China between continuity and change:cultural debates on Confucian tradition and modernity from the Opium Wars until today

Abstract

This thesis describes and analyses the crucial elements of the cultural debate on modernity and Confucian tradition in China from the end of the nineteenth century until today, and the outcomes in the current condition of China as a global superpower. The first chapter discusses some intellectual theories on the analysis of Chinese modernity, from the critical dissertation on Chinese culture of the German sociologist Max Weber, to the analysis of the revival of Confucianism as political and social ideology in modern East Asia described by the Neo-Confucian intellectual Tu Weiming, and a Wang Hui’s original theory on Chinese modernization. The second chapter traces the most important events of the intellectual debate on Chinese modernity: from the breakdown of identity occurred with the Opium Wars with the early debates on Westernization, to the complete rejection of the Confucian tradition during the Cultural Revolution of Mao, to the Confucian revival in the post-Mao era. The third chapter analyses the Confucian tradition revival as the ideological foundation of Xi Jinping’s cultural policy and as an instrument to build the soft power and the global image of today’s China.