As a term, conservatism has been used to characterize multiple intellectual trends, including Confucian revivalists, cultural nationalists, and proponents of
realpolitick. A common theme among the diverse trends of conservatism in China is the continuity of the Chinese civilizational tradition and opposition to Western secular modernity. It was primarily practiced as part of the
New Life Movement, as well as the
Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement. It was
influenced by other political ideologies, including
socialism,
fascism,
party-state capitalism and
paternalistic conservatism, as well as by Chiang's
Methodist Christian beliefs.
Cultural conservatism Dai Jitao Thought Dai Jitao Thought () is an ideology based on the interpretation of the Tridemism by some Kuomintang members, including
Dai Jitao, since Sun Yat-sen's death in March 1925. Dai Jitao Thought became the ideological foundation of the right wing Kuomintang, including the Western Hills Group. Dai Jitao himself described it as "Pure Tridemism" (纯粹三民主义).
Left-conservatism Neoauthoritarianism Neoauthoritarianism () is a current of political thought within the
People's Republic of China (PRC), and to some extent the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that advocates a strong, centralized state to facilitate
market reforms as necessary for democratic political reform, emphasizing stability. and earlier as
classically conservative by
Barry Sautman, with formal debate not involving Marxism. Its origin was based in reworked ideas of
Samuel Huntington. Taking market liberalization and democratization as destabilizing, Huntington advised the
post-Communist East European elite to take a gradualist approach to them in favor of stability, decoupling and rejecting earlier
optimistic development theories that they would easily follow with modernization; hence, "new authoritarianism." with the Neoauthoritarian wing close to
Zhao Ziyang. The Tianamen Square protests led to the debate being stalled. the current was further moderated by his commitment to keeping state control over the commanding heights of the economy. Chris Bamall considered Chinese policy following Deng's death (1997) consistent with Neoauthoritarianism under
Jiang Zemin and the early leadership of
Hu Jintao up to the late 2000s, including decoupling the Renminbi currency from the dollar, liberalizing prices, and passing a law allowing an increase in inheritance in 2008.
Background Following the 1978
Third Plenum, which made
Deng Xiaoping paramount leader, China employed a variety of strategies to develop its economy, beginning the
reform and opening up. Neoauthoritarianism would catch the attention of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in early 1988 when
Wu Jiaxiang wrote an article in which he concluded that the British monarchy initiated modernization by "pulling down 100 castles overnight", developmentally linking autocracy and freedom as preceding democracy and freedom. Neoauthoritarianism lost favor after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Henry He considers that, while 4 June halted the movement for democracy, because neoauthoritarianism avoids the issue of popular involvement, it would therefore be a downfall for it and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang as well. He considers it to have transformed into a kind of "neo-conservatism" after that. According to Christer Pursiainen, "Consequently, the CCP's transformation into a right-wing elitist party occurred during the 1990s under Jiang Zeming's [
sic] reign."
New Conservatism or
neoconservatism () (or, rarely, New Conservativism) fused liberal, conservative and
social evolutionist ideas, and argued for political and economic centralization and the establishment of shared moral values to achieve
civil society and a middle class which could serve as the basis for a pluralist democratic social order. It's influenced by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,
Karl Popper and
liberal conservatives such as
Edmund Burke,
Friedrich Hayek,
Michael Oakeshott,
Alexis de Tocqueville and
Yan Fu. The movement has been described in the West by political scientist Joseph Fewsmith. European and American political scientists have located neoconservatism in the middle of
left-conservatism and
liberalism. Prominent neoconservative theorists include
Xiao Gongqin, initially a leading neoauthoritarian who promoted "gradual reform under strong rule" after 1989.
Theory A central figure, if not principal proponent of Neoauthoritarianism, the "well-connected"
Legacy China's measures for successful economic and political stabilization led many scholars and politicians to accept the role of an authoritarian regime in fast and stable economic growth. Although the Chinese state is seen as legitimizing democracy as a modernization goal, economic growth is seen as more important. and
Barry Sautman characterizes them as reflecting the policy of "pre-revolutionary Chinese leaders" as well as "contemporary Third World strongmen", as part of ideological developments of the decade he considers more recognizable to westerners as conservative and liberal. Sautman sums its theory with a quote from Su Shaozi (1986): "What China needs today is a strong liberal leader." A criticism by Zhou Wenzhang is that neoauthoritarianism only considers problems of authority from the angle of centralization, similarly considering the main problem of authority to be whether or not it is exercised scientifically. == Party-state capitalism ==