CHINESE CONFUCIANISM: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW
Confucianism in Modern Times
Confucianism has largely provided the worldview and value orientation for more than 2,000 years of Chinese history. Confucianism has been interpreted very differently depending upon the historical era and who is doing the interpreting. For example, in the West the prevailing view has been to identify it with the authoritarian rule that prevailed in China until 1911. But this view does not do justice to important strands of Confucianism that are not inherently anti-democratic and which have had an important impact upon Chinese culture. Yes, Confucianism has tended to be hierarchical but it has also been highly moral in its orientation, based on the idea of civility backed by rituals that are community-based.
The ideals of the Western Enlightenment pervaded China after the 1911 Revolution and especially after the May Fourth movement of 1919 which protested government unwillingness to resist Japanese commercial and political demands. In this period, young people associated Confucianism with the feudal order and the Manchu Dynasty’s resistance to modern Western values such as freedom, equality, and women’s rights and to modern Western political and economic institutions. Confucianism was held responsible for China’s weakness and the humiliation it suffered at the hands of the West and Japan.
Confucian respect for the scholar, praise of ritual, and contempt for the merely practical and useful activities of life made it unsuitable for countries embarking on crash modernizations projects, and its emphasis on hierarchy did not satisfy the modern value of equality and justice. So it is not surprising that Confucianism was totally rejected by Mao, while in the more liberal environment that followed, it was disdained by those who pursued wealth and individual self-interest with little regard for the greater good and moral concerns.
Yet, during the 1980s and 1990s, as China’s wealth, power, and self-respect grew, Confucianism began to make a comeback. Capitalist development and the decline of communist ideals brought with it a lack of public spirit as many people felt the need for a moral framework to regulate widespread selfish behavior and lack of respect for others. In addition, China’s economic success led to a reevaluation of the Chinese tradition and the discovery that Confucian values long thought to be hostile to modernization were actually a pillar of China’s modern success. Such values were viewed as compatible with capitalism and as the basis of a superior form of modern society, one that combined the Confucian emphasis on harmony and social integration with material prosperity and economic development.
Current Chinese economic thinking goes back to the authoritarian rule of the dynasties, since a centralized bureaucracy rather than an entrepreneurial class exercises power. Confucianism, when broadly identified with the historical trend of social and political hierarchy, can be invoked to support the current regime of Xi Jinping. But this would sell Confucianism short. There are many passages in the classics that support a liberal interpretation of Confucianism, even though it is a more communitarian and less individualistic approach to liberalism than what prevails in the West. The type of liberalism that has developed in the West is not the only valid form of liberal politics.
W. T. De Bary, author of numerous insightful works on Chinese Confucianism and the liberal tradition in China, has argued that a liberal philosophy can be built upon the following attitudes: compassion and consideration towards others, skepticism toward conventional opinion, suspension of judgment, reflection on personal beliefs and actions, and willingness to engage publicly with different views. It also must include “institutional frameworks, legal enactments, and countervailing power structures protective of the open exchange of information and opinion.” He shows that the Confucian tradition has historically engaged in self-criticism and it can promote civility, nurture the dignity of the person, and provide the foundation for a democratic legal system. Yet the lack of a constitutional structure in traditional China prevented the development of institutions that could balance the power of the dynastic government and the rule of law to protect the rights of both individuals and groups.
Contemporary Trends in China
The Chinese Communist Party has been concerned about the impact of Western popular culture on young people, since it may influence the political orientations of its Chinese consumers. They fear that young Chinese will become more individualistic. Students, for example, find democratic political systems more attractive than the older generations, which is a worrisome development for the CCP. Furthermore, entrepreneurial attitudes are associated with a desire for greater individual freedom and a more liberal politics. To prevent the undermining of the one-party system, the CCP has focused on coopting students, urban residents, and entrepreneurs by offering them opportunities to become Party members and by engaging in periodic openings and reforms of the political system. But under Xi, this trend has not been maintained
The Chinese government’s sources of legitimacy are economic growth and nationalism. Its challenge is to reduce the inequality between city and country and between blue-collar and white-collar workers, because the economic needs of most rural people and of many factory workers have not yet been adequately met. Due to the slowing of economic growth, it will no longer be as easy for the urban middle class to increase its material standard of living at the expense of farmers and low-wage workers. Xi’s increasingly populist orientation demonstrates his awareness that some redistribution of wealth and income is needed to secure the allegiance of China’s lower echelons. The increasingly neoliberal orientation of the Chinese government during the unrestrained capitalism of the 1980s led to great inequality that has to be reversed. Chinese people will not tolerate the social outcomes of American-style unregulated capitalism, and it wouldn’t be good for national unity.
