Up the Drum Tower: The Confucian Comeback

Confucianism is an ethical tradition propagated by Confucius (c. 551–479 bce). Confucius (Kongzi in Chinese) viewed himself as the transmitter of an older tradition that he tried to revitalize in his own day. He was born near present-day Qufu in Shandong Province (today, Qufu is an administrative region with about 650,000 inhabitants, among whom nearly one-fifth share the surname of Kong and trace their family ancestry to Kongzi). Confucius traveled from state to state—China had not yet been unified—aiming to persuade rulers of the need to rule with morality. He failed in his political ambitions and settled for the life of a teacher. His ideas and aphorisms were recorded for posterity by his disciples in the Analects. Confucius is often shown in dialogue with his students and he emerges as a wise, compassionate, humble, and even humorous human being. His most influential followers, Mencius (Mengzi in Chinese, c. 372–289 bce) and Xunzi (c. 310–235 bce), also had less-than-illustrious careers as public officials and settled for teaching careers in (what is now) Shandong Province.

Confucianism was suppressed in the short-lived Qin Dynasty (221–206 bce) by the self-proclaimed first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. During the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 ce), Confucius’s thoughts received official sanction and were further developed into a system known as Rujia in Chinese (the term “Confucianism” is a Western invention; it is misleading because Confucius was not the founder of a tradition in the sense that, say, Jesus Christ was the founder of Christianity). Confucianism was the mainstream political ideology for much of subsequent imperial Chinese history until the collapse of the imperial system in 1911. The Confucian tradition is immensely diverse and it has been constantly enriched with insights from Daoism, Legalism, and Buddhism, and, more recently, liberalism, democracy, and feminism. But it has certain core commitments. The tradition is based on the assumption that the good life lies in nourishing harmonious social relationships, starting with the family and extending outward. The good life is a never-ending quest to improve oneself by study, rituals, and learning from other people (it’s not easy: Confucius said he reached the stage when his desires conformed to what he ought to do at the age of 70, or the equivalent of about 105 years old today). The best life lies in serving the political community with wisdom and humaneness (仁 ren). In practice, it typically means striving to be a public official. Only a minority of exemplary persons (君子 junzi) can lead the best life because most people are too preoccupied with mundane concerns. The ideal political community is a unified state whose rulers succeed to power on the basis of merit rather than lineage. Public officials should aim to provide basic material well-being for the people by means such as a fair distribution of
land and low taxation, and (then) try to improve them morally. They should rule with a light touch: through education, moral example, and rituals, with punishment as a last resort. Such ideas had a profound influence on the value system of public officials in Chinese imperial history; in the Ming and Qing dynasties, officials were selected by means of rigorous examinations that tested for knowledge of the Confucian classics (the Emperor was not selected by examination, but he was often educated in the Confucian classics). Once public officials assumed power, however, political reality often got in the way of humane rule and they often relied on “Legalist” harsh laws aimed at strengthening the state rather than benefiting the people.

The end of imperial rule seemed to signal the end of the Confucian tradition. Intellectuals and political reformers, whatever their political stripe, blamed the tradition for China’s “backwardness” (with a few exceptions, such as the “last Confucian,” Liang Shuming). From the May 4, 1919, movement onward, the dominant tradition was anti-traditionalism. The victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 seemed to deliver the final blow to Confucianism. Instead of looking backward to such “feudal” traditions as Confucianism, the Chinese people were encouraged to look forward to a bright new communist future. Such anti-traditionalism took an extreme form in the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards were encouraged to stamp out all remnants of “old society,” including ransacking Confucius’s grave in Qufu.

Today, it seems that the anti-traditionalists were on the wrong side of history. Chinese intellectuals commonly view themselves as part of a culture with a long history, with Confucianism as its core. Aspects of Marxist-Leninism that took hold in China—the prioritization of poverty alleviation and the need for a politically enlightened “avant-garde” to lead the transition to a morally superior form of social organization— resonated with older Confucian ideas about the need to select and promote public officials with superior ability and virtue who strive for the material and moral well-being of the people. To the extent that China’s experiment with communism has anything to offer to future generations, it can be seen as an effort to build on, rather than replace, older traditions. Hence, it should not be surprising that the CCP has moved closer to officially embracing Confucianism. The Confucian classics are being taught at Communist Party schools, the educational curriculum in primary and secondary schools is being modified to teach more Confucianism, and there are more references to Confucian values in speeches and policy documents. The opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, vetted by the Chinese Politburo, seemed to put an official imprimatur on the Confucianization of the party: Marx and Mao were gone, and Confucius was shown as China’s face to the world. Abroad, the government has been promoting Confucianism via branches of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese language and culture center similar to France’s Alliance Française and Germany’s Goethe Institute. The Confucius Institutes have been controversial in Western countries, but they are often welcomed in other parts of the world and sponsor, for example, workshops that compare the relational view of the self in Confucian and Ubuntu ethics.

But the revival of Confucianism is not just government-sponsored. There has been a resurgence of interest among critical intellectuals in China. Jiang Qing, mainland China’s most influential Confucian-inspired political theorist, was first forced to read the Confucian classics in order to denounce them in the Cultural Revolution. The more he read, however, the more he realized that Confucianism was not as bad as advertised and he saved his intellectual curiosity for more propitious times.

