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Whatever democratic political system evolves in China will bear the heavy imprint of its Confucian past. It is more difficult to judge the longer-term impact of Communism because its duration will have been far more limited. There are, though, important continuities between Confucianism and Communism — for example, in the notion of a special caste of political leadership, Confucian in the one case, Leninist in the other. [645] In North-East Asia — for these purposes, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam — the continuing influence of the Confucian tradition is palpable in the emphasis on education, the structure of the family, the central role of the bureaucracy and the commitment to harmony. [646] Because of the presence of a Communist government, this was, until 1978, perhaps less apparent in China, but there has been a marked revival in Confucian influence since then, a process initiated by the government during the nineties, [647] but which has increasingly acquired a momentum of its own. [648] Reflecting Confucian influence, an editorial in the People’s Daily argued that in order to build a market economy, it was necessary to promote ‘the rule of virtue while developing the rule of law’. [649] In March 2007 the prime minister Wen Jiabao remarked: ‘From Confucius to Sun Yat-sen, the traditional culture of the Chinese nation has numerous precious elements, many positive aspects regarding the nature of the people and democracy. For example, it stresses love and humanity, community, harmony among different viewpoints, and sharing the world in common. ’ [650] Communist Party officials in Henan province are now, amongst other things, assessed on the basis of Confucian values such as filial piety and family responsibility, while secondary school children are once more being taught the Confucian classics [651] and Confucius’s birthday is again being celebrated. [652] On a practical level, the Party is now placing a new kind of emphasis on the importance of the obligations and duties shown by its cadres towards the people they represent. As part of their training, they are given test cases in which they are expected not just to consult their superiors as before, but also, more importantly, to listen to the people. This new attitude has been reflected in the way in which public officials have apologized for their failures in the Sichuan earthquake and milk scandal — in a ma
Confucianism should not be seen as a fixed entity, having been through many mutations during its history. Like all philosophies and religions, its longevity has depended in part upon its ability to adapt to changing circumstances and times. [655] The fact that Confucianism is a syncretic tradition has served to enhance its flexibility and adaptability. One of the most outstanding examples was the ma
There are a number of ways in which Confucian ideas are likely to inform a democratic China: [662] the nodal role of the state and its bureaucracy; the centrality of the family, and extended networks like clans (which help, for example, to relieve the state of some of the tasks of social welfare); the importance of guanxi (the web of personal relationships which informs Chinese society); the Confucian preference for resolving conflicts by mediation rather than litigation, suggesting that the resort to law and the judicial process will always be far less significant in China (and Japan) than it is in the West; and the significance that is attached to values and morality as the lodestar of people’s behaviour. [663] These age-old belief systems have a profound effect on the way a society operates. China, like Japan and Korea, has a quite different sense of public order and behaviour compared with the norms that prevail in the West, a situation reflected in the much lower levels of crime in these societies. Indeed, these deeper societal traditions have undoubtedly helped China — and other East Asian societies — to cope with the combined vicissitudes of globalization and modernization, in effect acting as shock absorbers. [664]
[645] Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics, p. ix.
[646] Bell and Chaibong, Confucianism for the Modern World, pp. 7, 356-9, 368.
[647] Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, pp. 228-9.
[648] Callahan, Contingent States, p. 41.
[649] 1 February 2001, quoted in Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic?, p. 95; also Callahan, Contingent States, pp. 31-2.
[650] Quoted in Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 9.
[651] Raymond Zhou, ‘Let Sages Enrich Us, Not Polarize Us’, China Daily, 10–11 December 2005.
[652] Interview with Kang Xiaoguang, Beijing, 1 December 2005.
[653] Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic?, p. 91; and interview with Kang Xiaoguang, Beijing, 1 December 2005. Kang was the first to propose the idea of the Confucius Institute to the government. He has suggested that Confucianism should replace Marxism in education.
[654] Bell, China’s New Confucianism, pp. 9- 12.
[655] Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 32
[656] Bell and Chaibong, Confucianism for the Modern World, p. 26.
[657] Ibid., p. 9.
[658] Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics, p. 17.
[659] Wang Gungwu, The Chineseness of China , p. 171.
[660] Chen Kuan-Hsing, ‘Civil Society and Min-jian: On Political Society and Popular Democracy’, Cultural Studies, 17: 6 (2003), pp. 876-96.
[661] Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic? pp. 82-3; Callahan, Contingent States, p. xxxiv.
[662] For a discussion of Confucian ideas in practice, see ibid., pp. 210-14. Wang Gungwu argues there are three types of Confucian thinking; see China and the Overseas Chinese (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991), pp. 259-61.
[663] Bell and Chaibong, Confucianism for the Modern World, pp. 15–19.
[664] Ibid., pp. 12–13.