THIS TRANSCRIPT IS ISSUED ON THEUNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS TAKEN FROM A LIVE EVENT, HELD AT THE BRITISH LIBRARYIN LONDON, ONMAY 14TH, 2008. THE NATURE OF THE EVENT MEANS THAT NEITHER THE BBC NOR THEPARTICIPANTS IN THE PROGRAMME CAN GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATIONHERE.

SUE LAWLEY: Hello and welcome to the British Library in London. Sometimes called the "nation'smemory", it houses millions of valuable items, including Magna Carta,Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, and the National Sound Archive. It also housesthe oldest book in the world, which was printed in 868 AD in China. ThisChinese connection makes it an appropriate place in which to start this year'sReith Lectures. Our subject on this, their 60th anniversary, is China; and ourlecturer, a man steeped in knowledge of this vast country, which of course intwo months time plays host to the Olympic Games and is currently struggling toovercome the aftermath of a terrifying earthquake.

The title of the lectures is 'Chinese Vistas'. China's breathtaking economicgrowth over the last twenty-five years has transformed it into a great power.At the same time, for many people in the West its extraordinary past makes itan object of suspicion and mistrust. But there can be no doubt that it's acountry which will have a significant influence over all of our lives in theyears to come. In these lectures, we'll be exploring how it works and whatmakes it tick. Our guide is a man who knows China very well indeed. He'sSterling Professor of History at Yale University and isrecognised as one of the foremost scholars of Chinese civilisation from the16th century to the present day. "To understand China today", he says,"you have to understand its past."

In his first lecture, he's going back two and a half thousand years toConfucius, a man whose thoughts and ideas permeate the fabric of his countryand make him still relevant to the China of today. The first lectureis called Confucian Ways.Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 60th anniversary BBC Reith lecturer:Jonathan Spence.

(APPLAUSE)

JONATHAN SPENCE: Well thank you for that warm welcome. It's a very specialhonour to be invited to give the Reith Lectures for me, especially in this yearof 2008 when the series is celebrating its 60th birthday. To complete a cycleof sixty years is considered especially joyful in China. Only one emperor isofficially acknowledged in Chinese histories as having lived to see his reignenter a second cycle of sixty years. That was the ruler of China calledK'ang-hsi (Kangxi) who reigned from 1661 to 1722, a sixty-one year span. Soawesome was this achievement of K'ang-hsi (Kangxi) that his long-lived grandsondecided to abdicate the throne in the sixtieth year of his reign so that hewould not tarnish his grandfather's record. This act of abnegation was seen atthe time as an admirable manifestation of the virtue of filial piety. It was ofcourse noted at the time, though not publicly criticised, that the grandson whoso nobly gave up his throne refused to give up any power (LAUGHTER) and reignedseveral years more - nameless, as it might be said. I can only hope that it isauspicious to entitle these 60th birthday Reith Lectures 'Chinese Vistas'. Byusing this phrase, I hope to direct our thoughts to the long view that China represents rather than focusingexclusively on the various problems and opportunities that China confrontsat the present time. And where better to start such a venture than in theBritish Library with its immense holdings of Asian books and manuscripts?

In these four lectures, I will explore different aspects of China's longhistory, each of which has a different kind of tale to tell. The first lecture,today, we will be looking at Confucius in three guises: Confucius the man; andConfucius as the eternal teacher; and Confucius as an occasional villain. Inthe second lecture, we will focus on the intersections between China and Britain through trade and languageacross a span of three hundred years. In the third lecture, we will explore themany ways that the American Dream, as it is sometimes termed, was both boostedand undercut by different forces in China. And in the fourth and finallecture, we will prepare for the upcoming Olympics by exploring the Chinesechanging perceptions of the body, from earliest times to the present.

As I was reflecting recently on the sixty years that have passed since thefirst Reith lecture in 1948, I was struck by the thought that it was especiallyapposite that the first Reith lecture was given by Bertrand Russell. Russellhad lived for six months in China,from late 1920 into 1921, and he had the good fortune to be there at a time ofcosmopolitan intellectual ferment that has rarely been replicated in China before orsince.

