expansion eastward.
In his book, Chang sought to situate these negative conceptions of China within a corrective historical framework by highlighting the ways in which the situation had been radically different prior to the nineteenth century. In this period, China and Chinese traditions were the object of widespread admiration in Europe and the West, with Chinese culture making an especially powerful impression.38 During its three- to four-thousand-year history, Chang contended, China had developed a humanistically oriented philosophy that emphasized the importance of prosperity for every member of society. It had been commonly understood in China that emperors and political leaders were authorized to rule only if they treated their peoples well. This notion accorded closely to the social ideals espoused by the classical Chinese philosopher Mencius (Meng Tse) (372–289 BC).39 (Similar ideas would later be included in the preamble of the UN Declaration: “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”) According to Chang, it was also striking that China had never been a military feudal state for over two thousand years.40 However, Japan had the experience of being this for a long time.
Chang was eager to analyze the historical relationship between China and Japan in order to understand the actual conflicts between the two countries. Chang laid out the historical circumstances in the following way in the article “Civilization and Social Philosophies,” which he published for the American journal Progressive Education in 1938:
Japan, a smaller country with a centralized control, also had the readiness to learn foreign things quicker (than China). Japan’s modernization has proved quicker. China’s larger, more loosely knit organization, and also China’s stupid attitude of having itself achieved a valuable civilization made the process of modernization slower. You have heard that the cultural relation between China and Japan is often said to be about the same cultural relationship as between Greece and Rome. You have heard that, but I don’t think you can say it is true. For one thing, Rome took over things from Greece, and then after that, creativeness in Greece died. Another thing: Rome overran Greece. In this respect, Japan learned from China, and the Chinese culture continued and Japan continued to learn from China—from roughly speaking, around the fifth or sixth centuries—and then new movements reached Japan from China even down to the eighteenth century. You should trace it in art, philosophy, court matters, and in literature. Furthermore, Japan never overran China. So it is not at all the same type of relationship; it is rather a matter of relative speed in modernization. That is one reason for the conflict today—it is the speed of modernization. Another reason is the nineteenth century attitude toward expansion in that area. Gradually all the people who have interests in the Pacific are giving up that attitude, and I hope gradually, even suddenly, our neighbour will give up the idea that China cannot modernize herself.41
In a speech at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter in 1936, Chang noted that there was a general impression abroad that Chinese civilization and culture were not merely ancient but also static and backward. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, perceptions had been very different. The French philosopher Voltaire, for example, regarded the Chinese social and political organizations as humanistic in comparison with its European counterparts, which had been founded on religious thought. Chinese culture was not in fact spiritual, despite there being a common misapprehension that Eastern culture was spiritual and Western materialistic. That view, Chang argued, was wrong. It was indisputable that the Chinese had been more worldly than Westerners because religion in China had never grown into a significant force. Right up to the nineteenth century, China had continued to provide the world with material things. Tea, ceramics, paper, printing, and gunpowder—all originated in China. The country, it was true, still lagged behind as regards the production of railways, motorcars, and manufactured goods as well as in its capital accumulation. However, Chang argued, there were no intrinsic obstacles to modernization. The real difficulty came from the impatient and persistent pressure from the territories that happened to have already modernized. In the past ten years, and particularly during the past four, there had emerged in China a new movement, one which could be characterized as a critical adjustment, according to Chang. No longer would there be a blind imitation of cultural trends and political institutions, but, instead, Chang hoped, from this movement would emerge something that would make real improvements possible.42
Chang’s assertions about China’s past and the positive appreciation of China from European scholars are nonetheless vulnerable to the charge of being overly idealizing and generalized. There were also Enlightenment philosophers in Europe during the eighteenth century who were more critical of China’s political system and traditions. Baron de Montesquieu, for example, regarded the government of China as a despotic system that created a social and political order through repression and fear.43 Some Enlightenment philosophers in Europe may also have idealized Chinese history and culture for political reasons. They were eager to criticize the role of the state churches in their countries, and they looked favorably upon the more secular character of Confucian ethics.44
Chang’s talk of China and its millennia-long history in his writings was also a modified version of the facts. In an interview I conducted with the sinologist Willard Peterson in 2015, he noted that, while the term “Middle Kingdom”—Chung-kuo, or Zhongguo—is more than two thousand years old, the idea of a homogenous Chinese nation is a relatively late invention. When scholars and politicians refer to a Chinese history that stretches back three to four thousand years, they do not have in mind a Chinese nationstate as part of an international system. This notion of the nation-state only took hold at the time of the establishment of the republic in 1912, being further consolidated with the founding of the new People’s Republic in 1949. Chinese history prior to this point had been a succession of different political entities, often called dynasties, and a dominant social group, the Han people. Yet these entities did not collectively form a nation-state in the current sense of the word. To describe China as having a three-thousand-year history is thus to project a modern, twentieth-century notion backward onto the past. For Chang’s ideas about China’s millennia-long history to have validity, it is therefore important to acknowledge that the word “China” denotes a long line of dynasties that emerged as a nation-state only in the twentieth century. It should also be noted that Chang subsequently qualified his account of China’s long history precisely by referring to the separate histories of those territories that today compose the state of China. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, China was no longer seen by many citizens as an empire, representing a world civilization. It was perceived more as a state among other states in an international system.45
Chang’s book China at the Crossroads was nevertheless well received, and the reviewers were evidently surprised by the amount of factual information and reflections that he had managed to compress into a work of under 200 pages.46 It was often remarked that Chang had a particular talent for condensing texts and finding more concise formulations. This ability would serve him well during his work on the UN Declaration, when he would distinguish himself by presenting alternative formulations for the articles that were short and elucidative.
During his time in England, Chang was also in demand as a speaker on political and cultural issues in a range of settings. Chinese culture such as fine art or horticulture, Chang argued, was relatively accessible for those from a Western cultural setting. Philosophy and poetry had also become available thanks to translations. By contrast, Chang noted, Western audiences still found it extremely difficult to understand and appreciate Chinese music, although the enthusiastic reception of Mei Lanfang in the West had shown that this was changing.47
Chang also wrote an article during his time in England that compared the different university systems in the UK and in China.48 In this article, Chang spoke favorably about the tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge. This system created a personal relationship between the tutor and the student, according to Chang. It also encouraged the students to be humble and creative in their pursuit of knowledge through critical engagement with the opposing views of the tutor. In the Chinese universities, teaching was based more on lectures, which was a less costly system than the tutorial system but more “mechanical” in nature. The Chinese