Students are reading The Analects, a Chinese classics, as a way of paying tribute to Confucius and traditional culture. China is striving to reshape modern value of tradition. 

“Modernity” has been a buzzword in China’s media and in the daily lives of Chinese people. Hailed as rational and progressive, the term has won over people’s hearts by its association with affluence. However, it also comes at a cost in this day and age that could have a harmful impact on contemporary Chinese society. 

Cost of modernity

In addition to its assurance of progress and wealth, modernity leads to fatal consequences such as nihilistic values and social disorder. In China’s case, it has generated evident obstacles and unpredictable outcomes on the nation’s way to fulfilling its dream of rejuvenation.

The modernity of Western countries was shaped in a natural process because they had adequate time and room to resolve problems and risks arising in the process of shaping.

However, China is a latecomer to modernity, emerging before the wave of pre-modernity subsided while hidden worries about “post-modernity” had presented themselves. This has turned a diachronic contradiction among “pre-modern,” “modern” and “post-modern” into synchronic conflict, escalating risks China faces amid modernity and complicating the country’s quest for it.

In contemporary China, traditional values have been disrupted and new ones are yet to take full shape. The transition has unavoidably brought about a “vacuum” of codes, value system and values. Consequently, the country has found itself in predicaments featuring multiple actors and social disorder.

Market rules and the Matthew Effect

China hit the fast lane of modernity due to implementation of its market economy. The resultant market rules fueled people’s desire to create wealth and accelerated China’s development at a staggering speed. Rising from a poor country to the world’s second-largest economy, China is changing the world’s economic landscape to some extent.

However, rules intrinsic to the market such as “survival of the fittest” and “selection of the superior and elimination of the inferior” are bringing the Mathew Effect, whereby “the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer,” to prominence. China’s economic achievements are benefiting the minority at the cost of the majority.

Worse still, the Matthew Effect has extended to the social sphere. From “elite alliance” to “winners-take-all,” the hierarchical system has been increasingly consolidated and channels for social circulation have gradually been blocked. Social risks increased drastically as vulnerable groups are thrown in “social distress” alongside their financial straits.

Instrumental irrationality and dehumanization

Instrumental rationality can, without doubt, promote the accumulation of social wealth and advancements of science and technology, but its overexpansion can be devastating.

Guided by the logic of instrumentality in China nowadays, people are prone to shrewd calculations in their reexamination of surroundings. Utilitarianism is eroding humans’ inherent kindness and distorting their minds.

If instrumental rationality continues dominating society, all people will be reduced to emotionless, robotic beings in the end.

Inflated egos worsen moral crisis

In Chinese society, individuals have generally gone through a revolutionary transformation from “identity” to “contract,” which has broken all chains with which traditional communities bind them.

This is followed by quick expansion of individualism, along with gradual ending and loosening of close interpersonal social relations. As a result, we have entered a typical “stranger” society.

Evolving into a ghostly contagious disease, individualism infects the whole ideological structure of modern Chinese who are labeled as “indifferent,” “restless” and “frustrated.”

Development of modernity has not made life better, but instead deviated from its original meaning. Living in a “modern” society, people have lost their sense of home and belonging.

Increasing social risks, intensifying social conflict

China is undergoing a dramatic transition from a traditional society to a modern one; a great story of modernity is being unfolded across the country.

Modernity indicates changes and uncertainties that sway people’s judgment about the future and land them in an unforeseeable “risk society.”

In a contemporary Chinese society plagued by uncertainties and risks, insecurity and crisis consciousness start to set in and give rise to a prevalent “disadvantage mentality.” Not only among migrant workers, but white-collar workers and government officials are also dubbing themselves as “disadvantaged.”

This mentality can make people hostile and distrustful towards their surroundings, leaving society imbalanced and broken.

Social order rebuilding urgent

It is imperative for China to shift its focus from economic modernity to social and human modernity, explore a new path for coordination and sustainable development of economy, society and people, and recast a civilized and harmonious modern social order. This profound, complex and long-lasting revolution entails considerations from the perspectives of institution, confidence and consensus.

Institutionally, order and system are inseparable; systems form the framework and environment for orders to function. Social disorder throughout China, boiled down to its fundamentals, can be attributed to the absence or failure of social systems.

From the history of human society, it can be learned that risk and conflict are inevitable in a transitioning society. What matters is to take institutional measures to tolerate and resolve conflict, rather than suppression and elimination.

It is therefore necessary to break the mental block of maintaining stability and seek solutions from social systems because these systems are fundamental, stable, and chronic.

Amid disintegration of the acquaintance society, a grim crisis of confidence is spreading. Never has the issue of confidence been so sensitive to the Chinese people.

Due to a spate of public events in recent years, some local governments are frequently called into question by the public and an impassable “wall of confidence” is standing upright between government and society.

Originally solid shields of social trust, the government, experts and media have now become destructive forces. With damaged credibility, they are bringing social confidence to an ever lower level. However, a non-credible society is highly dangerous; government lacks appeal, meaning society will lose cohesive power and the commoners will get trapped in a cycle of mutual suspicion.

Consensus is the distillation of confidence. Only confidence can facilitate individuals, collectives, nations and states to reach consensus.

Consensus is a shared system of meaning based on mutual trust. Since reform and opening-up, erosion of pro-market ideology and the impact of Western ideas have progressively diversified and complicated values of the Chinese people and put social consensus at stake. To a large degree, social disorder and immoral social behaviors are external manifestations of the lack of social consensus.

However, social consensus is the most complicated, changeable and uncontrollable factor in the maintenance of social harmony and stability. Western countries normally gather social consensus through religion, while in China the building of social consensus should be achieved through adherence to socialist core values.

In China, the absence of consensus is bred by the decline of tradition. In a disordered society, it is essential to find a retreat for our souls to build social consensus; returning to tradition and reshaping traditional modern values are of vital importance.

Traditional Chinese culture has been handed down from generation to generation for 5,000 years. It offers the whole Chinese nation a sense of identity and belonging. If we lose tradition, we lose everything.

The authors are from the School of Marxism Studies at East China University of Science and Technology.

Translated by Chen Mirong

Revised by Tom Fearon