Revival of Confucianism

Remember the saying that China had thrown out the baby with the bath water in the early 20th century during a wave of internal self-criticisms and attempts to learn from the West?

One of the things that it was determined to throw out then was Confucianism which was seen as an outdated feudal doctrine that had deterred the modernization and development of China.

As writer Xu Jialu noted in an article on the revival of Confucianism in recent years, attempts to do so now are mainly to "carry the baby that had been thrown out with the dirty water home. We no longer want the dirty water. Moreover, water that had been thrown out cannot be taken back." (我们今天研究儒学，是把随着脏水泼出去的孩子再抱回家里，脏水并不收回，也收不回.) (许嘉璐 从中国文化与世界文化大视野看儒学复兴 高端讲坛 大国软实力 唐晋 主编 华文出版社 2009)

Though the question to ask here is - isn't the baby injured from having been thrown out together with the bath water earlier on? Perhaps by now it is crippled, if not suffering from damaged internal organs or even brain hemorrhage?

Xu does not think that there is a widespread revival of Confucianism, arguing that the revival is only within a handful of scholars and students, and negligible in a nation of 1.3 billion people.

"在中国内地上复兴儒学，任重道远。今天，弹奏古琴，古筝，吹吹箫,演奏民乐，如果在社会上卖票，那么，这样的乐团能很好的活下去吗？很难！但是，穿上露脐的衣服，来个脐钉，来个耳钉，拿着话筒，甩头发，跺脚，握手，最后来个飞吻，人们对此却是趋之若鹜。学术根植于社会。因此在今天这样一个社会环境下，要振兴儒学，道路太漫长了，需要一个文化的复兴，不是以年计，也不是以十年计，常常要以百年计."

("To revive Confucianism in China is a long and momentous task. Today, if a band were to perform on traditional musical instruments such as guzheng or the flute, can it possibly survive? With great difficulty! But if one were to dress up in belly-protruding clothes, carries a microphone, flips one's hair, stomps one's feet and then ends with a flying kiss, they will generate a lot more interest. With such a social environment, the path to reviving Confucianism is way too long. What is needed is a cultural renaissance that is calculated not in terms of years or decades, but in centuries.")