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The Diplomat
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Systemic Suppression: The CCP's Silent Elimination of Alternative Confucianism
Behind the ceremonial vocabulary used by Xi lies a system of epistemic control – one that quietly disables any version of Confucian thought that could challenge party supremacy. The most subversive threat to Xi Jinping's regime may not come from liberalism but from Confucianism: not the curated slogans in textbooks, but the unassimilated traditions that posit moral authority above the state. This final essay in the Simulated Sagehood series examines how heterodox Confucian frameworks like Jiang Qing's Political Confucianism have been quietly extinguished. What survives is a managed inheritance: tradition retained as spectacle, but stripped of its capacity to judge or constrain. Xi Jinping often invokes the language of Confucianism to project cultural continuity and civilizational depth. But behind the ceremonial vocabulary lies a system of epistemic control – one that quietly disables any version of Confucian thought that could challenge Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supremacy. The most prominent casualty of this containment is the school of Political Confucianism associated with Jiang Qing. In his 2012 book 'A Confucian Constitutional Order,' Jiang envisioned a tricameral legislature: a House of the Nation (rooted in cultural legitimacy), a House of the Worthies (anchored in moral wisdom), and a House of the People (reflecting popular will) – all governed by tianli (Heavenly Principle), not by Marxist historicism or liberal democratic sovereignty. This model doesn't just diverge from CCP doctrine; it subverts it. By positing a moral order that transcends politics, it implies that the party is not the final arbiter of truth. That tension was openly acknowledged during the 2010s, when a symposium in the Cambridge Journal of Law & Religion described Jiang's vision as an attempt to 're-center political legitimacy on a pre-Marxist moral cosmology' – a direct affront to the Leninist idea that the CCP alone defines what is right. For a time, particularly under Hu Jintao's relatively more pluralistic leadership between 2004 and 2012, this alternative Confucianism had space to breathe. It appeared in respected journals like Reading (读书), Open Times (开放时代), and the Beijing Cultural Review (北京文化评论). Scholars such as Kang Xiaoguang and Chen Ming proposed civil-service exams based on virtue rather than rote testing, and envisioned ritual-based models of governance as Chinese alternatives to both Soviet-style bureaucracy and Western liberalism. A 2018 issue of Culture and Society looked back on this moment as 'the adolescence of mainland New Confucianism' – a moment of possibility that was quickly being eclipsed. Under Xi, that window has closed. In 2015, internal guidance from the Central Propaganda Department and the National Press and Publication Administration instructed editors to avoid 'speculative institutional schemes derived from pre-modern systems' unless they could be reframed in terms of socialist values. The impact was immediate. Jiang's Guoxue Academy in Guizhou lost its legal registration in 2016. Leading academic journals began quietly rejecting submissions that treated tianli as a living political concept. Searches for '儒教宪政' (Confucian constitutionalism) on CNKI, China's national academic database, started returning no results. When a 2017 overseas article revisited the idea of a 'House of Sages,' the Global Times fired back with a familiar script, denouncing unnamed 'reactionary fantasies' that 'smuggle political ambition under antique robes.' The message was clear: any intellectual architecture that implied limits on Xi's authority would be treated as latent rebellion. Behind the rhetoric stands real coercive power. The 2018 Party Disciplinary Regulations include 'improper discussion' (妄议中央) as a punishable offense – on par with bribery and dereliction of duty. In 2023 alone, over 110,000 officials were formally disciplined; many were cited not for corruption, but for ideological misalignment. This is not censorship in the classical sense; rather, it resembles a filter. The key terms of Confucian ethics – xiao (filial piety), zhong (loyalty), and he (harmony) – are still present in textbooks and slogans, but only after being gutted of their metaphysical weight. What remains are empty vessels, repurposed to reinforce the logic of Xi Jinping Thought. Meanwhile, any notion of an external moral order – whether tianli, tianming (the Mandate of Heaven), or the right to remonstrate – is treated as illegible. These ideas are simply excluded: from curricula, journals, policy documents, and political imagination. What has been eliminated, in effect, is not Confucianism as heritage – but Confucianism as judgment. The language of tradition remains, without the possibility that tradition might hold power to account. This elimination doesn't take the form of persecution. It works through silence, through what is no longer published, no longer taught, no longer translated into institutional reality.
