The Torch Magazine

Toward An Understanding Of The Middle Kingdom

by M. Roy Schwarz, M.D.

When Napoleon was asked about China, he said, "Let the Dragon sleep for if he awakes, the world will tremble!" There is little question that the Dragon is now awake, but should the world tremble? To answer this question requires at least some understanding of the Middle Kingdom.

This paper will share insights into such an understanding based on 67 trips to China as President of the China Medical Board, a foundation created by the Rockefeller family.

The People Of The Middle Kingdom

    The current population of China numbers 1.3 billion, or 20% of the world's population. Unfortunately, it has only 7% of the world's tillable land to raise food for these people. The largest ethnic group in the population is the Han Chinese, but China also has 56 ethnic minority groups, each with their own language and together numbering 100 million people.

    The one child policy altered the sex ratio of newborn babies in China such that male births out-number females by a ratio of 117 to 100. This means that there are 30 million bachelors in China or, as the Chinese say, "bare branches" (guang gun) who will probably never find a Chinese wife. Partially as a result, in October 2015, the Chinese government announced that couples may now have two children, with an emphasis on females.

    The Chinese population is rapidly aging. In 2015, 15% of the population was 60 years or older, which equates to 60 million people. By 2050, the Middle Kingdom will have 450 to 500 million elderly people.

    In 1978, 82% of all people lived in rural areas, while only 18% lived in urban settings. By 2015, the rural dwellers had decreased to 45% as people moved to the cities. This has helped create what is called a "floating population" made up of 270 million people who leave the rural areas to work in the cities each year, coming home only for Chinese New Year. They leave behind 61 million children, or 1 in 5 of the youngsters in China. Because the wife often accompanies the husband, there is no one to care for the elderly. As a result, the suicide rate for those 70 to 74 years of age in rural areas has increased 3.6-fold since 1999.

    The recent slowing economy has resulted in non-payment of wages for some of the migratory populations, and this has led to unrest. Worker protests increased 94% between 2014 and 2015. Paradoxically, in some areas, there is a severe labor shortage, which began in 2012.

Seven Dynasties of the Middle Kingdom

    Understanding China requires a historical framework. The most convenient is that provided by the seven dynasties that ruled the united Middle Kingdom for 2,133 years.

    The first dynasty was established in 221 BC when Chin Shi Huang united five kingdoms and established the Chin Dynasty with himself as the Emperor. He established a single language, a standardized school system, a uniform set of laws, and a single system of weights and measures. He also saw the need to combine the short "walls" that various kingdoms had built to repel foreign invaders and, in so doing, began the Great Wall. He died in 206 BCE.

    Immediately after his death, the second of seven dynasties (the Han Dynasty) was established. It became the longest ruling dynasty in Chinese history, lasting 400 years (206 BCE - 220 AD).

    The two dynasties that followed the Han Dynasty ruled China for 600 years. These were the Tang Dynasty (618 - 960 AD) and the Song Dynasty (960 - 1260 AD). During this period, China boasted the most advanced civilization in the world.

    In 1260 AD, Mongols from the north under the leadership of Genghis Kahn overran China and established the Yuan Dynasty, which lasted 108 years. During this first period of foreign rule, involvement in China by outsiders was welcomed. One example was the 17-year sojourn in China by Marco Polo, a Venetian.

    In 1368 AD, the Chinese rose up, threw out the Mongol invaders, and established the Ming Dynasty. During the almost 300-year rule of the Ming (1368 - 1644 AD), trade was massively expanded and a Chinese renaissance occurred--but it was not to last.

     In 1644 AD, Manchurians from the northeast invaded China and established the seventh and last dynasty, the Ching Dynasty. This, the second dynasty of foreign rulers, lasted until 1912 AD when Sun Yat Sen, a Christian physician, overthrew the Ching government and established the Republic of China.

Contributions To Civilization By The Middle Kingdom

The Chinese have made a number of significant contributions to civilization, from gunpowder to porcelain to immunizations and civil service examinations. Here are a few other examples.

Printing and paper. Using a bamboo mulch to make paper, printing with wood blocks was established 600 years before the Gutenberg Press.
The compass. The compass allowed the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644 AD) to make seven voyages to 37 countries for trade purposes. This was accomplished through a Treasure Fleet of 62 ships manned by 27,800 crew members and commanded by Admiral Zheng He. There is some evidence that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe 100 years before Magellan and visited the Caribbean 93 years before Columbus.
Proverbs. Proverbs are a part of the fabric of Chinese culture. Some, like Mao's "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step," are universally recognized wisdom. Others include Deng Xiao Ping's "It doesn't matter what color the cat is as long as it catches the mouse," referring to China's economic model, and his response when asked about developing China: "It's like crossing a river feeling for the stones." A favorite of mine is calling a sensitive issue, especially if political in nature, "A tiger whose buttocks cannot be touched."
Confucius. This towering thinker was born in 551 BCE and lived until 479 BCE. He was a moralist who had the habit of confronting the rulers with their ethical misconduct. As a result, he spent a considerable time in jail. He believed that one "could not carve rotten wood" and that when government misbehaved, it disturbed an otherwise harmonious society.

