The largest statue of Confucius in the world, in stolid brass, looms 236 feet above the neighboring sprawl of the Nishan Center for World Confucian Studies just outside of Qufu, Shandong Province. The gigantic figure harkens to tradition while the massive Center, streamlined and gray, something like an Imperial Star Destroyer that Luke Skywalker might encounter, points to the future. This juxtaposition is designed to precisely represent Xi Jinping’s ideological-cultural project: forging multifaceted historical and philosophical ideas into a single political narrative that legitimizes the authoritarian rule of the Party. Immensity in the service of indoctrination.

            I found myself staring up at the enormous form of The Sage last year as I arrived to take in the Tenth Nishan Forum on World Civilizations, a huge gathering of academics, diplomats, businesspeople, NGO activists, and many, many ambitious apparatchiks. Media reports stated that “nearly 400 international guests” were in attendance and there were at least as many Chinese from various walks of life. My delegation, one of many smaller groups that had been herded into the large audience, was composed mostly of US, European, and Chinese professors who were in the midst of a more standard academic conference, The Third Confucius-Aristotle Symposium, a highfalutin name for a motley collection of people doing comparative philosophy. Most of us, it is fair to say, had never been subjected to the full force of ideological control that was on display at Nishan that day.

**

            The Party’s appropriation of Confucianism is an old story. From the beginning of the era of reform and opening in the late 1970s, Confucius-curious Chinese intellectuals, with a variety of motivations, found openings to bring classical texts back into academic settings. Early on, the Party, newly averse to Maoist-level domination of society, warily tolerated these moves. After the crisis of 1989, however, the leadership took a more active approach, presenting itself as a guardian of traditional culture and historical greatness to shore up regime legitimacy. Although this ran counter to Mao’s earlier cultural iconoclasm, Confucius was back politically and efforts to make him into an icon of socialism with Chinese characteristics proceeded steadily. By 1997, General Secretary Jiang Zemin was quoting Confucius in a press conference with President Bill Clinton.

Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, went further with his central concept of “harmonious society,” elevating a safe Confucian concept (who is against “harmony”?) to a key objective of PRC politics and public policy. Of course, “harmony” would be defined according to Party dictates, reinforcing repression of inharmonious dissidents like Liu Xiaobo, and explicit invocations of Confucius by Hu were rather scarce. But everyone understood the historical-philosophical allusion. It was a modern variation on a theme running far back in imperial Chinese history: using Confucianism to justify centralized autocratic power.

            Simultaneous with the top-down utilization of Confucianism by the Beijing leadership was the work of local officials in Shandong province, birthplace of both Confucius and Mencius, to seize on commercial opportunities.

Qufu had long been a center of the imperial cult of Confucius. The Kong lineage – “Confucius” being a Latinized form of Kongfuzi, “Master Kong” – maintained a family compound, a temple, and a graveyard there. All of these became locations for veneration of the “uncrowned king,” Confucius, when his thinking was made into a state ideology in the Han Dynasty and after. Various emperors over the centuries made pilgrimages to Qufu, leaving stele that stand to this day with encomia to the great philosopher.

In the twentieth century, the rise of anti-traditionalist nationalism during the May 4^th period undermined Qufu’s claim to glory, and Maoist extremism ultimately led to sacking of the Kong family sites during the Cultural Revolution. Most gruesomely, corpses of latter-day scions of the Kong family were disinterred and hung in disgrace.

All of the radical rejection of tradition, however, was pushed aside in the rush to reform in the 1980s. Local Qufu administrators knew an economic opportunity when they saw it and they redeveloped the city into a Confucian theme park of sorts. The “Three Kong” attractions – mansion, temple, and cemetery – were built into prime tourist draws. As the Party warmed to the memory and imagery of the Sage, more and more people flocked to Qufu to pay their respects.

The top-down and bottom-up forces of Confucian restoration converged in 2005. As Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval observe in their excellent book, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (193), in that year central government representatives joined locally-organized reinventions of grand Confucian ceremonies. Qufu thus emerged, with official blessing, as a “symbolic city of Chinese culture” (中华文化标志城) and a “common spiritual sanctuary of the Chinese nation” (中华民族共有精神家园).

And so, the stage was set for Xi Jinping’s visit to Qufu in 2013, when he urged onlookers to study Confucius as part of a broader project of  “using the past to serve the present.” Local officials seized this moment to start planning in earnest for the massive Nishan Center, which opened in 2019.

Throughout his tenure as General Secretary, Xi has presented himself as a man steeped in the Confucian classics and he has recently encouraged a sometimes-absurd effort to synthesize Marxism and Confucianism. A hackneyed film  in 2023, with Xi’s imprimatur, brought an avuncular Marx and a grandfatherly Confucius together in harmonious agreement on all matters philosophical and political. Although Xi made no explicit mention of Confucius in his report to the 20^th Party Congress, emphasizing instead the more general “fine traditional Chinese culture” (中国优秀传统文化), it is safe to say that The Sage stands tall in official Communist Party ideology – 236 feet tall to be exact.

**

            Knowing all this, I was leery when the invitation came in February 2024 to join the Third Confucius-Aristotle Symposium later that summer. I had noticed the previous iterations of this conference, since friends of mine in Chinese philosophy had attended. These are accomplished scholars, people I respect and trust. Since I move in these academic circles, I was not too surprised to be invited. The first two symposia had taken place in Greece, traveling to sites associated with the classical thinkers. This year it would be held in several locations in China – Qufu, Nishan, Beijing – a significant step in the gradual post-Covid reopening of academic contacts between the PRC and the West. It seemed inevitable, however, that the heightened ideological control in Xi Jinping’s China would intrude upon the intellectual work.

            My misgivings were further amplified by the sponsorship of the event: the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, headed by Jeffery Sachs. The idea here is to plumb ancient philosophy for ideas and perspectives that might be useful in addressing contemporary global problems, looking for notions of sustainability in the past that might speak to the present. A noble calling. Perhaps a bit idealistic but certainly holding some potential for interesting intellectual exchange. The problem, however, was not the pure philosophical possibilities but, rather, the political uses Sachs might find for the ideas and discussions.

            A word about Sachs. A longtime critic of US politics and foreign policy, he has, in recent years, become an unwavering and comprehensive defender of the PRC: he downplays massive repression in Xinjiang; he suggests that the US was responsible for the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan; he appears to take Xi’s propaganda pronouncements at face value. China, for Sachs, can do no wrong, while the US is the root of all evil. Moreover, the US is seemingly the only active force in the world. The authoritarian leaders Sachs backs – Putin, Assad, Xi – are simply responding to forces beyond their control, most often manipulated by the US, and thus cannot be held responsible for any bad acts.

            Even though I was aware of most of this going in, I accepted the invitation hoping that Sachs’s ideological obduracy would not foreclose meaningful intellectual exchange. As it turned out, I would be only partially satisfied.

            Things got off to a mixed start. We began in Qufu at the China Confucius Research Institute, an apt site for discussions of classical philosophies of East and West. At a banquet the night before the formal proceedings, we were greeted with remarks from Guo Chengyan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies. She noted that ancient wisdom could indeed help solve contemporary global problems – just as Xi Jinping tells us. My heart sank as she settled into a mindless repetition of Party talking points, devoid of intellectual import.

I was not alone, however. At my table was a group of Italian academics and NGO practitioners. As we fidgeted through the vacuous speech, one of them noticed the small glasses of wine set out in anticipation of the collective toast coming at its programmed time. As is customary at a Chinese banquet, no one was yet drinking. The Italian, however, threw ceremony to the wind, downed the vino, and called for another glass. His compatriots followed suit and I found my chance. By the time of the official toast, we had gone through several rounds. Here was a conjunction of East and West I could embrace.

