When All Civilizations Are Searching for Legitimacy
English translation of the Chinese original (AI-assisted). Read the original in Chinese.
A discussion of power, hypocrisy, and self-restraint
Let us put specific events aside for the moment.
Whether it is Venezuela, Iraq, Libya, or, earlier, Yugoslavia, the core of these events has never simply been "who is right and who is wrong," but a more universal question that is harder to avoid:
When power uses force, how does it construct legitimacy for itself?
On this point, the West does have a mature discourse mechanism. That is true.
But if we are honest enough, we must also admit: China has one, other civilizations have one—all civilizations have one.
The difference is not whether "hypocrisy exists," but how hypocrisy is organized, constrained, and made to bear costs.
⸻
I. Western Hypocrisy: Proceduralization and Outsourcing
In these kinds of events, the sentence most often heard in Western media is:
"News reporting tends to maintain neutrality, cite multiple viewpoints, and avoid reaching a final conclusion directly."
This is indeed a posture of avoiding responsibility.
But it is not simply a moral failure. It is a highly developed risk-management strategy.
It works in a very clear way:
- Separate moral judgment from the actor itself
- Outsource it to procedures, laws, experts, and international organizations
- Break "justice" down into components that can be recombined
Under this mechanism, whether the action itself crosses a line is no longer important. What matters is whether the procedure is complete, whether the rhetoric is closed, and whether responsibility has been dispersed.
After 9/11, Western media quickly abandoned neutrality and moved into full mobilization; today, when the West is the one taking action, "neutrality" is once again invited back onto the stage.
This is not a contradiction, but a consistent expression of the system's logic:
Neutrality is not a principle, but a tool that is brought out or put away depending on the circumstances.
⸻
II. China's "Concern for Face": Not a Hard Constraint, but a High-Cost Soft Constraint
Chinese culture does contain a different system of legitimacy:
- "Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness"
- "A just cause for war" versus "a war without just cause"
- A long-standing sensitivity to the judgment of history, to legitimacy, and to orthodox succession
These are not empty words. For a long time, they constituted a real psychological and narrative cost.
But one thing must be made clear:
This "concern for face" has never been a hard constraint.
It cannot guarantee that power will not expand, nor can it prevent violence from occurring.
Historically, every exercise of power has been able to find a matching moral narrative:
- Emperor Taizong of Tang's campaigns against Goguryeo were described as "punishing the disobedient"
- The Yongle Emperor's seizure of the throne was described as "clearing evil ministers from the emperor's side"
- The Qing dynasty's suppression of the Taiping Rebellion was described as "putting down rebels"
All of this shows:
"Concern for face" cannot prevent power from being exercised, but it raises the narrative, psychological, and historical cost of exercising it.
And precisely because of this, Chinese-style hypocrisy does not mean that hypocrisy "does not exist." Rather, it must complete a process of explanation that can be made to sound acceptable.
⸻
III. The Real Difference: How Visible and Stable the Constraints Are
If we must draw a distinction, the difference between China and the West does not lie in "whether there is hypocrisy," but in how hypocrisy is organized.
The Western system: proceduralized hypocrisy
- Advantages: it can be supervised, criticized, and repaired
- Disadvantages: it is easily manipulated by technical means; once the procedure is complete, moral judgment automatically loses its force
The Chinese system: internalized hypocrisy
- Advantages: it is hard to bypass completely by purely technical means; a surface consistency between behavior and stated justification must still be maintained
- Disadvantages: it depends heavily on the moral awareness of individuals and the collective; once it fails, there is no external mechanism to force a correction
Neither system is perfect, and both have been breached by power.
The difference is not "who is cleaner," but:
Whether hypocrisy still has to pay a price.
⸻
IV. Why Are We Particularly Repelled by Western Hypocrisy?
Not because the West is more hypocritical, but because its way of being hypocritical offends the logic of hypocrisy we are familiar with.
Simply put:
The bottom line of Chinese-style hypocrisy is "it has to make sense"
- The stated justification must be internally consistent within the moral language
- Even a powerful authority must give a "reason"
- This "reason" may be strained or far-fetched, but it cannot be completely detached from reality
The bottom line of Western-style hypocrisy is "procedural compliance"
- As long as the process is completed, the content can be highly flexible
- Moral language is a tool rather than a constraint
- The "reason" does not need to be internally consistent; it only needs authoritative endorsement
When an obvious breach of the rules is handled as "there is still disagreement," "further investigation is needed," or "different parties have different views," what is offended is not morality itself, but our basic expectation that "if you're going to put on an act, at least make it convincing."
Put simply: if you're going to perform, at least make it look like a performance.
⸻
V. The Real Danger Behind "The Collapse of Ritual and Music"
"The collapse of ritual and music" is not simply an accusation that someone is immoral, but a warning about a structural change:
The cost of hypocrisy is being systematically lowered.
Traditionally, whether in the East or the West, exercising power meant paying a narrative cost:
- Convincing one's own people
- Convincing history
- Convincing some transcendent standard of judgment (Heaven, God, reason, international law)
Today, these costs are increasingly being avoided by technical means:
- Media can switch narratives rapidly
- Laws can be cited selectively
- Moral language can be assembled as needed
When hypocrisy no longer needs to be internally consistent and only needs to be effective, all soft constraints stop working.
This is the truly dangerous signal.
⸻
VI. The Lessons of the Two World Wars: Not a Lack of Morality, but a Lack of Brakes
Before World War I, every country had a complete and internally coherent moral narrative; before World War II, Nazi Germany's internal narrative was likewise highly consistent and logically closed.
The disasters did not happen because moral language was lacking, but because:
When moral language loses its ability to question itself, it becomes an accelerator of conflict.
Everyone believes they are on the side of justice, every step "makes sense," and so no one steps on the brakes anymore.
⸻
VII. What Should We Really Be Wary Of?
Not that one side is more hypocritical, but that the soft constraints on power are failing in all civilizations at the same time.
So at least three things need to stay clear:
- Acknowledge symmetry - Do not deify "our side's morality" - Do not demonize "the other side's hypocrisy"
- Watch for the disappearance of costs - When saying one thing and doing another carries no cost - When a narrative only needs to work and no longer needs to hold together - The constraint has already disappeared
- Keep the ability to judge - Do not easily accept any side's moral claims - Do not treat rhetoric as truth - Do not treat procedure as justice
⸻
Conclusion: The Minimum Standard for a Civilization's Self-Preservation
This is not a defense of the West, nor a rejection of Chinese tradition.
It is simply an attempt to make one fact clear:
Under the logic of power, every civilization will seek legitimacy for its actions.
- The West systematizes and proceduralizes it
- China internalizes and historicizes it
Neither is completely honest, but the amount of self-restraint that remains is different.
True clarity is not denying that hypocrisy exists, but insisting on a minimum standard:
Hypocrisy must have a cost, narratives must at least barely hold together, and actions cannot be entirely without shame.
Otherwise, what a civilization loses is not its morality, but its last brake.
This is not moral purism. It is the bottom line of a civilization's self-preservation.
Images in the original are not included in the web version.