HK Dave, over at Simon’s World, links to this IHT story on how China is encouraging the study of Chinese language and culture at "Confucian Institutes" around to world in an effort to bolster its "soft power."

    I say, if you can’t beat ’em join ’em.  But that I mean, the PRC has obviously embraced strategy of reviving and promoting its culture, and especially its spin on "Confucian culture," as an instrument of international influence.  Fine.  Everybody does it.  There may, however, be an opportunity here for those of us who want to maintain a critical dialog on Chinese politics, bringing scrutiny to bear on the CCP’s authoritarianism and maintaining a bit of pressure for democratization.  And that opportunity is the oppositional potential of Confucian thought.

    Think about it.  Confucius himself was a political outsider, more often than not being frustrated as political rulers failed to heed his worldview and even, at least once, being threatened with death.  Of course his thought was reinterpreted in the Han dynasty, and grafted onto Legalism to be made into a justification of hierarchy and authority.  But when we go "back to Confucius" and Mencius in and of themselves, not in some "neo-" version, we find all sorts of potential challenges to the powers-that-be in the contemporary PRC: the admonitions against blind pursuit of profit; the demand that moral men remonstrate against injustice; the Mencian demand that economic equality be a governmental priority; and the general aversion to political coercion and killing. 

    So, yes, let’s encourage the study of Confucius and Mencius.  Let’s talk about how the death penalty weakens political legitimacy.  Let’s get serious about addressing inequality.  And let’s ask Beijing how well it is addressing the pressing environmental and issues of the day.

    It could be just like the old "ultra-left" critique of "using the red flag to defeat the red flag," a Cultural Revolution era slogan that warned against those who would invoke communist theory to bring about a reversal of communist policy.  Yes, I’m all for it.  Let’s use Confucian thought to undermine the PRC’s authoritarian version of Confucian thought.