In the last few years, China has been put by many media and political pundits, iconoclastically, onto a pedestal, as the country that we should all fear. It is described as the next superpower; economic might mixed with military power, but without democratic credentials and governed by a small elite that is difficult to decipher.

Daniel A. Bell disputes this representation of China made by the western media. Bell is a Canadian who is now a Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Tsinghua University is one of the elite universities in China. President of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Hu Jintao is an alumni.

Daniel A. Bell is the first western professor allowed to teach in an elite university in China, so he owns a rather privileged position from which to observe the spectacular change, with break-neck speed, in which contemporary China is being engulfed.

Bell 's opinion is that the depiction of China in the western press has created an atmosphere of misunderstanding that has given the west a misguided picture on the real nature of contemporary Chinese society.

His opinion is that in western countries the real problem comes from public opinion. Certain public prejudices make some stories more newsworthy than others, and those stories further reinforce those prejudices. Consider the way that China is demonised in the western press. A Chinese social critic beaten up by local thugs is bound to make the headlines in dozens of newspapers. Bell does not intend to suggest that such facts are unimportant. It's especially important for western reporters to write about them, since Chinese reporters can rarely do so. But if that's all people read (or want to read) about China, they will get a very skewed picture of what's happening in a country of 1.3 billion people that is undergoing the most rapid and comprehensive social transformation in the history of mankind.

How many people in the west know that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty? That the majority of Chinese citizens have personal freedoms almost unimaginable 30 years ago? That the Chinese government learned not to overreact to provocations from Taiwanese pro-independence forces, thus paving the way for better relations with Taiwan? That the party has implemented mechanisms for relatively smooth transitions of political power, including mandatory retirement ages for leaders? That European human rights groups are working with the Chinese authorities to reduce the incidence of torture in police investigations? That implementation of the death penalty has been substantially curtailed of late? Or that the official newspaper China Daily recently printed a photo of two young Chinese men in the throes of a passionate kiss in a pro-gay piece headlined 'Pride and Prejudice?'

Last year, the litany of bad news coming out of China - the poisonous foods and medicines, exploitation in factories and deaths in mines, pollution in Beijing, etc - has shaped and reinforced negative perceptions about China to the point that absurd comparisons between the "genocide" Olympics in Beijing and the "Nazi" Olympics in Berlin can get lots of airplay (a better comparison would be the 1988 Olympics held under an authoritarian regime in Seoul). Does anybody seriously believe that China will launch a world war after the Olympics, like the Nazis did after their Olympics? And where's the racism that was so central to Nazi ideology? Yes, the Chinese government is indirectly implicated in the killings in Darfur but it's not alone - Russia sells more weapons to Sudan, and Japan buys more oil - and arguably, it's working to improve the situation.

There has been a couple of items in the western media which Bell utilises to explain this relationship between the west and China; the first concerns Tibet and the second is the Beijing Olympics.

According to Bell, one might have thought that the recent killings of Chinese civilians and burning of Chinese shops had punctured the idealised view of peace-loving Tibetans in the western mind, yet the riots and the subsequent crackdown seem to have hardened western opinion against China, with growing calls to boycott the Olympics even though the Dalai Lama himself has argued against it. Anything positive about China leads to accusations about being an "apologist" for the regime. Once in a while, a story that attempts to provide some context or balance gets placed in the western press, but they are drowned out by the daily drumbeat of hostile reports.

So why worry about the one-sided reporting in western countries? It's not just that the "nattering nabobs of negativity" reinforce public fears about China that occasionally seem to border on racism, with Chinese influence viewed as inherently malevolent unless it conforms to western values and practices. Such reporting actually makes things worse in China, stoking up crude nationalist responses and making the government more paranoid. Most worrisome, the trend to demonise China plays right into the hands of rightwing militarists looking for another excuse to test their weapons. As the Atlantic correspondent James Fallows writes, "the same people - same individuals, same organisations, same publications, same blog sites - that ginned up a war with Iraq, and that have supported ginning up a war with Iran, are settling in for a longer-term confrontation with China". This type of western attitude is what Prof. Bell declares as a fearful disposition towards China and it worries many Chinese intellectuals, academics and prominent government and military figures. So there seems to be a two way fear in the relationship between China and the west, which in turn affects all the countries in the region, creating a relationship based on misgivings and suspicion.

