Summary

Contemporary Chinese intellectuals display a complex and sometimes contradictory attitude toward the West and toward exchanges between Chinese and Western thought. Their views are strongly shaped by state-led narratives, such as the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the “rise of China,” and the “Chinese Dream,” which emphasize Chinese cultural uniqueness and superiority. In exchanges between Chinese and Western thought, Chinese intellectuals often present themselves as bearing a mission to promote Chinese values to the West. Rather than engaging in reciprocal dialogue, they frequently seek to “instruct” the West and to “correct” what they perceive as Western misunderstandings. However, certain events have also revealed the dilemmas and divisions within the Chinese intellectual community. Some scholars have attempted to challenge dominant narratives through critical essays, expressing a longing for freedom. Yet such voices are often quickly subjected to censorship and find it difficult to gain wide circulation within China. Overall, in the current political, economic, and cultural context, Chinese intellectuals resemble a “choir” to some extent. Genuine dialogue between Chinese and Western thought will require greater openness, deeper critical reflection, and the recovery of independent intellectual voices beyond this collective “choir.”

Thomas Zimmer is a German sinologist who has been teaching and researching at German and Chinese universities for several decades. His areas of research include Chinese literature, the history of traveling between Europe and China since 1600, and the associated processes of knowledge transfer, as well as developments in early Marxism in China.

Subscribe now

中国知识分子的“思想大合唱”

司马涛

当代中国知识分子在面对西方及中西思想交流时，呈现出一种复杂而矛盾的态度。这种态度既受到国家主导叙事的深刻影响，又在一定程度上反映了知识分子对自身角色、自由表达以及文化自信的思考。中国知识分子在当前环境下比较像一个“合唱团”，其思想和表达往往围绕着“中国崛起”、“中国梦”和“文化自信”等国家叙事展开，而对西方的态度则体现出警惕、批判与选择性开放的特征。

首先，中国知识分子在国家叙事的框架下，倾向于强调中国的独特性和文化优越感。近年来，随着“中华民族伟大复兴”与“文化自信”成为中国官方意识形态的重要话语，一些中国知识分子积极响应，并在公共领域中发声，强调中国历史文化的独特价值，试图与西方价值体系划清界限。比如复旦大学中国研究院院长张维为主张“中国模式”优于西方自由民主制度，认为西方的“普世价值”并不适用于中国。他在《这就是中国》等节目中强调：“我们要有制度自信、道路自信、文化自信，中国有五千年文明，是世界上最有持续性的文明。” 清华大学康晓光教授提出“文化保守主义”立场，认为中国应该拒绝西方价值体系的“软侵略”，重新确立以儒家文化为核心的国家意识形态。他主张“复兴儒教”，使之成为现代中国的精神支柱。这种态度源于对西方主导的全球话语权的质疑，以及对近代中国“受害者”角色的强调。相对于对中国历史的深入批判，中国知识分子更倾向于“讲好中国故事”、传播“正能量”。这种“文化自信”的基础主要是对传统的肯定，而非批判性反思。相比之下，西方知识分子更注重个体独立性和批判精神，这与中国知识分子的集体主义倾向形成鲜明对比。

其次，在中西思想交流中，中国知识分子往往表现出一种“使命感”，试图向西方输出中国的话语和价值观。中国知识分子更倾向于“教导”西方，纠正“误解”，而不是进行双向、平等的思想交流。一个典型人物是因对国际政治尤其在对美关系方面态度强硬著称的中国人民大学国际关系学院教授金灿荣。他经常直接批评西方媒体与政治体制，并试图‘修正’公众对国际事务的认知。在分析国际问题时，他常用“告诉大家真相”、“不要被西方舆论误导”等表述，树立一种中国知识分子‘揭露真相’的权威形象。例如，他在一次讲座中说：“西方说中国不民主，那是他们根本不了解中国。我们得帮他们弄清楚什么是真正的民主。”——这里的“帮他们弄清楚”显然带有一种教导姿态。这种单向输出反映了中国对国际话语权的追求，但也导致了交流中的不对等。例如，西方强调自主探索和科学传统，而中国知识分子容易将西方的质疑视为“傲慢”或“误解”，从而削弱了真正的思想碰撞。此外，“人类命运共同体”等新理念试图取代西方的“人权”话语，进一步凸显了中国知识分子试图重塑全球叙事的努力。

不过，某些事件也揭示了中国知识分子内部的困境与分裂。比如清华大学许章润教授等人试图通过批判性文章（如2018年发表的《我们当下的恐惧与期待》一文）挑战主流叙事，表达对自由和理性的渴望。但这些声音往往迅速遭到审查，难以在国内获得广泛传播。相比之下，体制内的知识分子更倾向于顺应国家叙事，强调“正能量”而避免敏感话题。例如，2018年微信上流传的博文《知识分子不能只想着当富豪更不能当“土豪”》呼吁知识分子承担“道德责任”，却未触及体制性问题。外部审查和自我审查的压力使得中国知识分子的多元性受限，难以形成像德国知识分子那样的“多声部”景观。

王小波的遗产为我们提供了一个独特的视角。他在1990年代的文章中批判了中国知识分子因道德优越感和等级观念而产生的局限性，强调科学与思想的自由和平等。他认为，真正的知识分子应以理性为基础，追求真理，而非被意识形态束缚。王小波的观点在今天依然具有启发性：中国知识分子需要摆脱“精神监狱”，以开放的心态与世界对话。然而，当前的审查制度和国家叙事使得这种自由表达变得困难。正如李银河2013年博文中所言，王小波的文字至今仍被视为“敏感”，反映了审查对思想启蒙的持续压制。

总之，中国当代知识分子在面对西方及中西思想交流时，既受到国家叙事的引导，又在有限的空间内寻求表达自我。要实现真正的中西思想交流，中国知识分子需要在开放性与批判性之间找到平衡，摆脱“合唱团”的束缚，重拾个体的独立声音。

作者简介：司马涛，德国汉学家，数十年来在中国和德国多所高校任教。他的研究领域涵盖中国文学、自1600年以来欧洲与中国之间的旅行史及其相关的知识迁移过程，以及中国早期马克思主义的发展。

Issue 214 of Telos has just been published. This constitutes the second issue emanating from our 2025 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference in New York, “China Keywords,” co-edited by Eric Hendriks, the Director of the TPPI China Initiative.

This principally consists of articles on central Chinese political concepts and also continues the debate in the previous issue about the nature of the Chinese state. Read the editors’ introduction here.

In November 2024, the First World Conference of Classics was held in Beijing, and Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter, marking the formal endorsement of classics at the state level. The rise of classics in China—which remains highly controversial—is part of a century-long intellectual effort to reassess Chinese civilization in response to the crises of Western modernity. In ongoing debates over antiquity and modernity, China and the West, Chinese scholars have turned to canonical traditions in both civilizations to seek intellectual resources for addressing shared challenges. This civilizational self-awareness ensures that classics in China will not simply replicate Western models but will also involve sustained engagement with China’s own classical heritage.

Luo Feng is a Professor at the School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University. Her academic focus is primarily on Greek tragedy, Shakespearean drama, and the study of classical Chinese and Western poetics. She is the author of Dionysus and the World Polis: An Interpretation of Euripides’ “The Bacchae.”

Subscribe now

中国的古典学建设与文明自觉

罗 峰

在全球人文学科整体式微的背景下，一向被认为是西方传统学科的古典学在中国逆势兴起，堪称中外学界的一大奇迹。古典学在中国的兴起也引发了广泛关注，其中不乏争议。中国学人为何对据称是西方传统王牌学科的古典学感兴趣？它在中国的发展为何会引起如此大的关注？中国的古典学建设又将走向何方？

一、古典学的何种“传统”

2015年1月，由刘小枫教授创立的“‘经典与解释’丛书十五年350种纪念研讨会”在北京召开。“从古典重新开始”一时成为中国学界热议的话题。经国内媒体推波助澜，这门原本极为边缘的冷门学科随后在学界引发关于“何为古典学”的争议，引起广泛关注。

有目共睹的是，“经典与解释”丛书（迄今出版近800种）设计之初便中西学并重，为中国古典学术奠定了深广的基础，极大推进了中国古典学的建设，成为当代中国最具影响力的学术品牌之一。丛书下设“西方传统”“中国传统”“经典与解释辑刊”三大系列，其下又各设若干子系列（例如，“西方传统”下设“荷马注疏集”“古希腊肃剧注疏”“阿里斯托芬集”“柏拉图注疏集”“法拉比集”“莎士比亚绎读”“洛克集”“尼采集”“施特劳斯集”等四十余个子系列）。“西方传统”的译介不限于狭义上的“古典”，而是同时纳入中世纪的阿尔法拉比、阿威罗伊，现代哲人霍布斯、卢梭、洛克等，形成对西方古今大传统的深厚理解，侧重于经典的细致注疏，全面涵盖了政治哲学、古典诗学、伦理学、宗教哲学等学科，旨在引领汉语学界对西方思想大传统朝有解释深度的细读方向推进；“中国传统”立足于推动中国学人在现代学术语境中重拾自己的古典传统；“经典与解释辑刊”则以专题形式推广国内外学界的最新成果。

李长春教授总结了刘小枫教授在中国推行的古典学的四大特征：首先是涵括古今中西的包容性，通过充分敞开其中的张力，以西学激活中国经典，以古典关切现代人的生存处境。其次，中西古典学均诞生于现代性的学术语境，因此具有以古鉴今的反思性。第三是批判性，要在中西古今的张力中总体审视人类文明形态，需要借助古典学的批判意识。对什么是好、善、高贵和伟大等根本问题的共同关切，对于可能出现的新的文明样态的形塑，表明古典学也天然具有建设性。

时过境迁，古典学如今已迎来最好的发展机遇。不过，十年前那场因古典学在中国的兴起所引发的争论恰恰让我们看到，国内部分古典学者从一开始就没能认清西方古典学内部的张力。其实，早在2012年刊发的《古典学的何种“传统”》中，刘小枫教授不仅已然扼要梳理了西方古典学的起源和发展，还回溯源头精当地指出了内含于这一学科的张力。即便在西方，古典学也并非传统学科，而是伴随现代大学兴起的产物。18世纪末，亚当·斯密倡导面向商业社会的实用国民教育，人文教育衰落。通常认为，西方古典学科的成立，以弗雷德里希·A·沃尔夫（Friedrich A. Wolf）于1795年出版的《荷马绪论》为标志。但这位被誉为“古典学之父”的沃尔夫挑起“荷马问题”本身就表明，古典学从一开始就将古希腊罗马经典视为“古籍”研究对象，而非活的教养源泉。西方古典学科产生之初所内含的张力鲜明地体现在学科分支上。古典学甫一成立，便形成三位一体结构：古典语文学（文本研究）、古代史、考古学。三种学问路径的品质大相径庭，由此也导致了学科旨趣的核心分歧。有别于以实证原则研究为路径的古代史和考古学，古典语文学以关注经典文本承载的智慧。19世纪末，维拉莫维茨与尼采的著名论战所呈现出的实证史学与从现代文明危机视角解读古典的路径分歧，就凸显了西方古典学学科内部学问路向的本质差异与主导权争夺。不同于把一切文本当史料的实证路径，尼采的古典学抱负强调面向少数人进行古典教育的道德动机。这种分歧进一步延伸至现代教材：比尔德与汉德森的《古典学》代表了英美“后现代”倾向，将古典学核心等同于“旅游”（人类学化的实地考察/物质遗存研究）。这种学问路径把泡萨尼阿斯的《希腊指南》奉为圭臬，文本研究服务于田野。与之相对，克拉特夫的《古典语文学常谈》则体现了德国传统对西方文明精神传统的关切，将古典学（尤其语文学）与政治、道德及文明危机思考相联系，强调其教养功能。

由此可见，西方古典学的“传统”面相远非单一。由于古典学在西方的诞生有着鲜明的现代性，自这门学科诞生之日起，把古典作品作为客观实证研究的对象（以考古、人类学化为主导），还是视之为平衡乃至回应现代性困境的智慧和思想资源，一开始就构成了这门学科的内部紧张。后者正是尼采所代表的西方古典学人的品质和学问取向。尽管在那场争论中，维拉莫维茨占据上风，尼采所代表的关注古典智慧与现代精神关联的路径，却为我们指明了中国古典学的未来。

尼采的古典学路径表明，西方现代性的困境同样构成促发西方古典学人省思的一股力量。在这点上，中国古典学人的初心与之相仿：晚清以来中国学术乃至文明同样遭遇了西方现代性带来的困境，如何在这次中西文明的大碰撞中看清中国与西方，乃至传统与现代的关系，同样促发了中国学人百余年来的精神追索。

