“Countryside Confucianism”: Organizing the Confucian Revival, Saving the Villages, and Cultural Authority

Abstract

This article examines the Party-State-led Countryside Confucianism experiment based in the rural vicinities of Qufu. There has been, since the 1980s, a renewed interest in Confucianism from both mainland and foreign scholars. More academic to begin with, the focus has recently shifted toward more local and popular groups spreading Confucian teachings across the People’s Republic. This popular resurgence, often described as disjointed and fragmented, has sometimes expressed a more religious or politically charged Confucianism. Recent developments in the Shandong province are now pointing to a more organized—through the involvement of the Party-State—local revival. I argue that this recent government involvement in local Confucian revival comes as a way to compete and reposition itself on the local “cultural market” in order to reinstate its cultural authority over Confucianism, to curb certain practices and possibly restrain the growth of foreign beliefs in the Confucian city of Qufu. This objective of the article is first to document this countryside experience as to frame it in the more general Confucian revival. Furthermore, it will examine its ties to previous rural experiences conducted in Shandong as well as some of its more indirect sociopolitical objectives. To a certain extent, understanding this Party-State-led organized form of local Confucianism will shed light on its renewed role in terms of cultural authority, cultural governance, and local Confucian revival.