Epilogue: Confucianism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

The ‘Epilogue’ considers the harsh condemnation of Confucianism in the early decades of the twentieth century by leaders of the nationalist May Fourth movement. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in 1921 and, despite two decades of struggle with the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek who believed in the basis of Confucian ideology, the People's Republic of China was established by Mao Zedong in 1949. Confucianism was deemed the enemy of the proletariat and the Communist state. The 1976 Cultural Revolution set China on a course of economic and political reform, and since 2000 the government have endorsed Confucianism. But what does the future hold for Confucianism in China?