The Sage Returns

Confucian Revival in Contemporary China

Kenneth J. Hammond, Jeffrey L. Richey, Kenneth J. Hammond, Jeffrey L. Richey

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781438454924, 9781438454917
• eBook ISBN: 9781438454931
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Historia de China

Until its rejection by reformers and revolutionaries in the twentieth century, Confucianism had been central to Chinese culture, identity, and thought for centuries. Confucianism was rejected by both Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's Communist Party, which characterized it as an ideology of reaction and repression. Yet the sage has returned: today, Chinese people from all walks of life and every level of authority are embracing Confucianism. As China turned away from the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and experienced the adoption and challenges of market practices, alternatives were sought to the prevailing socialist morality. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the years, ideas, images, behaviors, and attitudes associated with Confucianism have come back into public and private life. In this volume, scholars from a wide range of disciplines explore the contemporary Confucian revival in China, looking at Confucianism and the state, intellectual life, and popular culture. Contributors note how the revival of Confucianism plays out in a variety of ways, from China's relationship with the rest of the world, to views of capitalism and science, to blockbuster movies and teenage fashion.

PART ONE

Confucianism and Intellectual Life

1

The Tenacious Persistence of Confucianism in Imperial Japan and Modern China1

ROBERT W. FOSTER

In reading the current news regarding China, those familiar with modern East Asian history may be struck by the similarity of the experiences of Japan’s rapid development in the Meiji period and of China’s since 1978. Comparative history is, at best, suggestive rather than definitive, but by noting similarities and differences within these two places and periods, one sees that Confucianism was one of the key conceptual resources used by various groups in response to change. We might also benefit from such a comparison to anticipate to some degree the evolving trajectory of Chinese leadership in the future and to reveal popular political perceptions and frustrations. Examining one facet of culture in these two countries offers a lens on societies under stress. Times of social-political stress can often be measured and quantified through statistics. Cultural evidence is perhaps more ambiguous, but the symbols that are marshaled to support different responses to stress point to specific concerns and how those concerns shift over time and differ between societies. Many argue that this is the age of globalization and the homogenization of culture. Yet it seems that the threat of homogenization (be it via Western liberalism or mass consumerism) also can revive traditional cultural symbols and infuse them with new meaning.

The problem for both Meiji Japan and post-Mao China was how to catch up with the wealthy and powerful nations of the world. For the Japanese, the question was whether modernization entailed Westernization. In other words, did “catching up” mean exchanging Japanese culture and sociopolitical models for Western ones? For the Chinese, the issue has been whether modernization entails globalization. By globalization, I mean the centrality of the international market and a pragmatic approach to economic growth that has placed economic growth ahead of social-political ideals. At the heart of both the Japanese and Chinese experience has been a turn toward capitalism guided by the state. At the same time, this shift to a new economic system and worldview has destabilized previous social structures and cultural codes. Modernization is at all times painful and disruptive. To accomplish the task, the government and people need to find some points of common interest. Governments, to retain their legitimacy, must convince the populace that the new path is in their best interest, whereas the populace will ponder if the government is working for their best interest. At moments of social stress, governments and people use familiar symbols and concepts to promote what can be opposing positions.2 As Michael Kimmelman recently wrote,

[C]ulture (often unconsciously) identifies crucial ruptures, rifts, gaps and shifts in society. It is indispensible for our understanding of the mechanics of the world in this respect, pointing us toward those things around us that are unstable, changing, that shape how we live and how we treat one another. If we’re alert to it, it helps reveal who we are to ourselves, often in ways we didn’t realize in places we didn’t necessarily think to look.3

Comparing the variable use of culture helps us understand where meaningful comparisons can be drawn between Meiji Japan and post-Mao China but also demonstrates where real differences exist because of the differing contexts of Japan in the pre–World War I imperialist system and twenty-first-century China in a post-Soviet world.

While Confucianism is not the only set of cultural and conceptual resources at play within Meiji Japan and post-Mao China, its persistent place in the debates suggests the flexibility of a social-political-ethical system often deemed to be at odds with rapid change. This view has been promoted both inside and outside Japan and China. In Japan, leading Meiji intellectuals such as Fukuzawa Yukichi encouraged Japanese to say “good-bye Asia” and cast aside traditional culture. In 1885, he noted that “[i]f one observes carefully what is going on in today’s world, one knows the futility of trying to prevent the onslaught of Western civilization. Why not float with them in the same ocean of civilization, sail the same waves, and enjoy the fruits and endeavors of civilization.”4 Furthermore, Fukuzawa was particularly critical of Confucians in China and Korea:

Their love affairs with ancient ways and old customs remain as strong as they were centuries ago. In this new and vibrant theater of civilization when we [Japanese] speak of education they only refer back to Confucianism. As for school education, they can only cite [Mencius’s] precepts of humanity, righteousness, decorum and knowledge. While professing their abhorrence to ostentation, in reality they show their ignorance of truth and principles. As for their morality, one only has to observe their unspeakable acts of cruelty and shamelessness. Yet they remain arrogant and show no sign of self-examination.5

