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La Barre presents a short outline of Chinese cultural history and character from an anthropological viewpoint which is to be followed later by a psychiatric study. The key to the remarkable stability and endurance of Chinese civilization is to be found in its agrarianism. It has produced an ethnocentric culture, which, despite numerous invasions and conquests and unchecked extension over a large share of the globe by a process of cultural osmosis, has remained nonmilitaristic, nonimperialistic, pretechnological, and basically rural. It has stamped the national Chinese character with an unshakable narcissistic conviction in its own cultural superiority amidst a world of barbarians.
The agrarian basis of Chinese civilization also made the family the pivotal social institution. Chinese character and social organization can be understood only through an evaluation of the family institution. Because of the intimate, lifelong, and inescapable contacts between the members of the family, interpersonal relationships are of profound concern to the Chinese. Preoccupation with 'face' is an expression of their social and psychological sensitiveness. The Chinese seem to have evolved a solution to Oedipal conflict that is far different from our own. Instead of overthrowing the father or liberating himself form his dominance, the Chinese son makes peace with him. The result is a noncompulsive, nonaggressive personality structure, and a capacity for friendship of the most delicate and rivalry-free nature. Although a son never 'comes of age' vis-a-vis his parents, the father's authority is mitigated by the social value attached to the paternal virtues of wisdom, forbearance, and patience and by a sharing of paternal responsibilities with the older persons in the extended family.
In contrast to the high ethical and humane standards reigning within the family, the Chinese feel relatively little obligation to the community at large. Political morality as judged by Western stand