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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China

watches about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering of

history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the

Chinese see these issues? For thousands of years, Confucianism has run through the fabric of Chinese society, politics and culture.

Even today, China is still known as a Confucian country, though of course decades of communism has taken its toll.

So what is this school of thought so fundamental to understanding the country, and how relevant is it still today?

I'm joined by one of the Le World's leading experts on the

philosophy, Professor Daniel Bell. In 2017, he was appointed the Dean of Shandong University,

an unusual appointment for a foreigner in China, but one based on his expertise in Confucianism,

because Shandong is a province of Confucius's birth. His new book, The Dean of Shandong,

confessions of a minor bureaucrat

at a Chinese university, detail some of the ups and downs of his time in that position.

Daniel, welcome to Chinese whispers. First of all, could you explain what Confucianism really is?

Okay, so it's a very complex and diverse tradition, and even the term Confucianism is a bit misleading because in English we tend to think Confucianism is really about Confucius. But in Chinese, it's Ruggia. So Kong's Confucius is one of the members of this tradition. But he himself was viewed himself as a transmitter and older tradition. And after him, there are many great thinkers. So it's not like Christianity where we have Jesus or, you know, Buddhism or we have Buddha.

There's no like one person who represents the whole tradition. And it's always been interacting and engaging with other traditions, from Taoism to legalism to Buddhism and more recently democracy and feminism.

But that said, I think there are some core commitments.

And the first commitment is that the good life involves the pursuit of compassionate

...