A regressive move led by a weak Chinese leadership Re: China embraces Confucius again
lo yeeOn
abia...@my-deja.com <abia...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>China embraces Confucius again
If it does, it is because its political leadership has been actively
encouraging it.
It means also that China's political leadership feels a lack of
stature and authority to inspire, pursuade, and lead.
The accusation of Confucian tendency against Lin Biao was probably
only a convenient charge to get him nailed. Ultimately it was a power
struggle between Lin and his enemies and Lin lost the struggle.
The anti-Confucian sentiment did not come with the founding of the
People's Republic under Mao. The new China simply carried the
sentiment to fruition. It first came to being as an awakening of
patriotic Chinese from the humiliation the country and its people
suffered in the hand of colonialist foreigners. Anyone, Chinese and
non-Chinese alike, who cares about the Chinese history and its future,
should not avoid paying attention to the meaning and significance of
the Enlightening Movement identified with the massive protestation
carried out by the intellectuals of China in May 4th, 1919, also known
as the May 4th Movement.
(I have no doubt that if the current Chinese leadership wants to
revive Confucianism, it is also in their interest to suppress the
influence of the May 4th Movement. May 4th Movement was about
awakening to the values intellectuals of the West have championed
since the days of Descartes, Voltaire, and Rousseau: the values of
thoughtfulness, equality, reciprocity (hence the need to fight against
oppression of all kinds. Confucianism is against all those values.
Foremost, Confucian's predestiny for all, its father has father's
place and son has son's place and the king has the king's place and
everybody has his own little place and particularly women has little
or no place except among themselves so that the wife could mistreat
the concubines despite the fact that they were all oppressed and used
by their common "husband". It is ludicrous! The reason why Chinese
women today can hold positions in universities and receive top-notched
education is because of the awakening which was carried to fruition
under communist China. And while China may not remain communist for
long, there is no reason for women to cheer for a return to slavery.
I have seen the Chinese women. Even my paternal grandmother, an
industrialist wife before the communist came who complained and
complained about how bad the communist was and that
the capitalists need to eat too
never once mentioned Confucius. I heard her talk about the Buddha and
Quan Gong, the judge revered for his infinite fairness with her
friends. I heard her talk about her hard life during the chaotic times
during the warlords and the Japanese invasion. I heard her talk about
Mao and the purge against her own father. But I've never heard her ever
talk about Confucius even though she was living a life subject to the
edicts which flowed from his teaching.
I have no doubt that she has heard of Confucius. But Confucius was
not a relevant figure in her consciousness. Confucius was talked
about in schools because that was what Chinese education was about.
In school if you studied Chinese classics, there were only two
categories you were exposed to: Chinese poetry from Tang and Song
dynasties, mostly, and Kong stuff: his analects and the generations of
re-interpretations of what each word from them means, often academic
argumentation without any change in its practical applications.
She did not worship Confucius as a deity. She burned incese mainly
for her family's ancestors. Why? Because she liked to say,
"the tree may grow to a thousand feet tall; but the leaves fall close
to its root/"
She would burn incense for Judge Quan and the Budda when she went to
the monastery at important occasions. But at the altar at home,
incense was burned only for the ancestors.
The Chinese for millennia worship their deceased parents and grand
parents because they thought that if they had to beg for help from
anyone, the most logical ones to heed their call would be their
parents who would like love them in their after life since they had
loved them in life. Superstitution is universal: Agamemnon sacrificed
his daughter before the Greek gods before he went and fought the
Trojans; Field Commander Kutozov prayed before the icon repeatedly
before he went to battle Napoleon at Borodino; everybody has his or
her own little god (or big god) for protection.
The Chinese did not have a Confucian religion. They were also barely
Buddhist, if ever. They didn't understand the deep logic in Buddhism.
And they were irrelevant concepts anyway because Chinese are generally
very pragmatic. They care about their own immediate survival more
than anything else, hence burning incense for their ancestors.
And thus a Confucian religion was only an institutional idea: an idea
promoted and enforced by a government for its own benefit.
Reciprocity between classes in the Confucian hierarchy doesn't really
exist. You can hope that your tyrant king or tribal chief would wise
up be nice to his subjects; but you cannot reciprocate. You cannot
misbehave like they do and not receive your punishment in accordance
to your proper _place_.
Thoughtfulness in the sense of Descartes ("Cogito, ergo sum" or "I
think, therefore I am")? Forget it! You cannot even be a Buddhist
and be enlightened one day after years of meditation that you should
never allow yourself to be subjugate to a life, living with three
other concubines of your husband, and say:
"enough is enough. I should start getting up every morning and learn
mathematics and logic from now on (like Mahatma Gandhi taught), and
be an independent woman with means and freedom of movenment."
And that's why China became such an Far East Asian Weakling.
I had an aunt who fled to Taiwan with her husband and eventually
settled in the US. She did her doctoral thesis at the U. of Chicago
on China from the old. She was a progressive woman and a Christian.
She was fully anti-communist and a bona-fide Republican voter. But
she never had anything good to say about Confucius or his teaching.
She was that way because she grew up with the May 4th Movement, went
to US-sponsored missionary schools through college. She say the weak
China before Mao and the strong China after Nixon visited China and
dined with Mao and Chou. She often admitted that despite all her
trepidation about the communist regime, she could not deny the pride
it brought to her as a Chinese-born American citizen.
For anyone today to advocate making Confucianism a religion and
re-instituting the exam system for government service is plagued by
provincialism and ignorance.
The world is so big and the ideas from all the cultures across the
globe is so rich and yet the access of information is readily
available, how can a modern Chinese not try to open his or her eye and
see that China does not need the Confucian albatross to weigh it down
in order to have something to cling on to. Moreover, the Chinese
people should let their leaders know that they better have something
better to inspire them with or they would be just as irrelevant and
obsolete as Confucius himself.
The Chinese communists were progressive in making a maximum effort to
bring down Confucianism and all the institutions which glorified and
followed it. In that same sense, the current Chinese leadership in
its endeavor to bring back Confucius as an ideology is completely
regressive.
And the fact that Lin was a smart military strategist but with little
exposure to western thoughts, as opposed to Mao Zhe-dong, Chou en-lai,
and others in the Chinese communist party leadership at the time also
explains why Lin was less sensitive to the corruption of Confucianism
on the Chinese soul.
What the current leadership is doing is regressive. It attempts to
save itself in the interest of a few individuals who lust for a power
they are not prepared to hold and in return sacrifice the hard-earned
gain acheived by rejection of confucianism.
And usually, when a leadership has to grasp for straw to hang on to
power, it's its twilight years. Expect a new and more pregressive
leadership or China is doomed.
lo yeeOn
========
>Once in disgrace as a lackey of the feudal class, Confucius may rise
>again to replace Marx as the guiding spirit of the Communist Party.
>
>Confucius has returned. In fact he was never far away, not even in the
>darkest days of the Cultural Revolution. For years the government
>reviled Confucius as a representative of "old ways of thinking", a
>lackey of the feudal class and oppressor of slaves. Lin Biao, the
>disgraced heir apparent of Mao, was condemned not only as a traitor
>but as "a close follower of Confucius". It has always been like this
>in Chinese history. In the 3rd century BC, Chin�the first emperor and
>unifier of China�wanted to do away with history and tradition so that
>he would become the cornerstone of a new China. He ordered the
>Confucian classics to be burned and the scholars massacred, much as
>Mao Tse-tung did.
>
>What happened after Chin is happening after Mao: Confucius is making a
>comeback. it could hardly be otherwise. China is not China without
>Confucius.
>
>The ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in deep crisis.
>Even among Party leaders, it is hard to find a convinced Marxist, even
>though a portrait of Mao is still hanging in Tiananmen Square. From a
>pragmatic perspective, the CCP needs to justify its grip on power
>using the old dynastic rationale: Mao is the founder of a new dynasty
>and the CCP is his heir. The CCP is no longer a revolutionary party;
>but a political aristocracy that claims a monopoly on power to steer
>the country through an economic and social transformation
>unprecedented in human history and make it a great power. There are no
>obvious alternatives. The history of China in the 20th century has
>been so volatile, violent, chaotic and miserable that its citizens
>appreciate the relative prosperity and freedom, even if there is room
>for much improvement.
>
>But this leaves the CPP with two great problems: consistency and
>solidarity. For 30 years the Party has followed the pragmatic approach
>suggested by Deng Xiaoping: "To be rich is to be glorious." Hence it
>has followed capitalist development policies. But this has created a
>problem of consistency within the Party. The Marxist structures and
>slogans remain, but the ideology has evaporated. What is the source,
>then, of the regime's legitimacy?
