SINOPHILIA: A CONCLUSION

There is something about that Western thinkers find attractive. For centuries China has been perceived as a feminine variant of Euro- pean civilization: a peaceful, passive and well-ordered society in which individuals subordinate themselves to the common good of the collec- tive. Simon Leys perhaps was right when, in his polemic with Said, he argued that was, in fact, a remedy against Eurocentric hostil- ity. We can easily see that the Swedish China experts in this aspect are very different from the orientalists as they do not share the oriental- ist’s condescending prejudices against the Asian other. As commit- ted China friends, their collecting, research and writing were done in collaboration with Chinese colleagues. Bernhard Karlgren taught Chi- nese students in Taiyuan, where collector Erik Nyström also worked. Johan Gunnar Andersson served as a Chinese official employed by the Chinese Geological Institute. Sven Hedin, like Andersson, wore the insignias of a Chinese official, first during the Swedish-Chinese Expedition and again when he served the Chinese Ministry of Trans- port. The Swedes criticized Western imperialism, saw China as their second motherland and praised the Chinese Empire for whose benefit they worked. They constantly reexamined the Silk Routes as if they seriously needed to comprehend why a wedge came between the two “chosen” cultures: China and Europe. Is not the collecting activity also an expression of such a sinophilia? Is it not built on strong feelings of love for Chinese objects? Swedish collectors wanted to invest pieces from another civilization with the same sublime content they found in the history of their own Euro- pean art. When a treasure hunter has won one coveted object, he is already setting his sights on the next find. The more collectors who want it, the higher the value of an object; the rarest and most difficult to procure compel the strongest desire. Collecting also led to bonding among like-minded males of the Swedish upper class, congregating as they did in a China Committee and a China Club. Sharing a passion for beauty, the members arranged exquisite settings and museums to display the objects brought from China. A great deal of love and effort was devoted to collections, which also gave birth to a whole regimen of acquiring and presenting knowledge demonstrated through describing, 222 sinophilia: a conclusion representing and cataloguing. The Eastern bride was brought home and the collectors saw this rescue as a good deed designed to save this defenseless beauty from the dangers of war-torn, impoverished China. No effort was spared in getting these treasures safely to Sweden. Large amounts of money were raised through requests for help and support to the Swedish government, the King and rich Swedish-Americans. A museum was erected to house the Chinese collections and expertise about China is tied to them. In the collecting stage we find old China hands, like Orvar Karlbeck and Erik Nyström, as well as missionaries, like George Söderbom and Hertig Larsson. To give the collections scientific legitimacy, experts like Gösta Montell and the great sinologist Bernhard Karlgren were called upon. From love for the objects, an institutional foundation for sinology was established. Despite the new Communist leadership’s hostilities toward the West, the Swedish love of China endured. During the seventies, the Swedish Chinese friendship was poised to become a mass movement as this affection was institutionalized in an association that promised unswerving loyalty to the Chinese state and its Communist party. But with the Swedish Maoists’ black-and-white world view, it became clear that the friendship with China needed a common enemy, someone or something imagined to be obstructing the never-achieved communion of China and Europe. Early Swedish-Chinese cooperation, together with the Third Way politics of the Social Democratic Party, provided a basis for the spe- cial relationship that came to exist between Sweden and the People’s Republic of China. Sweden was the first Western nation to achieve mutual diplomatic recognition with the new Communist state; in Swe- den, with its strong leftist tradition, a Maoist party was established early on. At the same time, influential writer Jan Myrdal changed the Sweden China Association into an extremely loyal, propagandistic friendship society. The sinocentric view of history held by the sinolo- gists of the 1930s passed to the Maoists forty years later, while much of the orientalism metamorphosed into an occidentalism, convinced as the Swedes now were about the superiority of the Eastern civilization that they believe would conquer the West. That the Swedes worked for Chinese government agencies and esteemed the country, its people, leader and culture—is that something to applaud? Did their China friendship and the criticism of the West