Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia No. 24
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ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA NO. 24 ASKON ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA NO. 24 ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA Editor-in-Chief Board of Advisory Editors MARIA ROMAN S£AWIÑSKI NGUYEN QUANG THUAN KENNETH OLENIK ABDULRAHMAN AL-SALIMI Subject Editor JOLANTA SIERAKOWSKA-DYNDO JERZY ZDANOWSKI BOGDAN SK£ADANEK LEE MING-HUEI ZHANG HAIPENG Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures Polish Academy of Sciences ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA NO. 24 ASKON Publishers Warsaw 2011 Publication co-financed by the State Committee for Scientific Research Secretary Agata Wójcik English Text Consultant Stephen Hedrick © Copyright by Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 2011 Printed in Poland This edition prepared, set and published by Wydawnictwo Naukowe ASKON Sp. z o.o. Stawki 3/1, 00193 Warszawa tel./fax: (+48) 22 635 99 37 www.askon.waw.pl [email protected] PL ISSN 08606102 ISBN 9788374520553 ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA is abstracted in The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Contents ROMAN S £ AWIÑSKI, The New Confucianism vs. the Development of East Asia (2) ................................................................................................. 7 KARIN TOMALA, Kulturspezifische Barrieren in der chinesischen Bevölkerungspolitik ....................................................................................... 23 LEE M I N G-H U E I, Culture et démocratie: réflexions à partir de la polémique entre libéraux taiwanais et néo-confucéens contemporains ......................... 65 £UKASZ GACEK, The New Global Leader in a Clean Energy Race. The Green Development in China .................................................................................... 89 ADAM W. JELONEK, Ethnic Identity of the Peripheral Provinces of Thailand ..................................................................................................... 97 MARCIN STYSZYÑSKI, Al-Qaedas Structure According to Propaganda Techniques .......................................................................... 125 ABDULRAHMAN A L-SALIMI, Some Remarks on the Correlation between Islam and Governance in the Modern Sunni and Shiite Revivalist Movements ................................................................................. 137 Notes on Contributors ................................................................................................. 143 The New Confucianism 7 ACTA ASIATICA VARSOVIENSIA No. 24, 2011 PL ISSN 08606102 ROMAN S£AWIÑSKI The New Confucianism vs. the Development of East Asia Abstract Having drawn a history of the use of Confucianism in modern times in selected Asian countries (Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia No. 23), the author focuses on the question of evaluation of contemporary adaptations of Confucianism. The article quotes the opinions of the Chinese luminaries of philosophy from 1958 (New Confucian Manifesto), the earlier opinions of traditional thinkers (Chen Xujing (1933), Wang Xinming (1935), and of contemporary Taiwanese (Yi-yuan Li (1967), Chun-chieh Huang (2009)) concerning the usefulness of Confucianism in our contemporary time. This is followed by a critical discussion of the views of Zhu Rukai (2006) and Jiang Qing (2009), and the two Confucian concepts of the harmonious society (hexie shehui), soft power, and moral government (dezhi) enjoying top-down promotion. Further, in a fictionalised form, it presents a vision of living in a contemporary Confucian society. Finally, in the postscript, it reminds of the existence of another option, represented by the former participants of the cultural revolution. Presented in the previous part (Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia No. 23) were questions related to the origin of the contemporary Confucianism, and the history of the use of Confucianism in modern times in selected Asian countries was provided. Continuing the question of applying classical Confucianism today, this part focuses on the question of evaluations that have emerged in reference to the question of adapting Confucianism in our time. 1. The New Confucian Manifesto of 1958 The publication of the New Confucian Manifesto (a.k.a. The Manifesto on Chinese Culture to the World) was an obvious reaction to the destruction of Chinese culture in the days of the Great Leap Forward and the establishment of peoples communes in continental China. The Manifesto was written in defence of the Chinese culture by four of the most popular philosophers of Taiwan and Hong Kong, Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang). They addressed their manifesto to the world authorities in 1958. At the time it was rather a voice calling