Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism are the core of traditional Chinese culture. If Taoism and Buddhism offer the world the way to return to heaven and cultivate, then the main purpose of Confucianism in more than 2,000 years of Chinese history is to solidify human morality, to make people keep the essence of being a human being, so that their morality does not decline quickly.
Confucius, who is regarded as the founder of Confucianism, was a native of Cuyi in the State of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (present-day Qufu, Shandong Province), and is said to have had 3,000 disciples, including 72 sages. He was also called “the sage of heaven” and “the mudor of heaven”, and became the “supreme sage” who has been revered by future generations.
The Five Rites in Order and Harmony in Heaven
Human morality refers to the moral relationship between people. There are five human relationships: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, brother and friend. In the ancient book “Shang Shu – Yao Dian”, there is a saying that “Shen Hui Wu Dian” means to teach one’s subjects with the five virtues. According to the Zuo Zhuan, the “Five Virtues” are “righteousness of father, kindness of mother, friendship of brother, respect of brother, and filial piety of son”.
At the time of Confucius, The Analects of Confucius – The Book of Learning says: “When a disciple enters, he should be filial, when he leaves, he should be a disciple, he should be respectful and trustworthy, he should love all people, and he should be kind, and when he has the strength to do so, he should learn to write.” The “filial piety, fraternal duty, and faith” of the Five Rites appear. In addition, Confucius also proposed “the ruler, the minister, the father, the father, and the son”, adding the relationship between the ruler and the minister.
At the time of Mencius, these five relationships were clearly regulated and have been used by later generations: father and son should have affinity, ruler and minister should have righteousness, husband and wife should have distinction, elders and children should be in order, and friends should have trust. If we compare this with the five constants “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith” proposed by Confucius, we can regard “benevolence” as the father and son having affinity, “righteousness” as the ruler and subject having righteousness, “propriety “righteousness” is the righteousness of the ruler and the minister, “propriety” is the orderliness of elders and children, “wisdom” is the distinction between husband and wife, and “faith” is the faith of friends.
It is said that Confucius’ grandson, Zi Si, wrote the “Middle Mean”, which once again clarifies the order of the Five Rites: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, brother and friend. Confucianism believes that when the Five Rites are in order, the world will be in harmony.
Confucianism influenced all dynasties
Confucianism influenced all the subsequent dynasties and became a treasury for all the dynasties after Emperor Wu’s “exclusive respect for Confucianism”. Starting from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism was celebrated every year, reaching a peak in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and was regarded as the “Grand Ceremony of the State”. In the Qing Dynasty, the Shunzhi Emperor set up the Temple of Literature in Beijing, dedicated to the annual ceremony of Confucius, and honored Confucius as the “Greatest Sage Wen Xuan Xian Shi”.
It can be said that in the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization, if a dynasty or a bright ruler is missing since Confucius, history will not lose the general body. However, if Confucius is missing, the history of the past two thousand years will lose its moral principles, and there will be no way to maintain human morality.
Because of the emperors’ esteem for Confucius, the descendants of Confucius were also treated generously, and were crowned as “Gong” and “Hou”. Among these titles, the “Derivative Gong”, which was conferred by Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, lasted the longest, and the last person to carry on this title was Kong Decheng, a 77th-generation grandson of Confucius born in 1919. He settled in Taiwan after the Chinese Communist occupation of the mainland and never returned to the mainland for the rest of his life, because of the heinous acts of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Cultural Revolution Destroyed the Three Confucius Tomb
After Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao’s cadre of Cultural Revolutionaries, Kang Sheng, approached Tan Houlan, the head of the Beijing rebellion, and instructed her to rebel at the Confucius Temple in Qufu. Kang Sheng said, “I thought about it for three days and three nights and drew a picture of my impressions of the place.” Kang handed the drawing to Tan Houlan and gave her the words, “When you get there, smash whatever you want.”
So, Tan Houlan led more than 200 people to Qufu in the name of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and wreaked havoc under the slogan of “making a rebellion against Confucius”, burning 2,700 ancient books, more than 900 scrolls of calligraphy and paintings, more than 70 national-level protected cultural relics, more than 1,700 rare books, smashing 1,000 stone monuments including Confucius’ tombstone They also destroyed the Confucius Temple, the Confucius Mansion and the Confucius Forest. What’s more outrageous is that they also dug up the grave of Confucius, dug up the joint tomb of Confucius, Tao and Wang, and burned it after exposing the corpse and criticizing it for several days.