The Diplomat
23-07-2025
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Erasing Confucian Cosmology: How Harmony Lost Its Soul
The statue at Fan Zhongyan's tomb site in Yichuan County, Henan. In 1043, Fan's Ten-Point Memorial proposed civil, military, and educational reforms not simply as policy corrections, but as acts of cosmological repair. Confucian cosmology once bound rulers to an order they could not command, linking virtue, ritual, and the rhythms of Heaven. This second essay in the Simulated Sagehood series explores how that moral architecture has been emptied and re-coded in China. In place of resonance, Xi's regime installs synchronization; in place of harmony across difference, it imposes order through uniformity. What remains is not metaphysics, but choreography, an aesthetics of control masquerading as ethical order. Under Xi Jinping, the metaphysical heart of Confucianism – once pulsing with the idea of cosmic responsiveness (ganying, 感应) – remains in name but is empty in spirit. The words of the tradition still echo in speeches and textbooks, but their deeper logic – where human action was supposed to resonate with a morally ordered universe – has been stripped of its ethical charge and repurposed for political submission. In classical Chinese thought, cosmology wasn't abstract speculation. It was a moral architecture, a way of binding rulers to a higher standard. Tian (Heaven) wasn't a deity, but a moral horizon – a principle rulers had to align with. Ganying wasn't just intuition; it was a ritual circuit, a choreography of offerings, timing, and space that linked governance to cosmic rhythms. Power was judged not by loyalty or efficiency, but by how well it harmonized with this larger moral field. He (和), often translated as 'harmony,' didn't mean peace or consensus. It meant ethical balance – a live calibration between Heaven, ruler, minister, and people. In the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), zhong (中) refers to centrality or equilibrium – not as a fixed state, but as a form of ethical responsiveness. Virtue created legitimacy, but only if it answered to something outside itself. This notion of 'differentiated harmony' – captured by the phrase he er bu tong (和而不同), or 'harmony without uniformity' – stood in quiet opposition to the Legalist idea of yi (一), or enforced sameness. Where Confucians aimed for resonance across difference, Legalists imposed order by crushing it. That contrast would come roaring back under the Chinese Communist Party's modern appropriation of Confucian ideas. Imperial China took this moral cosmology seriously. Omens, droughts, and celestial events were read as signs of moral imbalance, demanding ritual correction. In 637, Emperor Taizong issued a limited ban on animal slaughter during the three annual changzhai (long fasts) – not a sweeping reform, but a gesture toward ethical recalibration, where Confucian ren (benevolence) met Buddhist compassion in an act of cosmic repair. A few centuries later, Song Dynasty Emperor Zhenzong responded to strange heavenly phenomena by unveiling a 'Heavenly Text' (tianshu) – a supposed divine revelation that was in fact fabricated by the Daoist priest Zhao Yu. What followed wasn't retreat, but theatrical escalation: grand new rites, altar constructions, and sacrifices, especially at Mount Tai. These weren't acts of superstition, but were scripted performances designed to restore Heaven–ruler resonance. Even the Western Zhou Dynasty, nearly 3,000 years ago, eclipses could trigger pauses in labor conscription or suspensions of punishment. The message was clear: power must remain morally permeable to the world beyond itself. There were moments – rare but real – when Confucian cosmology exerted genuine moral traction on political authority. The Western Han Emperors Wen and Jing, ruling in the aftermath of the Qin collapse, pursued a politics of restraint. Collective punishment was scaled back (though retained in treason cases), fiscal discipline enforced, and rituals simplified. Wen, in particular, refused to build new palaces and avoided lavish rites, not merely out of thrift but as a gesture of symbolic restraint that later Confucian