Institutional diversity: Why Chinese civilization survives

Introduction

Societies have prospered and spread, becoming larger and more complex, when their norms and institutions effectively sustained successful interactions that expand beyond individuals’ local networks of kin and long-term relationships to include ever-widening socioeconomic spheres. It is these norms and their internalization as institutions that let humans adapt their individual psychology to be more suitable for social life, thereby facilitating the large-scale cooperation and exchanges that occur in large communities and that let these communities evolve into civilizations (Henrich et al., 2010). Without this adaptation, large societies in which strangers regularly engage in mutually beneficial transactions would not be possible. However, the collapse of ancient states throughout history raises intriguing social and ecological questions: How do these norms and institutions fail badly enough to permit this collapse? How have states such as China survived for so long? The answers have important implications in the modern context of global change and the need to develop contemporary strategies for social and environmental sustainability. Understanding the dynamics of how human societies change is crucial for finding solutions to current and future social issues.

Cultural characteristics shape how social and economic interactions occur, and, thus, shape economic development. This suggests that certain cultures may adopt institutional rules for economic activity that increase their potential economic growth (Williamson and Mathers, 2011). However, until relatively recently, historical research has failed to acknowledge how humanity’s problems, although common to most civilizations, cannot be understood independently of local cultural and ecological contexts (Cheng, 2012). Therefore, understanding human cultural evolution is a topic of more than academic interest, since it is also the key to understanding how civilizations adapt to their changing social and ecological environment.

China, the world’s most populous country, has survived longer as a continuous culture than any other culture, despite enduring many historical challenges. Currently, China is experiencing a period of unprecedented economic development, but this is only one phase in many thousands of years of development. Recent archaeological results reveal a history stretching back to prehistoric Chinese societies such as the northern Peiligang people, who raised millet and pigs as long ago as 7000 B.C.E. (Lawler, 2009a). Understanding how China became China is a topic of more than academic interest, since it is also the key to understanding how the world’s most populous nation perceives itself and its global role (Lawler, 2009a).

To understand why Chinese civilization has survived for thousands of years while continuing to adapt to millennia of change, I describe a cultural perspective that illustrates how Chinese civilization emphasizes the concept of harmony—using the example of lóng (pronounced “loong”), a potent symbol for the Chinese—and how this harmony has resulted from institutional diversity. This may surprise those who perceive China as monolithic and inflexible, but my description will help readers see past this stereotype. Based on this clearer understanding, I will briefly discuss the impacts of what the lóng represents on socioeconomic development and on the robustness, resilience, and adaptability of China’s social system.

Lóng and its role in Chinese history

A nation’s culture results from overlapping, hierarchically related symbols, each of which represents ideas that together form systems of meaning and belief (Brown and Feldman, 2009). In this sense, “totems” (ancestral images, usually not human) are particularly potent symbols (Mitchell, 1998), since they represent a people’s perception of its origins and reveal how those origins shape the subsequent evolution of that people’s institutions (Jones, 2005). A totem that continues to be respected, long after the society has evolved beyond those origins, provides the “moral bedrock” upon which all subsequent intellectual, social, and spiritual development rests (Jones, 2005). When a totem is broadly shared and respected by members of a social group, it forms the basis for their mutual dependencies (Hill, 1996). Totems are therefore primary institutions that have shaped the evolution of civilizations from around the world throughout their history (Lv, 1961). Recent archaeological research on China’s history has revealed the complexity of the many distinct cultures that combined to give rise to modern China (Lawler, 2009a). Historical interactions among these competing cultural centers, and their subsequent merger into larger composite cultures, may hold the key to understanding how modern China’s shared culture emerged.

The diversity of China’s ancient cultures is reflected in their totems, which included horses, deer, tigers, lions, snakes, fish, and eagles. As these cultures came into contact, the separate and autonomous tribes were gradually replaced by larger social units that allowed members of different tribes to merge their traditions and institutions in ways that were previously impossible (Hill, 1996). Simultaneously, their totems gradually evolved into a single unifying totem that combined aspects of the individual tribal totems: lóng. As shown in Figure 1, the traditional Chinese lóng combines many of the aspects of the original totems, such as the snake’s sinuous body and scales, the tiger’s fangs, the eagle’s claws, the deer’s antlers, and the fish’s fins. In contrast with the western dragon, which is usually seen as a symbol of strife, evil, and disharmony, the benign Chinese lóng symbolizes a combination of goodness, beauty, the divine, health, equality, respect, and harmony (Song, 2007). Humans are inherently narrow-minded and self-interested, and when adjacent cultures transform from competing entities into a single cooperating culture, it is necessary to relinquish some of that self-interest to evolve rules that satisfy members of both cultures and that can be sustained over long periods of time (Ostrom et al., 1999). The lóng offers one example of how this has occurred throughout Chinese history.OPEN IN VIEWER