            Since Party Secretary Guo had brought him up, I decided I would keep count of the references to Xi Jinping as a rough measure of ideological meddling in our academic work. As the first full day of the conference kicked off, I did not have to wait long for the initial invocation of the great leader. During the formal Opening Ceremony, a regular feature of academic conferences in the PRC, we were welcomed not by academic participants but by Zhang Dong, the Vice Mayor of the Jinan Municipal People’s Government, and Lin Haibin, Deputy Director of the of the Foreign Affairs Office of Provincial Party Committee. Lin wasted no time in echoing Guo’s point that, reassuringly, Xi Jinping was supportive of our efforts. He also told us, without any hint of irony, that we should speak freely. The Greek co-hosts followed with polite and nonpolitical opening comments. The local Party leaders, however, had made it evident that this was no ordinary academic conference: it was the new era of more thoroughgoing political guidance and surveillance of intellectual life.

            After the local dignitaries left, the academics took the stage. At last, it looked like some meaningful discussion might be possible. Most interesting was a presentation by Chen Lai, a renowned scholar of Confucianism from Tsinghua University. His argument was rather esoteric – just the way academics like it – pushing against the now common philosophical assertion that both Confucianism and Aristotelianism are kinds of virtue ethics. I found myself actually thinking instead of warding off ideological bromides.

            Then it was Sachs’s turn to talk. He situated his opening remarks among the academics but his points were more in keeping with the Party bureaucrats who preceded him. After offering a brief, self-effacing biography – appositely describing himself as a “failed economic adviser” – he went on to disparage those US analysts who, he asserted, were overly critical of the PRC. “China is no threat,” he intoned. If those misguided detractors would just travel to China and see the extraordinary economic and social progress that has been made in the past decades, they would certainly change their minds and all would be well. He had little to say about Confucianism. The thinking that Chen had inspired thus abruptly ground to a halt.

            Over the course of the next two days the work of the conference settled into a pattern of sorts. Presentations by some of the visiting academics pressed beyond the limits of Xi Jinping Thought. Most prominent in this regard was a Catholic priest who teaches philosophy at a Hong Kong university. He referred to a famous Han Dynasty Confucian, Dong Zhongshu, and his notion that “harmony derives from heaven,” gradually building an argument for the moral necessity of freedom of religion. Not quite in keeping with the Party ideologues. The priest’s mere presence, as well as the case he made, crystalized for me the value of the event. For the Chinese academics and students in the room, the scope of debate was broader than usual in the PRC. On the sidelines, in between the formal presentations and at meal times, pointed conversations could be pressed further.

Of course, the priest was not the only critical thinker in attendance. We were a typical group of Western academics, with different perspectives and ideas, constantly arguing with each other, resisting easy conclusions. It was good for us to be engaging with Chinese intellectuals. We were absorbing their views, not necessarily agreeing with them, but understanding them better. And they were no doubt learning from us, too.

Occasionally, we were brought back to political reality with a particularly clunky reminder of ideological constraint. Wang Ying, purportedly a specialist on early modern Chinese literature, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, weighed in with an especially insipid account of “modern civilization and the Chinese nation,” that could have been lifted verbatim from Xi Jinping’s voluminous “writings” on tradition and history. This was the price to be paid for the more constructive and productive interactions.

And then there was Sachs. He made it abundantly clear that this was his show. After each panel, he imperiously summed up the sometimes-diverse threads of discussion and bent them to his pro-China project. Liberalism is dead, he stated, implying no alternative to PRC authoritarianism. China had never had overseas colonies like the West and was, therefore, inherently more peaceful. Seems he had never heard of the Zunghar Mongols. And so on. After a time, it was easy to anticipate his interventions and ignore them, just more buzzing ideological flies distracting from the substantive conversation.

            On balance, the Qufu part of our journey was valuable. We heard some insightful and thought-provoking talks from Chinese colleagues; they were exposed to arguments not easily available now in the PRC. In between the formal sessions we heard of their tribulations in an increasingly repressive academic environment. All we could offer in return was sympathy and honest engagement. The ideologues did what ideologues do but could not dominate completely. And Sachs played true to form, though his influence was limited by the rather small scope of the proceedings to this point. That was about to change in the grander setting of Nishan.

