Modern Chinese Political Thought

Introduction

Although debates abound as to when “modernity” in China began, modern Chinese political thought is here taken to mean thought on politics (broadly conceived) produced after the late 19th century, when Chinese intellectuals began a critical evaluation of their received traditions in light of domestic instability, the success of Japanese modernization, and growing European influence via military, missionary, commercial, and intellectual interaction. These early evaluations had a crucial impact on later republican and communist ideology, because reformers throughout the 20th century continued to wrestle with dilemmas first articulated in the 1890s: What is China’s place in a wider global order, now that it is seen as one among many nation-states rather than as the unifying center for civilization? How might it transform its society and economy, given the increasing pace of globalization, the pressures of industrialization, and the need to sustain a growing population? What role might be played by “traditional” Chinese thought in the modern age, and how should that thought be assessed? As these questions show, Chinese thought during this era was typically holistic, and its inquiry encompasses diverse disciplines such as literature, history, sociology, economics, and philosophy. This article attempts to present “Chinese political thought” not only as an object of historical research but also as a self-reflexive and self-referential body of work that grounds philosophical discussion and political inquiry still meaningful today. My focus therefore will be on primary and secondary work concerned with normative and conceptual questions related to political philosophy; I therefore offer only a selective rather than comprehensive overview of work in modern Chinese intellectual history. Early studies of this period, such as Ssu-yu Teng and John King Fairbank’s China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Teng and Fairbank 1954a, cited under English-Language Anthologies), misleadingly reduced China’s political thought to a response to the “Western impact.” The works of Benjamin Schwartz, Joseph Levenson, Thomas Metzger, Lydia H. Liu, and others have shown the degree to which these questions emerged out of a interaction between existing concerns and categories: Chinese scholars interpreted, with growing sophistication and in novel ways, culturally diverse rather than monolithically “Western” ideas and institutions. Indeed, one striking feature of thought during most of this period is its richness and diversity. Far from parroting official orthodoxy, political thinkers at the turn of both centuries embrace emerging popular media—whether newspapers or the Internet—to express a huge range of critical perspectives. To emphasize this diversity, this article focuses on nonofficial thought, with topics on Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Chinese Communist thought covered elsewhere in this series of Oxford Bibliographies. Finally, although modern Chinese political thought typically refers to thought on politics produced by Chinese people during the modern era, it also includes work by non-Chinese scholars and by Chinese scholars (inside and outside the People’s Republic of China) working in English and other languages, who recognize the worth of Chinese political ideas for modern academic study.

General Overviews

With the possible exception of Wang 2008, there are few up-to-date, comprehensive overviews of explicitly political thought in China that relate current developments in the People’s Republic of China or Taiwan to the thought of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most general overviews of modern thought, such as Xiao 1978, focus on the ways in which 20th-century views fit within Chinese thought as a whole. Levenson 1958 advances the classic but now extremely controversial argument that Chinese modernity presented a decisive rupture with the worldviews of the past. Feng 1937 offers one of the first attempts to synthesize both ancient and modern Chinese thought into the categories of modern academic philosophy. All these sources, including Jenco 2013, draw on primary sources to advance an original argument, often to illuminate a broader political point about the evolutionary development of Chinese thought within the boundaries of Western modernity.

Feng Yu-lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Vol. 1, The Period of the Philosophers (from the Beginnings to circa 100 B.C.). Translated by Derk Bodde. London: Allen & Unwin, 1937.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Feng’s book focuses primarily on philosophical topics such as metaphysics, but, given the close alignment with sociopolitical concerns with much Chinese philosophy, he also explains some of the background from which modern Chinese political thought emerged.
Find this resource:
Jenco, Leigh. “Chinese Political Ideologies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Edited by Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, 644–660. Oxford Handbooks in Politics & International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers overview of Chinese political discourse from the 1890s until the present day. The article draws on primary sources and work in Chinese, to showcase the value and diversity of Chinese thought to nonspecialists and to resist teleological narratives of China’s modern development.
Find this resource:
Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy. 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The classic statement of the “death” of Chinese Confucianism in light of the rise of Western modernity, Levenson’s thesis has been challenged many times but retains its keen insight into the psychological and political implications of Chinese attitudes toward their older traditions in the modern period.
Find this resource:
Tan, Chester C. Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although this helpful study has largely been ignored by historians, it nevertheless offers very comprehensive, critical, and well-written assessments of many of modern China’s most-pressing political ideas. Particularly distinguished for its treatment of liberal (particularly “Third Force”) and nationalist thought.
Find this resource:
Wang Hui 汪晖. Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi (现代中国思想的兴起). 4 vols. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wang’s magnum opus draws heavily on primary sources of the late imperial and republican periods as well as on up-to-date Euro-American cultural and social theory, to argue for the distinctive features of Chinese modernity and to explore its relationship to global phenomena such as capitalism and imperialism.
Find this resource:
Xiao, Gongquan. A History of Chinese Political Thought. Translated by F. W. Mote. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although not focused on the modern period, this English-language translation of Xiao’s masterly overview of Chinese political thought from the Warring States to the Republican era situates later thought in a context both of continuity and change with respect to how Chinese thinkers have over time defined, and acted in, the “political” sphere.
Find this resource:
Collections of Primary Materials

