An article over the
weekend in the NY Times profiled the intractability of a central DustyBrine
question: How will The Koreas, China and
Japan navigate the resolution of their differences? I read the article with my daughter. The story suggested that U.S. Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel and the administration were flummoxed by behaviors they
shouldn’t be surprised by: seemingly
irreconcilable enmity between South Korea and Japan. The article goes on to suggest that American
encouragement of Japanese assertiveness in the face of a rising China was
backfiring in South Korea. Interestingly,
the article intimated that both leaders were constrained by perceptions, valid
or otherwise, of their family legacy. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/world/asia/a-growing-chill-between-south-korea-and-japan-creates-problems-for-the-us.html
President Park Guen-hye is the daughter of President Park
Chung-hee who ruled South Korea from a 1961 coup, until his assassination in
1979. Because he served as an officer in
the Japanese Imperial Army, it is thought that his daughter must work twice as
hard to establish her anti-Japanese credentials, with her constituents. Meanwhile Shinzo Abe’s grandfather, Kan Abe,
and father, Shintaro Abe, were both politicians. Abe's mother, Yoko Kishi, is
the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Kishi had been a member of the Tōjō Cabinet
during the Second World War. Kan Abe was
seen as the architect of Japan’s Imperial war effort who was later tried as a
war criminal. Now, Prime Minister Abe,
it is suggested is motivated, in part by wanting to clear his grandfather’s name.
Reading the article and talking about their motivations as
children of former leaders it dawned on me for the first time that North Asia
is living out a rather Confucian moment just now. For the first time in at least 120 years or
so, Japan, all of Korea and China are all being ruled by people whose parents
were also in power. Kim Jong-un’s father
and grandfather were obviously in power in North Korea and Xi Jinping’s father
was a senior ranking official in the CCP before him. It’s too bad the great Sinologist Joseph
Levenson, the author of “Confucian China and Its Modern Fate” didn’t live to
see this moment. He would have been
intrigued.
Confucianism has been a central governing philosophy,
emanating from China and deeply influencing the surrounding area for well over
two thousand years. In the latter part
of the 19th century it became discredited and by the early part of
this century it was completely abandoned as a legitimate means by which to
rule. North Korea has always been tarred
as a sui generis combination of
Stalinism and Confucianism with three uninterrupted lines of family rule. In China, Mao’s son was killed during the
Korean War and the Chairman disparaged the idea rule by lineage. And neither President Jiang Zemin nor Hu Jintao
were descended from parents of power.
The present generation of Chinese leaders however has disproportionally
descended from senior party officials.
Japan and South Korea are of course, functioning, and multi
party democracies. Neither Prime Minister
Abe’s predecessor Yoshihiko Noda, (son of a paratrooper) nor President Park’s
predecessor Lee Myung-bak (son of a farmer) came from political families. So why do the Japanese and the South Korean’s
want to elect the scions of political families, now?
Will Confucian rule return to this part of the world, as the
natural default for how to transfer and maintain power? Certainly the tendency for the CCP to
perpetuate its rule through loyal family appointments seems an undeniable
tendency. South Korea and Japan’s
elections may simply have been coincidental.
America has its Kennedys and its Bushes and these things pass. No one accuses the U.S. of becoming
increasingly Confucian. But while each
of these current leaders in North Asia is seen as strong domestically, in part,
because of their lineage, it is also what holds them back from potential
resolution.
Confucianism is of course, a complicated collection of ideas
that emphasizes meritocracy, (an examination system) to the detriment of feudal
ideas like primogeniture. Just because
the children of former rulers come to power, it isn’t necessarily “Confucian,”
however the veneration of ancestors is certainly a conservative force and one
that, in my opinion, retards potential resolution. Our contemporary rulers needn’t be 割股疗亲[1]
to be influenced by and perhaps held back by, the tradition.
Interestingly, the lineage of rule for any of these people
doesn’t go back any further than the grandparent, who lived through the
disruptive, revolutionary period in North Asia of 100 years ago. Kim Jong-un, as most people know is the son
of Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea.
Before him was the first ruler Kim Il-sung, the revolutionary leader who
founded North Korea . Kim Il-sung’s
maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister, and Kim Il-sung was the first
in the family, ever to rule. The South Korean President Park Chung-hee was born
into a peasant family. Shinzo Abe’s
grandfather was a Japanese politician born into a family of brewers of soy
sauce and sake. Xi Jinping’s father, Xi
Zhongxun was a revolutionary leader who, like many, was purged and then
rehabilitated to serve on the Standing Committee of the NPC and was
instrumental in opening Special Economic Zones early in China’s reform. He was born to a land-owning family in
Shaanxi.
The ”Confucian” world, the greater area of Chinese
civilizational influence, would also realistically include modern day Mongolia
and Vietnam. I looked at both the
current President and Prime Ministers for both countries but at least for now,
none of these people appear to be descended from families who ruled in the
past. It does not appear that either Norovyn
Altankhuyag the Prime Minister of Mongolia who was born in the Western province
of Uvs, nor the Presdient of Mongolia, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, who was born into
a herding family, as one of eight sons is the descendent of a ruling
family. In Vietnam, neither Trương Tấn
Sang the president of the country, nor Nguyen Tan Dung, the Prime Minister are
descended from parents who held power. The revolution there, of course, has had a
shorter gestation than China or North Korea, and perhaps the tendency for the
Party to promote its own will surface with time. Though, like Mao, Ho Chin Minh discouraged
this through example.
