Benjamin Haas writing for AFP (January 14, 2015) tells of a Confucius statue that stands tall at the seaside resort in Beidaihe, Hebei Province, China, saying it appears: “Arms outstretched like Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer, a towering Confucius statue stands in the seaside resort that hosts the Chinese Communist leadership’s summer retreat, opposite a hulking monument to President Xi Jinping’s dreams.”
The sculpture is part of a 50 million yuan ($8 million) complex built by Communist Party Wang Dianming, an ex-general who says his money comes from travel and education companies.
Confucianism is an ethical and philosophical system that stresses reciprocal service based on hierarchical levels and obedience, and was China’s official state ideology in Imperial times. It was a target of the Communist Party during their first decades in power, and particularly denigrated during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-tung – yet president Xi has always approvingly cited the sage.
Xi’s “Chinese Dream” of…national rejuvenation, improvement of people’s livelihoods, prosperity, construction of a better society and military strengthening is enlarged on by Wang, as told to AFP: “The Chinese Dream draws on the nutrients from China’s exceptional traditional culture and the teachings of Confucius.”
The Confucius figure stands almost 20 metres high and looks out at an obelisk written with the characters for “Chinese Dream” and “socialist core values”. One side of the base heralds a quote from Xi, while the other three sides depict soldiers, farmers and workers in the typical socialist realist style of the 1950s propaganda posters. In a corner of the grounds a smaller statue of Mao, founder of Communist China, gives evidence that the Great Leader is still in play.
“We want to achieve the Chinese Dream not only for the benefit of the Chinese people, but also for the benefit of all peoples,” reads part of Xi’s quote.
Mao roundly criticised the old Chinese traditions, particularly the Confucian teachings, for continuing a feudal social system. However, in more recent years, the Beijing government has been pondering on how to counter the ever-increasing popularity of Western culture, religions and prosyletising Christianity in particular, in fact wanting to downsize the influence of any religion by promoting up-dated interpretations of the more socialising aspects of the Chinese heritage.
It is seen that there is an air of spirituality in what Confucius has deposited and that is what’s missing now from a more commercialised China, different from that which was almost deposited in the heady days of early communism. There are rituals related to Confucius for such as seasonal changes and some ambitious protagonists see these ceremonies in like manner as those enacted by the Buddhists and the Catholics with all the sundries and trappings that have a long held attraction for the common people and those who are more spiritually inclined.
“The party chief’s speeches have been littered with Confucian sayings and allusions for years, long before he became president, with experts pointing to them as evidence that he truly admires the ancient philosophiy, rather than it being a device used by presidential speechwriters,” adds Benjamin Haas.
“We should be more respectful and mindful of more than 5,000 years of continuous Chinese culture,” the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, quoted Xi as saying in a front page article in October 2014. Continuing with: “Several thousand years ago, the Chinese nation trod a path that was different from other countries’ culture and development.” Any in-depth read of China’s long history will verify that statement.
President Xi delivered the keynote speech at an International Confucian Association meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to commemorate the 2565th anniversary of the sage’s birth in September 2014. That in itself gives an official nod to the development of Confucianist values in modern socialist garb to help re-instill in the Chinese a non-materialistic point of view.
The nation certainly has gone far enough in the direction of materialism, so cleverly spread by what superficially might seem an unwitting West, now drowning in its own lack of real human values.