The majority of primary sources on Chinese political thought can be found in the “collected works” (quanji) or “selected works” (xuanji) both of major and minor thinkers, or in articles written for key journals of their period. Collections of shiliao (historical materials) for particular eras cover more-general historical records. These are too extensive to list comprehensively here, but many have now been digitized for inclusion in databases and Online Resources, such as China Maxx. Because Chinese political thought is a field constituted by engagement with primary sources in Chinese, these sources are cited under their relevant subheading along with significant secondary interpretive materials (English-Language Anthologies).

Online Resources

The digitization of primary sources for inclusion in subscription-based databases such as China Academic Journals Full-Text Database, as well as in privately run open-source databases such as China Heritage Quarterly and the Chinese Philosophical E-text Archive, has made recourse to brick-and-mortar archives increasingly less necessary for scholars of modern Chinese political thought. Many of these resources also make available journals and other print media from the early 20th century that would otherwise be overlooked or inaccessible. China Maxx offers a growing list of e-titles of mainly current secondary and primary material; its subsidiary, Duxiu, will deliver scan-on-demand material for many primary sources, including journals, for the early Republican and Maoist periods. China Story Journal offers more-recent, even up-to-the-minute, translations, commentaries, and news about Chinese intellectual debates written both by Western and Chinese scholars.

China Academic Journals Full-Text Database. China National Knowledge Infrastructure.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive database for researching Chinese secondary literature on any topic, from 1915 to the present, offering more than a thousand journal titles and forty million individual articles. Those sources most likely to relate to political thought fall not only under Section G (Politics / Military Affairs / Law) but also under Section F (Literature/History/Philosophy).
Find this resource:
China Heritage Quarterly.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This quarterly online journal publishes erudite English-language commentary by scholars in China, Australia, and elsewhere on current affairs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Excellent as a source of translations on current sources of Chinese thought, and for its articles linking historical debates and ideas to current issues.
Find this resource:
China Maxx.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive and growing collection of e-books in Chinese, primarily current but also including select historical materials, with a special emphasis on the humanities and social sciences. Valuable for accessing up-to-date developments in Chinese scholarship.
Find this resource:
Chinese Philosophical E-text Archive.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Run out of Wesleyan University, this archive offers freely available, philosophically relevant Chinese language texts from the pre-Qin to modern periods. Although its holdings from the modern period are small, they include influential texts by Tan Sitong, Liang Qichao, and other reformers.
Find this resource:
China Story Journal.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published by the Australian Centre for China in the World, this comprehensive online resource offers very up-to-date and always expanding material on current thought trends in the PRC, including their relationship to earlier historical events and ideas. Resources include biographies of influential thinkers and politicians, explanation of key terms in current Chinese debates, scholarly commentary, interviews with scholars and China watchers, and translations of Chinese-language opinion pieces.
Find this resource:
Duxiu (读秀).
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An enormous database, comprising more than six hundred million printed pages, of articles from journals as well as books, including many key journals of the Republican and Maoist periods, such as New Youth (Xin Qingnian). Their on-demand scans are done by portions of the journal rather than by article, enabling some analysis of thought “in situ” and in relation to other contemporary debates.
Find this resource:
English-Language Anthologies

This section includes databases and English-language anthologies relevant to Chinese political thought. De Bary and Lufrano 2000 privileges breadth over depth, exhibiting how Chinese thought has changed over time and how recurrent questions have been approached by a variety of thinkers and schools in the modern period. Teng and Fairbank 1954a offers more-extensive translations of key texts, focusing on China’s original response to Western influence in the 19th century, with a helpful research guide (Teng and Fairbank 1954b) offering more in-depth references. Chan 1963 offers one of the only comprehensive English-translation anthologies of “Chinese philosophy,” ranging from pre-Confucian to the Mao eras. The admirable breadth of this volume offers translations of key texts not found elsewhere. Angle and Svensson 2001 also offers a wide range of philosophically insightful texts, centered on the reception of rights discourse in China.