Chinese dealing with the turmoil of the Republican period did undergo painful self-examination. Lu Xun’s classic short story “Diary of a Madman,” written in 1918, held that Confucian ideals of virtue and morality led the Chinese to “eat people.”6 However, Lu Xun saw little hope for China’s future. This view of Confucianism’s conflict with modernity has also been a dominant theme of Western scholarship on China. Max Weber stated that Confucianism was the most antithetical to capitalist development, a view also presented in such classic works as Thomas Metzger’s Escape from Predicament and Joseph Levenson’s Confucian China and Its Modern Fate.7

However, like any complex worldview, Confucianism can be used in many different ways. There is a set of symbols and ideas that can be marshaled to promote different causes. In Chinese history, there were sometimes deadly disputes, such as the suppression of the Donglin movement in Ming China, in which both sides claimed the validation of Confucian precedent. While an oversimplification, for the purpose of this chapter, I would like to note two distinct uses: one is “ruler’s Confucianism”; the other “popular Confucianism.” When the goals of government and people converge, the symbols can be used harmoniously to motivate large-scale changes—as has happened at times in Japan and China. When the goals begin to diverge, we see different uses of the symbols to support the interests of the rulers or the people.

Ruler’s Confucianism deploys Confucian symbols to promote social stability, obedience, and faith in authority. I consciously avoid labeling this “authoritarian Confucianism,” because authoritarianism is loaded with negative connotations, while the ruler’s authority is key to promoting Confucian social harmony. Examples of the resources in play here include the Confucian ideal of the ruler as “pole star” around which the various heavenly bodies arrange themselves harmoniously;8 and the image of the good ruler’s influence as the wind before which the grass must bend;9 the notion that everyone has a place in society and specific duties for that place: “let a ruler be a ruler, a minister a minister, a father a father, and a son a son.”10 In Meiji Japan, ruler’s Confucianism was at the heart of the “family state” (kazoku kokka 家族国家), with the emperor as father of the nation. In contemporary China, it has been expressed in Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society” (héxié shèhuì 和谐社会). Again, Confucianism is not the sole inspiration for the family state or the harmonious society; the former is also imbued with Shintō ideas, and the latter is still meant to advance “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” What is important to underscore is the flexibility of Confucian ideas, which allows them to be incorporated into projects as different as Japan’s Emperor System and China’s socialist development. In times of social stress, people will call on symbols they believe have persuasive power to promote specific solutions to the rifts and ruptures of modernization.

In tension with ruler’s Confucianism is popular Confucianism, which likewise stresses social stability but adds in key features such as benevolent and responsive government, family, and traditions. Popular Confucianism draws on a different subset of symbols and principles to promote its goals: government must lead by virtue, rather than by law;11 governments need the trust of the people to succeed;12 righteousness is more important than profit;13 Heaven hears as the people hear;14 and, if need be, there is the Mencian “right of revolution” against immoral rulers.15 Because ruler’s Confucianism is at the forefront of political agendas and state-run media, examples of popular Confucianism are more diffuse. However, we see elements of popular Confucianism in the Meiji People’s Rights Movement described by Irokawa Daikichi16 and in literature such as Sōseki Natsume’s Kokoro.17 In Japan, popular Confucianism was linked to a nativist nostalgia wonderfully encapsulated in Tanizaki Junichiro’s early Shōwa-period work In Praise of Shadows.18 In post-Mao China, popular Confucianism is evident both inside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and outside. Wang Juntao has argued that Confucian ideas influenced pro-democracy advocates throughout the twentieth century,19 while more recently a number of titles have been published in China and abroad about Confucianism and globalization.

Both Meiji Japan and post-Mao China were confronted by similar social-political issues: the need to modernize and to adopt capitalism and non-native political ideas while maintaining state control. The goals of the two governments seem to be essentially the same. The Meiji oligarchs called for a “rich country and strong military” (fukoku kyōhei 富国強兵), and these goals were strongly paralleled in Deng Xiaoping’s “four modernizations” focusing on technological, industrial, agrarian, and military modernization. Both governments desired a strong economy that could support a powerful military, so both liberalized their economies while not liberalizing politics. As a result, for roughly the first twenty years of Meiji Japan and post-Mao China, traditional moral education was rejected in favor of technical education. The goals were to adopt Western mechanisms to compete with the West. Early Meiji extolled “civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika). Deng Xiaoping ushered in “reform and openness” (găigé kāifāng). In both countries, fascination with Western ideas was fashionable.20 While popular engagement with Western ideas tended to focus on the liberation of the individual from traditional strictures, the governments’ engagement was practically minded: learn from the West to resist the West. Both nations wanted to be recognized as equals with the major world powers. This recognition came for Japan with the renegotiation of the unequal treaties in 1894, while many consider the 2008 Beijing Olympics to have been China’s “coming out party.”

One might argue that the parallel breaks down when comparing Imperial Japan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction: The Death and Resurrection of Confucianism
• Part One. Confucianism and Intellectual Life
• Part Two. Confucianism and the State
• Part Three. Confucianism and Popular Culture
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover