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- Herausgeber: Passerino
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Twenty years after publishing the book
Reinventing Confucianism – The New Confucian Movement, – and exactly one hundred years after the publication of
Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies by Liang Shuming (1893-1988), widely considered as the first spark, if not the actual start, of the New Confucian Movement - I take up once again the topic of the New Confucian Movement. On my side, at the time, twenty years ago, it was an attempt to describe a philosophical movement that greatly impressed me.
Umberto Bresciani
1942 Born in Ca’d’Andrea, Cremona, Italy.
1962 High School Graduate (Maturità Classica), Liceo Ballerini, Seregno (MI), Italy.
1968 Licentiate of Philosophy & Theology, Studentato Teologico Saveriano, Parma, Italy.
1969 Entered Chinese Language Institute (Annexed to Fujen University, Taipei, Taiwan).
1973 B.A. (major: History; minor: Chinese Studies), University of Maryland (U.S.A.), Far East Division.
1975 M.A. Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
1983 Ph. D. Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Professor of Italian Language: National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei (since 1974).
Professor, Dept. of Italian Language & Culture, Fujen University, Xinzhuang, Taipei, Taiwan (since 2003).
Umberto Bresciani has lived in Taiwan for over 40 years.
His main interest is Chinese philosophical and religious thought and comparative theological studies.
Main publications
Books:
Xifang hanxuejia yanjiu wenshidongyi de shangdui (Evaluation of research by Western sinologists on the Wenshidongyi), dissertation for the Ph.D., Chinese Literature, Taipei: National Taiwan University, May 1983.
Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement, Taipei: Ricci Institute, 2001.
La filosofia cinese nel ventesimo secolo – I nuovi confuciani, Roma: Urbaniana University Press, 2009.
Il primo principio della filosofia confuciana (Ebook), Gaeta: Passerino Editore, 2014.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Umberto Bresciani
The new confucian movement
2001 - 2021
The sky is the limit
Table of contents
Foreword
1. A Few Necessary Adjustments
2. Milestones
3. The Revival as a Whole
4. The Philosophical Movement – Diaspora New Confucians
5. Philosophical Developments of New Confucianism inside China
6. A Sampling of Mainland New Confucian intellectuals
7. A Forecast of Future Developments (Or “Where is China going?”)
8.Tu Weiming’s Project of “Spiritual Humanism”
9. Revisiting the issue “Is Confucianism a religion?”
Foreword
Twenty years after publishing the book Reinventing Confucianism – The New Confucian Movement,[1] – and exactly one hundred years after the publication of Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies by Liang Shuming (1893-1988), widely considered as the first spark, if not the actual start, of the New Confucian Movement - I take up once again the topic of the New Confucian Movement. On my side, at the time, twenty years ago, it was an attempt to describe a philosophical movement that greatly impressed me.
The first half of the twentieth century was a moment in history when the ancient ideology-plus-religion known as Confucianism was fiercely opposed at home and deemed dead in the world at large. In an age when the rage was to destroy the past in order to “modernize” China, the movement had a first start in a few lonely voices, such as that of Liang Shuming, daring to speak in favor of the old ideology named Confucianism. Little by little, those few isolated scholars gradually brought about not less than a reinvention of Confucianism. While the anti-Confucian wave was raging, those isolated and often scorned thinkers worked hard at fathoming the true essence of Confucianism and comparing it with Western culture, which like a gust of wind, or more exactly, like a powerful typhoon, was blowing over China.
The movement acquired renewed vitality with the passing of time, especially after 1949, thanks to a group of scholars taking refuge in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. It reached its most productive period in the decades when Chinese culture reached its lowest ebb, i.e., after Mao Zedong’s rise to power foreboded destruction of the “Four Olds.” The creativity of the New Confucian pioneers found expression in numerous great books they wrote in their places of exile. In China itself, it was after 1978 that scholars, gradually and cautiously, took Confucianism again into their hands. In a few years, the books and ideas of the movement spread throughout the country, at least among intellectuals, triggering a “cultural fever ( wenhua re) in the 1980s, which became a “Confucian fever” ( kongzi re) in the 1990s. The masses had forgotten most of the Confucian tradition, remembering of Confucius only the negative impact on China’s development, as insistently portrayed by the various campaigns against “feudal” culture.
