Conservatism Arrives in China | QDaily's Annual Book Recommendations, No. 5

"Conservatism has now arrived in China. The moment matters — not only for China but for the world, because it may help change the fate of this great Eastern power."

A year has gone by, and China and the world, society and the state, the economy and our own lives have all been pushed about by large questions. In the shock of it, the disappearance of intellectual voices — or their drowning in the noise — has only deepened our confusion. Or perhaps a turning point is close at hand. In any era, wise thinking is scarce, and people of insight are what allow us to see the road ahead.

That is why our "2018 Annual Book Recommendations" set out to introduce, as widely and variously as we can, books we believe are worth reading.

As in past years, our editors have read every book that came within our reach, and present them here in good faith.

We have also drawn on our contributing writers, who catch new currents before the rest of us do and see further into them. Our thanks to them all.

This is the first piece in our nonfiction book recommendation series, on conservative thought in China. The author, Wang Jianxun, is an associate professor at the School of Law of China University of Political Science and Law; his research covers constitutional theory and the classical liberal tradition. He is the author of Taming Leviathan (《驯化利维坦》), the translator of American Federalism (《美国联邦主义》), and the editor of Twenty Lectures on Self-Governance (《自治二十讲》).

Something worth noticing has been happening in China these past few years: more and more conservative works are being translated and published here. In July 2018, The Roots of American Order, the masterwork of Russell Kirk, the "godfather" of American conservatism, appeared in Chinese for the first time. Kirk is regarded as the American conservative who took up Burke's mantle, and as the man who led conservatism's revival in the United States after World War II. He traced the sources of American order back three thousand years, to the Old Testament tradition of Judaism and Christianity, then through the reason and virtue of Greece and Rome, the rule of law and the theology of the Middle Ages, and the constitutional government and moderation of England — currents that met in a great confluence in the North American colonies and produced a free and prosperous republic.

Before that, nearly all the major works of Edmund Burke, the founding figure of conservatism, had already appeared in Chinese, among them Reflections on the Revolution in France (《法国大革命反思录》), Three Books on America (《美洲三书》) and Liberty and Tradition (《自由与传统》), along with several biographies of Burke. A few years ago Feng Keli organized the translation of a series called Classics of Western Conservatism, which took in seven important conservative books, including Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (《自由、平等、博爱》) and God and Man at Yale (《耶鲁的上帝与人》). Cecil's well-known Conservatism (《保守主义》), Oakeshott's classic Rationalism in Politics (《政治中的理性主义》) and Scruton's fine The Meaning of Conservatism (《保守主义的含义》) have all been translated as well.

Conservative books keep pouring into China, but the country has long lacked a conservative tradition, and readers are prone to misunderstand it. The commonest mistake is probably to confuse conservatism with being conservative, hidebound, or against reform. Conservatism does not oppose reform. Refusing to change, or turning the clock back, is not conservatism; it is complacency, and it runs against the current of history. Others believe conservatism works in some countries but not in others. That is wrong too: it belongs to no country in particular and can be practiced anywhere.

To see what conservatism stands for and what it opposes, start with how it began. Two great events took place in 1789. In North America, a genuinely free republic was founded — the United States of America. In Europe, a revolution broke out that shook the world — the French Revolution. One of the second event's stated goals was also "liberty," yet liberty was not what it produced. It brought the White Terror, the Jacobin dictatorship, and the rule of military strongmen…

Soon after the French Revolution began, a British statesman born in Ireland attacked it from across the Channel, in a private letter, without mercy — a letter that was published shortly afterwards as Reflections on the Revolution in France (rendered in Chinese as 《法国大革命反思录》, and also as 《反思法国大革命》). It was an immediate sensation, selling more than 13,000 copies in a few weeks. The author was Edmund Burke, later called "the father of conservatism," though he never used the word "conservatism" himself.

