Abstract
This article examines a genre of psychological self-help in China that deploys Confucian ethics to address social, moral, and psychological distress. Within this genre, a branch of what is called “third force” self-help, which attempts to overcome an ambiguous “third state” between health and illness, advocates encourage individuals to cultivate a form of virtuous power that emanates from the heart, seen as the basis of cognition, virtue, and bodily sensation. The heart has the freedom to imagine and act but also constrains such freedom. It constitutes the moral core necessary for achieving equanimity, a state of equilibrium in which one is not shaken by external disturbances and spontaneous bodily reactions are regulated by high moral reflection. This third force self-help uses heart-based Confucian ethics not only to help individuals cope with socioeconomic changes, but also, I argue, to constrain direct opposition to the causes of those changes by translating structural inequalities into ethical and moral issues. I suggest that this virtuous power serves government interests. The emphasis on Confucian ethics humanizes market competition and biologizes individual and family responsibility for care, legitimizing both class stratification and the family as a provider of social welfare.
He who is really ren [benevolent] is never unhappy; he who is really wise [knowing dao] is never perplexed. The Analects When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there to fear? The Analects There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. The Analects
On 7 April 2007, a bank patron in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, Ji Cheng, withdrew money at the same time as security guards happened to be transferring cash to the branch. Ji got into an argument with the driver of the cash car, and the driver called to one of his colleagues, surnamed Zhu, who rushed over and shot Ji. Ji died on the spot. Security video shows that there was no provocation to justify Zhu shooting the bank patron. The incident triggered a nationwide debate. While most people blamed the tragedy on moral decay (see also “the death of Yue Yue”), 1 Chinese psychologists also pointed out that, in the case of the shooting, a lack of coping skills for dealing with stress may have contributed to Zhu’s actions; he was unable to appropriately adjust his high alertness and anxiety in the moment.
These concerns with the moral and psychological status of Chinese citizens have partly driven the rise of what is called the “third force of psychological self-help” (xinli zhuren de di san shili) (Zheng, 2009). Third force psychology is positioned in relation to two existing (and presumably inadequate) self-help genres (Zheng, 2009) – namely, free, medicalized counseling (mostly offered via broadcast on state-run media) (Clay 2002), and pragmatic problem-solving instruction (for example, anger management). Both those genres have been applied by governmental and non-governmental agencies in response to heightened psychological distress in China since the 1990s. The third force differs in that instead of pathologizing distress or offering practical advice, it encourages people to foster both psychological and ethical mechanisms to redress a specific state of distress deemed the “third state” (also called ya jiankang “sub-health”) (see Bunkenborg, 2014). According to proponents, this state, a compromised position of ambiguity and insecurity between health and illness that expresses psychologically, somatically and ethically, is rampant in China, affecting over 80 percent of the population (Liu, 2008). Counselors, psychologists, psychotherapists, and Confucian philosophers claim that the third force approach is a specifically Chinese remedy for this form of distress, tackling moral and psychological problems in tandem. Their claim has gained traction, and third force self-help now benefits from the qualified support of the government and is propagated through state media, including the powerful Central China Television (CCTV).
But how do proponents explain the spread, in China, of the ambiguous, insecure third state? What has led to dramatic cases of moral and psycholgoical failure, like those of Ji Cheng and Yue Yue? To answer these questions, they point to recent history. In China, “egalitarianism” in distribution dominated Mao’s socialist planned economy. However, since the late 1970s, mechanisms of market competition have been implemented, allowing some people to become rich, thus creating a significant income gap. Since the mid-1990s, when state enterprise restructuring cast off over 35 million workers, the gap has widened. Mass layoffs, together with urbanization and the move away from public social welfare (towards incomplete and poorly funded social support), have created a “new” class of urban poor, including laid-off and underemployed workers, retirees, and rural migrants (Wu and Webster, 2010). Waves of social unrest have posed threats to government stability. Simultaneously, the declining acceptance of communist ideology by ordinary people and the unleashing of market force have contributed to what some have deemed a moral and psychological “vacuum” (see Bell, 2008; Yan, 2011). Meanwhile, some estimate that one hundred million of the 1.3 billion Chinese suffer from some form of mental disorder (Chen, 2010). Thus, distress is widely seen to be on the rise. Third force self-help labels this distress the third state and claims to treat it by reconfiguring existing self-help tools in a Chinese way. On the surface, third force self-help actually criticizes market competition as pathological – leading to distress of body and mind. As one trainer I observed put it, “Competition, then anxiety, stress, class struggle, war, etc. these are vicious cycles of a market economy and capitalism.” The branch of third force psychology that I study here mobilizes Confucianism as a resource to address the ills emanating from market competition, be they social, moral or psychological.
And yet, third force should also be seen as part of China’s larger, booming peixun culture. Peixun, roughly translated as training, teaching, or cultivating, claims to offer practical knowledge or skills that give people an advantage in the job market. One key feature of such training claims to help people improve their psychological quality (xinli suzhi) and maximize their potential through xintai peixun (training of their heart-attitude). Xintai peixun is particularly appealing to those who want to enhance their work life in a climate of increased competition and improve social relationships, even as these are strained by increased socioeconomic dislocation (see also Zhang, 2014a).