Developments of these last twenty years have vindicated the feeling I had at the time I was writing my book. In fact, in my view, the whole thrust of the May Fourth and New Culture Movements was not a rational or pondered reaction to the encroachments of Western culture, but rather a bout of rage, an impetus of exasperation, vented against their cultural past, coming especially from the younger generations of intellectuals, facing the weakness and backwardness of their country vis-à-vis foreign powers. As I was thinking, once China could emerge from its disastrous situation of weakness, there should be a swing back, a return to a serious appreciation of its own national culture and values. This is exactly what has been happening in the last decades, gaining steam over time, and accelerating and intensifying during the present century.
There is ample evidence that Confucianism is undergoing a multi-faceted revival in contemporary China. The impressive growth of momentum of Confucianism in Chinese society in the last two decades (2001-2021) easily deserves an entire book. As a matter of fact, numerous books have been written on the various aspects of the Confucian revival that has been taking place. [2] In this essay, I am not planning to repeat the stories already told; I will, instead, after a brief general survey, concentrate on the philosophical side of the phenomenon, adding some considerations about possible future developments, and two supplementary chapters, one introducing Tu Weiming’s cultural project, and the other evaluating a possible role of Confucianism in the world’s future.
The contents of this essay is structured in nine chapters, as follows: a first chapter containing a few adjustments to Reinventing Confucianism, to make up for a few weak points in my previous book; a second chapter that lists notable milestones in the revival movement of Confucianism during these two decades; a third chapter that takes a general look at the revival movement, both in China and in the world; a fourth chapter that deals with the philosophical developments of the last two decades in various areas, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States; a fifth chapter that deals with the philosophical developments of the last two decades in China mainland; a sixth chapter, which introduces a sampling of a dozen figures of Confucian intellectuals belonging to the Mainland New Confucian Movement; a seventh chapter, which attempts to offer a few hints of a forecast for the future; an eighth chapter that introduces Tu Weiming’s project for a “spiritual humanism;” finally, the ninth chapter revisits the issue of Confucianism-religion, that in my view bears a very special significance for the future of humankind.
If we take a look at the whole New Confucian Movement, both of the last century, as it developed up to 1978, and in the following decades until now, we may see through it an overall effort to rediscover the real essence of Confucianism, and a debate whether Confucianism should exist only as an object of academic study, or as a player in today’s social and political life. The hot present debates among Chinese Confucian intellectuals about universal values, democracy, freedom, international relations, world order, future of humankind, all reflect the same concern: “what does it mean to be Confucian now?”
Regarding the New Confucian Movement, a difference still exists between those scholars, thinkers, or philosophers who are deeply involved in studying Confucianism and reviving it (broad sense), and those associated with the Xiong Shili line of thought, i.e., the disciples of Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan (strict sense), espousing a system of philosophy strictly connected with Song Neo-Confucianism, and viewing Confucianism primarily as a metaphysics, in dialogue with Kant or Hegel, and often tinged with Chinese cultural nationalism.
In the closing page of my reinventing Confucianism, I stated that “we are facing a movement which has much room to grow and develop further.” Presently, after these twenty years that passed by, and after a Mainland New Confucian Movement has started to exist, I must add that the room to grow is even larger than before. The Confucian philosophers of the three generations occupied themselves with numerous issues, mainly with comparative metaphysics and epistemology, and of course ethics. The New Confucians of today are still busy with metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; but many of them – especially the Mainland New Confucians (briefly MNC) – are busy with a larger variety of issues, primarily with political science and international relations, as well as religion.
1. A Few Necessary Adjustments
Twenty years ago, in my book Reinventing Confucianism – The New Confucian Movement, I drew a portrait of the New Confucian Movement through a profile of eleven pivotal representative figures, belonging to a first and a second generation of scholars (chapters 3-13), plus four representatives of the third generation (ch. 14), implying that these last four names were not the whole picture of the movement at the time, but simply a list of some of the most outstanding and promising figures. Presently, my feeling is that the overall historical portrait I offered was basically correct, although I recognize that it was approximate, and could have been more detailed. In particular, the chapter on developments inside China mainland could have been more specific about numerous new ideas and happenings, which are now documented much more abundantly in various publications.
