China's New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society

Posted September 5, 2008

There was nothing politically conservative about Confucius. To conflate his teachings with empirical despotism is as crude as equating the Beatitudes with Roman Catholicism. Those are the implications of a new book by Daniel A. Bell, who teaches political philosophy at Tsinghua.

Mr. Bell is a true believer. The revival of Confucianism in Communist Party rhetoric has great potential, he says, even if it’s not always based on accurate interpretation. It’s enough to inspire Sinologists to dust off their copies of the Analects to start their own version of a Bible study group—almost. Mr. Bell stops just short of endorsing a proposal to restore Confucianism as state ideology with its own branch in a tricameral government.

That proposal is from Jiang Qing, a Chinese scholar who wears traditional Ming dynasty clothing and has been called an anti-Western “Confucian Fundamentalist.” He has worked out constitutional alternative to both socialism and imported Western democracy.
He aims it at the current regime’s “crisis of political legitimacy.” Though Mr. Bell’s critique of Mr. Jiang is too hastily tacked on to the end of the book for it to make sense to laypeople, it is interesting to hear that Confucian fundamentalists do exist.

For a book on ancient political philosophy, China’s New Confucianism is certainly provocative. Almost every Westerner who has done business in China has wondered why karaoke is so popular. And any Westerner who has ever seen scantily clad women parade past red-vinyl booths in what they mistook for “just a karaoke bar” has wondered why paid sex is often preceded by singing duets. Mr. Bell brings it all home to Confucius and his view of music as a vehicle for morality. His disciple Xunzi said, “When music is used to guide and regulate the desires, there is enjoyment but no disorder.” As to extramarital sex, monogamy has never been a part of Confucian morality. Mr. Bell would do well to address other questions: Was monogamy just a Western import along with Marxism? Is the Confucian revival bringing polygamy back into style? And considering that Confucius was fine with polygamy, what was his view on prostitution?

Likewise Mr. Bell successfully draws readers into the Analects by answering questions by answering questions they can relate to modern lives: Why do theft rates spike before the Chinese New Year? Because filial sons and daughters feel obliged to bring gifts to their parents. Why do maids want to be treated more like family members than employees? Because a basic tenet of Confucianism is that moral life is possible only in the context of affective personal relationships. Legal rights as we know them, designed to promote equal respect and fairness, can compete with those sentimental ties. Mr. Bell even explains the phenomenon of top tier officials in the Communist Party dying their hair black. He finds an answer in Mencius, a passage stating that “white-haired people” should be cared for rather than employed in hard work.

Mr. Bell succeeds in using Confucianism to explicate everyday phenomena, but he is most convincing in political theory, for instance in his examination of “harmony”—which many Westerners hear as doubletalk for “conformity” or “submission.” “Left Confucianism,” he says, obligates intellectuals to criticize bad governments and obligates the state to provide for the material well-being of the people. Such values originated in Confucianism before it became state orthodoxy. Later, as rulers adapted Confucianism, they combined it with Legalism, China’s other main political ideology.

Although Confucianism often takes the blame for justifying “authoritarian nationalism,” the real fault lies in Legalism. Legalism and Confucianism were, in many ways, opposing philosophies stemming from a common tradition. Legalism meant harsh laws and punishments to coerce people into obedience. Confucianism, on the other hand, tried to coax people into behaving harmoniously through ethical leadership and ritual.

“There is an inverse correlation between the use of punishments and the use of rituals in society,” Mr. Bell writes. But rituals only have the intended moral effect if they involve emotional expression. The legacy of rituals meant to train people in harmony and morality would adapt to and even survive communism. From here, we can plausibly trace phenomena such as the civility campaign and the mass games back thousands of years. This even sheds light on the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies.

In the end, Mr. Bell’s freshest arguments are about hierarchical rituals. Western liberals think of them as coercive and beneficial only to rulers of feudal states. But according to Xunzi, rituals “benefit the weak and the poor, those who would fare worst in a ‘state of nature,’” and they “protect the humble” especially if they bring together people from different levels of power and status. Mr. Bell adds, “Hierarchical rituals can limit the powerful and protect the interests of the disadvantaged.” From mealtime manners to teacher-student and boss-worker relationships, rituals create caring and empathy where otherwise there might be strife.

It is no coincidence, he argues, that Japan and South Korea—societies that have held onto the most traditional Confucian hierarchical rituals—are among the industrialized Asian countries with the most economic equality. His theory is that with these rituals, the rich and powerful don’t have to chest-beat in other ways. The rituals do it for them. Some hierarchical rituals that put the powerful in contact with the weak actually bring about fairness in other realms.

In another section, Mr. Bell plays out a hypothetical conversation between Confucius and a modern professor about “harmony” and the value of direct public criticism. While students at Oxford fight it out in dog-eat-dog debates, Tsinghua students often reserve their strongest criticisms for private emails. The Chinese aversion to direct intellectual confrontation begins to make sense within the context of Confucianism and then by extension, surprisingly enough, so does the rationale behind China’s authoritarian politics.

And so Mr. Bell presents the “left Confucianism” as a solution to the much-discussed ideological vacuum in Chinese society and leadership today. But he doesn’t agree with Yu Dan, a professor at Beijing Normal University who has become the most famous face of the Confucian revival. Her classes and those of other Confucian scholars have been packed, and her books have been runaway bestsellers. Starring in a CCTV educational program on Confucianism made her a household name. Mr. Bell argues, however, that Ms. Yu depoliticizes the Analects, creating a kind of pop Confucianism, better meant for the self-help aisles than philosophy or political theory. One of the reasons she has been convincing, he adds, is that her gender is unstated evidence in itself that Confucianism isn’t so bad for women.

Apparently, what has struck a chord with university students and television viewers turns out to be “supermarket Confucianism.” The figurehead of the Confucian revival is picking and choosing, and then hiding the passages that don’t appeal to censors and her sponsors within the state media. However, Mr. Bell’s critique of Yu Dan’s Party-approved televangelism holds true for his own interpretation of the Analects: He also ignores Confucianism’s darker side. The chapter on karaoke and prostitution turns out to be his only foray into the role of sexual hierarchies in Confucianism. For thousands of years passages of the Analects were called up to force women’s submission to their fathers, husbands, and sons, and of everyone to state officials. How do they show up in modern Chinese society, and how do they fit into the revival? Certain objectionable passages are entirely absent from Mr. Bell’s analysis. The reader is left with bright insights into modern China, but also the suspicion that certain questions have been swept under the rug.

April Rabkin is a Beijing-based free-lance writer.