Angle, Stephen C., and Marina Svensson, eds. The Chinese Human Rights Reader: Documents and Commentary, 1900–2000. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding and philosophically sensitive presentation of Chinese receptions of human rights, which translates key primary sources from the entire 20th century. Particularly recommended for its translation of influential and theoretically rich—but typically overlooked—texts on rights thinking (including some anonymous articles published in journals).
Find this resource:
Chan, Wing-tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An ambitious set of translations meant to cover the whole of Chinese philosophy from its ancient beginnings until the 1960s. Its attempt to read Chinese thought through analytical categories of modern philosophy, such as “rationalism” and “idealism,” is sometimes misleading, but it does attempt to validate Chinese thought as worthy of philosophical examination at a time when many doubted its value.
Find this resource:
Contemporary Chinese Thought.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published by M. E. Sharpe, this long-running journal publishes English translations of essays by influential Chinese scholars, including many philosophers and political commentators. Excellent coverage of up-to-date academic debates in China, in a wide variety of fields.
Find this resource:
De Bary, William Theodore, and Richard John Lufrano. Sources of Chinese Tradition. Vol. 2, From 1600 through the Twentieth Century. 2d ed. Introduction to Asian Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although only the second half of this work is of relevance to modern thought, it contextualizes modern ideas in light of earlier indigenous trends since the 17th century. Offers a variety of translated primary sources, although most are short extracts designed to represent key ideas or debates rather than to serve as bases for deeper exegetical analysis.
Find this resource:
Teng, Ssu-yu, and John King Fairbank. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954a.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although overstating the degree to which modern thought in China is comprehensible through its contact with the West, this collection and its accompanying research guide, Teng and Fairbank 1954, offer an extremely valuable overview, via primary sources, of key debates about Chinese-Western interaction from the Opium Wars to the May Fourth movement. Many otherwise inaccessible sources are translated at length, mediated by helpful annotations.
Find this resource:
Teng, Ssu-yu, and John King Fairbank. Research Guide for China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954b.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This comprehensive research guide to Teng and Fairbank 1954 offers detailed citations and useful additional commentary on the primary sources translated in that volume. Highly recommended for scholars looking for help in navigating the huge amount of primary material produced in this era.
Find this resource:
New Ideas and New Institutions, 1895–1920

Chinese thought at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) brought new Western ideas such as social Darwinism, parliamentarianism, constitutionalism, and nationalism to bear on ongoing Chinese concerns about state stability, personal self-cultivation, and economic performance. China’s devastating loss of territory to Japan in 1895, and the failure of the comprehensive so-called Hundred Days reforms in 1898, historically has emblematized the overall failure of Chinese modernization during this period. This conclusion was frequently drawn by May Fourth radicals, including in Hu 1953 (cited under Liberal Responses) and Chen 1984 (cited under the New Culture and May Fourth Movements), which claim that only totalistic Westernization of Chinese culture could achieve national greatness. However, more-recent research, as well as the stunning economic progress of East Asian countries beginning in the late 20th century, indicates that such dismal judgments may be overstated. Reform in this era achieved a limited amount of success and also influenced later more-radical movements; moreover, Confucian values would be later claimed to provide, contra Max Weber, adequate ideological foundations for capitalism. Given the richness and dynamism of Chinese thought in the modern era, most general introductions focus, as does the excellent and wide-ranging discussion in Furth 2002, on how thought from particular eras wove together earlier trends and made possible later developments, in the process of advancing new inquiry of its own. Metzger 1977 draws attention to the particularly enduring importance of Neo-Confucian concerns in the post-dynastic period. Included here are also historical textbooks that offer particularly insightful analysis of intellectual trends and their relationship to historical events, such as Hsü 2000 and Zarrow 2005.

Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning, 1890–1911. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding and sympathetic examination of what Chang identifies as the “existential crises” faced by the 1898 reform generation, articulated through intellectual biographies of four of its key members—Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, Zhang Binglin, and Liang Qichao.
Find this resource:
Furth, Charlotte. “Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Movement, 1895–1920.” In An Intellectual History of Modern China. Edited by Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-Fan Lee, 13–96. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A truly outstanding, comprehensive, and original synthesis of major ideas in the late Qing and early republican periods. Focusing in particular on reform intellectuals’ changing attitudes toward time and history, this extended article also succeeds in presenting their thought on politics and society in compelling ways that emphasize their interaction and originality.
Find this resource:
Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although Hsü’s work attempts a more comprehensive, textbook-style overview of political and social developments of the modern era until the present day, it offers particularly well-contextualized coverage of intellectual trends from the early 1860s to 1945. Several chapters focus specifically on how thought of those eras both articulated and changed in response to various structural and historical trends. First published in 1970.
Find this resource:
Metzger, Thomas A. Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture. Studies of the East Asian Institute. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Contrary to Levenson, Metzger claims that more continuity than rupture exists between traditional and modern China. He explores the enduring importance of Neo-Confucian ideas, particularly the relationship of individuals to normative cosmic patterns and possibilities, in modern Chinese thought and politics.
Find this resource:
Zarrow, Peter. China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949. Asia’s Transformations. London: Routledge, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive textbook covering modern Chinese transformation, which contextualizes 20th-century revolutionary thought in the light of late Qing and early Republican reform ideas. Notable for its examination of thinkers and debates not extensively covered elsewhere.
Find this resource:
1898 Reforms

It is always difficult to periodize modern Chinese history, given the degree to which concerns from one “era” fold into those of another. However, China’s loss of territory to Japan in 1895 underscored for many intellectuals, including Yan Fu (Yan 1986) and Liang Qichao (Liang 1994), the need for a more thoroughgoing imitation of Western ways of life to counter both Western imperialism and Meiji Japan’s emerging national power. Ongoing research, including Kwong 2000, has debated the extent to which Kang Youwei’s radical ideas, including his Buddhist- and Christian-inspired vision of datong (great harmony), played a role in these court-led reforms (Kang 1958), associated with the “Hundred Days reforms” (wuxu bian fa) of 1898 (Yang 1973). Huters 2005 and Schwartz 1964 show the richness of political discourse in this period and its mutual dependence on ideas emerging from other fields, including literature, sociology, and politics.