So what did Burke actually say about the French Revolution? Its errors, as he saw them: it rested on abstract dogma; it was infatuated with absolute rationalism; it ignored human nature and the complexity of society; it set itself against tradition, custom, authority and religion alike. In short, the danger of the French Revolution lay in its abstraction, its rationalism and its radicalism. Burke was sure such a revolution could only end in disaster, and he even predicted that a Napoleon-like figure would emerge from it.

Such a revolution could never build a free society, Burke thought, because arguing about abstract "human rights" is pointless: rights are concrete, and bound up with a society's traditions, customs and experience. The revolution's leaders "held that no limitation whatsoever could be placed on the rights of man; that any argument to the contrary was invalid; that the claims of human rights admitted of no concession or compromise, and that anything detracting from their full realization was sheer cunning and injustice. They held that no government, however ancient, however just or benevolent its administration, could rest secure if it did not conform to their conception of the rights of man!" The "rights of man" and the "liberty" the revolutionaries pursued were, in Burke's view, nothing but licence and self-indulgence, unchecked by morality, authority or religion.

Smashing the "old society" struck Burke as a terrifying thing to attempt, because a society is an organism, a body that grows slowly. It can also be seen as a contract, but one wholly unlike an ordinary contract — unlike a contract for pepper, coffee or tobacco — and not to be dissolved at will: "because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. … As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." To overturn a society casually, in Burke's view, was to break this eternal contract.

The revolution's leaders were in love with the supremacy of reason, and so treated religion, custom and tradition with contempt. But man, Burke pointed out, is by nature a religious animal; religion is the foundation of civil society; atheism runs counter not only to our reason but to our instincts. He warned the French: "Your tyrants rule by terror. They know that whoever fears God fears nothing else, so they have rooted out of the mind that fear which alone can give rise to true courage." Once they had destroyed the Church and denied God, the Jacobin rulers did indeed begin to do as they pleased.

Not long after the revolution began, Burke observed that from the day it took power, "France became the most thoroughgoing, arbitrary and effective regime of any kind — one without precedent anywhere on earth to this day." A revolution that claimed to pursue "liberty," "equality" and "fraternity," he concluded, was bound to end in statism and totalitarianism: "In their scheme of government, individuality is pushed aside. The state is everything. … To reach its own exclusive ends, the state holds supreme power to control and to suppress — controlling thought through indoctrination, and controlling the body through the sword."

Burke's reasons for opposing the French Revolution were later gathered by others into a political philosophy and an intellectual tradition: conservatism. So what is "conservatism"? Or, put another way, what does it hold?

For many conservatives, "conservatism" cannot be defined, because it is not one or two simple principles, not one or two clear keywords, but a complicated way of thinking, a way of living, a way of handling things — one that must change as circumstances change. Any definition either misses the heart of it or flattens it.

The contemporary British conservative theorist Roger Scruton wrote: "Conservatism seldom presents itself in maxims, formulas or goals. Its essence is hard to put into words, and when forced to state itself, it does so sceptically. And yet conservatism can be articulated: facing a crisis, whether under political necessity or the call for theory, conservatism does what it can to express itself, though it is never quite confident that the words it finds match the nature that calls for them. This lack of confidence comes not from timidity or despondency, but from an awareness of how complicated human affairs are, and from loyalty to values that cannot be grasped through the abstract clarity of utopian doctrine."

A loose definition, in his view, is to understand conservatism as a "conservative disposition," since everyone has some impulse to hold on to what is reliable and familiar. He wrote: "Conservatism stems directly from the idea that the individual belongs to some continuous, pre-existing social order, and that this fact matters most in deciding where people should go." Another well-known British conservative theorist, Michael Oakeshott, said much the same thing: "To be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

Conservatives rarely define their political philosophy in a sentence, but that does not mean it has no basic ideas of its own. Russell Kirk, a giant of conservatism, set out ten of them.

First, conservatives believe an enduring moral order exists. Human nature does not change; moral truths last. The mark of a good society is that everyone firmly believes in objective moral law, has a strong sense of right and wrong, and holds justice and honour to matter.