As city residents become more satisfied at the material level, they tend to desire more emotional, aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual forms of satisfaction. They may find a strong emphasis on filial piety, obedience, and diligence limiting, since there is little encouragement of freedom of expression, civic participation, individual judgment, and creativity. The authoritarian system of Confucian capitalism may give way to a more democratic and popular government featuring greater individual freedom due to the rise of postmaterialist values. This doesn’t mean that Chinese and Western economic and political systems will converge. It only means that the Chinese political economy may become more balanced and ultimately more sustainable over the long run. Convergence will only occur if Western nations make a corresponding adjustment toward more focus on the common good and on duties and responsibilities, and not just rights.
Moral restraint was not enough to offset centralized power in traditional China. Despite the prestige of the classical sources behind them, Confucian scholars were never strong enough to resist the power of the ruling dynasties, although at times they lessened the severity of such rule by appealing to Confucian tradition. These days, at a time when getting rich and material possession are easily embraced as life goals, the moral orientation of Confucian philosophy can play an important role. Its emphasis upon the family as an important source of learning to become human and as nurturing care and reciprocity within intimate relations makes it a building block for the development of cultural institutions that can positively impact government. It also provides an ethical framework for an educational system whose main goal is to build character by cultivating the whole person.
The Chinese Confucianism of the Future
In the Xi Jinping era, Confucian philosophy has been invoked most often to support the national quest for power and to serve the government’s wish for a docile and obedient population. It does not promote spiritual development and emotional maturity. But the social and moral orientation of Confucianism is important for reimagining community in a decentralized world. Confucian thought focuses on self-cultivation and upholds the idea that any person can become a sage through self-effort, while placing emphasis on ritual, social relationships, and ethics.
Understanding Chinese nationalism and cultural identity requires taking a look at identity questions. The “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western imperialism and its Japanese imitators left deep wounds in the Chinese psyche as well as great resentment. The world powers that did great harm to China and looked down on its people and culture are the objects of such resentment. The memory of this very painful encounter with the modern West and Japan is strong, since Chinese people are being constantly reminded of it through the government-controlled education system and media.
Chinese nationalism is also a reaction against the Chinese tendency to adopt a student role toward the West after the country opened up in the post-Mao era, adopting Western technology while moving toward a market economy. Now that China is strong and confident due to its economic success and national unity, it expects other nations to respect Chinese institutions and culture and to learn from China’s success. The demeanor of Xi Jinping personifies this new attitude: his bearing and policies suggest a modern emperor, while his vision of China as the leading civilization harks back to the days of China as the Middle Kingdom. In those days, Chinese culture was a magnet that attracted the interest of foreign people from as far off as Europe.
The influence of politics and policy on the outcome of China’s grand efforts to achieve preeminence in the world is considerable. Even if China has much in its favor and its political economy has been on the right track, will Xi Jinping be able to accomplish his mission? So far, it appears that he has the strategic mindset and practical competence to successfully lead China, but will his drive to centralize power around himself produce more division and opposition rather than national unity? As Confucianism and the ideals of the past play a greater role in defining Chinese identity and uniqueness, will this revival be solely based on the elite culture of the mandarins and bureaucrats or will it also reflect the people’s culture which flourished outside official spheres?
There is a precedent in the cultural and literary movement that emerged in the 1980s which went back to the roots. Local and minority cultures were valued, and there was an attempt to recover the varied traditions and identities that had once flourished. The Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan has written novels that show the influence of these folk traditions. China’s modernizers viewed such traditions as backward and the leftwing and progressive thinkers of the 20th century, especially those connected with the May Fourth movement, were hostile to China’s past, including its folk religions. The Cultural Revolution during Mao’s time tried to totally destroy the ancient religions.
But some of the beliefs associated with folk religions are increasingly being recognized for their relevance to the modern world as an antidote to the alienation that has accompanied it. The folk religions emphasize the moral community, relation with ancestors, and harmonious balance with nature. If Chinese culture and religion is viewed in a unified way as the possession to some degree of all Chinese people, then the ancient folk traditions are its depths, a source of spiritual nourishment as well as cultural identity.