It is in this atmosphere of a training-enthused culture that I took part in third force psychological training sessions. These were offered by counselors, Confucian philosophers, and psychological self-help gurus. At Beijing Normal University, famous for its psychological education, in 2012 there were about 15 counseling centers in one particular campus building offering psychological training that can be considered “third force.” They mainly target white-collar workers, university students, entrepreneurs, and public servants. 2 Of course, this level of psychological service is not uniformly available, country-wide; the ratio of counselors to the population in China is 2.4 per 1 million people – very low compared with the US, where that number is 3,000 (Han and Zhang, 2007). Still, broadly speaking, for most Chinese, psycho-education media and self-help literature have become important bearers of therapeutic messages and psychological knowledge. Indeed, a therapeutic ethos in China has emerged – the language, ideas and practices of therapeutic expertise – in governing the population and social life (see Kleinman, 2010; Yang, 2013; 2015; Zhang, 2014a, 2014b). Arthur Kleinman (2010) calls this trend “psychoboom” – the widespread use of psychometric methods, psychological knowledge, and psychotherapy training in Chinese society.
One important aspect of this boom has been a revitalization of Confucianism. This is not entirely new. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, the communists invoked Confucianism to carry out two agricultural programs – one aimed at preserving family farms, the other at socializing private lands (see Zhang and Schwartz, 1997). During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Mao rejected Confucianism, deeming it at odds with revolutionary action. However, a decade later, Confucian teaching was again of interest, as Chinese thinkers sought to dignify and stabilize their country within globalization (Zhang and Schwartz, 1997). Since then, alongside another burst of official government support, a trend has emerged toward simplifying, popularizing, and psychologizing Confucianism in order to reach a broader audience, more recently in the context of the psychoboom (see Yu, 2006; Zhang, 2014b). Revitalized Confucianism as a psychological resource aims to relieve psychological disorders and pacify an anxious population while stabilizing a society in distress. 3
Third force psychologists who incorporate Confucianism in their training contrast this genre with both Mao’s negative ideological orientation and Western modes of self-help, such as those epitomized in New Age training. One trainer described what he perceives as this unique third force approach: We will have poise and confidence that reaffirm that we go beyond the kind of personality that is always rushed, worried [as was] typical in Mao’s era. Now after years of opening up, we should feel adequate as human beings not always catching up with the West. Unlike finishing schools that teach etiquette and know-how, we offer ethical and psychological bases for something that is not teachable: poise and confidence. Though unteachable, they can be nurtured through embodying virtues.
In fact, while the explicit purpose of third force training is to relieve the spread of third-state psychological distress, in practice, it places more emphasis on success than health. As an opening exercise for one 2010 workshop, the trainer, a psychological guru and author of books on ancient wisdom for wealth management, asked everyone (over 150 trainees) to stand up and “draw” the biggest “8” we could possibly manage with our arms and our bodies. The trainer then invited us to imagine the potentiality of our bodies and the potential development and prosperity of the 8 – an auspicious number in Chinese culture, symbolizing wealth and rapid growth. The exercise captured the themes of the workshop: prosperity and success through the Confucian tradition (in contrast with, for example, Carnegie success studies via market logic). To obtain wealth and success, this instructor asked participants to call upon shenghuo xinlixue, or “life psychology,” an approach that treats life as a source for improving one’s psychology in order to thrive in society. Self-help, then, was to be enacted in everyday life.
This prompting could occur because of the nature of Confucian ethics, which is not a distinct realm of human thought or action, but embedded in everyday practice (Liu, 2008; Lu, 2006; Zheng, 2009). In this sense, third force self-help, by tailoring precepts of Confucianism, psychologizes everyday life. To understand the power this psychologization holds in contemporary China, it is important to understand the adapted Confucian principles undergirding third force. First, proponents argue that psychological distress is not about difficulties or suffering but about people’s response to challenges; second, they claim that a virtuous person will not develop psychological disorders because they understand the dao (the Way, the rule and order of the natural and social world) and cultivate virtues such as ren (compassion). These virtues are based on the “heart,” an inner moral core necessary for achieving equanimity (see below), a state of equilibrium that overcomes the ambiguity and insecurity of the third state.
Returning to the 2010 workshop, the guru, with his emphasis on life psychology, was preaching the correct use of the Confucian heart to recover from the distress and confusion of the third state and achieve psychological and material success in a context of rapid market development. I call this success or strength “virtuous power,” a process through which one’s inner moral core anchored in the heart directs and regulates spontaneous bodily responses to circumstance. In what follows, I analyze key features of Confucian ethics of virtue and the heart, and their joint role in achieving virtuous power. While I engage precepts of Confucianism cited and interpreted by third force psychologists, the article is less an exploration of Confucian ethics in their own right than a critique of their implicit co-option by psychologists and the government for sociopolitical purposes. I then demonstrate how Confucian ethics employed by psychologists parallel or identify with goals of government initiatives. First, I offer some context.
