Abstract
The beginning of the twentieth century marked the confutation and negation of traditional Chinese values by intellectuals, who thought that Confucianism, and in general traditional Chinese culture, had hindered scientific, economic, and social progress. Nonetheless, we are now witnessing a revival of the tradition, from a political and cultural perspective, aiming to address and provide resolutions to the contradictions and issues of contemporary societies. Which are the most valuable traditions in China today, and what is their impact on Chinese society? This paper will provide some of the theories promoted by Chinese scholars and their interpretation of the role of philosophy and religion today.
President and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping launched a campaign “to revive Chinese culture” since his first five-year office. Xi’s well-known mantra “the Chinese dream” coincides with the concept of the “Great Renaissance of the Chinese People.” As Xi said, “the most critical core of a country’s comprehensive strength is cultural soft power.” 1 “We must firm our self-confidence in the theory, path and institutions [of Chinese-style socialism], and we also need to have cultural self-confidence.” 2 Highlighting “cultural self-confidence” assumes that Westernized culture, dismissed by Chairman Mao as “Poisonous weeds,” does not play an important role in socialist China. 3
Already in 2012 Xi Jinping had stressed the importance of maintaining the CCP’s ruling status with the people’s support; he said: “The Marxist view of power can be summed up in two phrases: power is given by the people, and power is used for the people” (quanwei min suofu, quanwei min suoyong 权为民所赋，权为民所用). Concern for the people was a leitmotiv of the Chinese classical philosophical literature and was reiterated throughout the centuries. Xi Jinping defined it “citizen empowerment” (gongmin fuquan 公民赋权), but the Chinese perspective was based upon a distinctive concept, that of centralization of thought rather than freedom of thought.
In fact, a 2011 national survey of political attitudes revealed that 85% of the respondents chose the following definition of democracy: “A system in which government leaders reflect people’s interests, serve the people, and submit to supervision by the people,” rather than describing democracy as “a system of periodic elections in which national leaders are chosen through competition between political parties.” 4 In a recent article entitled “The Populist dream of Chinese Democracy,” E. Perry argues that “mainstream Chinese discussions of ‘democracy’ have long betrayed a populist understanding of this concept” and that “Xi Jinping draws freely on this tradition in formulating his Chinese dream.” 5 The Chinese dream of Xi Jinping, further upheld in the agenda of the CCP, “is the re-orientation of the official propaganda to showcase the glories of the ancient civilization that it claims to represent and rejuvenate.” 6
“Democracy” (minzhu民主) is based on the cultural heritage of pre-imperial and imperial China, and is contained within the political agenda of Xi Jinping. But which democracy?
The term minzhu, generally translated as “democracy,” in fact differs from the traditional Western definition of democracy, which refers to competitive elections and majority rule. According to Chinese classics it referred to the people as the pillar of the state: “The people are the only foundation, when the foundation is firm the state is peaceful.” 7
Chinese classics affirmed “the primacy of the people” (yi min wei zhu 以民為主). Mengzi孟子, a philosopher of the fourth century BC stated: The people are the most important, the altars to the land and grain (the country) are next, and the ruler is the least important. For this reason, one who wins over the common people’s heart becomes the Son of Heaven. One who wins over the Son of Heaven becomes one of the various lords. One who wins over one of the various lords becomes a Chief Counsellor.
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Contemporary CCP theorists assume that Anglo-American democracy stems from a Western tradition that places man at the center of the world (renben sixiang 人本思想). They are aware that certain features of their political system, most notably People’s Congresses, were inspired by the example of Western legislatures through the interpretation of the Soviet Union. 10 Moreover, they acknowledge that they have much to learn from Western democratic theory and practice. However, it seems that the idea of minzhu民主 does not presume election with universal suffrage, but a “system in which government leaders reflect people’s interests, serve the people, and submit to supervision by the people.” 11
Zhang Mingshu 张明澍, in a chapter entitled “Minzhu shi shenme 民主是什么?” (“What is democracy?”), argues that there are two notions of democracy, one that emphasizes “elections” and “party competition” and another that emphasizes a “virtuous government” (dezheng 德政) and the Way of the Sage Kings of antiquity (wangdao 王道). 12 The first notion of democracy refers to a Western understanding of democracy and the second corresponds to the traditional Chinese idea. 13
What is therefore the difference between the Western and Chinese idea of democracy? What is the “American dream” and what is the “Chinese dream”? “The American dream”: any individual can achieve his or her own individual dream by his or her own individual effort;
In Western liberal democracy, what is important is freedom of thought, according to which the subject can express an autonomous will. It is this kind of freedom of thought and affirmation of an autonomous will that is not customary of Chinese traditional thought, which promotes “right thinking” rather than the “right to think” freely and moral values rather than a universal justice. 15
As highlighted by Michael Sandel, Deontological liberalism is above all a theory about justice, and in particular about the primacy of justice among moral and political ideals. Its core thesis can be stated as follows: society, being composed of a plurality of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is well organized when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good: what justifies these regulative principles above all is not that they maximize the social welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they conform to the concept of right, a moral category given prior to the good and independent of it.
