ABSTRACT
The Confucianism derived psychologically from traditionalism: when the people's Chinese identity seemed threatened by Republican westernization, the 'Chineseness' of Confucianism, more than its own traditionalist message, made it an, object of traditionalists' reverence and a pillar of the throne. The loss of the ambivalence, the Confucian-monarchical attraction-repulsion, comprised the Chinese state's attrition. Over the long span of imperial Chinese history, there developed a Confucian literatus-type; the figure of the emperor failed to conform to it. Dynasties were not pacifist like Confucianists but military like feudalists, always trying to keep a grip on the Confucian- suspect military organs. The over-all distinction between the necessary partners, Confucian literati and monarchy, and the basic condition of the tension between them, lay in their respective attitudes toward tradition. Indisputably their foreignness made for tense relations with Confucian literati; but it was a Chinese ethnic antipathy reducible to Confucian cultural terms.
