Zhong Wen: Someone once proposed what is called the “Matteo Ricci Confusion”—that is, when analyzed using traditional Western political-science frameworks, China’s polity and governing practices cannot be clearly categorized. As a result, European observers fell into a long-lasting state of perplexity. This “confusion,” beginning with Ricci, later influenced Montesquieu, Hegel, and even Marx, eventually becoming a mainstream Western mode of thinking. Through Liang Qichao’s translations in modern times, it entered China and constrained Chinese intellectuals’ own judgment and problem consciousness, persisting unresolved for over four centuries.

Bo Ya: Does the “Matteo Ricci Confusion” require a Chinese response? I think not. It is merely a confusion internal to the West. China has never felt this was a “problem,” because the standard for evaluating statecraft is obviously governing performance, not some particular “form” (institutional structure) or abstract “truth” (ideology). A once-and-for-all perfect “form” (polity) simply does not exist. But dogmatists such as Communists believe a response is needed and, behaving like slavish imitators of the West, engaged in Maoist “transformation” and Deng-era “reforms.” The result, of course, is a mess.

Zhong Wen: Exactly. I say such a response requires little effort because the enormous historical and cultural differences between civilizations are objective realities. It is nearly impossible to “convince” the other side. If mutual understanding is unreachable, then one should simply “seek common ground while reserving differences,” rather than pursue barbaric conquest or force one’s foot into someone else’s shoe. As a historic nation of more than a billion people, the meaning of Chinese life and practice does not require Western recognition in order to possess “legitimacy.”

Bo Ya: Yet Communist slavish imitators borrowed the violent machinery of foreign movements and Marxism-Leninism to carry out a barbaric conquest of China, establishing what people call the puppet regime of the “Later Qing—People’s Republic of China.” This makes them even more out-of-date than Ricci’s contemporaries four hundred years ago.

Zhong Wen: The Journals of Matteo Ricci, S.J. were compiled in his later years as he sensed his time was short. He organized records of nearly thirty years of observations in Ming China. On the covers of these materials Ricci never wrote a title—meaning that the book was not something he himself intended for public publication. These materials were merely “internal references” meant to be sent back to the Jesuit Superior General in Europe for review and circulation. Thus, the intended readers were upper-class figures of the Western world, so the writing is more direct and less guarded. But the fate of writings does not lie with their authors; these materials were publicly published in the West in 1615, five years after Ricci’s death, and their spread became unstoppable.

In The Journals, Volume I, Chapter 6 discusses “The Government Institutions of China,” and Chapter 5, “On the Humanities, Natural Sciences, and the Use of Academic Degrees in China,” also touches upon the foundational premises of the governmental system. Relevant passages include:

“We will touch upon this subject only within the range relevant to the purposes of this book. To discuss it thoroughly would require not merely several chapters but several volumes. From ancient times, monarchy has been the only form of government approved by the Chinese people. Aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy, or any such forms—they have not even heard their names.”

“Although we have said the form of government in China is monarchical, it should already be evident from what has been stated—and will become clearer below—that it is to some extent aristocratic.”

“As we conclude this chapter on Chinese government institutions, it seems worthwhile to record a few additional matters in which they differ from Europeans. … Another major and noteworthy difference from the West is that the entire nation is governed by the scholarly class, generally known as philosophers. The orderly management of the realm is entirely entrusted to their hands.”

“The entire nature of Chinese government is closely connected with these special factors (Note: referring to the civil-service examination system). Its governmental form is unlike that of any other nation in the world. Although it is true that the empire is not administered by the learned or ‘philosophers,’ it must be acknowledged that they exert broad influence upon the empire’s rulers.”

“Anyone may sit for the preliminary examinations; sometimes a single region may have four or five thousand candidates.”

Bo Ya: Ricci did not understand that Ming society was not so much aristocratic as more egalitarian and commoner-oriented. This was also part of why it fell to the Qing. Thus we see many traitors at the end of the Ming—people who were powerless under Ming institutions but became ferociously cruel under the Qing, which valued rigid hierarchy, much like today’s Communist Party. The Ming, by contrast, resembled the Republic of China—more free and tolerant.