CONFUCIANISM AND THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

CONFUCIANISM DURING THE MAO ERA


Cultural-Revolution-era book criticizing Confucius

In 1930s Chiang Kai Shek resurrected Confucianism as a guide to proper behavior and morality. After the Communist Party took over China in 1949, Mao Zedong, who was then an advocate for egalitarian values and gained grassroots support for promising equity, lashed out at Confucius for being a champion of the old feudal society and the ruling class. Mao once famously said, according to his nephew Mao Yuanxin, "If the Communist Party has a day when it cannot rule or has met difficulty and needs to invite Confucius back, it means you (note: the Party) are coming to an end."

Carrie Gracie of BBC News wrote: “In 1949, a revolution occurred. A political culture built around venerating ancestors and learning lessons from their perfect rule was turned on its head. "Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun," said Mao. You could try teaching those who disagreed with you, but if that failed you should destroy them.For a century, China had been hemorrhaging territory to Western and Japanese colonialists. For the first time in history, a self-consciously mighty civilization felt poor and backward. To many Chinese, their ancient philosophy seemed like part of the problem. And when the communists took power in 1949, Confucius was thrown off his pedestals. "The Chinese past was the enemy! It was held responsible," says Peter Bol of Harvard University. "If China had once been the great power in the world, if it had once been the source of models for the rest of east Asia, the Chinese past was used to explain why it no longer was, and it had to be destroyed." [Source: Carrie Gracie BBC News, October 9, 2012]

In the Mao era, Confucianism was labeled backward, counter-revolutionary, reactionary and superstitious. It was linked with feudalism and condemned as a source of evils that plagued traditional China. Confucian temples were made into museums and libraries. Even with ths being the case the Communists borrowed Confucian beliefs such as submission to authority to further their aims. Confucius's philosophy of harmony and respect of social hierarchies was at odds with Marxist ideology of progress through conflict.

During the Cultural Revolution, which aimed in part to tear down what remained of Chinese “feudal” culture, Mao Zedong vehemently denounced the Confucian belief system. The Analects was banned and Confucian scholars were tortured. Red Guards overran Confucian temples, defacing statues of the sage, and chanting "Down with Confucius, down with his wife!" Confucius was branded a class enmey in a “Criticize Confucius “campaign. The graves of the Kong family were trashed and looted. Corpses were once dug up from their graves at the Kong family's cemetery and hung from trees. More than 6,000 artifacts were smashed or burned. Red Guards dug up Confucius' grave to show that it was empty.

Good Websites and Sources on Confucianism: Robert Eno, Indiana University indiana.edu; Confucianism religioustolerance.org ; Religion Facts Confucianism Religion Facts ; Confucius .friesian.com ; Confucian Texts Chinese Text Project ; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu; Cult of Confucius /academics.hamilton.edu ; ; Virtual Temple tour drben.net/ChinaReport; Wikipedia article on Chinese religion Wikipedia Academic Info on Chinese religion academicinfo.net ; Internet Guide to Chinese Studies sino.uni-heidelberg.de; Qufu Wikipedia Wikipedia Travel China Guide Travel China Guide ; UNESCO World Heritage Site: UNESCO



Chinese Communist Party Embrace of Confucianism

Confucianism has made comeback as the Communist Party looks for ways to justify its authoritarianism and forge a common Chinese identity. In the 1990s, Confucianism was promoted to provide moral teachings and counteract the decadence and materialism brought about by the Deng reforms. In the early 2000s, a number of schools opened up to teach Confucian values to youngsters and an institute was set up at Renmin University devoted to the study of Confucius and Confucian thought.

Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker: ““It would have been anathema to Chairman Mao, but his heirs have changed their view on revolution. In the eighties, when China set itself in pursuit of prosperity, the Party studied how Confucian values had helped to stabilize other countries in East Asia. Generations of Chinese thinkers had dreamed of finding the optimal recipe for “national studies”—the mixture of philosophy and history that might insulate China from the pressures of Westernization. After the democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989 ended in a violent crackdown, leaders needed an indigenous ideology that might restore the Party’s moral credibility. Top Communists gave speeches at meetings devoted to Confucianism, and state television launched a series about traditional culture intended, it said, “to boost the people’s self-confidence, self-respect, and patriotic thought.” In 2002, the Party officially stopped calling itself a “revolutionary party” and adopted the term “Party in Power.” The Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, declared, “Unity and stability are really more important than anything else.” In February, 2005, the Party chief, Hu Jintao, quoted Confucius’ observation that “harmony is something to be cherished.” [Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, January 13, 2014]

“Soon, “harmony” was on billboards and in television commercials and intoned by apparatchiks. In 2006, a team of government-backed historians marked Confucius’ 2,557th birthday by unveiling what they called a “standardized” portrait: a kindly old figure with a luxuriant beard, his hands crossed at his chest. The Chinese Association for the Study of Confucius, supported by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, introduced traditions that had never existed before. It arranged for couples to renew their wedding vows in front of a statue of the sage.

“As a gentler alternative to Mao, Confucius has been enlisted as an avatar on the world stage. The opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics made no mention of the Chairman but featured recurring references to harmony and to the classic texts. In the past decade, China has opened more than four hundred Confucius Institutes around the world to teach language, culture, and history. Many universities have welcomed them; the program provides teaching materials and cash. (Some scholars have complained that the institutes seek to limit expression. In July, McMaster University, in Canada, closed its Confucius Institute after a teacher complained that she had been prevented from practicing Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement.)

Confucianism and the Communist Party


Book burning in the Cultural Revolution

"The Communist Party has come to appreciate that they can find new ideas in the old," a descendant of Confucius told the Los Angeles Times. Confucius was rehabilitated in the 1980s, and has been embraced enthusiastically by the current generation of leadership. Some scholars believe former President Hu Jintao is a closet Confucian. "Confucius said, 'Harmony is something to be cherished,'" Hu told the National People's Congress in 2005.

Kate Merkel-Hess and Jeffrey Wasserstrom wrote in Time, “Current efforts to treat Confucius as Chinese culture personified — whether via state-funded Confucius Institutes or the not-quite-official Confucius Peace Prize just ginned up to compete with the Nobel — also run into trouble when we get to texts. Yes, generations of Chinese have valued the great sage's Analects. But they have also loved Journey to the West, a popular novel in which the central figure, the Monkey King, is a rebellious trickster. Even Liu's essays that present "Chinese culture" as an obstacle to progress are hardly "un-Chinese." Lu Xun, an iconoclastic figure whose stories were once praised by Mao Zedong and still show up in textbooks, made a similar argument in the 1920s.

Confucianism, whether in service of Beijing's desire to keep political protest in check or as the tool of international observers seeking to discredit China as a nation of automatons, should be put in its proper place. It is not the polestar but just one admittedly important astral body in China's vast intellectual universe.

Barbara Demick wrote in the Los Angeles, “Party propaganda today is packed with Confucian aphorisms about respect, virtue, righteousness and "harmonious society." For the Communist Party, Confucius' writings about virtuous conduct serve as a warning to those who use cutthroat tactics in the emerging market economy, and his writings about modesty and self-control offer an antidote to Western liberalism.” [Source: Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2011]

State- Supported Comeback of Confucianism

Once ridiculed by Mao, Confucianism is making a comeback with state support. Confucian temples and schools have not only been allowed to open up and carry on a wide range of activities they sometimes receive government money and support to do so. Kong Xianglin, deputy director of the state-financed Confucius Research Center in Qufu and 75th-generation descendant of Confucianism told the Washington Post, “If Confucius were alive today he would probably join the Communist Party.” [Source: Andrew Higgins, Washington Post, May 18 2010]

In recent years Confucius and Confucianism have been the subject of numerous novels, television dramas and films, including the multimillion dollar bioepic "Confucius". The Communist Party has promoted the trend as a way of building national pride and promoting a common heritage and give some credence to the Chinese way of looking at government and offering that as an alternative to foreign ideas such as democracy. [Ibid]