二、中国的古典学建设与文明自觉

晚清以来，中国以惨痛的代价迎来了现代性时刻。遭遇西方严重冲击给彼时的中国学人造成一个严重的误识，中国在军事和经济上的落后，被等同甚至归因于文化、制度乃至文明的落后，甚至出现了全盘否定中国传统的倾向。由新文化运动引发的中西古今之争，影响至今。2009年时值新文化运动九十年，《开放时代》主办了题为《古典西学在中国》的论坛（后以笔谈形式刊发）。此次论坛不仅深入探讨了中国的古典学建设及文化崛起，诸多议题（文化自信、自主知识体系的探索及文明互鉴等）甚至富于前瞻性。

甘阳教授指出，较之经济上有目共睹的成绩，中国在文化上的崛起刚起步。原因在于近代以来中国对西方的认知长期停留在“现代西方”（文艺复兴后的技术文明），并以之比照“传统中国”，导致中西比较严重不对称。长期以来，中国学人不仅全盘否定中国文明，也未看清西方古典传统（古希腊-罗马）与现代西方的断裂性。这种认知偏差使中国学术陷入“以现代西学为体”的困境，亟需通过研究西方古典文明重建文化主体性。但研究西方古典学绝非亦步亦趋追随西方，而是借此重新定位中国和西方的关系。因此，建设中国的古典学不是西方古典学的一部分，而是“中国学术界的一部分”。他还提醒，中国的古典研究虽旨在服务中国文明复兴，简单学习西方的时代也已过去，但我们绝不能将西方意识形态化，而是要严肃对待西学，对西学的了解深度将决定我们对中国的了解深度。

刘小枫教授在题为《为什么应该建设中国的古典学》的发言中系统检审了中国高等教育的结构性缺陷：由于传统“国学”被现代西方学科体系（文史哲分立）切割，中国传统学问已失去整体关照。西方古典学（古希腊罗马研究）在高校更几近空白。现代大学日益凸显的实用导向使得大学过度偏重理工、经管等实用学科，导致文教沦为技术附庸，以品性涵养为核心的古典教化传统在我国教育中的缺位，令文明血脉濒临中断，文明传承陷入危机。刘小枫教授主张以“古典学”替代“五四”以来的“国学”，打破中西对立框架，转向“古今之争”的文明对话。他旗帜鲜明地反对与西方主流大学的古典学专业接轨，认为应该整合中国古典、古希腊-罗马、犹太-基督教、印度文明研究，消弭文史哲分割，以经典文本教学为核心，建设中西合璧的古典学，设立独立一级学科“古典文明系”，以此完成晚清以来中国学界未竟的教育大业：“立足本土培养‘兼通中西之学，于古今沿革，中外得失，皆了然于胸中’（皮锡瑞语）的新时代栋梁之才。”

此次论坛也为中西比较与文明对话的路径建立了范式。与会学者对西方文明的根基进行了批判性反思。研究西方古典旨在认清其文明根底的矛盾（如两希张力），为中国提供镜鉴，目标是以“文明对话”取代“文明冲突”，在“古今中西”的叩问中认清自己的位置。

二十一世纪初以来，古典学在中国方兴未艾。李长春教授指出，以2010年中国古典学学会创立为标志，中国学人在教学和科研中长期摸索推进古典学学科建设的努力，可谓中国的“古典学运动”。这场由中国学人自发开展的古典学运动“深刻地反映了中国学人想要重新认识中国自己的文明传统的强烈冲动”（《专访甘阳：古典学与中国学术共同体》）。

三、如何建设中国的古典学

新世纪以来，古典学在中国的兴起，不仅是中国学界对古典学学科建设的独立摸索，也表明了中国学人探问中西文明根柢的学术自觉。随着2024年11月首届世界古典学大会召开，中国的古典学建设获得国家层面的支持。如今，古典学早已不是先前的冷门学科（入选“2024年中国学术十大热点”）。围绕中国古典学的学科化设计及面临的挑战，也在学界引发诸多讨论。

2024年6月，在第十一届全国古典学年会召开期间举办的“应该如何建设中国的古典学”的圆桌讨论上，贺方婴教授回顾了21世纪以来中国古典学学科建设的历程。若以《经典与解释》辑刊发布为标志，中国古典学学科的起点可以追溯至2003。首辑刊发中学文章9篇，西学文章4篇，彰显了中国古典学人在中西比较视野下做中国的古典学研究的初心。2010年起，由刘小枫教授主编的《古典学研究》历经国际期刊、国内辑刊，到如今的季刊，为中国古典学学科建设搭建了高水平的学术交流平台。柯小刚教授甚至认为，古典学在中国的发展堪称“古典学的中国时刻”。

长期以来，中国古典学在缺乏国家制度支持、自主探索的情况下“碰运气”（《与刘小枫谈古典教育》）。2010年，刘小枫教授在中国人民大学首创古典学实验班，以中西古典学为核心辟出跨学科模式的试验田。他还编修了将语言、作品与文脉传统贯穿其中的古典语文教材《凯若斯：古希腊文读本》和《雅努斯：古典拉丁语文读本》。

对于中国古典学的学科设计，刘小枫教授强调要立足中国自身的古典传统，关注西方古典学的同时还应包纳古印度和阿拉伯文明。在对西方古典学的认识上，他主张除了公认的古希腊罗马经典，还应纳入欧洲的古典传统，因为西方的古今断裂实际发生于十七十八世纪的古今之争。诚如丁耘教授所言，由于中国的古典学天然是“一门自觉检讨现代性的学科”，这必然意味着新时期的古典学建设要有“大古典学”视野。刘小枫教授还指出设立古典学本科建制的紧迫性：近百年来，中国文化面临的基本问题依然是化解西方文明的挑战，“‘破解古今中西之争’是新时期的历史使命”。中国学术的底气，必须基于深入把握西方传世经典重新认识中国传世经典。若无从本科开始培育习读中西传世经典的学科建制保障，中国学界很难“真正获得对西方文明独立自主的解释权”。（《古典学不是象牙塔里的学问》）。

不过，就在形势一片大好之际，国内就古典学的学科范围及古典学学科建设的时机是否成熟上有了一些争议。实际上，刘小枫教授早已指明中国古典学建设的核心：“古典学的主体是经典研究，文献整理、文物品鉴、考古发掘都是辅助学科。”（《古典学不是象牙塔里的学问》）。2025年3月，四川大学成立国内首个古典学系，率先开启了中国古典学学科化建制的实践和探索。

扼要回溯中国古典学的来龙去脉不难看出，中国古典学在全球文科衰退潮流中逆势兴起，并非偶然，而是百年来中国学人在遭遇西方现代性危机中重新认识自我的一次自发探索。在古今中西之争的百年思想激荡中，中国古典学人选择回到中西传世经典，寻找化解人类共同面对的现代性危机的思想资源。这种鲜明的文明自觉注定中国的古典学不会是西方古典学的翻版，而是天然包含着对中华文明源头及传世经典的精深研究。

中国的古典学建设始终要直面吴飞教授指出的三大张力（中西、古今、义理与考据）。在接下来的学科建设道路探索上也将充满困难和争议。但争议本身并非坏事，而是学术活力与自觉的体现，关键在于如何将之转化为利于学科发展的动力。

对于古典学在中国的兴起，西方古典学者总体持开放欢迎的态度。不过，近期有学者注意到，美国“后古典主义研究集团”（The Postclassicisms Collective）核心人物詹姆斯·波尔特（James Porter）认为，中国学者在西方学者早已转向批判、反思乃至抛弃“古典”之时才开始研究西方古典，反映了“当下中国西化的潮流”以及中国学者欲在古典学上“与西方学者一争高下的学术心态”。（张瀚墨，《新世纪国学与古典学关系的反思》）这种偏见与傲慢本身提醒我们：西方古典学在日益考古学化、人类学化乃至反古典的转向中背离古典精神而不断衰落，不啻为一记警钟。这同样警示我们，中西古典学者若不能超越意气之争，摈弃门户之见，回归古典的德性教养旨归，注定无法以平和的心态正确看待古典学在中国的兴起。

【本文为上海市曙光人才计划项目“欧里庇得斯悲剧翻译、笺注与研究”（编号：24SG27）及国家社科基金重大项目“地中海文明与古希腊哲学起源研究”（23&ZD239）的阶段性成果】

作者简介：罗峰，华东师范大学外国语学院教授。她的研究领域集中在希腊悲剧、莎士比亚戏剧，以及中西古典诗学，著有《酒神与世界城邦：<酒神的伴侣>义疏》。

The Chinese New Leviathan: Cultural Subjectivity and Statecraft Today

The 2026 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute Conference

March 20–21, 2026, in New York City

Co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, City University of New York

Conference Registration

Registration for the conference is now open. Click here to register!

Keynote Speaker: Wang Hui (汪晖)

Renowned as a critical theorist and one of China’s leading intellectual historians, Wang Hui (Tsinghua University) will speak on the nexus of state, nation, and empire in modern Chinese history, and its implications for our understanding of modernity as such. His keynote address is entitled “China Under the Condition of Spatial Revolution at the Dawn of the Pacific Era.”

Conference Program (PDF)

Conference Description

Following the fruitful discussion that took place during our “China Keywords” conference in March 2025, our 2026 annual conference will focus on “The Chinese New Leviathan: Cultural Subjectivity and Statecraft Today.” The conference is part of TPPI’s five-year China Initiative, which aims to foster a critical and mutually regarding discussion of social and political theory between China and the West, well beyond the circles of China specialists. This outreach effort across political boundaries continues a tradition established by the journal Telos, which played a pivotal role in fostering a reciprocal encounter between intellectuals in the Anglosphere and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Essays from the “China Keywords” conference will appear in two special issues of the journal, beginning with Telos 213 (Winter 2025).

As one of the most potent and complex keywords in modern China, nationalism demands our rigorous theoretical engagement. It functions as a source of state legitimacy, a tool of social mobilization, and a site of intense public debate. From official state proclamations of rejuvenation to the pulse of online crowds, nationalism flows through China’s internal politics and its global stance. Its conceptualization has provided the intellectual context for the development of modern Chinese power, and it therefore needs to be understood both on endogenous terms and from a global philosophical perspective.

At our 2026 annual conference, presenters will move beyond descriptive accounts to theorize the multifaceted nature of Chinese nationalism, placing Chinese political thought in dialogue with Western critical theory and exploring points of convergence, divergence, and mutual illumination. Our original call for papers placed the possibility of such dialogue in the context of R. G. Collingwood’s The New Leviathan (1942) and Huimin Jin’s discussion of the ontology of self and subject in Telos 213 (Winter 2025). While some speakers and participants will be China specialists, we also warmly encourage non-specialists to join our conversation, and we welcome views from every political and ideological perspective. Indeed, the clash of radically divergent, often unconventional ideas is one of the hallmarks of our conferences.

Conference Location

The conference will be held at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at 25 West 43rd St., 17th Floor, New York, NY 10036. The Calandra Institute is located in midtown Manhattan and is close to major subways stops. It is three blocks from Grand Central Station, two blocks from the Bryant Park subway stop, and three blocks from the Seventh Avenue/42nd Street subway stops. For more information about the Calandra Institute, visit their website at https://calandrainstitute.org.

These are nervous days for China’s senior military officers. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Communist Party’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), has been placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law.” Zhang Youxia, long regarded as an ally of paramount leader Xi Jinping, was the military’s second-highest-ranking officer, directly beneath Xi himself. He is the highest military leader to be brought down by the anti-corruption campaign that, since Xi took office in 2012, has disciplined millions of Party and state officials across all sectors of Chinese society.

With Zhang Youxia’s removal, the CMC has been effectively hollowed out: of the seven members who constituted the commission at the start of the current term, five have now been removed or are under investigation. Only two figures remain: Xi Jinping, who serves as chairman, and Zhang Shengmin, the military’s chief of discipline and anti-corruption enforcement.

What is going on? Why have so many generals been removed from power and punished? The short answer is that we outsiders do not know. What we can say, however, is that there is every indication that the anti-corruption drive is genuine, holding Chinese leaders, civilian and military alike, to stringent standards of competence and moral integrity.

Western Speculations

This is not the line most Western speculations pursue. Instead, the predominant explanans is a concealed struggle for power. Maybe Xi thwarted a coup or broke through stubborn factional resistance. Did he get paranoid? Or was Zhang’s purge a show of strength? Or did Zhang refuse an order to mobilize for an invasion of Taiwan? Perhaps Zhang was the bearer of bad news—that the PRC is nowhere near ready for such a move—and paid the price. You can speculate all you want.

One problem confronting all such speculations is that Xi seems to have been a major driver behind Zhang’s career. Their fathers, Zhang Zongxun and Xi Zhongxun, were comrades-in-arms during the Communist Revolution, both hailing from Shaanxi Province and serving together in the First Field Army during the civil war. This shared revolutionary pedigree placed their sons in overlapping elite networks as second-generation Reds. Zhang rose in the CMC in the wake of Xi’s rise to power.

