One day the Chinese Communist Party will change its name and become the Chinese Confucian Party. Daniel A. Bell, professor of Political Philosophy at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and also an author for the Dissent magazine, said this in a light-hearted manner and now admits that his prophecy is slowly coming true. For decades Marxism has no longer been the reference philosophy for the Chinese regime, as he explains in his most recent book (China’s New Confucianism, 258 pp., $26.95, Princeton University Press). China instead is increasingly abandoning the old Maoist prejudice against the culture inspired by Kǒng Fūzǐ, the Chinese philosopher who lived between the 6th and 7th Centuries B.C., and Confucian classics are taught in party and in state schools. These values are now being referred to in many official documents and speeches (this also took place during the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Games).

The ‘confucianisation’ of politics and society is now apparent and there are some who even say that the elements of Marxism that during the last century became rooted in China are mainly those with Confucian bases. Why do the regime’s leaders dye their hair black? Because Confucius believed that men with white hair needed taking care of and that they should not hold important positions. Why is Karaoke so popular in China? Because the old Confucian tradition attributed great importance to the harmony of singing (this is why the author is sorry that, while his Chinese improves every year, his voice continues to be hesitant and hence he is often obliged to refuse his students’ invitations to join them at karaoke bars). In February 2005, President Hu Jintao himself praised the concept of harmony with an explicit reference to the Master, and Chinese “Goethe Institutes” through which Beijing is spreading its language abroad are using the name of this philosopher. Chinese domestic and foreign policies can be defined as “Confucian” too. According to Confucius, the first duty of a government is to ensure that citizens lack nothing. Human rights and democracy come later, as do international relations. A regime can be condemned and overturned only if it starves it people. If Marx is dead (as witnessed even by Bell’s students who use the books by the philosopher from Trier just to keep a seat in the classroom for their friends, because no one steals books by Marx anyway), Confucius instead is enjoying extremely good health.

In times of spreading anti-Chinese propaganda and alarmism, Bell’s main concern is that many of the thoughts and policies that come from the West are based on rough stereotypes of China, such as the prejudice according to which there is totalitarian control over intellectual debate. The point is that China “shouldn’t be condemned just because it doesn’t look like us”, and this is why Bell immerses himself in the difficult work of interpreting the Chinese world. The Canadian author, for example, discovers basic differences with the Western mentality in the manner in which immigrant domestic servants are treated. While Western people contextualise, the Asian relationship is far more confidential in the sense that domestic servants are treated as members of the family, however this results in their being denied any free time. According to Bell this too is a Confucian legacy, the result of the value of the (extended) family, and should not be judged negatively, even though a Western liberal would say that a contextualised relationship would be more appropriate (stating therefore that rights precede everything else, although in practice in Asia immigrants seem to prefer this more ‘familial’ kind of treatment). “I do not deny that such ‘Western’ values as democracy, solidarity, human rights and the rule of law need to be adopted in China”, concludes Bell. “But they also need to be adapted in China.” Nowadays Beijing seems more open than one thinks from a political-cultural point of view. People should be aware that many Chinese politicians recently travelled to Scandinavia to study the best European welfare system. A far cry from Marx and Mao. The path to Chinese democracy also includes Confucius and Olof Palme.

This article was published by the magazine Reset in its January-February 2009 issue (no.111).

Translated by Francesca Simmons