>
>The other problem is social solidarity. China has the largest number
>of millionaires in the world and the companies with greatest market
>value. But there are vast differences between the well-developed
>coastal regions and the poor interior provinces, and between rural and
>urban areas. Corruption is rife and the socialist safety nets of the
>1970s are being undone with nothing to replace them. Demonstrations
>and complaints have been increasingly frequent. Can the government
>withstand the stormy seas ahead?
>
>In view of this social turmoil, the Chinese Prime Minister, Hu Jintao,
>deliberately revived the ancient sage at the CPP's recent five-year
>congress in Beijing. Hu's slogan of the "Three Harmonies" is clearly
>Confucian: he-ping (peace in the world), he-jie (reconciliation with
>Taiwan), he-xie (social harmony). This is clearly a Confucian
>program.
>
>Ever since Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took control of the main political
>positions of China at the end of 2002, they have consistently acted as
>ruler-scholars at the service of the people, in keeping with the
>Confucian ideal of a good ruler. Many of their slogans, such as
>"people first", "running the Government at the service of the people",
>and "seek harmony in differences," are literal quotations from
>Confucius or his follower Mencius.
>
>The rebirth of Confucian values is everywhere. The Chinese Government
>has fostered the creation of Confucius Institutes all over the world
>to promote Chinese language and culture; the curricula in schools and
>universities pay now more attention to the Chinese classics; it is
>becoming fashionable in the media to use expressions with Confucian
>undertones. One of the outstanding publishing success stories of the
>last few years has been the sale of almost four million copies of a
>simplified version of Confucius�s Analects.
>
>Confucius� moral and social philosophy goes directly against the
>moribund Marxist orthodoxy but the CPP likes its emphasis on order,
>harmony, sense of responsibility, and authority. As the heirs of the
>Mao dynasty, they are seeking support for their position.
>
>However, this novel emphasis on Confucian values may be motivated by
>an honest drive to seek a solid foundation in the quicksands of social
>transformation. Hu and Wen are fully aware that Confucian ethics
>imposes reciprocal rights and duties on rulers and citizens. It
>demands obedience to authority, but imposes on the Government the duty
>of moral behaviour in favour of the people, to the point that it
>justifies rebellion against tyranny. They have begun a one-way trip
>away from Marxist ideology. Furthermore, the new generation of Chinese
>leaders believes that their first loyalty is to China and its people,
>not to the CPP. They have a deep sense of mission and responsibility
>rooted in the Confucian ideals of a good ruler -- even if the West
>views them as a despotic autocracy.
>
>Confucianism and government
>
> Confucius (551-479 BC) is the most influential thinker of China of
>the past 25 centuries. He shaped the culture not only of the "Central
>Kingdom," but also of Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. The
>canonical texts of Confucianism, the Four Books, including the
>Analects by Confucius, the Book of Mencius, The Great Learning, and
>the Doctrine of the Mean. These are not philosophical treatises with
>the logical rigor of Greek thought, but suggestive thoughts open to
>many interpretations. Confucian orthodoxy today is based on an
>interpretation made by scholars of the Sung Dynasty, in the 10th to
>13th centuries.
>
>Confucianism is a system of personal and social ethics. It does not
>rely upon supernatural arguments or God, although it is not closed to
>transcendence. Confucius simply pleads ignorance about the fate of man
>after death, while insisting on the importance of venerating one's
>forefathers as a sign of filial piety. Confucius would not regard
>himself as a secularist. Secularism disdains man�s spiritual needs,
>but there is nothing in the thinking of Confucius which suppresses
>man's spiritual dimension.
>
>Confucianism�s starting point is the unity of the three great
>realities: Heaven, Man, and Earth. The universe obeys its own order
>and laws and ethical behaviour consists precisely in following those
>"natural laws." For Confucius, the evil and disorder that visit human
>beings are a consequence of immorality. In particular, rulers have
>authority because they have received it from a higher power (tiandao)
>by means of a Mandate of Heaven (tianming). What exactly Heaven means
>in Confucian thought is disputed since it is, like many other notions
>of Chinese philosophy, a vague intuition rather than a formal
>metaphysical concept. In any case, it is something more than just
>mechanical laws.