In terms of Chinese time, the sixty year span of the Reith Lectures'existence has encompassed the entire life of Maoist China. In 1948, the futureof China's fate was still indoubt and only in 1949 were the last Nationalist troops of Chiang Kai-shek'sarmies routed and forced to retire to Taiwanas Mao, from a rostrum atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, declared the founding of thePeople's Republic. Whereas now, in 2008, at the very end of this cycle, Maoistdoctrine seems a fragmented and largely antiquated relic, still invoked to someextent by China'sCommunist leaders but in the public gaze almost eclipsed by visions from adistant past. While the Little Red Book of Mao's sayings was in every Chinesehand in the years of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the mass bestsellerin China of the last few years has been a contemporary rendering and commentaryon the Analects of Confucius with sales at the present time which exceed sixmillion copies. But in the sphere of outreach education, the trumpeted news isnot Mao's Revolution, but rather the wave of Confucian institutes for teachingChinese language and culture that China is now setting up in manyforeign lands. A recent Chinese government handout has cited the establishmentof one hundred and twenty Confucius institutes in fifty different countries. Inthe UK,there are currently ten. And in just the last few months in the United States, I visited Confucius institutes instates of the union as different as North Carolina,Arkansas, Texasand Rhode Island.Many, many more are on the way.

The question that arises is an obvious one: why Confucius? Is Confucius insome sense a replacement for Mao? If so, what on earth does that mean? Just inthe space of this sixty year cycle, has China leapfrogged back into its ownpast? What are the Confucian ways the Chinese now seem to be seeking? Ahistorical reprise here, it seems to me, can offer us the first of our fourvistas.

Confucius was a historically verifiable person, born in 551 BC, who died in479 BC at the age of 72. He lived most of his life in the state of Lu in whattoday is known as Shandong Province. He was not anaristocrat, but rather a member of the scholar or professional class whomanaged to become a mid-level bureaucrat. He loved music and poetry, lovedhistory and the practice of the rites, and he sought to define and practice theart of ruling. He spent fourteen of his years in wondering and only had a fewfleeting years in which to practice what he preached. By most conventionalstandards, he might be considered a failure. Those who would have mostvehemently denied that charge were a handful of young men with politicalaspirations who chose to study with him for varying lengths of time anywherefrom a few months to several years. At various times and places, these studentdisciples - if we may call them that - recalled different conversations withConfucius, and either they or their own later students entered a mixture of hissayings into the fragmentary text, which is known as the Analects. These discussionson politics, morality, duty, deportment, ritual propriety and social and familyresponsibility are as close to Confucius's own words as we can come. Though hedid not write them down himself, the words that comprise the Analectsconstitute a coherent view of the world as seen by especially acute eyes; andsome two thousand four hundred years later, the Analects remain at the core ofwhat we might call a Confucian canon.

Even from this brief discussion, we can see that Confucius is a most unlikelyfigure to be made the centre of veneration. He did not have conventionalleadership qualities, and his resonance - to me at least - comes from his lackof grandstanding; his constant awareness of his own shortcomings; his rejectionof dogmatism; and his flashes of dry wit. These qualities, mixed with anongoing patience with the hasty questions of the young, and his determinationto help them think rather than force their adherence to a particular point ofview. Few other world figures, I think, could have phrased their life goals inthe disarming yet proud way that Confucius did, as recorded in the Analects.And this celebrated passage, known widely in China, just goes as follows:

At fifteen, I set my heart on learning. At thirty, I found my balancethrough the rites. At forty, I was free from doubts about myself. At fifty, Iunderstood what heaven intended me to do. At sixty, I was attuned to what Iheard. At seventy, I followed with my heart what my heart desired withoutoverstepping the line.

