Is China headed for a clash of cultures as Xi Jinping fuses Confucius and Marx?

Xi Jinping’s vision is producing an unlikely and contradictory brew of Confucian communism, yoked to the service of a unifying state ideology

Paul F. Scotchmer

Published: 4:10pm, 27 Jul 2019

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Soon after becoming general secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping revealed his vision for a more distinctly Chinese direction for his country and has strongly encouraged a renaissance of Confucianism in China. Yet Marxism – a European import – remains the ideological framework of the government. It would seem, then, that China is headed for an internal clash of cultures.

Xi's cultural tack is diametrically opposed to that of Mao Zedong, who dismissed Confucianism as a retrograde social philosophy that could only dampen the revolutionary fire. Under Mao's leadership, The Analects was banned, artefacts were destroyed, and temples were turned into libraries and museums.

Mao’s contempt for Confucianism was consistent with the materialist conception of history, which lies at the core of Marxist thought. By this view, social standards and religious beliefs are simply reflections of a given mode of production. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto: “Law, morality, religion” are nothing more than “bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests”. With his attacks on Confucianism, Mao was simply helping history along, as it were.

By this logic, Xi is now reversing the course of history. In a 2014 address to the International Confucian Association on the 2,565th anniversary of Confucius’ birth, Xi praised Confucianism as “the cultural soil that nourishes the Chinese people”. He also used terms alien to the materialist political philosophy which underpins the Communist Party. “Confucianism,” he said, is the key to “understanding the national characteristics of the Chinese as well as the historical roots of the spiritual world of the present-day Chinese”.

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In addition to acknowledging Confucius’ historic influence in China, Xi underscored his relevance for the future. “Some people of insight,” he observed, “believe that the traditional culture of China, Confucianism included, contains important inspirations for solving the troubles facing us today.” Xi then spelt out several traditional ideas that could benefit Chinese society, mostly by helping to reduce corruption in government.

Xi’s vision for an ideological fusion of Communism and Confucianism does not seem likely, given the sharp differences between the two systems. Imagine, for example, Lenin’s or Mao’s reaction to Confucius’ instructions for rulers in Analects : “When one rules by means of virtue it is like the North Star – it dwells in its place and the other stars pay reverence to it. … Guide them with virtue and align them with li [礼: ceremonies and etiquette] and the people will have a sense of shame and fulfil their roles.”

Such counsel is a far cry from Mao’s declaration that “political power grows out of the barrel of the gun”. For the Marxist, the only “virtue” is participation in the class struggles against capitalist entities, or, in the aftermath of revolutions, party loyalty to communist regimes.

Confucius also offered this advice: “To guide a state great enough to possess a thousand war chariots, … treat persons as valuable”. But clearly, treating persons as valuable, or even humanely, has never been a hallmark of Marxist regimes.

In the process of tallying the nearly 100 million deaths attributable to communist governments in the 20th century (65 million in China alone), the authors of The Black Book of Communism came to a stark realisation that “terror has always been one of the basic ingredients of modern Communism”.

Let us abandon once and for all the idea that the execution of hostages by firing squads, the slaughter of rebellious workers, and the forced starvation of the peasantry were only short-term “accidents” peculiar to a specific country or era.

Even in recent days, on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Chinese leaders refused to apologise for the government actions that left hundreds of protesters dead in the streets. And the Chinese government continues to use repressive measures to control its people, including “re-education’ camps designed to scrub Uygurs and Kazakhs of their religious and ethnic identity.

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Despite the contradictions between Marxism and Confucianism, Xi’s instincts are to keep these strange bedfellows together. To this end, party members seize on Confucius’ comparison of the state to a family and his insistence that family members, in the interest of social harmony, show respect for the head of the family. However, Chinese leaders give scant attention to the other side of the Confucian equation for social harmony: the ruler’s obligations to the people.

For Confucius, the first rule of governance – even above ensuring food or national defence – was to induce the people to have faith in their rule. And Mencius, the Second Sage of Confucianism, took things a step further. While affirming that rulers have a divine mandate to govern, he also warned that a ruler who does not act on the people’s behalf ceases to be a legitimate ruler and can be deposed by the people.

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Looking ahead, it is hard to imagine the demise of the Communist Party in China. Yet it was also hard to imagine the demise of the Soviet Union before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The difference between the two is that China has the benefit of western markets and corporations, yielding handsome profits on exports as well as massive technology transfers, whether shared or stolen.

If these benefits are withdrawn as the result of a serious and protracted trade war, the position of the Communist Party will not be as secure as it is today. At that point, Xi or his successor might be more willing, or simply forced, to rethink the place of Marxism in China.

Paul F. Scotchmer has worked for non-profit organisations addressing international affairs, taught at several colleges and universities, and been published on religion and culture in leading magazines and journals

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Marxism vs Confucianism: China’s internal culture clash

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