Travels in the Riel World

Staying with Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue (yesterday’s post was from the same magazine and covered a road trip through Russia), today’s topic looks at Time’s portrait of Chinese President Hu Jintao. Specifically, at the way Hu is trying to blend the ancient Chinese wisdom of Confucianism with modern economics and a Communist governing philosophy.

In reality, the way Hu has negotiated a difficult situation says much about him as a person and about his evolving and distinctive political philosophy…Hu has ended up as something of a closet traditionalist whose sense of a political true north derives as much from the Chinese classics, to which he has turned in search of models of concord, as it does from Mao and Marx.

In February 2005, for example, Hu quoted Confucius to party officials, declaring that “harmony is something to be cherished.” He and Premier Wen Jiabao regularly proclaim an aspiration to hexie shehui, or a harmonious society. And they often use another slogan, heping jueqi, or peaceful rise, a phrase designed to soothe foreigners worried about the double threat of China’s fireball economy and rapidly modernizing military.

Such traditional-sounding rhetoric about harmony and peace — the antithesis of Maoist phrases about class contradictions and anti-imperialist struggle — has been spilling from party propaganda organs…

Much of his political demeanor seems to suggest a yearning for leadership in the style of a Confucian junzi, or gentleman — one who governs by virtuous example and thus radiates benevolence throughout society…

(But) just beneath Hu’s exhortations about harmony, peaceful rise and benevolent leadership, old Maoist structures remain. Far from wanting to weaken party control, Hu would like to reinforce it, to inspire officials to live up to the old ideals of “serving the people.”

That’s the message of a story in the Christian Science Monitor, which reports that the 2,500-year-old teachings of Confucius are gaining popularity in contemporary China.

Come back, Confucius, all is forgiven. For nearly a century the ancient sage was confined to the intellectual doghouse in the land of his birth.

Today he is fast supplanting communism as Chinese rulers, businessmen, and ordinary citizens turn back 2-1/2 millenniums to his teachings to help them cope with the economic and social changes racking their country.

“The economy is developing very fast, but people feel the need for wisdom and morality,” says Gu Qing, who publishes books on traditional Chinese culture. “Now we’ve solved the problem of filling people’s stomachs, they are looking for something to fill their minds.”…

For most of the 20th century, Chinese leaders reviled Confucianism as a feudal philosophy whose emphasis on respect for elders, propriety, and the harmony of hierarchy had trapped China in its past. The nadir for the man whose precepts defined society for more than 2,000 years came during the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards went on a weeks-long rampage of destruction in his hometown.

The current government sees Confucius in a more positive light: President Hu Jintao’s key slogan, “a harmonious society,” is a conscious evocation of the Confucian value of harmony and balance.

The new popularity of Confucius has even made a star out of university professor Yu Dan, thanks to a television lecture series. She has her own thoughts about why the ancient sage’s teachings are again striking a chord in China.

Ms. Yu says she struck a chord with a public confused by rapid change. Not long ago, she notes, citizens found a job and stayed in it for life, were assigned a home and lived in it for life, and rarely contemplated divorce. “Life was poor, but poverty brought its own kind of stability,” she says.

Today, the freedom to choose a career and a home can be unsettling, Yu says. “For a person who knows what he wants, choice is a luxury. But for someone who has no standards by which to choose, it can be a disaster. That’s why the pursuit of belief is getting stronger.”