Wednesday 11 May 2011

Confucius the Dissident


Close to the end of last month I wrote an article on the arrest and disappearance of Ai Weiwei, a leading Chinese artist and dissident (China in Night and Fog). I now have to report on the recent disappearance of Confucius, yes, Confucius, the ancient sage whose concepts of social harmony had such appeal for the Communist authorities, always afraid of inharmonious times and inharmonious people. But the wind has changed yet again and harmony, at least in the Confucian form, is no longer quite so fashionable.

Poor Confucius, there he is, forever in and out of Chinese history, approved of at one moment, despised at the next. He was certainly the political fashion as recently as January, when a 9.5 metre statue of the old boy was installed outside the National Museum on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square looking on to the Forbidden City. He was there, stared at by Mao, making the mad Chairman leap in hell.

Confucius, you see, represented everything that Mao hated, the traditional values and the feudalism of the old China. Mao came to China, particularly in the Cultural Revolution, a little like Qui Shi Huang, the first emperor, who tried to wipe out all memory of the past by destroying books and by burning scholars alive. Confucius was the past and the past was Confucius, swept into a form of oblivion.

The recovery of memory began soon after Mao’s death in 1976. Bit by bit the sage returned, tolerated to begin with and then celebrated by a nation and a government looking for roots in the past. Just as the Germans tried to spread their cultural message across the world with Goethe Institutes, the Chinese set up their own Confucius Institutes. Abroad it was a new way of selling China, a more acceptable face than that of the malign Mao, while at home Confucian notions of harmony were a corrective to the upheaval of rapid and socially unsettling economic progress.

Not any longer. At the end of April the statue was removed under cover of dark without any explanation. The thing is Confucius is a rather awkward avatar. Oh yes, there is all that stuff about obedience and duty, of deference to the system, but that’s not the sum total of his thought. In the Confucian scheme of things governments have to be accountable to the people and, what is worse from the apparatchik’s point of view, they only have the right to rule through the exercise of ethical conduct.

Ethical conduct is now the last thing that the Communist Party wishes to be reminded of, ever fearful that it might just lose the mandate of heaven, every fearful that it’s own abysmal lack of any ethical code will become increasingly apparent, ever fearful of its own people. I see from a report in the Economist that neo-Maoist websites are crowing over the sudden removal of the “witch doctor.” But the ‘witch doctor’ has proved to be remarkably resilient. The night and the fog may have descended on him but he will re-emerge, a symbol, seemingly, not just of harmony but dissidence.

20 comments:

  1. Confucius is an icon, his memory will live on no matter what the Chinese goverment does. By the way 'Leaves of Grass' is a pretty good movie.

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  2. "Thou shalt have no other god before The State, for The State is a jealous god" . . . and other gods may possess virtues of which The State is notably lacking.

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  3. Anthony, thanks. I shall watch that on your recommendation.

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  4. Calvin, I have new respect for the man, respect anyone who passed this sentiment down to posterity -

    An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

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  5. Ana, good writing as always. Couldn't help to laugh at this line:"He was there, stared at by Mao, making the mad Chairman leap in hell. "

    However I am not a fan of this "dissident". As matter of fact he has never been a "dissident" of Chinese culture except during some very short time of "5.4 culture movement" (a real "revolution" in china that was not fight for stomach) in early of 20th century, and during Communist China for about several decades. Of course, Qin Shi Huang killed all Confucianist scholars and burned all documents, but I consider that was the time before Confucianism prevailed.
    I don't know what's the reason his statue disappeared. Rumors say because complaints from internet.
    But I do agree, Confucius as a person, a sage, deserves respect. He will be remembered as one of most influential persons in China (you would love to know this Ana, Mao said there were only two geniuses in China, the first one is Confucius, the second, guess who? not Mao himself! He said the second one was Lu Xun!) but Confucianism as ideology, did more harm than good to Chinese people. I don't blame all negative aspects of Chinese culture to Confucius (as I do not blame all terrible events of modern China to Mao alone), but I do blame them to Confucianism.
    Personally, I am glad his stature disappeared. :-) I think the one in his home town should be enough for his followers.

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  6. Did you have to re-post this? there was a program issue with Blogger. There were some issues with You Tube earlier but they seemed to have cleared up. RON PAUL 2012! USA

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  7. Now you see him, now you don't: The Amazing Vanishing Sage! The persistence of his ideas as the operating principle of the Celestial Kingdom is quite remarkable, considering how many times China has dissolved into savage chaos in the intervening 2500 years.

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  8. It is all about C you see Ana:

    Confucius, Conservative, Comrade, Communist, Capitalist, Chinaman, Cultural, Chopsticks, Country, China.

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  9. Anthony. I came online on Thursday with the intention of updating my blog only to find that the whole of Blogger was down. When I clicked on the link for further information I just got some stupid gobbledygook. I saw it was back up on Friday afternoon but with this article missing. It’s now back but with previous comments posted by you and Calvin missing. I’m putting them back under my own name, as well as subsequent contributions. The whole thing is such a bloody nuisance.

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  10. Yun Yi said...

    Ana, good writing as always. Couldn't help to laugh at this line:"He was there, stared at by Mao, making the mad Chairman leap in hell. "

    However I am not a fan of this "dissident". As matter of fact he has never been a "dissident" of Chinese culture except during some very short time of "5.4 culture movement" (a real "revolution" in china that was not fight for stomach) in early of 20th century, and during Communist China for about several decades. Of course, Qin Shi Huang killed all Confucianist scholars and burned all documents, but I consider that was the time before Confucianism prevailed.

    I don't know what's the reason his statue disappeared. Rumors say because complaints from internet.

    But I do agree, Confucius as a person, a sage, deserves respect. He will be remembered as one of most influential persons in China (you would love to know this Ana, Mao said there were only two geniuses in China, the first one is Confucius, the second, guess who? not Mao himself! He said the second one was Lu Xun!) but Confucianism as ideology, did more harm than good to Chinese people. I don't blame all negative aspects of Chinese culture to Confucius (as I do not blame all terrible events of modern China to Mao alone), but I do blame them to Confucianism.

    Personally, I am glad his stature disappeared. :-) I think the one in his home town should be enough for his followers.

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  11. Calvin said...

    "Thou shalt have no other god before The State, for The State is a jealous god" . . . and other gods may possess virtues of which The State is notably lacking.

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  12. Anthony said...

    Confucius is an icon, his memory will live on no matter what the Chinese goverment does. By the way 'Leaves of Grass' is a pretty good movie.

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  13. Calvin, and the amazing vanising comments! I agree with you, both times around. :-)

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  14. Yun Yi, thank you for your valuable comment, and for the exchange on this subject we had in the other place when we couldn't here. :-)

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  15. Anthony, I'll look for this on your recommendation.

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  16. My impression is that the Chinese authorities see the subject of this blog in terms which originate from the West; and that is as a useful idiot, Ana. However:

    "All Art exists to communicate states of consciousness which are higher synthetic wholes than those of ordinary experience... ."

    J.W.N. Sullivan.

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  17. Confucius himself, I think, was a kind of reformist in his own right, reinterpreting and reviving the work of the old sages of China. When I made a close study of The Analects, I found that he embodied in his life and teachings everything that is good about China, its people, its culture. He was a man of peace and a warrior. He was a sage but he would be the first to admit if he did not know about something. He is reported to have said 'How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent man?'

    I know Usman Chou Chang Sai who first translated The Holy Quran into Chinese. He is very old now, he wrote a book in the mid-eighties on a comparison between Confucianism and Islam. My maternal grandfather was one of his teachers who taught him to read the Quran.

    There is also a chapter on Confucianism in Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth.

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  18. Rehan, as always, your understanding is more profound than most. The dissertation in your link is excellent.

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