Confucian virtue ethics and moral psychology
The Confucian tradition remains the defining characteristic of Chinese mentality (Tu, 1990). Its strong influence on Chinese culture and social life may be due to the value of Confucianism for legitimizing hierarchy and political structures (Zhang and Schwartz, 1997), or to its malleability: as demonstrated above in its waxing and waning popularity with political power, it can be interpreted in multiple ways, for example, as support for liberal democracy (i.e., through the “freedom” of the heart) or for a narrow Chinese nationalism (i.e., through promoting submission as virtue) (Tu, 1990). The moralization of psychological and social distress through Confucian ethics in third force psychological training can be viewed not only as part of the psycho-boom and psychologization (the use of psychology to govern the population and social life), but also as part of the post-1989 government-endorsed “Confucianism Craze” (Zhang and Schwartz, 1997) that seeks to renew the political order based on family, hierarchy, and patriarchy. In the context of former president Jiang Zemin’s call for “rule by virtue,” Confucian teachings are widely viewed as a way of repoliticizing tradition. Writ large, Confucianism is tested for its possible efficacy in solving contemporary problems and offering alternative governing technologies for leading and unifying an unevenly developed and increasingly privatized country. Like the project of “a harmonious society,” 6 the deployment of Confucianism for moral and psychological relief resonates with the party’s interest in redressing the negative consequences of its growth-oriented development pattern and enhancing its political legitimacy.
Those behind the third force movement draw on traditional Chinese concepts, one of which is the notion of xin, “the heart.” Xin is a cultural keyword central to Chinese life. The concept is strongly influenced by Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist philosophies, as well as the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. The meaning of xin contains both the physical heart and the “heart” that we cannot see, which includes emotions, virtue, wisdom, concentration, desire, vision, and attitude. The Confucian heart (xin), viewed as the basis of cognition, virtue, and bodily sensation (Nichols, 2011; Seok, 2013), thinks, judges, and feels (Hall and Ames, 1998). The heart is the origin of all emotions and the source of physical and mental life. Unlike the emphasis on the psyche that is driven by self-interest in other genres of psychological self-help in China, the heart in Confucianism-based third force self-help is the moral core that can negotiate ethical conflict or moral confusion. While in traditional interpretations, the Confucian heart has the potential to know the Way of Heaven (Liu, 2004; Shun, 2004), and humans thus have the potential to realize the state of tianrenheyi (the harmonious oneness of Heaven and humanity (Liu, 2004), third force teachings emphasize the heart’s strong moral component and its power in regulating spontaneous reactions to external forces so that one is not shaken by external circumstances. Thus third force trainers highlight both the “freedom” of the heart and its constraints.
The cultivation of the heart and virtue is enacted in Confucian ethics through the concepts of ren and li. Confucius defined ren as “love all men” (Analects 12.22). Ren makes a human human. It finds expression through the performance of li, which includes participation in rituals, social and political structures, and status-correlated behavioral norms. Confucius stated, “Ren means to restrain oneself and observe li.” Li restores social order by allocating a proper place for each person and prescribing appropriate behavior that will not trigger psychological or moral disorder but will instead contribute to social harmony (Fu, 2007a; Liu, 2008; Lu, 2006).
Ren is a practical virtue in daily life and is supposedly easy to achieve. According to Confucius, becoming ren is not about following rules or laws. Ren is traditionally interpreted as the essence of being, affective and powerful, but through the lens of third force training the operation of this essence takes a contemporary shape. According to a trainer surnamed Ma, speaking at an IT company retreat in suburban Beijing in July 2009, ren is affective. It is beneficial to live close to those with ren, since one can be influenced by those people and begin to develop ren for oneself. Also, those with ren can enjoy life even in difficult situations, because they will not be moved away from their moral core – the heart. Finally, Ma remarked that those with ren can figure out what is right and what is wrong. Ethical or moral practice comes naturally to one infused with ren. Ma further stated that ren is a way of increasing control and influence; by citing Confucius, he suggested that if a ruler cultivates himself with ren, everyone will follow his or her leadership, even without orders. The message in such teachings is that if one practices ren and observes li through daily life, he or she will not suffer from moral or psychological disorders and will have power and influence (see also Liu, 2008; Lu, 2006).
And yet, while speaking to the company’s sales department, Ma also emphasized how one should use character, virtue or charisma to cultivate long-term connections with business partners and powerful government officials and secure sales or support in order to succeed in the market. His emphasis on wealth and market prowess contrasted with messages from other Confucianism-based third force psychologists, who tend to pathologize the desire to achieve material security through aggressive market competition.
