It’s the celebrity grudge match we’ve all been waiting for, the Socratic dialogue of the century: When Marx Meets Confucius. The film, just released on China’s Hunan TV, seeks to explain and promote the “second combine” of Xi Jinping Thought. Xi Thought, for those not in the know, is the canonical new philosophy credited to China’s supreme leader that is now required learning for any ambitious young thing.
And what is this “second combine”, you may wonder? No, it is not a backup code for your padlock nor a piece of farming equipment but the pithy name for Xi’s wise insight, delivered during hours of dreary, televised symposiums, that “we must combine the fundamental principles of Marxism with China’s actual material conditions”. The film depicts an imagined meeting between Karl Marx and the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius at a modern Chinese university, where they talk nonsense and spout aphorisms at one another.
If this all sounds a bit wacky, that’s because it is. During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Confucianism was regarded as one of the “four olds”, a damaging counter-revolutionary vestige of the feudal superstructure, and the Chinese Communist Party tried brutally to eliminate all traces of the philosophy. But Xi has now spent years trying to develop a set of coherent-sounding reasons why “foreign” notions such as representative democracy, rule of law and human rights are an anathema to the Chinese people’s “natural conditions” (don’t, whatever you do, mention Taiwan). The revival of this bizarre cod-Confucian-Marxism is his answer to the conundrum.
Confucianism, you see, is part of China’s “excellent traditional culture” and is needed to gloss over the awkward fact that Marxism, like liberal democracy, is “a philosophy that originated in Europe”, as the film explains. Over a surreal animation of mini-Marx and mini-Confucius standing respectively on a rolled copy of The Communist Manifesto and a bamboo scroll amid a cloudy abyss, an action-movie voice asks, channelling Cilla Black: “Are they a natural match?”
Why, of course! The cosplaying philosophers explain to a set of bushy-tailed students how both had their own version of an ideal society in which everyone’s basic needs are met. Never mind that the communist utopian vision is one in which every individual expresses their own unique creative power, whereas in the harmonious Confucian ideal, the individual learns to embrace their preordained role in the natural hierarchy. This, somehow, is glossed into the idea that both philosophers believed in history being driven by “the masses”.
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More than the nonsensical content, however, the film has its own peculiar style. The philosophers seat themselves upon a lecture hall stage with a Disney-like scroll painting landscape as the backdrop. Periodically, Chinese characters in mythical or traditional guise appear floating above them in the sky to recite slogans about propriety or benevolence. Classical portraits become creepily animated and nod sagely. The two great men take turns to praise one another, stroke their beards and let out hearty, Father Christmas-style bellows of laughter.
Eventually, in parts I couldn’t find subtitled in English, Lenin and then Mao appear on screens to deliver lectures, resulting in a conclusion in which, apparently, Confucianism is deemed the “root” and Marxism the “soul” of the second combine. As for the brain, I think we can safely say it should be carefully lobotomised before contact with this cheesy propaganda clown show.
Dressing the part
One upside, the philosophers’ gawdy attire might serve as inspiration for a Halloween costume or two. In Hollywood, I read, actors are being warned not to go out to celebrity events wearing costumes from famous movie characters in case they inadvertently promote a production they’re trying to extract cash from during the current actors’ strike. Presenting themselves as Marx in a Chinese paofu robe or Confucius in a 19th-century three-piece suit would not only forestall any “scab” accusations but also avoid the inevitable, grossly offensive Hamas costumes we are bound to see someone disgrace themselves in.
