MANAGING CHINA AND THE CASE FOR ‘FACE’ (PART 1)
Date : 16-08-2019
Author:
Rana Divyank Chaudhary*
China is considered one of
the most intractable challenges in geopolitics today. The remarkable success of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) in recent decades, in achieving high economic growth by
fusing together market economics and authoritarian control, China’s several
millennia-old civilization, and its socio-cultural complexities, both
intimidate and confound those whose task it is to develop policy-options for dealing
with this resurgent Great Power. Strategists
are aware that the window of time within which other countries can close the
gap with China in terms of the hard power differential is rapidly narrowing. Consequently, there is the tendency to
explore unconventional approaches, so as to wrest every possible advantage in any
future armed conflict involving China. Chinese
strategic culture, and, societal sensitivities considered to be uniquely
Chinese, are frequently viewed in such inquiries as rich, albeit uncharted,
sources of generating strategic options for managing China.
One
such issue, which has figured in the analyses of Chinese practice of
geopolitics but which has not been examined from the perspective of strategy,
is the CCP’s need to preserve ‘face’, in its engagements with the world. In both, popular news media as well as
strategic circles, the idea of addressing this ‘face’ as a means for achieving
victory in a tense and probably hostile engagement with China has gained
traction. What does ‘face’ refer to? How is it uniquely Chinese? Are there different ‘faces’ for China and the
CCP? This article is the first part of a
series which attempts to explore the various aspects of ‘face’ that are
pertinent to the realm of geopolitics and the art of strategy.
The earliest non-Chinese appreciation
of the concept began to surface among the authors writing about China in fin
de siècle literature. In his book, Chinese Characteristics,
published in 1894, the American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith dedicated
an entire chapter to the exposition of ‘face’.
Renowned Chinese intellectuals of the time, such as Lu Xun and Lin
Yutang, either referred to Smith’s work or independently expounded the idea of
‘face’.
In
these writings, Chinese society is shown as concerning itself much more with
form than with facts. All social roles
are to be performed in strict observance of the established standards of
propriety. A Chinese person gains or
loses ‘face’ depending on the success of his execution of these acts. Smith even declared ‘face’ to be the “key
to the combination lock” of Chinese cultural traits. It is also interesting to note here that he
cites dispute-resolution in China’s villages as an illustrative instance of the
importance given to ‘face’. The ideal
verdict is not centred upon principles of justice as we have come to understand
them, whereby blame is affixed and retribution or compensation is expected. Instead, all involved must be given a chance
to save ‘face’ to establish a lasting peace.
Tellingly, Smith even draws an analogy of this ideal balance of ‘face’
with the European notion of the balance of power. This argument could be examined further and
critiqued in the context of China’s engagement in contemporary international
politics.
In
the present, views such as those held by Smith would fit the mould of
Orientalism and would probably be castigated in toto for its inherent
racism and ethnic stereotyping. However,
by Smith’s own admission, these observations were not being propagated as
scientific facts. Instead, in the
absence of better ethnographic methods, these were the most reliable generalisations. Apart from his own personal experience of
these norms, most of his Chinese interlocutors, too, attested to their wide prevalence
and validity. It is certain that this conceptualisation
of ‘face’ was to be impactful in the years to come, as borne out by the term
beginning to appear even in English literature and newspapers such as the Times by the 1920s. But, how accurate was the original definition
of ‘face’?
First as Honour, Then as Prestige
More recent and concerted
attempts to demystify ‘face’ investigated the basic question, which was to
discern whether ‘face’ was a universal aspect of human life or an exclusively
Chinese value. The oldest study available
in English on this subject is an article published in the American Anthropologist in 1944 by Hsien Chin Hu, entitled “The
Chinese Concepts of ‘Face’”. Hu
bases the study on the finding of anthropologists and psychologists that while several
societal values may seem universally applicable, different cultures place
varying degrees of emphasis and show distinct attitudes towards these similar-sounding
aspects. Therefore, while ‘prestige’
defines the possession of reputation in Anglophone societies, its closest
equivalent in the Chinese context, ‘face’, is not the same in terms of the
criteria by which it is gained and secured.
Hu
concludes that ‘face’ is essentially a simplified summation of two distinct Chinese
terms ‘lian’ and ‘mianzi’ (the Pinyin-equivalents of Lien and mien-tzu have
been used). Lian is the measure of a man’s moral character and carries an
individual’s internal as well as external social sanctions for ‘right conduct’. If a man acts in violation of the socially
accepted fundamental standards of human morality, it is considered to be his
downfall in the society’s eyes. In
China, such opprobrium has profound impacts and a loss of lian is known to have driven individuals to commit suicide. On the other hand, a man who is willing to
endure pain and suffering for adhering to his moral principles and for the
well-being of society is considered to possess lian. Mianzi is different
from lian in that while an individual
can gain reputation through his birth, social standing, wealth, or power, the
wider society remains ambivalent towards the morality of his actions. For instance, a person may choose to gain mianzi in the eyes of the public by not
being disagreeable with his superiors and the more powerful actors in his
society. However his egotistical desire
to self-aggrandize and avoid the costs of dissent would cause him to lose lian.
This
discussion elucidates that along the lines of ‘respect’ reserved for heroism
and martyrdom in most human societies, the greatest honour a person can achieve
in Chinese society, too, is that of being revered — for his unconditional
altruism and loyalty to his people. By
contrast, even though the pursuit of reputation for its own sake is permitted,
it is not regarded as the highest ideal, since such a pursuit is transactional in
character. Mianzi becomes an intangible commodity to be traded between the
individual members of society. A desire
to gain mianzi ought not to be allowed
to interfere with one’s own conscience and the performance of one’s duty to one’s
society.
This
final distinction is a crucial one and will be explored further in the next
part of this article wherein linkages between ‘face’, ‘nationalism’, and the
Chinese notion of ‘the century of humiliation’ would be studied in the light of
China’s extant historiography. We might
then be better placed to seek answers to the questions: how does ‘face’
manifest at the level of Chinese national identity and interplay in
international relations? Can a theory
about ‘face’ be developed and applied to not only understand China but also
respond to it? What would be the most crucial
problems that must be resolved beforehand? Opinions, suggestions, and criticisms from readers,
would help to better frame further discussion and are very welcome.
*****************************
*Rana
Divyank Chaudhary is an Associate Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation
(NMF), New Delhi. The views expressed in the article, are his own and do not
reflect the position of the NMF. He can be reached at associatefellow3.nmf@gmail.com
.
Department:Experts View