Huters, Theodore. Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A wide-ranging and theoretically informed account of Chinese efforts to interpret and appropriate Western knowledge, with particular emphasis on literary innovations and insight. Like the analyses of Chang Hao and others, Huters’s book is distinguished for looking at the world of thought in late imperial and early republican China on its own terms, while maintaining a critical perspective.
Find this resource:
Kang Youwei. Ta T’ung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-Wei. Translated by Laurence G. Thompson. London: Allen & Unwin, 1958.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Kang Youwei’s magnum opus was not as widely influential on contemporaneous thought as it came be later, but it has since been interpreted as a fitting symbol of late Qing radicalism. Its call for a great harmony to be achieved through a series of stages works from the ancient Confucian text the Liji, but it has been interpreted as a work of social Darwinism and even a precursor to later Marxist utopianism. Republished as recently as 2011 (London: Routledge).
Find this resource:
Kwong, Luke S. K. “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898.” Modern Asian Studies 34.3 (2000): 663–695.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A well-balanced but controversial consideration of how much influence certain key intellectuals and palace power holders, including Cixi and Kang Youwei, really had over the eventual outcome of the Hundred Days reforms.
Find this resource:
Liang Qichao. Yinbingshi Heji-wenji (饮冰室合集: 文集). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
These massive “collected works from the Ice-drinker’s studio” constitute Liang Qichao’s literary output over a period of nearly thirty years. Arguably the most influential set of writings from the late Qing and early republican periods; features many of Liang’s interpretations of Western ideas, which would go on to decisively frame later debate, including the hugely influential Xin min shuo, in which Liang argues for cultural transformations to “renew” the Chinese people and make them fit for self-rule.
Find this resource:
Schwartz, Benjamin I. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Harvard East Asian Series 16. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1964.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This definitive study of Yan Fu treats his ideas as historically inflected but also as having more general significance. Schwartz is careful to portray Yan’s engagement with Western texts as irreducibly creative rather than evidence of a “Western impact” on inert Chinese material.
Find this resource:
Yan Fu 嚴復. Yan Fu ji (嚴復集). Edited by Wang Chi 王栻. 5 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The definitive collection of the works of Yan Fu, arguably one of the most influential and far-thinking intellectuals of the era. The anthology includes his poetry, reform essays from 1895 as well as after 1911, and prefaces to his influential translations of Western works of political and social thought, including Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Find this resource:
Yang Jialuo 杨家骆, ed. Wuxu bianfa wenxian huibian (戊戌變法文獻彙編). 5 vols. Taipei: Dingwen shudian, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A particularly comprehensive anthology of key texts—including palace memorials and reform essays—published around the time of the Hundred Days reforms.
Find this resource:
The New Culture and May Fourth Movements

The May Fourth era, named for the 4 May 1919 student protests against Chinese treatment under the Versailles Treaty, has long been associated with iconoclastic antitraditionalism and radical calls for Westernization (Chen 1984, Lin 1979). In continuing the critical assessment of Chinese culture and reception of Western ideas begun a few years earlier, under the auspices of the so-called “New Culture movement,” these thinkers did advance bold new thinking about the conditions under which China could be seen as modern (Chow 1960); an example of how their thought might contribute in substantive ways to more-general ideas of democracy and social change is explored in Jenco 2010. Moreover, current research has shown the influence of moderate and conservative voices in crafting the thought of this era, as articulated in Chen 1985 as well as Doleželová-Velingerová and Král 2001. Liu 1995 shows the extent to which Chinese thought of this era cannot be captured by simple binaries of traditional/modern; rather, it was always characterized by a transnational, transgenerational interaction of old and new. Wang 2003 explores the personal and intellectual relationships that mediated May Fourth–era thought.

