Should they prove to be the success towards which the Chinese have been working, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games threaten to mark a watershed in global history. They would put on display the world’s major ‘communist’ power with the world’s most successful ‘capitalist’ economy. This apparent contradiction is only clarified if understood as a product of the world’s original ‘Confucian’ civilisation.
The English language media will continue to highlight perceived ‘Communist’ China’s disregard of human rights and ‘Capitalist’ China’s share of the environmental challenges that accompany Western style economic development. Followers of the Games might more beneficially take a serious interest in ‘Confucian’ China’s civilisation. At the same time they may need to weigh what one Western writer has identified as the dilemma of the Tibetan people, “trapped between an oppressive Beijing and a manipulative Washington.” They might also bear in mind that over a billion highly civilised and productive Han Chinese would protest strongly against the suggestion of Beijing’s ‘oppression’ and that the same Western writer has also stated that “China is viewed by Washington as a major threat, both economic and military, not just in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America as well.” In reflecting on Confucian China, news of a planned $4.2 billion, 300 square kilometres Confucius City may help. Although some are already inclined to depict project plans for the Confucius City in a manner that suggests a recent inspiration to create a Chinese Disneyland, the Confucian renaissance in China has a serious and well-established foundation dating back at least two decades. In fact, Mao Zedong’s library in 1949 was stocked almost exclusively with China’s great literary and historical works and the Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius political campaign in 1975 revealed a profound and active knowledge of the Sage’s influence. Positive official recognition of the importance of Confucian values probably dates, however, from the First International Conference on Confucian Studies in Qufu in 1987, jointly sponsored with Singapore’s now Mentor Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and the establishment of the Beijing based International Confucian Association in Beijing in 1994. At the former there was open banquet discussion of the critical role Confucianism had to play in China’s future. Some years prior to the 1994 Conference, President Jiang Zemin had made an explicit semi-public statement about the importance of reviving classical learning from an early age. Ignorance about the Confucian character of contemporary China is a product of the practice of ‘intellectual apartheid’. This once assisted in the building of Western empires and the projection of the Enlightenment’s ‘universal’ values. It now serves to keep those outside Asia ignorant of powerful forces shaping the global future. As will be explained later, the influence of Confucius has pervaded all of East Asia. It goes far to explain the economic success of the region over the last half century. Naiveté about the character of this Confucian influence also goes far to explain the enfeebling of the American economy.
The Confucian Legacy
The Confucian legacy is complex and can take many different characters, depending on the period of history one chooses to examine. It is, nevertheless, possible to make some strong statements about its central character in defining East Asia, with its to continue..http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Article/The_Beijing_Games_Confucius_and_the_Very_Great_US_Depression.html