**

            Nothing about the Nishan Center for World Confucian Studies was modest. From afar the gargantuan Confucius rose up over the countryside as our bus wound its way toward the temple-like front of the stone edifice. On either side of the traditional wooden doorway, we were greeted with large red panels inlaid with golden characters, the words of Xi Jinping. He exhorted us to, among other things, adapt the basic cultural genes (wenhua jiyin) of the Chinese nation to modern cultural circumstances (is that what we were doing here?). Hordes of helpers in trim blue uniforms pointed the way up a grand red-carpeted staircase surrounded by massive pillars. At the top we moved across a large foyer and into the lecture hall (jiangtang). The ceiling soared above us. Hundreds of chairs were set in the in neat rows, facing a low stage running the whole width of the expansive room. A wall of digital screens seamlessly projected high-definition videos emphasizing the glories of Shandong Province. It is the home of Confucius, thus the epicenter of “fine traditional Chinese culture.” But it is also an industrial powerhouse, producing and trading the most sophisticated high-tech goods. It seemed we had stepped into the heart of the Confucian-Industrial Complex.

            I found myself sitting with the Italians again. We were all equally awed, captivated by the crowd, the lights, the television camera booms swooping overhead. This tenth performance of the Nishan Forum on World Civilizations was designed to impress.

            There were a dozen welcoming speeches from a variety of local and international dignitaries. Leading off was the Governor of Shandong Province, Zhou Naixiang, who is also Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee. He could have his eye on promotion to the next highest rung of leadership in Beijing at the Party Congress in 2027. Xi’s avowed affection for Confucianism is an opening for his political advance. It was hardly surprising, then, that he enthusiastically endorsed the work of the Forum, bringing together various world cultures into a community of “common destiny of humankind,” a central element of Xi Jinping Thought.

            Also rising to greet us was Chen Xu, Deputy Director of the CCP Central Committee’s United Front Work Department, the office that ties the Party to various political and civil society organizations around the world. Without quite saying as much, there was no obfuscation here: what was happening in Nishan was sponsored by the Party and doing the work of the Party.

            There were some international representatives as well. Most interestingly, Fukuda Yasuo, former Prime Minister of Japan, offered remarks in his capacity as Council Chair of the International Confucian Association, yet another Beijing-based, Party-linked organization to manage intellectual and political expressions of Confucianism around the world. His comments were fairly innocuous, mentioning Xi but not overdoing it. Nonetheless, his presence fulfilled a political purpose: demonstrating the apparent attractive cultural power of Confucianism to bring foreigners from near and far, from friendly places and past enemies, to absorb Xi Jinping’s lessons on the greatness of Chinese tradition. For Fukuda and the Japanese government, on the other hand, it was a low-cost gesture of good will with little strategic import. Nothing that happened at Nishan was going to alter the balance of power in the East China and South China Seas.

            Following the Former Vice President of the Seychelles, the Greek Ambassador to the PRC, and some others distinguished guests, the most senior CCP official in the room walked to the podium: Sun Chunlan, recently retired member of the Politburo, the last woman to hold that august position, and one of only six women ever at that level of political power. She was here in her role as President of the International Confucian Association, where she worked alongside Fukuda. The crowd recognized her with warm applause. I had noted that some of the other speakers had called her out by name when addressing the audience. Thus, it seemed that the bad reputation she had gained as the PRC’s “covid czar,” enforcing harsh lockdown policies, had not undermined her standing with this audience. Perhaps those younger Chinese bureaucrats in the crowd knew that celebrating her loyalty to Xi’s “Zero Covid” policy was politically more beneficial than remembering the disasters associated with those bad times.

