Conservatism in China

Conservatism in China (simplified Chinese: 保守主义; traditional Chinese: 保守主義; pinyin: bǎoshǒu zhǔyì) emphasizes authority and meritocracy stemming from Confucian values, and economically, it aims for state capitalism rather than free markets. Many Chinese conservatives reject individualism or classical liberal principles and differ from modern Western conservatism because of the ideology's strong communitarian element. A major concern of modern Chinese conservatism is the preservation of traditional Chinese culture.
Chinese conservatism can be traced back to Confucius, whose philosophy is based on the values of loyalty, duty, and respect. He believed in a hierarchically organized society, modeled after the patriarchal family and headed by an absolute sovereign. However, Confucius also believed that the state should employ a meritocratic class of administrators and advisers, recruited by civil service exams. An alternative school of thought called Legalism argued that administrative discipline, not Confucian virtue, was crucial for the governance of the state.
For thousands of years, China was ruled by monarchs of various imperial dynasties. The Mandate of Heaven theory was invoked in order to legitimize the absolute authority of the Emperor. In the nineteenth century, imperial rule was challenged from within and without. The Taiping Rebellion (1849-1861) was a massive popular movement that aimed at both social and political revolution, but the Tongzhi Restoration (1861-1872) rejuvenated the regime with a combination of military innovation and social order. The historian Mary C. Wright calls this "the last stand of Chinese conservatism," although later historians have different views.
The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 overthrew Puyi, the last Chinese Emperor, and ushered in the Republic of China. The Chinese nationalist party Kuomintang (KMT) was originally a social democratic party that advocated Westernization during the Sun Yat-sen period. Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded Sun as leader of the KMT, was originally classified as "centrist", with the more Buddhist traditional and conservative "rightist" Western Hills Group and the "leftist" Reorganization Group led by Wang Jingwei. KMT was a Chinese nationalist party that ruled mainland China from 1927 to 1949, and after the anti-communist Shanghai massacre in 1927, Chiang was reinforced in right-wing and conservative elements (such as traditional values).
Chiang's Nationalist revolution became "conservative" in rejecting the communist attack on social hierarchies and inequalities, but remained revolutionary in the party-state's attack on the "materialist" order and mobilization of the masses to avoid a Western style capitalist modernity. The New Life Movement was a government-led civic campaign in the 1930s to promote cultural reform and Neo-Confucian social morality. The goal was to unite China under a centralised ideology following the emergence of ideological challenges to the status quo. This movement was related to Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist campaign at the time, but today it also inspires conservatives like Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party.
Following his defeat in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chiang continued right-wing authoritarian ruling the island of Taiwan until his death in 1975.
On the mainland, Chinese conservatism was vehemently opposed and suppressed by the CCP, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Members of the "Five Black Categories"—landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad influencers, and right-wingers—were violently persecuted. Young people formed cadres of Red Guards throughout the country and sought to destroy the Four Olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits—leading to the destruction of a large part of China's cultural heritage, including historical artifacts and religious sites. Among them, some Red Guards who embraced local officials were pejoratively called "conservatives".
In recent decades, Chinese conservatism has experienced a national revival. The ancient schools of Confucianism and Legalism have made a return into mainstream Chinese thought. General Secretary Xi Jinping has called traditional Chinese culture the "soul" of the nation and the "foundation" of the CCP.
Since Xi took office as China's president in 2013, social conservatism has been strengthened, including the traditional gender role for women.
As a term, conservativism has been used to characterize multiple intellectual trends, including Confucian revivalists, cultural nationalists, and proponents of realpolitick. A common theme among the diverse trends of conservatism in China is the continuity of the Chinese civilizational tradition and opposition to Western secular modernity.
Chiangism (Chinese: 蔣介石主義) is the political philosophy of President Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who used it during his rule in China under the Kuomintang on both the mainland and Taiwan. It is a right-wing authoritarian nationalist ideology based on mostly Tridemist principles mixed with Confucianism. It was primarily practiced as part of the New Life Movement, as well as the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement. It was influenced by other political ideologies, including socialism, fascism, party-state capitalism and paternalistic conservatism, as well as by Chiang's Methodist Christian beliefs.
Dai Jitao Thought (Chinese: 戴季陶主義) is an ideology based on the interpretation of the Tridemism by some Kuomintang members, including Dai Jitao, since Sun Yat-sen's death in March 1925. Dai Jitao Thought became the ideological foundation of the right wing Kuomintang, including the Western Hills Group. Dai Jitao himself described it as "Pure Tridemism" (纯粹三民主义).
Neoauthoritarianism (Chinese: 新权威主义; pinyin: xīn quánwēi zhǔyì) is a current of political thought within the People's Republic of China (PRC), and to some extent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that advocates a powerful centralized state to facilitate market reforms. The concept of liberal democracy led to intense debate between democratic advocates and neoauthoritarians prior to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. It has been described as right-wing, classically conservative even though it incorporated some aspects of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist theories. Wang Huning, widely regarded as the grey eminence and chief ideologue of the CCP, has criticized aspects of Marxism and recommended that China combine its historical and modern values. Jiang Shigong is considered a major promoter of the ideas of Carl Schmitt and neoauthoritarianism.
Neoauthoritarianism is a current of political thought that rose in China in the late 1980's and came into ascendancy after the death of Deng Xiaoping. Christer Pursiainen has characterized the CCP as a right-wing political party, pointing to an ideological change within the party under Jiang Zemin's leadership during the 1990s. In today's China, neoauthoritarian stands out Xi's rule, and was designed by Wang Huning. Its origin was based in reworked ideas of Samuel Huntington, who advised the post-Communist East European elite to take a gradualist approach towards market liberalization; hence, "new authoritarianism". A rejection of the optimistic views on modernization theories, it seeks faster reform of the socialist market economy while the party remain ideologically and organizationally sound.
Following the 1978 Third Plenum, which made Deng Xiaoping Paramount leader, China employed a variety of strategies to develop its economy, beginning the Chinese economic reform. By 1982 the success of China's market experiments had become apparent, making more radical strategies seem possible and desirable. This led to the lifting of price controls and agricultural decollectivization, signaling the abandonment of the New Economic Policy, or economic Leninism, in favour of market socialism.
With economic developments and political changes, China departed from totalitarianism towards what Harry Harding characterizes as a "consultative authoritarian regime." One desire of political reform was to "restore normalcy and unity to elite politics so as to bring to an end the chronic instability of the late Maoist period and create a more orderly process of leadership succession." With cadre reform, individual leaders in China, recruited for their performance and education, became more economically liberal, with less ideological loyalty.
Having begun in the era of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, decentralization accelerated under Deng Xiaoping. In a neoauthoritarian vein, Zheng Yongnian (1994) believed that "Deng's early reform decentralized power to the level of local government" with the goal of "decentralizing power to individual enterprises" running "afoul of the growing power of local government, which did not want individual enterprises to retain profit (and) began bargaining with the central government over profit retention, (seizing) decision-making power in the enterprises. This intervention inhibited the more efficient behavior that reforms sought to elicit from industry; decentralization... limited progress."
Though the government took a clear stance against liberalization in December 1986, political discussions centered in Beijing would nonetheless emerge in academic circles in 1988 in the form of democracy and Neoauthoritarianism. Neoauthoritarianism would catch the attention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in early 1988 when Wu Jiaxiang wrote an article in which he concluded that the British monarchy initiated modernization by "pulling down 100 castles overnight", thus developmentally linking autocracy and freedom as preceding democracy and freedom.
Neoauthoritarianism lost favor after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Henry He considers that, while June 4 halted the movement for democracy, because neoauthoritarianism avoids the issue of popular involvement, it would therefore be a downfall for it and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang as well. He considers it to have transformed into a kind of "neo-conservatism" after that.
With the failure of democracy in Russia, and the good performance of Singapore, it would continue to infiltrate the upper echelons of the CCP as a neo-conservatism. Most associated with Shanghai intellectuals, Wang Huning, a leading advocate in the 1980s, would go on to become a close advisor to CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin in the 1990s. The neo-conservatives would enjoy Jiang's patronage.
New Conservatism or neoconservatism (Chinese: 新保守主义; pinyin: xīn bǎoshǒu zhǔyì) argued for political and economic centralization and the establishment of shared moral values. The movement has been described in the West by political scientist Joseph Fewsmith. Neoconservatives are opposed to radical reform projects and argue that an authoritarian and incrementalist approach is necessary to stabilize the process of modernization.
Prominent neoconservative theorists include Xiao Gongqin, initially a leading neoauthoritarian who promoted "gradual reform under strong rule" after 1989.
A central figure, if not principal proponent of Neoauthoritarianism, the "well-connected" Wu Jiaxiang was an advisor to Premier Zhao Ziyang, the latter being a major architect of the Deng Xiaoping reforms.
Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies rejected economic development or modernization as transferable to the political sphere as a mere variable of the former. He preconditioned democracy on institutionalization and stability, with democracy and economic change undermining or putting strain on political stability in poor circumstances. He considered the measure of a political system to be its ability to keep order. Writing in the 1960s, he lauded the United States and Soviet Union equally; what the Soviet Union lacked in social justice was made up for in strong controls.
Wu considered social developments like liberal democracy unable to proceed simply from new authorities. Democracy has to be based on the development of the market, because the market reduces the number of public decisions, the number of people seeking power and political rights for economic bernefit, and therefore the "cost" of political action. The separation of the political and economic spheres lays a foundation for a further separation of powers, thereby negating autocracy despite the centralizing tendency of the state. The market also defines interests, increasing "responsibility" and thereby decreasing the possibility of bribery in preparation for democratic politics. On the other hand, political actions become excessive without a market, or with a mixed market, because a large number of people will seek political posts, raising the "cost" of political action and making effective consultation difficult. To avoid this problem, a country without a developed market has to maintain strongman politics and a high degree of centralism.
