Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 30-Sep-18 World View -- University of N. Florida and Pentagon cut ties with China's Confucius Institutes

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• University of N. Florida and Pentagon cut ties with China's Confucius Institutes
  
• Confucius and the roots of China's imperialism
  
• The Sayings and Aphorisms of Confucius
  

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**** University of N. Florida and Pentagon cut ties with China's Confucius Institutes
****


Confucius

The University of North Florida announced that it will cut ties with
the China-funded Confucius Institute on its campus. Others of the
approximately 100 colleges and universities hosting Confucius
Institutes are considering doing so as well, or have already done so.

Ostensibly, Confucius Institutes are apolitical partnerships between
American and Chinese universities, giving American students
opportunities to learn to speak Chinese or study abroad. But the
Chinese themselves say that they serve as "an important part of
China's overseas propaganda," and they also serve as outposts of
China’s intelligence and surveillance operations, as FBI Director
Christopher Wray testified to the US Senate in February.

In addition to the 100-plus Confucius Institutes in the US, China runs
about 500 "Confucius Classrooms" at American K-12 schools. In
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and other countries,
China runs 1,500 Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, with 40% of them
in the US, more than any other country.

The Confucian Institutes are one of the programs of Beijing's
international coercive propaganda agency, the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Every aspect of the
Confucian Institutes is tightly controlled by the Hanban agency, the
Chinese Communist Party agency that oversees all Confucius Institutes.
Teachers and teaching materials are all supplied by China. Taiwan and
Tibet are portrayed as undisputed territories of China, with no
alternate views permitted. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the
one million Uighurs in re-education camps, the human rights abuses in
China are all forbidden subjects.

The Pentagon has been working with Confucius Institutes in some
colleges, and even co-funding some programs, in order to develop
Chinese-speaking students. However, the 2019 National Defense
Authorization Act, signed in August, contains provisions barring any
U.S. university from using Pentagon resources for any program
involving Confucius Institutes. In many cases, this will forces
universities to choose between receiving funding the Pentagon and
funding from Hanban. Folio Weekly and Washington Post (14-Aug) and Washington Examiner (29-Apr)

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**** Confucius and the roots of China's imperialism
****

The Confucian Institutes really have nothing to do with Confucius, but
if they were called the "Chinese Communist Propaganda Institutes,"
then they would be rejected. However, most Americans associate
Confucius with wisdom, or cutesy aphorisms, so the use of the name
Confucius Institutes has been a great success for China.

In recent weeks, I've been doing my own research on China's ancient
philosophers, including Confucius, and this is a tentative summary of
what I've learned so far.

Confucius lived around 500 BC, and was a contemporary of Sun Tzu, who
wrote the Art of War, a book that is so popular that it's probably the
closest thing that the Chinese have to the Bible.

Sun Tzu was a brilliant war strategist and tactician. From deception
to beheadings, every tactic is on the table for winning wars.
Compromise or mercy are never possible.

If Sun Tzu's work was the recipe for imperialist warfare, Confucius'
work was the theology of imperialist warfare. Confucius lived at the
time of the Zhou Dynasty, about five centuries after it had beaten the
Shang Dynasty. How were the Zhou able to defeat the Shang? Much of
Confucius' work is devoted to answer that question in a theological
framework.

The Shang worshiped a heavenly ancestor called Shangdi ("the Lord on
high"), and kings were permitted to rule under the power of this god.
When the Zhou defeated the Shang, they replaced (or merged) Shang Di
with their own god, Tian, a sky god, a "deity above who rules the
Heavens."

Under the Zhou doctrine, a king is the Son of Heaven, and is allowed
to rule under a Mandate from Heaven, provided that he rules reverently
and virtuously. Thus, if the Zhou defeated the Shang, then the Shang
king must have lost his Mandate from Heaven. An excerpt from an
ancient history classic is the Zhou explanation of what happened:

<QUOTE>"We do not presume to know and to say that the lords
of Yin (Shang) received Heaven's Mandate for so many
years. ... But they did not reverently attend to their virtue and
so prematurely threw away the Mandate. ... Now our king has
succeeded and received the Mandate. ... Being king, his position
will be that of a leader of virtue. ... The Son of Heaven could
not properly fulfill his functions unless his moral nature was
pure and his conduct above reproach. Heaven could not be served by
a tyrant or a debauchee, the sacrifices of such a ruler would be
of no avail, the divine harmony would be upset, prodigies and
catastrophes would manifest the wrath of Heaven."<END QUOTE>

Confucius formalized and strengthened this doctrine of Tian and the
Mandate from Heaven. He wrestled with the same "theodicy"
contradiction that every religion faces: If God created everything,
the God created Good and Evil, so how could God be good if God created
evil?