>
>The rulers lose the Mandate of Heaven when they fail to behave
>ethically. Then the people can legitimately demand a change in
>government. But so long as the rulers enjoy the Mandate of Heaven, the
>people are obliged to obey and follow docilely the ruler's decrees.
>When Hu Jintao invokes Confucian values he is implicitly renouncing
>both the dictatorship of the proletariat and the tyranny of the
>market, as well as encouraging his fellow citizens to follow the order
>that heavens have given to human nature in order to reach personal
>perfection and social harmony.
>
>Like his Greek contemporary Aristotle, Confucius follows an ethics of
>perfection. Human beings must be in harmony with the universe, which
>assumes obedience to laws decreed by heaven. Obedience to the laws of
>nature requires learning them with self-knowledge and study. Knowing
>the laws leads to li, a characteristically Confucian virtue that
>implies the internalization of good social forms. Correct social
>behaviour results from consistency between external social conventions
>and internal personal dispositions. Li is the root of ren, a higher
>virtue, which could be roughly translated as "benevolence": wishing
>the best for everyone. For Confucius, the virtue of ren begins at
>home, with one�s family. From there it spreads in wider ripples to all
>people. Confucian ethics carries a strong domestic flavour: family
>relations are the foundation and model of all social relations. Ren
>implies the practice of zhong (fidelity, loyalty) and of shu (mercy,
>compassion). Benevolence (ren) also leads to the practice of the
>principles of justice and equity, which are at the core of the virtue
>of yi.
>
>A virtuous individual reaches moral perfection by seeking in
>everything a proper balance, the virtuous equilibrium of the just
>mean, which could be summarized as "know and respect the mandates of
>Heaven." For Confucius, society must be ruled by virtuous scholars.
>The calling and mission of a virtuous person is to rule others. This
>is not seen as an honour or an opportunity for personal benefit, since
>this should never be in the mind of a person aspiring to perfection.
>It is simply done in obedience to a mandate from Heaven, which a
>superior person knows and obeys.
>
>If the current rehabilitation of Confucianism in China is sincere, it
>confirms that the CCP intends to transform itself into a political
>aristocracy. It will no longer aim at the dictatorship of the
>proletariat, but at rule by the best equipped to govern the nation. In
>this it will connect with previous dynasties, since meritocracy has
>been for thousands of years a part of the administrative organization
>of the State through empire-wide competitive examinations.
>
>Another relevant point of Confucian ethics is its emphasis on
>responsibility. Western liberal democracy is based on an
>individualistic ethic which focuses on rights and freedom. In
>Confucianism, however, the individual is a person-for-others. Hence
>Confucian virtues always have a social dimension. For instance,
>Confucianism insists on the importance of study and knowledge; but
>their main aim is not mere personal satisfaction, achievement, or
>power over nature, but cooperation with others to achieve a harmonious
>relationship within society and within the universe.
>
>Confucianism and democracy
>
>Confucianism (particularly in the writings of Mencius) is optimistic
>about the natural goodness of human beings and their progress in
>perfection. It views society as an expanded version of the family. The
>patrilineal family system of China created rights and duties for the
>individuals unconnected to their condition as subjects of the State.
>In this sense, the Chinese people have enjoyed a high degree of
>autonomy in relation to the State, although they were subject to
>important family bonds.
>
>On the other hand, State controlled individuals through those same
>lineage and family bonds. It depended upon the network of family and
>clan relationships to function. Therefore, the Confucian emphasis on
>family relationships, on filial piety, on the need of solidarity among
>siblings, and on domestic harmony, reflects a political perspective in
>which it is expected that the basic units of the social pyramid will
>exercise self-control in favour of the State.
>
>Hence, for Confucius the family is school of virtue and foundation of
>society. If there are many virtuous and learned individuals, they will
>be able to run their families properly and the result will be a rich
>and well governed State. In turn, a prosperous and properly managed
>State will be in a position to encourage individuals and their
>families along a path of moral and civic virtue and thus reach social
>harmony.