Second, conservatives value custom, convention and social continuity. Old customs and conventions help people live together in peace; law, at bottom, is nothing more than custom and convention crystallized. Continuity means that a society is an organism with blood and spirit, not a machine to be rebuilt at will.

Third, conservatives follow the principle of prescription — established convention or precedent — and trust wisdom that is old and long practiced. If people today can see further, it is only because they stand on the shoulders of giants. The individual is foolish, Burke said, but the species is wise.

Fourth, conservatives hold to prudence. Both Plato and Burke thought prudence the first of the virtues. Any public measure should be judged by its likely long-term consequences, not by expediency or popularity. Before acting, conservatives think it through and weigh the costs against the gains.

Fifth, conservatives insist on variety. They prefer the complex diversity of social rules and ways of life that forms over long stretches of time, and oppose uniformity and egalitarianism. To keep a society's diversity healthy, differences of rank and material condition, and various kinds of inequality, are necessary. True equality means only that all are equal before God's final judgment and before the law; every other kind of equality leads to stagnation.

Sixth, conservatives believe in human imperfectability. People are imperfect, human nature is seriously flawed, and so a perfect social order cannot be built; the pursuit of utopia ends only in disaster.

Seventh, conservatives believe freedom and private property cannot be separated. Private property is the ground on which each person gains independence, character and dignity, and it teaches responsibility and fairness; every great civilization has been built on respect for it.

Eighth, conservatives support voluntary association and local self-government, admire community spirit and public participation, and oppose involuntary collectivism and centralized power. A country's strength, they hold, comes from its countless small communities.

Ninth, conservatives hold that power and human passions must be strictly limited. Unlimited power is tyranny, whether it is monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. Conservatives do not believe in "benevolent tyrants," and hold that power must be restrained by the separation of powers and checks and balances — only that can secure freedom and order. A just government keeps a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

Tenth, conservatives hold that permanence and change must be kept in balance. Permanence secures a society's stability and continuity; change secures its improvement. Change is necessary to the social organism, as the human body needs its metabolism — a body that does not change dies. But change must be gradual and prudent. Conservatives do not oppose social improvement and change, yet they remain sceptical of so-called "progress" and "progressivism," and sceptical of the assumption that the new must be better than the old.

These ten principles can be taken as the basic tenets of conservatism. Not every conservative accepts all ten, but nearly all accept most of them, since they are essentially the core ideas of the conservative tradition running from Burke onwards. That tradition was carried forward by the American Federalists (Hamilton, Madison and Adams above all), by Tocqueville, Thomas Macaulay, James Stephen, Henry Sumner Maine, Irving Babbitt, and in our own time by Oakeshott, Kirk, William Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol, Robert Nisbet and Scruton.

Depending on the yardstick used, conservatism is often sorted into types: political, cultural, social and fiscal conservatism, for instance, or traditional (classical) conservatism, modern conservatism and neoconservatism. Whatever the type, they share certain things — all of them, in some respect, stress conservation and prudence and oppose radical change; what differs is mainly the emphasis. Even conservatives of the same type may hold somewhat different views on particulars, which is no different from any other political philosophy or intellectual tradition.

Most people agree that conservatism is a political philosophy, or a body of political thought. But is it an ideology? Some say yes — Samuel Huntington argued exactly that in his 1957 essay "Conservatism as an Ideology." Others say no. Kirk insisted again and again that conservatism is not an ideology and is in fact anti-ideological; it is a state of mind, a kind of character, a way of looking at the order of civil society. What holds the conservative disposition together is a set of notions and attitudes grounded in feeling, not ideological dogma.

Conservatism and liberalism are, to a great extent, the two most influential political philosophies in the world today, and they dominate the politics of Britain, the United States and other countries. So how do they differ? Before sorting that out, it is worth saying briefly what "liberalism" means. Defining "liberalism" is no easier than defining "conservatism": its claims are just as complex and various, and it means different things to different people. There is no agreed definition of liberalism, just as there is none of conservatism.

