MCLC: Xi Jinping, literary leader

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Xi Jinping, literary leader
***********************************************************

Source: China Real Time blog, WSJ (5/9/14):
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/09/literary-leaders-why-chinas-p
resident-is-so-fond-of-dropping-confucius/

Literary Leaders: Why China’s President Is So Fond of Dropping Confucius
By Josh Chin

Generous girths aside, Winston Churchill and Chinese President Xi Jinping
would seem to have little in common. One was popularly elected, while the
other gained power by means of a shadowy process few understand. One was a
giant who made his name leading his country through war, while the other’s
legacy is still very much in the making.

But the two do share one characteristic besides their robust builds: a
fondness for literary allusions.

In the same way Churchill littered his legendary speeches with references
to the Bible and nods to Shakespeare, Mr. Xi has displayed a tendency to
lard his writings and public statements with quotations from classical
Chinese literature.

On Thursday, the overseas edition of the People’s Daily devoted itself to
cataloging the Chinese leader’s literary references, running a full-page
spread 
<http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2014-05/08/content_1424711.htm>
dedicated to explaining 13 allusions spanning the later part of Mr. Xi’s
career. The aim, it said, was to explain the Chinese leader’s thoughts on
“the question of cultivating morality among leading cadres.”

Some analysts have interpreted Mr. Xi’s embrace of the classics as a move
akin to Churchill’s borrowing from “Henry V” in his World War II speeches:
an effort to use pride in a venerable cultural tradition to rally the
nation at a time of crisis.

China is not facing war, but Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have
portrayed the Communist Party as facing a raft of daunting challenges:
endemic corruption, hostility abroad and an exceedingly tricky economic
transition opposed by entrenched special interests. Having long ago traded
in Marxism for the market, analysts say, the party is now trying to shore
up its legitimacy by associating itself with a Confucian tradition it once
lambasted as feudal and backwards.

Some of Mr. Xi’s references cited by the People’s Daily have more obvious
resonances with today’s politics than others.

One quote Mr. Xi used from the Confucian “Book of Rites” in a 2007 essay
speaks directly to his current efforts to clean up the behavior of China’s
wayward bureaucrats: “Nothing is more visible than what is hidden, and
nothing is more obvious than what is minute. Therefore a gentleman is
careful of himself even when alone.”

In other instances, however, Mr. Xi’s allusions are less pointed, instead
evoking an inchoate political anxiety. Such was the case during a 2013
visit to the Central Party School, when he quoted a line from the “Book of
Songs,” another Confucian classic: “In fear and trembling, as if walking
on thin ice, as if approaching a deep abyss.”

Mr. Xi is by no means the first Chinese leader to weave classical
literature into his essays and speeches. Nor is he the first to attempt to
leaven the Communist Party’s rhetoric with a sprinkling of Confucianism.
Mr. Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao similarly borrowed from Confucius when he
introduced the notion of a “harmonious society” more than a decade ago,
notes Sam Crane, a professor of Asian Studies at Williams College. But Mr.
Xi, Mr. Crane says, “is being more explicit and direct in his classicism.”

The People’s Daily spread, he adds, is “a rather obvious attempt to
bolster [Xi’s] image as a proper gentleman in old Confucian terms: well
read, morally upright and finding moral inspiration in the classic texts.”

In a country where even mundane conversations are often shot through with
pithy aphorisms taken from classical literature, it makes sense for Mr. Xi
show off his sophistication. Yet there could be some danger in reviving
the classical texts, which are often vague, shot through with allegory and
open to a wide range of interpretations.

Take, for example, this famous quote from Confucius’ Analects that appears
in an essay by Mr. Xi on poverty alleviation: “It’s easier to rob an army
of its general than it is to rob a common man of his purpose and will.”

According the People’s Daily, Mr. Xi intention in evoking the passage was
to encourage officials to cultivate the willpower necessary to “push ahead
in the face of innumerable challenges.” But Mr. Crane notes that it might
be read differently, particularly in light of the upcoming 25th
anniversary of the crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square.

“We should not assume that the state is the articulator of those purposes
and will,” he says. “And, indeed, 25 years ago there was a rather massive
divergence in the expression of popular purposes and state power.”

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin <http://twitter.com/joshchin>