Beyond The Traditional - China's Modernization, Political And Cultural Direction

This dissertation studies the alignment of political culture in China's modernization process. To be more exact, it studies the development and changes in this process, the fundamental connotation of which lies in the fact that the traditional political culture has been constantly surmounted and new-democratic political culture suiting the needs of China's modernization process emerges and develops. The process is full of difficulties and hardships, the most important achievement during which is made by the Chinese Communists who have closely integrated the basic spirit of Marxist notion of political culture and actual problems raised by the China's modernization process, created new-democratic political culture and socialist political culture of Chinese style suiting the needs of China's modernization process and guided China's cause of modernization in making achievements of world interest. To do the dissertation from this point of view is aimed at providing a unique perspective in order to observe the also unique modernization process in China more completely and more comprehensively. As far as the research on the relativity of modernization process and political culture alone is concerned, there are already some precedents in the circles of political science study. Some contemporary western researchers on political culture, such as Robert Dahl, have thoroughly studied and analyzed the development of democratic politics in the modernization process in the twentieth century. They firmly believe that the faith in democracy and political culture are the key factors of development of democratic politics in modern society, in other words, support from a kind of democratic political culture is needed in order to build democratic politics in a certain state. In 2002, the special issue of Newsweek published an article entitled "Why is recovery so slow?" which focused on the economic decline in the process of globalization dominated by Europe, USA and Japan, broke away from the stereotype of pure economics and wrote out a cultural prescription to cure severe economic disease, thinking that all the markets in the world adapt themselves to historical, social-structural, psychological, religious and political uniqueness of their own region, and these factors have an effect on the wishes of the people to work, consume, invest, deposit money and seek adventure. China's domestic scholars also touch deeply on this issue when thinking over the modernization process of our own country. Early in 1920s, Liang Shih-chiu discovered that China's modernization process was comprehensively deficient, materially, institutionally and culturally, thinking that if China's modernization process would not change its fundaments and custom, pursue a grander scope and adopt an overall point of view, China would not be saved, even if there would be more talents in the country. Actually, some social scientific researchers have noticed the trend of coexistence of globalization and indigenous culture and insisted that attention should be paid to the alignment of Chinese culture in an era of globalization, China needs to build up its political culture(civil culture) suiting the needs of its modernization process, laying a solider foundation is more important than importing science and democracy as for the issues, such as how China should learn from the West and quicken its steps of its modernization. However, current research of political culture, in most cases, is limited to a certain part of it, the issue of the alignment of political culture in modernization process as a whole is rarely studied, some scholars have, at the most, made some inquiries about the political culture in China's modernization process, that is, to apply relevant theory of political culture in reviewing the sense of political development of China's modernization process in different stages, but they haven't made a thorough review of the alignment of the political culture in China's modernization process from a perspective of relevance of modernization and po...