The Rise and Fall of the East

This self-avowedly ambitious work aspires to provide “a coherent explanation for the power, reach, and discretion of the Chinese state” (x). In providing an explanation that is coherent and comprehensive, the book succeeds; in providing one that is concise and compelling, it is of more arguable accomplishment. In every respect, though, Yasheng Huang provides us with a sweeping work chock-full of important insights on Chinese political economy.The core of Huang's account of the Chinese state relies on what he asserts is the underappreciated centrality of its ancient examination (keju) system, which explains China's historical tendency toward autocracy and stability but constrains its ability to develop new technology. This root cause and its three crucial implications give rise to the book's eponymous acronym, EAST.In Huang's account, the examination system is so critical, and useful, for the Chinese state because it provides an effective and efficient means to constrain preference divergence between rulers and subordinates; establish uniformity of culture, ambition, and prioritization among officials and the ruling elite of different regions; and powerfully shape China's political culture in a unitary, conservative, and deferential direction. Moreover, Huang argues, this legacy extends to the present day, explaining a characteristic of China that is as salient as it is durable: “The Chinese state is strong because it reigns without a society” (x).Central to Huang's account is the way in which the examination system tilts the balance between scope and scale in China's political-economic system. Keju, Huang argues, provided China's premodern rulers with an ingenious means of achieving scale while constraining scope. This conferred many benefits, not least the ability to effectively rule a large and polyglot population, but also deprived China of others, including the heterogeneity of political and social thought; the dynamism of private enterprise and civil society; and the capriciousness of experimentation and innovation. This imbalance in scope and scale, according to Huang, explains much of China's success but has at times proved its Achilles’ heel, and may well do so once again.The book excels in providing rich historical and empirical detail: one example is an evidently unique database of Chinese inventions that allows Huang to convincingly pose a novel answer to the Needham question. China's technological prowess relative to the West, he argues, suffered well before the Ming and in fact dates to the Sui, which not uncoincidentally also invented keju. This bolsters the view that political and cultural conformity, as reified and exemplified by keju, accounts for China's relative lack of technological innovation and deployment.Coupled with this detail are bracingly incisive insights: one such is that “the modern mindset—drive for knowledge and for answers—matters far more than a static piece of technology. A far more foundational question than Needham's question about Chinese science is, ‘What happened to Chinese curiosity?’” (241).On the other hand, Huang's account teeters on the edge of two common pitfalls of China studies scholarship: determinism and polemicism. In service of his generally convincing argument, Huang sometimes overstates the primacy of the Chinese state—claims that it is “watertight” or that it has entirely managed to “asphyxiate society” (89) are rather exaggerated, both historically and contemporaneously. His claims regarding the sustained and all-encompassing impact of keju, though convincingly argued in the case of premodern China, are more questionable when considered in light of modern examination-dependent states, among them the Indian Civil Service and indeed even post-1949 Taiwan.Perhaps of greatest import, Huang has much to say about China's future. First, he says, it has flourished when it has embraced heterogeneous ideas and cultures, and suffered when it has not. Second, the modern Chinese state owes its technological success to international collaboration, which is threatened by geopolitical rivalry and an inward turn. Third, and perhaps of most interest to policymakers, the Chinese Communist Party faces an intense succession dilemma when Xi Jinping steps down from power, which it is not guaranteed to survive.All in all, this is the sort of book that academia too rarely produces: a daring and absorbing, if partly flawed, attempt to answer a vitally important question at the heart of one of the oldest, most important polities in world history, and one on whose future that of all humanity will largely turn

Chinese history and philosophy · History · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies