CCP and Confucianism

As a aficionado of Confucian-ism, thanks to Prof Hahm Chaihark, it is interesting to me, just as it is interesting to Prof David Shambaugh that several of the criteria used in cadre appraisals in China used terminology reminiscent of the Confucian personnel system of imperial times.

These include de (morality), neng (capability), qin (diligence), ji (achievement), and lian (uncorrupt).

"The overall goal, according to many official documents, is to create a cadre corps composed of talented people (rencai), another Confucian concept." (China's Communist Party Atrophy and Adaptation, Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2008)

The adoption of the new appraisal methods and criteria after 2002 was said to be in response to the need to "rectify inefficient party committees but also to open up the evaluation process."

Such a process was deemed to be too secretive, carried out by too narrow a circle of party committee evaluators who are often susceptible to payoffs, using non-standardized, meritocratic criteria, and having no input from colleagues or from the general public.

Pictured is a poster during the Cultural Revolution urging the proletariat to "undertake the battle of criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius to the very end"!