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"A patriotic, educational, and enjoyable exhibition." That's how a senior Chinese official, Shan Jiaxiang, sums up the show of ancient art and artifacts now on display at the Hong Kong Museum of History. On one level, Shan is spot on. Certainly, "War and Peace: Treasures of the Qin and Han Dynasties" is an eye-grabbing selection of pieces for the city, which rarely sees these sorts of treasures. The show includes 100 relics, including many of the Qin dynasty's famous terra-cotta warriors.
But what's more interesting is the impetus behind putting these ancient finds on display in Hong Kong. The main point -- about which its organizers are quite explicit -- is to instill a sense of Chinese patriotism in Hong Kong's people. As a long-term resident of this city, who witnessed the resumption of Chinese rule in 1997, I don't have a problem with the goal. But as I looked a little closer, I began to have qualms. This turns out to be patriotism of a dubious sort -- the kind that misuses history and skips over the hard questions that Hong Kong and China both need to ask.
WHAT JUBILATION? The problem starts right at the entrance to the exhibit, which is held in belated honor of the fifth anniversary last July of the city's return to China. Shan, whose message of congratulations opens the exhibit, starts off by alluding to the "jubilant celebrations of the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong's reunification with China."
I'm not sure if Shan, who's director of China's National Administration for Cultural Heritage, was here for the fifth anniversary of the handover. But I was, and I can say there wasn't much jubilation. Today, the city is sunk in a deep economic funk and is increasingly worried about its liberties being whittled away under Chinese rule. The only ceremonies were government-managed events that had all the spontaneity of a People's Daily editorial. So, literally at the door of the exhibition is the sort of willful attempt to ignore facts and distort reality that I'm afraid is all too common in Chinese approaches to history.
Certainly, the choice of the Qin and Han dynasties for this landmark exhibit is no accident. The Qin empire, which dates from 221 B.C., saw the bloody birth of the Chinese state, as its first emperor conquered six other kingdoms. More important, it laid the legal and administrative basis for a government system that still defines China today. It's a distinctive legacy -- and one that justly makes Chinese proud.
BRUTAL FOUNDATIONS. Yet, the Qin Emperor also burned books and persecuted officials. He either buried alive or had murdered 460 scholars. Vast armies of conscripted labor toiled for the emperor's projects, like his massive tomb complex near Xian. Meanwhile, he squandered time and wealth in a quixotic search for an elixir of eternal life. The brutality of this regime laid the foundations for the China of today. But the ruler was unable to create a solid legacy that would follow him. Shortly after his death, the empire collapsed. It hadn't even lasted 15 years.
The exhibit has no more than passing references to the atrocities inflicted on ordinary Chinese people or on intellectuals. Instead we have soldiers "driven by a spirit that extolled fearless combat." There are misrepresentations about the Qin Emperor's role in constructing the Great Wall of China -- what the eminent Sinologist John King Fairbank a decade ago dismissed as "hoary legend." More seriously, the show features the claim that China's "basic territorial boundaries" were established then. But the absence of maps belies the truth -- Taiwan and Tibet, those contested areas that Beijing claims as its own, were literally not in the picture.
The lack of real historical questioning in the exhibit is unfortunate because many of the same ills seen in the Qin dynasty have continued to plague China through the intervening years. The oversized ego of the rulers, the lack of empathy for the suffering of ordinary people, the belief that a vast empire could be ruled by command rather than law and that checks and balances were unnecessary -- these are the sorts of issues that the Chinese need to be thinking about in a spirit of relentless questioning. These are questions for China's future as well as its past.
IGNORING DECAY. This exhibit won't encourage questioning, however. By the door, visitors also see a message from Patrick C.P. Ho, Hong Kong's Home Affairs Secretary, who lauds China: "In the 2,200 years from the establishment of governance systems in those two dynasties to the period immediately before the Revolution of 1911, China developed steadily on a set trail politically, socially, economically, and culturally."
This is nonsense, as even a cursory look at this exhibition shows. China's path was one of great tumult. While China has a historical continuity that exists nowhere else in the world, to imply that the country's development was some sort of progression ignores the dynastic decay that set in repeatedly.
More important, the show doesn't come to grips with the greatest problem of all from an historical standpoint -- China's inability to modernize. Despite early technological advances that were far ahead of the rest of the world, from gunpowder to the printing press, it was the West that was able to use that technology to grow. That's why the country went from accounting for more than one-quarter of the world's economy in 1820 to almost nothing during the Maoist years of the 1960s and 1970s. China's inability to adapt and embrace change continues to gnaw at it today, above all in politics.
In the exhibition catalog, Hong Kong residents are extolled to study Qin and Han in order "to regain the glory of our country and reach for new heights." The problem is that this isn't study. This is propaganda. Perhaps it's no surprise to see that China can't distinguish between the two. But it's sad to see that Hong Kong can't either.
Clifford is Hong Kong bureau chief for BusinessWeek. Follow his China Journal column every week, only on BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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Copyright 2003, Bloomberg L.P.
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