The Communist Party of China has always had an ambiguous relationship with what might be best labeled classical Chinese thinking and philosophy. Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic, read far more Confucius, Mencius or Laozi than he did of Marx. It is questionable if he ever made it through The Communist Manifesto. His main theoretical writings on contradictions were as much haunted by the shadow of Daoism from two and a half millennia before in the "warring states" era as they were by Hegel and his dialectical materialism.
Despite this, under Mao virulent campaigns were targeted at what was called, in the cultural revolution from 1966, the "four olds", which included old thinking. Confucius was one of the most celebrated victims, but pretty much anything from the dark feudal past of China was consigned to the intellectual and cultural dustbin.
In recent years, Confucius has made a spectacular comeback. But so too has almost the whole range of classical Chinese thinking. In The Governance of China - the book containing Xi Jinping's collected speeches and statements, published in 2014 - Song, Han, and Ming dynasty artistic and cultural figures far outnumber citations of Marx, Engels or Lenin. Under the CPC's chief ideologue, Liu Yunshan, "traditional, splendid Chinese history and culture" is represented as a huge asset. It also, remarkably, takes its place now as one of the sources of legitimacy the party in the 21st century appeals to. "We are the guardians of this mighty heritage", they seem to be saying, "oppose us, and you oppose this."