It is said that Professor Zhou Yutong, who focused on scriptures at that time, was escorted to the site of the “destruction of Confucianism” and was forced to dig up Confucius’ grave by himself. The Red Guards also used detonators and explosives in order to dig up Confucius’ tomb faster. After digging up the bones of Confucius for public display, they also burned them. The famous monument of “King Wen Xuan of the Greatest Sage” was broken in several pieces.
In addition, the Red Guards also escorted local leaders and cadres at all levels and scholars who had participated in the 1962 “Confucius Symposium” to accompany the statue of Confucius in the street, calling it a “funeral for Kung Lao Er.
It is obvious that the digging up of Confucius’ tomb and the destruction of Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest is a major event, an evil deed that even the Japanese have not done. The Chinese Communist Party can hardly be described as “extremely evil”.
According to the book Confucianism: A Biography of Mr. Kong Decheng, Kong Decheng’s granddaughter, Kong Zhumei, recalled that in 1990, “I saw my grandfather reading the newspaper one day and suddenly he said, ‘The Red Guards have even dug up my mother’s grave. Then with a long sigh, ‘Ugh ……’.”
In December 1966, Mao told a foreign guest that one of the important tasks of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” was to eliminate the influence of Confucius in all areas. Digging up Confucius’ tomb and destroying Confucius’ forest and temple was one of the important steps. In July 1919, in the inaugural issue of Xiangjiang Review, which he edited, Mao published four short comments exposing the “respect for Confucius” of Kang Youwei and others, which were his earliest “criticism of Confucius”.
Performing the “criticism of Lin and Confucius” comedy
In 1971, the “9-13” Lin Biao incident triggered the Chinese Communist Party’s “criticism of Lin and Confucius” campaign. In July 1973, Mao Zedong said in a conversation with Wang Hongwen and Zhang Chunqiao that Lin Biao, like the Kuomintang, was “respecting Confucianism and opposing the law”. Mao also argued that Legalism had been moving forward in history, while Confucianism had been moving backwards.
In a poem written by Mao to Guo Moruo shortly afterwards, he wrote the following lines: “Confucianism has a high name and a low reputation.” This means that although Confucius’ doctrine is famous, it is actually not very good. Undoubtedly, Mao’s important purpose in completely discrediting Confucius was to destroy the moral standards that had solidified human morality for more than 2,000 years, thus making the Chinese people accept the indoctrination of the Chinese Communist Party.
On August 7 of the same year, the Communist Party’s People’s Daily published an article by Yang Rongguo, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University, entitled “Confucius – a thinker who stubbornly defended slavery”, and on August 13, its article “The struggle of materialism against idealistic a priori in the two Han dynasties”. On September 4, Beijing Daily published the article “Confucianism and Confucian Reactionary Thought” written by the Great Criticism Group of Peking University and Tsinghua University.
On January 18, 1974, Mao wholesale document No. 1 of 1974 of the CPC Central Committee, forwarding “Lin Biao and the Way of Confucius and Mencius”, which was selected and edited by Jiang Qing. Since then, the “criticism of Lin and Confucius” campaign began, and newspapers and magazines all over the country published articles on “criticism of Lin and Confucius”. Confucius was called “Kung Lao Er” and was portrayed as a “restoration maniac who drove backwards in history,” a “hypocritical and cunning political liar,” a “vicious and brutal big He was portrayed as a “restorationist who reversed history,” a “hypocritical and cunning political liar,” a “vicious and brutal bully,” an “uneducated parasite,” and a “bereaved dog who ran into walls everywhere. Confucius’ idea of “restoring rituals to oneself” was also heavily criticized.
During the “Criticism of Lin and Confucius” campaign, some intellectuals were forced to agree with them. For example, Feng Youlan, a professor of philosophy at Peking University, who had suffered a lot from the Cultural Revolution, wrote two articles criticizing and respecting Confucius at the beginning of the movement, which were published in the Peking University Journal and approved by Mao, and were then reprinted in the official media. Since then, Feng Youlan has also become an academic advisor of the central government in the “Criticism of Lin and Confucius” campaign.
Since then, the glorious image of Confucius was pulled down from the high platform, and the trampled idea of “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith” was also removed from the minds of Chinese people. After the Chinese Communist Party launched reform and opening up, the morality of Chinese people has been declining day by day in the pursuit of profits.