An everyday heart and its “freedom” and constraint
Daily self-cultivation based on the cultivation of the heart – on human emotions rather than rationality – as preached in Chinese third force self-help, represents an underexplored area in the anthropology of ethics. The everydayness of ethical subjectivity does echo Kleinman’s (2006) claim that the moral is an experience, and relates to Lambek’s (2010) discussion of “ordinary ethics,” decisions made in everyday life are guided by one’s ethics and that ethical principles are intrinsically ordinary. However, while scholars have examined self-cultivation as a key concept in both anthropological and philosophical studies of ethics or morality (Lambek, 2010; Mattingly, 2012) and in the study of the self in the Chinese context (Kipnis, 2012; Kleinman, 2010; Yan, 2011), how to cultivate the self in the Confucian tradition in ordinary life has received only cursory attention in anthropology (though see Farquhar and Zhang, 2005, 2012 on the practice of yangsheng “nurturing life” and self-cultivation in Beijing). 7 What has been studied includes the way that cultivating the self within the Confucian tradition leads to an understanding of oneself as part of the web of a holistic society (Hansen, 1985; Kipnis, 2012). Self-cultivation is part of xiushen, qijia, zhiguo, and ping tianxia (if one cultivates the moral self, manages family unity, and governs the nation, peace will prevail in the universe). That is, Confucian self-cultivation dovetails with both family and state governance. The ideal Chinese self is rooted in its value for society (Fei, 1992). Confucian self-cultivation is anchored by the virtue of ren and gives rise to mutual assistance that is ultimately designed to achieve social harmony (the Confucian “Grand Union”).
Indeed, unlike virtues drawn from universally shared features of human nature that are developed by rationality in an array of Western moral theories (Rosemont and Ames, 2009), Confucian virtues are derived from family life, family feeling or family roles, which are not individualistic but relational. They are not rational but originate through the heart and human emotions. Indeed, the emphasis on the participation in familial life and in ritual activity renders the Confucian notion of flourishing differ from that of the major Western virtue ethics (Van Norden, 2003). Also Confucians put tremendous emphasis on the developmental role of filial piety, from which the sensibilities and dispositions of many other virtues are cultivated (Ivanhoe, 2007). Indeed, filial piety and fraternal submission are the roots of ren (Analect 1.2) and loosely the basis of Confucian ethics.
If self-cultivation is a process of becoming ethical as one cultivates virtues, the study of ethics draws attention to aspects of freedom that may shape the lives of people who are assumed by others to lack this virtue (see Robbins, 2012). But the emphasis on family roles and filial piety and the enmeshing of self, family, and state in the Confucian ethics beg the question of how much room individuals really have to act according to their own ethical stance. Indeed, a key feature of the anthropology of ethics and morality is the emphasis on issues of freedom, particularly in discussing the distinction between freedom and constraints (Laidlaw, 2002; Lambek, 2010; Mattingly, 2012; Robbins, 2012). Faubion (2011) suggests that ethics is a domain in which the competent and conscious practice of freedom is developed. People everywhere experience some freedom, but only certain societies have made freedom a feature of human life that routinely figures in the awareness of their members (Robbins, 2012). One goal for Chinese third force trainers is to help people discover their “selves” and regain “freedom” (of the heart) – something that presumably was suppressed by Mao’s socialism and has not been fully regained in the post-Mao market economy. This is another putative cause of the third state: ambivalence resulting from historical shifts in subjectivation. However, in Confucian ethics, “freedom” is realized through fulfilling family roles in a web of relationships, which may make people feel more confined than free. But Confucius also pointed out that within such constructs individuals are potentially free, for the power of the heart is infinite (Liu, 2004). Third force training seems to construct subjects who learn to appreciate their position within the family and the community and to recognize the “freedom” they can enjoy through this belonging and through fulfilling their roles within their family and community. This Confucian heart is “free” but not automatic.
By emphasizing the “infinite” power of the heart, third force trainers attempt to “empower” people. Unlike the first two forces of psychological self-help, which highlight the power of experts and expertise while rendering clients “victims” or “patients,” third force self-help advocates put a positive spin on distress as an opportunity for personal growth. A third force trainer is likely to quote a famous statement of Mencius (a disciple of Confucius): When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, and put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incomplete. (Mencius 1970, Gao z ixia)
The heart makes power virtuous
The third force psychologists I interviewed emphasized xin, or the heart, as a symbol of the higher self rather than just an internal organ or as a more fundamental component of being than the body. One trainer in a 2010 session at Beijing Normal University offered a story of a Jewish “psychologist” named “Frank” who was interned in a concentration camp. Frank realized that he had the freedom to choose how to respond to surveillance and torture. He could mediate his experience using his imagination and positive consciousness. He imagined life after his release and saw himself telling his students about camp life. The story suggested that, regardless of external circumstances, people have the freedom to imagine and respond positively to events. (The trainer was referring to Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl.) Although an individual might be co-opted by a system, through imaginative adjustment that person can tolerate oppression without resisting it. In the Confucian context, this story demonstrates the importance of strengthening the heart-attitude described in the above Mencius quote and the infinite power of the heart in perceiving and responding to external circumstances. The trainer said, “jing yuan wu hao chou, hao chou zai yu xin” (One’s environment is not good or bad if the heart does not perceive it that way). That is, transforming something bad into something good does not necessarily require external change; all it takes is an inner act of the heart. In this way such training encourages individuals to turn inward and tap inner strength and resources for solutions to external issues.
