A rebirth of Confucianism in China
Bell, Daniel A.
IN THE UNITED STATES, the political future is constrained, for better or worse, by constitutional arrangements that have been in place for more than two centuries. Barring dramatic developments,...
...They also try to limit the environmental impact of new technologies.' 8 And what if the large majority of Chinese seem satisfied with strong meritocracy...
...The symbolic leader of the state—perhaps the eldest member of the meritocratic house—could also be selected from the meritocratic house...
...Filial piety is learned at a young age— my son, in primary school, is graded according to how well he "shows filial piety to parents"— and it appears in various social settings, such as the Chinese equivalent of soap operas, which often revolve around relationships with elderly parents...
...Many theorists argue that they are compatible (see, for example, SorHoon Tan's book Confucian Democracy...
...The book is an implicit challenge to the political status quo—by ignoring it, he not so subtly strips it of value—thus helping to explain why it took five years to get permission for the book to be published...
...I do not mean to imply that there are no good arguments for justifying constraints on the democratic process in Singapore...
...The End of (Marxist) Ideology Officially, the philosophy of Karl Marx underpins the legitimacy of the ruling CCP and thus Marxism is the place to start for thinking about China's political future...
...Marx himself was a technological optimist (see his discussion of The Factory Acts in Capital, Vol...
...The first Confucius Institute was set up in 2004, and eighty campuses have since opened in thirty-six countries...
...Cai argues forcefully against some of the most frequent objections to democratic rule in China—that it benefits only majorities, that it undermines stability and economic development, and that it contributes to corruption...
...Chinese policymakers signaled a shift from no-holds-barred growth to a more sustainable model that would boost social and economic equality and enable lowincome and underprivileged groups to have more access to employment opportunities, basic education, primary health care, and social security...
...He can be reached at daniel.a.bell@gmail.com 1. Marx rushed to write and publish Capital because he thought the communist revolution was about to occur in his day and thus he feared his writings would be overtaken by events...
...The teaching curriculum for secondary schools now includes teaching of the Confucian classics, and several experimental schools have been set up that focus largely on the classics...
...But Singapore's "rule of law" relies on legal punishments that control detailed aspects of everyday life: as the joke goes, Singapore is a "fine" city...
...Yu Dan also visits Chinese prisons and lectures prisoners about Confucian values...
...For the government, the promotion of Confucian values has several advantages...
...Perhaps the biggest challenge to the government is the Confucian emphasis on meritocracy...
...The capitalist mode of production treats workers as mere tools in the productive process and puts technology to use for the purpose of enriching a small minority of capitalists...
...For long-term planning, they favor economic development that frees workers from the need to engage in drudge labor...
...That's why Marx justified British imperialism in India: yes, it would be exploitative and miserable for Indian work20 DISSENT / Spring 2007 ers, but the foundations would be laid for socialist rule...
...Given that the CCP spent its first three decades in power trying to extirpate every root and branch of Confucianism that it regarded as a feudal and reactionary woridview hindering progress, it would seem to be a losing battle...
...Notwithstanding official rhetoric, it is unclear how much these developments stem from commitment to communism...
...During a seminar at Tsinghua University in October 2006, the comparative political scientist Adam Przeworski noted that nonpartisan institutions play an important role in resolving conflicts when partisan politics cannot produce sufficient consensus for nonviolent political decision-making, and that the meritocratic house could serve this function in the Chinese context...
...DANIEL A. BELL is professor of political philosophy at Tsinghua University, Beijing...
...hence, they have an incentive to develop new, ever more efficient means to produce goods, creating a large material surplus without which socialism would not be feasible...
...Naturally, disillusionment soon sets in, there is a popular backlash, and the leaders end their days in disgrace (see Randall Peerenboom's impressively researched book, China Modernizes...
...Cai Dingjian of the Chinese University of Law and Politics has written an essay (in Chinese) titled "In Defense of Democracy...
...Once democracy becomes institutionalized at the local level, it can then be further extended to township, city, and provincial levels...
...Even sex workers often tell their customers that they send large chunks of their income to elderly parents back home (without specifying exactly how they earn their money...
...Sociologically speaking, however, it's interesting that so many people seem to derive comfort from Confucian values...
...As more Chinese gain access to education and democratic values and practices become more entrenched, the democratic legislature can be empowered relative to the meritocratic house...