in the desert. Orthodox Maoism needed no competition, and Confucianism was considered not as an important part of Chinese culture but rather an antiquity sentenced to destruction, and the ideology of the obliterated feudalism. Today, this unfortunate appeal postulating that the Chinese embrace of democracy and Western culture is more understandable, and in the context of an opening of China to other countries, seems really fresh and valid. The problem of an 8 ROMAN S£AWIÑSKI introduction of Western culture and relationships between democracy and Confucianism was tackled in the manifesto. However, this remains an object of contention found throughout scientific research. This controversy has brought about numerous theoretical works from the end of the 1990s, well into the early the 21st century. As the discussion between Albert Chan from Hong Kong and Jiang Qing1 an extreme Confucianist from the Chinese continent has proved, the coexistence of Western democracy and Confucianism in China is the subject of a heated controversy.2 Moreover, it can be found to be true when examining the situation of Taiwan, after the democratisation of the 1980s. We see that combining these systems do not need to be mutually exclusive. Yet, let us reach for the conclusions3 reached by the protagonists mentioned above. Albert Chan still believes that the ideas contained in the New Confucian Manifesto have lost nothing of their materiality, and there is no profound controversy between constitutional democracy and the Confucian tradition in its broad understanding. He makes the claim of an exaggerated focus on the moral values of Confucianism, despite certain criticisms by the text of the Manifesto (whose authors are already dead). He reaches the conclusion that it must be admitted that in traditional China Confucian teaching favoured supporting the imperial government, for which reason he himself and majority of researchers support a creative transformation (chuangzaoxin zhuanghua) of Chinese culture. Contrary to that, Jiang Qing treats Albert Chans position on democracy as a direction to follow, and Confucian values only as supporting elements, while he believes that this should go the other way round. Moreover, he believes that constitutional democracy favours only the little people and not the noble individuals. The additional answer provided by Albert Chan includes an additional and fairly harsh criticism of Jiang Qing. It boiled down to the following claims: Jiang Qing does not treat the nation as a subject. Jiang Qing assumes an unequal position of the governing and governed, and juxtaposes rationalism to the interest of the self. Regarding Confucian values, he challenges the principle of equality. After all, as far as general suffrage is concerned, Western democracies went through a particular process leading to the acquisition of voting rights, initially designed only for people of certain wealth. 2. The Taiwanese assessment of usefulness of Confucianism at the time of modernisation The Director of the National Taiwan Universitys Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Chun-chieh Huang, presented a question concerning Confucian traditions and expectations towards Confucianism in the 21st century. He tackles this question in the sixth chapter of his book on transformations in post-war Taiwan.4 This 1 Not Madam Mao, but a historian and researcher. (Translators note). 2 Albert Chan, Rujia yu minzhu xianzheng. Cong 1958 nian Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan tanqi (Confucianism versus Constitutional Democracy, Based on A Manifesto on Chinese Culture to the World of 1958), in: Rujia shehui yu daotong fuxing. Yu Jiang Qing duihua (Confucian Dao and the Contemporary Society. Dialogue with Jiang Qing), Fan Ruiping (ed.), Shanghai: Huadong Shifan, 2008, p. 1330. 3 Ibid., p. 2430. 4 Chun-chieh Huang, Zhanhou Taiwan de chuanxin ji qi zhanwang (Transformation in Post-war Taiwan and Its Prospects), Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2007, p. 165188. The New Confucianism 9 question was more extensively discussed at an international conference in Japan in 1988 and 1990, and then again in Taiwan in 1992.5 One of the cardinal questions is concerned with the issue of the distortion and the exploition of Confucianism. Taiwan was the earliest to be baptised by the Western culture. The question of Confucian ideas vs. the modernisation of Taiwan, contains in fact two challenges: 1) Chinese culture vs. Western modernisation, and 2) The traditional (zhuantongxin) vs. the modern (xiandaixin). A problem emerged in China after the May Fourth Movement: Should an independent Chinese culture develop or should there be an aim at full westernisation. At the time, two extreme options were visible: Chen Xujing (19031967) supported full westernisation of the country, and Wang Xinming and 10 other professors favoured native culture. In most works,