historians would interpret as alignment with Heaven. While the dominant ideology of the court remained Huang-Lao – a syncretic blend of Daoist non-action and Legalist statecraft – advisers like Lu Jia began articulating a political ethic grounded in virtue and moral suasion rather than coercion. His Xinyu rejected Qin authoritarianism and emphasized humane governance, ritual propriety, and the ruler's ethical conduct as the foundation of lasting order. Although not yet grounded in the metaphysics of resonance, this early Han rhetoric laid conceptual foundations for later cosmological models of rulership, where austerity could function as a ritualized performance of moral clarity. Centuries later, under the Northern Song, Emperor Renzong presided over one of the clearest efforts to embed Confucian ethics into the structures of governance. Reformers like Fan Zhongyan and Ouyang Xiu interpreted institutional decay as a symptom of moral misalignment. In 1043, Fan's Ten-Point Memorial proposed civil, military, and educational reforms not simply as policy corrections, but as acts of cosmological repair. Renzong responded to droughts and disasters with a pattern of ritualized self-accountability – issuing scores of self-reproach edicts, palace diet reductions, and public requests for remonstrance. While the precise number is debated, it far exceeded that of any earlier Song monarch. These gestures were not mere formalities: they often accompanied dismissals, budget reallocations, and real administrative shifts. They did not transform the system. But they did mark moments when sovereignty acknowledged its limits and sought legitimacy by answering to a moral order beyond itself. Yet those flashes of traction were neither continuous nor permanent. Over time, ritual began to detach from moral substance and serve the consolidation of power. Confucian forms were retained, but their ethical force dulled. Ming Emperor Yongle built the sprawling Temple of Heaven between 1406 and 1420 – not just as a sacred site, but as a theatrical assertion of harmony. The architecture multiplied altars and axis lines in a performance of cosmic alignment, even as Yongle centralized power and suppressed dissent. Qing emperors performed elaborate rituals at the empire's frontiers even while expanding through conquest and destruction – most infamously during the Dzungar genocide and the incorporation of Tibet and Xinjiang. Harmony remained on the stage, but it no longer bound sovereignty to an ethical horizon. Ritual could now operate as a mirror or a mask. Under Xi, the entire cosmological structure hasn't been debated or disproved – it's simply been overwritten. In 2013, the directive On Cultivating and Practicing the Core Socialist Values recast he (harmony) as 'unity and cohesion under Party leadership.' That may sound cosmetic, but it marks a profound ontological shift. Where he once meant ethical balance between distinct entities – ruler and Heaven, humans and nature – it now means the elimination of difference. In this, Xi's reinterpretation hews closer to the Legalist ideal of yi – sameness as control – than to Confucian harmony. The 2021 Xi Jinping Thought Student Readers illustrate this clearly. Children learn about 'social harmony' through standardized dress, synchronized flag-raisings, and orderly public behavior. He is illustrated by clean streets, neat queues, and families watching the evening news in unison. What once expressed resonance across moral and cosmic domains is now reduced to aesthetic compliance. It's not a misreading of Confucianism – it's an inversion. The classical system nurtured harmony by balancing difference; Xi's model engineers harmony by erasing it. This logic extends beyond human society. In Mencius 1A7, a ruler's refusal to watch an ox suffer was more than kindness – it was an ethical sensitivity that reached beyond class, species, and utility. That single passage fueled debates on humane governance for centuries. Han thinker Dong Zhongshu warned that Heaven sent disasters when animals were slaughtered without ritual care. His Chunqiu Fanlu linked environmental order, moral virtue, and the ethics of sacrificial violence into a single system. The