Recording the Grandeur of the Qing: The Southern Inspection Tour Scrolls of the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors

Recording the Grandeur of the Qing: The Southern Inspection Tour Scrolls of the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors

Chinese Ideas in the West

Author's Introduction

Today civil service is an accepted institution in all modern democracies. In the year nineteen forty-one, for example, nearly two million five hundred thousand men and women took examinations for positions in the United States government.

So fundamental is the principle of choosing public servants on the basis of fitness that one might almost suppose it had been a cornerstone of our national thinking ever since our nation's beginnings. Yet, though few people stop to consider it, the fact is that this matter of efficiency in government is a relatively new idea in America. The first hundred years of our nation's history were racked with scandalous corruption as a result of the notorious spoils system. Not until eighteen eighty-three, two years after a president of the United States had been assassinated by a disgruntled office seeker, did the public wake up and demand a system of civil service examinations that would ensure the selection of most government employees on the basis of merit rather than party loyalty.

The civil service idea did not originate in our country, however, nor in Europe, though it is true that in passing this legislation, Congress followed the immediate lead of Great Britain and France, both of which had taken similar action a few decades earlier. The first county to install the merit system was China. In the year one sixty-five B.C., China inaugurated what later became a widespread system of competitive government examinations. And during the greater part of the time from that early date until nineteen oh five, shortly before the Empire passed out of existence, the majority of Chinese applicants for public office had to prove their ability by passing one of these tests. A picture of the examination halls in Peking in which applications were locked while taking these Chinese civil service examinations is included below.

Civil service is but one of many ideas the West has received from China - ideas that have contributed significantly to our civilization in such fields as politics, economics, and literature. The extent of this contribution is not generally appreciated by Americans. Accustomed as we are to ascribe our cultural heritage to Egypt, Greece, Rome, and northern Europe, we tend to dismiss Asia as a distant continent of alien cultures possessing no possible common denominator with our own. It is not generally realized that prior to the sixteenth century, the West received more from Asia, including distant China, than it gave in return. A previous article in this series, China's Gifts to the West, depicts the many material things which China has contributed to our Western world. This pamphlet tells a similar story of the nonmaterial ideas we have received from China.

Many people are more interested in things than in ideas. This is easy to understand. Things are simple and concrete, and their effects on our lives are easily noticed. Ideas, on the contrary, are complex and subtle. They have a way of escaping us just when we think we have grasped them. Yet today it is increasingly evident that our lives are often shaped more by certain ideas - whether for good or evil - than by the material things that surround us.

Just now, for example, we are beginning to harness the energy concealed in the tiny atom. Its strength is all but supernatural. Yet it is as nothing beside the strength of the ideas of the men who will control it. Whether the atom is to be used for man's good or for his utter destruction is dependent upon these ideas. Western civilization gives abundant evidence of the mastery we have gained over physical matter. But the relations between nations today reveal how meager is their understanding one of the other. The greatest crisis before our country lies in this gap between our control of things and our understanding of other peoples. Somehow we must bridge this gap, and quickly. Otherwise, our mastery of things will simply provide us with irresistible force with which to bring about our own destruction. The future of civilization may depend on whether enough nations and groups within nations can acquire an understanding and appreciation of one another to the point where world peace is possible.

One of the ways of doing this is by studying the contributions which various peoples have made to the rest of the world. The present article is a step in this direction. And China is one of the countries with the richest possibilities for such a study. Her contributions to Western life have been varied. Many of them are significant. Some are quite surprising, as we shall see.