just thinking - chinese imperialism and chinese communism; an alternative view of china's 20th century history

a quick glance at both and there are striking similarities - one ruler at the very pinnacle, supported by an inner and outer court, ruling from a walled compound in beijing, central mandate to power derived in both from overarching moral duty to the people, in imperial china conferred by the heavens and in communist china conferred by marxist theory, the centre using its hard/soft power to force/cajole an oftentimes unwieldy and uncompliant bureaucratic apparatus extending to the village level, during the imperial era entry to the bureaucracy was via memorising confucian texts now entry is via memorising chinese communist texts (and in both the pragmitism of rule meant the texts took a back-seat) and post-mao has clearly seen a return to pragmatism over ideology, even the ritualistic state has survived - the forms of rituals have changed but the hierarchy and culture of ceremony has remained, recently, even the old habits of suzerainty seem to have resurfaced in china's resource dealings with impoverished/pariah african states.

think there might be a case to view the history of 20th century china from an alternative perspective. the dominant perspective now is that chinese imperialism was replaced by chinese communism and now chinese communism is being modified with foreign economic integration and markets. the alternative that may be explored is that chinese communism, through its distinctive stumblings, swings and campaigns, actually enabled the survival of chinese imperialism into modernity, i.e. the 20th century was actually a process of dynastic replacement and consolidation with the bonus of a democratisation, within the ruling class, of succession.

democracy would have been a catagorical change had the republicans been successful. whereas communism, as implemented by mao, although definitely iconoclastic and broke with the story, texts and language of imperial china till the qings, didn't create enough economic rent for him to consider spending on the much more costly business of unrooting and replacing the milennia-old underlying cultural and societal structures, which would have been necessary to affect much deeper and lasting change to ingrained thought patterns, habits, mores and norms. so most were left rather intact and indeed used/co-opted as the means to rule by mao. perhaps imperial china was merely reclothed and retooled by mao with new narratives and military/economic policies. and in doing so mao prevented the almost certain demise of imperial china which would have happened in the other probable scenarios then - either through the qing's own evident incompetence, should there have been no revolution, or should there have been true devolution of power through republican democracy. and mao's military/economic policies, whilst they may be correctly adjudged to be failures against potential (and definitely humanitarian disasters), they might have given the reclothed chinese imperial state just enough of a shot in the arm for it to survive the geopolitics of cold war. and where mao signed off, deng's post-cold war marketisation and opening of the borders of china to foriegn engagement and capital may have finally given the modern incarnation of the chinese imperial state the wealth required to not only consolidate its position of control but also upgrade its policing mechanisms to survive in the new digital age.