On the campus of Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University there used to be a statue of Chairman Mao. Even as President Hu Jintao's key slogan, Goujian hexie shehui (to build a harmonious society) has its roots in Confucian thought. “Confucius said, 'Harmony is something to be cherished',” Hu said in a speech February 2005. “From Confucius to Sun Yat-sen,” averred premier Wen Jiabao a couple of years later, “the traditional culture of the Chinese nation has numerous precious elements”, among which he mentioned “community, harmony among different viewpoints, and sharing the world in common”. In a book called China's New Confucianism, the political theorist Daniel Bell quips that the Chinese Communist party might one day be renamed the Chinese Confucian party.

Confucius has reappeared in school textbooks. A Confucian quote formed a key part of the lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The government is also investing in Confucius Institutes abroad to promote Chinese culture. Even prison inmates are reportedly being taught Confucian philosophy.

Yu Ying-shih: "Chinese Communists are not Confucianists"

Professor Yu Ying-shih — an advocate of new Confucianism and professor Emeritus at Princeton Universities, told a symposium in November 2014 marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of Hong Kong’s New Asia College: “Confucianism can be taken advantage of 2][by people with ulterior motives]. The traditional Confucianists, namely those whom the emperors honored, the Confucianists of the three rules and the five virtues, the Confucianists who forbade any form of criticism of one’s superiors — this is the Confucianism much beloved by feudal kings and dynasties. Those of us who have done scholarly research on Confucianism in the West often refer to this kind of Confucianism as “institutional Confucianism”. [Source: China Change, July 1, 2015 ==]

“Historically speaking, China has all along had two schools of Confucianism: the Confucianists who were oppressed, and the Confucianists who oppressed others. So from my perspective, for a certain organization (the Chinese Communist Party) on the China mainland to honor Confucianism has similarities to those Confucianists who oppressed others. Previously, this organization (the CCP) harshly criticized Confucianism, and referred to Confucius as “Old Kong Number Two”. This organization stated that Confucius never really made anything of himself. The criticism grew so sharp that some CCP members asked, (not realizing that the criticism was of the historical Confucius): “Who let this fellow Kong into the communist party anyway?” Indeed, the name of Confucius was at that time subjected to all sorts of indignities. ==

“But then in the blink of an eye, Confucius suddenly became popular again and now there are several hundred Confucius Institutes throughout the world. The communist mainland is advocating Confucianism and many mainland scholars are claiming to be “New Confucianists.”...We need to be very clear about those who are real Confucianists and those who borrow the term Confucianist in order to obtain political benefits from so-called Confucian thought. If we are clear about these distinctions, then we need not hesitate to discuss Confucianism, and we can continue to advocate the Confucianist view of culture and the Confucianist critiques of society. We can also continue to discuss how Confucianism combines with Western concepts of human rights, democracy, and freedom. ==

There is one thing I want to raise here in passing. How were Western concepts such as freedom, democracy, human rights, equality that make up the West’s universal values transmitted to China? If you are doing historical research and tracing back to the period just after the mid-19th century, you would find that these Western concepts were brought to China by Confucianists. For this reason, I feel that the issues Confucianism faces on the Chinese mainland are in fact simple, crude issues. Just because Confucianism has a good reputation, people want to exploit it. Once they exploit Confucianism, it seems that Confucianism belongs only to them. In fact, we need to look at the actions of these self-proclaimed Confucianists. This is exactly what Confucius said: look at the person, look at their behavior, and then you will see whether or not they are Confucianists. ==

“Confucianists are considerate of others, and the Confucian Way consists of these two words: honesty and consideration. Honesty is simply doing one’s best, while consideration means treating others with a considerate attitude; as Confucius said, “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you.” This is the basic teaching of Confucianism. If a political party or a government sends to jail anyone who dares to utter even a minor criticism of their policies, can they be Confucianists? That’s why I think it is very simple to identify real Confucianists. We definitely do not want to be deceived by terminology, and become the slaves to linguistic labels.” ===

