In the November 8th issue of The New Yorker, Zha Jinying has a great piece on the Chinese writer/governmental official Wang Meng (link might require subscription). 

Wang is a complex character, author of a famous story criticial of the bureaucratic power of the Party in the 1950s, which first gained him Mao's supportive attention but then led to his downfall during the Cultural Revolution.  He made a come back in the post-Mao period, rising to Minister of Culture.  In the aftermath of the June 4th, 1989 violence in Beijing, Wang refused to honor the troops who had opened fire on the citizens of Beijing, but he did so indirectly, feigning illness.  He was subsequently fired but has enjoyed a fairly stable official sinecure ever since.  Pressing for some intellectual liberalization at times, Wang also pointedly criticized Liu Xiaobo, recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and bete noir of establishment intellectuals in China, when Liu had been arrested and thrown in jail.  That earned Wang the enmity of many liberal intellectuals, Chinese and Western.  Last year he published a commentary on the Daodejing. Like I said, he's a complex figure.

Zha does a great job in drawing out the contradictions and tensions in Wang's life.  But at the end of the article, she suggests that Wang is something like a traditional Confucian in the way that he has attempted, over the course of his long career, to balance loyalty to the regime and criticism aimed at gradual change (i.e. remonstrance). 

This is a bit too convenient. A conscientious Confucian would not have kicked Liu when he was down, especially in such a public and politically damaging manner as Wang did.  It was unnecessary and hurtful, not noble-minded.  If Wang was truly Confucian he would recognize his mistake and correct it publicly:

 “Adept Kung said: ‘Mistakes of the noble-minded are like eclipses of sun and moon: they make a mistake, and it’s there for everyone to see; they make it right, and everyone look up in awe.” Analects 19.21.

 Until he comes forth and rectifies himself, Wang will be, to my mind, a Confucian-manqué.