After the Russian Communist demon Lenin seized power through a coup in 1917, turning Russia into a realm ruled by communist evil, the claws of this demon soon reached into China. In 1919, Beijing students, dissatisfied with the Paris Peace Conference’s handling of German interests in Shandong, launched a violent movement involving smashing and looting and attacks on Beijing government diplomats—the so-called May Fourth Movement. The May Fourth Movement was exploited by the Communist Party to further incite violent rebellion. Taking advantage of chaos, the Communists fabricated the groundless slogan “Down with the Confucian Shop.” This slogan was continuously used by Mao’s Communist Party to bring down Confucius and elevate the Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

In 1949, Mao’s Communist Party successfully seized power, and China was fully “red.” The CCP designated the May Fourth as Youth Day, commemorating it annually with great fanfare under the slogans “anti-imperialism” and “anti-feudalism.” “Anti-imperialism” targeted American imperialism, while “anti-feudalism” targeted Confucius, portraying him as the representative of feudal society. “Down with the Confucian Shop” became permanently linked with the May Fourth Movement and Youth Day, turning into a slogan known nationwide. Before 1949, when the mainland had not yet been fully red, Chiang Kai-shek still advocated respect for Confucius. After 1949, Mao Zedong completely sidelined Confucius.

During the 1919 May Fourth Movement, who exactly proposed the slogan “Down with the Confucian Shop,” or wrote articles using it? For many years, scholars on the mainland searched repeatedly but could find no source. The conclusion was “none”: no one had proposed this slogan, and no article could be found containing it. It was not until after Mao’s death in 1976, when the Gang of Four and Chen Boda were tried and convicted, that scholars discovered in internal Communist Party documents that before the CCP seized power in 1949, Chen Boda, when proposing the establishment of the “Chinese New Enlightenment Society,” said he was “willing to accept the May Fourth era’s call to ‘Down with the Confucian Shop.’” This was the first time in decades that the slogan formally appeared in documents. It turned out that Chen Boda was the originator; he falsely shifted the blame to the May Fourth Movement, claiming he was merely “accepting” it.

Did Chen Boda really have the audacity to invent the slogan “Down with the Confucian Shop”? Anyone with insight knows he was Mao Zedong’s chief secretary. Chen Boda was merely carrying out his master’s instructions. Therefore, the patent for inventing “Down with the Confucian Shop” naturally belongs to Chairman Mao himself. This is the true origin of the slogan. The Communist Party invented it yet dared not admit it, muddying the waters and deceiving the Chinese people with lies for decades, until Mao’s death finally revealed the truth.

For over two thousand years, Confucius the sage had been the spiritual pillar upon which the Chinese people established their lives. “Down with the Confucian Shop” meant stripping the people of their spiritual home and leaving them displaced. Mao’s Communists wanted to rebel and overturn everything precisely to render everyone rootless, so that demonic violence could seize power.

During the May Fourth Movement, slogans such as “democracy” and “science” were advocated, but Confucius was not opposed. No one called for opposition to tradition or to Confucius. These elements were all later inventions added by the Communist Party.

In 1923, the Russian Communist Party provided financial and military support to Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou to establish military academies and armies, promoting cooperation between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party to seize power. In 1926, the two parties began the Northern Expedition. When the Northern Expeditionary Army reached Hunan, the Russian Communist consulate in Changsha provided money and weapons to incite rural peasants to rebel, setting up “peasant associations” everywhere and stirring violent opposition against local gentry who maintained rural order. Mao Zedong was extremely pleased and excited by his so-called investigation of the Hunan peasant movement in February 1927, and in March he wrote his report, lavishly praising the “ruffian movement” as excellent. He called ruffians the vanguard of revolution, praised them not only for sticking their heads out but for seizing power and becoming kings, and described peasant associations in the hands of ruffians as fearsome instruments. Mao praised them, writing: “They tied up the bad gentry with ropes, put tall hats on them, and paraded them through the villages… They issued orders and commanded everything.”

