Introduction
The realisation of Xi Jinping’s vision ultimately depends on establishing a form of political pluralism that is compatible with the Confucian tradition.
Xi Jinping has never liked the popular Western phrase, ‘the rise of China’. He prefers China’s ‘restoration’ (fuxing) – describing an arc of recovery after the century-long free fall following the Opium Wars. Despite Xi’s ambitious project of cultural restoration, however, the People’s Republic of China is facing its most serious legitimacy crisis since its founding in 1949. At first glance this seems counter-intuitive, given that the Chinese Communist Party has pulled off one of the greatest achievements in world economic history. Yet political order based on the one-party system is under strain.
The roots of this crisis are generally misread in the West. What undermines the system is not economic slowdown or a lack of Western-style democratic legitimacy. The real problem for China is an increasing gap between the official project of restoring Confucian legitimacy and the ruling apparatus built on Russian Bolshevism, an alien and anti-Confucian ideology. The logic of ‘Mandate of Heaven’ (tian ming) holds that an immoral ruler will lose the mandate to rule. On this theme, Xi has tried to appropriate traditional values to gain popular support; he may fail to see that a revival of traditional culture will threaten the current political system. In this, he is ill-served by unwarranted self-confidence and by the party’s propaganda machine.
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