Unlike Christianity or Islam, Confucianism lacked religious beliefs from the very beginning. Its attitudes on religious matters were more similar to secularism. In the Analects, Confucius concentrated his arguments on human affairs and barely mentioned religious issues:

Confucius was not an utter atheist, but more like an agnostic. He reckoned it meaningless to put much attention on transcendental concepts before retrieving harmonious orders in the mundane world:

It was imperative to find a Sage King, who could wisely address the political and societal problems with benevolent rule, instead of praying to an intangible God with ambiguous existence. During the Enlightenment era, these Confucian ideas were regarded as examples of rationalism, and the concept of the Sage King was popular among enlighteners as an explanation for their envisaged rational monarchs. 

However, despite its similarities to many modern ideas in the Western world, Confucianism did not give birth to modernization in China. Conversely, it was long regarded as the crux of China’s long-standing social stagnation. Weber argued that it was exactly the absence of transcendental concepts that contributed to the flaws of Confucian rationality. The absence of religious beliefs led to the dependence on ethics instead of theology to explain the world in Confucianism. Ethics was about human relations within the world, while theology was about the religious beliefs outside the world. In this case, Christian rationality ultimately developed scientific ideas based on abstract knowledge far from human life, while Confucianism was limited within ethical arguments and insulated itself from novel ideas. 

In other words, when Christians longed for the perfect life in Heaven, Confucians were satisfied with the living world. They envisaged neither afterlives nor political reforms. In their eyes, politics was only about administration. There was never an impulse to fundamentally reform the political system for a Confucian king. Similarly, the rationality of Confucianism did not lead to the embrace of scientific methods; rather, it put emphasis particularly on ethics and focused merely on issues about human relations.

On the individual level, Confucianism put much stress on the cultivation of individual virtues. Mencius believed that virtues were inherent in human nature:

Relations between family and nation have long been an important yet debatable issue. In his classical work Republic, Plato regarded family as an impediment to political life and advocated for its dissolution to achieve national authority. In contrast, Confucianism saw family ethics as the root of public virtue. As the Book of Rites states:

National ethics was seen as the epitome of family ethics, while the foundation of family ethics lay in the virtues within individuals. If one individual had adequate virtues that qualified him to be the ruler of the nation, then he could act as the Sage King and implement the benevolent rule as in the ideal of Confucianism. Together, these ideas constituted a systematic ideology with ethics being the core concept.

To conclude, national ethics were manifested by family ethics, while their harmony was based on the cultivation of individual virtues. These claims consisted of the basic concepts of Confucian ethics. Religious ideas and theological debates were absent in this system, which was characterized by rationality focusing on human relations.

Apart from the focus on ethics, the rationality of Confucianism was further illustrated by its pragmatism. The pragmatism of Confucian rationality was most developed in Xunzi's thought. While explaining the rain ritual, he frankly claimed that it was just a fake show to comfort normal people:

Well-educated men consider such rituals as words, while normal people consider them as supernatural. 

Similarly, Confucians believed that rituals like funerals were meant to stabilize social rule by inspiring people’s emotions. This statement showed the pragmatic view of religion shared by Xunzi and Confucius, which was putting aside transcendental concerns and focusing on worldly life. 

In the early Qin era (before 221 BC), Confucianism was characterized by pragmatism. However, in the later generations, it gradually became ossified and conservative. According to Zhang Hao, the development of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) largely sanctified emperors. The ideal of the Sage King became the tool to solidify imperial rule, the family ethics became the stranglehold that bounded human nature, and the educational view of cultivating virtue restrained free thinking. As Liang wrote, “Feudalism is based on force and superstition, its roots are very shallow, so why does it last for such a long time? The exact thing that has remained in China for a long time and cannot be removed is ethics”.

Therefore, when Western thought was introduced into China, those characteristics were the starting points for liberalists to transform Confucianism. The rational and secular nature of Confucian ethics made it uniquely bifurcated: on the one hand, it could easily open to new ideas; on the other hand, it was resistant to undergoing any fundamental transformation.

Liberal thoughts are usually divided into two kinds: one originated from Locke, represented by thinkers such as Burke, Mill, and Hayek, emphasizing individual rights and constitutionality, also known as classical liberalism; the other originated from Rousseau, influencing thinkers such as Jaurès, Kant, and Fichte, emphasizing collective rights and nationalism, also known as republicanism.

As Yan Fu first introduced liberalism to China, parliamentary politics in European countries like the UK was undergoing rapid development and classical liberalism had a strong influence on him. However, other liberalists in the Republic of China (ROC, 1912-1949) were more attracted by republicanism. They mostly studied in the US under pragmatism scholars such as Dewey and Lasky and were not interested in metaphysical discussions on human rights. Under the trend of national salvation thought in China, these liberalists’ thoughts were similar to democratic socialism with more stress on collectivity.

For ROC liberalists, Confucian ethics were the primary target of criticism when they tried to reform Chinese culture. After the New Culture Movement (1910s-1920s), “science” and “rationality” became popular in China and the development of “the West” was interpreted as a breakthrough of science over religion. Scientism was underlined greatly to an extreme extent. In this context, the negative effects of religion were raised as an argument to criticize Confucianism. In the view of ROC liberalists, Confucianism, like medieval Christianity, fettered the progress of society and knowledge. The patriarchal ideology represented by family ethics was widely criticized. They believed that protecting individual freedom was necessary to develop democratic consciousness and cultivate modern citizens. Ideas like free marriage, the rule of law, and the improvement of people’s livelihood were largely promoted during this period.