...My graduate students and colleagues express a certain amount of skepticism regarding the DISSENT / Spring 2007 23 academic value of Yu Dan's work—she deliberately avoids controversial themes and resorts to ahistorical simplifications to make her points...
...I would surmise, however, that the main reason Chinese officials and scholars do not talk about communism is that hardly anybody really believes that Marxism should provide guidelines for thinking about China's political future...
...And no matter how corrupt things are in contemporary China, the gaokao examination process is relatively clean...
...BUT EMPOWERING democratically elected leaders at the national level is far more controversial...
...Few academics teaching in mainland Chinese universities —including those who call themselves "liberals"—favor country-wide democracy over the next decade or so (and discussions are completely free in the context of alcohol-fueled dinners with friends...
...The Revival of Confucianism In China, the moral vacuum is being filled by Christian sects, Falun Gong, and extreme forms of nationalism...
...The essay is an important academic and political contribution to the debate on democratization in China...
...And what about asking "the people" to make life-anddeath decisions such as whether or not to go to war or how best to curb virulent contagious infections...
...But such developments may reflect a better understanding of Marxist theory than in Mao's day...
...The editorial goes on to say that the welfare state requires democracy and the rule of law as an underlying framework...
...Had Lee been trained in the Confucian classics, it is hard to imagine he would show the same vindictiveness and lack of humility toward political opponents...
...Ethan Leib and He Baogang...
...Strong democrats may prefer to abolish the meritocratic house in due course—or at least reduce it to an advisory and symbolic function if it helps to strengthen the democratic sys26 DISSENT / Spring 2007 tem' 7—but there may be a case for more permanent empowerment of the meritocratic house when democratic processes threaten to get out of hand...
...Still, few doubt that there's a need for a different—and more inspiring— political model in the future...
...Not the end of all ideology, but the end of Marxist ideology...
...The proposal might gain additional support if it incorporates the following features: • The deputies in the meritocratic house are chosen (by examinations) for seven- or eightyear terms and there are strict penalties for corruption...
...Domestically, the affirmation of harmony is meant to reflect the ruling party's concern for all classes...
...Even the anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution was led (initially) by students from China's most prestigious universities (including Tsinghua...
...But the possibility of a bicameral legislature, with one political institution composed of democratic leaders chosen by free and fair competitive elections and another of meritocratic leaders chosen by free and fair competitive examinations, is more consistent with commitments to Confucian meritocracy and modern-day democracy...
...But relabeling won't suffice if the government really plans to adopt Confucianism...
...Historically, Confucian meritocracy was implemented by means of examinations, and there have been proposals to revive and update Confucian examinations for contemporary China...
...Less controversial, perhaps, is the claim that Confucian values still inform ways of life, especially regarding family ethics...
...5 But the government considers that such alternatives threaten the hardwon peace and stability that underpins China's development, so it has encouraged the revival of China's most venerable political tradition, Confucianism...
...In a Taiwanese publication titled Life, Belief, and the Kingly Way of Politics, Jiang Qing puts forward an interesting proposal for a tricameral legislature that includes representation for people's representatives, Confucian elites chosen by competitive examinations, and elites entrusted with the task of cultural continuity...
...They favor policies that give priority to the needs of the destitute (as Mencius put it, the government should give first consideration to "old men without wives, old women without husbands, old people without children, and young children without fathers...
...Farfetched...
...The national democratic legislature's main function is to transmit the people's (relatively uninformed) preferences to the meritocratic house...
...This is not, to put it mildly, the kind of model supporters of democracy should endorse...
...Perhaps that's why Marx himself felt the need to address workers and rally them to his cause...
...The proposal most likely to garner support from government officials and intellectual elites that are best positioned to think about and implement political reform!' is for a strong, meritocratically chosen legislature that has constitutional priority over the democratically elected house...
...Here things become more complicated...
...But here too, interpretations of Confucianism may diverge from official ones...
...The most famous is Yu Dan, who has written a selfhelp book on the Analects of Confucius that has sold over one million copies...
...This essay draws on his book Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton University Press, 2006) and the "comment is free" blog he writes for the Guardian...
...The question is, what comes after economic development...
...S0 FOR THE foreseeable future, it is unlikely that democratic rule at the national level will emerge in China...
...But his institutional proposals contain certain liberal assumptions, such as freedom of religion: he argues for the establishment of Confucianism as a state religion and compares the system to state religions in the United Kingdom and Sweden, with other religions not being prohibited...
