China’s state religion: “Political Confucianism”

Joel — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:22:55 +0000

“Political Confucianism” is the official ideology of choice in Mainland China, where some influential people are explicitly seeking to re-re-instate perennially useful Confucianism as China’s “state religion.” Here’s an explanation aimed at a Western audience by Wang Rui-Chang. For more introductory information, see “China: Dem0cracy, or Confucianism?”. There’s also “China repackaging Confucius” and “China unveils its ‘soft-power’ campaign: Canonize Confucius, no mention of Mao” as easy first introductions.

By coincidence, I also just today found this photo collection from the 1973-74 campaign to denounce Confucius.

Confucius say…

Joel — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:57:38 +0000

We had more ancient Chinese philosophy for bedtime stories tonight – in DVD computer animated comic book form. Yeah, that’s right: a CG 孔子 on DVD. Jessica fell asleep sometime around, “If one can rectify one’s own self, what problems can there be in governing?”

By the way, “Confucius say” in Chinese is 孔子說. No doubt many of you have wondered about that ever since elementary school and that “Man who stands on toilet” joke. But it’s no joke to the PRC: New/neo-Confucianism is apparently the philosophy of choice on which the government wants to build China’s emergence… but I haven’t read any thing substantial about that yet.

Here’s two other tidbits from this evening’s enlightenment:

“If you repay an enemy with kindness, how will you repay someone who is kind to you? You should treat an enemy with decency and fairness, and you should repay kindness with kindness.”

“While your parents are living, do not travel far away. If you have no choice but to travel far away, let your parents know your whereabouts so that they won’t worry.”

Some day we’ll learn about this stuff for real.

China Hope Live » Confucianism

China’s state religion: “Political Confucianism”

Confucius say…