These six stages of life for Confucius were clearly moral stages in whichthe need to strive at different levels was confronted and conquered. And ofcourse his six stages are worlds away from Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Manwhere growth and the path to age and death are seen in terms of physicalfluorescence and decay. Confucius is concerned with intellectual motion in hischarting of our life's course. At fifteen, he tells us, he sets his heart onlearning because he has already learned and absorbed so much of the history andpoetry from the past. At thirty, he finds his balance through the rites thatbring order and meaning to people's relations with each other and with theirrulers rather than the rights - R.I.G.H.T.S - as we now view them in terms ofour freedom to act according to our own inclinations. At forty, Confucius feltfree from doubts because he was beginning to understand the purpose of hisenquiries into the moral world and the wellsprings of purposive social action.He was fifty when he came to sense what heaven intended him to do. This was nota judgement about religion for this was heaven as a compelling force beyondinterpretation, a silent pointer to the past and the future. At sixty,Confucius felt attuned to what he heard, as striving diminished; and at seventyto achieve one's innermost goal without further pressures or insecurities. Howrich that seemed. How good an end to a long life.

The period in which Confucius lived was called the Spring and Autumn Period,and it was alive with intellectual ferment. At the same time, it was a harshworld in which a shrinking number of states competed viciously among themselvesfor hegemony. Most of his life, Confucius had been what we might now call astudent of politics and he had few illusions about being able to curb humans oftheir obsessions. Indeed, many passages in the Analects show him strugglingwith the question of when to put one's own lifetime of hard won experience inthe service of a ruler whom you know to be immoral or a ruler who is too lazyor stupid to think through the consequences of his actions. In the centuriesafter Confucius's death, many other schools of thought grew and flourished forvarying periods of time. Some directly disagreed with him while others createdarguments from completely different perspectives. The protracted period ofwarfare came to a temporary end in 221 BC with the unification of Chinaunder the harsh rule of the Qin (Ch'in)Dynasty. The Qin (Ch'in) founderbelieved in the equalising power of coercion and of legal codification, andunder his severe rule the moral arguments of the Confucian thinkers seemed thinand irrelevant. Yet after the Qin (Ch'in) Emperor's death, the Analects ofConfucius, along with other works by Confucius' intellectual precursors and descendents,now gradually came to constitute a kind of canon, constantly expanded bylearned commentary. And with the increasing standardisation of China's writtenlanguage and the growth of a class of trained bureaucrats, these works wereconstantly copied and circulated and gave a kind of undergirding to the shapeof China's governance across time. From this sprang the practice of using theaccumulated texts from the past as the basis for a standard examinationcurriculum that could be used as a filtering device for checking theintellectual skills of candidates for bureaucratic or military appointment.

By the 12th century AD, something approximating a state Confucianism was inplace and over time this came to encapsulate certain general truths that hadnot figured prominently in the original Analects. For example, now includedunder this broad definition of Confucian thought were hostility to or thedemeaning of women, a rigid and inflexible system of family hierarchies,contempt for trade and capital accumulation, support of extraordinarily harshpunishments, a slavish dedication to outmoded rituals of obedience anddeference, and a pattern of sycophantic response to the demands of centralimperial power.

It was not until the late 16th century that a concept of a Confucian mode ofthought began to percolate into the West. The initial source of thisinformation were the Jesuit Catholic missionaries who first entered Chinain the 1580s and managed to learn the Chinese language and to make both friendsand converts among the Chinese intellectual elite. They soon discovered thecomplexity of the Chinese admiration for Confucius and were forced to confrontthe knotty problem of whether the so-called worship of Confucius conducted inthe state schools that prepared students for the advanced examinationsconstituted worship in a theological sense or were merely an expression ofhomage to an outstanding individual from China's remote past. They facedparallel problems in determining the nature of the ancestor worship that wasconducted in shrines to be found even in modest Chinese homes and in redefiningthe exact nature of sacrifices to heaven and earth that were conducted at thecorrect ritual moments by China'srulers.

