We who are born in this twentieth century may always take for granted that nationalism is an unquestioned reality. To a Chinese who experienced Japanese invasion, Chinese identity has become an identity with the nation called China embodied in a state called China. In the recent decades, historians and sociologists ventured to disclose that, after all, nationalism was "invented" in the recent four hundred years in Europe, and, then, peoples in other parts of the world, one after another, adopted this notion to imagine their own corporate commonness.¹ Then, what is the Chinese case before our modern times?

China is a name coined by central Asians to call a large country after the name of the Ch'in dynasty, the first imperial dynasty that unified China in the third century B.C. However, Chinese did not address their own country by this name until the recent nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Usually, in the past, Chinese regarded themselves subjects of the emperor (Son of Heaven) who reigned over "tien-hsia," the world under Heaven. Therefore, Chinese essentially adopted an identity of being citizens of the world, a concept even in today's global village has yet to prevail. Such an identity indeed sounds rather abstract. Therefore, scholars tend to take note that Chinese identity was that of culturalism, in contrast to the commonly held national identity.²

Such a cultural identity, on the one hand, indeed, was the Chinese hallmark of cultural universalism. On the other hand, it reflected a Sino-centric mentality, an ethnical as well as cultural sense of superiority. I would like to hear from our learned colleagues in this conference comments on this issue by comparing the Chinese culturalism in the context of compatible phenomena of the Hellenistic, the Roman and the Catholic-ecumenical orders, which prevailed in vast areas beyond the application of national identities.

Nevertheless, the Chinese were no means the only people in their part of the world. In theory, one could claim the universality of an all-embracing cultural order. In practice, the members of such an order still had to justify their claim, firstly, by establishing a commonness among themselves, namely they still needed to "imagine" their sharing a common "community," using the term as borrowed from Benedict Anderson.³ Secondly, they also needed to set their claim apart from the claims of their neighbors who were not included in their sphere of cultural order and, therefore, distinctively separate "we," in the civilized world, from the "others," who were the "barbarians".

The development of the duality of both universality and particularity has a long history. It probably was first initiated in the period of the Western Chou, which witnessed the appearance of a network of feudalism. The state of Chou may not have been more than one of numerous states that evolved from tribal chiefdoms of the then Yellow River drainage during the second millennium B.C. Contending for survival in the multi-states system, Chou was not even a very important one, especially, in comparison with the state of Shang of the lower reach of the Yellow-earth plain. Choul's final victory over their mighty neighbor Shang and becoming the most the powerful state that dominated the then world of ancient China was the consequence of the combined effects of numerous elements, which I have tried to analyze in my book on the Western Chou history. What is relevant for this conference are two issues -- one is related to legitimacy and another is related to the exercise of effective control.

For the first issue, the Chou adhered to a claim of the Mandate of Heaven and that the Heaven, a universal transcendental authority, chose the morally worthy state to rule peoples of the then known world. The legitimacy of supremacy of the Chou over their contemporaries was given to the Chou as a recognition of their worthy conduct; it thus was an award related to a judgment. Likewise, the Chou leaders repeatedly warned their people that the Heaven, which bestowed this status upon the Chou, could remove it and give it to another even worthier state if the Chou failed to stand up to the moral judgment. The verdict and its criterion, therefore, is not assured by preference of the chosen people. Rather, the Mandate of Heaven was a contract, renewable only after test of constant re-examination by a transcendental will based upon a set of known criteria. The Choul's authority was built on the recognition of universalized expectation of certain manners of behavior. And, because it was a universal Heaven that supervised and judged, the world led by the Chou could not be defined by ethnic or any other boundaries. Potentially, the Chou world could reach all human societies.⁴

Meanwhile, the Chou established a network of garrison states to maintain their control over the Yellow River drainage and the eastern plain which constituted the present northern provinces. This feudal network was a political pyramid of authority delegated for the sake of controlling land, people, and other resources. The Chou system was so uniquely arranged that the political hierarchy virtually overlapped a kinship network in which the royal court was related to all the vassals as uncles, nephews, brothers and cousins whose status and obligations were placed in a hierarchy of the Chou lineage. matrimonial bonds tied the non-Chou states with the royal house as the Chou adopted exogamy as a way to link the non-Chou peoples with the Chou.