China's measures for successful economic and political stabilization led many scholars and politicians to accept the role of an authoritarian regime in fast and stable economic growth. Although the Chinese state is seen as legitimizing democracy as a modernization goal, economic growth is seen as more important.
In his 1994 article Zheng Yongnian elaborates that,
Deng Xiaoping explains: "Why have we treated student demonstrations so seriously and so quickly? Because China is not able to bear more disturbance and more disorder." Given the dominance of the Chinese state, Zheng believes that, when it is finally implemented, democracy in China is more likely to be a gift from the elite to the society rather than brought about by internal forces.
When neoauthoritarianism emerged to scholarly debate, Rong Jian opposed his old idea as regressive, favoring the multiparty faction. He would become famous for a news article on the matter.
Chinese-Canadian sociologist Yuezhi Zhao views the neoauthoritarians as having attempted to avoid an economic crisis through dictatorship, and Barry Sautman characterizes them as reflecting the policy of "pre-revolutionary Chinese leaders" as well as "contemporary Third World strongmen", as part of ideological developments of the decade he considers more recognizable to westerners as conservative and liberal. Sautman sums its theory with a quote from Su Shaozi (1986): "What China needs today is a strong liberal leader."
Li Cheng and Lynn T. White nonetheless regard the neoauthoritarians as resonating with technocracy emerging in the 1980s as a result of "dramatic" policy shifts in 1978 that promoted such to top posts. Henry He considers the main criticism of neoauthoritarianism to be its continued advocacy of an "old" type of establishment, relying on charismatic leaders. His view is corroborated by Yan Yining and Li Wei, with the addition that for Yan what is needed is law, or Li democracy, administrative efficiency and scientific government. Li points out that previous crisis in China were not due to popular participation, but power struggles and corruption, and that an authoritarian state does not usually separate powers. A criticism by Zhou Wenzhang is that neoauthoritarianism only considers problems of authority from the angle of centralization, similarly considering the main problem of authority to be whether or not it is exercised scientifically.
Party-state capitalism is a term used by some economists and sociologists to describe the contemporary economy of China under the Chinese Communist Party. The term has also been used to describe the economy of Taiwan under the authoritarian military government of the Kuomintang.
Conservatism in Hong Kong has become the backbone of today's pro-Beijing camp, which has been the major supporting force of the SAR administration led by the indirectly elected Chief Executive. It is one of two major political ideologies of the Hong Kong, with the other being liberalism. Since the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, conservatism has been characterised by business elites joining with pro-Communist traditional leftists in a "united front" to resist the rise of the demand for democratisation and liberalisation, in order to secure continued political stability and economic prosperity while maintaining a good relationship with the communist central government in Beijing leading up to and after the 1997 handover.
Historically, conservatism derives from the Chinese tradition of familism and Confucianism and was incorporated into the British colonial government's policies by Governor Cecil Clementi in the 1920s in the wake of rising Marxism–Leninism and communism in general. The anti-communist sentiments continued after the Second World War when waves of Chinese refugees fled to the colony as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) swept across Mainland China in the renewed Chinese Civil War. At this time, Conservatives supported the Republic of China (ROC), and were pro–Kuomintang (KMT). After the de facto end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 when the ROC government fled to Taiwan and throughout the Cold War, Conservatives have also taken libertarian thoughts on economic policies. Before the 1980s, most conservatives held a strong anti-communist sentiment.
Conservatism in Macau dates back to modern Portuguese Macau. Unlike Hong Kong, which was ruled by United Kingdom, a liberal democracy in the first half of the 20th century, Macao was influenced by Portugal's António de Oliveira Salazar's right-wing dictatorship in the 20th century, resulting in a weak liberal pro-democracy movement. Macau people, on average, a much more pro-China sentiment than Hong Kong people. Today, Macau's conservatism is represented by the pro-Beijing camp.
Conservatism in Taiwan is a broad political philosophy which espouses the One-China policy as a vital component for the Republic of China (ROC)'s international security and economic development, as opposed to Taiwanization and Taiwanese sovereignty. Fundamental conservative ideas are grounded in Confucian values and strands of Chinese philosophy associated with Sun Yat-sen's teachings, a large centralized government which intervenes closely in the lives of individuals on both social and economic levels, and the construction of unified Sinocentric national identity.
Conservative ideology in Taiwan constitutes the character and policies of the Kuomintang (KMT) party and that of the pan-blue camp. However, not all conservatives in Taiwan are ideologically friendly to pan-blue, and there are also some conservatives, such as some conservative Taiwanese nationalists and pro-Beijing conservatives.
New Confucianism is an intellectual movement of Confucianism that began in the early 20th century in Republican China, and further developed in post-Mao era contemporary China. It primarily developed during the May Fourth Movement. It is deeply influenced by, but not identical with, the neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties.
It is a neo-conservative movement of various Chinese traditions and has been regarded as containing religious overtones; it advocates for certain Confucianist elements of society – such as social, ecological, and political harmony – to be applied in a contemporary context in synthesis with Western philosophies such as rationalism and humanism. Its philosophies have emerged as a focal point of discussion between Confucian scholars in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States.