...The economic foundation, along with the legal and political superstructure, will change in the future...
...They argue that social justice cannot be DISSENT / Spring 2007 21 achieved without substantial political reforms, such as more autonomy for organizations of farmers and workers, democratic processes that allow for the articulation of interests, and a free press that would expose official corruption...
...At the local level, all sides in the debate recognize that leaders should be democratically elected...
...There are reasons to think that they are compatible, if not mutually reinforcing...
...There have been worries about the quality of decision-making and the extent to which local elections really succeed in curbing the power of local cadres and wealthy elites...
...Like the Thai king, it would intervene only in exceptional cases...
...In October 2006, for the first time in twentyfive years, a plenary session of the CCP's Central Committee devoted itself specifically to the study of social issues...
...The fact that American and other foreign corporations have lobbied furiously against the fairly mild Chinese proposal to upgrade workers' rights and warned that they would build fewer factories in China suggests that such fears are not entirely unfounded...
...8. Mencius, however, allows for the possibility that force can be justifiably used to carry out "punitive expeditions," the ancient Chinese equivalent of humanitarian interventions...
...Nobody argues that the current political system should remain in place once the economy is developed...
...Unpleasant work will be limited to the maintenance of machinery and other tasks required to keep the system going, but this "realm of necessity" would not take up most of the working day...
...It is not just the government that balks at the prospects of turning over the levers of the Chinese state to eight hundred million farmers with primary-school education...
...There also seems to be an aversion to "utopian thinking," which is an understandable reaction to Mao's disastrous attempts to sweep away the past during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution...
...Lee claims to be inspired by Confucianism, but he is trained in law rather than philosophy and the Confucian classics...
...The central tenet of Confucian foreign policy, for example, is that leaders should lead by moral example and oppose the use of force to promote morality.' Hence, Confucian intellectuals were severely critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq...
...In 1994, he wrote an article arguing for the preservation of the shareholdingcooperative system (SCS) that is a kind of labor-capital partnership...
...Even official sources point to the possibility of reconciling Confucianism with liberal democracy...
...In the Marxist framework, the moral point of the whole ugly process is to free the large mass of humankind from the need to engage in drudge labor...
...A few months later, he instructed China's party cadres to build a "harmonious society...
...Today, there are elections, but Singapore-style democracy means overwhelming dominance of the ruling People's Action Party along with harsh punishments for opposition politicians that range from public humiliation to bankruptcy and exile...
...Nor is it just a matter of educated elites looking down on the hoi polloi...
...And those parts of the CCP's program that failed to take hold, such as the attempt to replace family ties with ties to the state during the Cultural Revolution, did so because they conflicted with central Confucian values and habits...
...If capitalists become aware of this possibility, they might think their property rights are not stable and hence they might not be willing to invest in ways that are necessary to develop the productive forces now...
...Because Marxism is supposed to provide legitimacy for the government, it is the most tightly controlled political discourse in China...
...Filial piety, for example, is still widely endorsed and practiced: few object to the law that adult children have an obligation to care for their elderly parents...
...The Chinese government introduced direct village elections in 1988 to maintain social order and combat corruption of leaders, and they have since occurred in some 700,000 villages across China, reaching 75 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people...
...1): technological developments will lead to the communist revolution no matter what theorists say about it.' But his faith rested on now discredited economic theories, such as the falling rate of profit under capitalism and the labor theory of value...
...What Singaporean Chinese can do, mainland Chinese can do, whether it's the rule of law or democracy...
...Echoing Confucian themes, Hu said China should promote such values as honesty and unity, as well as forge a closer relationship between the people and the government...
...It invokes the quote in the Analects of Confucius that exemplary persons seek "harmony, not conformity" Then it breaks down the characters in the term "harmony," with the explanation that the first literally refers to "grain into the mouth," meaning people and social security, and the second refers to "everything can be spoken," meaning democracy and freedom of speech...
...In political practice, they have often proved to be compatible: Wang Juntao, a leading Chinese dissident who was jailed for five years over the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, argues that many of the key figures in the various democracy movements in contemporary Chinese history drew inspiration from Confucian values...
...5. As Peter Hays Gries has noted, many Chinese intellectuals call on the state to deal with extreme forms of nationalism (rather than viewing the state itself as part of the problem...
...But their views, as one might expect, tend to be more critical of the status quo...
...28 DISSENT / Spring 2007...
