News of the "final rehabilitation in the fortunes of the ancient sage, whose teachings were vilified by Mao Zedong" —
Chow Yun-fat to play Confucius in China-backed film. Ironically, the film is being produced "to mark the 60th anniversary of communist rule."
The film is to be directed by "Hu Mei, one of the best known female directors of China's vaunted fifth generation," whose "father, a conductor for an army orchestra, was imprisoned by the Red Guards, while her grandfather died in custody."
One is tempted to suggest that a more appropriate biopic "to mark the 60th anniversary of communist rule" would be of
Shih Huang-ti, the first emperor, who "unified China with merciless brutality and vowed that all Confucian doctrine, which set limits to the power of the ruler, should be erased," or of
Han Fei-tzu, who,
contra the "Confucian ideal of 'government through virtue,'" suggested that "neither the wisdom of ancient kings nor an ethical code would make a state strong" and that "'good' and 'bad' were defined by whatever the self-interest of the ruler demanded."
However, to make such a suggestion would be to fail to understand China. The enormous changes China has undergone in the last two decades are well-known and real, even if the C.C.P. retains its monopoly on power. The political sphere is but one area to assess a society's freedom. What many people outside of China are unaware of the official attitudes about Red China's history, such as the "official "70% good, 30% bad" verdict" on
Chairman Mao's rule. (My own verdict would be close to 99.9% bad, but could you imagine the outcry if an American government official suggested 30% of what
"King Lincoln" did was bad?)
When I visited
Peking in 1998, the National Museum at Tienanmen Square, in an exhibit about
Chou Enlai, while declaring Mao Zedong's leadership of the 1949 Revolution "heroic," stated that his instigation of the Cultural Revolution was "criminal." (Could you imagine a government institution decrying as "criminal" the 1863 suspension of
habeas corpus?)
(My parenthetical comments bring to mind those words of
Alexis de Tocqueville about
tyranny of the majority: "I know of no country in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America." I don't mean them to cast dispersion on my beloved homeland, only to suggest we don't focus one of many motes in China's eye while ignoring a significant beam in our own.)
Labels: America the Beautiful, Commies, Confucianism, The Seventh Art