            For me and the Italians, Sun’s appearance was propitious, signaling the last of the interminable succession of intellectually deadening political speeches. She played her assigned role: pronouncing the genius of Xi Jinping, the global utility of Confucianism, and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. By this time, after an hour of nonstop praise of Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, we were eyeing the exits. A bathroom break, a cup of coffee, anything to get away from the dogma. Brief glances of exasperation were exchanged and we found a few moments of respite before the next series of speakers.

            These would be academics but here they were placed squarely in the glare of the national Party-controlled media spotlight. No challenging ideas in the big lecture hall today, just politically correct rhetorical tiptoeing. I sympathized with the Chinese speakers. This was their political context now, a tightening spiral of intellectual control. They had to do what was necessary to survive, to carve out a bit of space elsewhere for what was left of independent academic life.

             And then Sachs was back. His was the last of the six “keynote speeches” in the grand conference room. After some polite preliminaries, he launched into a critique of US foreign policy. He mentioned Ukraine, the only person to do so the entire time, blaming the US solely for the war. I was becoming baffled by his repeat performances of crude anti-Americanism. No doubt he truly believed in what he says, and that was fine. But was he completely oblivious to the political context here? Did he not understand that he was being used to give voice to, so the Party didn’t have to do so directly, the assertion of Chinese cultural superiority in the service of the PRC’s authoritarian political legitimacy? Was he OK with that? Maybe he believed he was playing a shrewd political game: giving the authorities what they need here, so that he can get something he wants going forward, more access, more conferences, whatever. In any event, for those of us in the audience with a modicum of critical detachment he was, at this point, simply making a public fool of himself.

            And so went the morning in the lecture hall at the Nishan Forum. We were indeed subjected to lecturing, a constant stream of references to the Xi Jinping, creator of the one, true theory for interpreting Confucianism and Chinese tradition and how those should be used to address contemporary issues.

            All was not lost, however. After a quick lunch in yet another lavish room at the sprawling conference center, the academics divided into smaller breakout groups for more presentations and discussion. My group included some of my colleagues from the Confucius-Aristotle Symposium together with a collection of local Chinese scholars. After the morning’s harangue, I was curious to see how the speakers in this somewhat less ideologically intense setting would proceed.

            The Chinese academics just went about their business. They knew well where the political boundaries of their work were drawn and they presented philosophical arguments and analyses without any reference to the irrelevancies of Xi Jinping Thought. Neither did they venture statements that might cross the ideological line. Nonetheless, there is a lot that can be said about ancient philosophy without directly contradicting Party directives.

            Some of the foreign scholars, however, again pressed beyond the limits. In one instance, a distinguished American scholar of both early Greek and Chinese philosophy, rose to speak about human rights. She argued that Confucianism, Mencius in particular, was consonant with Western understandings of rights, including civil and political rights. At one level, this was an unremarkable account, since one of the key drafters of the original United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights was P.C. Chang, whose own thinking was fundamentally shaped by Mencius. However, making the case, in the confines of the Nishan Forum, that Confucianism was not only consistent with, but constituent of, a central pillar of a liberal world order certainly ran counter to everything we had been told that morning. Xi’s project is to construct an alternative to global liberalism, asserting a Confucian moral particularism that is, essentially, better than Western liberalism. The American’s analysis, and the allusion of Chang’s experience, was pointing toward a kind of Confucian universalism that merged with and reinforced Western liberal values.

            This was not the only heterodoxy to be found in the smaller side rooms of the Forum that day. Presentations on feminism and democracy and Hu Shih all raised uncomfortable questions for the defenders of Xi Jinping Thought. These transgressions were accepted politely, no doubt in the knowledge that their impact could be controlled. Access to the media ran through trusted PRC interviewers and writers. Their reports would ensure that the most pointed challenges would never see the light of day outside the small circle of participants.

            In the end, the Nishan Forum replicated, at a grander scale, the pattern of our smaller sessions in Qufu at the Confucius-Aristotle Symposium. To be sure, the ideological intrusion was more intense but meaningful intellectual exchange happened nonetheless. Participants, regardless of their intentions, had been made minor characters in the sprawling propaganda narrative of the wisdom of Xi Jinping. That is the price to be paid for access to spaces and moments of marginally more open intellectual exchange within the PRC these days. It wouldn’t nearly qualify as “free exchange” of ideas. The looming presence of the Party was simply too suffocating for that. But some intrepid attendees found their opportunities and they made what they could of them.

