Anita Chang reporting for Associated Press in Beijing says, “There’s a new face keeping Chairman Mao company on Tiananmen Square.”
A bronze sculpture of Confucius now stands tall at 31 feet (9.5 meters) and is described as having a serious expression.
Chang writes, “Confucius is enjoying a revival, in books and films, on TV and in classrooms…”
For those who don’t know, Mao declared war on Confucianism and education during the Cultural Revolution.
My wife, who grew up in China during Mao’s era, still believes Confucian values for harmony and peace are what made China weak and a victim to Western Imperialism during the 19th century and to the Japanese during World War II. She may be right. At the time, China believed it was too civilized to worry and wasn’t prepared to defend itself as it is today.
However, she also says to pay attention to the small things the government does. Don’t expect Chinese to be as direct as Westerners.
There’s a strong message in Confucius standing opposite Mao across the vastness of Tiananmen Square as if he were scolding Mao for what he did and few mainland Chinese will miss it. Mao, the student, has been chastised and Tiger Mothers such as Amy Chua are being sent a message to stay tough with their children when it comes to having the kids eat bitterness and sacrifice having fun while working hard earning an education.
Confucius wouldn’t want it any other way.
Now that China is a capitalist/socialist nation with an open market economy, the need for Confucian values is making a comeback with government support. Confucius taught duty to family, respect for learning, virtuous behavior (three traits rare in the West) and obedience of individuals to the state.
What Chang doesn’t say is that Confucius also had expectations for the state to lead by example and to act the part of a gentleman. China’s leaders are aware that they are responsible to provide security for the nation and economic progress for the people in ways that most Western rulers would never consider.
Although China’s central government hasn’t launched a Western style public relations campaign to resurrect Confucian values, which are still a strong foundation for most Chinese families, Chang indicates that we will see some top leaders promoting Confucianism.
In fact, in 2010, a movie of Confucius with Chow Yun Fat was filmed and released in China.
There’s another message that most American weapons’ manufactures and conservative hawks won’t want the world to understand. If China is really moving back to Confucian values, that means China will not be the aggressor in war but will keep a modern military for defense only.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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However, it is widely known that she was a capable woman who was very skilled at power play. Your comments have stirred my curiosity. Are there any more sources you know of that can give me an idea of the real empress dowager?
The only nonfiction book I know of that reveals the truth about Tzu Hsi is Sterling Seagrave’s “Dragon Lady”, which is about the dowager empress. There is a chapter that focuses on Sir Robert Hart. It seems Sterling also read Robert Hart’s letters and journals in addition to reading the personal journals of the British reporter for the London Times station in China at the time. The London Times reporter demonized the empress in the British media. Seagrave’s resesarch discvoered the London Times reporter was a liar and bragged about it in his personal journals, which Seagrave descovered reveals the truth about how most of the world sees Tzu Hsi as the dragon lady when she wasn’t as bad as most believe.
Empress dowager is considered a very incapable leader in China. It was her decision to surrender. Without a doubt, Chinese weaponry was very inferior to western weaponry at the time. However, that does not justify why she deprived the emperor of his rightful position and refused to fight with western powers, repeatedly ignoring the emperors call to arms. She surrendered without much of a fight.
Are you talking about her son, who was a spoiled brat that died of a STD. He used to sneak out of the Forbidden City and visit a nearby whore house. Or you talking about her nephew, who was influenced by a Japanese agent. Seagrave explores it all and with a lot of csholorship and research behind his book. Instead of depending on the lies, he went in search of the kind of first hand evidence that usually leads to a closer truth. Most of the other matereial written on the Dowager came from the same media that demonized her.
Actually, that wasn’t really my point. I and many Chinese believe that empress dowager should take all the blame. The emperor wanted to mimick foreign technology to improve China’s weapon system and then fight with the western powers, which was the most appropriate thing to do. However his mother aka the infamous empress dowager had all the power and only wanted to surrender to the foreign aggressors.
Terry,
Yet Sir Robert Hart wrote that the empress dowager was a capable ruler. I don’t recall his exact language but it was not critical. In fact, it was praise.
Consider how many Boxers were killed in 1900 by foreign troops with more modern weapons and how many foreign troops were killed. Also consider how many Chinese troops died in the Second Opium War when the Taku Forts fell and the Western forces advanced on China’s capital. In one battle, 20,000 Imperial troops were mowed down by machine guns while only a few Western troops were wounded or killed. Then the Western forces burned and blew up the famous Summer Palace destroying centuries of work and beauty.
Although Robert Hart played a role improving and modernizing China’s military, even in 1900, China was not capable of putting up a strong resistance to countries that already had been in the Industrial Revolution since the late 18th and early 19th century. In comparison, China’s industrial revolution didn’t start until after the Coummunists came to power in 1949 and really didn’t get going until the early 1980s.
Yes, many Chinese blame the dowager empress but she was demonized in the British media and what the British wrote about her to make her look evil ended up in the history textbooks in China. Have you read Sterling Seagrave’s Dragon Lady? Seagrave proved that much of the demonizing of the empress were lies and that the history texts were based on those lies. What most people believe of the empress dowager was early evidence of biased, Sinophobic propaganda to turn China and its rulers into the enemy so the British Empire could justify is agression and demands.
I have to disagree. China just happened to have a very weak emperor at the time. He wanted to fight the western powers bur his mother-who had all the power-did not. Had China been lead by a capable emperor at the time, they would have been able to drive the foreign aggressors away due to China’s vast population.
Are you talking about this statement, “during Mao’s era, still believes Confucian values for harmony and peace are what made China weak and a victim to Western Imperialism during the 19th century and to the Japanese during World War II.”
On reflection, I must agree with you that Confucianism was not the reason China was week between the early part of the 10th century until after World War II.
Yes, that Qing emperor and all those that followed him were weak and burdened with a very corrupt Manchu ruled government. However, China was also burdened with the Taiping Rebellion that drained military resources so China could not fight the West as efficiently as it might have. Both of the Opium Wars were fought at a time that China’s Imperial government was struggling to survive the Taipings that at one point controlled a third of China and had Nanjing as their capital. I’ve read that the casualites of the Taiping Rebellion were at least 20 million and may have been as high as 100 million.
If I’m not mistaken, there was also an Islamic rebellion about the same time in the northwest that cost another 11 million lives to defeat.
As for Japan, instead of Confucianism making China weak, it was more a combination of factors such as wide spread opium addiction, the collapse of the Qing dynasty and what followed that caused China to be open for an invasion from Japan, which was the anarchy and chaos and China breaking up into areas controlled by warlords in addition to the Civil War raging between the Nationalists and Communists (1926 – 1949). During the early part of the Japanese invasion into Manchuria and Northern China, Chiang Kai-shek was obsessed with destroying the communists and ignored the Japanese until it was too late.