Of course, with sufficient creativity, you can integrate this complicating factor into your speculative narrative. Western speculation tends to make a great deal out of very little; so much so that the British newspaper The Economist has joked about the return of Pekingology, the venerable Cold War–era craft of divining Chinese elite politics from communiqués, photographs, and telling omissions. Go wild: the wilder the hypothesis, the more Western audiences will like it.

Yet all the speculating operates almost exclusively within a register of cold-blooded power politics. In doing so, it risks missing what is probably the most important dimension of the ongoing purges under Xi Jinping: their moral—or spiritual, even quasi-religious—earnestness.

Subscribe now

Logic

This logic behind the purges becomes intelligible when placed within the broader arc of Xi’s rule. At the beginning of his tenure in 2012, Xi launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that ensnared figures once thought immune. Even former Politburo Standing Committee members were not exempt. Xi pledged to crack down on “tigers and flies,” signaling that no official was too senior or too insignificant to escape discipline.

In the 2010s, outside commentators severely underestimated Xi’s campaign, believing it would be temporary and mainly target political opponents. Yet Xi has demonstrated a willingness to act against allies and longtime associates if they compromised the system’s moral integrity. Even relatively minor infractions can trigger draconian consequences. And the campaign is ongoing.

To understand why Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is so extensive, durable, and uncompromising, it is necessary to reflect on how Xi likely understands his leadership role through the lens of Chinese political thought. The purges, if that is even the right word, have everything to do with a particular moral conception of politics and societal order. Xi considers it his task to enforce a moral puritanism upon leaders of the Party and the state, who are expected to serve as the highest moral exemplars but too often fall short.

Donate to TPPI

Less Differentiated

This, in turn, points to a dimension that Western observers often miss: the moral, spiritual, even semi-religious character of the Communist Party’s authority. In the Chinese tradition, political and religious authority have historically been far less sharply differentiated than in the modern West.

Western intuitions about Xi are therefore overly secular, shaped by centuries, indeed millennia, of conceptual and institutional differentiation between political and religious authority. From the medieval doctrine of the Two Swords and the uneasy interaction between emperor and pope in the Holy Roman Empire, to the early modern crystallization of the separation of church and state, Western political thought has been trained to see political leadership as largely non-sacral.

That hyper-differentiated Western scheme fits China poorly, because Xi is both Caesar and pope, while the Party-state under the CPC’s direction functions simultaneously as church and state. The CPC is the great teacher, charged with uplifting the people in a comprehensive sense, materially, morally, and spiritually.

This comprehensive, relatively undifferentiated understanding of leadership echoes a long imperial tradition that fused what Westerners conceive of as the separate realms of religion and politics. Chinese emperors up until the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) ruled as sons of heaven, maintaining cosmic and moral order through ritual sacrifices to heaven, earth, and ancestors; political failure, moral decay, and natural calamity were understood as signs of a loss of heavenly mandate rather than merely administrative shortcomings.

Share

Yes, the Communist Party of China is very modern, drawing heavily on Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic egalitarianism, that is, on imported Western categories of thought. Still, one of the many legacies of imperial China is the socio-structural situation in which the political center must fulfill tasks that Westerners, with their more cleanly differentiated template, would consider “religious,” an insight already incorporated into the mid-twentieth-century comparative theorizations by sociologists Talcott Parsons and Shmuel Eisenstadt.1

I mean to say that sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and sinologists have long known about this socio-structural legacy. The problem is that journalism and social media commentary tend not to carry over much of this theoretical knowledge, and therefore almost always process new events in a “naïve,” Western-centric manner.

Moral World Center

Zhongnanhai, the Party’s headquarters—fittingly located within a former imperial garden complex adjacent to the Forbidden City—is far more than the apex of political power as conceived in a Western, secular, and institutionally differentiated sense. It functions instead as China’s moral center, from which order radiates outward, through the Party, across the state, and into society at large, and beyond.

Corruption and incompetence at the very top are intolerable. Even a minor moral stain at the apex threatens China’s entire order.

That, in turn, would have international repercussions too. Foreigners beyond China’s borders would be adversely affected if the Chinese center were not properly ordered, because China has a distinctive mission on the world stage in the twenty-first century.

Westerners may scoff at the notion of such a Chinese mission, yet, through its industrial capacity and technological innovation, China already makes an unprecedented material contribution to the world. Beyond this lies China’s urgent “spiritual” responsibility to channel the emerging geopolitical multipolarity (or bipolarity) toward a peaceful world of mutually respectful diversity.

Subscribe now

To put it in Chinese terms, China makes the leading contribution to the emergence of a “new era” (新时代), in which different nations and civilizations are expected to harmonize, forming what official discourse calls a “community with a shared future for humanity” (人类命运共同体), a vision that some philosophers describe as a renewed tianxia world (天下世界). Political order rests on the moral rectitude of those who rule, especially in China, the country that is seen as bearing the Weltgeist (世界精神), to borrow the Hegelian formulation of philosopher Xu Jilin in his essay “New Tianxia-ism” (新天下主义, 2015).

I cannot lay out here the entire complex field of Chinese utopianisms and teleological imaginaries, Party-doctrinal concepts, and politico-moral idealisms—and doing so would in any case far exceed my competence. What should be clear, however, is that a very different moral metaphysics operates within the CPC, one that is largely invisible to Western audiences.

A simple heuristic can help avoid many misunderstandings: when confronted with the CPC’s lofty or stringent rhetoric and decisions, Western observers should think not “politics” alone, but “politics plus religion.”

Topics: China Initiative • Reflections & Dialogues

Eric Hendriks, a Dutch sociologist and graduate of the University of Chicago and Peking University, is Director of the China Initiative of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute.

China’s recent live fire military exercises around Taiwan have increased concerns about its arms buildup and intentions regarding Taiwan.1 Such moves by China highlight the urgency of the debate about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself and the U.S. commitment to its defense. The outcome of this debate will have repercussions around the world and for the rest of the century. We urgently need to understand the issues at stake and the ways our decision-making will affect the future.

In the first place, there should be little doubt about China’s plans for a forceful occupation. Taiwan has the most reliable assessments of Chinese plans, and we should take their concerns very seriously, as the Taiwanese will be most affected by Chinese foreign policy and have the best resources for evaluating it. In looking at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) discussions, government messaging, and the details of China’s military buildup, it has become clear to the Taiwanese that China’s economic and political actions over the last two decades can be summed up as a methodical, long-term preparation for taking Taiwan. In addition to aircraft carriers, the Chinese have been building amphibious landing craft and portable port facilities to successfully carry out an invasion. They have been making their economy more self-sufficient through the acquisition of key resources and technology. At the same time, they have worked hard to make themselves indispensable to the rest of the world through their near monopoly over rare earth minerals and their commitment to industrial capacity. Finally, they have been engaging in an intensive propaganda campaign in Taiwan to create a sense of the inevitability of occupation by China.

