Beijing  - China marked the 2,560th birthday of Confucius Monday with a ceremony attended by about 10,000 people in his birthplace of Qufu in the eastern province of Shandong.

Scholars, foreign dignitaries and people claiming to be descendants of the sage were among those celebrating at the Confucius Temple in Qufu, state media reported.

The small, ancient city also hosted an International Confucius Cultural Festival, which included a new musical drama depicting the life of China's most famous philosopher.

The anniversary celebrations came amid a growing revival of religious belief and practice in China over the past 25 years, particularly the long-established creeds of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

Recent television lectures and books on Confucius by Yu Dan, a Beijing-based philosophy professor, have proved hugely successful.

An English translation of Yu's best-selling Confucius from the Heart was published this year while Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat played Confucius in a new film of the sage's life scheduled for release early next year.

The nominally atheist leaders of China's ruling Communist Party have studied Confucian and other Chinese classics that were once banned as "feudal ideology."

The party has used the slogan "build a harmonious society" as an attempt to use ancient ethics to help reduce the corruption and greed that have followed economic reforms and to maintain its hold on political power.

The government in recent years has also opened dozens of Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese culture across the world.

Confucius is generally said to have lived from 551 to 479 BC although his famous aphorisms were only recorded by disciples many years later.

Confucian ideas dominated China for most of the next 2,000 years after his death. The Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) elevated him to godlike status, and Qufu reputedly grew into a pilgrimage site that once rivalled Mecca.

The rehabilitation of Confucius began in the communist era at a 1984 symposium in Qufu, where he was again accepted as "one of the glorious figures of China."

The Communist Party is attracted to Confucian social order but repelled by the philosopher's association with feudalism and the imperial households.

A "spiritual civilization" campaign, which began in the mid-1990s in response to fears that consumers were becoming too materialistic, promoted both Maoist and Confucian ethics.(dpa)