Large Confucius Statue Erected in Tiananmen Square, Then Taken Down


Confucian statue in Tiananmen Square

In January 2011, a huge statue of Confucius was unveiled in Tiananmen Square on the north end of the National Museum of China within sight of the huge portrait of Mao at Tiananmen Gate at the entrance of the Forbidden City. It was the first new addition to Tiananmen Square since Mao’s mausoleum was built. Observers wondered if the statue was signal an official change to the Communist Party policy. According to the People’s Daily, “The 9.5-meter bronze statue, outside the National Museum of China, is the latest sign of the philosopher's comeback amid the country's efforts to promote him as a symbol of traditional Chinese culture.” [Source: Zhu Linyong, People's Daily, January 13, 2011]

"Confucius was respected and even worshiped as a sage in most of the dynastic eras," said museum dean Lu Zhangshen at an unveiling ceremony. The statue was made by Wu Weishan, a famed sculptor from Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Since 1994, Wu has created more than 20 statues of Confucius of different sizes and styles. They have been placed on university campuses and international museums such as the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge in the United Kingdom. "I created this statue with my whole heart my finger imprints are on each square inch of it," said Wu who began materializing the lofty image of Confucius last March. "I meant to present Confucius as a peak in the history of Chinese philosophy and culture," Wu explained. "When passers-by look at his eyes, they may feel a kind of spiritual communication with the ancient wise man.” "In my opinion, Confucius was a loser in his lifetime, but he was a respectful loser because he stuck to his ideals despite all sorts of setbacks," said Cui Xiaozhan, a technician from Qingdao, Shandong province, as he passed by the statue. "Confucian wisdom transcends time and space. In my opinion, Confucianism is at the core of Chinese values It can still guide us in daily life.” But in the eyes of some erecting a prominent statue of Confucius on one side of Tiananmen Square was a slap in the face to Mao, a fervent anti-Confucian, whose embalmed body lies right at center of the square inside a mausoleum.

In April 2011, the statue was taken down. Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker: The statue was “moved, in the middle of the night, to a much less prominent site, in the courtyard of a museum. The reason for the move remained a mystery, because the Central Propaganda Department barred Chinese journalists from writing about it. People were left to joke that Confucius, the itinerant teacher from Shandong Province, had been caught trying to live in Beijing without the proper permit. ? [Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, January 13, 2014]

The Ministry of Tofu blog reported: the "mammoth sculpture of the ancient philosopher Confucius was unveiled in early January off one side of highly symbolic Tiananmen Square. China watchers and media home and abroad paid much attention to it as it could signal that the authorities is preaching Confucianism. However, Wednesday night, the sculpture was gone. The sudden disappearance once against led to widespread speculation as to what that means to the political prospect of the country.” The statue of Confucius is believed to have been removed by hard-line Maoists who disparage the ancient sage as a relic of a feudal past. [Source: Ministry of Tofu, April 22, 2011]

Li Yanhui wrote in the Global Times, ‘speculation has been rife over the reasons for the overnight disappearance of a 9.5-meter-high bronze statue of Confucius located in front of the National Museum of China near Tiananmen Square. Th next day a Global Times reporter found only a deep pit surrounded by construction screens where the statue had stood. "It was still there Thursday evening when I got off duty," a security guard at the museum told the Global Times Thursday on condition of anonymity. "But it was gone this morning." Another guard said the same thing, but neither was able to say why the 17-ton bronze sculpture had been removed or to where. [Source: Li Yanhui, Global Times, April 22, 2011]

Many ordinary Chinese were against the presence of the statue. People.com.cn reported on January 17 that about 70 percent of 220,000 people who took part in an online poll were against the idea of the Confucius statue. The statue's sudden disappearance also led to widespread speculation among Web users as to the reasons behind the move. "It's said this statue was not a legally registered building," a microblogger named Qin Lei posted on sina.com. According to a post on the official microblog of the Southern Metropolis Daily on sina.com Thursday, a worker told the newspaper that the statue had been moved for repairs, and may be brought back at a later date. The Tiananmen area administrative committee refused to comment on the removal. "(The disappearance) cannot be explained for the time being," a committee employee told the Global Times on condition of anonymity.

