Chinese have a unique tendency or psychological clique which Pye calls the "pleasure of suspending disbelief".4 Lifton notes with regard to the "immortalization of [Mao's] words" how "the leaders words have become vehicles for elevating him, during his lifetime, to a place above the state itself or its institutional source of purity and power, in this case the party".4 Thus the exaggeration of the "great man as leader" and who is an amplification of the "Confucian model of the father as the ultimate authority in the family" demonstrates how ideology is divorced from reality in China and in particular, in its Confucian tradition. Under communism Mao was essentially the Emperor, the red army could be seen as the warrior caste with the administrative bureaucracy of the CCP as the scholar gentry and finally below them the peasants. This demonstrates how deep - rooted traditional Chinese social hierarchy is. The communist revolution and the "socialist state" that ensued very much resemble imperial China in reality. This may be attribute to what Pye sees as a near psychological fear of social confusion or disorder in Chinese society which makes them crave a leader who unifies the nation by his very presence.5 In China the invocation of Confucianism has been inherently negative an stifling toward any movement for modernization. This is largely based on China's inability to adapt Confucianism to serve as a utilitarian rather than symbolic and conservative force as well as its tendency to focus on ideology and symbolism without real content. The same can be seen in contemporary China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. His program of opening up China under the slogan of "it is glorious to be rich" has once again seen the invocation of Confucianism ineffectively merely as a legitimizing agent. Deng has invoked Confucianism within the context of encouraging people to "jump into the sea" to become rich and set a Confucian example to others. In ...