In Mao Zedong’s eyes, the so-called “bad gentry” were precisely those who maintained normal rural social order. Mao not only praised ruffians for parading gentry through villages but also approved of their killing of prominent gentry, shooting of individuals, and overthrow of what he called the “feudal rule of local tyrants and evil gentry,” as well as the destruction of “clan authority represented by ancestral halls and clan elders, and the divine authority of City God and Earth God.”

The Hunan peasant movement praised by Mao was in essence, as he himself said, a “ruffian movement.” Genuine peasants stood by with folded arms, resentful yet helpless, because the Russian Communists provided money and weapons, and advisers incited ruffians to rebel. Ordinary peasants knew this was not the right path but dared not oppose it, allowing hooligans, ruffians, idlers, and the unemployed—these so-called “brave elements”—to run amok under Communist incitement, beautified with the name “Hunan Peasant Revolutionary Movement.”

Mao Zedong’s 1927 masterpiece Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan was his first step upward on the ladder of Communist violent seizure of power, earning great praise from Moscow and being published in full in Comintern propaganda materials. Mao’s opposition to Confucian “gentleness, kindness, courtesy, frugality, and deference,” and his praise of ruffian movements as excellent, later entered the Quotations from Chairman Mao during the 1966 Cultural Revolution and were repeatedly memorized by rebels as slogans for smashing, looting, and burning: “A revolution is not a dinner party… it cannot be so refined, so gentle, so courteous, so restrained, and so magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to bring down Liu Shaoqi, especially inciting ignorant student Red Guards to criticize Liu Shaoqi’s so-called “Black Self-Cultivation” (On the Self-Cultivation of Communist Party Members). This work, based on Liu’s 1939 Yan’an lecture, had long circulated widely and served as a textbook on self-cultivation. In it, Liu Shaoqi extensively quoted Confucian traditions of moral cultivation, directly citing Confucius: “I am not one who is born with knowledge; I love the ancient and diligently seek it,” and “Listen to what he says and observe what he does.” He quoted Mencius: “When Heaven is about to place a great responsibility on someone…” and “All men can become Yao and Shun,” and “Wealth and honor cannot corrupt him, poverty and lowliness cannot sway him, power and force cannot bend him.” He quoted Zengzi from the Analects: “I examine myself three times daily…” He cited Zhu Xi’s “investigating things to exhaust principle,” and also Fan Zhongyan of the Song dynasty: “Be the first to worry about the troubles of the world, and the last to enjoy its pleasures.” All these stood in stark opposition to the Cultural Revolution’s dominant Quotations from Chairman Mao. Mao was determined to denounce and discredit Liu Shaoqi’s “Black Self-Cultivation.”

To sever Confucius’ roots, Mao further instructed the Central Cultural Revolution Group to incite student Red Guards to go to Qufu, Confucius’ hometown in Shandong, to smash the Confucian Temple and dig up Confucius’ grave. In November 1966, more than 200 Red Guards from Beijing Normal University marched to Qufu and joined local rebels, holding mass rallies of tens of thousands to denounce Confucius. The BNU students stayed in Qufu for 29 days, destroying things daily: smashing over 1,000 steles and tombstones from various dynasties, burning more than 1,000 rare ancient books, and destroying over 6,000 historical relics. Confucius’ tomb was leveled, and the Confucian Temple, Cemetery, and Tomb suffered unprecedented devastation. After completing their mission, the Red Guards wrote to Mao to report their “achievements”: “Confucius No. 2’s grave has been leveled, the plaque ‘Model Teacher for Ten Thousand Generations’ has been taken down, temple steles smashed, and Confucian idols destroyed.”

After Mao’s death in 1976, no one criticized Confucius in the 1980s, and Confucian works could again be published. Confucius showed signs of revival.