            I was not sad, however, as the giant Confucius receded back into the hills when our busses pulled away at the end of the day.

**

            The third and final stop on our conference caravan was Beijing for a regathering of the Confucius-Aristotle Symposium, now under the co-sponsorship of Tsinghua University. Jeffery Sachs was still leading the show but our numbers were augmented by numerous Beijing-based scholars, most notably Wang Hui.

            Wang is one of the most prominent political theorists in reform-era China. For the past two decades, the core of his work has centered on analyzing the development of Chinese modernity, the passage from imperial monarchy, in which Confucianism loomed so large, through revolutionary political and social dislocations, to the contemporary tensions of socialism and capitalism. Most recently, the English translation of his magnum opus, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, has confirmed his international reputation as a sophisticated historian and sociologist of philosophy.

            Politically, he has long been associated with the PRC’s “New Left” – a moniker he rejects because he sees it as rooted in Western assumptions – concerned with the growing economic inequality and political exclusion produced by rapid growth and social change. He has argued that a key element in rejuvenating political life in a technocratic, bureaucratized polity is the power of a charismatic leader willing to press against entrenched interests. The obvious resonance of this argument with the consolidation of Xi Jinping’s control of the Party has led one of Wang’s critics to label it his “Heidegger Moment,” similar to the German philosopher’s embrace of Hitler.

            It was Wang who started off our Beijing meetings. His comments were intellectually expansive, avoiding overt political endorsements. He spoke of the global “polycrisis,” – intersecting problems of climate change, war, uneven economic development, and political polarization – that called for new ideas and new solutions. And those might be found in intellectual traditions other than the West. He was reservedly optimistic: there was, in the manner of Dickens, the best of times to be found in the worst. No mention was made of Xi Jinping. He welcomed open and far-ranging discussion.

            Sachs followed him and again blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the crudeness of his diatribe a stark contrast to Wang’s measured and reasonable observations. Wang’s long experience of navigating overbearing political authority, what had to be said and, more importantly, what did not have to be said, was evident.

            This gathering was more in line with moderately-sized academic meetings in the US. We were in a large downtown hotel with conference facilities and a large hall – though not nearly as vast as the Nishan Center – where as many as two hundred people might attend. The opening session nearly filled the room with local academics curious to see luminaries like Wang and Sachs. As the two days unfolded, however, the crowd dwindled at times to fifty or so. There were local reporters and video cameras but, again, nothing like the media blitz of Nishan.

            Less obeisance was paid here to Xi Jinping Thought by the Chinese academics, perhaps picking up the vibe established by Wang at the start, and a wider array of topics were explored, ranging well beyond Confucius and Aristotle. We heard talks on Islam, and Hinduism, and Buddhism.

            A highlight, for me, was a panel on what philosophy might contribute to the development of Artificial Intelligence. Several Chinese intellectuals offered their thoughts on how the malign potential of AI might be constrained by practical ethics. The standout was Zeng Yi, a computer scientist with a good understanding of Mencius, who, among his various titles, oversees the Brain-inspired Cognitive AI Lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His topic was “Creating Moral AI for a Sustainable Symbiotic Society.” In essence, he is attempting to program AI to create its own moral intuition, making the machine learn how to be good. The engineering and science were beyond me, but his use of Mencius as an ethical framework and the general thrust of his work was fascinating. This was not the Party-state seeking to expand surveillance and control, as some might fear, but, rather, an attempt to address a problem that pervades contemporary society everywhere: limiting the potentially selfish and destructive capacity of AI. Of course, Zeng cannot control how this work might be used politically going forward, but it was evident that his focus and intention were humane.

            The AI panel was another reminder that, even if the conference might be used for the propaganda purposes of the Party, some good and valuable exchange was happening. And then Sachs jumped in again.

