Officially, China has ‘Four Cardinal Principles’ that Deng Xiaoping (Former Chairman) put forward. Today I’ll talk about some other basic principles as seen by the general public. Only by understanding these basic principles of China can we know what the Chinese government and people are doing.
It is important to state that my crude opinion neither can nor does it represent the official view of the government, I am just talking about this topic from the perspective of an ordinary citizen. The scope of the topic may not be comprehensive or precise. Thanks.
Basic Principle 1: Maintain national territorial integrity
- People regard food as their prime want, and food depends on the land.
China has been a major agricultural country since ancient times. Land is the most basic means of production. Without land, there is no food. Therefore, land is the prerequisite for survival. By analogy, in the Mesopotamian civilization that mainly relies on trade exchange, people do not necessarily have to stick to a piece of land and be proficient in the changes of seasons and solar terms, but will pay more attention to contracts and fairness around trade activities. (I am not expressing that Chinese culture does not value contracts and fairness, I am only saying that some characteristics will have a more basic existence in the culture of the corresponding region)”
- The loss of territory means the division of the nation.
- The Century of Humiliation
There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “Born in sorrow, die in peace.” The Chinese people who have just experienced a hundred years of humiliation have not forgotten the pain, nor the martyrs who sacrificed themselves in the fight. From a young age, people should know where a safe and stable life comes from. In China’s own historical time dimension, or in the spatial dimension of different regions on the earth, people can see too many wars, turmoil and death caused by division. These are unacceptable and intolerable.
Basic Principle 2: Maintain national unity
- Strength in numbers
China’s civilization originated in the Yellow River basin, but as early as the Yao and Shun period (around 3000 BC, about 5000 years ago), the Yellow River floods were rampant, posing a great threat to the survival and security of the Chinese ancestors who relied on agriculture for their livelihood.
But with the scientific and technological level and productive forces of the ancient times, it was impossible for individuals or a few people to achieve effective control of the floods. This is also the early practice/theoretical basis for the Chinese people to think that “strength in numbers” and “man can conquer nature”.
- Integration rather than replacement
In ancient times, each tribal group maintained its unity by blood ties, which biologically speaking, made it difficult for such close relatives to grow in population and resulted in poor biological quality of their offspring; therefore, they had to be open and integrated in order to promote the continuous growth of their ethnic groups;
secondly, from the legendary battle between Yan Emperor and Huang Emperor against Chi You, to the Yao and Shun era, various tribes fought and conquered each other, eventually leading to the integration of ethnic groups and cultures, rather than the annihilation of the defeated by the victorious;
thereafter, whether it was in the Qin Dynasty’s unification of the world, or in the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties when all nations came to pay tribute, there was no case of ethnic or cultural extinction, on the contrary more often through marriage alliances (note, not because they could not fight but because they had just won a war and wanted to achieve greater stability and unity through marriage alliances, even laying the groundwork for future ethnic integration) and actions like “Zheng He’s voyages to the west” that used “rituals” to “govern” the world.
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