...In response, the government has backed experiments with deliberative democracy at the local level designed to address such problems (see The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China, eds...
...She is a national star who often appears on television to lecture about the benefits of Confucian values for everyday life...
...and • Freedom of the press is basically secure, and there are many opportunities to raise objections and present grievances to deputies at the national level...
...The idea that Taiwan should be reintegrated into the mainland by being threatened with invasion and bloodshed is far removed from Confucian ideals...
...In a fascinating essay titled "Liberal Socialism and the Future of China: A Petty Bourgeoisie Manifesto," he warns that progressive forces in China should not imitate social-democratic practices pursued in Western Europe...
...A leading official in the government read the article and decided to allow the SCS to spread in rural China...
...I visited the Translation Bureau of the Central Committee of the CCP—the official Marxist institute charged with translating Marx's works into Chinese— in the hope of finding out more about Marxist theorizing about communism...
...There may also be the worry that talking about communism now reduces the likelihood of achieving it...
...In China, by contrast, the political future is wide open...
...4. I would like to note that the argument regarding the end of ideology by the distinguished American sociologist Daniel Bell (no relation), has been widely misunderstood...
...By invoking the rhetoric of "scientific development," the Chinese government seems officially committed to the technological optimistic interpretation of Marx...
...It is not entirely fanciful to surmise that the Chinese Communist Party will be relabeled the Chinese Confucian Party in the next couple of decades...
...Instead, Cui argues for labor-capital partnerships and social dividends paid to all citizens according to age and family status.' Only such innovations could realize the goal of empowering the large majority of Chinese workers and farmers...
...It is another to ask voters to make informed judgments about empirically complex issues such as settling interprovincial disputes or assessing the trade-off between economic growth and safeguarding the environment for future generations, the sorts of issues that may be only distantly related to their lives...
...I try to evaluate his arguments in my book East Meets West...
...9. Civil service examinations have been revived in China, with thousands of people competing for top spots...
...And how will the transition come about...
...In private discussions, there is room for speculation, and I will report on some possibilities...
...And the rulers themselves get to decide on who counts as "the best and brightest...
...And Singapore wasn't anything close to a democracy when it was at China's levels of wealth and education (the same is true of Taiwan and South Korea...
...It's no less so than scenarios that envision a transition to Western-style liberal democracy (because both scenarios assume an end to one-party rule), and it answers the main worry about the transition to democracy: that it translates into rule by uneducated people...
...Leading intellectuals of the "New Left," such as Wang Hui, have long been calling for social justice, meaning that China's first priority should be to address the huge gap between rich and poor and to secure the interests of the disadvantaged...
...But such expeditions can only be carried out if several conditions are met, such as the need to rescue people from severe material deprivation...
...Barring dramatic developments, such as nuclear war or major terrorist attacks, it is unlikely that the political system will change much over the next few decades...
...One of the virtues of Lee Kuan Yew is that he has publicly attempted to justify Singapore's regime without being constrained by Western-style notions of political correctness...
...It is worth recalling that the Spring 1989 pro-democracy demonstrators were led by student elites from China's most prestigious universities...
...And from a normative perspective, it is important to think about policies that can speed up the process and minimize the suffering of workers along the way...
...According to the formulation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the current system is the "primary stage of socialism," meaning that it's a transitional phase to a higher and superior form of socialism...
...The CCP aims to secure the interests of the disadvantaged while maintaining tight curbs on freedom of the press and the freedom to participate in the political process...
...The main argument in his influential 1960 book The End of Ideology is that Marxism has been exhausted as an ideology in the United States, not that all normative ideologies have been, or should be, replaced by non-ideological commitment to technocratic decisionmaking...
...One response is that it's not useful to think about such questions because the transition to communism will happen anyway...
...The CCP's defense of brutal capitalism in China—as Deng Xiaoping famously put it, "To get rich is glorious"—has its roots in a similar logic...
...In fact, capitalists can now join the CCP, and the legal system is being reformed (slowly) so that it more closely approximates that of capitalist countries...
...Does Confucianism also pose a challenge to Western-style liberal democracy...
...In South Korea, perhaps the most Confucian-influenced country in East Asia, Confucian intellectuals played an important role in the pro-democracy movements that eventually led to the establishment of electoral democracy in that country...
...In the sobering documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore notes that he has been hammering away about the dangers of global warming for decades, and he expresses frustration at the lack of interest among democratically-elected decision makers in the United States...