            This time it came after a prominent economic and political theorist from Birkbeck, University of London, spoke on “Cosmopolitan Democracy in a Divided World.” He recognized the current global breakdown of democratic practice, especially in Europe and the US, with due reference to Aristotle’s warning about demagogy. He went on to ask how democracy could be revived and strengthened because it was something worthwhile that needed to be defended.

            When the other speakers had finished, Sachs could hardly contain himself, jumping at the chance to attack a justification of liberal ideals. Democracy, Sachs argued, was effectively meaningless; there was really no difference between it and authoritarianism. The US had failed as a democracy and China was succeeding with its single party government. Indeed, he went on, the very idea of “democracy” was simply a weapon wielded against China to distract from its extraordinary socio-economic accomplishments of the past several decades. “I am not on team democracy,” he asserted.

            This was the final straw for me. Up until then I had not raised any counterpoints to Sachs’s many interventions, not wanting to sustain discussion of his tendentious claims. Indeed, a tacit understanding among some of the foreign participants had developed: just ignore Sachs and make the most of the opportunities for more substantive intellectual exchange. But I felt someone had to say something, so I put up my hand. When recognized, I addressed Sachs directly, assuring him that, were he to consult with the political science literature, he would find a great deal of evidence for the difference between democracy and authoritarianism across a wide spectrum of outcomes. Moreover, if he wanted to offer an assessment of PRC economic accomplishments, it would be more accurate to start the analysis at 1949, and not limit it to 1979 and after.

            The second point was allusive, but people in the room understood my meaning: authoritarianism had spawned the horrors of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and those had to be part of any evaluation of the human costs of development in the PRC. This violated one of Xi Jinping’s dictates of not using the Maoist period to criticize the post-Mao period, but that line had to be crossed, even if obliquely.

            Sachs did not respond and the public discussion gradually came to an end. Afterward several participants, some of whom had been through the various phases of conferencing since Qufu, came up to me to express their relief that Sachs had finally been called out.

            My time was not done, however.

             The organizers of the conference had decided, when setting up the schedule of presentations, that I should be a part of a concluding roundtable, which included, among others, Wang Hui and Jeffery Sachs. Our assignment was rather vague: we should attempt to refer to presentations that had come in the course of the conference but also ruminate on some larger questions. How should we conceive of cultural difference on a global scale? Do we need new universal philosophical principles as benchmarks for intercultural understanding?

            As the days of the conference had unfolded, and especially after Sachs’s assault on democracy, I decided that I should take the opportunity to avoid the big questions and press a political challenge, albeit within the conventions of academic debate.

            It was the final session of the meetings. With both Sachs and Wang on stage, the room was three-quarters full, perhaps one hundred and twenty people. A modest contingent of local media was there. We started off with Wang talking about global modernity and civilizational discourse, expansive themes that suited his intellectual profile. He suggested that Chinese philosophy could provide new universal principles for international understanding, essentially replacing the hegemony of Western values. All of this was fairly common place in contemporary PRC intellectual debate. Sachs said something but I wasn’t paying attention, focusing instead of what I was going to do.

            When my turn came, I had just a few minutes. Quickly, I invoked Huang Zongxi, a Confucian philosopher of the seventeenth century, who straddled the Ming and Qing Dynasties. He had been loyal to the Ming, even supported the rearguard action to keep that ruling house in power, and then stepped back from direct political participation for a reclusive scholarly life. His learned reputation, however, brought him to the attention of the Qing rulers. They asked him to help write the history of the Ming, a project they would oversee to ensure that the narrative ultimately justified regime change. Huang demurred. Instead, he wrote a book, Mingyi Daifanglu, 明夷待訪錄, translated by William Theodore de Bary as Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince.

            The moderator chimed in to rush me along. She could see where this was going and was getting a bit nervous.