Xi Jinping Embraces Confucius and the Classics


Xi Jinping

In October 2014, Chris Buckley of the New York Times wrote: “Seeking to decipher Mr. Xi, who rarely gives interviews or off-the-cuff comments, China watchers have focused on whether he has the traits of a new Mao, the ruthless revolutionary, or a new Deng Xiaoping, the economic reformer. But an overlooked key to his boldly authoritarian agenda can be found in his many admiring references to Chinese sages and statesmen from millenniums past. Most often, he has embraced Confucius, the sage born around 551 B.C. who advocated a paternalistic hierarchy, to argue that the party should command obedience because it represents “core values” reaching back thousands of years. “He who rules by virtue is like the North Star,” he said at a meeting of officials last year, quoting Confucius. “It maintains its place, and the multitude of stars pay homage.” [Source: Chris Buckley, New York Times, October 11, 2014 ]

“ By reviving tradition, Mr. Xi is riding China’s nostalgic zeitgeist. Its people have increasingly turned to pre-Communist values while they navigate giddying, contentious changes driven by expanding commerce and inequality. With Mr. Xi likely to be China’s top leader for a decade, officials have been emulating him, and propaganda outlets have exhorted people to imitate his reverence for the ancient past. In May 2014, the overseas edition of the state-run newspaper People’s Daily published a selection of 76 of Mr. Xi’s quotes from Chinese ancients, most often Confucius and Mencius, but also relatively obscure works that suggest a deeper knowledge of the classics.

“When Xi is putting on a political performance, he uses Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and even Mao’s words,” said Kang Xiaoguang, a professor of public administration at Renmin University in Beijing. “But in his bones, what really influences him is not those things but intellectual resources from the traditional classics.” This restoration of tradition has been encouraged by the party, eager to inoculate citizens against Western liberal ideas, which are deemed a decadent recipe for chaos. The Ministry of Education authorized guidelines in March to strengthen instruction in China’s “outstanding traditional culture,” and the party propaganda department has said traditional values are part of “socialist core values.”

“As China grows stronger, this force for restoring tradition will also grow stronger,” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing and author of “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power.” “Where can China’s leaders find their ideas?” he said. “They can’t possibly find them nowadays from Western liberal thought, and so the only source they can look to is ancient Chinese political thinking.”

“Where Mr. Xi absorbed his enthusiasm for the classics is not so clear. He entered adulthood during the Cultural Revolution, when ancient tradition was under assault. But Mr. Xi has said he always liked to read, including Chinese classics, even as a teenager sent to labor in the countryside. Professor Yan of Tsinghua, who also came of age in the Cultural Revolution, said Mao’s campaigns against Confucius helped introduce those very ideas to the young. Visiting a university in Beijing last month, Mr. Xi said he lamented proposals that could reduce mandatory study of Chinese classical literature in school. He said, “The classics should be set in students’ minds so they become the genes of Chinese national culture.”

“Confucius has not always figured in the party’s pantheon. At the height of Mao’s radicalism, Confucius was attacked as an embodiment of poisonous conservatism. Under recent party leaders, Confucius has regained favor — recast as an inoffensively paternal defender of hierarchy, order and discipline. China’s state-backed language-training centers abroad are called Confucius Institutes. But even so, the party has sometimes appeared worried that appealing to an ancient sage might erode its own claims to singular authority. In 2011, the government unveiled a 31-foot bronze statue of Confucius near Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, and then four months later quietly took the statue down.” [Source: Chris Buckley, Sinosphere Blog, New York Times, November 26, 2013]

