China’s new patriotic education law will try to enforce patriotic education in institutions, schools, religious communities, businesses, and homes, and to extend patriotic education to Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, overseas Chinese, and the internet. The history of the PRC has included many ideological indoctrination campaigns. They are symptoms of the Party-State’s preoccupation with the decay of socialist and/or nationalist values. They emerge when officialist values have faded away.
This is not a new phenomenon. Chapter 18 of the DAODEJING seems to suggest that official attempts to promote official values has been a constant in Chinese political philosophy. Daoist texts often parody or satirise official Confucian texts and mores. Chapter 18 seems to say that such attempts arrive when it’s already too late, preaching moral virtues after they’ve decayed away:
大道廢，有仁義；智慧出，有大偽；六親不和，有孝慈；國家昏亂，有忠臣—道德經, 十八
When the great dao (大道 dàdào) falls out of use, humanitarianism (仁 rén) and moral obligation (義 yì) are preached. When knowledge (智慧 zhìhuì) spreads, (偽 wěi) artifice (falsity, hypocrisy) appears. When the harmony in family relationships (六親 liùqīn, the 6 relationships) falls asunder, the obligations between parents and children (孝慈 xiàocí) are preached. When the country falls into disorder (亂 luàn), ministers are told to be loyal (忠臣 zhōngchén).
—Daodejing, 18
Closing the stable after the horse has bolted?
Sean Golden