A Confused "New Confucianism"
In the political realm, the ruling Communist Party has, rather ironically, embraced the Confucian revival. Invocations of Maoist-Marxist socialist rectitude ring hollow now in a society roiled by neo-liberal, crony-capitalist economic transformation. Better to say that the “rise of China” has returned it to historical greatness, creating all sorts of possibilities for connecting the Chinese present with the Chinese past, including Confucianism, however strained the allusions might be.
A decade ago, President Hu Jintao began to extoll China as a “harmonious society,” resonant with Confucian idealism. More recently, President Xi Jinping has regularly cited classic texts to bolster his image as a learned exemplar of civilized leadership.
But these official references to Confucius, even if they were something more than political posturing, cannot counteract the much more powerful social and cultural changes sweeping across China. Rapid modernization in all of its manifestations – commercialization, urbanization, social mobility, the rise of the individual – have fundamentally transformed the contours of Chinese society.
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