State Confucianism, Chineseness, and tradition in CCP propaganda: Anne-Marie Brady

Abstract

In the history of China’s politically fraught debate over what constitutes modernity, Confucianism and Chinese tradition have frequently been portrayed as an obstruction to China’s path towards becoming a modern nation state. The CCP was long at the forefront of those in China who desired the elimination of such influences from Chinese society. However, the CCP is now in the vanguard of those who promote a revival of Confucian and other traditional values in Chinese society. In his authoritative 2008 survey of the rise of Confucianism in contemporary Chinese academic discourse, John Makeham stated that “there are no policy documents and programs that promote the idea of an officially sanctioned ‘Confucianized’ national identity in mainland China.”1 Makeham’s bold assertion might make readers overlook the fact that since the mid-1980s, the CCP has been directly involved in supporting the return of Confucianism2 and other aspects of traditional Chinese thought as a mainstream discourse in Chinese society. As I will show in this chapter, a careful reading of pertinent Party policy documents from the 1980s to the present reveals that the current popular Confucian revival began with the imprimatur of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) support, and in recent years it has now been fully incorporated into official discourse. The Party’s adoption of these concepts parallels the popular revival of interest within Chinese society towards China’s traditional philosophical and cultural norms. The debate over what “modernity” means continues within China, but some are now raising concepts such as “alternative modernity,” “socialist modernity” and “multi-modernity.” Instead of mimicking the experience and systems of other modern nation states China is now seeking to forge its own distinctive path, one which incorporates Chinese tradition within modernity, rather than rejecting it outright. In Marxist terms, ideology is determined by a society’s material conditions.From 1978, and even more so from 1992, China followed a decidedly different pattern of development from that of the Mao era, and CCP ideology has progressively evolved to reflect this change. Historically, Party ideologues denounced Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture as “feudal” andsought to erase their influence on Chinese society. So how is it that the CCP now embraces certain concepts of Confucianism and Chinese tradition, when in the past it rejected them and sought to reverse their influence in Chinese society? In the following chapter I will explore the role Confucianism and other traditional Chinese philosophies now play in the CCP’s contemporary propaganda and thought work, and consider in what way the new emphasis relates to the revival of popular interest in Chinese traditional philosophy and culture. While there has been much discussion of the popular revival of Confucianism, there has been very little analysis so far of the CCP government’s point of view on this new social trend. The chapter concludes with an analysis of what this shift in ideological content can tell us about the changing nature of political power in the People’s Republic of China today.