It was in the 1680s that a new kind of Chinese appeared on the intellectualscene in Europe. That was young Chinese whowere very often well trained in Latin by Jesuit teachers and brought theirknowledge of Latin and their native language back to Europe, usually inconjunction with the visit of one of the Jesuit fathers. One of these I'm mostinterested in is called Shen Fo-Tsung. And Shen arrived in fact in London in 1687, bringingwith him a copy of a very precious document at that time: a copy of Confucius'Analects translated completely (this time) into Latin. And once that bookcirculated and the Latin edition was reviewed in various learned journals ofthe time, we in Europe had a chance to reallynow get a kind of fix on what this belief was all about.

This version of the Analects, read and digested by many, included among thereaders Leibniz and, later, Voltaire; and, thus, the importance of this onlater Western philosophical thinking was immense. And some of this burden oftranslation and scattering of the word came from the 19th century onwardsthrough Protestant missionaries who then began a major translation exercise,the largest ever attempted, into the whole Confucian canon as it was includedin the first four major books and then the five longer commentarial books fromthe Confucian era. And these themselves tumbled over into the state ideology ofChina and were finallyrejected in Chinaitself by 1911 when the last dynasty came to an end. Though not, I shouldmention, until there had been a fairly strong attempt to incorporate Confucianismas China'sstate religion. And it was in the turmoil of events that took place followingthe collapse of the last dynasty - the foundation of a republic, the attack onthe Confucian belief system and the search for new Western meaning to curb ontoChina'sown structure - it was that world that Russell moved into in the 1920s. It wasan extraordinary time and was the inheritance, if you like, of a vast period ofhistory. And it is to these stories that I'll be returning in the futurelectures, including some discussion of the way that the state persecution ofConfucius was carried over into the People's Republic of China after 1949; wassharpened intensely in the period of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 76;and then, in this strange transmigration as it were, has re-entered thediscourse in China as these Confucius institutes and the resurrection ofclassical studies of difficult Confucian texts have once more taken astronghold in the People's Republic in the period after the death of DengXiaoping as Mao's successor. Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

SUE LAWLEY: Professor Spence, thank you very much indeed. I'd now like tobring in the audience for questions and comments. And I'd ask you to keep thempretty concise, if you would, and resist giving lectures of your own in theinterest of reflecting as many different views as possible. I'm going to startby calling in Zhang Lifen who's a Chinese journalist based in London and is Editor of the Financial TimesChinese language website. Zhang Lifen?

ZHANG LIFEN: In the past three decades, China has been embarking uponperhaps the greatest wealth creation movement in human history. What doesConfucius say about making money and wealth (LAUGHTER) and what might he saytoday about the growing wealth gap and the social disparities in China today?Thank you.

JONATHAN SPENCE: Thank you. Well that's the first time I've been asked tospeak for the sage. (LAUGHTER) So let's try. I think the central answer wouldbe that Confucius was not against the making of money. He was interested in therules that should go with the making of money and he felt that the pursuit ofprofit itself could never be ultimately as important morally and internally asthe pursuit of virtue and integrity. And we also know that one of Confucius'favourite - I call them student disciples - one of his favourites, Zi Gong wasfrom a commercial family and was himself a merchant trader. And Confuciuspraised this young disciple as saying that the making of money and thecommercial world was a good way of sharpening the wits and getting you tounderstand other points of view.

SUE LAWLEY: But I thought, Jonathan, you mentioned during the course of yourlecture that there was... Confucians anyway had a contempt for trade and theaccumulation...

JONATHAN SPENCE: (over) Yes. I said that when they slowly began tobe revised, as our thinking about Confucius got simplified and speeded up -which was in fact after really the 12th century, the period of Zhou Xi for theChinese here - then these new aspects of Confucianism took on these traits. Butin fact Confucius himself, to answer the question, going back to those originaldocuments, we do not find a contempt of trade.

