Confucianism in Chinese Academia

By Daniel A. Bell

Over the last decade or so, there has been a revival of Confucianism. Popular books on Confucianism are best sellers, and official discourse from the government often expresses traditional Confucian values like harmony. What is less well known, however, is the resurgence in interest among academics in China.

Rigorous experiments by psychologists such as Peng Kaiping and Wu Shali show that there are striking cognitive differences between Chinese and Americans, with Chinese more likely to use contextual and dialectical approaches to solving problems. Psychologists Huang Guangguo and Yang Zhongfang from Taiwan and Hongkong advocate the use of traditional Chinese ideas like the “relationism” (guanxizhuyi) and “middle way” [zhongyong zhi dao] for psychological research. Economists such as Shen Hong take the family as the relevant unit of economic analysis and try to measure the economic effect of such values as filial piety. Feminists such as Chan Sin Yee and Li Chengyang compare care ethics and Confucian-style empathy, particularity, and the family as a school of moral education. Theorists of medical ethics such as Fan Ruiping discuss the importance of family-based decision making in medical settings. Those working in the field of business ethics like Huang Weidong research the influence of Confucian values on business practices in China.

Political surveys by political scientists like Shi Tianjian, Chu Yunhan and Zhang Youzong show that attachment to Confucian values has increased during the same period that China has modernized. Sociologists such as Kang Xiaoguang and Sebastien Billioud study the thousands of experiments in education and social living in China that are inspired by Confucian values.

Theorists of international relations such as Yan Xuetong and Xu Jin look to pre-Qin thinkers like Mengzi and Xunzi for foreign policy ideas. And philosophers such as Jiang Qing, Chen Lai, Bai Tongdong, and Chen Ming, draw upon the ideas of great Confucian thinkers of the past for thinking about social and political reform in China. Wang Richang discusses the Confucian foundations of government slogans like “yi ren wei ben” (“the people as the foundation”)

But academics doing research on Confucianism often work within rigid disciplinary boundaries borrowed from Western academia. At a recent conference, "Traditional Values in a Modern Chinese Context: An Interdisciplinary Approach," which was held at China’s Renmin University in Beijing this June, we tried to break away from this pattern. Leading academics working on Confucian values from different disciplines met to see what they could learn from each other. The conference, which was convened by Shi Tianjian, Kang Xiaoguang, Peng Kaiping, and myself, was supported by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and organized by the Non-Profit-Research Center, Renmin University.

Chen Lai pointed to the complexity of measuring Confucian values, which would involve tracing their origin in classic texts, their historical development, as well as evidence of contemporary influence. But most participants still felt that the research was well worth doing, given the importance of Confucianism for understanding Chinese society and furthering social and political reform rooted in local conditions.

As one might expect, there were important areas of disagreement. For one thing, the starting points were often different. The majority sympathized with Confucian values and openly admitted that they begin with normative standpoints, just as liberal thinkers try to promote liberal values. Some claimed that they are doing purely scientific work measuring Confucian values. And some do both: most notably, Kang Xiaoguang both promotes political Confucianism and studies its development in Chinese society.

The participants also identified areas of study that could not be researched fruitfully from other perspectives. Philosophers like Jiang Qing pointed to values like tian and liangzhi that could not be studied by the empirically-minded social sciences, and Confucian educators like Yang Ruqin argued that moral growth is long term and could not be measured in controlled laboratory studies.

But the workshop also led to some fruitful proposals for cross-disciplinary research. The participants noted areas of weakness in their own disciplines that could be usefully addressed from other perspectives. Philosophers and historians could help to refine the questions posed in political attitude surveys. For example, the “Confucian” attitude measured by political scientists that children should blindly obey their parents should be made more conditional if the aim is to measure attachment to Confucian values rooted in classic texts. Philosophers might also suggest questions for research inspired by less well-known Confucian values, such as the idea that listening to different types of music or believing in different views of human nature (性善vs性恶) have different moral consequences during the course of one’s life.

Social scientists, for their part, can help philosophers determine which Confucian values are most effective in contemporary society. For example, the claims that filial piety provides the psychological basis for extending morality to non-family members could be researched by means of longitudinal studies. Psychologists could also identify the key ages that best allow for the memorization of classical texts. Social scientists could also help to study whether morality normally improves with age and whether learning the Confucian classics really does make rulers more morally sensitive and politically effective.

The findings of social scientists might also help Confucian philosophers to determine which Confucian values are particular to societies with a Confucian heritage and which ones might be universalized. For example, the finding that collectivist attitudes are more typical of Chinese subjects in experimental settings means that there will likely be resistance to promoting those values abroad (just as there would be resistance to promoting highly adversarial and interest-based politics in China). Yan Xuetong pointed out that Confucianism won’t be taken seriously abroad unless it is practiced by political leaders at home.

These research questions remain open. What is clear, however, is that academics need the freedom to discuss and publish their ideas and adequate funding to carry out research in order to pursue these questions in fruitful ways. Under the right conditions, China could well develop into a leading center of global learning, with academics researching questions and values hitherto neglected in the West.

Daniel A. Bell is a professor in the Department of Philosophy of Tsinghua University. His latest book is China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Reading Recommendations

Gems on China often appear in unexpected places, and we were recently alerted to a handful worth looking into at the Literary Review of Canada. These three pieces review recent works in Chinese studies that touch on issues central to current discussions on the China blogosphere. We’ve included short excerpts below, but encourage you to make the leap to the longer versions.

The first is a review by Timothy Cheek, the author of a book on Mao that we flagged in one of our first posts last January, and a regular commentator on contemporary China, as here and here. In “The Karaoke Classics: A view from inside China’s Confucian revival,” Cheek reviews Daniel Bell’s China’s New Confucianism, addressing a theme that has emerged at China Beat a few times before and also been taken up by China Beatniks in other venues: How is Confucianism relevant today? (For instance, see Xujun Eberlein’s piece, “China: Democracy or Confucianism?,” Jeff Wasserstrom's "Confucius: China's Comeback Kid" or Daniel Bell’s own piece, “Imperial Ways.”) Bell, moreover, is becoming known as something of a Confucian provocateur. As Cheek describes, Bell’s take on contemporary Confucianism may be a shock:

"Bell’s approach is resolutely iconoclastic and, he claims, Confucian. He aims to entertain and instruct, but he also aims if not to offend then at least to chide western academic and cultural presumptions. This is the job of the Confucian educator, he says: 'the task of the morally committed individual is to resist the excesses of the dominant [intellectual/cultural] fashion in order to bring things into balance.' So, those who are sure proper scholarship should be 'objective' (or at least safely harnessed in abstract theoretical frameworks) and who embrace ideas of modernity (or the Good) that include the sanctity of individual rights, electoral democracy and contractual protection of labour, along with the perniciousness of prostitution—be prepared for rebalancing.

"Bell’s approach comes together in his spirited treatment of the recent Chinese karaoke boom, hardly the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Confucianism. But he connects this trend with Confucius’s advocacy of music and the relationship-building effect of singing together. True to his claim in a later chapter that 'Confucians Needn’t Be Old, Serious and Conservative,' Bell then goes on to defend the parallel rise of a new form of prostitution, in which karaoke hostesses charge clients for sexual favours between songs. He explicitly engages the questions that leapt to my mind: Is this bad for women? Bad for the family? Is it moral? His answers are relativistic and pragmatic, much like his reading of classical Confucianism. He is less concerned with abstract virtue and more concerned with actual relationships and their social consequences. He makes a reasonable argument for a form of prostitution that builds something more than a cash nexus in the sex trade, constrains passions with the sociability of group singing and limits extra-marital sex to time-limited engagements (contrasted to affairs with co-workers or others that may compete with the marriage, and therefore family, bond).

"Not my conventional, Fung Yu-lan understanding of Confucianism. Nonetheless, Bell makes a compelling case that such views can be argued from the tradition’s fundamentals."

Continue reading at “The Karaoke Classics: A view from inside China’s Confucian revival.”


In “An Informed Citizenry?: Expanding media in China does not necessarily mean a challenge to power,” Bernie Michael Frolic examines Yuezhi Zhao’s Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict. Particularly relevant in this moment of what China Media Project has been calling “Control 2.0” (not just suppressing news but actively shaping its narrative), Frolic meditates on the Western belief that more media will eventually lead to democracy in China. Of Zhao’s book, Frolic writes:

"What emerges is the uncertain conclusion that the neoliberal forces of marketization and globalization have taken root in China, but not that deeply. Democratic outcomes remain a distant prospect. The rising middle class is surprisingly supportive of the current authoritarian system. The CCP maintains its control, reinventing itself when necessary to preserve its power. While socialist ideology is in retreat and neoliberal commercialization of the media has made substantial gains, resistance from the old and the new left creates tension and contradictions, for example, by unleashing Chinese nationalism, polarizing urban and rural sectors, or creating new elite and class conflict.

"In 2005, Hunan Province Satellite Television developed a show called Supergirls, modelled after American Idol. It quickly became the most popular show on Chinese television. The audience was asked to vote for their favourite candidates with their cell phones, at the rate of one yuan per message, ten times the regular price. I watched this show when I was in China and marvelled at its explosive success in winning audience participation. It showed how a provincial broadcaster could use market principles to outstrip the state-run national media. But within the year, Supergirls was marginalized by the authorities, not allowed to run in prime time and, according to Zhao, was criticized for its 'individualistic and consumerist value orientations.'

"China’s developmental path remains uncertain for Zhao, who is sympathetic to a more open Chinese society and liberalized political system. She hesitates to predict such an optimistic outcome. She writes, 'There are formidable structural forces against any substantive reorientation of China’s developmental path around the goals of human-centred and balanced development, environmental sustainability, social harmony, and "people’s democracy"—if these are to be more than hollow rhetoric.'"

Continue reading at “An Informed Citizenry?: Expanding media in China does not necessarily mean a challenge to power.”



In the last of LRC’s reviews, “Spiritual Dissent: Falun Gong, the Chinese Communist Party and their apocalyptic struggle for China,” Jeremy Paltiel reviews Falun Gong and the Future of China by David Ownby. Despite all the ink spilled over Falun Gong, as Paltiel points out, few scholars have conducted research on the organization. To that end, Paltiel writes:

"David Ownby’s first and most important contribution, I believe, is to put this movement in context. He does so in two ways: first, he places it in a line of syncretistic Chinese millenarian movements that meld Taoism and Buddhism with 'body work' and a moral message, dating back to the White Lotus movement that rebelled against the Qing Empire more than two centuries ago; then he traces the rise of Qigong as a component of the professionalization of traditional Chinese medicine in the 1950s and its explosion as a popular movement under charismatic leadership in the post-Mao reform era.

"Qigong involves practices that attempt to manipulate the esoteric energy of 'qi' (literally, breath or air) that according to traditional Chinese metaphysical beliefs pervades the universe. Efforts to systematize these practices and provide them with the legitimacy accorded the professionalization of traditional Chinese medicine were submerged by the Cultural Revolution but gained momentum in its aftermath. By the late 1980s Qigong claimed millions of adherents who followed dozens of Qigong masters. Li Hongzhi initially aligned himself with this movement, but went further by providing a spiritual text called the Zhuan Falun ('The Scroll of the Wheel of Law' or the 'Wheel of Dharma') to systematize his doctrine. The first edition of the Zhuan Falun appeared in 1993.

"More broadly, Ownby aligns Falun Gong with the struggles of the Chinese state with so-called heterodox movements going back to dynastic times. God and Caesar never eyed each other from a respectful distance in traditional China. While Confucius urged his followers to keep a respectful distance from the realm of the spirits, China’s literati-bureaucrats and the Son of Heaven always had a difficult time managing popular religion. They could neither leave it alone nor embrace it. Then as now, they were skeptical of its claims and deeply suspicious of its adherents. More than one millenarian movement gave rise to an uprising that shook the dynastic foundations. The founder of the Ming, Zhu Yuanzhang, arose out of just such a sect before he turned against his followers and embraced orthodox Confucianism upon assuming power in 1368. Likewise, mid 19th-century Taiping rebels embraced elements of Christianity as they proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace that nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty."

Continue reading at “Spiritual Dissent: Falun Gong, the Communist Party and their apocalyptic struggle for China