from FPRI:
CONFUCIUS IN A BUSINESS SUIT:
Chinese Civilizational Norms in the Twenty-first Century
by Evelyn S. Rawski
Chinese attitudes towards their traditional civilization
have reflected the shifting political agendas of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the early twentieth
century, some intellectuals identified Confucianism as a
major barrier to the creation of individuals who could
participate in building modernity. In the words of the short
story writer Lu Xun, filial piety and other Confucian values
had imprisoned individuals, forcing them to sacrifice their
own dreams to perpetuate the family.[1] It, along with
Buddhism and Daoism, had to be destroyed so that a new
society could arise in China.
Iconoclasm, a characteristic of the New Culture movement of
the 1910s and 1920s, appealed to Mao Zedong, then a young
student. Although he displayed some ambivalence about
China's historical civilizational achievements after
establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949,
he generally expressed the view that Confucianism had been a
negative force in Chinese history.[2] The educated elite who
wrote the canonical works of Confucianism came from the "bad
classes," so how could their creative products be
praiseworthy? The regime's hostility to Confucianism was
exemplified in the "Pi Lin, Pi Kong" (Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-
Confucius) campaign of 1973-74, which ironically may have
exposed Chinese youth for the first time to the Analects,
which purport to be a record of Confucius' conversations
with his disciples. Articles appearing in the press during
the mass campaign presented Confucius as "a representative
of the declining slave-owning aristocracy who hated the
emerging feudal landlords and their supporters, the legalist
philosophers." In other words, Confucius was not even
feudal, he was pre-feudal and attempted to block the
historical dialectical movement from aristocracy to feudal
order.[3] In contrast, the first emperor and unifier of
China (221 B.C.), Qin Shihuang, who had traditionally been
characterized as a villain by Confucian historiography, was
hailed as a hero for burning books, in order to break the
dominant aristocracy to usher in a new historical era.
The attack on Confucianism, along with Buddhism and Daoism,
however, aroused other intellectuals to passionate defense
of these civilizational products. Contact with European
philosophic models prompted other intellectuals to defend
Confucian thought against iconoclastic attack and found a
school of "New Confucianism." Those defending Confucianism
as a philosophical system capable of holding its own with
any complex philosophy created in Europe have in the process
imported European ideas into their writings.[4] Through the
teacher-disciple links forged in the early twentieth
century, New Confucianism survived the political turmoil of
China's twentieth century in U.S. academic institutions and
elsewhere, and re-emerged in the 1980s as a significant
intellectual discourse.[5] Similarly, Buddhist leaders
strove to enunciate the ways in which their religion spoke
to the new dilemmas facing Chinese people in the twentieth
century. During the socialist years, Buddhist institutions
in China were damaged; forcing monks to return to lay life
virtually destroyed the monastic institution, but not
completely.[6] Daoism, itself identified as "feudal
superstition," has also survived into the twenty-first
century.[7]
As we begin the second decade of the twenty-first century,
almost 35 years after Mao's death, we find a complete
reversal of judgment concerning Confucius and the doctrine
bearing his name. The recent appearance of a bronze statue
of Confucius, which now stands on the east side of
Tian'anmen square, at the heart of China's capital, Beijing,
in close proximity of Mao Zedong's mausoleum, culminates a
political reorientation that uses Confucianism as a cultural
symbol to be projected abroad, one that seems to be less
threatening to the capitalist countries with which China
deals on an increasingly intimate basis.[8] Some analysts of
contemporary politics explain the regime's Confucian
patronage as China's emulation of U.S. and European "soft
power" policies. The PRC's equivalent of the Goethe
Institutes are the Confucius Institutes, first founded in
2004, which now offer Chinese language instruction and
Chinese culture courses in 88 countries and regions all over
the world. According to an article in Beijing Review, there
were 282 Confucius Institutes by late 2009.[9]
But the new interest in Confucianism is not merely directed
towards a foreign audience, nor is it confined to the PRC.