SUE LAWLEY: Quite convenient that Confucians today don't frown onconspicuous wealth, I think. Let me call in Rana Mitter. He's a lecturer inmodern Chinese history and politics at Oxfordand the author of several books on 20th century China. Dr Mitter?

RANA MITTER: It seems to those of us who look at China today that it's fuelled bytwo or three systems of thought that seem at first glance mutuallycontradictory. I mean the reappearance of Confucianism reminds us thatConfucianism looks back to a golden age in the past; whereas also modern Chinais fuelled by both the remnants of Communism, a progressive looking system ofthought, and of course this new marketised, privatised economy, which alsoderives very much from modern assumptions. What's the compatibility of theseseemingly contradictory systems of thought that underpin China today?

JONATHAN SPENCE: I'm not sure that they can be reconciled. It seems to me ahighly complicated mix. Of the three, the Confucian side is more on theaesthetic and the intellectual side, and this learning is really something thatI think many people thought would have vanished in the People's Republic. Whatdoes the leadership really think of this, who are the Confucian experts in theleadership itself is opaque to me. I don't know who knows these texts.

SUE LAWLEY: (over) And why are they encouraging … why are theyencouraging I think is really the point...

JONATHAN SPENCE: Well why are they encouraging?

SUE LAWLEY: ...a belief in Confucianism?

JONATHAN SPENCE: Yes. It seems to me that there has been now a realisationin China of how much of China's preciouspast the Chinese destroyed themselves. I think Confucius means pride in yourown past, an attempt to reassess past burdens and promise of the country. Andthe Chinese Communist government gets credit now for re-establishing theseparticular values.

SUE LAWLEY: Let me call back in Rana Mitter because I think what I sensebehind your question was a suggestion that maybe the Chinese government, wecynics or sceptics might say, are using it as a means of control because youknow Communism has failed, they don't want capitalism. Perhaps Confucianismfills a gap.

RANA MITTER: I mean certainly the fact that the current leadership underPresident Hu Jintao talks about "a harmonious society" brings to minda Confucian rhetoric. I guess the direct question I'd want to put back thoughis is it meaningful for us in the West to say China is a Confucian society?

JONATHAN SPENCE: I would not say this was a Confucian society. I would sayit's a society where many more people are reading difficult Confucian textsthan were a few years ago. What is the government doing about this? Is it sortof hypocritical or artificial in some way? Maybe it is, maybe it has someconnections with a harmonious society. But Confucius lived in a really rivensociety with extraordinary levels of violence and difficulty in everyday life,so to read the Analects and have them … you know read them aloud at a Cabinetmeeting or something would have an extraordinary effect. (LAUGHTER) I don'tknow how they would be ultimately handled. I think it's a grand question and Ithink it hasn't been solved yet.

SUE LAWLEY: But if Confucianism weren't there for the encouraging on thepart of the Chinese government, then the need for the Chinese people to havesomething to fill that moral vacuum...

JONATHAN SPENCE: Yes.

SUE LAWLEY: … might be filled by perhaps less desirable ideologies likeWestern ideologies. Not least Christianity, for example. And we have on thefront row here Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster,Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Your question, Cardinal?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Professor Spence, when Pope Benedict wrotelast year to Catholics in China,he called on the state to respect authentic religious freedom. I'd like to knowhow you would describe a Confucian understanding of authentic religious freedomand, in the context of your lecture, what interpretation might be placed onthat by the current leadership in China?

JONATHAN SPENCE: That's difficult. (LAUGHTER) I think the government findsthis an opportunity. It wants to reach out, I think, to those who arepractising Catholics in China,but it still wants to keep a strong bureaucratic hold. And it might from thatbuild a kind of institutional control that's even stronger than in the present,so I think the Pope is going to have a hard time convincing the Chinese tochange their attitude about this kind of religious belief.

SUE LAWLEY: The Pope is rather intent on doing that, isn't he, Cardinal?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Yes.

SUE LAWLEY: But how many millions ofunofficialCatholics do youthink there are worshipping in China?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Oh well, I think there are a huge numberand I think they're going to increase in years to come.