Chinese thinkers, and in particular Confucian thinkers, in early imperial times have foreseen the limits of an abstract notion of universal justice and have otherwise affirmed the importance of a proper behavior, righteousness and a moral disposition to do good (yi義), together with cardinal moral values such as humaneness (ren 仁), social rites (li 禮), and wisdom (zhi智). The relation between the individual and the sensible world is built around the practice and achievement of these cardinal virtues. One needs to start with introspection, self-knowledge, and then extend one’s experience to others and the world around oneself. The Chinese, Confucian thinker is in the pursuit of the good, placing the good and the idea of self-cultivation and unity of thought at the center of his discourse. The cardinal virtues, humaneness, knowledge and wisdom, ritual norms of behavior or ritual propriety, provide the ethical background for a good government, in relation to the discipline of the individual and of society.
Freedom of thought, according to Kant, conversely, intends independent determination by causes in the sensible world. The Kantian idea of freedom is related to self-reliance, separate from and above the laws of nature; it implies acting in accordance with a self-given law. Kant affirms the priority of right over good, the priority of the self over its ends.
In this respect M. Sandel highlights two perspectives in the understanding of the self: as an object of experience, the individual belongs to the sensible world, whereby his actions are determined, as the movements of all other objects, by the laws of nature and the regularities of cause and effect; as a subject of experience, by contrast, the individual inhabits an intelligible or super-sensible world, where he is capable of autonomy, independence of the laws of nature and acting according to a law he gives himself. 17 There is no such a distinction in Chinese ethics; man is part of the world, subject and object simultaneously of his own experience.
Patriotism, professionalism, integrity, friendship versus freedom, equality, rule of law
China is the country of the harmonious coexistence of the opposites and contradictions. In November 2012, the 18th Party congress of the CCP, after selecting Xi Jinping习近平 as its new general secretary, promised that by the year 2049 China would become a prosperous, democratic, civilized, and harmonious country. A syncretic combination of four values, that is, prosperity (fuqiang 富强), democracy (minzhu 民主), culture (wenming 文明), and harmony (hexie 和谐), is accompanied by four individual goals of patriotism (aiguo 爱国), professionalism (jingye 敬业), integrity (chengxin 诚心), and friendship (youshan 友善) and by four societal goals, including freedom (ziyou 自由) and equality (pingdeng 平等), as well as the impartial rule of law (gongzhengfazhi 公正法治). 18 These values and goals are made public on billboards across China.
In this mixture of diverse concepts we find reminiscences of the classical culture, such as chengxin 诚心, variously translated as “integrity,” “sincerity,” and “authenticity,” a concept discussed within two fundamental philosophical works, the Zhongyong 中庸 (On the Practice of the Mean) and in the Daxue 大学 (The Highest Science), or hexie 和谐 (harmony), another concept we find in various classical texts.
The need of unity of thought (tongyi sixiang 統一思想) stems from traditional theories of good government, from a concern for social stability (especially in a country as large and diverse as China), in the awareness that the masses require guidance. In this regard, the belief that unity of thought is a social good provides psychological comfort to members of society, who feel that they are part of a group rather than isolated individuals.
The Daxue, one of the four classical books which became the textbooks to be studied for the official civil service examination, stigmatizes the steps to achieve a good government of the self, of the family and of society: Those men of old who wished to cause the light of their inner moral force to shine forth before the entire world had first to establish orderly rule in their kingdoms. Wishing to establish orderly rule in their kingdoms, they had first to put their royal houses into proper balance; wishing to put their families into proper balance, they had first to cultivate their moral character as individuals; wishing to cultivate their own characters as individuals, they had first to set straight the seat of their emotive and cognitive faculties; wishing to set these faculties straight, they had first to achieve a state of integral wholeness in the inner depth of their consciousness; wishing to achieve a state of wholeness in their innermost consciousness, they had first to expand to the utmost their range of comprehension. And the key to this desire to maximize their range of comprehension lay in extending to all things in the objective world the correct conceptual grid.
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Nowadays Chinese scholars have different opinions about how to face the problems and contradictions of contemporary times, but there is a general consensus on the adoption of traditional values and their positive psychological and social impact.
Chinese philosophers stress the importance of flexibility rather than dogma, as they interpret rulership not as the science of reconciling diverse interests by appeal to universal truths, but rather as the art of persuasion: the disparate elements of society should be molded into a harmonious whole. Similar to imperial China, where the Son of Heaven maintained political order by adhering to ethical values and social norms, today the Party is responsible for the political stability of China.