Broadly, "liberalism" stresses the fundamental importance of liberty and argues for equality, democracy and other basic values. But liberals understand "liberty" and "equality" in widely different ways, so their positions are far from uniform. Some understand liberty negatively — negative liberty; some understand it positively — positive liberty; others understand it in republican terms — republican liberty.

Because of these differences of understanding, and other factors besides, liberalism too is sorted into types: classical liberalism and modern liberalism, or political, economic, social and cultural liberalism. I cannot discuss the claims of each type here, or all their quarrels with conservatism. I will compare modern liberalism with conservatism, because that quarrel is the most conspicuous today and shapes political practice in many countries.

Besides, classical liberalism and conservatism differ little; some people think there is almost nothing between them. Certain figures can be called classical liberals or conservatives with equal justice — Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Lord Acton, Hayek, Thomas Sowell. Even Burke is sometimes grouped this way, since he worked to limit the power of the crown and to defend the liberty of Englishmen and of the American colonists. Some people therefore simply call them "liberal conservatives" or "conservative liberals."

Between conservatism and modern liberalism, though, the distance is enormous. Modern liberalism arose in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, out of criticism of capitalism and the free market, and it calls for government to enter social and economic life and to provide welfare. It is also called social liberalism or left liberalism, and in the United States progressivism; among its representative figures are Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Hobhouse, Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, Keynes and Rawls.

Where do conservatism and modern liberalism part company?

First, over whether a transcendent moral order exists. Conservatives say it does, and many hold that social order has its source in the Judeo-Christian tradition, that earthly law should submit to God's law, and that moral standards are objective. According to Kirk, what conservatives care about first is the renewal of spirit and character, the eternal question of the inner order of the soul, and the religious restraints that underpin any life worth living. Modern liberals deny a transcendent moral order; order, they say, can be altered at will by human free will and the principle of consent, and no objective, eternal moral standard exists.

Second, over whether human beings are sinful, imperfect, and unchangeable in their nature. Conservatives say yes; modern liberals say no. Liberals are the more optimistic about human nature and the more trusting of those who hold power, which is why they want government to enter social and economic life more deeply.

Third, they see liberty differently. Conservatives argue for ordered liberty: freedom is bounded by order, order comes before freedom, and any order is better than anarchy. Modern liberals hold that liberty comes first — that so long as no one else is harmed, freedom should not be restricted, and that anarchy is better than an unfree order. Conservatives, for instance, do not think people of the same sex have a freedom to marry, since marriage is the union of a man and a woman, nor that women have a freedom to abort, since the foetus has a right to life. Modern liberals approve of both.

Fourth, they take different attitudes to tradition, authority and custom. Conservatives believe freedom and order cannot be had without tradition, authority and custom, and work hard to defend them; liberals do not see it that way, and may regard those things as fetters on human freedom.

Fifth, they differ over private property and the free market. Conservatives believe private property and the free market are essential to a society's freedom and prosperity, that one of government's chief jobs is to protect them, and they oppose redistributing wealth, the welfare state, and arbitrary state interference in markets and economic activity. Burke said: "The state ought to confine itself to what is truly and strictly public business — public peace, public safety and public prosperity." "To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government. It would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it. The people maintain the politicians, and not the politicians the people. It is government's duty to stop evil from spreading, and government should use its power to restrain evil. In this, and perhaps in everything else, government can seldom do positive good." Modern liberals, by contrast, believe private property benefits only the rich, or chiefly the rich, and harms the poor; they want wealth redistributed through progressive taxation and support the welfare state; they oppose the free market and support state intervention in social and economic life.

Sixth, they see equality differently. Conservatives hold that equality means only equality of rights and freedom, only equality before the law; any other kind is incompatible with a free society. They oppose abolishing rank and class distinctions — which cannot in fact be abolished — and take differences of talent, standing and wealth to be normal. Modern liberals hold that equality means equality across the board: equality of status, economic equality, equality of wealth, equality between the social roles of men and women. Without these, they say, a society is not truly equal. On that understanding they support all sorts of levelling measures, and some go so far as to argue for abolishing every difference between people.

