lauren, what do you mean?

如今，几乎所有的老外都应该听说过我们的"和谐社会"这个词。
大概三年前，我头一次见到这个词是在浦东的卢浦大桥后面的一条公路上，以大号字体写在一个宣传牌上面。 在当时这….

You’re blog articles are wonderful. I see that China has become your home. I will be studying there, in Nanjing, come Spring 2008.

I’d love to learn more from you about life in China and would love to keep in contact and even meet up.

What do you say?

Rochelle the Buttafli

It seems a tenable point that most regimes founded by reasonable people aim for some sort of higher ideal. And if they don’t they should. Often this ideal is missed or corrupted, and then (Mr Lenin) “what is to be done”? The USSR and China were founded on a higher ideal that was never achievable, because the route they followed was flawed. Aiming for liberty via unadulterated socialism does not work. And when it failed in these two regimes, the terminology of the aims and ends was used to clothe the hideous mess that ensued. You may recall the “democracy” the USSR enjoyed.

Where did this leave the Chinese leaders?

They realized before the Soviets that any real success for their county, and probably their own hides, depended on obtaining economic growth. But socialism and the planned economy this entails could not deliver this growth. Therefore a laissez-faire approach was required. But this necessitates freedom and liberty in the economic sphere, which is difficult to obtain without general freedom and liberty.

On deciding that that economic freedom must be allowed (to a degree), a higher aim was required to legitimize the regime’s existence and policy to itself, its people and the world.

The natural aim for Zhou Blow or you and me might be liberty via democracy. But this it seems is not on the menu. Some other exotic dishes have been offered: Socialism with Chinese Characteristics; The Three Represents. My own feeling is that The Harmonious Society is more of the same. A struggle to define a political philosophy.

I hope this doesn’t sound too obvious. Interested to hear Da Shan’s point of view.

@Sean: Ha, I agree, Mencian government would be the best! As for your question about Confucianism, Yu Dan and the masses, I can’t say I know it’s the first time they’ve got Confucius Lite. Based on my feeling about Chinese peasantry, not real research, though, it seems they have a couple of Confucian ideas ingrained: societal hierarchy (wife to husband, son to father, citizen to government, etc.) and the importance of education. Now, I don’t know how those ideas would spread if not through education, but seeing as Confucianism is associated with feudalism, I’d guess that his ideas were really helpful in governing people, and that it somehow got promoted thru feudal governments. I have had lots more contact with Chinese city people than country people, and they have all memorized bits of the classical Chinese from _The Analects_; I can only assume that today in the countryside children would do the same even at the lowest level of school, seeing as that 1) education is standardized, and 2) rote memorization of philosophy they can’t possibly understand starts that early.

As for why Yu Dan struck a chord and sold 3 million books in half a year, perhaps it has to do with the discontent that is the reason for all the “Harmonious Society” propoganda. Average Chinese people really do need help with their lives: they have pressure to build material wealth without the skills or mindset to achieve it in China’s new capitalist economy. They need to make sense of things. Even before Yu Dan, Christianity has taken off across villages. To me, that’s another sign that people are looking for answers.

And, since this comment isn’t long enough, I am going to have to refute the Da Shan comment. I made fun of him for years, too, until just a few days ago he was on a comedy about the Japanese in Manchuria during WWII. He was an American pilot who parachuted down to secretly help the locals fight the Japanese. I have to admit, I really liked him! Maybe it was because the whole joke was that he couldn’t speak Chinese. He kept trying to say, “Wo Meiguoren”, and they heard it as, “Wo mai4 guo ren” (I have sold people).