Regarding my presentation of the “First Generation” of New Confucians, I realize that in my narrative I failed to distinguish two groups of figures. As certain scholars have rightly argued, [1] two different groups of thinkers - some would even talk of two different “generations” - can be identified among the outspoken Confucians of the time, namely, an earlier batch of isolated voices of defense of the Confucian world-view, such as Liang Shuming, Ma Yifu, Xiong Shili, and Zhang Junmai; and a second group of younger, and most of them partly Western-educated, philosophers, such as Feng Youlan, He Lin, Qian Mu, and Fang Dongmei.
Another point in my book deserving a clarification is the classification of the eminent philosopher Fang Dongmei as a representative of the second generation. His name has just appeared among the second group of the first generation. As a matter of fact, Fang Dongmei, who was also teacher of Liu Shuxian, Cheng Zhongying, Shen Qingsong, Fu Peirong, and many others, should rightly belong to the first generation, more correctly to the second group just mentioned. Fang Dongmei, no doubt, was a peer of Feng Youlan and He Lin. In my book, I located him in the second generation – which was mainly active and prominent in the decades after 1949 – for historical correctness, considering that in China in the 1930s and 1940s Fang Dongmei was a distinguished university professor teaching Western philosophy, a son of the May Fourth Movement, and an admirer of John Dewey and Henry Bergson. It was during the years of the Sino-Japanese war that he gained a renewed interest in Chinese philosophy. In 1947, he took up a teaching job at National Taiwan University (Taipei), just recovered from Japanese occupation. It was there that he became an outspoken defender of the great value of Chinese philosophy, both in his university teaching and in illustrating it to Western intellectuals through books written in the English language. Therefore, my motivation was to stress that Fang’s significant presence and active contributions in the New Confucian Movement belonged mainly to the period after 1947, lasting until his death in 1978. When considering his age, of course, he should belong to the earlier generation, not to the same generation as Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Xu Fuguan.
At the time when I compiled my book, very few panoramic views of the New Confucian Movement were available. Since then, numerous authors have been writing about it from various angles. One that is especially worthy to be quoted here is Chen Lai’s perspective. According to Chen Lai - a historian of philosophy, and a leader of the present-day Confucian revival in China itself - in modern times Confucianism went through four periods of adversity, each of which provided the revival with material for reflection and growth. The first of these was the Xinzheng Reforms (1901-1911) of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republican period; in particular, the ending of the civil service examinations in 1905 removed Confucianism’s institutional base from state and educational systems. The second period was the New Culture Movement in the late 1910s and 1920s. Widespread critiques in this period removed Confucianism from its once central position in the discourse on ethics. The third period of adversity was the three-decade period that immediately followed the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in which government-sponsored attacks largely disassembled the social structure of Confucianism. The fourth period was the first twenty years of the “Reform and Opening-up” period (1980-2000), in which intellectuals viewed Confucianism as the opposite of modernity. However, it was also in this period that a modern and new Confucianism began its journey of reconstruction in China Mainland. [2]
In my overall presentation of the movement, I admit that gaps are easy to find. Perhaps the omission I most regret is that of Lao Siguang (Sze-Kwang Lau, 1927-2012) [3], a remarkable figure of philosopher who for several reasons deserves to be included in the third generation of New Confucians. First of all, he masterfully and rigorously applied Western logic and hermeneutics to the study of Chinese philosophy; further, he developed a philosophy of culture, showing how in the millennia-long cultural tradition of China, the spirit of the culture was dominated by Confucianism; finally, in his New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy (1984-1986) , he tried to reconstruct traditional Chinese philosophy with the help of modern Western philosophy, but in ways that both resembled and differed from the works of Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi . It is a fact that “his work highly influenced the study of Chinese philosophy in Hong Kong and Taiwan and helped shape several generations of Chinese scholars’ understanding of traditional Chinese thought.” [4]
As representatives of the third generation of New Confucians, in my book Reinventing Confucianism I selected four figures – Yu Yingshi, Liu Shuxian, Cheng Zhongying, and Tu Weiming – even though it is understood that there are numerous other worthy scholars and thinkers belonging to that generation. In particular, I feel another relevant omission on my side has been that of Cai Renhou, a faithful disciple of Mou Zongsan and a worthy representative of the third generation. I will offer an introduction to this philosopher in the next chapter.
