A Study To The Political Culture In The Contemporary China (1949-1978)

Since 1930s, with the rise of Freud school of thought and development of the cultural anthropology, the cultural issues become an important way to explore and recognize the social problems. More and more of scholars have begun to attach importance to the important role of subjective variables in the interpretation of social and historical situation, pay close attention to the social macrostructure behind the cultural structure, ideology and other factors, so that to grasp the macro run law of society through the analysis of the cultural dimension. The rise of the research of political culture is on this background.Gabriel .Almond define the political culture a set popular political attitudes of a nation, beliefs and emotions. He also maintained that a political culture is formed by the notion's history and current social, the economic and the process of the political activities. Political culture as a ideology are reflections of people' consciousness in the particular society. Political culture as a navigation of political psychology is the results of the notion's history and tradition long-term precipitation at the notional psychology. Contemporary Chinese political culture is formed by the Chinese society environment, economic foundation and political structure and other factors that since 1949. However, the development of culture has its own historical continuity, with the morphological changes in the socio-economic, the changes of the cultural type will happen corresponding, but the changes of the cultural type does not mean that the cultural development is disrupt and the old culture is disappear, on the contrary each new cultural patterns necessarily want to inherit and absorb the achievements of previous culture.The core content of the Chinese traditional political culture is mainly embodied in three levels: that is, the sense of the home of the world is result in the patriarchal social structure, the cognition of the subjects of a feudal ruler role is formed by the absolute monarchy and highly centralized traditions, as well as the ideological system of the politics ethicized and the ethics political. With the tremendous changes in modern society, the core value of traditional Chinese political culture was shocked by the western culture. At the collision of Chinese and western culture, the core values of the traditional Chinese political culture was or tenaciously retained, or tenaciously in part, or survival and continuity by the variant forms. They ware formed the foundation on which the contemporary Chinese political culture to being generation and development.Aristotle said: "a man is by nature a political animal." On the strict sense, what of Aristotle said is about the nature attribute of people. From the nature of people, the people must naturally belong to the political community, to leave a certain political community, humanity will lose their basic survival. From a natural person to a political person that was a series of the sociopolitical steps. So-called political society is that the people in a particular political relations, through the practice of social and political life and political activity, in that process the people gradually gain the political knowledge and the political ability and gradually to shape or change their political psychology and political thought. From a view of sociological point, a society would to being continuation, it always need to produce some new members uninterruptedly, these new members need to learn concepts, practices, skills, knowledge, beliefs and norms that was already existing in the society. This process is just that a person from a natural person into a society person. Families, schools, units of society, mass media and the ruling party is still the main carriers of political socialization in contemporary China, but because of the profound changes in social and political ecology, the carriers of political socialization has emerged of its own distinctive characteristics regardless of their content of political socialization and taken the way of political socialization.Each type of political culture has its own core values, it is this core value determines the nature of political culture and the people' way of thinking and behavior patterns in the political community. The core values of contemporary Chinese political culture are including the thought of collectivism, the ideals of socialism, the ideals of people democracy, and so on. Similarly, any kind of political culture has its own code of political ethics and their ethical dimensions. Contemporary Chinese political ethics embodied in the following aspects: First, emphasize the class nature of political ethics. Secondly, with the small people and noble's socio-position were changed that people' concept of elite were corresponding changed. Third, the thinking type about enemies, we and friends. Fourth, emphasize the loyalty to the party and the country, and the firm conviction of Marxism and socialism. Fifth, emphasize the self-discipline and pursue the leader's personality perfect.Specific political system decide the ways of the community's political participation, in contemporary China, the most prominent feature of political participation is the mobilize participation, and such form of participation is closely related to the "from the masses, to the masses", a mode of political input and output. Look at political participation of contemporary Chinese history, especially the history of reform and opening up previously, it is easy to find that the mobilize political participation is the remarkable character during this period. The mobilize political participation is not only a manifestation of political participation, in a sense, it is also a people's political survival status. Contemporary Chinese political participation and political mobilization create a special feature of the political environment, despite the way of political participation is inevitable with such as characteristic of disorder, but it is contribute to rise the people's political ability in the political practice and to set up a new political cultural system.Because of the multi-ethnic character of contemporary Chinese political culture, in addition to the vast size and the formation of inter-regional imbalances in development and stage of development and other factors, contemporary political culture shows the characteristics of hybrid and transitional color. First of all, because the new China was just originated from the semi-colonial and the semi-feudal society that remove the impact of the traditional society is not in a overnight, and the modern culture has not set up in a quick process, so the contemporary Chinese political culture is mixed by the traditional political culture and the modern political culture. Secondly, because of the above reasons, so that the contemporary Chinese political culture has a obvious transitional characteristics, so it is also a mixed type of the dependent political culture and the participation political culture. Naturally, because of inter-regional imbalances in development and culture of extreme backwardness and the vast size, the narrow political culture has also been maintained in a certain extent.A political culture is the formation of variety of factors. Understanding of contemporary Chinese political culture have to consider the political system and the way of production, and the specific stage of development of society, the construction of traditional political culture, the most of the members' political awareness capacity and other non-fundamental factors. Specifically, among a variety of factors in which to impact contemporary Chinese political culture, both the modern political system and production methods of public ownership that represent the factors of progressive forces, but also including the incompatible situation such as the backwardness of economic and cultural, the lower stage of society's development, the negative impact of traditional culture as well as members of society's political cognitive abilities incompatible the advanced system. It is just this contradiction and integration between tradition and modernity, resonance and compromise between progress and backwardness that decide some basic features of contemporary Chinese political culture. These characteristics are mainly as follows: First, a high degree of awareness of the nation. Second, citizen's relatively low degree in political quality and a high degree in political attention. Third, the rule of law weak, sense of the rule of man deep rooted. Fourth, the appraise system with official standard and the psychology of look forward to clean-handed officials."Left" trends of thought in contemporary China are a prominent cultural phenomenon, "left" trends of thought not only greatly influenced the development of contemporary Chinese society and political trends, but also as a specific, broad-dominant narrative structure deeply influence the people's way of thinking and behavior. In contemporary Chinese political culture, some phenomenon such as the mindset of class struggle, the political labeling, the worship of "revolution" and the worship of leaders is the result of "left" trends of thought forced intervention on the political culture. Practice has proved that the formation of a political culture including its development and change is the law of its own. Divorced from social reality and the majority of people's life experience that one of the subjective thought on the entire political community members are bound to twist people's political psychology-oriented and resulting cultural distortion in the process of political development. Therefore such morbid political culture should not last long. Political culture is the underlying structure of political system. As an ideology, it is intangible and invisible, but it is powerful presence. In the historical process of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, to build socialism political culture with Chinese characteristics is one of proper meaning. In order to keep the political culture of the first 30 years of new China adapt to new political relations in reform and opening times, at least three aspects of efforts should be carried out: First, build amore perfect socialist value system. Second, create a reasonable, open and orderly institutional environment in order to provide institutional safeguards for citizen's political participation. Third, cultivate a healthy and positive sense of citizen, improve citizen's political quality.Political culture is the psychological foundation of a political act, political acts are manifestations of political culture. Specific political ideals and specific institutional environment will affect people's psychology and political activity, and it play an effective regulatory role on people's political behavior, it is also people's specific political act determines the specific process of political development. Therefore, political culture as an important dimension of political order is an important factor, just is that determine political order whether or not stable. It is hard to imagine that without the soft support of political culture a social community could maintain political stability and harmonious.