...There may be the worry that the strong meritocratic system becomes entrenched— fossilized, like the American constitutional system—and hard to change once it's in place...
...SO WHY ISN'T communism being discussed...
...Jiang Qing, the contemporary Confucian intellectual, contrasts his Confucian theory with Western-style liberal democracy and argues that Confucianism is more appropriate for China...
...These exams are largely meritocratic (meaning that the successful candidates are the ones with the top scores), but they test for political ideology in ways that reward conformity rather than political ability...
...Threatened by rural discontent—according to official figures, there were 87,000 illegal disturbances in 2005—the government realizes that it needs to do more for those bearing the brunt of China's development (there is a joke in China, that development benefits everyone except farmers, workers, and women...
...2. With the exception, of course, that most social democratic theories also defend, if not give priority to, civil and political rights...
...The reform-minded DISSENT / Spring 2007 27 members of the CCP seem to favor intraparty democratic elections for leaders (similar to political reforms in Vietnam) rather than emphasize more meritocracy within the party...
...Lee's view is that education won't suffice, there will always be a minority of people endowed with superior innate intelligence (such as his own son, the current prime minister of Singapore, and other family members that control key levers of the economy), and they should be society's leaders...
...the United States will still be far ahead in terms of total and per capita contributions), and the imperative to limit these emissions should be obvious to anyone who has seen the movie...
...The examinations test for the Confucian classics, basic economics, world history, and a foreign language, and they are set by an independent board of academics randomly chosen from China's universities that is sequestered from the rest of society during the examination process;'' • There is substantial deliberation before decisions are taken in the meritocratic house, and most debates are televised and transmitted to the public on the Web...
...The Confucian emphasis on meritocracy— rule by the most talented and public-spirited members of the community—might seem to conflict with democracy, but there have been institutional proposals to combine the two desiderata...
...How does Confucianism resonate in society at large...
...An American businessman who is well connected with China's political elite told me that Marxist theorists in the government still plan to implement higher communism in the future, but they don't want to make it explicit because communism might require expropriation of the capitalist class...
...Let's deal with the present problems first, they said, before worrying about the long term...
...Jiang defends the basic values of Confucianism and argues that they are appropriate for China now and in the future...
...For scholars, there may be political constraints...
...Like most ideologies, however, Confucianism can be a double-edged sword...
...But which institution should have priority...
...On the academic front, there has been an explosion of conferences and books on Confucianism in China, to the point that even the most dedicated Confucian could not keep up...
...China will likely be the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in a few years (in terms of new contributions...
...7. The Central Party School in Beijing is considering a proposal to make the Confucian classics one of its core programs and another to open an after-hours school on the Confucian classics for children on its campus...
...In China, the debates on this question are somewhat constrained due to political controls as well as the widely felt need to deal with China's more immediate economic and social problems...
...Jiang could not develop the institutional implications in that book, but the Web allows for more free speech...
...Such forward-looking leaders may also worry that if workers are made aware of the plan to implement communism in the future, they might not be willing to undergo the sacrifices required to get there...
...The question is, who is more likely to enact laws that limit greenhouse gases in China: political leaders chosen by poor farmers who understandably worry first and foremost about their short-term economic interests or deputies in the meritocratically chosen legislature...
...On October 12, 2006, the newspaper Southern Weekly—perhaps the leading intellec24 DISSENT / Spring 2007 tual newspaper in China—published an editorial on the meaning of the term "harmonious society...
...More pertinently, the successful candidates are theoretically supposed to implement policy, not make it (unlike the successful candidates of the imperial examinations who occupied posts of political power...
...There is nothing distinctly Marxist about the CCP's call for more social welfare...
...BUT WHEN IS China supposed to implement communism...
...One of the problems with democracy in Confucian-influenced Taiwan and South Korea is that excessive faith is placed in elected leaders who are expected to manifest the traits of Confucian morally exemplary leaders...
...A Response to Contemporary Anti-Democratic Theory...
...Confucius said, 'Harmony is something to be cherished,' " President Hu Jintao noted in February 2005...
...Internal party advancements have been made more meritocratic of late, but political advancement is still limited to party members, and those who reach the top spots do so at least partly (if not mainly) due to their ability to outmaneuver political opponents and refrain from taking unpopular positions (not the sort of traits that would be valued by a system designed to reward ability and public-spiritedness...