In my book, another unforgivable omission was that of “Columbia Confucianism.” It should have been mentioned, together with, and prior to, “Boston Confucianism.” William Theodore de Bary, in his over seventy years of teaching at Columbia University, educated, in tandem with Chen Rongjie (Wing-Tsit Chan), a legion of sinologists and published a long list of pioneer books, so that their activity was instrumental – earlier and more so than Boston Confucians - for the spread of Confucianism in the English-speaking world. I will make a repair for this omission in the third chapter, when sketching the revival of Confucianism in the United States.
As a millennia-old cultural tradition, Confucianism is much more than an arid philosophical system, involving just some metaphysical or ethical theories to be cultivated by a solitary philosopher in the quiet of his room. [5] This is a fact that already surfaced in the various profiles of my book. I am thinking, for instance, of Xu Fuguan, who openly argued that, in order to understand Confucianism, one should discard metaphysics (see chapter 12 of my Reinventing Confucianism); or of Tang Junyi, who stressed the spiritual, transcendent dimension of Confucianism. The multifaceted reality of Confucianism has been coming to the fore in the last couple of decades, with an overall and multiform cultural revival and a substantial religious revival. The religious aspect of the revival will surface along our general survey, but also in other occasions through this essay, such as when dealing with Tu Weiming’s project; finally, it will be the subject of the last chapter, dealing with the extraordinary import of Confucianism as a religion in the future culture of the world.
I wish to add a note also about the original title of my book Reinventing Confucianism. Back then, in my introduction, I stated that “given the enormous difference of cultural outlook between China and the West, the labors of the New Confucians to formulate the traditional Confucian doctrines under the light of Western patterns of thought amount to a reinventing of them.” As a reader of the present essay will realize, the word reinventing is even more suitable for today’s Mainland New Confucians. These scholars and thinkers are people who grew up after Confucianism was denied the right to exist. They grew up learning nothing – or only bad things – about Confucianism. Even more relevant, they grew up thoroughly educated in Western (Hegel’s and Marx’) patterns of thought. Later on, when they started to study Confucian books, it was for them a new experience, a real discovery. Their itinerary to wholly comprehending Confucianism and making it their own, by finding in it values for today’s society, as it has been the case in numerous figures we will encounter, has been a process of rediscovering and reinventing, even more so than the earlier New Confucians. Often these Mainland New Confucians – such as in the cases of Jiang Qing or Li Zehou - have rediscovered Confucius after excelling through an intense Marxist education and then perusing all kinds of Western philosophies and religions. Their spiritual itinerary is more similar to that of a Western intellectual turning to Confucianism for his/her “ultimate concern” than to the experience of the New Confucians of the first hour. If these Mainland New Confucians, when approaching Confucianism, have some advantage on Western intellectuals, it is due to the language, that inevitably still preserves echoes of a Confucian civilization.
2. Milestones
Hereby, I present a list of some relevant events of the last two decades, only a few scattered events, but enough for the purpose of highlighting the vitality and gradual, but astounding, growth of the movement of revival of Confucianism.
2001 - Tu Weiming at the United Nations; Zhang Xianglong in Shandong . In 2001, Tu Weiming – whom I mentioned in chapter 14 of Reinventing Confucianism as one of the outstanding representatives of the third generation of New Confucian philosophers, and an internationally well-known representative of Confucianism – was appointed by then Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan as a member of the United Nations “Group of Eminent Persons,” to facilitate “Dialogue Among Civilizations.” Tu Weiming’s indefatigable work of spreading Confucian doctrines and dialoguing with different groups made him deserve the prize. However, at the time one could not but feel quite surprised that an ideology such as Confucianism, which until just a couple of decades earlier was vilified and discarded in China and forgotten throughout the world, was now publicly acknowledged to deserve such an honor in the person of Tu Weiming.
