The Chinese Communist party celebrated its 90th birthday on July 1. In the days prior to this event, the airwaves were full of historical dramas depicting heroic People’s Liberation Army soldiers and party cadres battling various enemies. There is a new, neo-Maoist faction within the party, led by Bo Xilai, the party chief of the western city of Chongqing, promoting the singing of classic Communist songs such as “The East is Red” in work-places and schools across the country. Henry Kissinger, in China for a book tour, managed to attend a sing-along with some 70,000 other people.

　　7月1日，中国共产党庆祝了自己的90岁诞辰。在之前的一些日子，电视广播里铺天盖地地播放着各种历史剧，讲述英勇的人民解放军战士和党员干部与各色敌人做斗争的事迹。中共内部出现了一个以重庆市委书记薄熙来为首的新毛派阵营，他们提倡在全国各地工作场所和学校唱红歌，比如《东方红》。亨利?基辛格(Henry Kissinger)来中国为自己的新书进行宣传时，设法出席了一场有大约7万人参加的唱红歌活动。

　　This “red culture” revival has nothing to do with the Communist party’s original ideals of equality and social justice. Rather, it is being promoted by national party leaders as a means of strengthening stability in a country where inequality has shot up in recent years. One song not being promoted is the Marxist “Internationale”, with its call for revolution, lest this suggest the need for an Arab spring in China.

　　“红色文化”的复兴，与中共初创时“追求平等和社会公正”的理想没有半点联系。相反，由于近年来中国的不平等现象明显加剧，全国各地的党政领导如今推广红色文化，是把它作为一种增强稳定的手段。马克思主义歌曲《国际歌》没有得到推广，这首歌号召群众起来革命，当局唯恐它会暗示中国也有必要上演一场“阿拉伯之春”。

　　Older Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution understand its horrors and how much the new China relies on their generation’s determination never to let something like that happen again. The term-limits and collective decision-making imposed on party leaders are designed to stop another Mao Zedong arising. But because the party has never allowed an honest accounting of Mao’s legacy, younger Chinese can look back on that era today with nostalgia and imagine it as a time of stability and community.

　　经历过文化大革命、岁数比较大的中国人，深知这场运动的惨烈之处，也明白新中国的未来在很大程度上取决于自己这一代人“决不让类似事情重演”的决心。中共领导人任期方面的限制，以及集体决策的安排，都是为了避免中国出现又一个毛泽东式的人物。但是，由于中共始终未曾允许对毛泽东的“遗赠”予以坦诚的评价，年轻一辈中国人今天可能会以一种怀旧情绪回望那个年代，以为那是一个以稳定和公有为特色的时代。

　　However, an alternative historical narrative is now being formulated alongside the Communist one, with the revival of serious study of classical Chinese philosophy, history and literature. Mao attacked Confucius as a reactionary, but today academics have tried to revive a Confucian approach to international relations. The American scholar Tu Weiming left the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 2009 for a post at Beijing University, promoting Confucianism as a serious ethical system on a par with western philosophy. Chinese dynastic history is again regularly taught in schools and there is renewed interest in traditional Chinese medicine, music and art.

　　然而，伴随着对中国传统哲学、历史和文学的严肃研究的复兴，在中共的叙事之外，正在形成另一种历史的叙事。毛泽东曾抨击孔子反动，但如今学术界却尝试在国际关系方面重新运用孔子的思想。2009年，美国学者杜维明离开哈佛燕京学社(Harvard-Yenching Institute)，前往北京大学任教，致力于宣扬儒家思想，视之为一种与西方哲学并驾齐驱的严肃伦理体系。学校里又开始定期讲授中国断代史，人们对于中国传统医学、音乐和艺术的兴趣重新浓厚起来。

　　The government has encouraged this revival of Confucianism to provide a justification for a modern, authoritarian China that does not depend on western theories of history. The latter necessarily see China as an uncompleted project: the Chinese may have developed a strong, bureaucratic state by the Qin unification in 221?BC, but they never evolved a rule of law or democratic accountability. After the fall of the last Chinese dynasty in 1911, many Chinese lost faith in their own institutions and believed they should be replaced by western ones. Only now, with China’s emergence as a power, is there an effort to recover this disrupted tradition. Best-selling authors such as Zhang Wei Wei can argue that China is not a democracy manqué but rather a civilisation founded on principles different from – but as valid as – those of the west.

