Volume 24, Number 8 · May 12, 1977
Mrs. M. and the Masses
By John K. Fairbank
In the People's Republic
by Orville Schell
Random House, 271 pp., $8.95
Comrade Chiang Ch'ing
by Roxane Witke
Little, Brown, 549 pp., 15.00
One flaw in a human rights foreign policy is that human rights are not as pervasive as human righteousness, and the self-esteemed revolutionaries who monopolize righteousness in Russia and China will reject American tutelage. But if the Kremlin leaders do it a bit defensively as Europeans once removed, the same cannot be expected of Peking. To rule by virtue of virtuous conduct was a Chinese specialty long before Christianity and Roman law taught us that individuals have immortal souls and civil liberties. Confucian morality stressed duties, not rights, as the glue of social harmony, and individualism is still a dirty word in the People's Republic. The fact is that the human rights concept, though enshrined in a self-styled universal declaration, is culture-bound. Thus it assumes the rightful supremacy of law and due process over moral teachings, but right-thinking Maoists, who don't tolerate a legal profession, scorn the letter of the law and exalt Mao's principles of moral conduct. They view our civil rights as a form of political affluence associated with the property rights of our economic affluence, not something China can use. Chinese individuals relate to state and society in a different way.
Review, 2885 words
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