Xi Jinping Pays Homage to Confucius

In November 2013, Xi Jinping visited Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. Chris Buckley of the New York Times wrote: “Xi Jinping, likes venerating his forebears. Mr. Xi has made a reverential visit to a statue of Deng Xiaoping” and “also paid respects to Mao Zedong, and to his own father, a revolutionary who served under Mao.” A year after being named China’s leader, “Xi took political ancestor worship back 25 centuries. He visited Qufu, in Shandong Province, which claims to be the hometown of Confucius, the sage who has been both reviled and honored by the Communist Party as a symbol of traditional values. Mr. Xi made clear that he likes those Confucian traditions — or at least a version of them that can sit easily next to party doctrines and control. [Source: Chris Buckley, Sinosphere Blog, New York Times, November 26, 2013]

“Mr. Xi visited the Temple of Confucius in Qufu and called together experts to discuss the right way to study Confucius’ teachings on ethics, government and virtuous living, according to China’s official news agency, Xinhua, and other state media. “I want to read these two books carefully,” Mr. Xi said, as he fingered through an annotated copy of The Analects, the collected sayings and dialogues of Confucius, and another book collecting stories and thoughts ascribed to the thinker, who was born about 551 B.C.

“Mr. Xi seems to believe that imposing change demands even greater fealty to the party’s version of tradition.“The Chinese nation possesses a traditional culture that reaches far back in time and can certainly create new glories for Chinese culture,” Mr. Xi said at the meeting with Confucius scholars. But he told them that Confucius should be interpreted through the party’s prism, “using the past to serve the present” so that the sage’s thoughts “can be made to play a positive role in the conditions of the new era.”

Xi visited Qufu to “send a signal that we must vigorously promote China’s traditional culture.” He told scholars that while the West was suffering a “crisis of confidence,” the Communist Party had been “the loyal inheritor and promoter of China’s outstanding traditional culture.” In October 2014, Xi reiterated his reverence for the past at a forum marking 2,564 years since Confucius’ birth. Ancient tradition “can offer beneficial insights for governance and wise rule,” he said in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where leaders hold congresses and legislative sessions, according to Xinhua. “This is about finding some kind of traditionalist basis of legitimacy for the regime,” Sam Crane, a professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who studies ancient Chinese thought and its contemporary uses, told the New York Times. “It says, ‘We don’t need Western models.’ Ultimately, it is all filtered through the exigencies of maintaining party power.” [Source: Chris Buckley, New York Times, October 11, 2014]

Neo-Confucianism in Communist China


Zhu Xi

It can be argued that the Chinese Communist Party embrace of Confucianism is more of an embrace of Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism. Aya Igarashi wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun, “A fundamental shift occurred after the Communist Party of China seized the reins of the government in China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) launched by Mao Zedong, the Cheng-Zhu school was criticized as a symbol of feudalism, which Mao demanded be brought to an end. Zhu Meizhen, 60, a 27th-generation descendant of Zhu Xi, recalled the hardship she experienced, saying, “At the time, I resented the fact that my family name was Zhu.” [Source: Aya Igarashi, Yomiuri Shimbun August 12, 2014]

In November 2012, Zhu Meizhen noticed a phrase in the speech Xi Jinping made upon his assumption of the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of China. When promoting “The Chinese Dream” as a slogan, Xi quoted a line from Zhu Xi’s writings, “Succeed the work of your ancestors and pave a way to the future.” Compared with the situation during the Cultural Revolution, Zhu Meizhen said, “A good era, in which we can take pride in our traditional culture, has arrived.” “But Zhu Meizhen, who majored in philosophy in university, sees things differently. “Compared with Western philosophers, Zhu Xi was more tolerant and open-minded,” she said.

“In the present-day Wufuzhen area of Wuyishan is China’s one and only primary and middle school named after the philosopher. It is a public school named Wuyishan Shi Zhuzi School. As officials of the school said its students are obliged to recite Zhu Xi’s Family Instructions, I asked a male student heading home, “Can you do it?” His face instantly turned red, and he shook his head and ran away like a scared rabbit. No problem, kid. I think if he keeps studying hard, Zhu Xi will gaze upon him warmly.