Each individual should cultivate his own self in order to understand the dao, the Way of Nature, the multiple patterns and relations of the universe. In understanding the dao one should exceed the limited perspective of the self and see oneself in relation to others. The ruler thus achieves harmony from diversity (he erbu tong和而不同), and therefore governs the chaos.
Lin Rongrong, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stigmatizes the different perceptions of a rightful government and the idea of democracy with the dichotomy “Prevent Harm” (yi e 抑恶), typical of US culture, and “Promoting Good” (yang shan 扬善), typical of Chinese culture, whereby in US culture the chief aim of the government is to prevent harm by avoiding the pursuit of individual interests at the expense of others. Alternatively, in Chinese culture the aim is to set forth goals for the betterment of society and to guide citizens in achieving these collective goals.
Freedom of thought and the possibility to make moral choices distinguish people from each other and is constitutive of being human. Making moral choices and expressing one’s own thoughts are essential to the Western concept of democracy. Democracy means that individual members of society, through elections, choose the kind of society they want to live in. In China we are faced with a different mode of thought and rhetoric, for instance the concept of “unity of thought” (tongyi sixiang), which basically implies adherence to the official ideology, against “spiritual pollution,” “bourgeois liberalism,” and “comprehensive Westernization.” This “unity of thought,” which can be interpreted as repression of creativity and dissent and forced adherence to the party, typical of a totalitarian socialism, has been adopted in other East Asian countries where, following the Chinese example, freedom of thought and expression has been limited and channeled toward the promotion of common values. 21
A new spirituality
President Xi also encourages a “new spirituality” which strives to unify foreign creeds such as Christianity with Chinese sensibility and values. The new politics aims to launch Chinese values into the activities of Christian congregations. President Xi is considered a promoter of Chinese culture; he is trying to change the nature of the Christian church by introducing elements of Chinese civilization. A modern kind of “accommodation policy” applied to Christianity by the Chinese.
This policy of sinicization of Christianity found expression in the so-called “Five Introductions”(wujin 五进) and “Five Transformations” (wuhua 五化), initiated in Zhejiang province, where Xi Jinping served as Party Secretary from 2002 to 2007. The Zhejiang province was a fertile environment, following centuries of interactions with Western Christian organizations.
The “Five Introductions” are: Religious policies, laws and regulations must be introduced into churches. Health and medical treatment should be introduced into churches. The culture of popular science should set foot in churches. The concept of supporting people in need should be introduced in churches. Traditional culture and the construction of harmony should be introduced in churches.
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The “Five Transformations” are: The sinicization of Christianity should concern the localization of the churches with Chinese characteristics. The regularization of the management of churches. The inculturation of theology. Rendering transparent the finances of churches. Rendering church doctrines compatible [with Chinese religions].
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The question of the applicability of the word “religion” and its rendering zongjiao has been broadly discussed, and is an ongoing debate in China as well as in the West. 24
A rethinking of the role of “religion” and in general of the five religions recognized by the government is in the political agenda, along with the inclusion of Christianity under the umbrella of the accommodation policy. In twentieth century China, as Li Tiangang 李天刚, professor at Fudan University, points out, Chinese intellectuals such as Kang Youwei 康有为 (1858–1927), Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873–1929), Xia Zengyou夏曾佑 (1863–1924), and Zhang Binglin 张炳麟 (Taiyan章太炎, 1868–1963) all expressed their opinions and viewpoints on “religion” and the result was the refusal and criticism of the concept in slogans such as yifeng yisu 移风易俗 (change prevailing habits and customs), pochu mixin 破除迷信 (dispose of superstitions), Saochú 扫除宗教 (sweep away religion), zhongguo wu zongjiao中国無宗教 (China has no religion), and xiaomie zongjiao消灭宗教 (abolish religion).
Thus, the acknowledgment of “The Religions” and the shift from the Three traditional jiao 教(Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) to the Five jiao (Buddhism 佛教, Daoism 道教, Islam 伊斯兰教, Catholicism 天主教, and Protestantism 基督教) underwent a process of “modernization” or “adaptation.” Li Tiangang recently argued that modern Chinese religions are different from the three schools of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism of imperial times. They are new religions reformed to adapt to the needs of Chinese modern society since the nineteenth century. The two Christian Churches imported from Europe since the seventeenth century differed from Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism; Christianity arrived initially with the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) followed by the London Missionary Society priest Robert Morrison (1782–1834) and European modernity to exemplify a modern society. As for Islam, according to him it is partly foreign, partly traditional Chinese religion, despite facing a new phase with Inner Asia Fundamentalism. 25
The perception of the religions in contemporary China should be considered in a broader context of re-appropriation and revitalization of Chinese traditional culture, meaning “harmonization of traditional values” within a new understanding of modernity.