Chen Duxiu 陈独秀. Chen Duxiu wenzhang xuanbian (陈独秀文章选编). 3 vols. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Chen Duxiu was the founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, well known already for his vicious attacks on Chinese tradition from the perspective of Enlightenment-inspired scientific principles and egalitarianism. His collected works enable a comprehensive glimpse of the evolution of his thought from moderate to radical.
Find this resource:
Chen Song 陈崧, ed. Wusi qian hou dong xi wenhua wenti lunzhan wenxuan (五四前后东西文化问题论战文选). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This excellent compilation reprints key contributions to debates on East-West culture that were published in journals before and after the May Fourth era. Chen continues earlier Chinese exegetical traditions by drawing together otherwise inaccessible work, in ways that throw new light on the connections among the source materials he collects here. Notably includes moderate and conservative voices that resisted May Fourth radicalism.
Find this resource:
Chow, Tse-tung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Harvard East Asian Studies 6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book remains the definitive study of the May Fourth movement and includes extensive discussion of its periodization, its debates, and its personalities. Chow draws on an enormous range of material, citing and translating long passages in otherwise inaccessible works to bring the spirit of the May Fourth reform movement alive and to explore the ambiguities in May Fourth commitments to enlightenment.
Find this resource:
Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena, and Oldřich Král, eds. The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project. Harvard East Asian Monographs 207. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This well-crafted edited volume was among the first to critically reassess China’s long-standing May Fourth project, reflecting on how historical representations of it throughout the 20th century have been unduly shaped by the partial self-representations of its participants. This volume considers the extent to which the May Fourth legacy was and is constituted by moderate as well as radical possibilities.
Find this resource:
Jenco, Leigh K. Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511750892Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A contribution to the emerging field of “comparative political theory,” which incorporates Chinese and non-Western voices into disciplinary discussions in fields such as political theory and philosophy. Argues that Zhang Shizhao, in facing the difficulties of social change in early republican China, offers substantive and original insight into the more general dilemmas of founding new political communities.
Find this resource:
Lin, Yusheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the most influential early interpretations of the May Fourth movement, which argues that its iconoclasm and emphasis on cultural reform are a distinctively Chinese phenomenon, with roots in (ironically) traditional Neo-Confucian preoccupations with ordering the mind.
Find this resource:
Liu, Lydia H. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated modernity—China, 1900–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Liu’s influential study of cultural exchange examines the process by which classical Chinese terms were used to render Western terms by Japanese scholars and then reimported into China; she describes this movement not as translation between equivalent terms, but rather the creation of new ideas via “translingual practice.”
Find this resource:
Wang Fansen 王汎森. Zhongguo jindai sixiang yu xueshu de xipu (中國近代思想與學術的系譜). Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding and wide-ranging set of historical studies that focus in particular on the social role of intellectuals after the demise of the exam system, including their engagements with Western thought.
Find this resource:
Revolutionary Ideals, 1911–1949

The revolution in culture called for by May Fourth intellectuals was intertwined with a revolution in political institutions. These ideals were articulated in nationalist, anti-Manchu terms, most prominently by Zhang Binglin (Zhang Taiyan), and their goals were shaped by Sun Yat-sen’s “three principles of the people.” Sun’s ideas would go on to have far greater political endorsement on Taiwan, after the retreat of the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, whereas the mainland would become dominated by the Leninist policies of Mao Zedong after the success of the Communist Revolution.

Sun Yat-sen and Nationalist Revolution

Sun Yat-sen is probably the most famous person associated with China’s 1911 Revolution, which toppled the Qing dynasty. But the revolutionary ideas in China were not always purely socialist or nationalist; even Sun 1927 offers hybrid views that promoted radical ends in ways indebted to earlier forms of Asian thought, including anti-Manchu writings from the 17th century. As Murthy 2011 shows in a philosophical study, Zhang’s ideas (see Zhang 1982) were deeply influenced by Buddhism as well as nationalist and anarchist ideologies.

Murthy, Viren. The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness. Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004203877.i-268Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the first book-length examinations in English of Zhang Taiyan’s revolutionary philosophy, emphasizing its indebtedness to Yogācāra Buddhism as well as its engagement with modern global capitalism. Contextualizes Zhang’s arguments by discussing their similarities and differences with alternative views in late imperial and republican China, such as Kang Youwei’s.
Find this resource:
Sun Yat-sen. San min chu I: The Three Principles of the People. Edited by L. T. Chen. Translated by Frank W. Price. International Understanding. Shanghai: China Committee, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The standard translation of Sun Yat-sen’s politically influential “three principles” of people’s livelihood (minsheng), people’s nationalism (minzu), and people’s power (minquan). Although seemingly a call for nationalist self-rule, the three principles nevertheless authorize Han domination of minority cultures and the subjection of the people to a system of tutelage. Would go on to be particularly influential in Taiwan, where the principles were ostensibly the basis for Kuomintang (KMT, often translated as Chinese Nationalist Party) rule there after 1949.
Find this resource:
Zhang Taiyan 章太炎. Zhang Taiyan quan ji (章太炎全集). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The comprehensive writings of Zhang Taiyan (also known as Zhang Binglin), a prominent revolutionary distinguished for his classical learning as well as promotion of Buddhist principles of knowing.
Find this resource:
Rise of Communism

Definitive research in Dirlik 1989 and Zarrow 1990 has shown the degree to which the growth of communism in China was due not to some inherent cultural proclivity toward collectivism, but rather by anarchist organizations that eventually merged with communist influence and drew on Chinese traditional ideas, particularly Daoism. Daoist influences are also apparent in the work of Li Dazhao (Li 1984), who is often listed with Chen Duxiu (see Chen 1984, cited under the New Culture and May Fourth Movements) as one of China’s first Marxist thinkers. Like other thinkers of his generation, including Mao Zedong, Li was as engaged with Continental European philosophy and classical Confucian ideas, as argued in Meisner 1967, as he was with Marxism. Cheek 2002 offers a usefully mediated introduction to key primary sources in the study of Mao Zedong’s thought. For more-comprehensive information, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles on communism in China (The Chinese Communist Party to 1949, The Chinese Communist Party Since 1949) as well as Mao Zedong.

