Yes, but what is being said is that Rousseau and Hobbes and Locke are ingrained in Western culture in much the same way that Confucianism is ingrained in Chinese culture. Lapses in the absolute power of Western monarchy opened up a space for an Enlightenment and gave rise to those new ideals, not to mention the prior blows that this style of governance had suffered in the West -- the Magna Carta, more frequent war, rapid losses in colonial territories, and the growth of Catholicism. The collapse of Western monarchy was what brought on the Enlightenment, which then served as a catalyst for further destruction of that system. China didn't experience hundreds of years of rebellion against the government, and for a long time it wasn't openly trading new ideas with the West (whereas the European countries were tied closely together in a lot of political matters). For the most part, the Chinese approach to this power structure was also much, much more defined. Keep in mind that Europe was largely still connected to Greco-Roman history, and these basic cultural foundations called for democracy and republicanism rather than an absolute social harmony.

In the context of today, it's important to remember who the teachers and adults in China are: people who grew up under the Communist government. And with more respect towards the older generation, historically China has had a hard time rebelling against social norms ingrained in their culture. Trying to do away with Confucianism isn't a question of how many people are involved when the elders were all indoctrinated in those ideas by a Communist regime. Even if half the young population of China had independently stumbled upon papers describing these Western cultural values, spreading the idea is impossible when it goes against the CPC's core values, defies the ideas of the older generation, and is completely foreign from what was taught in school.

The fundamental difference between the West and China here is that China has always been under a strong, conservative leadership that these ideas have not been able to permeate. To think that China could simply pick up ideas from Western philosophy misses the point.

In that framework how do you explain the cultural revolution, and the inversion of power that resulted from that?

Younger red guards denouncing their elders, the attempt to get rid of the four 'olds' doesn't seem like a particularly conservative or Confucian agenda to me.

If it were impossible for this kind of thought to take root in China, I doubt that this movement could have gotten off the ground.

The right time to judge whether the Chinese people really value social harmony more than the west does is when economic growth stalls or even reverses for a decade or so.

Thank you, very well said.

Well they could take new ideas from them, but it's much easier said than done. The philosophical, historical and cultural framework that allowed the thought of Rousseau and Hobbes to spread in the West does not exist in China.

Interestingly this also partly explains why totalitarian Communism spread easily in China... Chinese culture was conducive to that philosophy.