"Confucianism" (Ruxue) is a term that has been used at
different times to refer to "a form of culture, an ideology,
a system of learning, and a tradition of morally normative
values."[10] Some argue that the revived interest in
Confucianism was actually sparked by Western interest in
Confucianism as a significant component of East Asian
capitalism.[11] Another important stimulus to the
transnational intellectual discourse, involving academic
participants in the PRC, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and
other parts of the world, was the Singapore government's
1982 decision to insert Confucian ethics into the secondary
school curriculum, with the advice of eight Confucian
specialists from abroad.[12] The idea of a Confucian-style
capitalism voiced by Harvard University Professor Du Weiming
attracted widespread attention and spurred other events: an
international conference on Neo-Confucianism in Hangzhou
(1980), 1982 round-table discussions in Taipei and a Zhu Xi
conference in Hawaii attended by leading scholars from the
PRC and abroad; and Harvard Professor Du Weiming's lectures
and appearances in China in the late 1970s and early
1980s.[13] Among a small circle of intellectuals,
Confucianism was not just a product of China's traditional
civilization, but should be transformed within the
contemporary context, modernized to serve as the foundation
of China's modern culture. Whether that goal was possible,
and just how it could be achieved, were matters of
debate.[14]
Not only have foreign scholars paid serious attention to the
Confucian revival, Confucianism, albeit in a much more
generalized form, has also been embraced by the Chinese
leadership since the 1980s. In the PRC, the China Confucius
Foundation was founded in 1984, and an International
Confucian Association in 1994.[15] In the seventh national
five-year plan for the social sciences (1986-90), the
government approved a large research project on Modern New
Confucian Intellectual Movement directed by a professor at
Nankai University, Fang Keli; Fang received renewed funding
for this project in the eighth five-year plan.[16] Hundreds
of books on Confucian thinkers were published in the 1990s,
and journals dedicated to Confucian subjects appeared.
Centers of Zhu Xi studies were established in Jiangxi and
Fujian (where the great Neo-Confucian philosopher lived and
worked) in the 1990s; in 2002 People's University
established an Institute for Confucian Research (Kongzi
yanjiuyuan).[17] "Almost all" of Zhu Xi's individual works
are available in modern collated and punctuated editions in
China today, with a new modern edition of Zhu's collected
writings being published in 2002-03.[18] Centers of Zhu Xi
studies in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces have held
international scholarly conferences on the philosopher in
1987, 1990, 1995, and 2000, with publications of some of the
conference proceedings. Zhuzi xuekan, a journal edited by
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Shangro
(Jiangxi) Normal College, also disseminate new writing on
Zhu Xi.[19]
Confucianism, along with Daoism and Buddhism, has become
part of National Studies (guoxue) at some major Chinese
universities. Allusions to traditional ideals appear in
speeches of Chinese leaders like President Hu Jintao.
The contemporary explosion of interest in Confucianism
appears in many different guises and is directed to
different audiences. Yu Dan, a professor of media studies at
Beijing Normal University, became a national sensation after
she appeared in 2006 on CCTV to explain the Confucian
Analects and its applicability to the daily life of ordinary
people. The book that she published on this subject was a
major bestseller, even though some Confucian specialists
attacked her "vulgarization" of the original text.[20] In a
similar vein, Beijing University since 2003 has offered
intensive "National Study Classes" (guoxueban) for
businessmen which offer them guidance in reading classical
Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts; Tsinghua, another
prestigious university in Beijing and People's University
have also followed in Beida's footsteps.[21] Oral
recitation/ memorization of the Four Books (The Great
Learning, Analects, Doctrine of the Mean, Mencius), a major
part of the traditional Confucian curriculum, seem to be
returning to favor in the "children read the classics" (shao
er dujing) movement.[22]
Confucianism is cited by Chinese leaders visiting foreign
countries as evidence of China's great civilizational
traditions. A speech in Athens, Greece on October 3, 2010,
Premier Wen Jiabao observed that "both the Chinese
civilization and the Greek civilization have made major
contributions to the progress of world civilization."
Greece, like China, would surely stand the test of its
current fiscal and economic crisis. Wen looked forward to
improving the trade, maritime, and investment relations
between the two countries.[23] Confucianism is especially
valuable in promoting amicable relations with China's East
Asian neighbors. When Fukuda Yasuo, Prime Minister of Japan,
met Professor Yu Dan of Beijing Normal University, they
chatted about Confucius' Analects, which the prime minister
said he had read in middle school.[24] Nor should Europeans
be left out of the dissemination of Confucian texts: one
translator of the Analects into English, Lin Wusun, said
that he compared "the thoughts, experiences and influences
of Confucius with those of Socrates and Jesus," extracting
"useful quotes" from Confucius for those "who want to engage
in further study."[25] Jiang Damin, governor of Shandong
province, announced in 2008 that he hoped to build a
"Chinese cultural symbolic city" in Confucius' native place,
Qufu.[26]
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] See "Diary of a Madman," written in 1918; an English
translation is found in Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other
Stories, trans. William A. Lyell (Honolulu: University of
Hawai'i Press, 1990).
[2] The positive aspect of Confucius which Mao also espoused
was his identification as teacher; see Kam Louie, "Sage,
Teacher, Businessman: Confucius as a Model Male," in Chinese
Political Culture, 1989-2000, ed. Shiping Hua (Armonk, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 29-30.
[3] Quote from Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern
China (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), p .635; see
p. 636-37 for a description of the movement.
[4] For a survey of the twentieth-century evolution, see
John Makeham, "The Retrospective Creation of New
Confucianism," in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination,
ed. John Makeham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp.
25-53. For a very different reading of the Confucian
movement, see Arif Dirlik, "Confucius in the Borderlands:
Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism,"
Boundary 2 22.3 (1995): pp. 229-73.
[5] For a critical appraisal of some aspects of the
intellectual revival, see Benjamin Elman, "Rethinking
'Confucianism' and 'Neo-Confucianism' in Modern Chinese
History," in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in
China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, ed. Benjamin A. Elman,
John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms (Los Angeles: University of
California Asia Institute, 2002), pp. 518-54.
[6] Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern
China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Raoul
Birnbaum, "Buddhist China at the Century's Turn," China
Quarterly #174 (2003): pp. 428-50.
[7] Chi-Tim Lai, "Daoism in China Today, 1980-2002," The
China Quarterly #174 (2003): pp. 413-27.
[8] "China's Confucius Institutes: Rectification of
Statues," The Economist, January xx, 2011.
[9] Ni Yanshuo, "Confucius Around the World," Beijing Review
(March 6, 2008); "Zhang Zhiping, "Spreading the Word
Overseas," ibid. (July 29, 2010), both online at
BeijingReview.com.cn. See the Confucius Institute site:
http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/.
[10] John Makeham, Lost Soul: 'Confucianism' in Contemporary
Chinese Academic Discourse (Cambridge: Harvard University
Asia Center, 2008), "Introduction,"pp. 1-2; also his "The
Retrospective Creation of New Confucianism," in New
Confucianism: A Critical Examination, ed. John Makeham (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 25-53.
[11] Arif Dirlik traces the interest in Confucianism to
Herman Kahn and Peter Berger's writings about the dynamic
potential of the East Asian economies in the late 1970s: see
his "Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the
Reinvention of Confucianism," boundary 2, 22.3(1995): pp.
243-45.
[12] Dirlik, ibid., pp. 238-39; Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 1.
For a perspective on the cultural milieu in the PRC during
the 1980s, see Song Xianlin, "Reconstructing the Confucian
Ideal in 1980s China: The 'Culture Craze' and New
Confucianism," in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination,
ed. John Makeham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.
81-104.
[13] Makeham, "Retrospective Creation," pp. 33-34.
[14] See Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 11, "Marxism and Ruxue" and
ch. 12, "Jiang Qing's Ruxue Revivalism," which includes
discuses the differences between Fang Keli on the one hand
and Luo Yijun and Jiang Qing on the other.
[15] Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 2, 3.
[16] S‚bastian Billioud, "Confucianism, 'Cultural
Tradition,' and Official Discourse in China at the Start of
the New Century," China Perspectives #3 (2007), p. 52. Fang
Keli was later appointed Dean of Graduate Studies at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and became a member of
the Office of Academic Degrees Committee of the State
Council: Jiawen Ai, "Two Sides of One Coin: The Party's
attitude toward Confucianism in Contemporary China," Journal
of Contemporary China 18.61 (2009), p. 694.
[17] S‚bastian Billioud and Jo‰l Thoraval, "Jiaohua: The
Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project," China
Perspectives #4 (2007)p. 4.
[18] Xudong Fang, "Contemporary Chinese Studies of Zhuzi in
Mainland China," Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy
3.1 (2003): 121-22; Fang notes that an earlier ten-volume
edition, published in 1996, was not collated and punctuated.
[19] Ibid., pp. 133-34.
[20] Billioud and Thoraval, "Jiaohua," pp. 18-19. See also
Daniel A. Bell, China's New Confucianism: Politics and
Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008), Appendix 1, pp. 163-74, which
assesses Yu Dan's book, Reflections on the Analects of
Confucius. Bell notes that ten million copies of this book
were sold.
[21] Ibid., pp. 9-10.
[22] Ibid., pp. 15-17.
[23] "Confidence and Cooperation Will See Us Through
Difficulty: Speech at the Hellenic Parliament by Wen Jiabao,
Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of
China, in Athens, October 3, 2010," Beijing Review (December
2, 2010), BeijingReview.com.cn.
[24] "Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Met Yu Dan," Beijing
Review (February 18, 2008), BeijingReview.com.cn. Yu Dan
presented a copy of her book, Yu Dan Explains the Analects
of Confucius, in both a Chinese and Japanese edition, to the
prime minister.
[25] "Modern Take on a Master," Beijing Review November 18,
2010, BeijingReview.com.cn.
[26] Reported in the "Society" section, Beijing Review March
13, 2008, BeijingReview.com.cn.
----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute
(http://www.fpri.org/).
CONFUCIUS IN A BUSINESS SUIT:
Chinese Civilizational Norms in the Twenty-first Century
by Evelyn S. Rawski
Chinese attitudes towards their traditional civilization
have reflected the shifting political agendas of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the early twentieth
century, some intellectuals identified Confucianism as a
major barrier to the creation of individuals who could
participate in building modernity. In the words of the short
story writer Lu Xun, filial piety and other Confucian values
had imprisoned individuals, forcing them to sacrifice their
own dreams to perpetuate the family.[1] It, along with
Buddhism and Daoism, had to be destroyed so that a new
society could arise in China.
Iconoclasm, a characteristic of the New Culture movement of
the 1910s and 1920s, appealed to Mao Zedong, then a young
student. Although he displayed some ambivalence about
China's historical civilizational achievements after
establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949,
he generally expressed the view that Confucianism had been a
negative force in Chinese history.[2] The educated elite who
wrote the canonical works of Confucianism came from the "bad
classes," so how could their creative products be
praiseworthy? The regime's hostility to Confucianism was
exemplified in the "Pi Lin, Pi Kong" (Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-
Confucius) campaign of 1973-74, which ironically may have
exposed Chinese youth for the first time to the Analects,
which purport to be a record of Confucius' conversations
with his disciples. Articles appearing in the press during
the mass campaign presented Confucius as "a representative
of the declining slave-owning aristocracy who hated the
emerging feudal landlords and their supporters, the legalist
philosophers." In other words, Confucius was not even
feudal, he was pre-feudal and attempted to block the
historical dialectical movement from aristocracy to feudal
order.[3] In contrast, the first emperor and unifier of
China (221 B.C.), Qin Shihuang, who had traditionally been
characterized as a villain by Confucian historiography, was
hailed as a hero for burning books, in order to break the
dominant aristocracy to usher in a new historical era.
The attack on Confucianism, along with Buddhism and Daoism,
however, aroused other intellectuals to passionate defense
of these civilizational products. Contact with European
philosophic models prompted other intellectuals to defend
Confucian thought against iconoclastic attack and found a
school of "New Confucianism." Those defending Confucianism
as a philosophical system capable of holding its own with
any complex philosophy created in Europe have in the process
imported European ideas into their writings.[4] Through the
teacher-disciple links forged in the early twentieth
century, New Confucianism survived the political turmoil of
China's twentieth century in U.S. academic institutions and
elsewhere, and re-emerged in the 1980s as a significant
intellectual discourse.[5] Similarly, Buddhist leaders
strove to enunciate the ways in which their religion spoke
to the new dilemmas facing Chinese people in the twentieth
century. During the socialist years, Buddhist institutions
in China were damaged; forcing monks to return to lay life
virtually destroyed the monastic institution, but not
completely.[6] Daoism, itself identified as "feudal
superstition," has also survived into the twenty-first
century.[7]
As we begin the second decade of the twenty-first century,
almost 35 years after Mao's death, we find a complete
reversal of judgment concerning Confucius and the doctrine
bearing his name. The recent appearance of a bronze statue
of Confucius, which now stands on the east side of
Tian'anmen square, at the heart of China's capital, Beijing,
in close proximity of Mao Zedong's mausoleum, culminates a
political reorientation that uses Confucianism as a cultural
symbol to be projected abroad, one that seems to be less
threatening to the capitalist countries with which China
deals on an increasingly intimate basis.[8] Some analysts of
contemporary politics explain the regime's Confucian
patronage as China's emulation of U.S. and European "soft
power" policies. The PRC's equivalent of the Goethe
Institutes are the Confucius Institutes, first founded in
2004, which now offer Chinese language instruction and
Chinese culture courses in 88 countries and regions all over
the world. According to an article in Beijing Review, there
were 282 Confucius Institutes by late 2009.[9]
But the new interest in Confucianism is not merely directed
towards a foreign audience, nor is it confined to the PRC.
"Confucianism" (Ruxue) is a term that has been used at
different times to refer to "a form of culture, an ideology,
a system of learning, and a tradition of morally normative
values."[10] Some argue that the revived interest in
Confucianism was actually sparked by Western interest in
Confucianism as a significant component of East Asian
capitalism.[11] Another important stimulus to the
transnational intellectual discourse, involving academic
participants in the PRC, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and
other parts of the world, was the Singapore government's
1982 decision to insert Confucian ethics into the secondary
school curriculum, with the advice of eight Confucian
specialists from abroad.[12] The idea of a Confucian-style
capitalism voiced by Harvard University Professor Du Weiming
attracted widespread attention and spurred other events: an
international conference on Neo-Confucianism in Hangzhou
(1980), 1982 round-table discussions in Taipei and a Zhu Xi
conference in Hawaii attended by leading scholars from the
PRC and abroad; and Harvard Professor Du Weiming's lectures
and appearances in China in the late 1970s and early
1980s.[13] Among a small circle of intellectuals,
Confucianism was not just a product of China's traditional
civilization, but should be transformed within the
contemporary context, modernized to serve as the foundation
of China's modern culture. Whether that goal was possible,
and just how it could be achieved, were matters of
debate.[14]
Not only have foreign scholars paid serious attention to the
Confucian revival, Confucianism, albeit in a much more
generalized form, has also been embraced by the Chinese
leadership since the 1980s. In the PRC, the China Confucius
Foundation was founded in 1984, and an International
Confucian Association in 1994.[15] In the seventh national
five-year plan for the social sciences (1986-90), the
government approved a large research project on Modern New
Confucian Intellectual Movement directed by a professor at
Nankai University, Fang Keli; Fang received renewed funding
for this project in the eighth five-year plan.[16] Hundreds
of books on Confucian thinkers were published in the 1990s,
and journals dedicated to Confucian subjects appeared.
Centers of Zhu Xi studies were established in Jiangxi and
Fujian (where the great Neo-Confucian philosopher lived and
worked) in the 1990s; in 2002 People's University
established an Institute for Confucian Research (Kongzi
yanjiuyuan).[17] "Almost all" of Zhu Xi's individual works
are available in modern collated and punctuated editions in
China today, with a new modern edition of Zhu's collected
writings being published in 2002-03.[18] Centers of Zhu Xi
studies in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces have held
international scholarly conferences on the philosopher in
1987, 1990, 1995, and 2000, with publications of some of the
conference proceedings. Zhuzi xuekan, a journal edited by
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Shangro
(Jiangxi) Normal College, also disseminate new writing on
Zhu Xi.[19]
Confucianism, along with Daoism and Buddhism, has become
part of National Studies (guoxue) at some major Chinese
universities. Allusions to traditional ideals appear in
speeches of Chinese leaders like President Hu Jintao.
The contemporary explosion of interest in Confucianism
appears in many different guises and is directed to
different audiences. Yu Dan, a professor of media studies at
Beijing Normal University, became a national sensation after
she appeared in 2006 on CCTV to explain the Confucian
Analects and its applicability to the daily life of ordinary
people. The book that she published on this subject was a
major bestseller, even though some Confucian specialists
attacked her "vulgarization" of the original text.[20] In a
similar vein, Beijing University since 2003 has offered
intensive "National Study Classes" (guoxueban) for
businessmen which offer them guidance in reading classical
Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts; Tsinghua, another
prestigious university in Beijing and People's University
have also followed in Beida's footsteps.[21] Oral
recitation/ memorization of the Four Books (The Great
Learning, Analects, Doctrine of the Mean, Mencius), a major
part of the traditional Confucian curriculum, seem to be
returning to favor in the "children read the classics" (shao
er dujing) movement.[22]
Confucianism is cited by Chinese leaders visiting foreign
countries as evidence of China's great civilizational
traditions. A speech in Athens, Greece on October 3, 2010,
Premier Wen Jiabao observed that "both the Chinese
civilization and the Greek civilization have made major
contributions to the progress of world civilization."
Greece, like China, would surely stand the test of its
current fiscal and economic crisis. Wen looked forward to
improving the trade, maritime, and investment relations
between the two countries.[23] Confucianism is especially
valuable in promoting amicable relations with China's East
Asian neighbors. When Fukuda Yasuo, Prime Minister of Japan,
met Professor Yu Dan of Beijing Normal University, they
chatted about Confucius' Analects, which the prime minister
said he had read in middle school.[24] Nor should Europeans
be left out of the dissemination of Confucian texts: one
translator of the Analects into English, Lin Wusun, said
that he compared "the thoughts, experiences and influences
of Confucius with those of Socrates and Jesus," extracting
"useful quotes" from Confucius for those "who want to engage
in further study."[25] Jiang Damin, governor of Shandong
province, announced in 2008 that he hoped to build a
"Chinese cultural symbolic city" in Confucius' native place,
Qufu.[26]
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] See "Diary of a Madman," written in 1918; an English
translation is found in Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other
Stories, trans. William A. Lyell (Honolulu: University of
Hawai'i Press, 1990).
[2] The positive aspect of Confucius which Mao also espoused
was his identification as teacher; see Kam Louie, "Sage,
Teacher, Businessman: Confucius as a Model Male," in Chinese
Political Culture, 1989-2000, ed. Shiping Hua (Armonk, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 29-30.
[3] Quote from Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern
China (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), p .635; see
p. 636-37 for a description of the movement.
[4] For a survey of the twentieth-century evolution, see
John Makeham, "The Retrospective Creation of New
Confucianism," in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination,
ed. John Makeham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp.
25-53. For a very different reading of the Confucian
movement, see Arif Dirlik, "Confucius in the Borderlands:
Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism,"
Boundary 2 22.3 (1995): pp. 229-73.
[5] For a critical appraisal of some aspects of the
intellectual revival, see Benjamin Elman, "Rethinking
'Confucianism' and 'Neo-Confucianism' in Modern Chinese
History," in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in
China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, ed. Benjamin A. Elman,
John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms (Los Angeles: University of
California Asia Institute, 2002), pp. 518-54.