Seventh, they take different attitudes to the family and to intermediary bodies. Conservatives regard the family as the basic cell of society, fundamental to its continuity and to the formation of morals, and hold that the family's educative function and authority cannot be taken from it. They likewise value intermediary bodies — civic or non-governmental groups such as churches, guilds and schools, and other self-governing associations — believing that their independence and authority form an important barrier against the power of the state. Modern liberals deny the family and such bodies any special standing, often seeing them as forces that obstruct freedom and that ought to be subject to the state. The family exists, they say, purely by free will, and some regard the loosening or dissolution of the traditional family as a sign of progress; hence their support for same-sex marriage and the like.

Eighth, they see local self-government differently. Conservatives accept the subsidiarity principle: society should not step into what an individual can handle, and the national community should not step into what a small, local community can handle. Local self-government both helps people take part and helps preserve a society's diversity. Modern liberals like uniformity and standardization, want no difference between one place and another, are enamoured of centralized power, and put their faith in a central government they believe to be fairer and better able to realize the ideal of equality.

Ninth, they take different attitudes to multiculturalism. Conservatives oppose it; they do not believe cultures are equal, they believe some are better than others, and they hold that cultural identity shapes national identity to a great degree — that a society's cohesion requires some mainstream culture to lead. Modern liberals support and promote multiculturalism; cultures are equal, they say, different cultures should not be treated differently, no culture should be asked to merge into another, and a society can hold together without a mainstream culture at all.

Finally, they take different attitudes to change. Conservatives approach change prudently: change only when it is necessary, and let it be moderate, gradual and partial, its aim conservation rather than novelty. Conservatives are not "conservatives" who reject change out of hand; on the contrary, they support change, so long as it is moderate. Burke said: "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." "Just as timely reform benefits government, moderate reform benefits the people — not only because moderate reform has continuity, but because it carries within it a principle of growth. Whenever an improvement is made, it is surely right to leave room for further improvement later. … But in violent change, in what those whose passion outruns their reason call a 'thorough purge,' the whole operation tends as a rule to be so crude, so rough, so ill-considered, so mixed with recklessness and injustice, so at odds with the general course of human nature and human institutions, that even the people who wished most fervently for reform are the first to be disgusted by what they have done. Then, to correct this corrective work, grievances that had already subsided are called back out of dormancy. The result is that only running riot counts as real reform, and only that is welcomed. … Confusion becomes uncontrollable — not because the remedy was too toxic, but because it was misapplied and its action too violent. In light of this, one of my chief convictions about reform is that it should proceed by degrees: some effects arriving soon, others only after a longer time."

Conservatives are famous, as everyone knows, for opposing the French Revolution. That does not mean they oppose every revolution, or revolution under any circumstances. Burke supported the American Revolution, which happened almost at the same time, because the American Revolution came to no more than colonists demanding the rights they held as Englishmen; it did not break with British tradition, custom and law, and it did not cut the past away. Set beside the French Revolution, the American one was relatively conservative. As a last resort, Burke would even accept a violent revolution to overthrow a government. He said: "If a government is truly wicked and arbitrary, and cannot be reformed (as sometimes happens), then it should be replaced, by force if necessary. But when the question is the degree of perfection of governmental institutions, large or small, the room allowed for such measures is much smaller."

Modern liberals, by contrast, lean towards change that is radical, violent and total, however much upheaval the consequences bring. Ruled by absolute rationalism, they detest the "old society," love the "new society," and love to dream up and construct a "utopia." Often they cannot tolerate old traditions and customs, believing these hold back a society's march towards greater freedom and equality. They like sweeping the old away and remaking things, sometimes for the sake of novelty alone, and they tie "new" to progress and justice. They support "sex-change" surgery, for example, and support people choosing whatever gender they identify with, and take this for a mark of social progress and tolerance.

