From socialist ideology to cultural heritage: the changing basis oflegitimacy in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

There has been a shift over the past generation in the moral basis for legitimacy of the Chinese state. The socialist state was legitimated by a sinified version of Marxism-Leninism, watered with the blood of revolutionary martyrs who fought on behalf of the Communist Party to defend the nation from external aggressors. However, at many levels of society, the Marxist legitimation is dead. Instead of claiming to represent the values of Communist revolutionary struggle in the twentieth century, the state is now presenting itself as the carrier and the defender of 5000 years of national cultural heritage. This undoubtedly arises partly from changes in moral attitude arising from the grass roots and partly from government initiatives descending from the top down. There is wide variation across China in the intermingling between the bottom-up and top-down moral impulses, and this is partially connected with different moral ecologies constituted by configurations of state and local political and economic institutions throughout China. In this paper, based on case studies from fieldwork carried out in several different locations in 2009, the author draws a broad map of these variations.