In my meetings with Taiwanese foreign policy experts this past summer, virtually all of them anticipate some sort of invasion or other aggressive action in the next one to three years. The differences of opinion concern the way in which Taiwan should react to this situation. President William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) reaffirmed Taiwan’s determination to defend its sovereignty and is working hard to prepare Taiwan’s military for an invasion.2 While recognizing that Taiwan will depend on using asymmetric weapons such as mines and drones to counter an invasion, they also understand that ships and plans are necessary right now in order to challenge Chinese incursions into Taiwanese waters and air space. However, the Kuomintang (KMT), which dominates the legislature, has blocked President Lai’s attempts to increase military spending and proposes to try and find accommodations with the CPP in order to forestall or prevent an invasion. These voices recognize, however, that such a strategy would, over the long term, still lead eventually either to a delayed invasion or to a coerced surrendering of Taiwan.

Subscribe now

The KMT, having been a vociferously anti-communist party for most of the twentieth century, has surprisingly changed its position in this century to become a crucial partner for the CCP. The KMT suggests that Taiwan should cooperate more with China, particularly on economic issues, and that a more conciliatory approach would be the best for Taiwan’s economy. Since losing elections twenty years ago and becoming an opposition party after decades in power, the KMT has been using this economic message as a way to gain back votes. Unfortunately, this approach is dangerous because increasing economic dependence on China could turn Taiwan into the next Hong Kong, in which tight economic ties have led to political subjugation and the elimination of liberal democratic freedoms. Through their dominance in the legislature, the KMT has been opposing President Lai’s efforts and thereby hampering Taiwan’s project of increasing and revamping its military forces, most recently by beginning impeachment proceedings.3 The KMT might even move toward promoting the CCP’s ideal scenario of a “voluntary” merging with China that would amount to a surrender of Taiwan’s sovereignty along the lines of the Hong Kong model of eventual total subjugation.

To pursue the CCP ambition to occupy Taiwan, Chinese commentators have been appealing to President Trump to “call on Taiwan to stand down”4 and move toward “formally opposing Taiwanese independence.”5 In order to convince the United States of China’s peaceful intentions in spite of its ongoing military buildup, which includes a new, third aircraft carrier and a series of amphibious landing barges,6 they have been improbably promoting the idea that Taiwan poses a military threat to China, claiming that “Taiwan and the United States will have to countenance some military buildup to allow for credible deterrence from China.”7 Using an awkward formulation to mask a ludicrous justification for China’s vast arms buildup, such diplomatic gaslighting has become the primary strategy in China’s attempt to suggest that the United States and Taiwan are the aggressors and should “stand down.”

Cultural Politics

While Taiwan will continue to rely on U.S. support, Taiwan will need to be the primary actor in its own defense. As the war in Ukraine has shown, the key consideration for Taiwan’s future will be the way the Taiwanese understand their political identity and their commitment to maintaining it. Cultural politics will be crucial for Taiwan’s continuing existence as a sovereign state. The KMT, because it historically sought to return to rule all of China, has taken on the role today of emphasizing the Chinese character of Taiwan by promoting cooperation with the CCP, partly for economic reasons and partly by appealing to a common cultural heritage. The DPP does not deny this shared heritage yet also insists that Taiwan is a separate sovereign state with its own traditions and trajectory.

Donate to TPPI

One way to understand the complexity of this discussion of Taiwanese culture is to consider the myth-making around Koxinga (鄭成功), the Chinese general who in 1662 succeeded in driving out the Dutch, who had dominated Taiwan since arriving in 1624. His significance for Taiwan illustrates the complexity of Taiwanese identity. The son of a Ming dynasty merchant and a Japanese mother, Koxinga spent the first years of his life in Japan, then moved to Fujian in China, where he succeeded in the imperial examinations during the Ming dynasty. When the Ming were deposed by the Manchus to establish the Qing dynasty in 1644, Koxinga remained loyal to the Ming dynasty, leading its resistance to Qing dominance. After unsuccessfully laying siege to Nanjing, he went to Taiwan, allied with the indigenous people, and expelled the Dutch in order to be able to establish Taiwan as a base to continue his resistance to the Qing dynasty. Though he died of illness shortly thereafter, his son and grandson maintained an independent rule over Taiwan until the Qing were able to take Taiwan in 1683, ruling until the end of the nineteenth century. In this period, any honoring of Koxinga’s legacy was officially forbidden because he was a Ming loyalist against the Qing dynasty. At the same time, though he allied with some of the indigenous people, they likely considered Koxinga as another foreign invader.

After two centuries of Qing dynasty rule, the Japanese occupied Taiwan in 1895, and they subsequently made Koxinga into a hero who epitomized the relationship between Taiwan and Japan through his Japanese background. The period of Japanese rule meant that Taiwan escaped much of the upheaval in China during the twentieth century, and modern Taiwanese identity diverged significantly from Chinese consciousness due to the relative peace in Taiwan in the early twentieth century.

Share

The real violence in Taiwan occurred after the Japanese were expelled in 1945. When the KMT took control and in 1949 fled to Taiwan along with two million followers, they began using Taiwan as a base of resistance against the Chinese Communists. However, the brutal authoritarian character of their rule, known as the White Terror, created a conflict with the native-born Taiwanese. Koxinga continued to be heroized by the KMT as a precursor to their own leader, Chiang Kai-shek, since both of them used Taiwan as a base from which to oppose usurpers in China, but that legacy also could reinforce the chasm separating the oppressive Chinese “foreigners” from the native Taiwanese.

Today, Koxinga is still celebrated in Taiwan, with statues of him all over the country and Tainan’s National Cheng Kung University named after him. Koxinga’s legacy is ambivalent for those who seek to maintain Taiwanese independence. On the one hand, he expelled the Dutch and worked with the indigenous Taiwanese to maintain Taiwan as independent from the Qing dynasty. On the other hand, he also established Chinese rule over Taiwan, thereby undermining the self-rule of the indigenous population. In China itself Koxinga is currently celebrated as an anti-imperialist who expelled Westerners so that the Han Chinese could rule Taiwan. This interpretation reinforces the Chinese attempt to cast themselves as the victims of Western imperialism when in fact China itself has now become the imperialist power.

