From an overall point of view, Chinese agricultural civilization was developed independently in an exceedingly open and rich territory, and under the protection of an advantageous topography able to prevent external invasions from any direction. The principal traits of Chinese culture were accumulated gradually in the course of the continuation and renewal of the Chinese agricultural civilization for thousands of years. Agriculture drew its resources from the land and because cultivated land could not be taken away, the peasants were neither as mobile as nomads who could move from place to place in search of water and grass, nor as free as laborers who could choose their places of employment without limits. They were born, grew up, aged and died here for generations. They made a self-supporting living and obtained enough to eat and wear by intensive and meticulous cultivation, a tremendous labor on a rather narrow stretch of land, supplemented by household handicraft in a close combination with agriculture. The stylized productive activities and nearly solidified economic structure developed in the people such natural dispositions as tolerance of hardship and tenacity, honesty and sincerity, simplicity and an unsophisticated nature. It focused their minds on their native land, leading to careful consideration before migrating. These provide the necessary conditions for the prosperity of society and economy, the development of science and technology, the stability of public order and the flourishing of culture and education, while determining as well their highest possible limit.

In the Middle Ages, the natural economy was also dominant throughout Europe, but based upon serfdom to the feudal manor as its basis. Within the manor there was a definite division of labor among the different serfs and especially the work of agriculture and handicrafts which usually were undertaken by different people. Owing to the division of labor among serfs and the available machinery, the productive forces stagnated for a rather long period and the degrees of prosperity in the economy and of development in sciences and techniques were far inferior to that in China. However, this inherently dual tendency could not quite solidify the natural economic structure so that capitalist industry and commerce could easily emerge and develop. In India the rural commune system was so stubborn that the society was decomposed into many atoms similar in appearance, but among which there were no connections. The rural communes had no intention of social progress and no actions propelled the society forward.

But the natural economic structure in China was different from both Europe and India. Its distinctive qualities were that the component units were based on one family and one household, and that there were fewer divisions of labor among the respective family members. Each household combined the production of the means of livelihood and the most necessary means of production along with that of humankind itself (that is, the multiplication of the race). It possessed far greater social productive forces than the manor economy of serfdom and conversely enabled this economic structure to be exceedingly integrated and solid. The direct combination of agriculture with household handicraft saved so much material and time that these rural households were able to evolve into a landlord economy by annexing land. This economy was the basis for the formation of a unified country. This rural household possessed far more vigor than the Indian rural commune so that it could bring China’s civilization to leadership in the world for a rather long period of time. Its structure, which was far more solid than that of the European manor, enabled China to break through its intrinsic setup and to develop a capitalist industry and commerce.

In the traditional agriculture and handicraft of China, the importation, inheritance and development of productive techniques, and the understanding and the utilization of such natural conditions as seasons and topographical advantages, etc., relied mainly upon oral instruction and the examples accumulated through practice. Thus, an elder of a family who had rather rich productive experience became the authority of this family, and the structure of the Chinese family turned into a typical father-son pattern with the lines of father-son and of mother-in-law-daughter-in-law as its main axes. The principal purpose of marriage was to beget male offspring who could in turn generate successive generations of descendants. The practical roles played by the male labor forces in agricultural production brought made bearing male’s to be of supreme importance in human reproduction. On this basis, the Chinese patriarchal clan system was gradually founded. In this pattern of families, clans and relatives a giant social network grew and formed a pattern. What was needed was to follow it and to preserve its knowledge and experience. These usually were the same formula, repeated again and again for generations, and wear directly preserved in the elders’ minds. Both descendants and ancestors lived in an identical environment and walked the same route in life, so each person could easily acquire the ready-made keys from the ancestors when he met any question. Therefore, Haven and ancestor worship, the arrangement according to levels qualifications and record of service, traditionalism, age standing for IQ, and antiquity representing truth — all these were were the inevitable outcomes in the theory of knowledge created by the families and the pattern of its social structure.

For a thousand years, the people always got up at sunrise and went to rest at sunset, sowed in the spring, looking after the plants in Summer, harvested in Autumn and stored up in Winter. Things were going round and round with no alteration in time other than the change of seasons once a year. This fixed life-style-repeated continuously in simple repetition, accustomed people to being happy-go-lucky, believing in fate and being satisfied with their present condition. All their thoughts and feelings and the whole cultural system showed that they preferred unity, identity and quiet stability to multiplicity, diversity, change and disorder, so that a great unity was formed as the times required. The central mission of the great unification was to ensure unity in all of peoples’ lives.

For the bureaucracy which represented the supreme Emperor the ideal was non-governing, i.e., not to disturb the mechanical life of the people. This was the great unification in the field of politics. In ideology the manifestation of the great unification was the development of a single school of thought and worship of the Con-fucian classics. The people did not seek to show their own originality and to found their own characteristic ideology and system of scholarship, but were satisfied with committing a fixed set of several Confucian classics to memory and expounding them, or at most stating a few of their own views as annotations of the classics in order to defend traditional thought. As a result a tradition of scholarship regarding the study of the classics, commentaries and correct annotations and implications was formed. This great unification excluded multiplicity. It did not require creative or exploratory types but those who would follow in a conservative manner; this was the inevitable outcome of the great unification.

Although invasions and harassment by the nomadic nations several times broke up the usual equilibrium, the solidity and tenacity of the economic structure combining agriculture with household handicrafts were strong enough to digest the invasive alien and, with the passage of time, to recover the fixed setup of the great unification by meekly submitting to oppression and subduing firmness with gentleness. The accumulation and concentration of the social contradictions were dispelled temporarily by the peasant insurrections and wars which broke the great unification, but it was rebuilt as rapidly as possible.

People now remember a way in which Chinese history and cultural system could develop have been eagerly sought for one and half centuries. In order to relieve China rapidly from the closed cultural system of agriculture based upon household production and to promote the development and wide spread use of productive forces, many persons with lofty ideals sincerely hoped to find a ready-made way from the West. They carried out many explorations and made great efforts to lead China into the path along which Western capitalist civilization developed. In China capitalist industry and commerce, a bourgeois representative system of government and the capitalist social psychology had rather considerable expansion But obvious differences with Western capitalist structures of society, politics, economy and cultural psychology soon appeared. People attributed these differences to the oppression and obstruction of imperialism and feudalism, which indeed is an important reason.

But the big powers themselves tried by every possible means to bring China into the capitalist world market and to colonize her thoroughly with cannons and goods. That, however, produced very little effect. They found that the most stubborn resistance came from the structure of the small-scale productive economy, which closely combined Chinese household agriculture with household handicraft, as well as the structures of the society and the relevant cultural psychology. In China the feudal rulers as well as the so-called reformers also had a try at setting up Western capitalist industry. Since the Qing Dynasty, both the Northern Warlords and the New Warlords of the Guomintang were dramatically enthusiastic about developing bureaucrat capitalism. They had their own golden age and considered themselves unexcelled in the world. But they could not gain a foothold. Still the most broad resistance came from the widespread, traditional and exceedingly solid structure of the small-scale productive economy, of society and of cultural psychology.

However, these traditions have not lacked special vigor and positive effect in the course of China’s march toward the new democracy and socialism. The attempt to make a direct transition from an old type of rural society to socialism is an illusion of Populism. But developing conditions in which the antithesis between industry and agriculture is not so serious, the separation between town and country is not so obvious and the capitalist alienation is not so universal will open a broad field to explore for building the Chinese pattern of democracy and socialism. The historical conditions of China, in contrast with the West, will contribute greatly in this respect.