However, by stressing the “freedom” of the heart and adopting a model that pins blame for psychological distress on moral or ethical failures resulting from people straying from Confucian virtue ethics, the third force trend actually reinforces the self and its moral agency, rather than structural forces. This perspective resonates with the government’s call for individual solutions to socioeconomic difficulties instead of structural remedies. These interventions also seem to envision accepting complete subjugation and brutality through the heart’s imaginative readjustment without resistance against external powers or norms, as illustrated in the story of “Frank.” This claim differs from Judith Butler’s (1999) argument that the capacity of the individual subject to resist norms arises from workings of power itself, and does not reside within the individual actor. Indeed, as Shively (2014) suggests, in reality there is no reason to presume that human agents innately seek freedom from structures of normativity, and they may actively cultivate norms through a variety of mechanisms. In the context of third force self-help, the heart is nevertheless the very site for negotiating norms of practice and constituting subjectivities.
The anecdote of “Frank” also reveals a contradiction in heart-based ethics and its possible successes, or what we deem the limits of virtuous power. On the one hand, virtuous power, as the achievement of equilibrium through everyday cultivation of virtue in body and spirit, could allow an individual to better navigate an oppressive or distressful situation. In today’s China, this could lead to, for example, staying closer to family (a putative virtuous unit) to gain emotional and material support during a period of unemployment, as economic restructuring continues, thereby reducing distress. However, this power does not impact economic and state powers that have brought about unemployment, and actually supports a neoliberal agenda that requires families to step in where the state will not, a fact the government has not ignored.
As mentioned, the Chinese government has provided qualified support for the Confucian revival, including third force self-help, through state-led radio and TV programs. In 2005, President Hu Jintao indicated that the Confucian idea of harmony underpins the party’s campaign to build a harmonious society. Maintaining social stability is of tremendous sociopolitical significance, given the widespread socioeconomic dislocation and intensified class tension caused by privatization and marketization. Hu’s 2006 “Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces” anti-corruption campaign made numerous references to the Confucian ideals of justice and honesty. In July 2013, the government even wrote filial piety – the root of ren – into the Constitution. On 1 July 2013, China revised its Law for the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People by stipulating the obligation of adult children to obey, please, and tend to the “spiritual” and financial needs of their parents. This revision mobilizes the family to take care of its elderly and represents a rollback of public welfare provision (Levine, 2013). 8 These outcomes beg for a reckoning for third force interventions in relation to biopower as it exists in China. In doing so we see that heart-based practices both serve and have the potential to disrupt biopower. Biopower is a term created by Michel Foucault (1978) to refer to a particular mode of power that administers life. As a juncture of power and life, biopower relates to the government's concerns with fostering the life of the population through discipline and regulatory controls. It deploys diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations. The main aim of biopower, being part of capitalism, is not to repress people, but to make populations productive. It emphasizes the protection of life rather than the threat of death. Life and living beings are at the heart of political struggles and economic development.
Recall that Rabinow and Rose (2006) reinterpret Foucault’s original notion of biopower to emphasize a devolved and individualized element of biopower. They define biopower as governance of life and criticize analyses that center the role of the sovereign. Similarly, Hardt (1999) argues that a new economic dynamic privileges the individual-as-body more than previous biopower regimes in which individuals were constructed as political subjects. In line with Hardt’s conceptualization, the kind of therapeutic governance implicit in third force psychological training aims to offer ethical and psychological mechanisms that can redress the third state and foster the individual’s ability to triumph in life amidst the socioeconomic transformation in China. In the sense of fostering life to make the population productive, this therapeutic governing via third force psychological training is a form of biopower. The governance of social life and the population occurs through the invocation of a therapeutic ethos, which is established via therapeutic expertise, while individuals are constructed as bodies, minds, or hearts in need of guidance. The therapeutic ethos makes this exercise of power appear as therapy and thus hegemonic. In general, third-force psychological training differs from other modes of therapeutic governance: instead of using a strong medical language to pathologize distress, it adopts positive and constructive approaches to “empower” individuals.
Proponents of third force self-help implicitly entrench this therapeutic governance in four ways: (1) by valorizing submission as a virtue through the Confucian notion of wulun (five hierarchical relations) as a way of legitimizing social hierarchy; (2) by pathologizing the desire to achieve material security through competition in the marketplace while promoting ren-based ethics for development of the market; (3) by facilitating people’s capacity to cope with social and psychological distress through promoting a form of equanimity based on the moral core of Confucianism, which assigns blame for psychological disorders to individual failure rather than structural forces; and finally; (4) by rooting filial piety in the heart, which naturalizes and justifies the government’s emphasis on the family as a welfare provider.
