Can China rescue the classics? Greek philosophy may be of ideological use

In the Western world, this is not an easy time to be a classicist — a teacher or learner of the history, literature and languages of ancient Greece and Rome. Not just because some faculties are closing and resources shrinking, but because of the perpetual din of ideological warfare.

For one thing, Donald Trump has brought to the ascendant a general suspicion of the humanities and liberal arts as a preserve of decadent elites. Among the wilder fringes of his supporters, there are loud-mouthed admirers of Sparta’s warriors. But that hardly amounts to serious engagement with the past, and it risks tainting the entire legacy of ancient Greece.

America does, of course, have a distinguished cohort of traditionalist, classics-minded intellectuals and they have sought to protect the discipline from passing intellectual currents behind the high walls of private schools and colleges. But that too makes the subject ideologically charged.

On the cultural Left, meanwhile, there has been a searching of soul: is America’s tradition of classical learning, so beloved by the Founding Fathers, irredeemably tainted by association with white hegemony and colonialism? Such a view has found an eloquent exponent in the Princeton professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta who is not sure whether the discipline deserves to survive at all.

To those who fear that the diligent study of Mediterranean antiquity may now disappear in a cloud of ideological contention, help seems to be on its way — from an unlikely quarter, namely China. Even while Xi celebrated an anti-Western alliance when he fraternized with Putin in Moscow last week, the Chinese leader is busy appropriating what we think of one of the foundation stones of Western culture.

The enthusiasm of that country’s intellectual and political leaders for the study of Europe’s ancient world seems to grow by the month, as several recent developments show.

In November, the authorities in Beijing hosted a World Classics Conference, where hundreds of scholars from all over the world were lavishly accommodated and invited to give short papers. Tim Whitmarsh, a Cambridge professor of Greek history, wrote afterwards that the gathering was on a scale he had never experienced. President Xi Jinping sent his warm blessings, and there were rumors he might appear.

[su_unherd_related fttitle=”More from this author” author=”Bruce Clark”]https://unherd-wpml-test.go-vip.net/2024/11/can-orthodoxy-save-russias-soul/[/su_unherd_related]

At that event, it was announced that China would imminently open a research center for the Hellenic past in Athens — joining the 19 existing schools from Western countries, including the American School of Classical Studies which is probably the US academy’s most important offshore research institution in the liberal arts.

China has its Latin scholars (it organized a conference on the Roman poet Ovid in 2017) but recently the country’s cultural and intellectual diplomacy has put a particular focus on Greece: both the ancient Hellenic heritage and the modern state of Greece, which was invited to co-host the gathering in Beijing.

Academic synergy between Greece and China is burgeoning on many fronts, albeit from a low base. Four Greek universities are committed to a formal partnership with four Chinese ones: this makes possible joint research projects, seminars, exchanges of scholars and jointly administered qualifications. The Greek philosophy professor who has co-directed this cooperation effort, Stelios Virvidakis, was gratefully amazed to receive a personal letter from President Xi — and then multiple inquiries from China’s state media, inviting him to say how he felt about getting such a missive.

As Virvidakis has discovered, one Sino-Hellenic pairing which his Chinese partners especially like has involved Confucius as the father of Asian thought, and Aristotle as the progenitor of European philosophy. There have been three recent symposia on that wise duo: two in Greece and one in China. The Chinese also enjoy comparing their most famous sage with Plato and his pupil Socrates. People who visit the Athenian Agora may observe that this sacred, US-funded archaeological space is now adorned by a brash pair of Chinese-funded statues of Confucius and Socrates.

It feels as though a new chapter in educational history is being written. The huge American investment in the study of ancient Athens, especially noticeable in the cold-war fervor of the Fifties, had an obvious connection with the global contest between communism and what was then called the Free World. By showcasing the story of the world’s first democracy, American scholars were — consciously or otherwise — fighting the good fight against Soviet totalitarianism. The new Chinese zest for Greece also has a certain strategic dimension, given that the port of Piraeus is now controlled by Chinese interests and has flourished under its new bosses.

[su_pullquote]”It feels as though a new chapter in educational history is being written.”[/su_pullquote]

Commerce and economics aside, to what purposes are the Chinese now promoting the study of golden-age Hellas? The answer is both complex and surprising, according to Shadi Bartsch, an American classics professor at the University of Chicago.