Debate Over Confucianism within Communist China

Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker: In October, 2010, the dissident writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That enraged the Chinese government. In response, a group of nationalists organized what they called the “Confucius Peace Prize,” and awarded it, the next year, to Vladimir Putin, for bringing “safety and stability to Russia.” At times, the embrace of Confucius has turned hostile. In December, 2010, a group of ten well-known classical scholars denounced a plan to build a large Christian church in Qufu, Confucius’ home town. “We beseech you to respect this sacred land of Chinese culture, and stop the building of the Christian church at once,” they wrote. The government tried to argue that there was a precedent for having a church in town, but the protest attracted the support of grassroots Confucian associations and Web sites, and construction was postponed. [Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, January 13, 2014]

“In China, the official embrace of Confucius has come to be seen by some as suffocating. When, in the name of protecting political stability, censors remove critical comments from the Chinese Web, savvy users say that their words have been “harmonized.” The Party’s conception of Confucian harmony leaves little room for the politics of negotiation, for an honest clash of ideas. After the pop scholar Yu Dan became a sensation, Li Ling, a Peking University professor, published “Stray Dog: My Reading of the Analects,” in which he criticized the “manufactured Confucius.” He wrote, “The real Confucius, the one who actually lived, was neither a sage nor a king. . . . He had no power or status—only morality and learning—and dared to criticize the power élite of his day. He travelled around lobbying for his policies, racking his brains to help the rulers of his day with their problems, always trying to convince them to give up evil ways and be more righteous. . . . He was tormented, obsessed, and driven to roam, pleading for his ideas, more like a stray dog than a sage.”

“When Li’s book came out, in May, 2007, he was denounced by other classical scholars, such as Jiang Qing, a prominent Confucian political thinker, who called the author “a cynical doomsday prophet who deserves no response.” One of Li’s defenders was Liu Xiaobo. Before Liu went to prison, he warned of a mood in which “Confucianism was venerated and all other schools of thought were banned.” Instead of invoking Confucius, Liu wrote, intellectuals should be venerating “independence of thought and autonomy of person.”

Religious Leaders in China Required to Take Government- Runs Confucian Culture Course


Commentary on the Analects

In 2019, the Chinese government begun requiring five-day Confucian culture immersion courses for religious leaders In Qufu, Confucius’s hometown, as part of a campaign to extend government control over faith communities through a process of Sinicisation. Associated Press reported: The ruling Communist Party’s United Work Front Department said that the activity was designed to ensure the primacy of traditional Chinese values above all.“To hold activities here ... is a collective tribute to excellent traditional Chinese culture and a conscious identification and integration with Chinese culture,” said the release, posted on the department’s website. [Source: Associated Press, May 28, 2019]

“Participants pledged to “cultivate the Chinese cultural character of our nation’s religions so that our nation’s religions are rooted in the fertile soil of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and to ceaselessly and deeply advance the Sinicisation of our nation’s religions”, it said. President Xi Jinping has launched the harshest crackdown in decades on religious practices, especially those viewed as foreign such as Christianity and Islam, while at the same time elevating home-grown Confucianism.

Confucianism’s emphasis on strict social organisation, advancement through study and exam taking, adherence to hierarchy and maintenance of social harmony appeals especially to the heavily bureaucratic party, which brooks no challenge to its authority.Xi has repeatedly called for religious leaders and believers to be guided by “socialist core values”. Party bureaucrats overseeing religion have demanded that key religious tenets and texts such as the Bible and Koran be interpreted “in conformity with the demands of modern Chinese development and excellent traditional Chinese culture”. That has been accompanied by a campaign of removing crosses and bulldozing many churches, destroying mosques and locking an estimated 1 million Chinese Muslims in camps where they are forced to renounce Islam and their cultural traditions.

Those participating at the launch of the five-day course included the president of the Chinese Taoist Association, vice-president of the Chinese Islamic Association, chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and president of the Chinese Christian Association.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Chinese government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated September 2021


This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of country or topic discussed in the article. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from factsanddetails.com, please contact me.