And yet, the Confucian ethics of third force psychology that emphasizes the centrality of the heart can also combat therapeutic governance. For example, on the one hand, that organ can align the heart’s owner with state control, as mentioned. On the other hand, the heart, as the central physical and psychic organ, has its “freedom,” “empowering” the individual to envision an alternative future in China – possibly, even, to question Confucianism as a political tool. In one of the training sessions I attended, one participant described his feeling about the emphasis on the heart, “Some aspects of the teaching such as filial piety are resonating with my heart and my conscience. But my heart isn’t at ease when he [the instructor] only talked about our own responsibility without mentioning the role of society in providing for senior citizens, typical chicken soup for the soul (xinling jitang) roughly refers to self-help genres in China. One feature of such genres is their focus on the self and the inner world rather than social contexts (or the state) for psychological relief and solution to people’s problems.
Indeed, in my interviews in Beijing, I often heard alternative and even resisting voices on the implicit political orientation of third force psychology. At a two-day training retreat sponsored by a Beijing IT company in summer 2012, one employee who sat at the back of the room often slept during the sessions, one day I happened to sit next to him and asked him about the training in which the trainer interspersed his psychological message with Confucian doctrines. “Brainwash, pure brainwash,” he remarked, “He [the trainer] should explain why a statue of Confucius on Tian’anmen Square was put up [in 2011] and then suddenly removed after a few days.” I asked why. “Looking at the history,” he replied, “when a dynasty has no other way to survive, they always moved Confucius out of the closet and used his teachings to fool people.” He checked his cell phone message and then slept away that session as well.
When assessing such counter examples and the function of third force within biopower and therapeutic governance, it is worth noting that so far, the Chinese government has allowed third force self-help to flourish (alongside the other two self-help forces), while quashing any direct opposition against state politics. In general, third force encourages people to translate structural social inequalities to ethical and moral issues and achieve a sense of equanimity in order to forestall widespread criticism and social unrest. To illustrate this point, I want to further tease out the mechanics of Confucian ethics incorporated in third force self-help.
Equanimity and virtuous subjects
One element often emphasized by third force trainers is equanimity, which measures the power of the heart to respond to external circumstances. For example, in a video based on her public lecture (Liu, 2008), Liu Yuli, a philosopher from the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, which trains party cadres, discusses the negative effects of anger and ways of cultivating equanimity. She indicates that the body requires at least three days to recover from a three-minute fit of anger. Liu also offers ways of regulating anger. She implies that those who have de (the attainment of ren) will not easily become angered, for de helps nurture equanimity. Liu tells a story about Socrates, comparing him to Confucius. One day, she said, when his wife threw a fit, Socrates patiently listened to her angry speech. After she stopped, Socrates said, “Since you finished your speech, I will go to see my friend.” His calm further angered his wife; she poured a basin of water onto his head, which his friend happened to witness. Socrates joked to his friend, “I know after thunder there will be a storm.”
By claiming that those who have ren or de are unlikely to be emotionally disturbed, Liu’s analysis moralizes anger and other kinds of emotional distress; they represent a failure to cultivate ren using the heart. Liu implies that widespread mental distress in China manifests a deep moral crisis (see also Yan, 2011) triggered by the transformation from a value system anchored in traditional Chinese values, such as ren, to one based on individual-centered ethics derived from market competition. The virtuous agent can have strong emotional reactions when appropriate to the circumstances, but even in that situation he or she possesses a high moral stance that ensures that he or she will not be engulfed by the emotion (Shun, 2011). Such poise results from the agent’s moral core. As Mencius stated, “Virtuous actions are natural expressions of what lies deep within one’s heart” (7A21). Thus, equanimity calls for a dual psychological process through which intuitive bodily responses are regulated by higher moral reflection guided by the heart.
Throughout the Analects, equanimity is presented as an ideal ethical practice; virtuous people should not be disturbed by external forces, but should turn to their own hearts for solutions. Equanimity forestalls attacks; the uprightness surrounding the equanimous individual can be deeply upsetting to opponents, whose ethical shortcomings are implicitly highlighted (Shun, 2011). This is precisely the kind of success – virtuous power – based on heart-centered everyday virtue cultivation that third force trainers encourage. In this sense, equanimity resembles the notion of secondary control. While primary control attempts to change external or environmental factors to fit one’s needs and expectations, secondary control refers to “attempts to change one’s thoughts or behavior to fit the environment” (Cheng et al., 2010: 403). That is, individuals align themselves with existing realities, leaving them unchanged but exerting control over the psychological impact of those realities. However, in the self-help mode, the move away from a focus on how others treat the individual to a focus on the individual’s responses to that treatment can give rise to self-blame. The key message third force trainers convey is that equanimity includes a willing acceptance of adverse life circumstances and a sense of ease and contentment as one flows along with the ethical way of living (see Shun, 2011).
At the nexus where an appreciation of the value of Confucian ethics melds with re-styled self-help, we find a Confucianism that appeals to the Chinese government because it shores up current policy, including privatization and the turn to the family as a provider of social welfare. At the same time, the government blames individuals for their failure to cope with the effects of such policies. The possible self-blame that results from this new formulation of who is responsible for providing for the people relieves the government of responsibility for making critical interventions.