That same year 2001, a Shandong philosopher named Zhang Xianglong - who through assiduous study of phenomenology had discovered Confucianism and become interested in the ‘New Confucians” - wrote an article about the future of Confucianism, which he viewed as the epitome of traditional Chinese culture. In an age when China was rapidly developing its economy and becoming a world power, he, while appreciating the government’s efforts to recover traditional culture, observed that in the last half a century his country had gone through a deep and tremendous change, to the point that traditional culture had practically disappeared.
Considering it historically difficult to revive the Confucian culture of past ages, Zhang Xianglong suggested that perhaps China could learn from the experience of other countries, and try to create a limited enclosure, a Confucian special area, something like the “Amish country” of the United States. He mapped out a blueprint for creating a “Confucian culture reserve” in China, in which a local authentic Confucian society according to traditional patterns could be established and preserved intact, in the hope of evoking a nation-wide restoration of the Confucian way of life in the future. [1]
2003 – The Ruzang Project At the turn of the new century, Tang Yijie (1927-2014), a philosophy teacher in Beijing University, and probably the best-known historian of Confucian thought in the country, launched the idea of making a collection of all the books of the Confucian tradition, including also books located in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The goal was to create a “Ruzang”, i.e., a comprehensive “Confucian Canon,” something like the Daozang of Daoism, or the Dazangjing of Buddhism. Endorsed by other influential scholars such as Ji Xianlin (1911-2009) and Pang Pu (1928-2015), the project was accepted by Beijing University. Supported also by the Education Ministry, it was launched in 2003, under the direction of the same Tang Yijie, who worked at it scrupulously until his death in 2014. The work includes to codify Confucian Classics, notes and commentaries of the various epochs, and finally to supply comments and judgments on the most authoritative Confucian scholars, therefore to collect a variety of publications and put together a vast library of Confucian culture. The forecast is that around 4000 to 5000 volumes will be collected, with about one billion Chinese characters. About 500 scholars are involved in the project, expected to be completed in 2025.
2004 – A Fateful Year for Confucianism. The year 2004 was a fateful year for Confucianism, because of numerous favorable events, not least among them the fact that several well-known liberal intellectuals moved into the Confucian camp. [2] In April, a large-scale International Congress on Contemporary New Confucianism was held in Hangzhou. Another important congress was held in Guangzhou, the “First National Academic Conference on Confucian Religion,” ( Rujiao Huiyi) organized by Chen Ming, the editor of the journal Yuandao. On May 5, the Texts for the memorization of classics of Chinese culture for elementary education ( Zhonghua wenhua jingdian jichu jiaoyu songben), a 12-volume anthology of classical texts compiled by Jiang Qing for the special classes for memorizing the classics, was published. Again in 2004, in July, a few leading Confucian scholars met in Longchang, near Guiyang, inside the Yangming Academy ( Yangming jingshe) created by Jiang Qing. Together with Jiang Qing, there were Chen Ming, Sheng Hong, Liang Zhiping, and Kang Xiaoguang. They called their meeting “Summit of Conservatism.” The topic of the meeting was “The Contemporary Fate of Confucianism.” It was the first meeting among Chinese mainland leaders of New Confucianism, and it was there that they started calling themselves “Mainland New Confucians” (MNC) and defining their differences from the “Hong Kong and Taiwan New Confucians.” On September 5, at the closing of a “high-level cultural debate” a group of seventy prominent personalities – presided by Xu Jialu, a former vice president of the Standing Committee of the People’s Assembly, and including such figures as Ji Xianlin, Ren Jiyu, Yang Zhenning, and Wang Meng - signed a commitment “to preserve and develop traditional culture,” while extolling the humanistic spirit of traditional culture, and stressing the pluralistic aspect of world culture. On September 19, President Hu Jintao presented to the 16 th Party Congress his political goal of building a “harmonious socialist society .” The use of the word “harmonious” was not casual; it stressed how the Confucian tradition – where harmony is the supreme value - was now an important component of social life and the foundation for a harmonious future for the country. [3] On September 28, Confucius’ Birthday, the cult to Confucius in his majestic temple in Qufu was officially performed by government representatives, the first time since the founding of the PRC. These are some of the events why the year 2004 was later defined as “the year of cultural conservatism.” It is to be noted that in China – especially in official pronouncements – there is the habit of calling “cultural conservatives” the supporters of Confucianism, and calling Confucianism “traditional culture.”