Today, he runs an independent Confucian Academy in remote Guizhou Province and argues for a political institution composed of Confucian scholars with veto power over policies as well as a symbolic monarch selected from the Kong family descendants. His works, not surprisingly, have been censored in mainland China but that hasn’t stopped the explosion of academic research inspired by the Confucian tradition, leading to a kind of reverse brain drain from the United States back to China. Tu Weiming, the most influential exponent of Confucianism in the West, retired from his post at Harvard to lead the Institute of Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. He was followed a few years later by Roger Ames, the celebrated translator and interpreter of the Confucian classics: Ames retired from the University of Hawaii to become the Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University. The younger Confucian political theorist Bai Tongdong left a tenured job in the United States to become the Dongfang Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University. The cross-cultural psychologist Peng Kaiping, who carried out rigorous experiments showing that Chinese were more likely than Americans to use Confucian-style contextual and dialectical approaches to solving problems, left a tenured post at Berkeley to become dean of Tsinghua’s School of Social Sciences. Notwithstanding increased censorship, such scholars are attracted by vibrant academic debates inspired by the Confucian tradition in mainland China. Periodicals such as Culture, History, and Philosophy (文史哲) and Confucius Research (孔子研究)—both edited by Shandong University’s Wang Xuedian12—and websites such as Rujiawang provide prestigious channels for the dissemination of Confucian academic works. In the twentieth century, academic Confucianism had relocated to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. Today, the center is shifting once again, back to mainland China.

These political and academic developments are supported by economic factors. China is an economic superpower, and with economic might comes cultural pride (not to mention increased funding for the humanities and higher academic salaries). Max Weber’s argument that Confucianism is not conducive to economic development has been widely questioned in view of the economic success of East Asian states with a Confucian heritage. Unlike with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, there has never been an organized Confucian resistance to economic modernization. Quite the opposite: A this-worldly outlook combined with values such as respect for education and concern for future generations may have contributed to economic growth. But modernity also has a downside: It often leads to atomism and psychological anxiety. The competition for social status and material resources becomes fiercer and fiercer, with declining social responsibility and other-regarding outlooks. Communitarian ways of life and civility break down. Even those who make it to the top ask, “What now?” Making money, they realize, doesn’t necessarily lead to well-being. It is only a means to the good life, but what exactly is the good life? Is it just about fighting for one’s interests? Most people—in China, at least—do not want to be viewed as individualistic. The idea of focusing solely on individual well-being or happiness seems too self-centered. To feel good about ourselves, we also need to be good to others. Here’s where Confucianism comes in: The tradition emphasizes that the good life lies in social relationships and commitment to the family, expanding outward. In the Chinese context, Confucian ethics is the obvious resource to help fill the moral vacuum that often accompanies modernization.

In short, this mix of political, academic, economic, and psychological trends helps to explain the revival of Confucianism in China. But I don’t want to overstate things. The Confucian comeback seems to have stalled of late. It’s not just elderly cadres still influenced by Maoist antipathy to tradition who condemn efforts to promote value systems outside a rigid Marxist framework: As we will see (chapter 7), the Marxist tradition has been making a strong and surprising comeback and communist ideals increasingly set the political priorities and influence academic debates. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, liberal academics in China often look askance at Confucian-inspired defenses of social hierarchy and political meritocracy and blame Confucianism for China’s authoritarian tendencies in the family and politics. Not to mention that Confucianism has yet to make a substantial impact among China’s minority groups such as Tibetans and Uyghurs. So it’s a huge mistake to equate Chinese culture with Confucianism.

That said, Confucianism’s greatest impact—in terms of everyday social practices, people’s self-identification, as well as political support—is strongest in Shandong Province, the home of the Confucian tradition. The license plates for the province start with the character 鲁 (Lu), the name of Confucius’s long-defunct small state. Shandong Airlines has quotations from the Analects of Confucius above seats on its airplanes. Village leaders in the Shandong countryside teach Confucian classics to young children. The sociologist Anna Sun argues that the modern Chinese state’s effort to promote Confucianism began in September 2004, during the celebration of Confucius’s 2,555th birthday in Qufu.17 In imperial China, government officials were in charge of annual ceremonies to commemorate Confucius at the Confucian temple in Qufu, but the rites were discontinued after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. In September 2004, for the first time since the founding of the People’s Republic, the state officially took over, with government representatives presiding over the rites, and the ceremony is now broadcast on national television. On November 26, 2013, President Xi himself visited Qufu and gave a speech that praised Confucian culture and criticized the destruction of the Cultural Revolution. He visited a Confucian academy and said that he would diligently read two books on the Confucian classics that were handed to him by the academy’s director. In 2016, the government officially established the Academy for the Education of Virtuous Public Officials (政德教育学院) in Qufu, which provides education in the Confucian classics for mid-level cadres from the whole country. So it should not come as a big surprise that Shandong University hired a dean of political science and public administration largely on account of his scholarly writings on the contemporary social and political implications of Confucianism, even though the scholar is neither Chinese nor a member of the CCP. But how did I end up as a Confucian scholar in China, the reader may wonder?