Still, as in the example of the sleepy trainee, it is clear that self-blame does not arise uniformly. While that trainee maintained a kind of “equanimity” on the outside, his heart seemed disturbed by the applicability of reviving Confucianism to solve contemporary problems, and he felt free to do as he pleased while training went on without him.
Ren, filial piety, and biologizing social responsibility
By rooting virtue in the heart, third force training naturalizes virtue as emanating from the biological body and linking it to kinship, with important political implications. At a session in July 2011 at Beijing Normal University, a philosopher-turned-psychological trainer surnamed Zhao argued that ren is far from abstract, but is connected to everyday, embodied emotional practices. Zhao cited Mencius’s story of the child by the well to show how this intuitive embodiment leads to goodness and compassion. The reason why I say that everyone has a compassionate heart is this. Suppose someone suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well. Everyone in such a situation would have a feeling of compassion, not because one wanted to get in the good graces of the parents, not because one wanted fame among their neighbors and friends, and not because one disliked the sound of the child’s cry. (Mencius 1970: 2A6) Treat your elders with respect, and extend this to the elders of other families. Treat your young with tenderness, and extend this to the young of other families. [In this way] you can control the whole world. (1A7)
For Mencius, being benevolent and virtuous is fulfilling one’s biological and human nature (Nichols, 2011). Even though Confucians recognize the equal moral worth of human beings, they acknowledge that humans give priority to biological ties. In third force training, this priority can serve as a strategic social and professional tool. Several trainers argued that it was dangerous to work with distrustful people in the market economy and that, if a person wants to avoid distrust, they should socialize with trustworthy people. Who was trustworthy? Liu (2008), for example, claims that the way to tell which people are trustworthy is to notice which ones exhibit filial piety, citing Confucius 1938: “Qiu zhong chen yu xiao zi zhi men” (Hire people who are filial to their parents). She states that if a person is not grateful to their parents, that person cannot be trusted. Liu then offered a Japanese example. In Japan, employers visit parents to check whether employees in line for promotion are filial. The instructor surnamed Ma offered a similar example. Qin Yunong runs a microcredit company in Shanghai. His lending decisions are partly based on how deferential applicants are to their parents because he believes that this trait correlates with reliability in repaying loans. Thus linked within third force self-help, heart-based virtue, kinship and embodied filial piety tell us which subjects to trust in a market economy, implicitly naturalizing and supporting the current government which draws on Confucian precepts.
Ren, virtuous power, and humanizing the market
While third force trainers criticize market competition and the incursion of “Western” values in China, which, they believe, have caused widespread social and psychological distress, they emphasize moral and ethical solutions guided by both ren and government priorities. For example, in the sessions I participated in, trainers often quoted Confucius as saying that “A gentleman’s anxieties concern dao, not poverty” (Analects 15:31), downplaying socioeconomic causes of individual stress. Some of these trainers implied that class should be replaced by the Confucian notion of wulun, the five hierarchical relationships: father–son, superior–subordinate, husband–wife, brother–brother, and friend–friend. However, in highlighting wulun as emanating from the family, third force trainers seemed to naturalize social hierarchy.
Of course, such teachings and distortion did not always go uncontested. In one of the training sessions, a trainee asked how to use wulun to explain the current income gap and social stratification in China. Instead of offering a direct answer, the trainer, a counselor and hospital director, remarked, Obviously if we stick with Mr. Confucius’s teachings, and continue to practice ren rather than market competition, none of these phenomena will emerge. … Like Confucius's favorite disciple Yanhui, he enjoyed life and was happy [le] even in extreme poverty. He is not anxious or stressed out, striving for money or status, a real junzi (roughly “virtuous gentlemen”).
However, to illustrate how ren works, Liu shifts the focus slightly to a monetary example, as she describes how ren’ai (compassion and love) gives rise to mutual assistance and mutual benefits, engendering win–win situations. She points to Li Jiacheng, the richest person in Hong Kong and China, who, during the 1973 oil crisis, when the price of oil was raised eightfold over the pre-crisis price, did not take advantage of conditions for immediate profit. Rather, Li sold 20 tons of reserve oil to business owners at half price. He also organized bulk buys for people who relied on oil for their businesses, thereby lowering the purchase price. These benevolent acts saved many businesses in his industry, and those business owners regarded Li as their savior. Reciprocally, Li’s ren gained him respect and assistance through the rest of his career.
On the other hand, to demonstrate the negative consequences of competition, at a training session in July 2011, an instructor surnamed Wu told a story of the competition between two groups of sheep to reach a pasture first. They ran so fast that they were not able to stop at the edge of a cliff and fell to their deaths. They competed so strenuously that they forgot that their ultimate purpose was to eat grass on the pasture. Wu used this story to warn people not to focus on competition or profit at the cost of destroying the environment or even themselves. Illustrations such as this relate to sustainable development and resonate well with the goals of the harmonious society. Wu’s teaching has also legitimated the party’s campaign since the mid-1990s for “spiritual civilization” (jingshen wenming) in response to fears that people were becoming too materialistic through aggressive market competition; they were in danger of losing the moral basis anchored in the heart.
