The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired a book that should be useful for students interested in Asian history, Chinese studies, political science, international affairs, diplomacy, and related fields.

The Problem of China is by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. The TU Library collection includes many other books on different aspects of China as well as several books by and about Bertrand Russell. The book is also available online for free download.

Bertrand Russell wrote about philosophy, mathematics, and logic as well as history, society, and political science.

In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.

Russell was a pacifist who went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, Russell concluded that the Second World War against Nazi Germany was a necessary lesser of two evils. He also criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, condemned the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War and supported nuclear disarmament.

In 1920 and 1921, for about 10 months, Russell travelled around China and gave over sixty public lectures. He was a guest professor of philosophy at the University of Beijing (then Peking).

His lectures on mathematical logic were popular with students. Reportedly, Mao Tse Tung attended some of Russell’s talks.

Liang Qichao, a journalist, political activist, and founder of the Chinese Lecture Association, had suggested that Russell be invited to China. The idea was supported by Zhang Yuanji, director of The Commercial Press Printing House of Shanghai. Commercial Press paid the expenses for the trip. The handwritten invitation to Russell was prepared by Professor Fu Tong, a philosophy instructor at The Government University, Peking.

The invitation was sent in care of the British philosopher J. H. Muirhead, with whom Fu had studied in England:

Will you kindly ask Mr Bertrand Russell for me whether he can accept such an invitation as to come to China for a year to give us some lectures.

The resulting book, The Problem of China, assessed China’s past, present and future. Russell advised China against using a wholly Western model of social and economic development.

He felt that the Western example contained too much greed and militarism. At the same time, he argued that it would be better for China not to imitate the violent example of Revolutionary Russia.

Russell claimed that the character of the Chinese people whom, he met in 1920 was essentially one distinguished by a peaceful temperament.

He predicted that China would advance if it could establish a well-organized governmental system and promote its own industrial development. Education was an essential element in national development, in Russell’s view.

Russell saw China as a civilized society a distinguished history and culture. China could definitely benefit from Western scientific knowledge, but should ideally preserve a traditional lifestyle that would avoid the frenzied and sometimes destructive aspects of Western life.

He would recall later in his Autobiography that he and his wife

were somewhat surprised by their wit and fluency. I had not realised until then that a civilised Chinese is the most civilised person in the world … Our Chinese friends took us for two days to Hangchow [Hangzhou] to see the Western Lake. The first day we went round it by boat, and the second day in chairs. It was marvellously beautiful, with the beauty of ancient civilisation, surpassing even that of Italy… Many Chinese have that refinement of humour which consists in enjoying a joke more when the other person cannot see it. As I was leaving Peking a Chinese friend gave me a long classical passage microscopically engraved by hand on a very small surface; he also gave me the same passage written out in exquisite calligraphy. When I asked what it said, he replied: “Ask Professor Giles when you get home”. I took his advice, and found that it was “The Consultation of the Wizard”, in which the wizard merely advises his clients to do whatever they like. He was poking fun at me because I always refused to give advice to the Chinese as to their immediate political difficulties.

In The Problem of China, he wrote:

Two things of a very general nature seem to me evident: the first that it is not to be desired that China should adopt the civilisation of Europe in its entirety; the second, that the traditional civilisation of China is inadequate to present needs and must give way to something radically new…I am convinced that China, in the future as in the past, has a distinctive contribution to make to civilisation, and something more than mere quantity to add to the world’s mental possessions… [A] radical and permanent solution must depend upon education … It must be universal and it must be scientific and the science must not be merely theoretical, but in close touch with modern industry and economics… [China’s] industrial resources will lead in the near future to the great development of industrialism… All the Great Powers are anxious to secure a share in the exploitation of your resources, and unless you develop more national strength than you have hitherto shown, you will be unable to withstand aggressions fomented by foreign industrialists… If your independence is to be preserved, it is necessary to transfer to the nation the kind of devotion which has hitherto been given to the family.

According to Russell, most thoughtful Chinese people whom he met during his visit were concerned with the question: How can we develop industry without at the same time developing capitalism and all its evils?

His reply was that political issues should first be resolved, to make it possible to address economic challenges:

Political reform in China cannot for many years to come take the form of democracy after the Western model. Democracy presupposes a population that can read and write and that has some degree of knowledge as to political affairs. These conditions cannot be satisfied in China until at least a generation after the establishment of a government devoted to the public welfare. You will have to pass through a stage analogous to that of the dictatorship of the communist party in Russia, because it is only by some such means that the necessary education of the people can be carried through, and the non-capitalistic development of industry effected.

The Russian Bolsheviks, as is natural to pioneers, have made many mistakes, more especially in the measures which antagonised the peasants. They are now, very wisely, repealing these measures, and those who follow them on the same road will be able to profit by their experience.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)