2005 – Confucius’ Birthday On September 28, 2005, year 2556 since the birth of Confucius, the solemn rite for Confucius’ Birthday was again performed in Qufu. This time it was done on a grand scale, being at the same time a state event and a world event sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco), by the International Confucian Organization, by the Chinese Culture Promotion Society, and by the China Cultural Link Engineering Group Committee. With the participation of 2500 eminent persons, among them many high-echelon cadres of the CCP, it was broadcast live on TV to the whole country. In the following years, the ritual became a tradition, and started spreading to other cities large and small, while in some cities the temple of Confucius underwent renovation at government expense. At the time, many observers thought all this was a government move to foster tourism, but not everybody saw it in that light. It was in the same year 2005 that the philosophy department at Renmin University in Beijing launched its school of guoxue studies (literally, “national learning” studies), referring to traditional Chinese thought and culture. The study of Confucianism was of course a major part of that curriculum. The school offers a six-year series of undergraduate and graduate courses and recruits 20 to 30 students a year. Later, Beijing Qinghua University, Wuhan University, and Xiamen University, followed suit and established a research institute of Confucian studies. Again in 2005, on September 9 thru 12, the Philosophy Department of Wuhan University held the “Seventh International Conference of New Confucianism.” The participants came from China, but also from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States, altogether 140 participants. Such a scale was unprecedented. Famous representatives of Contemporary New Confucianism, such as Cai Renhou, Tu Weiming, Liu Shuxian, and Cheng Zhongying, were all present at the conference, something truly remarkable. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Philosophy of Wuhan University and Taiwan philosophical journal Legein Monthly. The following year, Guo Qiyong, head of the philosophy department of Wuhan University, together with Hu Zhihong, arranged the publication of the speeches of the conference, which came out in print in 2007 and contained 1.340.000 characters.
2007 – World Confucian Conference In 2007, China’s Ministry of Culture, together with the Shandong Provincial Government, organized to convene once a year in September a “World Confucian Conference” ( Shijie ruxue dahui) for the promotion of Confucianism in China and in the world. As a meeting place for such a conference, they chose the city of Qufu, in Shandong, Confucius’ place of birth. After 2013, the conference has been held every two years. Since 2007, over one thousand scholars, Chinese and foreign, have taken part in it. Beside lectures and meetings, the conference includes a ritual of respect to Confucius, and since 2009 the granting of a “Confucius Culture Prize” to scholars or institutions outstanding in the promotion of Confucianism. So far, the receivers of the prize include Tu Weiming, Pang Pu, Tang Yijie, Tang Enjia, Li Xueqin, Mou Zhongjian, Roger Ames, Chen Lai, and Dong Jinyu. In 2017, the prize was jointly assigned to Cai Renhou of Taichung (Taiwan) and Guo Qiyong of Wuhan University.
2008, August 8 - Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. On August 8th, 2008, countless viewers around the globe watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The opening ceremony was certainly an enormous international declaration of the CCP interest in Confucianism. Organized by the world-famous film maker Zhang Yimou, it included performers – PLA soldiers dressed in a Confucian literati garb - representing the disciples of Confucius, chanting quotations from the Analects as if they were slogans. The Confucian theme was continued as the performers lifted and lowered individual blocks in a choreographed display. In the end, the blocks formed the Chinese character he, or harmony, a central principle of the Confucian tradition, and the central theme in the political program of then president Hu Jintao. Clearly, Confucianism was one of the central themes of the opening ceremony. As this performance was the most watched opening ceremony in the history of the Olympic games, the CCP sent a calculated message depicting Chinese culture to the globe and to citizens of the PRC. [4] The inauguration ceremony showed once again how in recent years the Chinese government has been instrumentalizing Confucianism on the various levels: political, educational, mediatic, and intellectual.
Although far from complete, the above list recorded a sufficiently long list of important