The struggle over Koxinga’s legacy is not merely academic in nature. In Taiwan, as in China, his meaning defines the debate over Taiwanese political identity. On the one hand, there are those who emphasize a shared Chinese history and tradition and can point to the common use of Mandarin as an official language as well as the strong Chinese influence on customs and rituals. On the other hand, there is still a lingering Japanese influence on Taiwanese culture, and the indigenous Taiwanese population has its own language, history, and culture as well. This Taiwanese cultural tradition, along with the recent history of the political struggle to establish democracy against the authoritarianism of KMT rule, provides much of the basis for support for the DPP.

Subscribe now

This link to the pro-democracy struggle has meant that the sense of a separate Taiwanese cultural identity is inextricably linked with the question of liberal democracy. After enduring the authoritarian dictatorship of the KMT for decades, Taiwan has developed a liberal democratic political system that demonstrates to the world and to China how a Chinese-influenced culture can develop its own liberal democratic traditions that defend the rule of law and in which the people take control of their own destiny. In resisting China, the Taiwanese are insisting on their right to live their lives according to their values and thus participate in the shaping of their own history. Part of this involves their ability to know the truth about the past during their own experience of authoritarianism, while the CCP constantly tries to cover up similar abuses in China. Another part is the enforcement of legal protections against arbitrary government decisions, the use of free elections, and the ability of people to form their own community organizations, such as churches, small businesses, and political movements, all of which are severely restricted in China.

Taiwan and the World

The KMT argument for increasing economic engagement with China as a way to deter the political and military threat that it poses is a more extreme version of a similar decision that faces all the other countries in the world. Democracy and freedom are being challenged globally by China’s authoritarian model,8 which is based on Marxism but also rooted in centuries-old structures: on the one hand, a bureaucratic state that manages the people from the top down; on the other hand, a centralized notion of culture in which China considered itself the Middle Kingdom that was the seat of world culture and regarded other cultures as barbaric the further they were from the Chinese center. In China, Zhang Weiwei has claimed that China is a civilizational state with its own trajectory that diverges from the West.9 As opposed to seeing the conflict between the CCP and Taiwan as an ideological one,10 some Western postliberals also seek to frame such conflicts as a civilizational struggle.11 This stance presumes that culture moves forward from the past when in fact culture involves a backward look that chooses what is relevant from the past that matches our current values. The idea of competing civilizations rejects the ability of one culture to learn from another and downplays the importance of our ethical values in making choices about our relationship to various traditions.

In arguing that China necessarily includes Taiwan, the CCP, by challenging Taiwanese sovereignty, is rejecting a Westphalian nation-state model of world order that is premised on the sovereignty of each individual nation-state. As much as the CCP emphasizes nation-state sovereignty in fending off criticism of its human rights record, its moves against Taiwan can only be justified based on a civilizational understanding of sovereignty rather than one based on nation-states.12 The nation-state system provides the basis for popular sovereignty—that is, government of the people, by the people, and for the people—because it allows cultural and political traditions to develop independently in each nation-state based on the people’s sense of right and wrong. By contrast, the CCP’s threats to Taiwan, its suppression of dissent in Hong Kong, and its genocidal policies in Xinjiang and Tibet indicate that it is one of history’s worst imperialists. Not content to simply assert a CCP vision of Chinese identity, it seeks to subjugate other peoples and in the extreme cases to totally eradicate other cultures. Similarly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also based on a rejection of nation-state sovereignty as well as of popular sovereignty and the cultural independence of the other nations surrounding Russia.

Donate to TPPI

To the extent that the world is only now waking up to the long-term threat of CCP domination, the CCP has a window of opportunity for both taking Taiwan and, on the heels of this action, expanding its military and political power across the globe. By recently playing its rare earth minerals card as a counter to Trump’s tariffs and thereby alerting the world to the danger of its monopoly, China has set itself an approximately five-year window for military action until the world has been able to find substitutes for Chinese suppliers. While the Trump administration has recognized this threat and is realigning U.S. priorities in response, most of the world is very ill prepared for long-term political and military conflict with China, and in many cases countries are subordinating political considerations to economic ones. Such an approach would be short-sighted, since it would open the way not simply to economic domination but also to a type of political domination that would suppress the ability of people all over the world to determine their own lives and futures.

Militarily, politically, and economically, Taiwan is the key first step for the CCP to realize its goal of dominating the world by 2049, as expressed in Xi Jinping’s recent highlighting of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in the context of “great changes unseen in a century.”13 Chinese occupation of Taiwan would destroy the center of the first island chain, extending from South Korea, Japan, and to the Philippines, that restricts China’s ability to project its growing military power across the world, and it would encourage newly threatened countries to begin to ally more with China for economic development and in their political orientation. Aside from providing China with control over the Taiwanese semiconductor industry, which currently produces 90 percent of the world’s supply of the most advanced AI chips, the Chinese takeover of Taiwan would also deprive the world of one of the key political antagonists to the CCP’s ambitions. Its deep understanding of China’s politics, economy, and culture make Taiwan into a crucial ally for all those countries seeking to protect their own sovereignty. Most importantly, the existence of Taiwan poses a fundamental propaganda threat to China’s model of totalitarian capitalism (reminiscent of Nazi Germany in its corporatist structures and the use of slave labor) and in this way underlines the urgency for China of subjugating it.14 As the CCP understands, the most effective way of countering Chinese imperialism will be to preserve an independent Taiwan.

Topics: China Initiative • Reflections & Dialogues

David Pan is Professor of European Languages and Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and has previously held positions at Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University, Penn State University, and McKinsey and Company. He is the author of Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (2001) and Sacrifice in the Modern World: On the Particularity and Generality of Nazi Myth (2012). He has also published on J. G. Herder, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Schmitt, and Theodor Adorno. He is the Editor of Telos.

Many of us were taught in graduate school to oppose, if not hate, the U.S. empire and to mock Reagan administration comments about the Soviet Union being an “evil empire.” Odd since both governments, at times, in rhetoric and practice, opposed and engaged in empire and imperialism. When Hardt and Negri’s Empire1 was published, there were many who felt that we finally understood empire. The publication of Niall Ferguson’s Empire2 offered a revisionist account of the term and its legacy.

Each of these was an attempt to make sense of a sort of extended rule from one polity into another, relying on the cognate terms imperialist, imperial, and empire. Like cognate terms from a foreign language, the similar etymological roots often belie complicated, if not different, meanings. Namely, imperialism generally refers to expansionist projects of sea- and land-based great powers in the long nineteenth century, if not later, that go beyond typical efforts to extend immediate territorial borders and diplomacy of balance of powers. Empire is normally understood as a type of polity that organizes a large territory within which a considerable diversity of people lives under a single ruler, though with high degrees of variation in status, rights, and legal categories. Scholars from different traditions have seen the nineteenth century as one in which either nationalism or imperialism arose, partially for the reason that empire and nation seem so very different. What recent scholarship has highlighted is what nation and imperialism are not. So then what?