Ancient Chinese civilization appears to have formed from a series of mergers of older cultures. As a more recent example, the western and northern tribes contributed the lóng symbol, whereas the eastern and southern tribes contributed the Chinese phoenix (fenghuang) symbol, which is believed to have arisen from a combination of various bird totems as long ago as 7000 B.C.E. (Lawler, 2009a). The Chinese phoenix appears to be unrelated to the Western phoenix, but like its Western namesake, it is often associated with the dawn of a new era, and thus shares a sense of rebirth and renewal. The Shang tribe who contributed the phoenix totem to Chinese culture established the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1562 to 1066 B.C.E. (Lawler, 2009a). When the Shang dynasty was conquered by the Zhou, whose totem was the lóng, the conquerors established the Zhou dynasty, which lasted from 1066 to 256 B.C.E. Rather than eliminating the phoenix, the Zhou retained it, transforming its role into a propitious symbol for Chinese women; the lóng retained a more masculine essence, serving as a celestial partner for the phoenix. Nonetheless, the lóng remains the dominant symbolic figure in Chinese history.

The lóng and the phoenix, and their combination, remain key Chinese cultural symbols that represent the philosophical ideal of harmony through the institutional diversity that results from absorbing institutions from different cultures and integrating them into a single, more diverse culture. This concept indicates respect for different human groups, as well as respect between humans and nature (Cao et al., 2007). This respect takes the form of a cultural willingness to examine other institutions and adopt them if they appear favorable. As in ecosystems, diversity provides robustness and the ability to endure severe stresses; the institutional diversity that has resulted from China’s long history of integrating institutions from other cultures has saved Chinese civilization from many historical crises, such as environmental disasters (flooding, drought) and human disasters (invasions by other cultures, wars among dynasties). Today, this same philosophy is encouraging Chinese socioeconomic development. When China endured the social convulsions during the many periods when one dynasty replaced another, the image of the lóng eventually encouraged the survivors to once more embrace unification. Two familiar examples are when the Mongols invaded China and established the Yuan Dynasty (which lasted from 1279 to 1368 C.C.E.) and when the Manchus invaded and established the Qing Dynasty (from 1616 to 1911 C.C.E.). In both cases, the new rulers eventually came to believe that they were the offspring of the lóng (Lv, 1961). This historical legacy of absorption of other cultures into a larger Chinese culture can be seen today in the preservation of various ethnic groups, which retain a surprisingly high degree of autonomy and cultural distinctiveness under the powerful central government. Similarly, the institutions of Hong Kong and Macao remain distinct from those of China even though these former Western colonies have been reintegrated within China.

Learning from Chinese institutional diversity

“Institutions” represent the set of a culture’s written and unwritten norms and rules, which both consciously and subconsciously affect how humans think, and the development of such institutions appear to be a universal aspect of human cultures (Beddoe et al., 2009). As in an ecosystem, where the diversity of organisms helps to sustain the ecosystem during environmental change, diversity of human institutions improves the ability of cultures to survive and adapt. This can also occur at levels far below the national level; for example, a firm’s ability to change strategies or innovate depends on its internal diversity (Jackson and Deeg, 2008). Similarly, empirical studies have shown that no single type of property regime works efficiently, fairly, and sustainably for all of the common resources shared by a society (Ostrom et al,. 1999). Often, it is unclear which of several potential policies is the optimal solution for a given situation, but preserving a mix of policies often performs better than insisting on any single policy (Brock and Carpenter, 2007). In nature, self-organization of an ecosystem into spatial patterns results from a combination of cooperation and competition among organisms, with habitat diversity allowing organisms to occupy different niches, thereby reducing competition and promoting the overall viability of the ecosystem (Rands et al., 2010; Wakano et al. 2009). In human systems, institutional diversity serves a similar role by increasing the robustness of the social system (i.e. its ability to withstand internal or external disturbances without drastically changing its structure or dynamics); the system may even be able to absorb and benefit from perturbations and changes, as in the case of the absorption of Mongol invaders into Chinese civilization, allowing the overall system to persist without major qualitative changes in its structure. As in a natural ecosystem, this results from a form of social adaptation through which the system avoids structural change by remaining flexible enough to adapt to the stress and return to its initial conditions (Young et al., 2006). In the human case, the system’s resilience depends on the ability of its institutions to adapt and to continue functioning (Beddoe et al., 2009).