JONATHAN SPENCE: There are meant to be many millions, many millions.

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: But I think what Pope Benedict is trying toencourage is a sense where there is a space within the great China forreligious liberty, especially for Christians, who have an authority. I thinkthe trouble is that there's an authority outside China which they don't really like.

JONATHAN SPENCE: They don't like at all. (CARDINAL LAUGHS)

SUE LAWLEY: Called the Vatican?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Well you've said it. You're right.(LAUGHTER) So I think we'll just have to wait and see. But I do think that in away Christianity and Christians in China, whether Catholic or otherChristian denominations, there's an opportunity for them now which they didn'thave before.

JONATHAN SPENCE: Yes, practice of different forms of worship is much morewidely spread. But at the same time, there are maybe tens of millions ofCatholics who are practising in so to speak an unofficial way, an undergroundway. But your point is absolutely well taken that this government in China, as all theprevious ones, have been extraordinarily alert to the problem of undergroundreligious groupings and their dangers to the state.

SUE LAWLEY: Can I just take time out to ask the Cardinal. The Pope did sayback in 2006 that he might go to the Beijing Olympics. Do you think he will?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Well I think he very much wants to go to China, just ashis predecessor Pope John Paul. It was one of his great ambitions.

SUE LAWLEY: But is hegoingto?

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Is he going to? Well, again, that dependson the government in China.They have to say you will be welcome. If he is welcome, I think Pope Benedictwill go.

JONATHAN SPENCE: I think it could be said by the government, as it was saidto President Nixon in a difficult period of time, (LAUGHTER) and it opened upthings quite remarkably. It's possible sometimes to say something fresh andinvigorating and there could be an extraordinary effect. There could also be acomplicated backlash from elements of the church that the party's not sure howto control.

CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR: Well I shall encourage Pope Benedict to go.(LAUGHTER)

JONATHAN SPENCE: Yes, I would certainly, absolutely.

SUE LAWLEY: Let me... I see Lord Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown, a fluent Mandarinspeaker, as we know, sitting on the front row there.

LORD ASHDOWN: (greeting in Mandarin)

SUE LAWLEY: A quick point?

LORD ASHDOWN: Professor Spence, I wonder if I could tempt you intocontemporary comment and even a little bit of prediction. As China now facesthe challenge - and it was referred to earlier - of how do they sociallydemocratise after having economically liberalised, what is it that will fillthat unifying space, that culture (and later I suppose Maoism as a form of thatculture) fill to unify the nation?

JONATHAN SPENCE: The debate is so focused now on how on earth can thisgeneration of leaders pass on peacefully to the next succession of leaders thepower they hold at the moment in China without gaining some othersource of legitimacy. They've got to do this. But the vacuum has mainly been amove away from rigorous Maoist tenets to much looser kind of free market tenetsand a more overt reliance on the law as generated from the Communist Partycentre and a very weak constitution. How can this endure?

LORD ASHDOWN: If I may, I mean you accept there is then a vacuum...

JONATHAN SPENCE: I would...

LORD ASHDOWN: … which previously things like Confucianism might have filledand yet we don't have it... ??

JONATHAN SPENCE: (over) It might have done. And for some Chinese,for some Chinese I think it probably is not a vacuum in a Communist sense. Imean people still have some elements of faith or belief and hold onto some ofthe things that might have been too simply dismissed as just Maoisms.

SUE LAWLEY: I can take a quick comment here.

CORINNA-BARBARA FRANCIS: Corinna-Barbara Francis. I'm from AmnestyInternational. I research on China.If we can talk about an international, global system, one of the bases of thatis the idea of universality - of universality of rights, of universality ofobligations as well.

JONATHAN SPENCE: Right.

CORINNA-BARBARA FRANCIS: Do you have any sense whether this revival ofConfucianism in China willhave any impact on China'sacceptance of this international idea of universality of human rights, forinstance?

