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principle avenues toward harmony, is the concept that, given sufficient information and
wisdom, everybody will agree. Confucian optimism holds that the primary task is not so
much to resolve conflicting claims or allocate limited resources as it is to raise awareness
that all citizens agree that these claims should be peacefully resolved and resources be
prudently managed. Confucian optimism suggests that, given sufficient information and
under enlightened leadership, different outlooks, competing values, and conflicting desires
will melt away. There is thus, for example, little need to limit the powers of government,
because in the final analysis, it will function merely to harmonize the needs and interests
of the governed, all of whom are assumed to have similar desires. In this, Confucian op-
timism diverges fundamentally from the Western vision of democracy, which at its core
sets up institutions deliberately to resolve competing claims and mediate disputes that
are assumed to characterize the polity.
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Confucian optimism has long held a prominent place in Chinese thought, but begin-
ning with liberation, it has seemingly been amplified with the Communist elevation of the
concept of unity (
tuanjie
) to its presently exalted position. Following on the Confucian
notion of the unity between man and heaven, the Communist Party has emphasized the
concept of
tuanjie,
in part, to legitimize its power as it successfully reunited the country
following decades of rule by warlords and occupation by the Japanese. It further justified
the Chinese version of manifest destiny, which was instrumental for the newly proud state
in solidifying control over (or even reclaiming) peripheral (and non-Han) regions such as
Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Its continued popularity in government propaganda,
well into the reform era and past the demise of earlier, revolutionary slogans, suggests
continued concern for the fragility of the multi-ethnic state. Not entirely trusting that
the desires of Han and minority peoples indeed are identical, the slogan seems used as
a superficially-acceptable verbal battering ram (who could object to a sentiment as lofty
as “unity”?) intended to bludgeon through repetition the notion that all Chinese share the
same aspirations and values.
But honorable as it may be to credit the desires of your neighbor as much as your
own,
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and necessary as it was to resurrect the respect of Chinese for the integrity and
strength of their own country,
tuanjie
(and its ideological ancestor, Confucian optimism)
is not merely useless but positively counterproductive as a basis on which to formulate
natural resource policy. This is because natural resource management is nothing
but
find-
ing ways to deal with the inevitable conflicts that exist and compromises that must be
made among competing stakeholders and among the competing desires within each of us.
Natural resources, even those that are renewable under wise management, are all finite;
one cannot simply create more when needed to satisfy unending demand. Thus, alloca-
tion is required, meaning that compromises must be made, and, in any given situation,
losing will generally balance winning. This is the very basis of the entire field of property
rights studies, which, while not universally accepting that private property rights are the
only or best solution, does generally take as axiomatic that rules specifying and limiting
access to natural resources must underlie any successful management system. Nor does
it require a vision in which there are competing camps of people—some desiring wildlife
conservation but not economic development, others only too happy to see the demise of
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