China's Politics, Culture, and Their Impact on Social Order

Introduction: China's Political and Cultural Identity

Despite experiencing significant economic progress in recent years, China has managed to maintain its political ideology and many of its cultural values. Globalization has had only a limited effect on China compared to other countries, most probably because the state focused on its own background as a means of driving evolution. It is difficult to analyze China solely from the perspective of recent events; it is therefore essential to consider China's history prior to communism in order to understand current affairs in the country. Patience is one of the most important concepts needed when addressing how China's culture and politics affect each other, and how both affect social change in the country.

The Chinese people have grown accustomed to the government using force whenever it considers it necessary to emphasize its point of view. The government does not hesitate to employ violence and similar strategies when it believes that a particular individual or community is acting in disagreement with its legislation. Even so, China has managed to preserve a great deal of cultural values in an environment dominated by communist ideology and by globalization.

China has experienced much change ever since Confucius established the basis for a Chinese cultural identity — one that contained many elements the wider world associates with China, yet which are actually in tension with many of the values embraced by the contemporary Chinese community. The Communist Revolution of 1949 appeared to have created a major rupture with China's traditional background. The nature of that revolution produced much controversy, however, as people struggled to determine "the extent to which the ideology and practice of Chinese communism could be said to reflect indigenous cultural influences" (Wasserstrom and Perry 1).

Confucian Roots and the Communist Revolution

A great many individuals are inclined to believe that Chinese communism stands in direct contrast to traditional China. However, the truth is that Chinese Communists simply adapted traditional ideas in order to make them compatible with the innovative thinking present in communism and in globalization. As Fitzgerald observed, "The Chinese conceptions which underlie the theory of government are unique; unlike any others, and evolved in China. The roots are deep and nourished in a soil alien to the West; the flower is therefore also strange, and hard to recognize" (Fitzgerald 20). One can practically say that politics and culture are interdependent in China and that they influence each other significantly. The contemporary ideology present in China is the result of a merging between traditionalism and communism. In Fitzgerald's words: "The Chinese Communists, embracing a world authoritarian doctrine in place of one local to China, have enlarged the arena in which old Chinese ideas can once more be put into practice, in more modern guise, expanded to the new scale, but fundamentally the same ideas which inspired the builders of the Han Empire and the restorers of the T'ang" (Fitzgerald 42).

One of the most illuminating ways to demonstrate that traditional values remain present in Chinese society is to examine the Chinese educational system. Communists lobbied to reform the system with the goal of making education accessible to everyone, regardless of background. Even so, more than half a century after the Chinese Revolution, educational inequality continues to dominate the country's educational institutions. Many parents cannot afford to send their children to school, and rural counties are unable to devise adequate methods of funding the nine-year compulsory education program. The government directs many of its resources toward other domains, making it very difficult — and in some cases impossible — for children to benefit from a nominally successful educational system. Traditionalism thus comes into direct conflict with communism, as people who are unable to send their children to school face penalties, and as many of these children fail to participate in the agricultural system as they did before the Communist Revolution.

In an attempt to demonstrate its capacity for broad reform, the government provides wide access to schooling, yet ends up losing a great deal of resources because many parents are either unable or reluctant to send their children. Some parents believe that schools indoctrinate their children, which further discourages attendance. As Postiglione noted, in spite of the fact that schooling is now accessible to a wide range of individuals, "educational inequalities continue to widen, compliments of a hot-wired market economy and the easing of pressure on the central government over the responsibility to ensure access and equity" (Postiglione 3).

The fact that China has one of the world's largest gross domestic products makes it clear that it is not a typical communist country. While many attribute this to its tendency to adapt communism to globalization, it is also owed to the fact that China has preserved many of its cultural values throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the present.

Education, Inequality, and Traditional Values

Given the extent of change China has experienced since the Communist Revolution, it might seem natural that some cultural values would have been preserved in the years following it. However, when examining more recent developments, it appears that China has undergone something of a cultural rebirth, returning to its roots over the past few decades. Communism continues to dominate affairs in the country, but some of its more severe attitudes from the latter part of the twentieth century seem to have softened. Soft power is probably one of the most consequential concepts to have entered China's strategic thinking in recent decades. Party Chief and President Hu Jintao, for instance, noted at the Central Foreign Affairs Leadership Group meeting in January 2006 that "the increase of China's international status and influence depends both on hard power, such as economy, science and technology, and defense, as well as on soft power, such as culture" (Li 1). This makes clear that, despite the significant changes communism has brought to China, Chinese leaders themselves stress the importance of cultural values to the country's well-being.

Chinese political leaders are well aware that they can exploit culture both to keep their own population content and to charm the West with China's historical and cultural depth. This is why China is not associated exclusively with communism by Westerners, and why a great many people around the world express interest in the country's ability to achieve rapid economic growth. However, many strategists have expressed doubt regarding China's ability to effectively leverage its cultural values to improve international relations and to persuade the world that it deserves to be taken seriously from a moral perspective (Li 2).

Strategists broadly believe that China's soft power approach is likely to backfire because the country is not fully committed to respecting its cultural values and remains willing to act in ways that conflict with international human rights norms when its leaders deem it necessary (Li 2). Many consider that "China's capability to influence the rest of the world through soft power is restrained by a lack of agreement on what constitutes Chinese culture and values" (Li 2). In contrast, others believe it is only a matter of time before China achieves meaningful success through soft power strategies, and that China's soft power gains are already coming at the expense of U.S. influence in East and Southeast Asia. It appears that the contemporary international community is increasingly receptive to soft power approaches over coercive reform.

Conclusion: Balancing Politics and Culture

Even though the interaction of politics and cultural values has had some positive effects on Chinese society, the Chinese government has encountered significant problems as a result of attempting to combine these two forces. People grew confused, unable to determine whether it was better to adhere to traditional values or to relocate to growing cities where employment appeared more profitable and accessible. This uncertainty had a damaging effect on millions of Chinese citizens, who were unable to attend educational institutions, lost significant portions of their land, and ultimately found themselves living in places where jobs were either unavailable or poorly paid.

China's trajectory illustrates the profound difficulty of reconciling a politically authoritarian system with a rich and deeply rooted cultural heritage. The tension between communist governance and traditional Confucian values continues to shape the country's social order in ways that produce both remarkable economic achievements and persistent human costs. Understanding China requires holding both of these realities in view simultaneously.