JONATHAN SPENCE: I would assume that some of this is going to come throughmarket structures and credit structures and shared economic growth goals. Itmight even be shared like they were talking about the earthquake: sharedhumanitarian values and China'swillingness not only to receive but to give as well.

SUE LAWLEY: But implicit in the question, I think, was that you know it's anautocracy; there is a top down way of governing going on. I think that'sprobably the question, isn't it: how far should we compromise what we believeshould happen in terms of religious freedom or human rights and social freedomsin order to accommodate China as it moves into taking its place in the modernworld?

JONATHAN SPENCE: This is such an incredibly … (LAUGHTER) No, it's anunbelievably difficult … difficult problem.

SUE LAWLEY: No, I know...

JONATHAN SPENCE: And I'm trying to think about you know problems of sharedor mutuality among human rights, deciding what rights we have to interfere withother countries. I mean I find this a hard problem. And it's not just thatindividual Western countries do have you know a complete monopoly over certainforms of virtue. (LAUGHTER) It depends how you … it depends how you assess thecourage. I mean there's unbelievable courage among many young Chinese … wellChinese of all ages, trying to use the law in China and use the constitutionthat there is in China to stop these particularistic abuses, but certainly touse the law at present to redress wrongs against the local party structure isvery definitely to risk imprisonment and worse. But there is a kind of battlebeing joined, I think, here - a legal battle about rights, human rights andpossibilities at least of acting as a sort of ratified defender of people whenyou truly believe they've been wronged very, very seriously.

SUE LAWLEY: I see a few more questions here, but I would...

JONATHAN SPENCE: Yes. If they're going to stay this difficult, we cantake... (LAUGHTER) ... we can maybe have an extension.

SUE LAWLEY: I'd love to hear if there are any Chinese voices out thereanywhere. If you'd like to put up your hand just to make a quick comment. Butin the meantime, I'd like to go to the Archbishop of Canterbury no less who'ssitting on the front row, Dr Rowan Williams, who went on an official visit toChina a couple of years ago, didn't you?

DR ROWAN WILLIAMS: That's right and the contacts I've kept up since then.But one of the things which struck me there was that we were not talking justabout a moral vacuum in general, but a vacuum in what was once before theCultural Revolution essentially something which guaranteed everyone's welfare.In the absence of that is quite a development of small local NGO's, a volunteerethos beginning to grow, civil society beginning to spring up. But my questionreally is how all of that volunteer ethos with its inevitably pluralistassumptions, how that sits with a Confucian approach to society?

JONATHAN SPENCE: We find traces of it very early in China, strong traces of most peoplebeing left free to do entirely you know their own work on their own land. Thisis a rural vision in the early Chinese text. But there is an important caveat;that a certain amount of the shared productive capacity among farmers, forinstance, has to go to the state in order to make this freedom possible. TheNGO's, to leap forward some twenty-five hundred years - I know for instancethose who've been active in AIDS research and prevention, of those who've givenall kinds of pro bono legal assistance, and these are really among the heroes Ithink of contemporary China. The courage you need to do this is considerableand the damage to your family can be remediable. That's a powerful vision. Thekey fact that in Chinathe extraordinary disequilibrium of income goes with enormous freedom in termsof startup companies and so on, but again - as the headlines keep reminding us- the conditions in such sort of startup environments can be much worse forworkers than they would be in an old-fashioned state run Maoist steel plant. Sofrom this might come a kind of vision of economic activity that would let moreroom you know for individual conscience, change in curriculum in the schools.All of these would be part. They make me more positive, I must say, when Ithink about the range of things being attempted.

SUE LAWLEY: Jonathan, we're getting a little pressed for time, so I've got acouple of questioners who have been having their hands up for some time. JoGlanville back there. Jo Glanville is Editor of Index on Censorship. That's themagazine, as we know, which champions the cause of free expression across theworld.