Cheek, Timothy. Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A nicely annotated collection of primary sources by Mao Zedong, giving both historical context and an overview of how Mao’s thought changed over time. Ideal for classroom use, and as an introduction of Mao’s thought and its relationship to Chinese communism.
Find this resource:
Dirlik, Arif. The Origins of Chinese Communism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The definitive historical examination of communism’s origins, demonstrating its sociological relationship to the growth of anarchist cells in early republican China and to the key intervention of the Comintern in transforming radical ideology toward Marxism.
Find this resource:
Li Dazhao 李大钊. Li Dazhao wenji (李大钊文集). 2 vols. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This comprehensive collection of works by “China’s first Marxist” demonstrates the degree to which his thought was just as marked by liberal, Daoist, and even Confucian influences as it was by Marxism. The collection includes, in addition to Li’s critical assessments of Marxism, his influential and rich studies of historiography and time, such as his masterwork Shi xue yao lun.
Find this resource:
Meisner, Maurice J. Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism. Harvard East Asian Series 27. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first and so far only book-length study of Li’s work in English. Although some of the references and conclusions are now outdated, and its presentation of Li’s Marxism as the inevitable teleological culmination of Li’s thought is overstated, the book is distinguished for its emphasis on the “traditional” influences on Li and for its comprehensive grasp of the world of thought in which Li moved.
Find this resource:
Zarrow, Peter. Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture. Studies of the East Asian Institute. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Shows the degree to which anarchism in China remained indebted to Daoist philosophy; notable for its careful unpacking of anarchism’s imbrication in wider debates about the status of women and the family in traditional China.
Find this resource:
Liberal Responses

Although the communists ended up the “victors” (at least in the short run) at the end of China’s 20th-century turmoil, and although revolutionary discourse dominated political thought for much of that period, liberal ideas of various stripes flourished throughout the 1920s and 1930s (Fung 2010); after 1949, these conversations continued abroad, in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many liberal arguments were exemplified or influenced by the Deweyan pragmatism in Hu 1953. The author of Zhang 1993 was influential in building a “Third Force” that opposed both nationalism and communism while, like other liberals, responding constructively to the distinctive problems of China’s domestic needs, its global position, and its cultural legacy. (Some of the key liberal perspectives appear in essays collected in Chen 1985, cited under the New Culture and May Fourth Movements.) Many of these responses have been revisited more recently in works such as Xu and Luo 2007 (see Critical Discourse in the Contemporary Chinese World), looking for alternative possibilities for moderate modern reform opened by the authors’ ideas. Chang 1989 also offers a pessimistic, albeit historically rich and theoretically insightful, comparison of the development of Chinese thought and its failure to recognize the worth of European liberal ideas.

Chang Hao 張灝. You’an yishi yu minzhu chuantong (幽暗意識與民主傳統 /). Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores why China failed to develop the ideological prerequisites for liberal democracy. This theoretically insightful comparative study argues that Chinese thought has for the most part been dominated by an unusually optimistic trust in the capacity of rulers and individuals to transform society positively, in contrast to the “concerned consciousness” (youhuan yishi) about power that led European liberals to seek institutional modes of constraining and channeling it.
Find this resource:
Fung, Edmund S. K. The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511730139Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A helpful survey of key debates in the republican period, notable for its coverage of many ideas and thinkers not typically engaged by English-language scholars. Argues that many of these debates by liberals and conservatives paved the way for Chinese modern thinking, though it does not engage Marxist or communist influences on that thought.
Find this resource:
Hu Shi 胡適. Hu Shi wen cun (胡適文存). 4 vols. Taipei: Yuandong chubanshe, 1953.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Like other major thinkers of the period, Hu’s collected works exist in many forms and appeared originally in a variety both of academic and more-popular publications. As one of the most well known of China’s liberals, Hu advocated a scientific, problem-based approach to China’s predicament that disavowed revolutionary or totalizing solutions in favor of piecemeal, democratic reform. He was a central figure in the May Fourth movement (see the New Culture and May Fourth Movements), arguing forcefully for language vernacularization, scientific education, and a reappraisal of the value of China’s non-elite culture.
Find this resource:
Zhang Junmai 张君劢. Zhang Junmai ji (张君劢集). Edited by Huang Kejian 黄克剑 and Wu Xiaolong 吴小龙. Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Zhang was a central figure in liberal debates during the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on the work of German statists as well as Liang Qichao, Zhang argued for a socialist democracy under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nanjing regime. He is best known for formulating “metaphysical” or “philosophical” values in opposition to scientific views of life, in a series of famous debates in 1923.
Find this resource:
The Revival of Confucianism

