文字简化、学术产出与技术进化—来自中国的经验 [Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning]

Over the past century, the accumulation and dissemination of human knowledge have seen an explosive increase, particularly noticeable in the academic world. As Wolfgang Klein has pointed out, convenient knowledge production often accompanies inefficient knowledge reception, creating a vast information gap (Klein 2024 [1989]). The academic world produces mountains of butter, yet there is no one to consume it all. This dilemma also profoundly affects China, a country with a long cultural tradition. Even though Chinese people are known for their diligence and eagerness to learn, they, too, can only look on helplessly at the overwhelming information generated by the information explosion. The famous Chinese novel Journey to the West mentions a challenge set by the Celestial Emperor, where rain will only fall after a chicken eats an entire mountain of rice, a dog licks a mountain of flour, and a candle burns through a golden lock. The despair here is akin to the feeling facing mountains of butter referenced earlier. Thus, the Chinese perhaps can understand this feeling of powerlessness in the face of excessive knowledge even better than Klein.

Chinese culture has a long-standing tradition of knowledge production and dissemination. More than two thousand years ago, Confucius proposed the concept of the “Three Immortals” in the historical work Zuo Zhuan: to establish moral integrity, to achieve meritorious deeds, and to leave behind influential words. Since then, Chinese intellectuals have long aspired to have their words endure for posterity, considering it a great honor to have produced a body of work so extensive that it could stack up to their own height, a feat known as ‘writings equal to one’s height’ (著作等身, zhù zuò děng shēn), and admiring the ability to compose a long military document while leaning on a horse ready to set off, symbolizing the ease and flair with which they could produce literary works, a quality celebrated as ‘leaning on a horse and writing a thousand words’ (倚马千言, yǐ mǎ qiān yán). The Wei Emperor, Cao Pi (reigned from 220 to 226 AD), also emphasized the importance of written works, describing it as “a grand enterprise of governing the state, a glorious endeavor that endures through time,” which gained widespread recognition among intellectuals.

Due to such enthusiasm in academic production, it become impossible to read all the available texts in China from a very early period, though Confucius encouraged that learners should “study without growing weary”. As far back as the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 AD), the phrase 皓首穷经 [hào shǒu qióng jīng] ‘to exhaust one’s life studying the classics’ had already emerged. It proves that the classical texts had by then become so numerous that even a lifetime of study could not suffice to read them all. The renowned scholar Han Yu (768–824 AD) of that era used the metaphors “书山” (shū shān, mountain of books) and “学海” (xué hǎi, ocean of learning) to describe the vastness of the so called Six Classics and the Hundred Schools of Thought.

There are more examples from later times. The Twenty-Four Histories, created by official historians appointed by various dynasties, total 47 million characters. The Yongle Canon, commissioned under the orders of Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty (who reigned from 1,402 to 1,424), compiled knowledge across various fields such as astronomy, geography, yin-yang theory, medicine, divination, Buddhism and Daoism, and technical skills, and contained 22,877 volumes (with an additional 60 volumes of tables of contents), amounting to 370 million characters. By the Qing Dynasty, the ambitious Emperor Qianlong (reigned from 1,735 to 1,796) ordered the compilation of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, which covered nearly all disciplines of ancient Chinese knowledge, including literature, history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine, resulting in 79,338 volumes and a total word count of 800 million characters.

However, the regrettable fact remains that, despite producing such a vast amount of knowledge over 2,500 years, Chinese intellectuals have struggled with how to effectively utilize and innovate upon this knowledge. Take Chinese characters, for example – they are considered a source of pride for Chinese civilization, being able to transcend generational linguistic barriers caused by phonetic changes and preserving the legacy of different eras. Yet, the complexity of Chinese characters, with their numerous strokes, homophones, variant forms, and multiple pronunciations, became a heavy burden for learners. Educated elites even took pride in their extensive knowledge of characters. For example, in the 1920s–30s, the great writer and thinker Lu Xun (1881–1936) created a character Kong Yiji in one of his novels, who was proud in knowing that there were four different ways to write the character 回 [huí]. However, when faced with the modern Western technology embodied by armed ships and cannons during the late Qing Dynasty, China was utterly helpless. The frustrations in the “century of humiliation” (starting with the First Opium War in 1839 and ending with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949) led many Chinese intellectuals to question and abandon traditional Chinese culture. Lu Xun famously argued that the core values of Chinese culture, “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness,” were merely tools of oppression (Lu Xun 2014 [1918]), while Hu Shih (1891–1962) criticized the three major flaws in Chinese literary tradition and advocated for abandoning classical Chinese texts in favor of foreign books. Related to this, there was also a denigration of Chinese script, with some believing that “if Chinese characters are not abolished, China will perish,” (Lu Xun 1974 [1936]) and that classical Chinese and traditional characters were obstacles to educating the masses and disseminating knowledge. Some linguists even suggested abandoning Chinese characters altogether in favor of Latinized alphabets or Esperanto.