GLANVILLE: Thank you. Professor Spence, I'd just like to bring the subjectback to human rights and to ask whether there's likely to be any more space forfree expression in a Confucian China or whether it would just be exchanging oneform of authoritarianism for another?

JONATHAN SPENCE: My point I think I was trying to make is that there is noabsolutely clear sort of practical, structured way that Confucian belief needor indeed can be used you know to completely control a state and control allexpression. But Confucius was very, very conscious of the dangers of speakingout and that to me is very interesting and is maybe a kind of presentist echo.There's a huge backlog, if history's any use to us here, there is a very strongpotential backlog in Chinaof deeply intelligent questioners and very courageous questioners and weneedn't worry that that's going to stop.

SUE LAWLEY: I'm going to call in for a last question now. I see him sittingout there. John Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs Editor.

JOHN SIMPSON: I've noticed in talking to some quite senior Chinese officialsthat people are increasingly now talking about the state as the servant of thepeople instead of the people as the servant of the state. And yet in the lastcouple of months, we've seen things which for a Western country would be prettyminor actually - demonstrations about Tibet, for instance - yet we've seen hownervous the Chinese authorities have become in the last couple of months as theOlympics get closer. How do we relate these kind of things - the idea thatpeople should be looked after properly and the state should serve them, and atthe same time the state should get really upset if the system is shaken?

JONATHAN SPENCE: Well I think again this is as hard as all the otherquestions have been. (LAUGHTER) How do we deal with this? How do we think thisthrough? I think for the current leadership at least, this is kind of one thingat a time. Our moods change rapidly, so that for instance the Tibetan mood thatwe were in, many of us, you know the outrageous behaviour and so on, wassoftened in a sense by the earthquake and human compassion.

SUE LAWLEY: You mentioned to me in a conversation we had earlier that theearthquake could be interpreted as a kind of nature being out of kilter andsomehow a judgement on the Chinese government itself. How deep would that...

JONATHAN SPENCE: Well that takes us back to the worries long ago at the Tangshan earthquake where we do know that the governmentdid try and stop a spreading of the news of the Tangshan earthquake in 76. I haven't checkedthe government's use of other earthquakes since, but I...

SUE LAWLEY: (over) But do you genuinely believe that that would bea feeling that's running...??

JONATHAN SPENCE: (over) Well the kind of thing that could lead toturmoil … If a great many things are going wrong in conjunction with a reallyserious natural catastrophe, that is a dangerous moment in any society. I dothink that it's strongly dangerous in China and I was very, very struck at theNew Year's holidays in China with over a hundred million people on the movewhen these huge blizzards brought a standstill to the train service and peoplewere in a kind of desperation with their children, they were freezing, they hadno food, there was no trace of a toilet, people were sick, had no trace of ahospital. The government seemed to be totally incompetent. And I as ahistorian, my mind was racing back to moments in 1813, 1797, 1642, 1585 and soon when some kind of conjunction of extraordinary incompetence by an autocraticregime linked to manifestation of nature as a force being really angry and outof kilter. These had been catastrophic for tens of thousands of people and inat least three cases had nearly brought down the government. This earthquakedidn't happen to do that and it seems to me the authorities have tried torespond swiftly to a nightmarish situation. But the only truth I think to myremark there might be that given the scale of both the natural phenomenon andthe governmental incompetence and the human suffering, that would be now, as inthe past, an extraordinarily volatile and difficult moment for the Chinese tohandle. Thank you.

SUE LAWLEY: And there we must leave it. Thank you all. Thank you very muchto our hosts here in the British Library. Next week we'll be in Liverpool, homeof Europe's oldest Chinese settlement, and there Professor Spence will beoutlining the history of the relationships between Britainand Chinain his second lecture which he's called 'English Lessons'. But that's it forthis week. For now, I'd like to thank Jonathan Spence very much for theConfucian way, dare I say, in which he dealt - here's your quote from yourlecture - with great patience with our hasty questions. Jonathan Spence, thankyou very much indeed. (APPLAUSE)