Book of Rites urged nobles to abstain from meat while mourning – not just for human grief, but in recognition of broader sentient suffering. That whole ethical universe is now dormant. Modern CCP documents and textbooks no longer mention tian-ren ganying – the resonance between Heaven and humanity. Environmental policy is framed not as stewardship but as technocratic optimization. The flagship initiative of 'ecological civilization,' introduced under Hu Jintao and expanded by Xi, turns environmental ethics into spreadsheets: carbon credits, eco-city blueprints, green GDP. The moral grammar remains, but it's been converted into metrics. Nowhere is this clearer than in Xiong'an, the showcase 'smart eco-city.' Citizens are encouraged to embrace 'green lifestyles,' rewarded with housing and benefits for actions like tree-planting or sorting trash. AI-based behavioral scoring is still uneven, but the logic is already in place: ethical performance as data. Even phrases like tian-ren he-yi (Heaven and humanity in unity) survive – but only as marketing for Chinese diplomacy or tech-savvy modernization. The cosmos is still cited. But it's no longer inhabited. This transformation didn't begin with Xi. Mao Zedong denounced Heaven as superstition and collapsed moral order into class struggle. Deng Xiaoping shifted legitimacy from cosmic alignment to GDP growth. Hu Jintao tried to soften that edge, introducing slogans like 'harmonious society' and 'ecological civilization.' Xi finishes the arc – not by discarding the old language, but by embalming it. Harmony becomes discipline. Virtue becomes loyalty. Heaven becomes a decorative backdrop. To many outside China, this might look like rational progress. After all, in a world run by data and governance metrics, who needs omens or rites? But Confucian cosmology was never about superstition. Its real power lay in de-centering authority – binding it to something it couldn't control. Floods and eclipses mattered not because they caused political change, but because they interpreted power. That external frame – where sovereignty had to respond to something beyond itself – acted as a brake on autocracy. Consider the late Ming. When the Wanli emperor stopped performing the Temple of Heaven rites for nearly 30 years, Confucian officials protested not out of rote ritualism, but because his silence symbolized a breakdown in the moral order. His absence from ritual space became a proxy for dynastic decay, long before the Manchu threat arrived. Other civilizations have had cosmological checks – mizan (moral balance) in Islamic thought, logos in Stoicism, ordo in medieval Christianity – but none formalized them quite like China. The Chinese model triangulated Heaven, ruler, and people through codified rites, bureaucratized resonance, and symbolic accountability. That precision makes its unraveling today even more striking. In Xi's China, that triangle is broken. Tian no longer functions as a moral constraint. The people cannot remonstrate in meaningful ways. Legitimacy no longer flows from above or below – it loops inward. The 20th Party Congress made this official: the CCP's centralized leadership is now the sole source of political truth. Omens are out. Metrics are in. And in 2022, a revised Party Constitution placed Xi Jinping Thought above even Deng Xiaoping Theory. Authority no longer seeks external justification. It declares itself valid. Recovering the spirit of Confucian cosmology doesn't mean reviving superstition. It means recovering the principle of external constraint. Replace eclipses with transparency. Replace sacrificial rites with civic audits. Replace Heaven–Earth resonance with climate interdependence rooted in responsibility. What matters isn't mysticism; it's the refusal to let power justify itself on its own terms. What remains today is a highly curated imitation. Harmony is measured in spatial order. Virtue becomes a checkbox. Heaven becomes a logo on a brochure. The symbolism persists, but the force is gone. Ritual no longer binds power to morality – it seals it within performance. The CCP reenacts legitimacy on a stage drained of resonance. The architecture still stands, but the breath is gone.