>
>Towards a Confucian China
>
>What lies ahead for China if it shrugs off its socialist ideology
>completely? It is difficult to say, but certainly 21st century China
>will be deeply influenced by more than 2,000 years of immersion in
>Confucian values. It will value strong authority; social hierarchies;
>political consensus; a political elite; and social meritocracy. Some
>of the forms of Western democracy, even universal suffrage, will
>exist, but it is likely that political power will continue in the
>hands of a political aristocracy that will still call itself Communist
>Party of China, at least for the next few decades.
>
>What happens afterwards, when China has high living standards, a large
>middle class, and a dynamic ecnomy is anyone's guess. But one thing is
>certain: China will not allow the West to impose on her a political
>model. "Study the past to define the future," said Confucius. When
>Chinese study the history of their encounter with the West, they find
>a century of humiliation, from 1843 (when China was forced after her
>defeat in the opium wars to cede Hong Kong to Great Britain) to 1949
>(when Mao proclaimed the People�s Republic of China).This is bound to
>define the long-term political future of China.
>
>Confucius and Chinese foreign policy
>
>Is a powerful China good for world peace? Will it pursue the logic of
>power, the logic of self-interest, or the logic of benevolence? The
>opinion of my Chinese friends is unanimous, as if springing from a
>collective historical memory. China, they say, has never been an
>aggressor. The trend of its foreign policy is to attract rather than
>coerce. As Confucius said: "If those who are close are happy, those
>who are far will be attracted."
>
>For Confucius and his followers, only selfish and petty people, of
>those he calls xiaoren -- stunted individuals -- engage in power
>struggles. A virtuous person, a junzi, must not seek power, but the
>good of society at large. His internal goodness (ren) comes out in the
>form of external good manners and propriety (li). These virtues are
>not merely individual qualities. When a State is truly civilized,
>which for Confucius is the same as virtuous, it will exert a
>beneficial influence over the entire world and contribute to global
>stability, peace, and harmony among nations.
>
>One of the traditional concepts of Chinese culture is the awareness
>that all peoples form a global community (datong): "All are one under
>Heaven." This notion goes beyond the vague idea of one human race to
>which all men belong. In Confucian thought, datong is based on the
>unity between Heaven, Man, and Earth. This means that the human
>element (the individual person, the family, the clan, the State, or
>the whole of human society) has a duty to seek harmony with both
>Heaven (that is with the superior ethical laws) and Earth (natural
>resources, the economy, and the management of material things). If
>humanity clashes with the moral or the economic order, the world
>becomes a place of conflict, injustice, exploitation, and suffering.
>Mankind has then lost the Way (dao). When conflict and disunity
>predominate, the Way is being lost -- a far cry from Marxist
>dialectics.
>
>Therefore, the great question is how far is whether the contemporary
>Chinese state is at the service of the dao, or is the dao a tool in
>the hands of the State? In the last few years China has shown great
>restraint in her foreign policy, has supported multilateralism, and
>developed an "charm offensive". But critics accuse her of having
>exploited the dao to enlarge her sphere of influence (particularly in
>the Pacific), to isolate Taiwan, to expand her exports, and to secure
>a supply of raw materials for her economic boom, all of it supported
>by the modernization of her armed forces and the acquisition of
>civilian and military advanced technology.
>
>Another key element in China�s foreign policy is the Taiwan question.
>This is directly linked to domestic policies since those far away will
>feel attracted only if they see that those close by are happy. While
>the official relationship between Beijing and Taipei continues to be
>chilly, the economy of Taiwan is increasingly dependent on China: more
>than a quarter of Taiwan�s exports and 95% of its external investments
>go to the Mainland. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese work there. It
>is a typically Confucian challenge: how to achieve a harmonious
>relationship in spite of differences.
>
>*****
>
>Modern China is basically traditional China garbed with Western
>technology and an Enlightenment ideology. China is recovering her
>confidence and rediscovering her authentic self, which is thoroughly
>Confucian. A modern re-interpretation of Confucian values could help
>her cope with rapid social and economic transformation without
>succumbing to Western excesses of individualism and relativism. Hence,
>my reading of Hu's promotion of Confucius is that the West should be
>very positive about China's potential for contributing to world
>stability and peace. Much will depend on the vision and honesty of her
>leaders -- on their wisdom and virtue, as Confucius would put it.
>
>Alberto Serna lives and works in Hong Kong. He is the managing
>director of a publishing company in Hong Kong and is engaged in NGO
>projects in Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia.