Prasanta Chakravarty, Brinda Bose - The Confucian Epilogue - the uses of humanities education in China
“Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome aboard the Harmony (Hixie Hao) Bullet Train from Shanghai to Beijing.” It is a bullet train. China is. But one that is chaotic, serpentine and ever-morphing. And the humanities, it appears, shall provide the harmonious anchorage to its dizzying pace. A dominant section of its practitioners and policy makers believe that to be the role of humanities in contemporary China. In a recently concluded symposium to assess the directions Humanities studies is taking around the world held at Nanjing University—one of the top C9 League Universities in that nation—it was instructive to witness the way the Chinese academia and artistic community perceive emerging trends and imagine their role in them. This provides us with a fresh view outside of the dominant Euro-American and South-Asian paradigms for humanities studies. It also allows us a sense of how one of the major economic powers of the world is currently thinking about culture and literature within patterns of economic growth; how it is trying to come to terms with its own internal, tortuous debates, started after Mao’s death in 1976, and at the same time guardedly welcoming the world to share and exchange diverse viewpoints—thanks to its open-door policy. In fact, understanding the way China thinks and responds to artistic and literary debates makes an interesting comparison with the way humanities studies are being shaped now by the liberal policy-makers and academics in India.
A Triptych
The triangular ideological axes within which the Chinese questions may be framed are well chalked out: accommodating Mao and the official version of socialism in a changed world, negotiating with non-Marxist Western economic motivations, and a grand return of Confucius and his ameliorating ethical ideal. According to the formulation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the current political system is the primary stage of socialism, a transitional phase to a higher and superior form of socialism. But there is a deep aversion to utopian thinking and to Mao’s rejection of the moral and cultural past during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The CCP no longer stresses class struggle; nor does it oppose private property. The legal system is also being overhauled to that end. This is how Daniel Bell, one of the leading intellectuals at Tsinghua University in Beijing (who often writes to provide a moral raison de etre for the present dispensation) expresses it, drawing a parallel with India, “That is why Marx justified British imperialism in India: yes, it would be exploitative and miserable for Indian workers, but the foundations would be laid for socialist rule.
”The fact of the matter is that no one is really sure what the ruling elite intends as far as socialism is concerned. In the short term, the communist government will not be confined to Marxist theory if that conflicts with its intention of providing stability to the nation and its wish to remain in power. But Western ideas of rights-based liberalism is also found wanting, for that too conflicts with nationalist sentiments and local practices. To fill the moral vacuum that such scales of economic ambition must create, the official circle has taken refuge to Confucius and his followers, a harmonious and peaceful option, one that can both counter western style democratic values, extreme forms of nationalism and sects like the Falun Gong. Confucian thinking—a baggy term with its wide variety of forms and interpretive scope—is the perfect recipe for offering the compunctions of an economically growing nation a moral rudder. It stresses love, thrift, filial piety, family responsibility, cultural homogeneity and so on, and floats around more as a cultural fulcrum in the public consciousness. For the government, emphasizing harmony means showing a concern for all classes. Internal disturbances must be handled peacefully, not by violent class conflict.
Internationally, the idea of a harmony-loving nation allays fears of military adventurism and an economic explosion. This workaholic nation must also apparently critique itself by setting an example of being morally upright. Such indoctrination must start young—millions of schoolchildren are now studying the Confucian classics, including in many local initiatives outside the formal system. Several high-profile companies in China instil training in “culture” that is grounded in Confucian values and the classics, to inculcate loyalty, responsibility, meritocracy and philanthropy.
Indeed, responsibility is in the air. Corporate intervention and assimilation of good citizens within the system is also the baseline from which the current Indian political class speaks. And the deeply conservative academic-managers are gung-ho too. It has begun right from schools where the first lessons of pop-morality are being proposed...
...One trusts, however, that it is not the end of ideology in China. It is too complex and varied a nation to be thus harnessed. Nor will such modern scholasticism reign forever. One witnessed some notable maverick dissension at the humanities symposium itself. Many Chinese scholars and artists understand acutely the nature and methods of this process of social engineering—the construction of morality and the construction of civilization in keeping with a socialist market economy. The moral planning that goes with it is a certain kind of nation-building exercise. Gan Yang, in a powerful and influential article, ‘Memories Construction and Structures of Tradition’, defines tradition in this case not as identity or memorialisation, but a ‘technocratic-utopian’ renewal project—this is ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’—a brake to ‘stop the runaway engine of modernity’.
Here is a leap into moral time, where tradition turns into a useful re-embedding tool for preparing an exemplary society. Values become instruments of reform and modernization. In another controversial essay, ‘Liberal Socialism and the Future of China: A Petty Bourgeois Manifesto’, Cui Zhiyuan calls this arrangement a shareholding-cooperative system which seeks to moderate the social consequences of divisions and hierarchies. Leading intellectuals of the New Left such as Wang Hui have long been calling for social justice, reiterating that China’s first priority should be to address the huge gap between rich and poor, and to secure the interests of the disadvantaged. It is evident that while the happiness-seeking bourgeois in the economic sphere is a creator of industry and accumulation, in the cultural sphere he is clearly for the solidity and persistence of all things. Hence, the required dose of saccharine sentimentality... read more: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286275
A Triptych
The triangular ideological axes within which the Chinese questions may be framed are well chalked out: accommodating Mao and the official version of socialism in a changed world, negotiating with non-Marxist Western economic motivations, and a grand return of Confucius and his ameliorating ethical ideal. According to the formulation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the current political system is the primary stage of socialism, a transitional phase to a higher and superior form of socialism. But there is a deep aversion to utopian thinking and to Mao’s rejection of the moral and cultural past during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The CCP no longer stresses class struggle; nor does it oppose private property. The legal system is also being overhauled to that end. This is how Daniel Bell, one of the leading intellectuals at Tsinghua University in Beijing (who often writes to provide a moral raison de etre for the present dispensation) expresses it, drawing a parallel with India, “That is why Marx justified British imperialism in India: yes, it would be exploitative and miserable for Indian workers, but the foundations would be laid for socialist rule.
”The fact of the matter is that no one is really sure what the ruling elite intends as far as socialism is concerned. In the short term, the communist government will not be confined to Marxist theory if that conflicts with its intention of providing stability to the nation and its wish to remain in power. But Western ideas of rights-based liberalism is also found wanting, for that too conflicts with nationalist sentiments and local practices. To fill the moral vacuum that such scales of economic ambition must create, the official circle has taken refuge to Confucius and his followers, a harmonious and peaceful option, one that can both counter western style democratic values, extreme forms of nationalism and sects like the Falun Gong. Confucian thinking—a baggy term with its wide variety of forms and interpretive scope—is the perfect recipe for offering the compunctions of an economically growing nation a moral rudder. It stresses love, thrift, filial piety, family responsibility, cultural homogeneity and so on, and floats around more as a cultural fulcrum in the public consciousness. For the government, emphasizing harmony means showing a concern for all classes. Internal disturbances must be handled peacefully, not by violent class conflict.
Internationally, the idea of a harmony-loving nation allays fears of military adventurism and an economic explosion. This workaholic nation must also apparently critique itself by setting an example of being morally upright. Such indoctrination must start young—millions of schoolchildren are now studying the Confucian classics, including in many local initiatives outside the formal system. Several high-profile companies in China instil training in “culture” that is grounded in Confucian values and the classics, to inculcate loyalty, responsibility, meritocracy and philanthropy.
Indeed, responsibility is in the air. Corporate intervention and assimilation of good citizens within the system is also the baseline from which the current Indian political class speaks. And the deeply conservative academic-managers are gung-ho too. It has begun right from schools where the first lessons of pop-morality are being proposed...
...One trusts, however, that it is not the end of ideology in China. It is too complex and varied a nation to be thus harnessed. Nor will such modern scholasticism reign forever. One witnessed some notable maverick dissension at the humanities symposium itself. Many Chinese scholars and artists understand acutely the nature and methods of this process of social engineering—the construction of morality and the construction of civilization in keeping with a socialist market economy. The moral planning that goes with it is a certain kind of nation-building exercise. Gan Yang, in a powerful and influential article, ‘Memories Construction and Structures of Tradition’, defines tradition in this case not as identity or memorialisation, but a ‘technocratic-utopian’ renewal project—this is ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’—a brake to ‘stop the runaway engine of modernity’.
Here is a leap into moral time, where tradition turns into a useful re-embedding tool for preparing an exemplary society. Values become instruments of reform and modernization. In another controversial essay, ‘Liberal Socialism and the Future of China: A Petty Bourgeois Manifesto’, Cui Zhiyuan calls this arrangement a shareholding-cooperative system which seeks to moderate the social consequences of divisions and hierarchies. Leading intellectuals of the New Left such as Wang Hui have long been calling for social justice, reiterating that China’s first priority should be to address the huge gap between rich and poor, and to secure the interests of the disadvantaged. It is evident that while the happiness-seeking bourgeois in the economic sphere is a creator of industry and accumulation, in the cultural sphere he is clearly for the solidity and persistence of all things. Hence, the required dose of saccharine sentimentality... read more: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286275
See also
Chinese media and the politics of forgetting: Tiananmen anniversary - June 4, 1989
Chinese Journalists resist censorship: Timothy Garton Ash on The Southern Weekly affair
Looking Back at the June 4 Massacre, Twenty-Four Years on
Chinese Journalists resist censorship: Timothy Garton Ash on The Southern Weekly affair
The Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang
The crises of Party culture become clear with a single glance. The CPC is called the ruling party, yet it operates according to secret party rules: this is an identity crisis. Its formal ceremonies & slogans are like those of an extremist church, & it has long lost its utopian doctrine that stirred the passion of the people: this is an ideological crisis. It tells beautiful lies while accepting bribes & keeping mistresses: this is a moral crisis. The totalitarian system is in the process of collapsing, yet political reform is not in the foreseeable future: this is a political crisis. It has corrupted traditional values & also rejected universal values, rendering Party members and government officials at a spiritual loss: this is a crisis of values.
The crises of Party culture become clear with a single glance. The CPC is called the ruling party, yet it operates according to secret party rules: this is an identity crisis. Its formal ceremonies & slogans are like those of an extremist church, & it has long lost its utopian doctrine that stirred the passion of the people: this is an ideological crisis. It tells beautiful lies while accepting bribes & keeping mistresses: this is a moral crisis. The totalitarian system is in the process of collapsing, yet political reform is not in the foreseeable future: this is a political crisis. It has corrupted traditional values & also rejected universal values, rendering Party members and government officials at a spiritual loss: this is a crisis of values.
