Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1990

There is no mystery as to what is the key to China's successful modernization: keep what is good in the traditional and adopt what is good i n the new. The problems, and these are enormous problems, are what and how: what is good in the old and how to keep it, and what is good in the new and how to adopt it without upsetting what we want to do in the firs t half of the proposition. There is no question as to how much good Western science and technology have done in prolonging Chinese lives and raising Chinese living standards. There is no question that China can benefit from more and better Western science and technology. But can China do so without doing violence to the traditional focus on the harmony between Heaven and Man or, to use modern jargon, on the traditional integrity of the Chinese ecosystem? Nor i s there any question that the modern Western device of the market economy is capable of spurring the creative ideas of every individual entrepreneur, or rewarding those that are successful in turning a profit; but can this device be adopted without doing violence to the traditional Chinese respect for a rational and systemati c human order? From the phrasing of these questions it is clear that, from the point of view of an archaeologist, wh o sees two separate, millennia-old approaches to the ordering of the cosmos and the ordering of the human world, and who is not convinced of the total superiority of one of these two approaches over the other, I am worried about this confrontation of the Chinese and Western civilizations and the forced assimilation of one by the other. The relationship between heaven and man There are many sources for my anxiety, but my principal worry concerns the seeming incompatibility of the traditional Chinese cor e concept tian ren he yi, or ‘Heaven and Man are one', a concept that is based on the traditional cultural practices - in agriculture, architecture, medicine, stock-breeding, cooking, treatment of waste, and every other facet o f material life —that are consistent with a harmonious relationship between man and Nature, with Western values that may be very different. Colin Renfrew, Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, defines the very concept of 'civilization' as human attainment to a cultural level that is above the level of the animals and the plants and serves to insulate humans from Nature. In this characteristically Western view, man is conqueror of Nature and places himself above Nature. This the West has done; and the tools it has used to achieve this are technology, which alters Nature, and trade, which reshuffles Nature's resources. Has the rapid advancement of Western civilization, with its twin tools of technology and trade (in its modern form, the capitalistic market economy), already significantly altered the harmonious relationship between Heaven and Man? The world's scientists are alarmed about the so-called greenhouse effect, the pollution of the air and water, the nuclear genie, the wasting and defertilization of th e soil, the water crisis, toxic waste, and a host of other problems brought on by the so-called economic development, which is a hallmark of the advancing Western civilization. Let me give another example from our daily lives. In a recent (August 1990) issue of Consumer Reports, a symbol of American materialist consumerism, we read the following dilemma about beef: ‘The US, with less than one-twentieth of the planet's people, consumes one-fourth of the planet's beef ... What if Americans at e a lot less beef? Could some land now growing grain destined for livestock be used to grow other crop s to feed the world's hungry? In theory, yes. But the opportunities created by reduced demand for beef wouldn't necessarily lead to increased production of other foods or more food for hungry people. There would have to be market demand for the other foods, and someone would have to pay for the food grown for the hungry. Otherwise the former cornfields might simply lie fallow - or sprout housing subdivisions.' There is nothing profound or unique about the beef story; it is just common sense, and it reminds us of the old story about the potatoes of Ireland. In an economic society humans do not interact with Nature without significant economic intervention; and that intervention is usually based on the profit interests of the various segments of society, and never based upon the survival interests of all humans. Tropical forests are often razed to make pasture land for beef cattle. How can we have beef, and the tropical forests too? Has the rapid advancement of Western civilization, with its twin tools of technology and trade ... already significantly altered the harmonious relationship between Heaven and Man? 40TH CONGREGATION 8