Human social order results from overlapping hierarchical structures that serve different roles. This is referred to as a stratification of power (Brown and Feldman, 2009). These governing structures facilitate social transactions in such a way as to facilitate the coordination and cooperation that are prerequisites for the system’s survival and development (Mabogunje, 2000). By constraining individual behavior, these structures solve problems and allow societies to adapt to their environment, and how they accomplish this defines a recognizable culture (Beddoe et al., 2009). These written and unwritten rules interact both horizontally, at the same hierarchical level, and vertically, across hierarchical levels (Berkes, 2008). The implications of these structures is that institutions cannot be conceived and implemented only at one level; on the contrary, institutional diversity allows the development of processes within and across hierarchical levels, and is as important for a society’s long-term survival as biological diversity is for an ecosystem’s survival (Ostrom et al., 1999). This is one reason why increasing the choices available to members of a society and thereby increasing their participation is seen as a healthy attribute of a socioeconomic system. It is therefore essential for societies to consider diversity as a compromise between the similarities that are necessary for a society to cohere and the differences that provide flexibility and robustness (Huisman, 2007). Reciprocal cooperation can be established and sustained, and can even expand if the social institutions prevent members of the society from acting in an overly self-interested manner (Ostrom et al., 1999).

As in a natural ecosystem, diversity generally increases the stability of a social system (McCann, 2000). For example, simple human communities are typically more easily disturbed than more diverse communities; they are more subject to destructive population oscillations during environmental crises, and are more vulnerable to invasions. This appears to be because the simpler community has fewer institutions capable of responding, and if one institution cannot respond adequately, there may be no other institutions that can compensate for this failure. The history of Chinese civilization shows that China’s diversity tends to be positively correlated with its stability. Stability can, in turn, promote socioeconomic development by encouraging cultural exchanges and trade. As far back as the third millennium B.C.E., the thriving Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indian civilizations may have transmitted technologies such as the domestication of wheat and forging of bronze to early Chinese culture (Lawler, 2009b). By the first century B.C.E., the fabled Silk Road spanned a wide range of difficult environments, from deserts to mountains, linking the eastern cities of China with European and Middle Eastern markets. Tangible goods such as Roman silver traveled east as fine Chinese silks traveled west, while intangibles such as Buddhism and Islam moved with the traders along the trade routes. Caves containing Buddhist imagery, the ruins of ancient caravansaries, and ruined cities are still visible along the length of the Silk Road (Lawler, 2009b).

Societies face the difficult task of balancing conservation of things that work well and that confer stability with the development of new, more flexible responses to problems and changing situations. If the correct balance can be achieved, both stability and useful changes are possible. This balance is achieved when diverse institutions permit the solving of problems that affect the “commons”, which is preserved by conservation; the solutions may be simple, and permitted by simple institutions, or more complex, requiring solutions by institutions at multiple levels (Berkes, 2008). The history of Chinese civilization demonstrates that institutional diversity not only results from institutional change (e.g. the integration of institutions from other cultures), but also drives the change (e.g. by facilitating change and allowing Chinese culture to adapt). The modern institutional diversity can decrease the social cost of necessary changes, such as socioeconomic development, by seeking a compromise between conservation of the key success factors of old institutions and assimilation of the beneficial aspects of new ones.

Resources are never infinite, and this inevitably leads to resource scarcities (Cao et al., 2007). Most regions of the world and most societies have at least some unique resources they cannot fully utilize but that other regions and societies need. This leads to the evolution of trade networks to move surplus resources to where they are needed. Economic or social decline may result when the vital foreign trade breaks down (Butzer, 2012). However, cultural ideologies, which are shaped by religious and cultural traditions that build trust within a population, are also a primary factor that influences socioeconomic development and increases social stability (Stulz and Williamson, 2003). Allowing a single religion and culture to become dominant can increase the risk of conflict and hinder cultural exchanges and trade; this is clear to any student of European history. Therefore, a willingness to encourage cultural and institutional diversity may provide the flexibility required to prevent the conflict between different ideologies, including religions (Cao, 2012). Once again, China provides an example: when Buddhism and Islam spread into China during the past 2000 years, there was little conflict and none of the mass warfare that accompanied a similar process in the West.

