Chinese Political Thought: Confucianism, Communism, and Corruption

Corruption Report

Title: Chinese Political Thought: Confucianism, Communism, and Corruption

By: Dario Ortega

            Western political thought can be traced back to the ‘classics.’ Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides are the pillars of western political thought. However, China does not follow the same line of philosophical development. Chinese political thought originates from a different philosophy, Confucianism.  Confucianism influencing Chinese political thought is a useful concept to analyze when studying corruption in China because it provides an insight into the mind of the Chinese people and government officials.

            It would seem that Confucianism was the perfect fit for China and its government. In basic Confucian political thought, there is both an emphasis on order as oppose to rights or liberties, and an idea of a “rule of virtue.”

Since order is valued, there is very limited opposition to the concept of one ruler or regime having complete control of the government and country. Authoritarianism can thrive in a country whose people have engrained in their basic philosophical understanding that the government does not exist to protect rights, but on the contrary exists to maintain society from collapsing and develop prestige worldwide at all cost and by all means. This line of thinking not only legitimizes a regime such as the Chinese Communist Party; it provides the means by which such a regime can remain in power.

The means to remain in power are also supplemented by the concept of a “rule of virtue.” In classic Confucian political thought, rulers are thought to be both maintainers of order and protectors of virtue. This means that rulers in China are believed to be the moral compass of society. In contrast to the west, divisions in power, checks and balances, and regular elections, are just some of the ways that westerners show their general distrust of government. Government in the west is not a protector of values, or a beacon of society’s morals, it is the shield of society’s freedoms against the government itself. In China however, the government is allowed to obstruct both freedoms and the law because it is thought to be a protector of virtue, the shield against a change of what makes China particular and basically, ‘Chinese.’ This can be compared to the politburo of a communist state, which is the group of men responsible of being the moral and political ‘compass’ of society.

This study of Confucianism in Chinese political thought is vital because it provides a lense by which to perceive corruption in government. Is it corrupt to use one’s office to make money in a country where the government is responsible for order and virtue? Some would argue that it is not. As oppose to the west, corruption is not connected to a personal gain by betraying an institution or law; corruption in China is not seen as a legal issue, it is perceived as a failure to “rule with virtue.” Therefore, as oppose to a legal incident, corruption would be defined in China not by legal means but by moral or political means. With this in mind, there is no real surprise in the fact that the Party not the courts process corruption cases.

Sources:           

Ting, Gong. The Politics of Corruption in Contemporary China: An Analysis of Policy Outcomes. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994.