But what is modernity and what are the relations between new modernity and the religions or the religious sphere?
In Europe, at the turn of the nineteenth century, we witnessed a transformation of the prevailing understanding of religion and its role: on the one hand, there was a new perception and understanding of religion and of the “world religions” (notably Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism) accompanied by the foundation of scientific disciplines in the West (such as religious studies, history of religions, comparative religions); on the other, the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries were periods of religious marginalization, whereby other institutional spheres, including the scientific, the political, the legal, and the economic, increased greatly, giving rise to the idea that in Western society religions had, or should have, a marginal role; a development which reached its apogee toward the middle of the twentieth century. 26
In the late twentieth century the decline of secularization or secularist ideologies was accompanied by novel visible and powerful religious manifestations whereby religion was gaining more attention in all its forms. 27
In China, the first decades of the twentieth century saw a refusal of the traditional culture, in particular of Confucian ethics. Chen Duxiu 陈独秀 (1879–1942), who would become the founder of the CCP, criticized Chinese tradition and in particular Confucianism, advocating liberation from it: The pulse of modern life is economic and the fundamental principle of economic production is individual independence. Its effects have penetrated ethics. Consequently the independence of the individual in the ethical field and the independence of property in the economic field bear witness to each other, thus reaffirming the theory [of such interaction]. […]
In all modern constitutional states, whether monarchies or republics, there are political parties. Those who engage in party activities all express their spirit of independent conviction. They go their own way and need not agree with their fathers or husbands. 28
In fact, after the May 4 Movement, Chinese intellectuals made an effort to deny the value of “religion” in Chinese culture and did not acknowledge the fact that China could have a religion. Liang Qichao thought that Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religions could not be considered religions as these had no dogmas, that Daoism and Buddhism possessed a certain organization but not as significantly as Christianity, that Confucianism had some dogmas, but that it was not transcendent as Christianity; that popular religions had their rituals, but compared with Christianity these could be considered superstitions.
Liang Qichao considered that in China there was no “religion,” and that throughout the history of “Chinese religions” the most important forms of religion came from abroad. 29 Also, Hu Shi 胡适 (1891–1962) and Qian Mu 钱穆 (1895–1990) thought that Chinese culture had nothing to do with religion.
Qian Mu, in his “Discussion of Chinese Religion” (Luelun zhongguo zongjiao《略论中国宗教》), said that Chinese spirituality had nothing to do with the foreign idea of religion, and that everything that belonged to the category of religion came from abroad. However, he could not deny that the Chinese had their own spirituality and beliefs; in fact, he said that the Chinese, too, believed in the spirits. 30 He meant that their spirituality focused on the cultivation of the inner self (nei內), in his words: zhong qixin 重其信, xin qiji 信其己, xin qixin 信其心.
In other words, Qian Mu explained that the spirituality of the Chinese focused on self-cultivation (weiji 為己), on the way of man (rendaojiao 人道教), and on natural theology (ziran shenxue 自然神學). 31 These were exactly the values promoted by Confucians throughout the ages, since the time of Confucius and his disciples. The important role of Confucianism in building a modern, civilized, democratic country has been reaffirmed in China today.
Kang Youwei had tried to explain that a modern Confucianism could be a driver to modernization, but his disciple Liang Qichao refused this perspective and denied the role of Confucianism in the process of modernization. Kang Youwei’s reform failed in 1898, and consequently Confucianism fell into disgrace.
In the first decades of the twentieth century Confucianism played a very conservative role, and during the May 4 1919 movement, the new generation of intellectuals criticized it as representing the traditional regime by the slogan “Down the Confucius Shop” (dadao kongzi jia 孔子倒孔家店). Liang Qichao梁启超 (1873–1929), Hu Shi 胡适 (1891–1962), and Liang Shumin 梁舒敏 (1893–1988) thought that Chinese culture lacked a sense of “religion,” and that Chinese funerals were like poetry and ethics rather than religion; they lacked the fundamental aspects of a religion like Christianity, that is, dogma, organization, and a transcendent aspect.
In 1929, rules were issued to decide whether the temples were to be destroyed or preserved. The acknowledged religions, in particular Buddhism and Taoism, and the temples dedicated to the heroes of Chinese civilization, Confucius among them, were to be preserved, and the rest were to be destroyed, a distinction which evidently was impossible to apply, especially in the case of Daoism, which was indissolubly associated with them. As Goossaert explains, the most significant consequence of this process of purification that aimed to separate the five “official religions” from the “superstitions” which actually were at the base of Chinese religion was that the great majority of communities worshipping local saints in villages or neighborhood temples were deprived of legal protection and were confiscated and converted into schools, police stations, garrisons, etc.
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