This is where the symbol of the lóng reveals its influence. Just as the lóng represents a compromise that resulted from assimilating and integrating the totems of many ancient tribes, recent institutional change in China continues to illustrate this tradition of accommodation to achieve harmony. For example, the traditional Chinese concept of community ownership of certain resources did not disappear during the recent transition to private ownership, but was instead strengthened (Lv, 1961). Similarly, the Western concept of a market economy has spread through China, but without eliminating the role of central planning or China’s system of social welfare. China’s rapid socioeconomic development in recent decades demonstrates the economic value of such institutional diversity: even as some institutions have changed to adapt, others have remained stable, and the civilization has survived in a recognizably Chinese form as a result of this rebalancing of institutions. As the modern Chinese example shows, various institutional configurations can coexist, and that coexistence can sustain growth (Boyer, 2004). Finding a way to take advantage of the complementary natures or compatibility of different institutions is essential for a civilization’s survival.

A decrease or destruction of institutional diversity entails huge risks. Qin Shi Huang, the emperor credited with unifying China for the first time in the third century B.C.E., consolidated the Great Wall that had been started by previous rulers, and ordered the construction of the famous terracotta army in his mausoleum, which is being excavated today; these are two of China’s most famous tourist attractions. But he also ordered the destruction of any evidence of previous rulers (burning of books and execution of scholars) to eliminate any trace of previous dynasties (Lawler, 2009c). These efforts led to the overthrow of his dynasty and its eventual replacement by the Han dynasty. More than 2 millennia later, Mao Zedong repeated this historical error by encouraging the destruction of “old ways of thinking”, thereby triggering the destruction of thousands of ancient buildings and historical artifacts (Lawler, 2009c). This unwillingness to learn from the lessons of the past and to conserve aspects of the old system that worked led to the deaths of more than 40 million people by famine from 1959 to 1962 (Jin, 1993). Mao’s successors rapidly changed his policies and institutions, within 2 years of his death, and set China on its current path towards modernization. The Tang Dynasty, from 618 to 907 C.C.E., provides a notable counter-example; it is widely recognized as a time when Chinese culture flourished, and represents one of the most complex dynasties in Chinese history. The Tang both took aggressive measures to ensure stability (e.g. the development of huge armies to protect against external enemies) and equally aggressive measures to enhance trade along the Silk Road and to encourage flourishing of the arts. Many Chinese look back at this society with considerable nostalgia.

The road ahead

Institutions do not function in isolation; instead, they form interdependent systems with complex interactions (Jackson and Deeg, 2008). This can be seen in how social systems implement environmental conservation at multiple levels, from local to international. Because each of these levels operates at a different scale, it requires a different perspective (Berkes, 2008). The result of these differences is that social and cultural evolution tends to be reticulate, with complicated branching patterns (Hill, 1996). This does not mean that any one perspective is necessarily right and that other perspectives are necessarily wrong; rather, it means that each may be correct in different contexts. Increasing cultural and institutional diversity increases the diversity of ways in which people organize themselves to share a common pool of resources, and ensures both that old ways will not quickly disappear and that new ways will be permitted to evolve when circumstances make this useful or necessary (Ostrom et al., 1999). The balance between the old and the new depends on complex interactions between institutions, and these interactions are poorly understood (Balvanera et al., 2002).

Civilizations face the risk of decline if they respond unwisely to environmental and social stresses (Zhang et al., 2007). This problem becomes more severe when we address global issues, since the complexity of the interactions among global systems increases the risk of unwise decisions. Specialists and their fields of study evolve to provide deep insights that are likely to lead to wiser decisions, but at the same time, increased specialization has made individuals increasingly dependent on each other (Lim et al., 2007). Institutional diversity can turn this interdependence into an asset rather than a liability when it increases institutional resiliency and therefore increases the ability of a society to survive and adapt to change (Beddoe et al., 2009). Globalization offers tremendous advantages, because it increases the access of any one culture to more diverse institutions from other cultures, but also poses tremendous risks, because it can promote homogenization of institutions that decreases diversity in all its many forms, including biodiversity, institutional diversity, ethnic diversity, cultural diversity, language diversity, technological diversity, and the diversity of tastes, preferences, and values (Young et al., 2006). These changes can entail a loss of local institutions, and in the resulting lower diversity systems, it may become more difficult to create new ideas and connections that would restore institutional diversity (Young et al., 2006). As is the case in natural ecosystems, the protection of institutional diversity in human systems may be as important for our long-run survival as the protection of ecological diversity. Efforts to sustain institutional diversity can therefore benefit from the lessons offered by Chinese history, as symbolized by the lóng: successful adaptation to the challenges of history requires ways to preserve the important aspects of the old, while combining them with aspects of the new to produce something that will be flexible enough to survive the challenges of the future.