By Jerome A. Cohen
I am grateful to Matt Pottinger for making this speech (English; Mandarin), which has been widely-circulated, especially because of the stimulating discussion it has provoked in public as well as among China scholars. I thought it was a brilliant political speech, beautifully crafted for the audiences to which it was directed in the US, the West and China. It was not intended as an academic discourse.
Matt’s speech has provoked the expression once again of different views among China scholars about how to interpret the May 4th Movement. Like preceding chapters of Chinese history, it was capacious enough to permit both scholars and political figures to find in it what they might be looking for.
I am reminded of Stephen Platt’s excellent review, in last Saturday’s weekend Wall Street Journal, of a new book by Timothy Brook entitled Great State: China and the World. Platt’s last paragraph, arguing that “China is no more constrained by its history than any other country”, concludes that “insofar as its leaders prefer to cast their efforts as a culmination of what has gone before, Mr. Brook shows us that there are ready examples to justify nearly any path they choose.”
For example, late Qing dynasty reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao found support for their proposals in pre-20th century Chinese history. I recall that in the 1970s Ross Terrill edited a volume, The China Difference, for which he asked John Fairbank to consider the extent to which China’s history might provide support for greater freedoms of expression. Ross asked me to look into sources of possible support for ideas of government under law and due process. I don’t think John found too much to build on. Perhaps reflecting the greater optimism of youth, I think I found some traditional theories and practices that might be mobilized on behalf of contemporary liberal aspirations (My article then is here: “Due Process [in China]?” in Ross Terrill (ed.). The China Difference. New York : Harper & Row. 1979.).
To me the remarkable thing about our desirable efforts to scrutinize the May 4th process is how relatively little attention has been focused on its significance for the growth of a modern legal system. Yet Democracy, Science and the freedoms of expression on which they rest are unlikely to flourish in the absence of the rule of law, however its many variant meanings are conventionally understood. I doubt that I will undertake such a study. Perhaps colleagues can tell us that some good ones exist already, in Chinese if not in English, if we return to works published in the era between the two great wars that I am unfamiliar with. In any event I hope that the present ferment will reach the legal system as well as other crucial topics caught up in the wake of May 4th.