POLS1005 Book Report Name: Kwok Yan Yu Vanessa Student ID: 21228736 Book Title: Chinese Ideology Author: Shiping Hua (editor) This book traces the political ideologies trends in China according to chronological order, historically and comparatively, it was divided into the four main chapters of traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and Post-Mao ideology. The author have included some of his subjective perspective while introducing and further discuss on the topic of Chinese Ideology, aiming to not only showing how the study of ideology is relevant to the topic, but also how China withheld its own distinct characteristics of ideologies compared to the west. In the following content, I would like to introduce one of the author’s major thesis and propose my opinion towards it with reasoned argument. The author proposed that “Conservatism” as an ideology trend had little influence in China politics and stated that actually there were no conservatism party in China modern history, and it even bought out some examples, such as Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party were left-wing parties. In response to this argument, there is validity in the perspective of the author’s thesis, nevertheless I would like to point out a different perspective of this statement. I believe that Conservatism influenced deeply in the modern history of China. Firstly, I would like to define the term “Conservatism” . According to the dictionary definition, "Conservatism" is a political and social philosophy that promotes traditional social systems in a specific cultural context, and its core values generally include a focus on tradition, social order, hierarchical authority, and property rights. Edmund Burke is considered the father of British conservatism for his opposition to the French Revolution and he believes that institutions and traditions can survive and work well because they are built with accumulated wisdom and experience of the past, which does influenced China and modern conservatism can also be found in modern China politics, which is also under the idea of "Conservatism". The idea of “ Conservatism” is formed in different aspects, for example political, economic and cultural, and Chinese conservatism can be proven in those fields in the following content. Economically, the conservative trend of thought in the process of economic modernization mainly refers to the economic trend of denying, resisting, and resisting the industrialization and marketization of the economy， which points directly to China’s economic before the Reform and Opening-up Policy. In the first half of the 20th century of China, it was mainly manifested in the ideological trend of "building the country with agriculture" and the "controlled economy" trend, the former being anti-industrialization and also anti-marketization; the latter being antimarketization, and some anti-industrialization. In the second half of the 20th century, it was mainly manifested as the "small peasant community" or "agricultural socialism" and "ideological trends" and restricting and thus abolishing the commodity economy. The former is an anti-industrial trend, and the latter is an anti-market trend. And after the Reform and Opening-up Policy, which is implemented by Deng, Xiaoping in 1978, the China's characteristic socialist market economic model was formed and actually follows the neo-liberal path of capitalism, and the government uses political power to clear the way for capital liberalization in order to seek economic growth, and actively participates in economic globalization. Therefore, it is clear that modern conservatism found in modern China ideology, which is a blend of the neoliberal economic ideas and the traditionalist ideas of Edmund Burke, proves that Conservatism influenced deeply in the modern history of China. Culturally, conservatism emphasizes the inherent moral culture of one's own people. Cultural conservatism advocates the absorption of certain foreign cultures on the basis of Confucianism and the creation of a new Chinese culture. This proposition generally continues the model of "middle school as the body, Western learning as the use". The outbreak of the First World War and the October Revolution in Russia prompted the European intellectual circles to criticize and re-examine the ideological trend of capitalist civilization. This trend of thought was passed down to China, combined with the original cultural conservatism, to form the Oriental cultural school. Du Yaquan, the editor-in-chief of the Oriental Magazine, whose main representative figure, first raised the question of "the combination of Oriental culture and Western culture to produce a new culture in the future". Liang Qichao returned from a visit to Europe, preaching that "Western culture has gone bankrupt" and calling for "everyone to have a sincerity to respect and love their own culture." Showing that China is conservative in a cultural aspect. Politically, In China's modern history, people regarded the promotion of new things and movements as progress, and the promotion of old things to reject new things as conservative; in fact, progressivism is opposed to conservatism, and radicalism is opposed to stubbornness. The middle forces in Chinese society have always been under-grown; the struggle between progressivism and conservatism, the struggle between radicalism and stubbornness, and the actual progress has not been great. The Western Affairs Movement and the Penghu Reform Law are considered to be attempts of conservatism (royalism), as opposed to the republican ideas of Revolutionaries such as Sun Wen, but Sun Wen and others actually practiced cultural conservatism. After the Xinhai Revolution, Yuan Shikai, Zhang Xunzunkong, and the attempt to restore were also considered by progressives to be the embodiment of conservatism, as opposed to the Western trends of thought such as liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism introduced by the New Culture Movement. After the April 12 incident, the Communist Party claimed that Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang had betrayed Sun Yat-sen's republican ideas. After the Civil War, liberal intellectuals partly led the Communist Party to remain on the mainland, and some still followed the Republic of China government to move to Taiwan. Since the June Fourth Incident, Political Authoritarianism, Social Conservatism, Cultural Conservatism and National Conservatism in China have been on the rise. Therefore, political conservatism is obviously shown in modern China history. In conclusion, this paper argues the author’s thesis and proves that Conservatism influenced deeply in the modern history of China in aspects such as political, economic and cultural, also modern conservatism could be found in the present politics of China. (Word count:1010) Reference 1. Shiping Hua(2021). Chinese Ideology(1st Ediion). Taylor&Francis Group, 1-266 2. Hamilton, Andrew (2019). "Conservatism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
