ABSTRACT
When one thinks of China, a binary image usually emerges. On the one hand, China is viewed as a nation of rich historical heritage and tradition, with a civilizational bloc of its own in East Asia that centers on an integral set of Confucian values and moral codes, an imperial management system supported and sustained by a mature and sophisticated civil service selection and maintenance scheme, and a self-awareness of Sino-centralism that best manifests itself in the tributary system. On the other hand, China is also a modern, socialist country of twentieth-century political and ideological ethos, with a communist party that is the direct product of MarxismLeninism, whose historical mission is to reject traditional-or, in Marxist parlance, feudal-traits that have molded the Chinese culture, in order to create a socialist new nation based upon the basic designs mapped out by the Communist Party’s various ideological ancestors, from Marx and Lenin to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
