Title: Confucianism, Communism and Democracy: A ‘Triangular’ Struggle in China-Reflections on Italy’s Historical Experience with Cultural Reform
Abstract: At the beginning of the 20th century, democracy and communism were introduced in China to counterbalance Confucianism and in order to overcome the deep social crisis and strive for the modernization of Chinese traditional culture. The contemporary history of China is the history of struggle between Confucianism, democracy and communism. No foreign ideology can survive in China unless it has capacity of harmonizing itself with Confucianism. Learning from the Italian experience of the development of culture in order to successfully modernize the country’s traditional culture, China needs to recognize and protect more the individual rights and freedom and build up a society in pursuit of the truth by the elimination of the traditional bureaucracy-oriented mentality and money-worship idea. A political order modelled on the Roman Principate, characterized by the centralization of powers in a head of state and rule by law, can be a realistic and interim solution for China to realize at low cost the passage from totalitarianism to republicanism. Before reforming successful its traditional culture, it is convenient for China to implement continuously Deng Xiaoping’s so-called ‘24-character strategy’.
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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