In the latter half of the 20th century, China underwent a profound discussion on the form of its written language. Traditional Chinese characters, like cuneiform, originated from pictographs, making them difficult for the general populace to learn and write. Moreover, the Chinese written language system, known as Classical Chinese (文言文, wényánwén), had long become severely disconnected from the spoken language. For over two thousand years, only a small number of elite intellectuals had the opportunity to spend more than ten years mastering this literary language, which was entirely distinct from the spoken language. It became clear that this complex writing system and the complete disjunction between written and spoken language were detrimental to knowledge dissemination and production.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the country undertook a planned reform of its writing system, which included promoting Mandarin (the common speaking), simplifying Chinese characters, and implementing the Pinyin system. China significantly simplified Chinese characters, achieving notable success in reducing the number of strokes, characters, and variant pronunciations. A direct result of Chinese character simplification was a drastic reduction in the illiteracy rate from 80-90 % before 1949 to 2.67 % today, with a significant improvement in the general population’s educational and cultural level. Simultaneously, China inherited the important achievements of the New Culture Movement of the early 20th century, advocating the use of Vernacular Chinese [白话文, báihuàwén] in written texts, which greatly reduced the difficulty of language learning and usage. Additionally, China adopted the Latin alphabet to create the Pinyin system for spelling Chinese and providing phonetic annotations for characters, which has played a positive role in the digitization of Chinese characters and their use in the computer age. Pinyin is also the standard for spelling Chinese names and place names internationally. Today, knowledge production and dissemination in China have become relatively easy, and language and script reforms have made significant contributions to China’s economic takeoff and cultural development.

Klein suggested addressing the difficulties in knowledge dissemination by either limiting the total amount of knowledge produced, assigning each professor an annual publication quota, or increasing the difficulty of expression, such as reintroducing cuneiform writing with hammers and chisels (Klein 2024 [1989]). We can only partially agree with this view.

On one hand, it is true that knowledge or books are not necessarily better the more there are. The vast amount of knowledge produced in ancient China did not ensure that Chinese culture and technology remained cutting-edge. The British scholar Joseph Needham (1900–1995) famously posed the “Needham Question,” asking why scientific and industrial revolutions did not occur in modern China. Although China produced a large amount of knowledge over its long history, the use of Classical Chinese and complex traditional characters confined knowledge production and dissemination to a very small portion of the population, resulting in the stagnation of thought, technological inertia, and cultural decline in the country – a lesson and a warning for other cultures around the world.

On the other hand, however, the Chinese experience suggests that it is essential to expand the population engaged in knowledge production and to encourage active knowledge generation. Over the past 70 years, China has promoted the use of the national common language, simplified characters, and implemented the Pinyin system nationwide; actively taught foreign languages, creating a society where everyone learns English; and conducted multi-language teaching in various schools. The country has also developed scripts for 12 minority languages. These measures have significantly raised the educational and cultural levels of the population. Today, China has the largest number of researchers in the natural sciences and publishes more papers annually than any other country, including the United States. This has been a crucial support for China’s rapid economic development over the past 40 years.

However, it is regrettable that most of these scientific papers are written in English. As of 2020, Chinese accounts for only 1.3 % of the languages used by the top one million internet websites worldwide, far below English’s 63.6 %, and even less than Vietnamese’s 1.9 %. This shows that in modern society, the output of knowledge in Chinese is still far from sufficient – not too much, but too little.

Klein’s suggestion to reintroduce cuneiform as a means to limit knowledge production was, of course, a jest. However, in China, some people have indeed advocated for a return to traditional characters and the re-learning of Classical Chinese. In the Chinese context, this view is often seen as a historical regression and a rejection of modern civilization. In the era of artificial intelligence, research based on the Transformer model has shown that languages with larger quantities of high-quality data result in more advanced artificial intelligence. In this context, we believe that all languages should continue to encourage the publication of a large number of high-quality academic works. As for the problem of knowledge reception, we think there is no need to worry. The butter will always find someone to consume it. Perhaps in the near future, breakthroughs in brain-computer interface technology will make acquiring knowledge as easy as consuming butter.