　　中国不是建立在西方历史理论的基础之上，中国政府支持儒家思想的复兴，是为了给施行威权统治的现代中国提供一个正当的理由。西方历史理论肯定会把中国视为一项未完成的工程：自公元前221年秦朝统一中国以来，中国人或许已经缔造了一个强大的官僚国家，但却从未培养出法治与民主责任。当中国最后一个封建王朝1911年灭亡之后，许多中国人对自己的制度丧失了信心，认为应当用西方制度取而代之。只有到了今天，中国作为一个大国重新崛起之后，才有人努力恢复这种中断了的传统。张维为等畅销书作家可能会辩称，中国并非一个尚未实现民主的国家，而是一个建立在有别于西方（但与之同样有效）的原则基础上的文明国家。

　　Many of the new Confucianists argue that in the Chinese tradition, political power is limited not by formal rules such as constitutions and multiparty elections but by Confucian morality, which required benevolence of emperors who had to act through a highly institutionalised Mandarinate. Ancient China did have a pure power doctrine in the school known as Legalism, elaborated by the philosopher Han Feizi and ruthlessly implemented in the state of Qin that would ultimately unify China. It is perhaps not surprising that Mao favoured Legalism and oversaw its revival. But just as Confucianism replaced Legalism as the dominant state ideology in early China, so too contemporary Confucianists see the present-day party as better grounded in moral terms than it was under Mao.

　　许多新儒家学者认为，在中国传统中，对政治权力加以约束，凭借的并非宪法和多党选举等正式规则、而是儒家的伦理道德，这就要求帝王们具备仁爱之心，而他们必须通过一个高度制度化的官僚体系实施统治。中国古代的学校里，确实有一套被称作“法家”的纯正权力学说，哲学家韩非子对这一学说进行了详尽阐释，而秦国则对其进行了冷酷的实践，并最终统一了中国。毛泽东青睐法家学说，并推动了它的复兴，这或许并不令人意外。但是，正如儒家学说取代法家学说、成为古代中国占据主宰地位的国家意识形态一样，当代儒家学者认为，与毛泽东时代相比，当今的中共在道义方面有着更好的根基。

　　The Communist party is itself of two minds about this Confucian revival. It is eager to find alternative sources of legitimacy for itself in a world where liberal democracy is the default ideology. But a modernised Confucianism is a potential threat because it is, after all, a more genuinely indigenous product than Marxism-Leninism. It is perhaps for this reason that a large statue of Confucius, erected earlier this year in Tiananmen Square, was suddenly dismantled a few months later.

　　中共自身对于这种儒家学说的复兴喜忧参半。在当今世界，自由民主已成为理所当然的意识形态，因此中共急于给自己找出其它的合法性来源。但与马列主义相比，儒家思想毕竟是一种真正更为本土化的产物，因此经过现代化改造的儒家思想构成了一种潜在威胁。或许正是出于这个原因，今年早些时候在天安门广场竖立起来的孔子雕像，几个月之后突然又被拆除了。

　　Contemporary China thus has two alternative traditions, a neo-Maoist one and a neo-Confucian one. Both are being promoted as alternatives to democracy. Neo-Maoism is purely retrograde and could easily erode what freedoms the Chinese have won over the past generation. Neo-Confucianism is more complex: it could interpret Confucianism in ways that support liberal democracy; or it could become the basis for a narrow Chinese nationalism. That the Chinese need to find their own way to modernity is incontrovertible. Whether either of these ideas can bear the weight of regime legitimation – or ultimately co-exist with one another – is yet to be seen.

　　当代中国因此具备了两种可供选择的文化传统——新毛派思想和新儒家思想。作为民主思想的替代品，这两种思想目前在中国都得到了大力弘扬。新毛派思想是一种彻头彻尾的倒退，有可能轻易葬送中国人上一代人争取到的种种自由。新儒家则更为复杂：它既可能按照赞同自由民主的方式解读儒家学说，也可能成为中国狭隘的民族主义的基石。中国人必须找出自己的现代之路，这是一个不争的事实。上述两种思想中，是否有一种能够承担提供政权合法性的重任——抑或两者最终能否共存，我们将拭目以待。