Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

“We should question the advisability of too close a relationship between the scholar and the state.” You bet we should! On this point I could not agree more with Said — yet it is hardly an original conclusion. The very concept of the “university” has rested for some 700 years on the absolute autonomy and freedom of all academic and scholarly activities from any interference and influence of the political authorities. It is nice to see that Said is now rediscovering such a basic notion; I only deplore that it took him 300 pages of twisted, obscure, incoherent, ill-informed and badly written diatribe to reach at last one sound and fundamental truism.

1984

*Reply to an inquiry launched by the Asian Studies Association of Australia: scholars involved in different areas of Asian studies were invited to comment on the relevance of Edward Said’s Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1979) to the problems entailed in the approaches and methods of their respective fields.

PARIS taxi drivers are notoriously sophisticated in their use of invective. “ Hé, va donc, structuraliste! ” is one of their recent apostrophes — which makes one wonder when they will start calling their victims “China Experts”!

Perhaps we should not be too harsh on these experts; the fraternity recently suffered a traumatic experience and is still in a state of shock. Should fish suddenly start to talk, I suppose that ichthyology would also have to undergo a dramatic revision of its basic approach. A certain type of “instant sinology” was indeed based on the assumption that the Chinese people were as different from us in their fundamental aspirations, and as unable to communicate with us, as the inhabitants of the oceanic depths; and when they eventually rose to the surface and began to cry out sufficiently loudly and clearly for their message to get through to the general public, there was much consternation among the China pundits.

Professor Edward Friedman, a teacher of Chinese politics at an American university, recently wrote a piece in the New York Times that informed its readers that various atrocities had taken place in China during the Maoist era. That a professor of Chinese politics should appear to have discovered these facts nearly ten years after even lazy undergraduates were aware of them may have made them news only for the New York Times ; nevertheless, there was something genuinely touching in his implied confession of ignorance.

Madam Han Suyin, who knows China inside out, seldom lets her intelligence, experience and information interfere with her writing. One rainy Sunday I amused myself by compiling a small anthology of her pronouncements on China and learned that the “Cultural Revolution” was a “Great Leap Forward” for mankind, and that it was an abysmal disaster for the Chinese; that the Red Guards were well-behaved, helpful and democratic-minded, and that they were savage and terrifying fascist bullies; that the “Cultural Revolution” was a tremendous spur for China’s economy, and that it utterly ruined China’s economy; that Lin Biao was the bulwark of the revolution, and that Lin Biao was a murderous warlord and traitor; that Jiang Qing tried hard to prevent violence, and that Jiang Qing did her best to foster violence.

Professor Friedman and Madam Han Suyin represent the two extremes of a spectrum — the first one apparently in a state of blissful ignorance, the other knowing everything — yet the way in which both eventually stumbled suggests that, in this matter at least, the knowledge factor is, after all, quite irrelevant. What a successful China Expert needs, first and foremost, is not so much China expertise as expertise at being an Expert. Does this mean that accidental competence in Chinese affairs could be a liability for a China Expert? Not necessarily — at least not as long as he can hide it as well as his basic ignorance. The Expert should in all circumstances say nothing, but he should say it at great length, in four or five volumes, thoughtfully and from a prestigious vantage point. The Expert cultivates Objectivity, Balance and Fair-Mindedness; in any conflict between your subjectivity and his subjectivity, these qualities enable him, at the crucial juncture, to lift himself by his bootstraps high up into the realm of objectivity, whence he will arbitrate in all serenity and deliver the final conclusion. The Expert is not emotional; he always remembers that there are two sides to a coin. I think that even if you were to confront him with Auschwitz, for example, he would still be able to say that one should not have the arrogance to measure by one’s own subjective standards Nazi values, which were, after all, quite different . After every statement, the Expert cautiously points to the theoretical possibility of also stating the opposite; however, when presenting opinions or facts that run counter to his own private prejudices, he will be careful not to lend them any real significance — though, at the same time, he will let them discreetly stand as emergency exits, should his own views eventually be proved wrong.

Ross Terrill, an Australian writer now settled in the United States, has been acclaimed there as the ultimate China Expert. I think he fully qualifies for the title.

Between the Charybdis of Professor Friedman and the Scylla of Madam Han Suyin, Mr. Terrill has been able to steer a skilful middle course. I would not go so far as to say that he has never imparted to his readers much useful insight on China (actually, I am afraid he has misled them rather seriously on several occasions); nevertheless, unlike his less subtle colleagues, he has managed to navigate safely through treacherous and turbulent waters and to keep his Expertise afloat against tremendous odds. By this sign you can recognise a genuine Expert: once an Expert, always an Expert.

When I was invited to review Terrill’s biography of Mao (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), I initially declined the suggestion; it seemed to me that the book in itself hardly warranted any comment. However, its significance lies more in what it omits than in what it commits. If I eventually accepted the task, it was not merely to offer a few observations on the “ physiologie de l’Expert ” but rather to take the opportunity to correct a bias of which I may have been guilty in the past when reviewing some of Terrill’s earlier works. (These works include 800,000,000: The Real China (1972), Flowers on an Iron Tree (1975), The Future of China (1978), and The China Difference (1979), which, like China and Ourselves (1970), is a collection of essays by various authors, edited and with an introduction by Terrill.)

My first encounter with his writings was inauspicious. Opening at random his Flowers on an Iron Tree , I came upon a passage in which he described, as if he had visited it, a monument in China that had been razed to the ground years before. After that, it was hard for me to conjure away a vision of Terrill at work on his travelogue, busying himself with the study of outdated guidebooks without actually leaving his hotel room. For a long time this unfortunate fausse note was to colour (unfairly, no doubt) the impression I had formed of Terrill’s endeavours. Now, not only do I feel that my indignation was somewhat excessive, but I begin to see that in all the liberties Terrill takes with reality, there is always a principle and a method, both of which I completely overlooked at the time: when he sees things which are not there, at least he recognises that these are things that should be there. This gives a kind of Platonic quality to his vision — it may be of little practical value, but it certainly testifies to the essential goodness and idealistic nature of his intentions.