One could probably list more differences, but these are the main ones between conservatism and modern liberalism. Much of the argument, disagreement and conflict in Western society today goes back to them. Disputes over welfare, abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, immigration and government regulation all show the split. On the political spectrum, Britain's Conservative Party and America's Republican Party hold to conservatism, while Britain's Labour Party and America's Democratic Party hold to modern liberalism.

Conservatism has a deep tradition and great influence in Britain and America, yet in China it has long been left out in the cold. Since Western learning began flowing east in the late Qing, currents of thought have poured into China — socialism, utilitarianism, existentialism, (modern) liberalism — with conservatism alone missing, or at least with far fewer adherents. One reason is that when China opened its doors, varieties of radicalism and collectivism were in fashion in the West, and the many Chinese students who went abroad quickly brought those ideas home, taking them for the West's current and its future. What is more, against an age preoccupied with "national salvation" and "enlightenment," Chinese intellectuals were especially fond of the Continental Enlightenment and knew little of the Scottish or the American one. People then knew Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot well, and the (absolute) rationalism, anti-traditionalism and anti-religious temper of the Continental Enlightenment were widely accepted and promoted in China. As Eastern and Western cultures collided, people were impatient for change, above all sudden change, and drawn to radicalism and rationalism, while the conservative tradition of Britain and America left them unmoved or provoked their contempt. For a long time Chinese admired the French Revolution and followed in its footsteps, eager to smash the "old society" and build a "new world." Rationalism, radicalism and collectivism unquestionably dominated twentieth-century China, and the political and economic consequences still weigh heavily on Chinese lives.

Twenty years ago, when Liu Junning published his book Conservatism (《保守主义》), most Chinese were still unfamiliar with the subject, and some were suspicious or hostile. Today Conservatism has been reprinted again and again and found many more readers, more and more conservative works have been translated and introduced here, and more and more people understand, accept and identify with conservatism — conservatives in the full sense of the word.

They have begun to reconsider the problems radicalism and rationalism brought, the disasters caused by violent revolution — the French Revolution above all — and the consequences of planned economies and planned thinking. They have come to see the value of custom, tradition, authority and religious belief, and to understand that a free society cannot be built from a blank sheet of paper but is the result of slow accumulation. More and more people now see that social change is necessary, but that it must be moderate and gradual, not the tearing down and starting over that history's violent revolutions repeated again and again — because that only reduces what was accumulated to nothing and makes a free society harder to build.

Some will say conservatism has a market in Britain and America but will not work in China, because China has nothing worth conserving, and no tradition of freedom in particular. This is wrong. China has no "great tradition" of freedom, true, but it does have a "small tradition" of it: countless people of conscience have worked for freedom over the centuries, only for their efforts, for one reason or another, never to converge into a great stream or bear fruit. Once conservatism takes root in China, the country has a chance to escape the cycle of violent revolution, to escape the vicious circle of dynastic turnover, and to see that great stream of freedom at last.

Others will ask whether promoting conservatism in China means returning to the Confucian tradition. The answer is that whatever in the Confucian tradition is compatible with freedom can be conserved, and whatever is not should be discarded. Liu Junning defined conservatism plainly as the doctrine of "conserving freedom," which means conservatism will not accept despotism and tyranny, nor any tradition that advocates or quietly permits slavery. Nor will it accept the "sole veneration of Confucianism" that some people urge — not only because Confucianism is one among many Chinese traditions, but because to venerate it alone is a rigid and closed attitude and practice. Conservatism has a particular fondness for old things, but it does not refuse renewal; provided it can act prudently, it stays open to what is new.

For a long time, because conservatism had not entered China, people were bound to misunderstand it. Conservatism has now arrived in China. The moment matters — not only for China but for the world, because it may help change the fate of this great Eastern power.

Cover image: Liberty Leading the People (《自由引导人民》) by the French painter Eugène Delacroix, via Wikipedia; banner image: Russell Kirk, via Wikipedia.