As she shows in her book Plato goes to China, Greek philosophy (briefly introduced to China by Jesuits in the 16th century) has been put to many ideological uses over the past century. In 1912 the Chinese Republic saw a burst of enthusiasm for ostensibly pro-democratic texts from ancient Athens. Those texts were largely forgotten amidst the cultural revolution — but then rediscovered during the political spring that preceded the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989.

What happened next, as Bartsch describes it, is a spectacular piece of intellectual legerdemain. Chinese scholars have continued to read Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides — but much of their enthusiasm focuses on passages which deplore democracy and its tendency to degenerate into demagoguery.

For liberal lovers of Plato, one of his troubling ideas is the “golden lie” — his idea that states need a false but legitimating ideology which helps to underpin social order and a stable class system. Since Tiananmen, Chinese readers of Plato have warmed to that gilded falsehood, or at least to the idea that statecraft and philosophical integrity may be in conflict.

Among the Chinese political philosophers who have gained attention in the West is Tongdong Bai — a professor at Fudan University who is also a member of the Pontifical Academy in Rome. His book Against Political Equality carefully distills Plato and Confucius and their ideas for reconciling private and family concerns with the public interest. Confucius fares better — partially because he respects the family — but Plato is given a very fair hearing. Albeit in a moderate form, Bai’s whole approach reflects the idea that worthy elites can deliver better political and social outcomes than the voice of the mob.

As Bartsch demonstrates, the current Chinese reading of ancient Hellas is far from monolithic: there are those who study Greece, and its influence on the modern West, simply in a spirit of “know the enemy” while others see great wisdom in ancient Greek thought but regard the contemporary West as a poor successor.

At least one Chinese scholar has put forward the surreal notion that the medieval West simply invented the classical heritage as a fiendish trick; and in October 2023 a well-connected pundit on US-China relations, Jin Canrong, opined that Aristotle could not have produced such a vast oeuvre before the advent of paper.

[su_unherd_related fttitle=”Suggested reading” author=”Wessie du Toit”]https://unherd-wpml-test.go-vip.net/2025/04/why-china-will-beat-the-west/[/su_unherd_related]

For the time being at least, there is a striking contrast between the rather formal, stiff and cautious rhetoric which has been heard in set-piece interactions between Chinese and Greek officialdom, and the variety of views aired in Chinese academia.

In state-to-state cultural diplomacy, a very simple picture is often presented. It feels as though 19th-century nationalism is being revived, with a clear emphasis on undifferentiated historical continuity: Greece has always been Greek, just as China has always been Chinese. As Whitmarsh wrote after attending the Beijing shindig, this is a proposal for dialogue between (stereotypically defined) nations, but not within them. Its tone is almost at the opposite extreme from the internal turmoil of the American academy.

That siloed vision is a pity, because despite all the ideological pressures, China’s intellectual response to the European past and present — as described by Bartsch and others who know the scene — seems to have retained a measure of diversity.

For example, there is Chinese interest in Leo Strauss, the German-born philosopher who is also revered by American neo-cons. Strauss found much to admire in ancient Greek thought and much to criticize in liberal modernity; that could help to explain why his face fits in contemporary China. But what of the fact that the leading Chinese follower of Strauss, Liu Xiaofeng, is a self-described cultural Christian who wrote a doctorate on Christian theology in Switzerland? That fits no pattern.

Long may that relative diversity last. To put it mildly, today’s China is not a land of intellectual freedom. To quote the civil-liberty watchdog Freedom House, it is a place where “following a multi-year crackdown on political dissent, independent NGOs and human rights defenders… civil society has been largely decimated”.

In the officially encouraged romance between China and Greece, it is too early to tell what ideological constraints might be imposed. But if China replaces the West as the most generous sponsor of research into Greek history and thought, there is good reason to fear that such investigations will take place within narrower confines than was the case at least in pre-Trump America. Idealistic belief in democracy may well lie outside those confines, to judge by the zeitgeist of today’s China.

Veterans of Classical studies are watching with mixed feelings. If the new Sino-Hellenic moment really helps to save the serious study of classics from becoming collateral damage in America’s culture wars, that might be a blessing. But only if the global conversation about Ancient Greece and its meaning for today can still be pursued with intellectual freedom and parrhesia — the right to shock and offend. It is that sort of freedom which is exuberantly exercised in America by mavericks like Princeton’s Padilla. Let’s hope this does not become an exception.