Foreign Policy Magazine
TAISU ZHANG
For most Chinese, the 1990s were a period of intense material pragmatism. Economic development was the paramount social and political concern, while the various state ideologies that had guided policy during the initial decades of the People’s Republic faded into the background. The severe ideological struggles that had marked the end of both the 1970s and the 1980s had exhausted the population, leaving it more than eager to focus single-mindedly on an unprecedented bevy of economic opportunities.
Now the tide is changing yet again. Chinese society is apparently rediscovering, or at least re-prioritizing, its moral and ideological cravings. Over the past several years, ideological forces and divisions have moved back to the center of Chinese political and social life, and ideological tensions among Chinese elite are now arguably higher than at any point since the immediate aftermath of the 1989 protests. The image of a “post-ideological” China has become increasingly outdated.
Relatively few observers or policymakers, however, seem to entertain the possibility that Chinese elites are ideological creatures, or even that they may be dealing with an ideological population. This is a remarkable sea change with profound implications for policymaking. Just a decade or two ago, many commentators had trouble accepting that Chinese statesmen — or even educated Chinese — were anything but Communist ideologues. In the early 2000s, the notion that Chinese elites no longer believed in Communism was still a novel one that sometimes triggered incredulity and backlash. By contrast, anyone today who insists that Communist ideals still hold sway over Chinese policymaking does so at considerable risk to his or her reputation as a serious China hand.
How did the idea of a post-ideological China arise? The charitable — and possibly correct — interpretation for this change is that it simply reflected a general shift in Chinese social attitudes. Chinese political and social discourse turned away from ideologically charged arguments in favor of the kind of flexible pragmatism that the former Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin regularly advocated. There is also a less charitable interpretation: that China’s economic rise, and particularly its sustained growth during the global economic crisis, generated a sense of vulnerability and, consequently, an alarmist mentality among many Western analysts, who rushed to — and continue to believe in — the conclusion that Chinese policymakers were ruthless and efficient utility maximizers preying upon the softer, more idealistic, and democratically constrained developed world.
Whatever the reason, the stereotype of Chinese pragmatism is probably past its expiration date. In China today, the signs of an ideological revival are everywhere. Most visibly, a number of icons, long thought dead, have made prominent and in some cases highly successful resurrections in national political rhetoric. First is long-deceased Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s rehabilitation as arguably the core element of the party’s founding myth and its historical legitimacy. As a number of scholars and commentators have noted, in several recent speeches Chinese President Xi Jinping has enthusiastically embraced Mao not only as the party’s founding father, but also as a symbol of its commitment to nationalism and populism. This marks a significant departure from the subdued and almost reluctant treatment of Mao that Xi’s predecessors, particularly Hu Jintao, seemed to display. Curiously, while Xi’s rhetorical signals drew immediate commentary, their potential policy implications have gone largely unstudied, if not outright dismissed as insignificant.
Mao has not been the only person to receive ideological rehabilitation. Confucius, too, has become an increasingly prominent figure in Chinese political rhetoric. And party leaders have frequently quoted ancient philosophers, including Mencius, Zhuangzi, and Han Fei. Xi himself has repeatedly argued that, “to solve China’s problems … [China needs] to fully make use of the great wisdom accumulated by the Chinese nation over the last 5,000 years.” State support for projects such as the new Confucius Academy in the provincial capital of Guiyang, opened in 2013, lends such rhetoric an element of seriousness that has buoyed neo-Confucian activists. Yet the attempts to breathe new life into ancient Chinese thought has also drawn alarm and disdain in other, more liberal, parts of the Chinese internet, which tend to see Confucian social ethics as backwards and bigoted.
It is easy, and perhaps tempting, to dismiss these initiatives as cynical ideological propaganda by an authoritarian state facing unprecedented socioeconomic and political tension. There is undeniably some truth to this, but it is far too simplistic. In fact, one could just as plausibly argue that the party has played a reactive role, rather than a proactive one: its ideological campaigns to revive figures such as Mao and Confucius reflect intellectual and cultural currents that have rapidly gained force among highly educated Chinese over the past five to seven years. Compared to the depth and momentum of these currents, the party may simply be trying to catch up. Xi himself seemed to admit as much in a famous August 19, 2013 speech, in which he argued that the party was facing a new wave of serious ideological challenges, and needed to issue a more robust response.
The two most significant Chinese intellectual developments since the late 1990s are probably the rise of a powerful “New Left” and the reemergence of a disorganized but increasingly influential neo-Confucian movement. The New Left combines nationalist sentiments — as a January 2010 editorial in the Global Times declared, “we do not want to become a Western intellectual colony” — and widespread dissatisfaction with economic inequality into a potent call for a “reconstruction of socialism,” one that would both reinstate many of the planned economy policies of the 1980s, and further strengthen ideological control over the Internet and media. If one surveyed the current Chinese intellectual world, the most influential figures — and those that enjoy the closest ties to the party leadership — tend to be leftists. This includes the prominent economists Wang Shaoguang and Justin Yifu Lin, the political scientist Cui Zhiyuan, and the philosopher Liu Xiaofeng.
Neo-Confucian figures, on the other hand, generally support both the revival of Confucian ethics such as filial piety and the reinstatement of certain traditional political institutions, particularly the civil service examinations. Although they tend to be less mainstream, the sheer combustibility of the term “Confucianism” in Chinese political and intellectual discourse has nonetheless given them an outsized media presence. Since the late 1990s, calls for a Confucian revival have steadily gained in volume and popularity, evolving from a much-mocked fringe movement to a still-mocked but certainly powerful national trend, particularly at the level of elementary education. For example, Jiang Qing, an early leader of the movement who now runs the well-known Yangming Confucian Academy, has become almost a household name in intellectual circles. Both developments have their roots in anti-Western nationalism. From the early 1980s to the 2000s, democracy, the rule of law, and free market reform were the political lingua franca not merely of most Chinese intellectuals, but also of most business leaders, and even some officials, who paid at least regular lip service — and probably more than that — to these aspirational ideals. During this period, Chinese elites appeared to share the consensus that China should, in a word, Westernize. To a large extent, both the New Left and neo-Confucianism were intellectual backlashes against this consensus, driven partly by perceived incompatibilities between Western thought and Chinese socioeconomic and political realities; partly by frustration at (perceived) Western hostility and ideological discrimination towards China; and partly by the nationalist urges that came naturally with economic takeoff.