Yet, while many third force advocates, like Liu, criticize the unsettling consequences of market competition, they do not argue that China should not develop a market economy. Instead, they envision alternative approaches to development – more “sustainable” and “humane” ones based on ren – the model Li Jiacheng represents. To urge people to regain humanity or ren in the context of market development, at the same training session conducted in July 2011, Wu referred to Mencius’s parable of the degradation of a mountain called Niu Shan: The trees of Niu Shan were once beautiful, but as it was situated near the borders of a large State, they were hewn with axes and hatchets […] The way in which a man loses his proper goodness of mind is like the way in which the mountain is denuded of trees by axes and hatchets. (Mencius 1970 vt. 1, viii, 1, 2)
And yet, the focus of the training session where this exercise took place was on the significance of the kind of “teamwork” often invoked in Western business jargon. Wu compared how Chinese people play chess with the way Western “Bridge” is played, arguing that Chinese players try to prevent others from moving forward, while Westerners establish “bridges” to facilitate the forward movement of teammates. Wu encouraged trainees to act in this team-spirit way, implicitly linking ren and virtue with the Western business model of teamwork, which aims to maximize efficiency for market gain.
Conclusion: The heart, moralization, and psychologization
This study of the recent spread of everyday Confucianism in China through therapeutic interventions of third force self-help offers an analysis of the ethics currently being promoted in that country to both enable people to cope with change and serve government interests. This complementarity involves a particularly challenging paradox, as the goal is for the individual to forsake his or her individualistic orientations and root his or her self in ren, while the government is moving in the opposite direction by creating a market economy that emphasizes competition and individualism. The self-help genre of the third force thus aims to open people to developing the market economy with the cooperative spirit of Confucianism. This genre of ethical practice transforms acceptance and openness to market change into a kind of virtuous power to maintain equanimity in the face of dramatic change, while constraining them from opposing government policy. Distress may be alleviated, but at a cost. There is no correlated ethical imperative to participate in social action to confront government control.
Given that Confucianism stands for order, hierarchy and tradition, its revitalization as a self-help resource demonstrates how psychology, morality, tradition, and politics are integrated into an emerging psycho-political economy. Chinese psychologists and Confucian philosophers help moralize, psychologize, and repoliticize elements of the tradition with an emphasis on virtuous conduct and “benevolent governance” anchored in the heart. The emphasis on virtue adds a new dimension to biopower and therapeutic governance, where the heart as the basis of emotion, virtue and bodily sensation is the linchpin uniting the psychological, the moral and the political. Given both the “infinite” power and constraints of the heart, the heart-based virtuous power as a mode of therapeutic governance both aligns with, and has the potential to challenge, biopower in China today. In general, the highlighting of the heart as the moral core in third force psychological training serves to translate structural inequalities into moral and ethical issues, thus individualizing the government’s responsibility for social problems and legitimating its continued existence.
This study of Confucian ethics – role-based morality and virtue – contributes to the anthropological study of ethics and morality by emphasizing the importance of human emotion rather than rationality and of the holistic heart as the moral core of the individual in thinking, judging, and feeling, by providing a perspective on moral practice that encompasses a dual process in which spontaneous first-order reactions are regulated by high moral reflection, and by emphasizing the significance of fulfilling family roles and filial piety in cultivating moral virtue and maintaining social harmony.
The heart-anchored virtuous power advocated by third force self-help trainers is most evident when filial piety is nurtured. Individuals may experience success in reducing distress by remaining close to family and drawing on those supports; they may also use evidence of filial piety to determine who is trustworthy and increase professional status. However, granting greater status to filial piety also facilitates governmental initiatives. In China, the rise of individual-centered ethics threatens the stability of families when the government needs them most for social welfare provision. The emphasis on filial piety (as the root of ren derived from the heart and as the means of fulfilling one’s human nature) offers a biological and moral legitimation of the government’s recent turn to family as a cornerstone in a reduced social welfare system.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I thank the organizers of and participants at these events. I particularly appreciate comments and insights from Francesca Bray, Stephan Feutchwang, Stefan Ecks, Hans Steinmuller, and Charles Stafford. I thank Marguerite Pigeon, Janet Dixon Keller, Kate Babbitt, and Kristina Kyser for their encouragement, insightful comments, and editorial improvements. Thanks are also due to George Zhao and Wang Aiwu, who helped with the data collection and translation.
Author’s note
Pieces of the argument and narratives of the article were presented at the annual meeting of American Anthropological Association in Chicago and at a conference “Irony and the Chinese State” organized by Hans Steinmuller and Susanne Brandtstadter at the London School of Economics, and in the Department of Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: a multi-year research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities of Research Council of Canada.