Reform Era: Two Opposing Currents

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omnipresent, but in this case was utilized to preach the reformation of one’s thought towards the new ideology. Nonetheless, it was based on a Confucian doctrine, which points towards historical continuity.Billioud concludes that unlike communist states in Eastern-Europe, the CCP in China didn’t restrict itself to only communism.⁵⁵

However, some of the above argumentation is not very convincing, especially the supposed historical continuity with regards to the Maoist state’s use of Confucian terminology. Weatherly for example, mentions that the Maoist state used Confucian references to China as ‘Middle Kingdom’.⁵⁶ However, it is too short-sighted to ascribe something to Confucianism just because the same terminology is used. Confucianism naturally influenced the Chinese language profoundly, which does not mean that the use of words or sayings with Confucian origins would necessarily have been associated with Confucianism. Instead, China as ‘Middle Kingdom’ might just as well appeal to the deep feelings of nationalism under the population, rooted in 19^th and 20^th century humiliation, which made the CCP pragmatically use this kind of terminology – which probably bore strong symbolic meaning as the population had been contextualized with this kind of language – in order to capitalize on its legacy as unifier of the country.

3.2.3. Reform Era: Two Opposing Currents

Burton uses Geertz to argue that the Cultural Revolution changed China’s superficial cultural expressions, but “could not successfully transform the basis for China’s normative culture.”⁵⁷ The layer that gives meaning and form to the pattern of life proved to be resilient.⁵⁸ Already in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, all kinds of cultural expressions revived spontaneously in many parts of society. Temples were rebuilt, processions were held, and academic circles openly discussed China’s heritage again.

Hoblig and Gilley argue that since this moment, the role of Confucianism in people’s lives in such fields as “religion, spirituality, moral self-cultivation, philosophy, science,

55 Ibid, 56.

56 Ibid, 27.

57 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 14.

58 Charles Burton, Political and Social Change in China since 1978 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990), 97.

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and children’s education” grew progressively. Later this was termed as ‘cultural fever’

(文化熱).⁵⁹

However, the enthusiasm for culture was based on two developments: the rediscovery of China’s traditions, but also the influx of Western culture. The 1980s saw two quite diametrically opposed currents. One current was impressed by the Western culture that started to flood into China since the ‘opening up’. Amongst the people that followed this line of reasoning were many intellectuals, but also broader layers of society as well as CCP officials. They were deeply rooted in the ideas of the May the 4^th Movement, and argued that the Western culture could now help to finally destroy Chinese cultural weakness.⁶⁰ However, other developments led some people to believe the opposite. The influx of culturally Chinese people from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan as well as from diaspora communities around the world showed to some that modernity and Confucianism can go hand in hand.

This societal room to flirt with China’s traditions and the Western culture was created by the fact that Communism/Marxism/Maoism didn’t have a hegemonic position in the cultural realm anymore. The disasters of the first three decades of CCP rule, combined with the market transformations, made Communism/Marxism/Maoism lack credibility there.⁶¹ Below the two aforementioned opposing currents are described.

3.2.3.1. River Elegy: Westernization

Many intellectuals and officials during the 1980s still felt that one of China’s weaknesses was its culture. They believed that a total reorientation was needed in order to be able to face the outside world, and the strong Western culture could finally do that job. Tu illustrates this current by recalling a television series from 1988, called ‘river elegy’.⁶² This was a documentary series on contemporary China, through the lens of recent history and culture. This series argued that China was once a great civilization, but weakened over time due to isolation and due to conservative static powers. It advocated that the

‘blue ocean’ needed to be embraced to save the ‘yellow earth’; the blue ocean

59 Holbig and Gilley, “Reclaiming Legitimacy,” 409.

60 Tu, “Cultural China,” 4-6.

61 Burton, Political and Social Change, 95-100.

62River elegy can be viewed online at: accessed January 9, 2013, http://archive.org/details/ddtv_40_china_presenting_river_elegy.

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Figure 4.1. River Elegy representing the West which indeed came over the ocean since the ‘opening up’, and the yellow earth representing China. The documentaries symbolically attacked all tradition, by stating that the Yellow River – which symbolizes the traditional Chinese culture – is

“seven-tenth mud”. Since elegy means “a poem or song composed as a lament for a deceased person”, this was a death poem for the traditional Chinese culture. Symbols and achievements like the dragon and the great wall were put in the context of backwardness and isolationism. Again, this documentary combined political nationalism with anti-traditionalism. But this time, anti-traditionalism

meant the adoption of western culture. ⁶³ A bottom-up approach – through the West – was now envisioned to realize what Mao’s top-down approach – to replace Chinese culture with a communist worldview – failed to do.⁶⁴ This documentary initiated a heated national debate

regarding the meaning of the Chinese culture. After the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989, this pro-Westernization current was discredited for the party, and many of the documentary makers, as well as those who supporter their ideas, either fled the country or changed their views.⁶⁵

3.2.3.2. Asian Dragons: Confucianism Revisited

Since China’s opening up, many ethnically Chinese people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – as well as from Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia and around the world – flocked into China to benefit from the new opportunities. By doing so, they provided a huge amount of foreign investment, exceeding both Japan and the U.S. Moreover, these people were not laborers or laundrymen, but investors, engineers, professionals and merchants, who brought skills, technology and money with them. But the most startling for many Chinese, was the realization that these people were both modern, and also kept their Chinese cultural traditions alive. Apparently, as Tu convincingly argues, the

63 Jun Liu, “Restless Chinese Nationalist Currents in the 1980s and the 1990s: A Comparative Reading of River Elegy and China Can Say No,” in Chinese Nationalism in Perspective: Historical and Recent Cases, ed. C. X. George Wei and Xiaoyuan Liu (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001), 205-231.

64 Tu, “Cultural China,” 5.

65 Figure 4.1. Accessed January 9, 2013, http://dgeneratefilms.com/uncategorized/chinese-realites-1-river-elegy.

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periphery of the Chinese civilization had kept the torch of the Chinese culture alive while the center was in turmoil. The incompatibility of the Chinese culture and modernity became an outdated thought. The media soon started to endorse this new perspective. ⁶⁶