An Op-ed article published in New York Times yesterday entitled 'A Confucian Constitute for China'  by Jiang Qing and Danile Bell -- both of them are leading figures of the contemporary political Confucianism. To see the full article, please visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/a-confucian-constitution-in-china.html?_r=2

I am impressed that New York Times published an article like this, which is good as it keeps my research relevant. But it's strange at the same time as I had been thinking a lot about what it means to me to observe the revival of Confucianism in China. Other than accumulating information and knowledge, what all these means to me? So I'm going to share a bit more on my personally feeling about this whole movement.


The word 'humane authority' seems bizarre, and you can only HOPE that the people in power will uphold this 'humane value'. The assumption is that there are 'Confucian scholars' who will uphold the value and they should be in charge of the government, but how and where you can find legitimate 'Confucian scholars' these days? (in my understand it is different from 'scholar who study Confucian classics')

When I read this article, I can't stop thinking about the passionate activists of the Confucian classic-reading education movement, the dedicated loving parents, and the hard-working lovely children whom I had met during my fieldwork research.  From the grass-root level, I can see why it make sense for them to go back to Confucian classics as the guideline to deal with all the changes, uncertainty and disappointment that they are encountering in a rapidly changing society. And the reason why they want their children to study the classics so that they can have the chance to gain the wisdom to deal with the same challenges that their parents' generation had faced, to be prepared and hopefully suffer less and have a chance to be happy (not in material sense).  After all, all societies need some kind of moral and ethical guidance, whether it's religious schooling, or secular one that the communist party had done 'so-well' in indoctrininating the school children with models of self-less communist spirit. 


What I can't see, however, is that how the current situation in China can help nurture the ideal kind of 'Confucian scholars' who can uphold the ultimate value in Confucianism to be righteous, and in Qing & Bell's word, 'humane'. More and more, people who have the conscience to speak up for social injustice, for freedom, for basic rights as a human being, had been brutally shut down, tortured, and suppressed. Sometimes I can't help but worry about the future of these children who study Confucian classics -- if it is as the activists claim that they learned the 'right way' to be a human being through intensive study of the classics -- what kind of disappointment they will face? and how much suffering that they have to go through in order to 'do the right thing'? 


But even if political transformation have miraculous became possible (with or without bloody revolution), who gets to decide that the 'new new' China is going to have a 'Confucian Constitution'? If it is not by the people (as Qing & Bell both against the model of Western democracy), will it be the people who already possessed some kind of political and cultural capital that get the power to decide? If so, isn't it just a change of outfit from a communist ideology to a Confucian ideology to cover and portect the interests of the dominant class? What could have been changed then? 


When Confucius was preaching his teaching in his time, he had the freedom of speech, to talk about what he believed in as true and right. He had the freedom to travel from state to state to preach his teaching to large group of audience. The audience have the freedom to attend , and not attend, and that they also have the freedom to choose to listen to the other 'Hundreds School of Thoughts'. Maybe Confucianism can only manifest in its best in this kind of condition, in which freedom and space are possible, that allow it shines together with the other school of thoughts.