...To support the view that the "quality" of the people!' does not undermine the prospects of democracy, however, he draws on Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew's point that Singapore's Chinese immigrants (largely from poor and uneducated backgrounds) have succeeded in establishing a good society based on the rule of law...
...Should we complain just because the system doesn't satisfy our ideas about democratic rule or should we allow for the possibility that there are morally legitimate, if not superior, alternatives to Western-style liberal democracy...
...But what if it works well...
...1 ° Such influential early-twentiethcentury figures as Sun Yat-sen, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao received a Confucian education, and they argued that democratic institutions such as parliamentary systems, elections, and equal rights are natural extensions of Confucianism...
...For independent intellectuals, the only remotely plausible justification for the current system of economic liberalization combined with tight political control is that it is a temporary necessity given the need to provide social order during the disruptive period of economic development (and many would reject this claim...
...The reason is that capitalists compete with each other to make a profit...
...Not surprisingly, the political system he has put in place owes much more to Chinese-style Legalism than Confucianism: the heavy reliance on fear and harsh punishments for social control in Singapore is far removed from Confucian ideals that emphasize rule by moral example and informal norms and rituals (with legal punishments as a last resort, not first resort...
...Perhaps the most influential academic work on Confucianism is Jiang Qing's Political Confucianism (not yet translated into English...
...4 To the extent there's a need for a moral foundation for political rule in China, it almost certainly won't come from Karl Marx...
...With respect to decision-making at the national level, one hopes not just for fair representation and local solidarity, but also for deliberators with the ability to process large amounts of information as well as sensitivity to the interests of different kinds of people, including foreigners and future generations that are affected by national policies...
...If the symbolic leader is chosen from the meritocratic house, there would be less of an expectation of morally exemplary leadership on the part of democratic leaders, the people would be more rational in evaluating their elected leaders, and the democratic system itself would be more stable...
...The ideology has been so discredited by its misuses that it has lost almost all legitimacy in society...
...At the provincial, township, city, and village levels, the top decision makers are chosen by means of competitive elections, and decisions are taken in deliberative forums...
...Abroad, the government has been promoting Confucianism via branches of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese language and culture center similar to France's Alliance Francaise and Germany's Goethe Institute (so far, however, the emphasis has been on language teaching rather than the promotion of culture...
...Wu Zhongmin of the Central Party School supports the official recognition of social justice with the view that social resources should be distributed according to contribution, where members of society "are enabled to obtain according to deserts...
...But unofficial interpretations of Confucianism often diverge from the governmental line...
...The deputies debate at length...
...If communism is implemented without developed productive forces (advanced technology and the knowledge to make use of it) that underpin material abundance, it won't work for long...
...Again, there is an obvious challenge to the government: Objectively measured performance on an exam, rather than party loyalty, would determine who occupies what government post.' A Challenge to Western-Style Liberal Democracy...
...The discourse, both official and unofficial, seems to be confined to debates about how best to provide benefits for workers and farmers, given current levels of technological development, and nobody seems to be thinking about how to move toward an abundant society that frees workers from unwanted labor or about when this ideal is supposed to be realized...
...Yet it has recently taken on board concerns about the need to minimize the suffering of workers and farmers during the process of "scientific development...
...For practical purposes, it's the end of ideology in China...
...The tendency to avoid utopian theorizing also helps to explain the lack of theorizing about "higher communism...
...The migrant-worker waitresses at the Purple Haze restaurant in Beijing, where I am a part owner, complain about the "quality" of customers who bark commands and show disrespect...
...It could be argued, however, that the parts of Marxism that really took hold in the population—the priority of material wellbeing and an aversion to other-worldly outlooks —did so because they resonated with deeper Confucian roots...
...I was handed beautifully packaged translations of the Communist Manifesto, and the people I met spoke about the need to deal with the problem of economic inequality in contemporary China, but they seemed puzzled by my questions about freeing workers from drudge labor in China's communist future...
...In an article widely distributed on the Web, he argues that the Marxist curriculum in government party schools should be replaced by Confucian material.' Jiang and other Confucian intellectuals have been getting the attention of the government, including meetings with top government officials...
...Technology will do the dirty work needed to meet people's physical needs, and people will finally be free to go fishing, read books, design and create works of beauty, and so on...
...But the New Leftists do not ask the question of what happens after economic development, when the large majority of Chinese no longer have to spend their days toiling in fields and factories...
