Opinion | How China chose a communist revolution over capitalism and rehabilitated the idea of reform
- The country’s youth had a choice in the early 20th century between two types of Western revolution, and eventually discovered a definition of their own
- As the People’s Republic turns 70, the idea of reform is favoured, but for centuries it was regarded as doomed to fail, says sinologist Wang Gungwu at the launch of ThinkChina magazine
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, two words probably stand out. First, the “revolution” that succeeded in 1949. And then, the “reforms” that started about 40 years ago.
These two words are often put together, sometimes in opposition, suggesting that reforms are better than revolution; at other times, that a revolution is necessary, reforms are a waste of time and unable to achieve what people want. So these two words have a very interesting and intimate relationship.
Yet, the two words are very difficult to unpack. And very often, misleading.
Let me begin with the word revolution. We have translated it as geming. But geming, of course, has a long history, quite different in origin from the word revolution. That is a Western word, basically from the French, and we have many examples of it from western Europe. But that idea of revolution was not the same as the idea of geming, which was originally about the change in the mandate for the new dynasty, or a new system of government – a mandate change – and this idea of geming goes back to the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
Revolution, on the other hand, has a wide range of meanings. Some are even confusing. It can apply to violent revolution, political revolution, social revolution. The same word is used for industrial revolution, scientific revolution, commercial revolution. All sorts of adjectives have been used to describe revolution. So the word actually doesn’t have a very clear meaning. It means different things with different adjectives.
But geming is very simple, a change in mandate. So how did these two words get together? It’s quite clear that the revolution idea was actually brought to this part of the world from Europe.