Likewise, each vassal state established a small-scale feudal network within its own territory by dispatching the children of the state's ruling house to grand fortified settlements and many crossed matrimonial ties with the local leading houses of those who originally might have been tribal chiefs or powerful leaders of the indigenous population. Therefore, at least the ruling elements of the Chou China were knit into a huge kinship structure. The identity of this ruling group was fairly clear, namely the children of the Chou house and their relatives. Frequent court visits, ancestor worship, exchange of gifts, confirmation of appointments, in addition to use of certain rituals and ceremonies, all were instrumental in reinforcing the rather particular "we group" identity. Relics of this ancient notion survive in today's usage of Chinese daily language. The state (kuo) was the vassal-state, the estate (chia) was established by the branch of the state-ruling house, Today, the Chinese word "chia," remains to mean household or immediate family. A combination of "kuo" and "chia" means a country and a state, and along with "t'ung-pao" (compatriot of China), are today terms meaning the entire nation of China for all members of the Chinese population.⁵

The faith of a universal transcendental force of the Heaven, combined with a particularly defined ruling group, provided the Chou with an option of forming a cultural identity rather than an ethnic-national one, an option taken by the ancient Greeks, or a religious one, by the ancient Hebrews.

The Chou ruling group, however, still needed to face other groups who were not given the same Chou identity. First, the ruled subjects in various Chou states, more often than not, were indigenous populations of these native lands. They were regarded by the Chou and their allies who dwelt in the fortified settlements (i.e., in the "cities"), as people of the field (i.e., the "country folks"), These people of the field, using their native dialects and abiding to the local customs and styles 6 of living, appeared to be distinctively alien to the Chou people. From the Chou view point, therefore, the distinction is that of culture. The Chou were civilized, the others were not; albeit, the reality was that some of these country folks had equally rich cultural traditions that often could be traced back to the days before the Chou ever appeared as a nation.⁶

The second category of the non-Chou peoples were the tribal peoples who resided in mountainous regions in north China, some of whom probably were connected with the early nomads on the Asian steppe-land. Ethnically as well as culturally, these peoples were indeed different from the Chou-Chinese who were farmers tilling the Yellow River loess land, These northern tribes juxtaposed the Chou-Chinese during much of the first half of the first millennium B.C. The Chou-Chinese often found these "Jung-till tribes so different from themselves that derogatory terms such as "barbarian" were applied to address these neighbors. Vice-versa, the Jung-ti peoples, who sometimes allied with some Chou states to fight other Chou-Chinese, were fully aware of their own identity.⁷

Another major non-Chou group were the southern peoples in the Yangtze River valley. These peoples, by the mid-first millennium B.C., gradually were absorbed into a newly found southern state of Ch'u, which managed to challenge the Chou world-order in the north. Struggles between the Chou states and Ch'u continued for three centuries until Ch'u adopted some of the Chou culture and eventually became assimilated. Nevertheless, the distinctive features of the Ch'u culture is evidenced by archeological findings that belonged to a much later period, even after the Han unification. During the extensive period of the Chou-Ch'u contest, the Ch'u were regarded "uncivilized barbarians" in spite of the richness of the Ch'u culture, and to the Chou-Chinese their cultural identity did not apply to the Ch'u.⁸