...A former colleague of mine at the City University of Hong Kong found, to his surprise, that gay literature often centers on relationships with parents (in contrast to gay literature in Western countries that often centers on relationships between couples...
...Chinese readers would recognize the reference to Marx's account of "lower communism," but in practice the government's call for social justice seems to mean nothing more than the recognition of the need for the welfare measures that some capitalist countries have adopted to mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism (many Chinese officials of late have visited Scandinavian states to learn about their social welfare system and such welfare states have been praised in the official media...
...In reality, even the "commu22 DISSENT / Spring 2007 nist" government won't be confined by Marxist theory if it conflicts with the imperative to remain in power and to provide stability and order in society...
...The leaders are then given strong executive authority, leading to abuse of power, corruption, and nepotism...
...Technology will be highly developed, and at a certain point—the moment of revolution—private property will be abolished, and machines made to do work for the betterment of humanity instead of the interests of one small class...
...6. In the more open atmosphere of Taiwan, the value of filial piety can also take unusual forms...
...The Confucian view is that political leaders should be the most talented and public-spirited members of the community, and the process of choosing such leaders should be meritocratic, meaning that there should be equal opportunity for the best to rise to the top...
...It is one thing to debate and vote on the price of water and electricity and the relocation of farmers—one expects that local citizens most familiar with the detailed knowledge required for making judgments about the choices that intimately affect their daily lives are best placed to make such judgments...
...And the government has been more active in promoting workers' rights...
...3. Cui's views have had political impact...
...But it does have an important virtue: it develops the productive forces more than any other economic system...
...Cui Zhiyuan of Tsinghua University is perhaps the most radical of the New Leftists: he has argued for both economic and political democracy...
...Even those critical of the lack of commitment to democracy among conDISSENT / Spring 2007 25 temporary Chinese intellectuals may betray certain assumptions that are difficult to reconcile with rule by elected politicians...
...Without an "absolutely essential material premise," as Marx put it in The German Ideology, "want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and the old filthy business would necessarily be restored...
...And philosophically, the commitment to the disadvantaged could be grounded in social-democratic theories that emphasize social and economic rights' or even Christian values that give priority to the needs of the poor and the humble...
...It's true that the CCP no longer emphasizes class struggle, hatred of the rich, and opposition to private property...
...6 Many intellectuals have turned to Confucianism to make sense of such social practices and to think of ways of dealing with China's current social and political predicament...
...The institute is flush with funds from the government, and perhaps its employees are relatively free to think about the appropriate conditions and mechanisms for the implementation of communism in China...
...I was told that it's too politically sensitive to be explicit about such matters...
...They consider the interests of all those affected by policies, including foreigners and future generations...
...Such experiments hold the promise of aiding the democratic education process and securing more fair outcomes from that process...
...The centralized decision-making of the one-party state has many disadvantages, but one advantage is that it may be easier to implement radical (but defensible) ideas if the top leadership is convinced...
...In Chinese, it is common to comment on the "quality" (suzhi) of the people...
...It forced Wal-Mart to accept the state-controlled union in its Chinese outlets, and it has drafted a law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and give labor unions power to negotiate worker contracts, safety protection, and workplace ground rules for the first time since market forces were introduced in the 1980s...
...The CCP need not abandon the commitment to communism as the long-term goal so long as it recognizes that poor countries must go through capitalism on the way...
...Even more worrisome, Lee himself is perhaps the most notorious defender of rule by meritocratically selected political elites, N a view he supports with dubious eugenic theories...
...The last proposal—the elites would be descendants of Confucius's family—stands about as much chance of success as proposals for reinstituting more seats for hereditary aristocrats in the British House of Lords...
...Internationally, the call for peace and harmony is meant to disarm fears about China's rise...
...The examinees for the all-important gaokao (college entrance examinations) are sequestered during the examination process and prevented from communicating with the outside world so as not to leak the answers...
...But I came up empty...
...Of course, such elections are not free of problems...
...At Tsinghua—the university that has trained much of China's political elite, including President Hu Jintao—my Marxist colleagues do interesting and valuable work in Marxist theory (similar to Western scholars of Marxism), but they do not apply Marx's ideals to China's current and future political reality...
...If there is to be a tricameral legislature, it would make more sense, in my view, for the third house of government to be an independent anticorruption agency (similar to the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption) with the task of monitoring corruption in the other two houses and society at large...
Vol. 54 • April 2007 • No. 2