    Confucius established the first private school in China, which enrolled 3,000 students, 72 of whom became leading thinkers. He believed that "moving mountains and rivers is easy, but changing people's behavior is difficult" and that the only way to change people's behavior is through education. His formula for this behavior modification was "reading plus thinking against a backdrop of reality."

    In "The Great Harmony" chapter of his monumental collection of his philosophy, The Analects, he outlined his concept of how to maintain a harmonious society. Every ruler of China since Mao has quoted him in speeches. On the wall of the United States Supreme Court's Hearing Room are the great lawgivers of all times. There, standing beside Moses and Hammurabi, is Confucius.

    China's 48 "World Heritage Sites" is a national total second in the world only to Italy's 51. Among the most impressive are the Terra Cotta Warriors of Chin Shi Huang (each with a different face and each with a necktie); the famous Great Wall (13,170 miles in length, if all the walls built by the Chinese to keep out foreigners are combined, and never breached by invaders); the Grand Canal (a 1,100 mile long channel from Hang Zhou, across the bay from Shanghai, to Beijing, begun in the 5th Century BCE); the Giant Buddha Of Leshan (the largest carving in the world, 233 feet above the confluence of three rivers in the Sichuan Province, dating to the Tang Dynasty); and the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, a marvel of ancient engineering that calls for more detailed explanation.

    In the period before the Chin Dynasty was established (226 BC), the Sichuan Province was bedeviled each spring by flooding of the Min River. The Governor of the area, Li Bing, proposed cutting a 66-foot-wide channel through the adjacent stone mountain (Mount Yulei) and diverting some of the river's water to the 5,300 square kilometer Chengdu Plain lying beyond the mountain. The channel was "cut" using water and fire to heat and cool the rock until it shattered and could be removed. This took eight years. He then built an island in the river to divide it into two streams. One, the inner stream, continued down the normal course of the river. The other, or outer stream, was diverted to flow through the gap and onto the Plain. In order to control the water level in the outer branch, he created bamboo sacks of rock in the shape of hotdogs and placed them across the inner channel. By adding or subtracting the number of sacks, he could control the amount of water that went through the gap versus the amount that went over this "dam" and down the river. Because of the monumental nature of this project, Li Bing was deified, the only Chinese to bear the title of a "god".

    The intellect that gave the world these contributions still exists in today's Chinese people. They are conscious of having once been the world’s most advanced civilization, and remembrance of how that role was lost still gives pain.

One Hundred Years of Humiliation
of the Middle Kingdom

    The One Hundred Years Of Humiliation began in 1839 when the British declared war on the Chinese in order to force them to continue to import opium so that the British could collect taxes on the imports. The Chinese lost this war (the First Opium War) and, as a result, lost Hong Kong Island. The Second Opium War broke out in 1857, the British again declaring war on China to force them to continue to import opium. Again defeated, the Chinese were forced to give the British Kowloon.

    In 1894, a war erupted between China and Japan over the sovereignty of Korea. China lost this First Sino-Japanese War and had to cede a portion of their northeast territory to Japan.

    In 1899, the Boxer Rebellion began, motivated by Chinese frustration over the exploitation of China by foreign powers. When the eight foreign powers put down the rebellion, the Chinese were forced to pay monetary reparations that exceeded the tax revenues of the Chinese government for an entire year.

    Although China was not involved in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904, primarily about control of Korea, the war was largely fought on Chinese soil. As a result of the Treaty of Portsmouth, the Japanese were given sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula, Port Arthur, and more land in the northeastern part of China.

     China declared war on Germany during World War I (1914-18), yet the Treaty of Versailles gave the Japanese still more land in northeast China, further influence over the Korean Peninsula, and islands in the south Pacific.

    In 1937, the Japanese invaded China from their base in the Manchukuo State in the north, and the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted (part of the broader conflict we call World War II). In the Peace Treaty of World War II, the Chinese Nationalists, under Chiang Ki Check, were given back the land that Japan had previously controlled. However, in part because the Nationalists would tolerate foreign influence and the Chinese Communists would not, a civil war ensued. After the Chinese Communists had driven the Nationalists to Formosa, Chairman Mao's first words on October 1, 1949 in the Tiananmen Square Victory Celebration were "And now China is for the Chinese!"

    Seven wars in 100 years all resulted in humiliation of the Chinese. Chairman Mao's words—"Enough is enough!"—resonated with the whole nation. Failure to understand the history behind Mao's pronouncement will result in a serious misunderstanding of the Chinese behavior that we see today.

Modern Reforms in the Middle Kingdom

    Since 1975, three major reforms have been undertaken in China.

    In 1975, when Deng Xiao Ping introduced the "socialist market economy," the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $35. Deng predicted that, with the new model, by the year 2000 the per capita GDP would be $800. It turned out to be $845, a 24-fold increase. He also predicted that by 2050, the per capita GDP would be at least equal to the most advanced nation in the world. Chinese leaders realized, however, that economic reform would stall without reform of their scientific and educational enterprises.

    Convinced that their future economic growth depended upon science to produce new products to market in the global economy, the Chinese needed an educational system able to produce the scientists who create the breakthroughs. While the Chinese were under Russian influence, universities grew up in a silo fashion (if one wanted to focus on forestry, one created a university dedicated solely to forestry) but by 1990s, they realized that the leading universities of the world, which produced most of the scientific breakthroughs, were comprehensive universities where all disciplines were combined. As a result, they embarked on a campaign to merge their silo universities. In Hangzhou, for example, they merged four universities overnight, creating a single university of 60,000 students and a faculty of 20,000.

    Any such merger would be complex, and all the more so in China, where in addition to the usual academic administrative structure of President, Vice President, and Dean, each university has a parallel "Party" structure, with a Party Secretary for every administrative leader. As a Chinese proverb has it, "Can two tigers live on one mountain?" The mergers caused some unhappiness, but the incentive that overrode this unhappiness was money. Peking University, for example, received $250 million more than their normal allotment, to be used to create world-class science laboratories, pay world-class salaries, and provide world-class living quarters. This, they hoped, would reverse the scientific diaspora that had occurred for 25 years and would attract distinguished Chinese scientists to return home and bring their breakthroughs with them.

Challenges Facing the Middle Kingdom

    The number one goal of the Chinese government is to maintain social stability. Hence, any challenge that might result in instability must be dealt with. All other aspects of the operation must be subjugated to this goal. Achievement of this goal currently faces a number of challenges.

    The first is caring for 1.3 billion Chinese. This includes providing water when 40% of the towns are without clean water year round. It involves combating pollution, not only of the water, but of the air and the land. It involves education for the people, jobs for the 7.5 million college graduates each year, and healthcare for the people. It involves dealing with the male to female birth ratio and providing care for the elderly. Finally, it involves the challenges associated with the expansion of the cities.

    The government must deal with the evolving expectations of the people. This is especially acute in the rural areas where the people learn about the standard of living in the cities and they want the same for themselves. As the economic miracle has unfolded, it has also eroded the traditional culture of the Chinese people including its values, its family structure, and the roles and responsibilities of individuals.

    In addition to these challenges, the Chinese government must deal with corruption, which is epidemic in all segments of society. To counter this, President Xi Jinping has embarked on an aggressive anti-corruption campaign. He characterized this campaign as "catching both tigers and flies," meaning to snare crooks at all levels of society.

    In the past, when government corruption became widespread, when there was a huge income gap between the urban and rural areas, when there was a marked discrepancy in educational and health care opportunities between the rural and urban areas, and when taxes were high, revolutions have occurred. Many of these gaps exist today.

    The Great Wall, as I have told you, was never breached. Then how did the Mongols and the Manchurians capture China? The answer was that the people opened the gates and let them in, feeling that foreign invaders would be less burdensome than their own government.

    The greatest question facing the Middle Kingdom is, "Will a one-party system like that in China be adequate to maintain the harmonious society of Confucius?"

    The Dragon is clearly awake. Should we tremble? I leave that answer to each of you now that you have an understanding of the Middle Kingdom.

Closing Thought

I close with my favorite Chinese proverb: "If you plant for one year, plant rice. If you plant for 10 years, plant a fruit tree. If you plant for 100 years, educate your children."

Sources and Further Reading

Du, Finbar and Du, Ban. Things Chinese. China Travel and Tourism Press, 2001.

Eptein, Israel. From Opium War To Liberation. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1980.

Fairbank, John King, and Goldman, Merle. China: A New History. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1999.

Lanqing, I Li. Education For 1.3 Billion. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Pearson Education, 2003.

Roberts, J. A. G. A Concise History Of China. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.
Rong, Deng. Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2003.

Sinclair, Kevin, and Po-Yee, Iris Wong. Culture Shock! China: A Guide To Customs And Etiquette. Portland, Oregon: Graphic Arts Center, 1999.

Author's Biography

    M. Roy Schwarz, a native of Idaho, received his BS degree at Pacific Lutheran University and his M.D. at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He has served on the faculties of McGill University, University of California at San Diego, University of Colorado, Columbia University, University of Michigan, University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University.
   He served for nine years as President of the China Medical Board (CMB) of New York, a private foundation established in 1914 by the Rockefeller Foundation to create a world class, western science based medical school in China. This school became the model for medical education in Asia. During his tenure, the CMB supported 13 medical schools in China and 13 more in Thailand, Laos, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Mongolia.

    Dr. Schwarz also established an Institute for International Medical Education to define Global Minimum Essential Requirements for graduates of all medical schools in the world.

    He and his wife of 60 years, T.C., live in Winchester, Virginia.

    "Toward an Understanding of the Middle Kingdom" was presented to the Torch Club of Winchester, Virginia on June 1, 2016.