Parental legacies can provide a ruler with perspective and
experience and can also skew a leader, even in a representative democracy, from
pragmatism to the settling of old scores.
Just ask George W. Bush. But the
power of the U.S. system at least is not in picking meritorious people every
time. Rather it guarantees the removal
of potential mediocrity every time. The
revolutionary generation or two that preceded the current power holders may
have been able to act more practically (or rapaciously) without the grounding
of familial tradition.
I think we have less concerns about this tendency for
vocational consistency within a family line when the trade happens to be music,
rather than rule. A brilliant musician, who’s father was not but whose son, Youssoupha,
has carried on to become a rapper is the the Congolese musician Tabu Ley
Rochereau was born in 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabu_Ley_Rochereau Born in Bagata, Belgian Congo in 1940, in a
middle class family he rose to help change the nature of popular music on the African
continent, forever.
When I first traveled to West Africa in the early 90s’ Zaireoir, the music styled on the
popular music of Zaire with a positive vibe and high end jangly guitar loops
was all the rage. I have always been
more of a fan of Ghanaian High Life and Nigerian Afro Beat and the music of
West Africa in general. But what was to
explain the extraordinary popularity of Zaireoir? The founding performers of the tradition
were not known to me at then. Over time
I got to learn about Franco and the TPOK Jazz and Tabu Rey Rochereau, which helps
to explain a great deal.
I’d read some liner notes somewhere that boldly stated:
“If 'Franco & TPOK Jazz' were
the Rolling Stones... then 'Tabu Ley Rochereau' is the Beatles or, at the very
least, is Paul McCartney. Songwriter, singer, talent scout, music-publisher,
record-company executive and even, most recently, a politician - it's clear
he's one of the Greats.”
Whoever he is, that’s a dude who knows how to market. I bought a Tabu Rey Rochereua disc, shortly thereafter. I’m now a fan of both gents for sure, though
I don’t know how apt the comparison point is between the Fab Four and the
Glimmer Twins. Unless Franco courted some bad-boy image that I’m not aware
of. Perhaps it's the perky positivity of
Tabu Rey that brought to mind McCartney for the gentleman above. I listened to the disc this morning. I tried, but I could not find any songs that were not in a major key. They are all relentlessly positive. And if you lived in a world that was
relentlessly negative, and your performers job was, as much as anything, was to
get people to forget their cares, then swinging rhumbas got them up on the
dance floor, and surely got him invited back to perform again, over and over. The lyrics could be grisly for all I know, though I doubt
it. The melodies, however, are always upbeat.
Mobutu Sese Seko was the president of the Congo, which he
renamed Zaire in 1971, from 1965 till 1997.
Mobutu was the son of a hotel maid and a cook. He took power after overthrowing the
democratically elected ruler, Patrice Lumumba in 1960 where he established
himself as head of the military with U.S. and Belgian backing. His kleptocracratic rule was marred by
corruption, venal governance and cruelty.
However he was known as someone who supported the arts, certainly the
music form, zaireoir if not Franco
and Tubu Rey themselves, benefited from his patronage.
I can still recall when Mobutu was overthrown in 1997 by the militant
fighter, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who was born to middle class parents
and studied in France when he was young. Che Guevara apparently chastised the young
revolutionary while he was still an insurgent in the jungle, for being
insufficiently serious in his revolutionary ardor. One can only imagine what Che didn’t approve
of. A man with foresight, he was wise
enough to have his son Joseph trained at the PLA National Defense University here
in Beijing. And when Laurent, the father
was assassinated in 2006, the handsome young lad of barely thirty, Joseph
Kabila became the youngest head of state in the world. Tabu Rey was invited to join his cabinet
where he served as a cabinet minister until and illness sent him off to Belgium
for recuperation.
Joseph Kabilia studied with the PLA in Beijing, and came to power
on account of his father, but we would not call him Confucian. Kim Jong-un assumed office at the age of 28,
beating out Joseph Kabila’s by two years and, as the third in the family to
assume the mantel of power, we tend to think of North Korea as rather typically
Confucian. China has the legacy of 2400
years or so of Confucian thinking and rule and, not surprisingly, when the CCP looks
for ways to buttress its rule, with the waning relevance of Marxism,
Confucianism awaits with open arms.
Japan and South Korea we think of a “modern”, economies, ruled by
representative democracies, but still, the power of political legacy is clearly critical
for the electorate. Perhaps because so
much remains unresolved in this neighborhood, from the period of World War II
and immediately after, that the ghosts of that time are needed to buttress and legitimize
rule. But nearly all of those earlier rulers
were forced to make radical, and abrupt changes to their plans, as they lived through those tumultuous times. They had to improvise. Let’s hope their offspring remember their
flexibility, as much as their forefather's supposed consistency. The music is unlikely to stay relentlessly positive.
[1]
gēgǔliǎoqīn: to cut flesh from one's
thigh to nourish a sick parent (idiom) / filial thigh-cutting
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