For Confucius, this contradiction and its apparent manifestation in
the Zhou conquests, applies to Tian. He finds that Tian is an
absolute power in the universe, and he accepts three assumptions:

• its alignment with moral goodness;
• its dependence on
  human agents to actualize its will;
• the variable,
  unpredictable nature of its associations with mortal actors.

Since Tian depends on human actors to implement its will, Confucius
insists on moral, political, social, and even religious activism.
Only through this activism will a society maintain a harmonious order.

When you look at the work of Sun Tzu and Confucius, and use their work
to analyze modern events, you see that both philosophers lack any idea
of a "peace conference" or a "United Nations." Since the Chinese king
was the Son of Heaven and received its Mandate from Heaven to rule, it
would not make sense to sue for peace with anyone else, because no one
else had the Mandate from Heaven.

But if there's no peace, it's still possible to take advantage of a
"peace process." Sun Tzu said that "All warfare is based on
deception," and he advocated the use of deception first, and actual
war as a last resort.

So for China today, the United Nations is a tool to bring about peace,
but a tool to be used with deception to win the war. For example,
China treats international law with contempt, saying that its own law
supercedes international law as in the South China Sea, where China is
criminally violating international law, but still references
internation law when it favors China. This is a perfect example of
deception and manipulation. China is contemptuous of international
law, but still uses it as a tool of deception.

We might assume that the North Koreans are following the same kind of
strategy, with the child dictator Kim Jong-un having received his own
Mandate from Heaven. Kim will never denuclearize, and treats the
peace talks with South Korea and Trump with contempt, but will still
use them as tools to provide political pressure to get the sanctions
lifted, and make fools of and humiliate the US, as his father did ten
years ago. New World Encyclopedia and University of Tennesee and
Wolfram Eberhard, History of China

****
**** The Sayings and Aphorisms of Confucius
****

Many people know nothing about Confucius except his sayings, whether
or not he actually said them.

"Confucius say" sayings are often meant to be funny, and can often be
found as sayings in fortune cookies served after meals in a Chinese
restaurant. Here are some examples: "Confucius say: Man with one
chopstick go hungry." or "Confucius say: Man who cut self while
shaving, lose face. " or "Confucius say: Man who jump off cliff, jump
to conclusion! " or "Confucius say: Man should not sleep with woman
with more troubles than he have."

Those sayings are meant to be funny, but he probably never said them.

However, there is a large body of real Confucius sayings that carry a
great deal of wisdom, even though they were written down 15 centuries
ago. In fact, many of them have become common sayings. Here are some
examples:

• "Your life is what your thoughts make it."
  
  
• "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
  (This is an early form of the Golden Rule.)
  
  
• "The journey with a 1000 miles begins with one step."
  
  
• "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in
  your life."
  
  
• "Learn avidly. Question it repeatedly. Analyze it carefully. Then
  put what you have learned into practice intelligently."
  
  
• "If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the
  wrong room."
  
  
• "Act with kindness but do not expect gratitude."
  
  
• "I slept and dreamt life is beauty, I woke and found life is
  duty."
  
  
• "Respect yourself and others will respect you."
  
  
• "By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide
  apart."
  
  
• "Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change."
  
  
• "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire."
  
  
• "To see the right and not to do it is cowardice."
  
  
• "When anger rises, think of the consequences."
  
  
• "If we don’t know life, how can we know death?"
  
  
• "Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a
  day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his
  life."
  
  
• "Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance."

Famous Confucius Quotes

Related Articles

• Australia passes foreign influence laws, targeting China (29-Jun-2018)
  
  
• New book documents extensive Chinese infiltration into Australia's organizations (26-Feb-2018)
  
  
• Concerns grow over China's covert infiltration into New Zealand's government (16-Feb-2018)
  
  
• China-Australia relations plummet over China's illegal militarization of South China Sea (16-Dec-2017)
  

KEYS:

Generational Dynamics, China, Confucius, Confucian Institutes,
University of North Florida,
United Front Work Department, UFWD, Hanban Agency,
Sun Tzu, Art of War, Shang Dynasty, Shangdi, Zhou Dynasty, Tian,
Xi Jinping, North Korea, Kim Jong-un

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John J. Xenakis
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