During Hu Jintao’s administration in the 2000s, the promotion of a “harmonious society” included encouragement of Confucius, softening rigid Marxist-Leninist dogma. With Hu Jintao’s tacit approval, from 2006 to 2008, “Yu Dan Lectures on the Analects” became extremely popular. Yu Dan lectured widely on Confucius, receiving enthusiastic responses from people long starved of spiritual nourishment. She was also invited to Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe, and the United States to lecture on Confucius, paving the way for popularizing the Analects. Social atmosphere became lively, and Confucius, long absent, returned.

Amid this popularity, the film Confucius began production in 2009. During the National People’s Congress sessions in February–March that year, Hu Jintao told director Hu Mei: “Confucius is significant; now is the right time to make the film,” expressing strong support. The film was completed that year and released in 2010 to enthusiastic reception. Confucius truly returned.

In spring 2011, a massive Confucius statue weighing 9 tons and standing 9.5 meters tall was quietly erected east of Tiananmen Square, causing a sensation. Confucius had truly returned, standing in Tiananmen Square, so tall that people had to look up to see his face. Some Beijing residents rushed to kneel in reverence, expressing long-suppressed admiration.

The re-erection of Confucius in Tiananmen Square involved no publicity or ceremony and was extremely low-key. Such a major move clearly had Hu Jintao’s support. Hu may have feared opposition from senior leaders and thus made no announcement. Even so, it was intolerable to the paramount elder Jiang Zemin. After standing for only three months, the statue was forced to be removed. One night at midnight, the largest crane was quietly deployed to dismantle it completely and move it to a museum, where Confucius remains in cold storage to this day. Hu Jintao’s vision of a “harmonious society” suffered a major blow from Confucius’ banishment; one can imagine Hu’s heartbreak.

After Xi Jinping took office in 2013, to repay Hu Jintao for immediately handing over power, he quietly visited Qufu, picked up a copy of the Analects, and hypocritically said, “I want to study and research it carefully,” to give Hu some consolation. Xi did not worship Confucius; he intended to “research” him. The Confucius statue remained in cold storage at the museum.

During Hu Jintao’s tenure, there was also an attempt to promote “harmonious society” abroad, reducing the CCP’s Marxist image by developing Confucian culture. Beginning in 2004, “Confucius Institutes” were established overseas. The first was opened in Maryland, USA, in 2004. By 2012, 358 Confucius Institutes had been established in 105 countries, along with 500 Confucius Classrooms, teaching Chinese language and culture while also promoting Communist ideology. They were thus regarded abroad as part of the CCP’s external propaganda. However, many countries were not strongly opposed and could coexist “harmoniously” with the CCP, with conflicts not yet erupting.

After Xi Jinping took office in 2013, drawing his sword against the United States and showing ambition to replace it as global hegemon, the CCP increasingly used Confucius Institutes as tools of major external propaganda. Their expansion accelerated. By 2018, Confucius Institutes had spread to 154 countries, totaling 548 institutes worldwide (110 in the United States), along with 1,193 Confucius Classrooms, with 1.87 million participants. Under the guise of teaching Chinese and Chinese history, literature, philosophy, and folk culture, they inserted CCP socialist theory, Xi’s global governance concepts, the “community of shared future for mankind,” and the CCP’s Two Centenary Goals, indoctrinating communist ideology and serving as bases to direct overseas students and scholars. In essence, they were spy hubs.

In August 2020, the U.S. government designated Confucius Institutes as “foreign missions,” identifying them as institutions representing the Chinese Communist government. Many Confucius Institutes announced closures. Canada, France, and Australia also closed institutes, and Sweden shut down all Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms.

The CCP does not respect Confucius domestically and has not established a single Confucius Institute at home, yet it uses Confucius as a brand, providing large amounts of funding (USD 500,000 per institute) and training large numbers of teachers (all bearing major external propaganda and intelligence missions) to establish many Confucius Institutes worldwide. After being exposed by the United States in 2020 and designated as foreign missions, the CCP quickly changed strategy, announcing that Confucius Institutes would be renamed “Language Exchange Centers” and shifted from government-run to privately run. However, everyone understands that this is merely a change of name, not substance—the reality remains the same, only more concealed.