"Freeman: 'legalism' in today's china"

Via R.C.
sent: wednesday, july 30, 2025 at 11:02:58 p.m. edt

"Freeman: 'legalism' in today's china"

"legalism was a philosophical school of thought in ancient china that emphasized strict adherence to laws and a powerful, centralized state. it emerged during the warring states period (475–221 b.c.) and advocated for a system where laws, rather than morality or virtue, were the primary means of governance. legalists believed that humans were inherently selfish and needed strict laws and harsh punishments to maintain social order and achieve prosperity."

"'legalism' in today's china ambassador Chas Freeman: 'there are strong elements of "legalism" along with Confucianism and the worship of science in today's china. legalism is the inspiration for "rule by law" vs. the "rule of law." the first is the use of laws and regulations by the governing authorities to control the behavior of the country's citizens. the second is the limitation of government authority by subjecting it to legal constraints. quite different ideas. in contemporary china, Marxism is a methodology by which to observe trends and events and form, test, and adjust hypotheses about their causes and likely outcomes. this is Marxism as inductive reasoning / social science rather than deductive reasoning as in soviet Marxism, which was a rigid official ideology. you can see these elements of sinicized Marxism expressed in Deng's emphasis on 'seek truth from facts' and 'practice is the sole criterion of truth,' as well as 'crossing the river by feeling the stones.' [N.S.: Nonsense, as is abusing concepts like "inductive" and "deductive" reasoning.]

"freed of most elements of ideological dogmatism, Leninism reinforces the Confucian tradition of rule by meritocratic hierarchy in which advancement mainly depends on the level of knowledge proven in examinations and performance and yields highly qualified, decisive, and ruthless leadership. Confucianism (actually Mencius' school of it) lives on in the notion that influence abroad is achieved by the force of example, which causes foreigners to wish to emulate china's moral and material successes. the model that this neo-Confucian-legalist system aspires to is that of singapore, where Lee Kuan-yew took a typically selfish, essentially anarchic, largely chinese society and remolded it into a law-abiding society of citizens devoted to educational achievement in an orderly society. singapore's system is democratic enough to legitimate the government's authority through elections whose outcome is foreordained (eliminating unwelcome uncertainties and surprises). singapore values excellence and rewards it with pay levels for public servants and strict rules that virtually eliminate incentives for corruption and punish it severely, (My take on the use of big data to create a social credit system in china is that this is an effort to scale up the remolding of the singaporean personality so that the vastly larger population of china can undergo a similar transformation.) the objective is wise rule by a meritocracy that reliably delivers prosperity and domestic tranquility to the populace."