Backlight: China - from Cartier to Confucius

While the rest of the world tries to come to terms with China’s rising economic and political power and its impact on the existing global order; a small group of philosophy students from Shanghai’s prestige Fudan University gathers every Friday night at their professor’s house to study Chinese classical texts by Confucius.

Through the work of Confucius and Socrates this new generation is rediscovering values that seemed to be buried during the Cultural Revolution and state-capitalism of China’s present rulers. These young Chinese conservatives are very self-confident about the economic development taking place in their country but are insecure about the lack of principles to guide it. Their search is an unnerving new force to China’s ruling class and they turn out to be a new generation of neocon nationalists.