I can’t let this one go by.  Another People’s Daily commentary invoking Confucius.  Once again, a state-sponsored  intellectual is singing the praises of Chinese foreign policy, arguing that it follows along the harmonious path suggested by the Venerable Sage:

 Fifty years ago, the Chinese government, together with India
and Burma (Myanmar), initiated the Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence for handling international relations, and thus made major
contribution to world peace.

The "one country, two systems" principle advanced by Deng Xiaoping has
successfully solved the problem of the return of Hong Kong and Macao to the embrace of the motherland and it embodies China’s
traditional spirit of "harmony without uniformity", thus providing the world
with a typical example for solving similar problems.

     Now, I am not one of those who worries about Chinese aggression.  PRC foreign policy of late has, for the most part, been quite staid and prudent.  I doubt, however, that this is a matter of "Confucian tradition."  Rather, PRC leaders have been careful in defining Chinese interests and smart in how they have gone about securing them.  And "interest" is not really a Confucian concept.  Confucius would tells us that leaders should cultivate their own practice of Duty and let that be an example to others.  Sending warships into the East China Sea on the eve of a Japanese election is not Confucian, nor is threatening Taiwan with military attack.

     But pointing out how Chinese foreign policy departs from some Confucian ideal is easy.  The more interesting point here is how articles like this keep harping on Confucian ideas as a guide for international relations.  Why don’t they turn their gaze inward and ask how the Communist Party is doing in terms of fostering Humane government at home?

      Look at the quote above once more.  Fifty years ago.  That was the year, 1955, that Mao starting pushing acclerated collectivization in the Chinese countryside – the "high tide of socialism."   It was the beginning of a political dynamic, driven by Maoist idealism and Leninist coercion, that brought on the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, inhumanity on a world-historical scale.  Any political organization responsible for such suffering in the past, and faced with continuing poverty and inequality in the present, would do well to focus on cultivating domestic harmony, instead of setting itself up as a model of foreign policy righteousness.