Had the above mentioned condition carried on without change, there might have been in China several nations, each of which claimed ethnic and cultural identity. However, history took anther turn. Through the prolong interaction between the Chou states and the other ethnic-cultural groups (i.e., the Ch'u and Jung-ti) in war or in peace, these peoples gradually were thoroughly assimilated by the Chou-Chinese. By the period of the Warring-states in the fifth to the third centuries B.C., these non-Chinese states looked just as other states of the Chou world. The states that contended for survival and for supremacy during the Warring-States period, one after another, developed state structures that strikingly resembled the European states in the relatively recent centuries. The state was normally ruled by a monarch who was served by a rather professional bureaucracy. Constant wars among these states forged a sense of identity for the rulers as well as subjects. A pattern of a sovereign state began to take shape. Again, if such a trend had carried on long enough in ancient China there might have developed the kind of nation-state that would have somewhat resembled the state we are familiar with today. But, again, history took another turn. China was soon unified in the third century B.C., and these former states all became provinces of the unified Ch'in and Han empires.⁹

After all, the unification of Ch'in-Han China was not only possible but also inevitable due to the prevalence of a sense of common cultural identity that took root in the universality of the Chou culture. Thus, the contending entities during the Warring-States period, indeed, never questioned the final outcome of unification (in fact, it is what they regarded as the restoration of a unified China of the ancient days); only they fought to decide which particular state should win the royal title of achieving unification. The Ch'in-Han unified empire, which lasted four and a half centuries, left the permanent impression in Chinese history that China normally should be a unified polity. A majority of Chinese people ever since the Han period identified themselves with the people of the Han just because they bear the legacy of the state of mind that the entire China ought to be a single unit.

What is problematic is that the Han China was not clearly defined as a sovereign nation-state. Yes, there were provinces and counties that had marked boundaries between each other. Yes, there even was a great wall permanently marking the borderline that separated the nomads from China. However, here and there within the provinces and counties and beyond the reach of the Chinese authority various ethnically and culturally distinctive groups of peoples still lived, rather independently, their own way of life. From time to time Chinese people would reach these gaps and frontier lands to convert them culturally, and then the Chinese government would follow in to establish political authority in such areas. In the Ch'in-Han local administrative system there was a particular unit called "tao" (a route) that mainted the function of stretching into the non-Chinese area until these so-named "barbarians" were "civilized" as ordinary Chinese and a "district" was established as an administrative unit, This polity of China therefore was inclusive and stretchable, instead of being precisely, judicially defined.¹⁰

Beyond the delineation of ethnicity and nations, the Ch'in Han empire indeed was an universalistic entity. The imperial title of Son of Heaven was an expression of such universality.¹¹

It has been mentioned previously in this paper that the Chou feudalism was held together by a combination of a pyramid of authority delegation and a well-knit kinship network. Among the Chou ruling elite, including members of all strata of the ruling classes, blood and matrimonial relationships formed social bonds of primary importance on which was the premise of defining dynastic rights and obligations and the pecking order among peers. Since parent-child relationship was the line from which other kinship relations were derived, filial piety thus was regarded the cardinal principle of kinship ethics. Reading the inscriptions on the Chou bronzes, one finds everywhere this concern expressed in these terms: family tradition, inherited position, reverence to the ancestors, consensual relationships between involved parties guaranteed in alliances established by ancestors, obligation of the living to honor and to glorify family names, and so forth. The societal fabric of the Chou elite was a community made up of a cluster of clans, lineages and households rather than individuals.¹²

Such primary social groups upon which familialism in ancient China was built, actually was the cornerstone of numerous human societies in history and in anthropology, What appears uniquely Chinese is that these primary groups survived in Chinese society as the most relevant corporate bodies ever since the Chou times and these primary kinship groups provided the Chinese with collective identities, The historical reasons for primary groups to remain viable collectivities probably is related to the coincidence of the drastic social mobility taking place in the Eastern Chou period (ca. 8th to 3rd centuries, B.C.) and the Confucian transformation of the Chou feudal ethics. Collapse of the Chou feudalism caused most ruling households to lose power and status. Those who suffered downward gradation on the social ladder still brought with them their accustomed conscious of these primary groups to their much lesser social status. Such change perhaps is associated with the phenomenon that by the time of the second century, B.C., after China was unified, almost everyone appeared to have a surname, which erstwhile had been a privilege reserved for aristocrats. Even Ssuma Ch'ien, the Grand Historian and one of the most learned in his time, could not distinguish the surnames of aristocratic clans and segmented branches of lineages. Then, every ordinary person had a surname that denoted a lineage.¹³