[6] Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern
China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Raoul
Birnbaum, "Buddhist China at the Century's Turn," China
Quarterly #174 (2003): pp. 428-50.
[7] Chi-Tim Lai, "Daoism in China Today, 1980-2002," The
China Quarterly #174 (2003): pp. 413-27.
[8] "China's Confucius Institutes: Rectification of
Statues," The Economist, January xx, 2011.
[9] Ni Yanshuo, "Confucius Around the World," Beijing Review
(March 6, 2008); "Zhang Zhiping, "Spreading the Word
Overseas," ibid. (July 29, 2010), both online at
BeijingReview.com.cn. See the Confucius Institute site:
http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/.
[10] John Makeham, Lost Soul: 'Confucianism' in Contemporary
Chinese Academic Discourse (Cambridge: Harvard University
Asia Center, 2008), "Introduction,"pp. 1-2; also his "The
Retrospective Creation of New Confucianism," in New
Confucianism: A Critical Examination, ed. John Makeham (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 25-53.
[11] Arif Dirlik traces the interest in Confucianism to
Herman Kahn and Peter Berger's writings about the dynamic
potential of the East Asian economies in the late 1970s: see
his "Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the
Reinvention of Confucianism," boundary 2, 22.3(1995): pp.
243-45.
[12] Dirlik, ibid., pp. 238-39; Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 1.
For a perspective on the cultural milieu in the PRC during
the 1980s, see Song Xianlin, "Reconstructing the Confucian
Ideal in 1980s China: The 'Culture Craze' and New
Confucianism," in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination,
ed. John Makeham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.
81-104.
[13] Makeham, "Retrospective Creation," pp. 33-34.
[14] See Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 11, "Marxism and Ruxue" and
ch. 12, "Jiang Qing's Ruxue Revivalism," which includes
discuses the differences between Fang Keli on the one hand
and Luo Yijun and Jiang Qing on the other.
[15] Makeham, Lost Soul, ch. 2, 3.
[16] S‚bastian Billioud, "Confucianism, 'Cultural
Tradition,' and Official Discourse in China at the Start of
the New Century," China Perspectives #3 (2007), p. 52. Fang
Keli was later appointed Dean of Graduate Studies at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and became a member of
the Office of Academic Degrees Committee of the State
Council: Jiawen Ai, "Two Sides of One Coin: The Party's
attitude toward Confucianism in Contemporary China," Journal
of Contemporary China 18.61 (2009), p. 694.
[17] S‚bastian Billioud and Jo‰l Thoraval, "Jiaohua: The
Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project," China
Perspectives #4 (2007)p. 4.
[18] Xudong Fang, "Contemporary Chinese Studies of Zhuzi in
Mainland China," Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy
3.1 (2003): 121-22; Fang notes that an earlier ten-volume
edition, published in 1996, was not collated and punctuated.
[19] Ibid., pp. 133-34.
[20] Billioud and Thoraval, "Jiaohua," pp. 18-19. See also
Daniel A. Bell, China's New Confucianism: Politics and
Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008), Appendix 1, pp. 163-74, which
assesses Yu Dan's book, Reflections on the Analects of
Confucius. Bell notes that ten million copies of this book
were sold.
[21] Ibid., pp. 9-10.
[22] Ibid., pp. 15-17.
[23] "Confidence and Cooperation Will See Us Through
Difficulty: Speech at the Hellenic Parliament by Wen Jiabao,
Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of
China, in Athens, October 3, 2010," Beijing Review (December
2, 2010), BeijingReview.com.cn.
[24] "Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Met Yu Dan," Beijing
Review (February 18, 2008), BeijingReview.com.cn. Yu Dan
presented a copy of her book, Yu Dan Explains the Analects
of Confucius, in both a Chinese and Japanese edition, to the
prime minister.
[25] "Modern Take on a Master," Beijing Review November 18,
2010, BeijingReview.com.cn.
[26] Reported in the "Society" section, Beijing Review March
13, 2008, BeijingReview.com.cn.
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