The Chinese Communist Party’s overseas united war in the name of Confucius
What is surprising is that the Chinese Communist Party, which dug up Confucius’ tomb and denigrated him, has once again taken advantage of Confucius. Based on Confucius’ enormous influence around the world, the CCP has set up Confucius Institutes overseas to actively promote the CCP’s sophistry and spread the CCP’s culture, including teaching foreigners to sing songs in praise of the CCP.
On June 15, 2004, the world’s first Confucius Institute was officially established in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. in December 2010, the U.S. director of the Confucius Institute at Kennesaw State University in Georgia told a conference that “the Confucius Institute is just a title and is not focused on preaching the ideas of Confucius and Mencius”. in 2014 In November, an official from the Chinese Communist Party’s Hanban had also said at the official opening of the Confucius Institute in Seoul, South Korea, that “Confucius has been recognized around the world, and the Confucius Institute is not offering courses on Confucian thought, but using the name of Confucius to promote the Chinese language around the world.” In fact, the main thing that the Confucius Institute does is to carry out overseas unification.
In 2008, the “Confucius Institutes” had a budget of $1.6 billion. In 2008, the budget of Confucius Institute was as high as 1.6 billion. Since then, the budget has been increasing year by year. In terms of operation, the common denominator of every Confucius Institute is a loss, a huge loss. The reasons for the losses are many, but the most important one is the lack of transparency in the operation mode and financial situation. As a result, Confucius Institutes have become, on the one hand, a hole that the Chinese Communist government cannot fill and, on the other hand, a cash machine for Ministry of Education officials to withdraw money from various countries at will.
At the Sixth Confucius Institute Conference held in December 2011, the young singers invited from various countries sang mostly “red songs” in praise of the Chinese Communist Party. Li Changchun, then the CPC propaganda minister, also described the Confucius Institute as an important part of the CPC’s “big foreign propaganda”.
Instead of talking about Confucianism, the Confucius Institute celebrates the Communist usurpation of power and sings the “red song” of the evil party, proving the fact that the Confucius Institute has a vain name. To put it bluntly, the Confucius Institute is a half-hearted training institution that touts the banner of Confucius and not only fails to promote Chinese culture, but also insults the sages.
On March 3, 2017, “In the Name of Confucius,” a documentary exposing the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas “Confucius Institutes,” had its world premiere at the Belleville International Documentary Film Festival in Ontario, Canada. The competition jury’s review of “In the Name of Confucius” stated, “The film reveals shocking details, sinister intentions, and a civilian hero, exposing the truth behind a multi-billion dollar enterprise.”
Aware of the CCP’s sinister intentions, some places began closing Confucius Institutes, and in 2013, McMaster University, a leading Canadian institution, closed its Confucius Institute. In December of the same year, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which has more than 60,000 members, called on colleges and universities to end their cooperation with Confucius Institutes, and in October 2014, the TDSB Program Committee of the Toronto School Board voted “by an overwhelming majority” to “cancel cooperation with Confucius Institutes. In October 2014, the TDSB Program Committee of Toronto Board of Education voted “overwhelmingly” to “cancel cooperation with Confucius Institutes.
In 2014, the Confucius Institutes at the University of Chicago and Penn State University were discontinued; in the same year, the American Association of University Professors appealed to universities across the United States to terminate or revise their contracts with Confucius Institutes.
In addition, the Confucius Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden, the first “Confucius Institute” in Europe, which opened in 2005, was closed in 2015. In May of the same year, the Media University of Stuttgart in Germany also terminated its cooperation with the Confucius Institute, and in July, the inspectorate in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, took a Confucius Institute at a university to court and demanded its closure. And back in 2010, the Russian Federal Security Service shut down a Confucius Institute in the Yakutia region.
The Chinese Communist Party harbors evil intentions
Why does the Chinese Communist Party criticize Confucius? It is because Confucius’ “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith” are the cornerstones of human morality, which can “cultivate one’s moral character, bring up one’s family, rule one’s country, and level the world,” while the CCP’s communism and philosophy of struggle are perversions and heresies that can only harm people, destroy families, mislead the country, and disrupt China. The two cannot be integrated. If the Chinese Communist Party wants to establish its party culture to unify the world, it is bound to make a big move against Confucius, and this is the evil intention of its criticism and insult to Confucius. Therefore, the prerequisite for the revival of Chinese culture is to abandon the CCP and remove the Party culture, while the revival of Chinese culture under the CCP’s rule is nothing more than selling dog meat on a sheep’s head.
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