Permeation of the usage of a surname is not merely a phenomenon of mocking the conduct of the former aristocracy. The kinship primary groups did serve the useful function of protecting their members in times of prolonged and tremendous chaos. Furthermore, Confucius, who himself was a member of an old aristocratic household that suffered from declining of status, received the education of an aristocratic youth and also experienced a life of poverty and low social status. His great contribution was to have organized one of the most important systems of thought in human history that was not claimed to receive divine revelations. He simply redefined values developed in the aristocratic community as the deliberate ethics of a particular social class into a set of universalized values based upon human concerns. The Confucian transformation received wide acceptance probably due to the simple reality that the literati in ancient China were mostly people who shared with Confucius a similar social background. Among the Confucian re-interpreted ethics is the emphasis of filial piety, which is derived from the concern of familialism in the Chou period. This emphasis upon obligation to family and ancestry appears consistent with the previously mentioned crucial role taken by primary groups in the time of great social changes.

Mutual reinforcement between social functions and ideological justification provided the primary kinship groups with ample space to thrive in the transitory period of ancient China. After China was unified, the universal empire was too big and somehow too vague to give ordinary citizens an easily recognized, meaningful sense of belonging. Identity with primary groups therefore became an expedient collective identity.

Now here we have the duality of universal culturalism and particular familialism combining to comprise two levels of Chinese identity. In this regard, two specific issues need to be addressed. The first issue is between the very large cultural system and the limited primary unit: where did community feeling rest? Or, more precisely, how did a Chinese individual feel he or she shared with other fellow Chinese a community, even an imagined community? The second issue is: how did a Chinese decide his or her preference between these two levels of identity? Or, how did a Chinese balance choices between these two if there had been a conflict of options?

For the first issue, answers can be sought, again, by looking into the social development during the Ch'in-Han period, a formative stage of Chinese economics and social systems. In my investigation on the foundation of Chinese agrarian economic system in the Ch'in-Han period, I attempted to argue that the Han farmers developed one of the most sophisticated agricultures of intensive farming in the ancient world, and, that an extensive marketing network appeared in the Han period to maximize interflow of products of farming and cottage manufacturing activities. This nation-wide network was developed together with a network of roads that linked all parts of the then China. The physical existence of such a network of roads was a permanent asset for Chinese anywhere sharing a common economic community.¹⁴

Furthermore, the Han Confucianism, with a considerable amount of synthesis absorbing some elements of other schools of thinking in ancient days, had been the mode of Chinese mentality. The Han Confucian literati also were candidates of the imperial bureaucracy or incumbent members of the civil service. They were local community leaders as well as leaders of primary kinship groups.¹⁵ Such dual status of these Confucian elite gave them the advantage to bridge the gap between the universal culturalism and the particular familialism, especially, because these same Confucian elite monopolized the intellectual sphere that deliberated on and promoted the Confucian way of thinking, The officials carefully watched implementation of Confucian ideology in state policy and local administrators assumed the assignment of "teaching" the people in Confucian principles instead of "governing" them.¹⁶

The combination of an economic community and ideological permeation sufficiently created a sense of sharing a common China, whether imagined or not. Such a pattern of common Chinese-ness was by no means derived from ethnic-national identity, nor that of a state religion. Due to the inclusiveness of such universal culturalism, ever since it was formed in the Han time, Chinese could easily tolerate the reign of a ruling house of foreign-origin, As long as the foreign ruler accepted Chinese culture he would be accepted by the Chinese. It thus helps explain how foreign regimes repeatedly established dynasties in China, some of which lasted for centuries. At the beginning, foreign regimes might have faced strong resistance because they were culturally aliens. As soon as they had been assimilated by Confucianism and had observed the general principles expected of a Chinese imperial government to behave (including guarding the full operation of that nation-wide marketing network), the Chinese population would recognize such a regime as a legitimate government headed by a Son of Heaven.