Although widely reviled since the May Fourth movement, Confucianism has made a major comeback in modern China and the wider Sinophone diaspora, as well as in the English-speaking world. More-recent reformulations of this “New Confucianism” in China, with its emphasis on Sinocentric institutional reforms, can be found in Jiang 2003 (cited under Confucianism and China). Before the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese scholars in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States (most prominently Mou Zongsan, and Mou’s student Tu Wei-ming) had begun exploring the value of Confucianism as a social and religious practice for the modern world (see Confucianism and the World). These efforts are increasingly amplified by scholars writing in English, some of whom have enriched the global standing of Confucianism through sympathetic albeit critical explorations of its historical debates and evolving concerns.

Confucianism and China

Much of the reinterpretation of Confucianism during the 20th century is due to the work of diaspora intellectuals working outside the communist mainland after 1949. Some, such as in Mou, et al. 1958, claim earlier precedents for this “New Confucianism” (in Chinese, xin ruxue 新儒学or xin rujia 新儒家, to be distinguished from the xin xue 心学—“learning of the heart-mind”—of Neo-Confucianism) in the pioneering Liang 1983, by Liang Shuming, whom Alitto 1979 called “the last Confucian.” In more-recent years, Jiang 2003 has provoked tremendous controversy with his radical and sometimes ethnocentric interpretation of what he calls “institutional Confucianism.” Makeham 2008 advances strong criticism of the genealogical, intellectual, and historical claims made by many New Confucians, including Jiang.

Alitto, Guy. The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although not about Confucianism per se, Alitto’s book offers a perceptive contextualization of Liang’s arguments in the larger intellectual world of republican China, including Liang’s role in articulating rural reconstruction as a moderate alternative to communism and May Fourth radicalism. In an epilogue, Alitto notes Liang’s own self-identification as Buddhist, despite his earlier ongoing defenses of the value of Confucianism.
Find this resource:
Jiang Qing 蒋庆. Zhengzhi ruxue: Dangdai ruxue de zhuanxiang, tezhi yu fazhan (政治儒学: 当代儒学的转向、特质与发展). Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Jiang draws from a less well-known strand of Confucianism derived from the Gongyang commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals to argue for the institutional rather than merely ethical or cultural value offered by imperial Confucianism to the modern world. His thesis is particularly controversial for justifying political and social hierarchy in the name of good governance.
Find this resource:
Liang Shuming 梁漱溟. Dong xi wenhua jiqi zhexue (东西文化及其哲学). Taipei: Liren Shuju, 1983.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Originally published in 1921, this is one of the earliest defenses of the value of Confucianism to the modern world, advanced via Liang’s innovative theory that situates Indian, Western, and Chinese culture into three successive stages of civilization. As the middle way between Indian asceticism and Western materialism, Chinese Confucian culture emerges as the culmination of historical progress. Republished as recently as 2010 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan).
Find this resource:
Makeham, John. Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive and sharp critique of the revival of Confucianism, from a historical and textual perspective. Points out the constructed and ahistorical claims of much “New Confucian” thought and argues that the revival cannot be attributed to direct promotion by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government, but rather to Chinese cultural nationalism.
Find this resource:
Mou, Zongsan, Carsun Chang, Junyi Tang, and Fuguan Xu. “A Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” In The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought. Vol. 2. Edited by Carsun Chang, 455–483. New York: Bookman, 1958.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This translation of a famous manifesto issued by diaspora Chinese intellectuals after the Communist Revolution calls for a reassessment of China’s traditional culture, including its value as a counterpart to the alienating tendencies of modernity. Notable for its invocation of Chinese culture as a spiritually guided entity compelling the psychologies of modern Chinese.
Find this resource:
Confucianism and the World

Confucianism is no longer, if it ever was, a purely “Chinese” or even “East Asian” philosophy. Thanks to the work of cross-cultural interpreters such as in Tu 1979, as well as no doubt to the emerging economic might of the PRC, Confucianism is now legitimately seen as a world philosophy and (sometimes) religion. These more recent Anglophone and international interpretations of Confucianism, however, tend to follow Mou, et al. 1958 (cited under Confucianism and China) in deemphasizing the institutional requirements of Confucian political theory, to focus on the relatively dehistoricized Confucian ideals of virtue. This has led to a number of attempts, including by many contributors to Bell and Hahm 2003, to bring widely validated ideals such as human rights and rule of law into conversation with rarified Confucian principles, irrespective of how those principles may have changed through time, or informed political action in the past. For a more historicized view of human rights and Confucianism, among other Chinese theories, see the primary texts gathered in Angle and Svensson 2001, cited under English-Language Anthologies.