            Huang put forth a searing critique of Imperial China’s structure of political power. The outsized authority of the emperor created material incentives for both the holders of that ultimate position and those around him to violate basic Confucian virtues in pursuit of personal interest. He laments “How is it that since the Three Dynasties [since the fall of the Zhou Dynasty in 221 BCE] there has been no order but only disorder?” And he argues that disorder is rooted in the constitution of the Imperial state.

            The moderator asked me to sum up.

            I complied and said: “What Huang Zongxi tells us is that the greatest obstacle to the realization of the Confucian project in the world is the overconcentration of power in a single ruler.”

            Flustered, the moderator replied, “Well not everyone would agree. We’ll come back to that,” and she moved on to other topics.

            We did not come back to it. The moderator side-eyed me as she turned to questions from the audience. No one wanted to publicly talk about, in a room of one hundred people and local media, my obvious allusion to Xi Jinping’s cult of personality. When it was over, I shook hands with Sachs and Wang and thanked them for the opportunity to present my ideas and engage with others. They smiled and went on their ways.

            Afterward, again, I was approached by a number of people, Chinese as well as American and European, to thank me for saying what I had said. It was a sign of just how tight the ideological control has become in the PRC, that a rather modest allegorical point would be seen as transgressive.

            I wasn’t sure, and am still not sure, if there would be any consequences for my action. Would I be invited back for the Fourth Confucius Aristotle Symposium? It didn’t really bother me. I have long been resigned to the possibility of being denied a visa for political reasons, just as some of my academic friends have been. At this point in my life, I cannot let that prospect cloud my critical judgment and expression. But a funny thing did happen shortly after the conference wrapped up.

            Wang Hui sent me an invitation to dinner for the next evening. It was a relatively small event, about twelve people, with some other conference participants and a couple of his graduate students. I sat next to Wang. We talked about his book, about a variety of themes that had come up in the conference. I chatted with the others, inquired about the current research of his graduate students. Sachs was not there and no reference was made to any of the seemingly challenging things I had said.

            Reflecting on the moment later, I took the invitation as a sign, not of agreement with my points, but, rather, a gesture of willingness to continue the conversation. Let’s see if the broader political dynamics will make that possible going forward.

**

            All in all, the Qufu-Nishan-Beijing conference cavalcade was a high-profile example of a fairly common phenomenon: the Party’s efforts to politically control intellectual life, even seemingly esoteric topics of Confucianism and comparative philosophy.

Learning how to operate within certain ideological limits is simply part of the job of being a foreign China analyst of any sort. We all have self-censored at some time or another; many of us have grimaced at being used for crude propaganda purposes. It comes with the territory. We do not want to get our hosts in trouble if we say something politically incorrect. Moreover, some of us have legitimate professional interests – gaining access to archives and fieldwork; opening the way for graduate students – that temper reactions to political interference. We need to be in China to learn and bring our knowledge to the world.

            Indeed, the benefits to being physically present in China can outweigh the political costs. Direct, face-to-face interpersonal communication provides insights beyond what can be gleaned by the best video link or social media. Gesture, inflection, and allusion are all infinitely more meaningful in person. And even with all the bureaucratic oversight and surveillance, it is still possible to interact with like-minded Chinese intellectuals, people who are keen to connect and talk as freely as they can. Being in China makes for better knowledge about China.

            Most of us, however, try to minimize the political manipulation of our words, and ideas, and images. We limit our responses to certain questions, react at times with strained smiles and silence. And sometimes we fail. We let out guard down and follow the flow of a conversation, only later to realize that the reporter we were speaking to has taken our words and turned them into an apology for authoritarianism.

            But we come back, because we know in coming back, we have a chance for better understanding. And it might advance our efforts to reclaim Confucianism, a multifaceted and valuable field of philosophical ideas, from autocrats and their apologists.

            That’s the calculation. A simple trade of sorts: exploitation for knowledge. It can be uncomfortable at times, and the opportunities for politically significant resistance meager. Xi’s urge for control is making it harder to have meaningful intellectual discussions. But it is still possible to learn and teach in China.

            I hope I’m able to go back.