However, while the concept of individual freedom quickly destroyed family ethics, national ethics did not encounter the same impact. Although the 1911 Revolution completely overthrew the emperor, the family ethics of Confucianism were strengthened out of the need to build national awareness and develop nationalism. Unlike Western liberalism, which originated from the discussion around human rights, the ultimate goal of ROC liberalists, despite their emphasis on individual freedom, was to achieve national unity and prosperity, so liberalism was more a means than an end in modern China. 

The basic reason for ROC scholars to revere liberalism was merely that they believed liberalism was the knack for the prosperity of Western countries, besides which they did not truly accept the inherent values of liberalism. As European democracy was in crisis after the 1930s, many ROC liberalists turned to authoritarianism or communism. The debate between Hu Shih and many of his peers such as Chiang Ting-fu and Wu Jing-chao on democracy and dictatorship in the Independent Review was a typical case.

Meanwhile, ROC liberalists emphasized the role of cultural indoctrination, as “spirit” appeared frequently in their nationalistic writings. According to Liang Qichao, China could be energetic only if the people generally had a “youthful spirit”. According to Chen Duxiu, the greatest drawback of Confucianism was that it hindered the national spirit and thus the national development. A strong nation needed capable people, while the spirit of the people needed to be cultivated through general cultural indoctrination. Partly due to the influence of Dewey, Hu Shih’s political thought generally focused on education. He always regarded the cultivation of national character as the foundation of national transformation, believing that the key to the construction of a democratic state was not the democratic institutions, but democratic citizens. For Hu Shih, the primary role of the political institutions was not forming norms but indoctrinating people. Li Dazhao also believed that the constitutions in countries such as Britain and the US were the result of the evolution of customs and emphasized cultivating culture.

Their emphasis on cultural indoctrination and individual spirit was very similar to the Confucian idea of cultivating virtues. However, cultivating individual virtues for national salvation and the individualism principle of liberalism were inherently contradictory. In order to resolve the contradiction between virtue and freedom, ROC liberalists put great emphasis on the rule of law. On the one hand, they confirmed the effect of Confucianism on individual virtues and believed that individual development was ultimately for the sake of national development. On the other hand, they demanded the government improve the constitutional protection of human rights, avoiding excessive state intrusion into the individual sphere despite their advocation for patriotism. For them, human rights were “national rights” rather than “individual rights” and never had the same sacredness as in Western thought.

ROC scholars’ advocacy for patriotism was essentially the preservation of the Confucian idea of the Sage King and benevolent rule. In his article Liberalism, Hu Shih analyzed the similarities between Confucianism and liberalism, simply interpreting liberalism as political critiques toward authority’s failure to exercise benevolent rule and resorting to cultivating tolerance in Chinese politics. Liang Qichao saw the contradictions in Chinese liberal thought, while his solution was again only the rule of law. However, in the absence of a respectful environment for law in China, such appeals could only be futile. Ultimately, patriotism, individual freedom, and the rule of law were caught in a dilemma of mutual constraints.

Therefore, Weber’s critics were still valid in explaining the fall of liberalism in the ROC. As mentioned before, Confucianism was a secular and rational ideology from the very beginning. There was no transcendental concept like Christianity or Islam. Therefore, when ROC liberalists tried to find a basis for liberalism in China, they could only return to the pragmatic logic of benevolent rule. Meanwhile, the emphasis on individual freedom was fundamentally meant for the development of the nation and was contradictory to the sanctity of human rights in Liberalism. These characteristics coincided with the republicanism thought that stemmed from Rousseau so that individual rights such as property rights demanded by classical liberalism were never given due emphasis. Eventually, the spark of liberalism was swallowed by the trend of nationalism and communism.

Confucianism was characterized by family-based ethics, the cultivation of human virtues, pragmatic political ideology, and the stress on national development. These characteristics gradually ossified and deformed under the influence of imperial dictatorship after the Han Dynasty, imprisoning the development of knowledge and society in China. 

After liberalism’s introduction into China, the ideas of the rule of law, constitutionalism, and human rights were widely accepted by the intellectuals of ROC. They tried to learn from the West to modernize China. However, despite the disintegration of family ethics after the New Culture Movement, the national ethics were retained out of the need to construct nationalism. Therefore, Confucianism was largely preserved and supplanted the dissemination of liberalism in modern China. The idea of cultivating individual virtues was merely transformed into the idea of cultivating individual spirits to achieve national prosperity. The emphasis on individual freedom of ROC liberalists was fundamentally aimed at cultivating nationalism, rather than protecting individual rights as in Western tradition. 

These differences were, on the one hand, due to the socio-historical conditions of modern China. On the other hand, Confucianism lacked the transcendence of Christian thought from the very beginning. Thus, Chinese liberalists could only argue for liberalism regarding rationality and pragmatism. This doomed the failure of liberalism in China.

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