Daniel A. Bell: The Confucian Party

... Part of the political debate [in China today] is the effort to revive Confucianism.

Should liberals be worried? In one important sense, no. Confucian scholars — many of whom are party members — favor a more open ideological atmosphere where new ideas for political and educational reform can be debated and criticized.

They point out that China’s most fertile intellectual period was the Warring States era (476 to 221 B.C.) , when scholars like Mencius could openly criticize rulers for their immoral deeds and put forward political alternatives. My Confucian friends have criticized the government’s clumsy attempts to shut down debate about Charter 08, a manifesto published in 2008 which urged the Communist Party to abandon monopoly rule and establish a multiparty system of government.

But the same scholars were severely critical of the content of the charter, saying that it echoes 20th century efforts by Chinese liberals to seek complete Westernization as the solution to China’s problems. In fact, even liberal scholars like Qin Hui, China’s most influential social critic, openly criticized the charter’s substance. Had the government not interfered with the charter, it might have died a natural death.

For the Confucians, any long-lasting and stable political reform must be rooted in China’s own traditions. So should we view them as narrow nationalists? Quite the opposite. Jiang Qing, a leading exponent of the new Confucianism, explicitly criticizes the idea of state sovereignty, saying that sovereignty lies with “heaven” rather than the state. He argues for a democratic institution that would offer more opportunities for political participation, while criticizing democracy for being too narrowly focused on the interests of the current generation of voters....