Contemporary Chinese culture finds itself in a painful trans-formation evoked by modernization. This means not only the modernization of industry, agriculture, military affairs and scien-ce-technology, but more importantly the modernization of culture, especially of people’s ideas. At present, various conflicts in mixing new and old ideas are difficult for people to follow. This is not only an indication that the old cultural paradigm has fallen into crisis, but also that a new cultural paradigm is coming into being. There-fore, a consideration of the inner conflicts of contemporary Chinese culture in its process of modernization can have remark-able theoretical and practical meaning. These conflicts have the following main aspects.

Reviewing the history of the People’s Republic of China, one finds that the first thirty years and the following years represent respectively two cultural modes with different qualities. The cul-ture of the first thirty years, like traditional Chinese culture, re-garded politics and ethics as of basic importance, but the culture of the following years has regarded economic development as basic. The conflict between political and economic concerns in the process of modernization has provided the basic motivation in the evolution of contemporary Chinese culture.

At first sight, the culture of the first thirty years seems opposed to traditional culture, but in the final analysis they are consistent in giving the highest importance to politics and ethics. The saying: "gain knowledge from research into things" put for-ward by Zhu Xi recommended mainly research not in the natural sciences and economics, but on the problems of politics and ethics. Since Marxism spread in China because of the civil and anti-Japanese wars, theorists have had no time to investigate Marx’s concept of historical materialism and his economic theory. Rather, they emphasized his theory of class struggle, which was identified with political theory. This social and historical background has formed a special cultural mode in which politics holds the central position, while ideas concerning economic reconstruction regu-larly were rejected.

Since China began the reformation of 1978, economic recon-struction became the most important question in daily life, re-flecting the beginnings of an entrance into a new cultural mode in which the economy is central. This transformation does not mean that the relationship between politics and the economy was turned simply upside down, but that a foundational transformation of the cultural paradigm appeared. Practice shows that this the cultural mode based on economic reconstruction corresponds to the desire of the Chinese people. Not only has it raised the material level of life, it also has promoted the development of the entire culture.

However, the conflict between these two cultural modes -- the political and the economic -- has not ended. On the contrary, a series of debates appearing in political, philosophical, economic and literary fields, such as the problem of federation, the theory of ownership, and the ideas of humanism, freedom and democracy, all reflect the conflict between the two cultural modes.

In today’s world with highly developed science and tech-nology contributing to an improved life, China should no longer wallow in the old cultural mode focused upon politics. Only by actively perfecting the economic culture can China be revived. This is not to deny the role of politics, but the politics to be stressed puts in the central position not class struggle, but democratic politics based on a new cultural and social structure.

In the old cultural mode the highest political goal was the search for unity as opposed to variety. In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods there appeared the theme: "Let a hun-dred flowers blossoms, let a hundred schools of thought contend", reflecting the co-existence of many countries at that time. Since the first Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C., and especially since the Han Emperor, Liou Che, advanced the slogan: "to dismiss a hundred schools from office, to have a monopoly of Confucian-ism," Chinese culture came to regard unity as the highest goal in order to suit the needs of a totalitarianism. Contemporary Chinese culture does not cast off the yoke of traditional culture which one-sidedly seeks unity. This was expressed very clearly in the Great Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 which tried to unify the thought of all people by some dogmatic ideas, even to standardize the clothing of all people to but the two colors, grey and blue.

On the contrary, in the new cultural mode based on the economy the variety of the economic order, which was necessarily reflected in the field of ideas, rejects such an absolute unity and approves diversity. In recent years criticism of the idea of "the great unity" in the historical field and the appearance of the new theory of "cultural pluralism" in the philosophical field indicate the common desire to seek the variety and the richness in which can be found the passion of the people to make a new life.

In fact, unity and variety are not two extremes of an abstract antagonism. There is no real unity without rich variety; in a word, unity should contain that variety which is an essential feature of modernization and a new cultural mode.

As noted above, traditional Chinese culture was centered on politics and ethics; therefore it looked down upon the development of economy and science-technology. Historically, the Chinese people had many inventions, but used these inventions in super-stitions rather than in the development science and technology.

In contemporary Chinese culture, we are confronted with the following contradiction. On the one hand, China lags far behind in the field of science-technology, and also lacks a scientific spirit, especially in administration. Thus China needs to introduce results of science-technology from Western countries. On the other hand, together with the development of science-technology there appears also a scientistic trend, namely, that science easily can resolve all problems, that modernization is only a matter of science-tech-nology, and that China should be ruled only by technological experts. We must contain this trend in order to open a road for the development of humanism. In short, in the process of moder-nization one of the problems confronted is to promote the spread of science-technology, while avoiding scienticism.

Because of the traditional Chinese culture based on politics and ethics, when Chinese intellectuals evaluated events they weighed heavily their ethical quality, rather than their historical quality. That is to say, the ethical valuation was put first, and the historical valuation second. For example, Cao Cao as an historical figure played an important role in the evolution of the Chinese history, but used to be considered a bad person due to his ethical failings.

There is both evil and goodness in ethics, and progress and retrogression in history; they go hand in hand. It is paradoxical that what is evil-doing in terms of traditional ethics is progressive in history, as Engels put it:

According to Marxism, the historical evaluation ought to be put first and ethical evaluation second. One can say even that ethical valuation also has its historicity, which is to say that ethical ideas cannot be abstract, but come always from definite historical conditions which determine whether an ethical idea is meaningful. Under the influence of the traditional cultural mode, contemporary Chinese culture is apt to put the ethical before the historical eva-luation. Further, when people make ethical evaluations, they insist in great measure on old ethical ideas. Hence, sometimes the con-flict between the two valuations can be very acute. For instance, the phenomena of selfishness, corruption, degeneration, embezzlement and bribery have appeared in the process of economic reform and modernization. Hence, some people conclude that what is evil comes from economic reform and modernization and believe that economic reform and modernization should be rejected. It goes without saying that they have forgotten that history does not float in the either of goodness; on the contrary, it develops always together with what is regarded by traditional culture as evil-doing. Cer-tainly, we should oppose corruption, embezzlement, etc. through law, and selfishness through altruistic education, but we should not be opposed to economic reform and modernization.

Putting the historical evaluation before the ethical does not mean that the latter is insignificant. It too is important and ne-cessary, but it must be based upon new ethical ideas which are good for modernization.

It is well known that the traditional Chinese society -- which reflected also the mode of production -- is typically a village community in which natural blood-relationships form the basis of all social life. In such natural communities the force of the whole or clan was great, whereas that of the individual was insignificant.

Confucian filial piety and fraternal duty were a simple negation of the individual.

In ancient society a person was regarded only as a son or brother, not an independent personality: "the country is a great family and the family is a small country." If the individual in a clan was of no account then a clan also did not count in relation to the country. In a word, all were without meaning before the emperor, who in the last analysis also was not an independent personality because he was controlled by the family to which he belonged.

After the liberation of 1949, in the Chinese countryside a collectivization movement began, but was not able to change fun-damentally the mode and communication of the traditional village communities, which slowly had permeated the cities. In cities persons always live in some organization or work unit; it is often said: "the individual belongs unconditionally a specific organi-zation." It is very difficult for a person to change from one work unit to another.

Since the Cultural Revolution, together with economic re-form and the development of a market economy, the relationship between the individual and the totality has been undergoing a Copernican transformation. Whereas in the past the individual was absolutely dependent upon the totality, which was all and the individual nothing, now the individual has begun to rise and the totality, whether clan, village or community, has begun to decline. The private economy, the movement of population from the coun-tryside to cities, the rise of hundreds of cities and towns and such like, all show that the traditional system of clans has broken down. In cities, together with the growth of the private economy, the individual belongs no longer unconditionally to some work unit. Temperamental voluntary contractual relations are taking the place of the permanent connections by which the individual was fixed to the totality. Of course, the change from a traditional society based on village communities to the new society based upon independent personalities is a long process of modernization.

The primitive ethical spirit based upon the blood-relationship was adapted only to the traditional Chinese society: Confucian doc-trine is a typical expression of that spirit. On the contrary, the legal spirit based upon relationships of equality between persons is adapted to modern civil society. Those basic conditions which ren-der the individual really independent -- private property, freedom of religious faith, political equality, democracy and freedom, rea-sonable sexual freedom, and so on -- must be guaranteed by definite law.

The differences between these two spirits are as follows. First, the primitive ethical spirit is characteristic of clans while the legal spirit is a characteristic of modern civil society. Secondly, in the former the individual is insignificant, but in the latter the individual is a truly independent personality. Thirdly, with the former the relationship among persons is unequal, whereas in the latter it is equal. According to Hegel’s point of view, development from the primitive ethical to the legal spirit is historically necessary:

From all this we can conclude that Confucian doctrine cannot serve as a complete guide for modernization. Only the legal spirit, based on independent persons and political equality forms the basis of the new society and the new culture. On this basis, we can dis-cuss how to draw upon the heritage of traditional culture, espe-cially Confucian doctrine. In one word, the formation of the inde-pendent person (or the new individuality) and the democratization of the country (or the new totality) are synchronomous in the process of the modernization.

1. Marx/Engels, Ausgewaehlte Werke (Dietz Verlag, 1990), Band 6, pp. 290-291.

2. G.W.F. Hegel, Phaenomenologie des Geistes (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989), p. 355.

3. Ibid., p. 354.