Enlightenment in China: Love the art, forget the ideas
oday social order and public tranquillity (of a sort) remain a top Chinese priority. Nowhere is this more evident than at central Beijing’s politically fraught Tiananmen Square, where a German-sponsored exhibition, “The Art of the Enlightenment”, opened this month in the newly refurbished National Museum of China. But to much of the outside world, the Chinese government’s often thuggish approach to maintaining social order looks anything but exemplary.
Not surprisingly, this has generated some tension in the staging of this ambitious year-long exhibit. Tilman Spengler, a German sinologist, was listed as part of the “expert group” arranging a companion series of panel sessions. But having spoken last year at an event honouring Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace prize laureate, Mr Spengler was denied a visa. According to Dong Junxin, a top official in China’s Culture Ministry, Mr Spengler had “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” His exclusion hardly seems in line with the Enlightenment ideals of open inquiry and freedom of thought; Mr Dong insisted it had nothing to do with the exhibition.