Angle, Stephen C. Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding attempt by a modern philosopher and scholar of Confucianism to use (primarily Neo-)Confucian categories to advance substantive philosophical discourse in its own right, touching on issues such as the modern uses of ritual and claims about human nature.
Find this resource:
Bell, Daniel A., and Hahm Chaibong, eds. Confucianism for the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511509964Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An influential edited volume that collects attempts by current Western and Asian scholars to think through how Confucianism might be relevant for the modern world. These speculations are often grounded in primarily impressionistic and ahistorical representations of Confucianism, although these continue to be influential in much current discourse.
Find this resource:
Tu Wei-ming. Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This collection offers some of the earliest attempts in the English academic world to think through the possibility of Neo-Confucianism as a philosophy with modern relevance. Tu is particularly convincing when discussing the religious and social significance of Neo-Confucian practices, including self-cultivation. His ideas gained prominence when he lent voice to the Asian Values debates in Singapore and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s.
Find this resource:
Critical Discourse in the Contemporary Chinese World

The diminished intellectual output during the anti-rightist campaigns and the Cultural Revolution was offset by the explosion of intellectual discourse that emerged after the “reform and opening-up” (gaige kaifang) policies of Deng Xiaoping, as well as by the lifting of martial law on Taiwan in 1987. As Davies 2009 argues, the deeply contested guidelines of what the author calls Chinese critical discourse reflect complex commitments to various thinkers and ideas, each of which represents different visions for what is best for China (on view in Luo and Ni 2000 and Davies 2001). The works of many intellectuals, including Wang 2008 (cited under General Overviews), Aisixiang.com, and Chen 2010, use social and historical research to consider questions of modernity, cosmopolitanism, and development in Chinese and broader Asian contexts. The complexity of these explorations belies the simple labels of “liberal” and “New Left” often applied to them. These, like their counterparts writing under rubrics of “liberalism” or “Third Way” approaches, often advance new substantive inquiry in the process of interrogating neoliberalism, statism, and their contemporaneous interlocutors from a variety of perspectives, exemplified by Xu and Luo 2007. Many of these debates have been translated into English in China Heritage Quarterly, cited under Online Resources; the works of left-leaning and neo-Marxist Chinese intellectuals have been published widely in English, including Zhang 2001, as well as in American social-commentary journals such as Social Text and New Left Review.

Aisixiang.com.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This website’s comprehensive archive of the works of Wang Hui offers many of the key essays in which he argues for a neo-Marxist approach to the problems of modern China. Wang is known for his critique both of Chinese society and its communist leadership as leaning toward neoliberal thinking, abandoning what he believes is a more fruitful and critical Marxist revolutionary tradition. He situates his critiques, published both in English and Chinese, in a broader assessment of the inequalities produced by global market expansion.
Find this resource:
Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822391692Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This English translation of Chen’s earlier Chinese-language book has already made an impact in Asian studies. It argues that to move beyond imperialization, studies of Asia (including Chen’s native Taiwan) must attempt intra-Asian comparisons to forge solidarity and new knowledge in the pursuit of emancipatory politics.
Find this resource:
Davies, Gloria. Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Davies’s masterful overview of what she calls “Chinese critical inquiry” in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century advances a powerful comparison between its perfectionist longings, on the one hand, and the resistance to moral closure promoted by much Euro-American academic discourse.
Find this resource:
Davies, Gloria, ed. Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry. Asian Voices. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This extremely valuable book selects original scholarship, translated into English, by Chinese scholars on the state of modern Chinese intellectual discourse, to showcase the diversity of critical views in modern China (particularly in the 1990s). Also includes a valuable translated transcript of a conversation among several Chinese intellectuals about the state of liberalism and the New Left.
Find this resource:
Luo Gang 罗岗 and Ni Wenjian 倪文尖. 90 niandai sixiang wenxuan (90年代思想文选). 3 vols. Nanning, China: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive and well-curated collection of the influential, debate-motivating essays from the People’s Republic of China in the 1990s, concerning both economic and political reform as well as engagements with Western ideas and cultural movements.
Find this resource:
Xu Jilin 許紀霖 and Luo Gang 羅崗. Qi meng de zi wo wa jie: 1990 niandai yilai Zhongguo sixiang wenhuajie zhongda lunzheng yanjiu (啟蒙的自我瓦解: 1990 年代以來中國思想文化界重大論爭研究). Changchun, China: Jilin chubanshe, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this assessment of the tumultuous era of the 1990s, Xu and Luo attempt to exemplify and explore a “third way” beyond right/left paradigms. Much of their exploration centers on the concept of enlightenment, particularly its collapse and hope for revival, in modern Chinese critical discourse.
Find this resource:
Zhang, Xudong, ed. Whither China?: Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An appropriate companion volume to Davies 2001, this book collects translated essays by key Chinese intellectuals as well as Western scholars on the state of Chinese cultural and political affairs, with a special emphasis on anti-neoliberal critiques.
Find this resource: