“[Chinese] Students might memorize a couple of Confucius’ quotes, but that’s basically the extent of his [Confucius’] contemporary influence,” according to a self-styled Chinese History Expert, when theorizing that young Chinese people don’t seem to respect their elderly people at all.
Modern Chinese society is not influenced by Confucianism in any meaningful way. Western Marxism and consumerism are far more influential. Students might memorize a couple of Confucius’ quotes, but that’s basically the extent of his contemporary influence.
A tweet by “Chinese History Expert“, Jan. 29, 2023
So far, I mostly agree with him, except for “Western Marxism”. Marxism did originate in Germany, but it is now no more than a topic of scholastic discussion in the West. After all, Communism and the Soviet Union that followed Karl Marx and his comrade Friedrich Engels who built the theory, together with other formidable names such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev, are still fresh in the memory of Europeans today. Marx and his comrades conceptualized and implemented the theory, a “specter” that haunted Europe and America for decades. It’s anything but “Western.”
Then, in a screenshot, the “Expert” goes on to show his audience why he believes that China isn’t Confucian by pointing out that:
young Chinese people ridicule … elderly people as backward, uncultured, and incapable of using technology;
Elderly people are looked down upon by young Chinese for spitting and defecating in public and for cutting in front of queue lines because they’re too selfish to wait;
Chinese politicians dye their hair black to avoid looking old while Western politicians often enjoy the prestige associated with grey hair, and America recently elected a 78 year old president.
These are simply the wrong reasons for the right conclusion.
A disrespect for the elderly does go against Confucius’ teaching. But his observations are wide of the mark, or downright misleading or even deceptive.
“You can’t teach old dogs new tricks”, but you can make it easier for them to learn the tricks, for example, by making phone apps more elder-friendly, like simpler interfaces with bigger fonts and brighter colors. That’s exactly what the young (of course) developers of some Chinese phone apps are respectfully doing, as part of the government’s effort to help the elderly people live modern life.
And indeed it was the elderly people who benefited the most from the zero (positive) COVID policy that ended in early December, 2022. And according to the toxic labeling of people, those who worked tirelessly and fearlessly against the pandemic are the young. Millions of elderly people would have otherwise lost their life in China.
Moreover, no one, regardless of their age, (and for that matter, gender, skin color, or sex orientation,) deserve respect from others, young and old, if they “spit and defecate in public” or “cut in line”. They are despised not because of their age, but because of their questionable behavior. Age is just the wrong tree to bark up.
And to be fair, trying to look young is a phenomenon among Chinese politicians. But it has nothing to do with respect or disrespect for the elderly. It’s common everywhere. No one want to look old or to be told they do. Age is even a taboo in some societies. For example, you cannot even politely ask people about their age in the West. But more importantly, Trump got elected (and will get elected again in 2024, which I’m pretty sure about) not because of his age, but despite it.
The political jokes churned out by the American propaganda machinery about senile Soviet leaders eerily apply to the American politic scene today. The senility of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden perfectly fits the image of a USA in decline and losing steam and vitality, in stark contrast to the virile and powerful charisma of J.F. Kennedy.
To form a tenable conclusion, the “Chinese History Expert” he needs to figure out how evidence supports points. For example, he needs to distinguish between Chinese people as a whole and as individuals; and understand the philosophical relationship between whole and part, between the main part of a thing and the minor part(s) of it. But obviously this is a serious problem in the Western world, where, for example, the definition of gender has become elusive for the public.
He can even argue that China isn’t socialist, let alone communist, because it has a booming market economy which generates billionaires at a faster pace than in the West and has a manufacturing industry that is bigger than West Europe and North America put together. And in turn, I can claim that the USA is a command economy because it commands its own and European corporations not to do business with China.
My advice for him to correct his ill-informed opinions about China (if he wants to, that is) is that he just grab any Chinese college textbook on Marxist philosophy. They are well written books and no words in them are redundant. The ideas are straight-forward and easy-to-understand. Unfortunately, they are all in Chinese and I don’t know any similar books in English. But I can always recommend works by Chairman Mao Zedong because the intended peasant audience can easily and readily understand them and the works have already been translated into English. He wrote great articles and it’s no surprise. He was a graduate from a teacher’s college and his first important political job was the acting chief of the KMT’s propaganda department. And he was most successful in motivating peasants, the least cultured people of then China, into a revolution against the then KMT government. He was the expert in speaking to the people. If taking this advice of mine, the “Expert” can at least cherry-pick more convincing evidence the next time.
But as I’ve said earlier in this post, I do agree that China isn’t a Confucian culture, but not for the reasons the “Expert” listed. Confucianism is just one of China’s many time-honored traditions that make the country great. It has long ago blended organically with:
- Daoism (escaping to quiet earthly life; when you’re fed up with this world’s life, but still wants to live here),
- Buddhism (seeking otherworldly happiness and reincarnation; when you’re so bored or feel so much pain that you decide to give up on this life and anticipate the next one),
- a number of other isms less known to the English audience, like:
- Legalism (“adherence to the law, esp the stressing of the letter of the law rather than its spirit”)
- Moism (“emphasizing universal love, ascetic self-discipline, and obedience to the will of Heaven”)
- Marxism (theorizing communism),
- Leninism (building a communist country),
- Maoism (building a communist country from one whose population was mostly uncultured peasants), and
- Chinese socialism/”socialism with Chinese characteristics” (turning a mainly rural country into a globally leading, high-tech manufacturing-based market economy that benefits the people),
… to have formed the Chinese values today, one of which is the collective mentality as shown in the sci-fi movies series of Wandering Earth, that set the modern country apart from its history and from the rest of the world.
The movie series is the latest sign of the great achievement of a country that has gone so far during the past decades in realizing its aspirations.
No other country can ever produce a sci-fi movies series as inspiring and as realistic as the Wandering Earth.
Its distinctive collectivism is refreshing after moviegoers have long ago become bored with the individual American heroes in Hollywood movies. It brings hope to this troubled world. And China produces convincing sci-fi movies no other countries does because it possesses the largest ever manufacturing industry in human history.
A trailer of Wandering Earth 2 is below:
1. China Space Station:
2. China’s Yutu 2 moon rover:
3. Launch of Chinese Space Station Module – Tianhe on Long March 5B:
4. The Beidou satellite navigation system:
5. Chinese infrastructure:
6. China bullet trains:
7. Chinese NAVY
8. Chinese Air Show
China is the center of one of the world’s three industrialized zones: East Asia, North America, and West Europe/Russia. East Asia has a good reason to be the only industrialized zone apart from the countries of white Europeans and their descendants. The other industrialized East Asian countries, Korea and Japan, are also more or less “Confucian” or considered themselves Chinese as late as a few hundreds of years ago. Their history was written in Chinese (Korea), they got their native country names from Chinese emperors (North Korea 朝鲜) or from Japan (South Korea 韩国) but ultimately from China, received their (South Korea) national flag from Chinese officials, and adapted Chinese scripts (both characters and writing strokes) into their language writing system (Japan).
Finally, Confucianism is not a textbook quote. Neither is it a dead set of thoughts. It had changed so much since its birth even beyond the wildest imagination of Confucius himself. As early as the Western Han Dynasty 西汉王朝 (206 BCE-202 BCE), a few hundreds of years after the birth of Confucius, Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 used an adapted form of Confucianism to theorize the new Empire of Han (206 BCE-220 CE), which eventually gave the people and their language the native names: 汉族 (Han people) and 汉语/汉字 (Han language and Han scripts). After that, it just kept on changing and reinventing itself, becoming even more unrecognizable along the way to Confucius himself until it blended completely with Buddhism and Daoism (儒释道合流) to have formed a key part of traditional China. It is no wonder that the Expert feels confused after reading the Confucian classics (in Chinese?) and hasn’t seen in Chinese people today. Of course, he can’t it because it has long ago disappeared into something else.
In my student days, I too felt confused when coming across claims like “backward Chinese culture”:
Why is the culture of so great a country like China for thousands of years backward?
Though it’s between the lines, no one had actually told me what that backwardness meant until I figured it out myself later:
The Chinese culture per se is neither advanced nor backward. It always lives in historical contexts. When it meets the needs of the times, it’s advanced. When it doesn’t, it’s backward. In other words, it has to keep adapting itself to the new by getting rid of the old elements, realizing the potential of good ones, and introducing new ones.
The great Confucian elements, such as “going into society” 入世 instead of withdrawing from it, “pursuit of secular ambitions” as opposed to hermitic Daoism, obsession with education instead of obscurantism (like in the West today), diligence, respect for traditions while changing to meet the needs of the times, and long-term planning (longer than election cycles in the West at least; planning 10 years for planting trees and 100 years for cultivating the people 十年树木, 百年树人), all have helped make China and other East Asian countries great modernized powerhouses (the next one should be Viet Nam and it’s communist, too). In this sense, Confucianism has played a very “meaningful” role contrary to the Expert’s belief.
Confucianism is built in the valued inheritance. We speak it, breathe it, eat it, use it every day. Just like the air, we don’t feel the presence of it, except for, of course, on bad-air days. But all these does not make them “Confucian cultures.”
We are a modern, industrialized country that aspires even greater things in this new century. Our goals are stars and seas 我们的目标是星辰大海. Our fellow countries, most notably the USA, no doubt a great country in its own way, are just other members of humanity we meet along the way.
Just like the sun rises not to give humanity sunshine, or sets to give humanity darkness, China has no desire to win against or overtake anyone. We just want to be a better country than before.
Attachments:
The original texts and screenshot from the “Chinese History Expert” fully archived below.
The tweet:
Modern Chinese society is not influenced by Confucianism in any meaningful way. Western Marxism and consumerism are far more influential. Students might memorize a couple of Confucius’ quotes, but that’s basically the extent of his contemporary influence.
A tweet by “Chinese History Expert“, Jan. 29, 2023
The text transcribed from the screenshot:
Western observers often claim that China possesses a Confucian culture. This oft repeated characterization is rarely explained, however, and I don’t think modern China is Confucian in any meaningful way. I’ve read the Confucian classics, and I find no more of that ancient ideology in modern China than could be found in America or Europe. It’s often said, for example, that Confucian cultures display more respect for elderly people than Western cultures, but this claim is almost never supported with evidence. I’ve heard pretty consistent ridicule of elderly people as backward, uncultured, and incapable of using technology. Elderly people are looked down upon by young Chinese for spitting and defecating in public and for cutting in front of queue lines because they’re too selfish to wait. Chinese politicians dye their hair black to avoid looking old while Western politicians often enjoy the prestige associated with grey hair, and America recently elected a 78 year old president.
A transcription of the screenshot of a tweet by “Chinese History Expert“, Jan. 29, 2023
The screenshot:
