Page 52 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

CAN ONE SAY NO TO CHINESENESS?

definitions of Chinese as ‘belonging to the Han race, being born in China proper, 1
speaking Mandarin, and observing the “patriotic” code of ethics’ (Tu 1994b: vii). 2
Instead, Tu wants to 3
4
explore the fluidity of Chineseness as a layered and contested discourse, 5
to open new possibilities and avenues of inquiry, and to challenge the 6
claims of political leadership (in Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong or Singapore) 7
to be the ultimate authority in a matter as significant as ‘Chineseness’. 8
(ibid.: viii) 9
0
The impetus for this intervention is a certain disillusion, if not despair, about the 11
political reality of the People’s Republic of China. As Tu observes, 12
13
Although realistically those who are on the periphery . . . are seemingly 14
helpless to effect any fundamental transformation of China proper, the 15
center no longer has the ability, insight, or legitimate authority to dictate 16
the agenda for cultural China. On the contrary, the transformative 17
potential of the periphery is so great that it seems inevitable that it will 18
significantly shape the intellectual discourse on cultural China for years to 19
come. 20
(Tu 1994c: 33–4) 3 21
22
It is important to note the political implications of Tu’s project. His position 23
is known to be explicitly neo-confucianist and largely anti-communist, which we 24
need to keep in mind in assessing his critiques of ‘the center’. Placed in the context 25
of Chinese cultural history, however, the assertion of the (diasporic) periphery as 26
the centre is a radical one. The notion of a single centre, or cultural core, from which 27
Chinese civilization has emanated – the so-called Central Country complex – has 28
been so deeply entrenched in the Chinese historical imagination that it is difficult 29
to disentangle our understandings of Chineseness from it. Yet the very emergence 30
of a powerful discourse of cultural China enunciated from the periphery and 31
formulated to assert the periphery’s influence at the expense of the centre is a clear 32
indication of the increasingly self-confident voice of some diasporic Chinese 33
intellectuals, such as Tu Wei-ming himself. This growing self-confidence has much 34
to do with the historical and economic state of affairs in global modernity at the 35
end of the twentieth century. As Tu put it, ‘while the periphery of the Sinic world 36
was proudly marching toward an Asian-Pacific century, the homeland seemed mired 37
in perpetual underdevelopment’ (1994c: 12). Indeed, it is precisely the homeland’s 38
seeming inability to transform itself according to the ideal image of a truly modern 39
society – an image still hegemonically determined by the West – which has led 40
to the perceived crisis of Chineseness which the project of cultural China aims to 41
address. 42
Central to the intellectual problematic of cultural China is what has been seen 43
as the urgent need to reconcile Chineseness and modernity as the twentieth century 44

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