During the period of disunity in the third to sixth centuries, northern "barbarians" occupied much of northern China. It was the first serious test of Chinese universal culturalism. Yes, there were prolonged resistances against invaders. What appeared a manifestation of the effective duality of culturalism and familialism was that the refugees fled to southern China and re-established Chinese states there by means of rallying around primary kinship while those who stayed in the occupied areas, ganged together in lineages and class behind fortified villages, managed not only to have protected their own members but also to have tamed the intruders by providing them with Confucian education and the services of Confucian bureaucrats.¹⁷

It is a great deal more problematic to address the second issue: How did a Chinese individual decide the priority between the universal culturalism and particular familialism? In times of peace, when not being hit by foreign invasions and not having to face a formidable challenge from another cultural system, these two levels of identities normally were mutually supplementary, once, a very grave challenge arrived, the coherence of this duality would then be seriously questioned. The state, which is embodied as the guardian of the culturalism, seems the first vulnerable one to be sacrificed, while the primary groups, be it a lineage, a clan, or a local community organized around such primary groups, would assume the responsibility of guarding the cultural identity. To a Chinese, the end of a state was merely the end of a regime, not the end of the cultural world, the "tien-hsia." Even though, while China was being divided and the "imagined" community of a nation-wide market network was becoming fragmented, these localized primary groups, under the leadership of Confucian scholars, would still adhere to the "imagined community" of universal Confucianism upheld by exemplary members of the model Confucian lineages and households.¹⁸

There were five categories of human relations that Chinese regarded essential: ruler-subjects (or boss-subordinates), parents-children, husband-wife, fraternal relations, and friendship. Among these, three are household-related, one (friendship) is community-related, and one (ruler-subjects) is public-related. Thus, the preference looks clear. A good person needs to reach out step-by-step from self-deception, gradually toward assuming more social responsibilities. it is not surprising, therefore, the Chinese always regarded the responsibility of keeping a household in good shape was the first step toward maintaining good community order, governing a state well, and ultimately reaching a peaceful and harmonious world (ping-tien-hsia).

Let me conclude this paper by citing the case of a cultural hero of the thirteenth century, Wen Tien-hsiang, one of the last Chinese leaders who resisted the Mongol invasion.¹⁹ There is every reason to assume that Wen Tien-hsiang had a strong ethnic-nationalist sentiment against the nomadic, alien, tribal Mongols, that he refused to surrender and chose to be executed in 1273 after being captured by the formidable Mongol cavalry. However, in the most celebrated poem composed by Wen, titled "Cheng-chi-ke" (A Ballad of the Righteous Integrity), he cited one hero after another in Chinese history who were regarded models of men of great integrity. Virtually every one of these heroes were praised because of their honoring the Chinese cultural values and unwillingness to compromise Confucian ethics for which they willingly gave their lives. Nationalism associated with state or racial distinction was not a subject that Wen Tien-hsiang treasured.

What I have presented here is the dual identity a Chinese normally adopted in the past two millennia or more. In the recent century, the modern situation is a very different story. The duality was shattered due to double blows upon Chinese culture and Chinese society. The rise of modern nationalism associated with a nation-state is largely a response to the precedents established in Europe during the past four or five centuries. It is ironic that in the last decade of the twentieth century, as the hitherto unquestioned concept of nationalism is being question by Anderson, Gellner, Hobsbawn and others, especially at the sensitive moment when the future of Hong Kong is at stake, we are here to re-examine the validity of a collective identity of which Chinese of my generation, who grew up in the anti-Japanese war years, had always believed to be one of a nationalism of a Chinese nation-state. History takes turns often ironically, and we are often caught up by such turns unprepared.

1. For instance Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); E.J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).

2. For instance, Benjamin I. Schwartz, "Culture, Modernity, and Nationalism" in Daedalus, Summer 1993, pp. 207-226, especially, pp. 218-220; also, Prasenjit Duara, "De-constructing the Chinese Nation," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (307) July 1993.

3. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991, revised edition).

4. Cho-yun Hsu and Kathryn Linduff, Western Chou Civilization (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988) pp. 68-111, 186-226.

5. Cho-yun Hsu and Kathryn Linduff, op. cit., 1988 pp. 158-185.

6. In the work of Mencius recognized were distinctions between the citizens and people of the field.

7. Jaloslav Prusek, Chinese Statelets and the Northern Barbarians in the Period 1400-300 B.C. (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), passim, especially, pp. 136-183; James Legge (tr. ) , The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895, Hong Kong University reprint, 1960) vol. IX, pp. 459-460, 463-465, Year 14, of Duke Seang (Duke Hsiang) and its prolegomena, pp. 130-133.

8. For a statement of the Ch'u's claim of independence see James Legge (tr.), The Ch'un Ts'ew, op. cit., vol. V. pp. 130-133, 138-141, Year 4 of Duke Sae (Hsi).

The state of Ch'u was a conglomeration of numerous tribal states in the Han and Yangtze valleys. By the end of the 8th century the Ch'u had to be counted as a power in the south of the Chou China. By the mid-seventh century B.C. the Ch'u were the major challengers of the Chou world. The Chou states and the Ch'u struggled to capture minor states on the Han River, The struggle lasted for centuries until several other non-Chou powers arose and a multi-state system was formed. A comprehensive history of the Ch'u has yet to be rendered in English. In my chapter on the Spring-and-Autumn period in the to be published Cambridge History of Ancient China, the history of the Ch'u is given considerable discussion. At this time, see the Shih-chi, Ch'u-shih-chia (The State History of Ch'u) of the Shih-chi (The Record of Grand Historian). For a recent study on the Ch'u that demonstrates its internal development of a power struggle parallel to what happened in the Chou states, see Barry Blakely, "King, Clan, and Courtiers in Ancient Ch'u" Asia Major, Third Series, vol. 5, number 2 (1992) pp. 1-39.

9. Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965) pp. 92-106; Benjamin I. Schwartz, op. cit. , pp. 218-219.

10. Ying-shih Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).

11. For the characteristic of the administrative unit of Tao, see the Ti-li-chih (Treatise of Geography) in the Han-shu (History of the Han Dynasty); also see Ying-shih Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China (Berkeley: University of California, 1967).

12. Cho-yun Hsu, op. cit., 1965, pp. 2-8.

13. Cho-yun Hsu, op. cit, 1965 pp. 24-51; also, Allen J. Chun, "Conceptions of Kinship and Kingship in Classical Chou China," T'oung Tao 76 (1990) pp. 16-48, and M. V. Kryukor, "Hsing and Shih," American Orientalists, 34 (1966) pp. 535-53.

14. Cho-yun Hsu,, The Han Agriculture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980).

15. T'ung-tzu Chu, Han Social Structure (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972).

16. These cases are stereotypes from filled pages of the biographies of exemplary officials in the Han-shu and the Hou-Han-shu (The History of the Han Dynasty and the History of the Late Han Dynasty).

17. Albert Dien (ed.), State and Society in Early Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 7-14.

18. There are numerous anthropological works that testify to the crucial role of lineage (or kinship organization) in Chinese societies,, in China as well as overseas. A classical work is Maurice Freedman, Lineage organization in Southeastern China (London:The Athlone Press, 1958).

19. His descendants are still living in a village in the New Territories, Hong Kong, James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: the Wang in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1975).