The revival of Confucianism in socialist China continues apace. It comes in very direct ways - from op-eds in the People's Daily to official celebrations of his birthday - but it also comes in more indirect ways. Today, in People's Daily we are treated to an odd combination of Confucian and socialist virtues:
Hu Jintao's new ethic concept gets overwhelming support
Two senior Party officials, Li Changchun and Liu Yunshan, reiterated on Thursday their support to the "Eight Honors and Disgraces", a new concept of socialist morality recently put forward by President Hu Jintao.
Li, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, called on all the Chinese people to study and implement Hu's new concept.
Liu, CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau member and head of the CPC Central Committee's Publicity Department, pledged to make the concept known to all Chinese.
In March, Hu reminded the whole nation of maintaining socialist morality with "Ba Rong, Ba Chi (Eight Honors and Disgraces)", which in Chinese reads like pairs of opposing moral values and has a rhyming poetic lilt.
-- Love the country; do it no harm.
-- Serve the people; never betray them.
-- Follow science; discard superstition.
-- Be diligent; not indolent.
-- Be united, help each other; make no gains at other's expense.
-- Be honest and trustworthy; do not spend ethics for profits
-- Be disciplined and law-abiding; not chaotic and lawless.
-- Live plainly, work hard; do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures.
Since it was released in a national promotion campaign "Ba Rong, Ba Chi" has received widespread support from officials and commoners alike.
A number of songs have even been composed with lyrics straight from Hu's new slogan and composed by both civilians and Army musicians and sung by people of all ages.
The General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has selected six of these songs and ordered the service personnel to learn them.
As well, central government departments, some schools and even the China Disabled Persons' Federation have put together plans to study and carry out the new socialist ethical standards as set by the president.
Confucius is not mentioned by name, but he is lurking here. First, the style of this "tell them how to be virtuous from the top down" exercise, where the upright scholar-officials instruct the ignorant but good-hearted "commoners," is reminiscent of the actually-existing bureaucratic Confucianism of imperial times. Although that actually-existing Confucianism may have used the original author's ideas in ways he did not intend, adding too much Legalism to the mix, we have to accept it as a Confucianism of sorts, and one that is something of a precursor or model of our odd Socialist Confucianism of today.
More specifically, several of the Eight Honors and Disgraces really do resonate with the original texts. "Serve the people," although it has a Maoist pedigree, is very much in keeping with a Mencian sensibility," and "do not spend ethics for profits" and "make no gains at other's expense" are consistent with the political economy of the Analects, as is "Live plainly, work hard; do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures".
There are at least two dangers here for the party leadership, however.
First, if these sorts of criteria are used not just to guide public behavior, which is the intention of the authorities, but also employed by the public to judge government performance, the Party could be setting itself up for criticism. After all, President Hu and Prime Minister Wen would of course want everyone to know that they, and all of their virtuous party cadres are upholding the Eight blah, blah, blahs. But we know that corruption runs very deep in the Party, that "spending ethics for profits" is a perfect description of much of what is going on in PRC politics and business. And if people start asking who are the greatest violators of the Eight blah, blah, blahs, their attention can only be drawn back to the fundamental and systemic dysfunctions of authoritarian dictatorship. In other words, the Confucian ideals can be turned against Communist practice.
Second, the whole revival of ancient traditions as a means of providing legitimacy for state socialism can sometimes produce glaring contradictions. Notice the inclusion of "Follow science; discard superstition." That's good old scientific socialism for you. But, remember, "superstition" was a word very commonly applied to Confucianism by the May 4th intellectuals who gave birth to the Communist Party. All that ancestor worship was seen as backward and unmodern. So, is the revival of Confucianism, in and of itself, a relapse into superstition?
As regular visitors here know, I think we can revise Confucianism to make it applicable to modern society. It can be more than an outmoded superstition. But the CCP is not helping itself when it does things like this:
Heroic opera boomed from huge speakers and white-gloved police officers carried elaborate funeral wreaths as senior Communist officials bowed low Wednesday before the reputed burial mound of a legendary Chinese emperor.
The ceremony was a lavish display calculated to woo the Taiwanese public and instill national pride across China.
Leaders from the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp Parliament, and top executives from state-controlled industries joined a senior Taiwanese opposition lawmaker and 700 Taiwanese executives in paying their respects to Huang Di, the semi-mythical "Yellow Emperor." Huang Di is said to have lived 5,000 years ago and is credited with inventing agriculture, the civil service and the use of fire in cooking.
Veneration of Huang Di really is veering off into the realm of mythic superstition. I do not mean to offend religious Taoists and other religious sects that might honor Huang Di. My point is that, for a secular socialist state, invoking Huang Di, and doing so for such obvious political purposes, is not compatible at all with some notion of "follow science." Huang Di is not, and is not meant to be, scientific. It is not clear to me that Huang Di can be "modernized" in the way that Confucian thought might be. Confucius never makes this sort of claim about himself:
According to one tradition, Huang-di spontaneously came into being as a result of the fusion of energies that marked the beginning of the world. He created man by placing earthen statues at the cardinal points of the world, leaving them exposed to the breath of the world's beginning for three hundred years. When they were totally pervaded by the energy of that breath, the statues were able to speak and move. In this way the various races of mankind came into being.
Myths may be necessary for collective identity, but to what extent can this one sit comfortably next to a call to "follow science"? And what is the CCP saying when they officially sponsor Huang Di worship?
Doing the Huang Di thing could undermine the Confucian revival. When the Party brings to the fore such obviously fictitious symbols like Huang Di in the name of reclaiming tradition for socialism, they are opening other facets of that reclamation to critique. Will Huang Di's obviously mythic and imaginary nature weaken the attempt to modernize Confucian thought? I hope not...
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