Chinese religion as a whole provides a contrast to the Western emphasis on individual freedom. The highest form of freedom is gained through self-mastery, the cultivation of the inner person, rather than by controlling nature and others. Such freedom relies on a creative ability to use inner resources to develop a rich and meaningful life rather than attempting to dominate the outer world. It acknowledges limits, both social and natural, that restrict people from trying to expand their reach indefinitely. Instead of aiming for limitless individual freedom, people recognize their relation and connection with others and nature and their responsibilities toward them. In this way, they find our place in the world and provide support and assistance to each other in a spirit of mutuality.
The concern that East Asians leaders have had about the influence of Western values is not only an attempt to preserve power within a hierarchical social order. It also reflects a valid hesitation to embrace unrestrained selfish behavior and to allow the disappearance of moral values. The pursuit of self-satisfaction in a society where people feel they do not belong does not seem like a worthy goal either for the individual or the society. China’s Communist leaders like Xi want to regulate everything and suppress the individual but the solution is not unrestrained individual freedom. It is a balance between the individual and social dimensions while acknowledging the interrelation and interdependence of humans with each other and with nature.
The historian Xu Jilin finds Confucian thought valuable for creating a civil religion that could provide a moral ground for secular China inundated by consumer culture. But he values most the humanist and self-cultivation threads of Confucian thought, not its authoritarian dimension. The diasporan Confucian scholar and philosopher Tu Weiming has provided such an interpretation of Confucian thought that selects what is most valuable in the tradition and suitable for the global future. There is a need for thought and values that humanity as whole can accept, while preserving the local differences that provide a variety of flavors to a universal philosophy.
In his nuanced analysis of the Western Enlightenment mentality, Tu credits the introduction of these ideas with bringing about material progress in East Asia and introducing liberal thought to the region. Still, he criticizes Enlightenment thinkers for their failure to address humanity’s ultimate concerns and to sensitively respond to the disruption of the harmony between humans and nature. An equally important shortcoming is their lack of a global perspective that could assist the realization of a global community.
Tu believes that East Asia has successfully revived its Confucian traditions and creatively adapted them to the present context as the basis for reshaping the Western economic, political, and social institutions that were adopted for the purpose of bringing East Asia into the modern world. And, in the process, a valid form of modernity has been created. Tu asserts, “Surely, enlightenment values such as instrumental rationality, liberty, rights consciousness, due process of law, privacy, and individualism are all universalizable modern values, but as the Confucian example suggests, Asian values such as sympathy, distributive justice, duty consciousness, ritual, public spiritedness, and group orientation are also universalizable modern values. Just as the former ought to be incorporated into East Asian modernity, the latter may turn out to be a critical and timely reference for the American way of life.”
In Tu’s vision, Confucianism’s distinctive future contribution is the ancient yin/feminine outlook in which community, emotional connection, family orientation, and empathy are paramount. By reviving values that have been increasingly submerged by the enthusiastic adoption of Western instrumental rationality, Confucian humanism points toward the realization of decentralization, human-scale technology, and voluntary simplicity.
But the Confucianism of China and East Asia today is quite different. As Tu points out, although Confucian culture has led to the development of a “less adversarial, less individualistic, and less self-interested modern civilization,” East Asia is also characterized by “exploitation, mercantilism, materialism, greed, egoism, and brutal competitiveness.” In other words, it has tempered some of the excesses of Western modernity, but the humane and sustainable communities that Tu envisions have not yet emerged.
Tu’s New Confucian standpoint looks forward to a new postmaterialist era, but the New Confucians of the Chinese mainland look backward. They often emphasize gender distinctions, advocate authoritarian rule, and desire to make Confucianism the state religion. Their ideal is the yang/masculine qualities of Confucianism, whereas Tu strives for yin-yang balance through a revival of the yin/feminine aspects that characterized early Confucianism, an orientation closer to Daoism. In contrast to Tu who seeks to blend the Western Enlightenment and Confucian outlooks, most mainland Confucians view Western influence as almost totally negative and want to purge China of Western elements, a typically nationalist perspective, whose ultimate aim is power over the West, a perpetrator of China’s century-long political and cultural humiliation.
What would Chinese thought be like in the future? It is likely to resemble the blending of liberalism and Confucianism that Xu Jilin and Tu Weiming have developed, a more liberal and progressive Confucianism based on liberty and fraternity. Equality enters the picture once postmaterialist values become prevalent. A more expansive outlook overcomes an exclusive national orientation, and a renewed focus on community and emotional bonds allows human equality to be experienced through face-to-face contact. Social life on a human scale, rather than alienation in gigantic centralized societies will become the norm. Hierarchies based on the quest for power will lose their appeal. Confucianism will be poised to contribute to a better human future.
