Can Confucianism serve as a basis for state ideology in the PRC today? Can it be a source of principles that might guide and justify the use of state power?
No, it cannot. Long story short: given the nature of modern states, and especially the modern authoritarian state dominated by the CCP, any invocation of Confucianism at the level of state ideology will produce an inhumane distortion of basic Confucianism values.
Let me elaborate.
Modern states, generally, are inhospitable to Confucianism. The centralization and power and reach of modern bureaucratic state apparatuses, with all of the attendant capacities (exigencies?) for rationalization (yes, I'm thinking Weber here) create a political context unanticipated by, and ill suited to, the assumptions of pre-Qin Confucianism. Confucius and Mencius focused on encouraging inter-personal practices, centering on individuals in families, that would work from the bottom-up, as it were, to produce a broader social harmony. Modern states, by contrast, set national policy, designed to be implemented impersonally and equally across the entire citizenship, thus creating a top-down dynamic of guidance and surveillance and control.
For Confucians, if there is a clash of obligations, family duties should take precedence over law: the bottom-up social dynamic is prior to, and more fundamental than, the top-down political process.. In The Analects, Confucius tells us that fathers and sons should shield each other from the law if one or the other has transgressed. Mencius tells us that Shun would have given up political office and escape with his father if the latter had broken the law; etc. Moreover, both Confucius and Mencius contend that noble-minded people have an obligation to speak truth to power, to point out injustice when it is done, and to remonstrate honestly to the powers-that-be to counteract the poverty and oppression that might appear in daily life. Mencius, in particular, committed himself and his life to this pursuit.
Moderns states, in general, strongly reject the idea of personalized and particularistic administration, which is the very definition of "corruption" - i.e. if the bureaucracy acts preferentially toward a particular individual because of status or social identity. Thus, states must deny Confucian ethical particularism. And the rationalization of bureaucratic administration also creates obstacles for honest remonstrance. For example, if a complaint does not fit into the discourse of the bureaucracy it might be ignored or shunted aside.
The PRC state is yet worse for Confucian-Mencian practice, because it is a case of a modern state dominated by a single authoritarian party, bending all the processes of rationalization to the even narrower purposes of maintaining the power of the single party, leaving much less space and possibility for diverse social pracitces and honest dissent at odds with state power.
The recent case of Xie Chaoping illustrates how actions that are consistent with Confucian morality are routinely repressed by the authoritarian PRC state.
Xie wrote a book about the corruption and abuse of power surrounding the building of the Sanmen dam in the 1950s. The message was threatening enough to current Party officials in Shaanxi, none of whom would be implicated in the events discussed in the book, that they trumped up charges of "illegal business activities," He was jailed for close to a month, during which he was humiliated and abused. He has since been released, though his freedom to travel is still restricted.
In essence, Xie's book is an example of honest remonstrance. Terrible injustice had been done decades ago to powerless and poor people in Shaanxi. In Confucian terms, those Shaanxi people had been exploited and put in a position where they could not adequately care for their families or enact their duties to their parents and children and relatives and friends. But even at the remove of fifty years, Shaanxi party officials saw Xie and his writing as a threat to their political hegemony: if they let this case stand, others might feel emboldened to remonstrate and the process might eventually turn on the party, laying bear the corruption that currently exists in Shaanxi and elsewhere in the land. In defense of the single-party state, they arrested and abused Xie, since all intellectual and social activity is subject to rationalization by the party-state.
There is a double violation of Confucian principles here. The party-state is continuing to violate the obligations of the original victims of corruption in Shaanxi, denying the truth of their suffering and defending the corruption of the officials of the 1950s. And the party-state is violating Xia Chaoping's ability to carry out his obligation to honestly remonstrate to the government.
At one level there is nothing extraordinary about the case of Xie Chaoping. This sort of thing happens every day in China. But that is precisely the point. Restriction and repression of Confucian principles is deeply ingrained in the nature of the PRC state. If that state were really to take Confucianism to heart as its guiding ideology, we might expect President Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao to stand up and defend Xie's duty to remonstrate. No one, of course, expects that. Both Hu and Wen must, by the logic of the party-state that they lead, accept and defend such daily abuses. Maintaining the power of the party will, every time, trump Confucian considerations.
And that is why it is impossible for Confucianism to serve as a guiding ideology of the PRC state. Any such invocation, under current conditions, will be limited by and subordinated to the purposes of defending single-party CCP rule. And that inevitably leads to un-Confucian abuses of power and inhumane outcomes.
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