But how does Chinese society react to this titanic change within its borders? What type of defence mechanism has it enacted to be able to front a transformation of this proportion?

Bell's position gives him an unique position from where to observe and participate on the debates that are going on in China, and he is in no doubt that nobody argues that the current political system should remain in place once the economy is developed. The question is, what comes after economic development? In China, the debates on this question are somewhat constrained due to political controls as well as the widely felt need to deal with China's more immediate economic and social problems. There also seems to be an aversion to "utopian thinking," which is an understandable reaction to Mao's disastrous attempts to sweep away the past during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Officially, the philosophy of Karl Marx underpins the legitimacy of the ruling CCP and thus Marxism is the place to start for thinking about China's political future. It's true that the CCP no longer emphasizes class struggle, hatred of the rich, and opposition to private property. In fact, capitalists can now join the CCP, and the legal system is being reformed (slowly) so that it more closely approximates that of capitalist countries.

Nevertheless this a society that until a few years ago it took care of its citizens from cradle to the grave in the name of 'Communism', but none is willing to discuss the future of communism. Bell provides a concise answer to his own question "So why isn't communism being discussed?"

" For scholars, there may be political constraints. Because Marxism is supposed to provide legitimacy for the government, it is the most tightly controlled political discourse in China. At Tsinghua-the university that has trained much of China's political elite, including President Hu Jintao-my Marxist colleagues do interesting and valuable work in Marxist theory (similar to Western scholars of Marxism), but they do not apply Marx's ideals to China's current and future political reality. I was told that it's too politically sensitive to be explicit about such matters."

Then he adds, " I would surmise, however, that the main reason Chinese officials and scholars do not talk about communism is that hardly anybody really believes that Marxism should provide guidelines for thinking about China's political future. The ideology has been so discredited by its misuses that it has lost almost all legitimacy in society. In reality, even the "communist" government won't be confined by Marxist theory if it conflicts with the imperative to remain in power and to provide stability and order in society. For practical purposes, it's the end of ideology in China. Not the end of all ideology, but the end of Marxist ideology."

Then the inevitable question arises, 'What then?'

In China, the moral vacuum is being filled by Christian sects, Falun Gong, and extreme forms of nationalism. As Peter Hays Gries has noted, many Chinese intellectuals call on the state to deal with extreme forms of nationalism (rather than viewing the state itself as part of the problem).

But the government considers that such alternatives threaten the hard-won peace and stability that underpins China's development, so it has encouraged the revival of China's most venerable political tradition, Confucianism. Like most ideologies, however, Confucianism can be a double-edged sword.
"Confucius said, 'Harmony is something to be cherished,'" President Hu Jintao noted in February 2005. A few months later, he instructed China's party cadres to build a "harmonious society." Echoing Confucian themes, Hu said China should promote such values as honesty and unity, as well as forge a closer relationship between the people and the government. The teaching curriculum for secondary schools now includes teaching of the Confucian classics, and several experimental schools have been set up that focus largely on the classics. Abroad, the government has been promoting Confucianism via branches of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese language and culture center similar to France's Alliance Française and Germany's Goethe Institute (so far, however, the emphasis has been on language teaching rather than the promotion of culture). The first Confucius Institute was set up in 2004, and eighty campuses have since opened in thirty-six countries. For the government, the promotion of Confucian values has several advantages. Domestically, the affirmation of harmony is meant to reflect the ruling party's concern for all classes. Threatened by rural discontent-according to official figures, there were 87,000 illegal disturbances in 2005-the government realizes that it needs to do more for those bearing the brunt of China's development (there is a joke in China, that development benefits everyone except farmers, workers, and women). Internationally, the call for peace and harmony is meant to disarm fears about China's rise.

How does Confucianism resonate in society at large? Given that the CCP spent its first three decades in power trying to extirpate every root and branch of Confucianism that it regarded as a feudal and reactionary worldview hindering progress, it would seem to be a losing battle. It could be argued, however, that the parts of Marxism that really took hold in the population-the priority of material well-being and an aversion to other-worldly outlooks-did so because they resonated with deeper Confucian roots. And those parts of the CCP's program that failed to take hold, such as the attempt to replace family ties with ties to the state during the Cultural Revolution, did so because they conflicted with central Confucian values and habits.
Basically, China, to be able to maintain social peace is going back to its pre-revolution roots.