Poker faces at China's NPC sessions fail to hide leaders' eroding legitimacy
Lanxin Xiang believes a system of political pluralism, in line with Confucian tradition, is vital
The annual parliamentary gatherings in Beijing were, as usual, a parade of poker-faced who's-who with little substance. In today's digital world, such bland dress rehearsals prompt most Chinese to walk away from their television sets. Instead, they cast anxious eyes on the drama about catching corrupt officials, both "tigers" and "flies".
A poker face is supposed to represent authority and respectability, but it does not work. Despite the public calls for a "cultural restoration", the leadership has yet to learn the traditional political role of rituals and procedures in public events. China is facing its most serious legitimacy crisis since 1949, because, along with widespread moral decay within the Communist Party, its political presentation is so ineffective that the Confucian moral image of the state has been damaged.
Political presentation in traditional China was called li, or rites. Confucius envisioned proper government being guided by the principles of li. He would have been shocked with the shoddy presentation today. Confucius believed governments should place more emphasis on li and rely less on xing, or penal punishment, when they govern.
In Confucian thinking, li performs four major political functions for the state: it determines the closeness or distance in relationships; clarifies ambiguities; discovers common features and differences; and tells what is right from what is wrong.