The Diplomat
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Bureaucratized Confucianism: How Tradition Became a Tool of Control in China
What does it mean when a regime speaks the language of ancient virtue but enforces it through curriculum mandates and ideological scorecards? The opening essay of Simulated Sagehood, a five-part series, traces how Confucianism has been reconstructed, not as a living tradition, but as a calibrated instrument of bureaucratic control. Through textbook reform, propaganda choreography, and institutional incentives, Xi's China fuses ethical language with Leninist mechanics. The result is not revival but simulation: a Confucianism of surfaces, stripped of its moral interior. The return of Confucian language under Chinese leader Xi Jinping isn't a spontaneous cultural revival. It's a carefully orchestrated campaign — engineered from the top of the Chinese party-state — to wrap centralized political control in the language of ancient virtue. What's unfolding is a quiet reversal: values once rooted in moral constraint, like filial piety, virtue, and ethical cultivation, are being refitted to serve a system built on obedience and authority. This isn't Confucianism reborn. It's a state-authored script, stitching together the vocabulary of tradition to legitimize modern power. The turning point came in 2013 with a little-known but foundational document: the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere — more commonly known as Document No. 9. Here, the Chinese Communist Party elevated 'cultural security' to the same strategic level as political or cyber defense, identifying 'Western constitutional democracy,' 'universal values,' and 'historical nihilism' as existential threats. The proposed solution wasn't dialogue or reform, but insulation: Confucian culture would be deployed as a kind of ideological firewall, meant to inoculate China against liberal ideas. This approach was codified in the 2017 Opinions on Implementing the Inheritance and Development Project of Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture — a mouthful of a title, but one with clear intent. It brought Confucian texts under the wing of national security. The classics were no longer seen as sources of independent moral insight, but as symbolic tools linking the Communist Party to an unbroken Han civilizational arc. The machinery driving this transformation spans a vast web of state organs: the propaganda system, the education bureaucracy, and the united front system — a structure designed to manage intellectuals, religious groups, and diaspora networks. Each branch reshapes Confucian motifs to suit its own mission. After the Central Propaganda Department issued its 2015 Action Plan for promoting 'core socialist values,' local governments were told to inject concepts like li (ritual), xiao (filial piety), and zhong (loyalty) into school posters, radio scripts, and CCP publications. But these concepts are no longer invitations to ethical reflection. Xiao is reframed as deference to political authority. Zhong — which once carried the tension between loyalty and principled dissent — is reduced to personal allegiance to Xi as the party's 'core.' These values aren't interpreted; they're rebranded as slogans. The shift is institutionalized most clearly through the Ministry of Education. In 2017, under State Council directive No. 61, the government established the National Textbook Committee, chaired by a vice premier and staffed by Marxist theorists and propaganda cadres. Its job? To vet all school textbooks for ideological conformity. Accuracy — whether philological or philosophical — takes a backseat. By 2019, new standardized textbooks in literature, civics, and history began inserting handpicked excerpts from the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean). These insertions weren't meant to provoke classical interpretation. One widely noted example pairs Mencius' famous line, 'When the ruler is upright, the people will follow,' with a photo of Xi visiting a poor village. The message is clear: Xi doesn't just rule — he continues a civilizational mandate. This symbolic fusion reached a new level in 2021 with the launch of the Three-Subject Unified Textbooks (三科统编教材). For the first time, Xi Jinping Thought became mandatory reading in all public primary and secondary schools — including in ethnic minority regions. Sayings like 'The noble man cultivates himself to govern family and state' (君子修其身以齐家治国) now appear alongside directives to 'love and follow the party's core, General Secretary Xi.' Confucian virtues are no longer positioned as part of an ethical journey. They are cast as historical truths — completed, fulfilled, and embodied in CCP rule. What remains of Confucian discourse is the scaffolding. The meaning has been hollowed and refilled with political certainty. Since 2020, this 'Confucianism with CCP characteristics' has become part of institutional performance. The state now applies ideological-political quality assessments (思想政治素质考核) to teachers, cadres, and schools. The Eight-Ministry Opinion of 2020 explicitly links results from these evaluations to funding decisions, promotions, and curriculum approvals. By 2023, the National Cadre Education and Training Plan designated the study and application of Xi Jinping Thought as the key test for political fitness. Provincial party academies now use numerical dashboards to track how often officials invoke 'excellent traditional culture' in speeches, papers, and events. In this environment, Confucian vocabulary doesn't function as ethical language. It becomes metadata — an ideological KPI, measurable and monetized. The tradition survives not as thought, but as performance.
