Although it is fashionable among liberal scholars to dismiss the relation between cultural norms and the system of government, in China’s case, it is precisely the culture that has kept the communist party in power. The Communist Party of China (CPC) today is not following Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought, but the Confucianist doctrine that has influenced the Chinese society and shaped its worldview for more than two millennia. As a result, the political system has not been widely opposed as the Western pundits of democracy had predicted in the 1990s. Instead the communists by replacing the foreign doctrines with a doctrine that is uniquely Chinese are transforming China for better. If one is to look closely, today’s China is not that different from the Tang and Song dynasties of more than a millennium ago, when China was one of the world’s highly developed civilizations.
Let’s look at the similarities between the earlier dynasties and today’s China. Confucianism was at the core of Chinese polity in the imperial times and the rulers followed or claimed to follow the great sage’s teachings, the CPC today is doing the same, albeit without acknowledging it openly. Just as the earlier dynasties were a meritocracy and to get a bureaucratic job one had to be a scholar well-versed in classics and go through many rounds of competitive exams, in today’s China, the membership to the communist party is restricted to the best and the brightest students. Just as the imperial rulers talked about maintaining order and harmony (he xie), President Hu Jintao’s political doctrine talks about creating a harmonious society, and as a result harmony is the buzzword in today’s China. After being criticized as feudal for the most of the 20th century, Confucius is now praised as a great sage in the official speeches—a taboo even until 30 years ago— and the Confucian classics, which were banned in educational institutes since the founding of the People’s Republic, are taught to students today. Moreover, the Chinese government is using his name to gain soft power by establishing Confucius centers abroad. Call it a historical irony: The sage who died almost 2,500 years ago is the brand ambassador of modern China.
Communist Party of China (CPC) today is following Confucianist doctrine that has influenced the Chinese society and shaped its worldview for more than two millennia.
To understand the communists’ new found love for Confucius one has to look at Chinese history of the 20th century. Starting the new cultural movement (wu si yundong) in 1919, Confucius was blamed for China’s backwardness. The proponents of this campaign, including Lu Xun, one of China ‘s well-known writers, blamed Confucius and traditional Chinese culture for China ‘s failure to modernize, most famously in The Madman’s Diary (kuangren riji). From 1919 to 1949, the Chinese intellectual discourse was focused on finding a suitable political ideology to transform China, some advocated Western style democracy, some Marxism and some even advocated anarchy. All this came to an end with the communist victory in Chinese civil war in 1949. After that all things old was blamed for everything that went wrong in China. Unlike Confucius, who focused on order and harmony, Chairman Mao focused on continuous revolution and class struggle or, in other words, disorder and perpetual chaos. With Mao’s death in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping’s opening up and reform campaign (gaige kaifang) of 1978, the regime began to dissociate itself from Mao’s legacy and in a break with the communist tradition, people were allowed to practice their religions, traditions and establish private businesses. On the surface, all seemed to work fine but the troubles were brewing underneath. The big shock came in 1989 with the Tiananmen Square protests. There were many reasons for the protests such as rising inflation, doing away with the employment opportunities for college graduates by the government, laying off of workers in the state-owned enterprises and rising cases of corruption among the high-level party cadres. It is also worthwhile to note that the protestors were not demanding Western style democracy, they were asking for reforms in the party.
The Western governments’ criticism of China for the way it handled the protests led to a surge in nationalism in China. The Chinese intellectuals, although not happy with how their government dealt with the protest, were also not very happy at the Western government’s criticism of their country. Suddenly books like China That Can Say No (Zhongguo keyi shuo bu), and its sequel, China Still Can Say No (Zhongguo haishi neng shuo bu), which basically called to resist the West’s “interference” in Chinese society and government and called for a strong foreign policy, became bestsellers. Other publications called the Chinese, the descendants of the legendary Yellow Emperor (huang di), to unite against foreigners’ bullying of China. Since it favored the regime, the CPC actually encouraged it. For a while, it seemed that nationalism had replaced communism as the official ideology in China. However, the Chinese leadership was quick to realize that promoting nationalism would only stall China’s progress and make it appear militant to the outside world, thus they began to discourage the publication of books with nationalistic fervor. Since communism was discarded, nationalism deemed dangerous for China’s development and international image, the party then found Confucianism as the best course to follow because of its emphasis on hierarchy and one’s duties and responsibilities, and more importantly unlike other ideologies, it was homegrown and exerted significant influence on people’s daily lives and how they thought. It made the scholars happy that China didn’t concede to the West, and common people happy that the regime was following the traditional culture.
Confucius’s emphasis on duties and responsibilities is evident in this famous line from the Analects (lun yu): Let the prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father and the son a son” (jun jun chen chen fu fu zi zi). Which can be understood as, if everyone follows his duties and responsibilities honestly, the society will be a harmonious one. This also means that one should not overstep his boundaries. Thus, the CPC began a campaign to become “Confucianist” by purging high-ranking cadres and civil servants accused of corruption, investing in infrastructure development, implementing welfare programs and discouraging nepotism, because in the past, rebellions took place when the rulers were inefficient and or corrupt, and these rebellions led to dynastic changes. Even Confucius says it is alright to rebel if the ruler is not acting like a ruler.
Given the nature of Chinese society, an average Chinese would rather tend to his own affairs, duties and responsibilities rather than bother about the system of government as long as the government does not interfere in his affairs, and the communist party understands this very well. One of the popular old Chinese sayings is, “The heaven is high, the emperor is far away” (tian gao huangdi yuan). Since the majority is not bothered about the form of government, gone are the days of putting all Chinese under the state’s scrutiny through neighborhood and village committees. And unlike the Mao-era China when people were expected to say China was perfect, today one can freely speak about the problems in the Chinese society and government, however, one is not yet free to offer solutions to the problems, because it would be tantamount to overstepping one’s boundaries—a strict no-no in Confucianist tradition. Offering solutions, the correct solutions to any given problem, is the prerogative of the ruler.
With the Communist Party following Confucianism, there are people who think it wouldn’t be surprising if the CPC changes its name to Confucian Party of China. This has also made outsiders wonder what type of system China will have in the future. But, it is obvious that it will not be a Western style multi-party democracy, and it will not revert back to the Mao era. If Pan Wei, a Professor at Beijing´s elite Peking University and a CPC member is to be believed, “ China will have to come up with a political civilization that is different from the west.” What exactly it will be is open to discussion. But given the direction in which China is heading these days, it will be a system that combines the Confucianist tradition with free market ideology and rule of law, and will be a unique “democracy with Chinese characteristics” or, in other words, “Confucianist democracy.”
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