It is interesting that discussions of empire and imperialism make little mention of emperors. They are often largely structuralist, whether Marxist, mercantilist, or geostrategic. We could not imagine a discussion of democracy without a demos, even if the claim is that the demos does not truly rule. But discussions of empire and imperialism feel no such compunction, even though an emperor is a necessary condition for empire and the term imperial makes reference to the emperor directly or indirectly. The removal of the emperor in such discussions may be more or less intentional, may represent an effort to move away from Great Man historiography, may be a relic of structuralist approaches to understanding power, or may be a convenience for commentators of different partisan stripes. There are still other possibilities, but I leave those to the imagination of the patient reader.

The talk I gave at the March Telos conference aimed to discuss four emperors and three empires that normally get little attention. The point of the investigation is not only to draw attention to cases of empire and imperialism that fall outside the typically studied set, and thereby to highlight the diversity and complexity of the concept of empire. It is also to make the claim that scholarly use of the term imperial/ist is misleading, and scholars should either conceive of a word with a clearer connection to the phenomena in question or be more forthcoming about the range of meanings in the word. Thus, scholars should be a bit careful before describing the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan or Russian and Iranian support for the recently fallen Assad regime in Syria as “imperial adventures.” Similarly, this study may facilitate an understanding of Chinese efforts to reimagine imperial history as an alternative to Westphalian models.

Subscribe now

Introduction

What are normally translated as “empire” (帝國, diguo) and “imperialism” (帝国主义, diguo zhuyi) are the subject of considerable debate among scholars. These debates make problematic earlier readings of the relationship between modernity and pre-modernity, nation-state and empire, and colonialism and imperialism along lines familiar to scholars of the social sciences and conceptual history.3 Much in these debates rests on the negative ethical connotation associated with empire, especially as a response to Nazi and Japanese imperialism,4 although the Sino-scholar-sphere has witnessed very different trends. Recently, there have been many efforts to see normative value in Chinese empires and to treat those empires as something very different.5 Indeed, the Qing Dynasty was not called an “empire” in Chinese until the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki.6 Diguo, at that moment, did not recognize the traditional Sinocentric order but was used to elevate Qing to the same status as the victorious Great Japanese Empire (dai Nippon Teikoku, 大日本帝國). But as Qing became an empire, the very first article of the treaty dealt a blow to its imperial status by terminating Choseon’s (Korea) tributary relationship with it. Thus, Qing was legally recognized as an empire by the Japanese empire when it released its claims of suzerainty over the monarch in Korea, who two years later declared itself an empire.

The same year as the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japanese and Korean assassins, assisted by the father of Korean King Gojong, murdered the king’s wife, Queen Min. The king fled and took up lodging for nearly a year in the Russian legation. With considerable pressure from the populace, especially pro-independence politicians and civil groups, he returned to the palace and, in 1897, proclaimed the Great Han (Korean) Empire (대한제국, daehanjeguk, 大韓帝國). But the same Japanese empire that compelled Qing to recognize Korean sovereignty also forced a protectorate treaty on the newly independent country (1905) and then Gojong’s abdication (1907) to his son, Sunjong. The new emperor bore a title that was more confusing given the 1910 annexation of Korea.

Donate to TPPI

In 1934, Manchukuo, which proclaimed its statehood two years earlier, was declared an empire (大滿洲帝國), with Aisin-Giro Henry Puyi, the former Qing emperor, as its emperor. This was his third time on a throne, having been twice on the throne in China (1908–12, 1917) with the establishment of the Republic in-between as well as the equally short-lived imperial rule of Yuan Shikai (1915–16). Yuan’s brief rule as emperor and Puyi’s twelve days in 1917 in China began with hope, among some at least, that the newly crowned emperor would be able to reverse the descent into disorder and rally the people together behind a government symbolized by a ruler in a traditional seat of authority. By the time Puyi became emperor of Machukuo, two years after it proclaimed its independence, it was clear that the emperor would have very little meaningful governing power, though like Yuan and Gojong, Puyi seemed to believe that the imperial title and throne would provide resources that could be used to resist the tide of political events.

These emperors hardly seem to be members of the same conceptual category as Yoshihito (Emperor Taishō, 1912–26), Tsar Alexander III (1881–94), Napoleon III (1852–70), Franz Joseph (1848–1916), the Qianlong Emperor (1736–96), and Sejong the Great (1397–1450). Similarly, when scholars and public intellectuals speak of empire, they generally mean that of the Nazis, the Japanese, or the United States. They do not imagine the Brazilian, the First or Second Mexican, or the Austro-Hungarian empires of the nineteenth century. Why not?

This essay aims to understand some of the diverse and shifting meanings of diguo (帝國, teikoku, 제국) in Northeastern Asia during the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries by avoiding the streetlight effect that dominates discussions of empire and imperialism. That is, like the drunkard and the police officer who look for the former’s keys under the streetlight because “that is where the light is,”7 scholars seeking to understand empire and imperialism look at the great and terrible empires8 and give short shrift to others.9 In the unusual spaces, the darkness, of Choseon under increasing Japanese domination, Manchukuo, which was largely an extension of the Japanese imperial project, and early Republican China, this paper profiles emperors who were not imperial conquerors. Rather than seeking to expand, to match some concept of Lebensraum, these emperors sought to prevent the collapse of their governments and countries, and often to preserve their lives. Their power, status, and authority were tenuous and constantly undermined by political actors, both domestic and international.

This is rather important since empire and imperialism both assume an emperor (皇帝, tennō, 황제). An emperor need not be the most powerful actor in an empire or imperialist project, but the emperor must be, in some way, central to its normative self-understanding. So what could that have been for Emperors Gojong, Puyi, and Yuan? Or rather, do these emperors show that imperialism is far less about empire than about the propensity of polities with capabilities, opportunities, and specific visions to expand territorial control? If so, that may explain the relative ease in applying the term imperialist to emperor-less regimes that espouse anti-imperial rhetoric, such as the Soviet Union or the United States. Rethinking the role of the emperor in imperialism—and the appropriateness of the latter term—is helpful, as scholarship increasingly questions the assumption that the empire and the nation-state are diametrically opposed forms. The two are different, though both have shown a propensity to expand, contract, collapse, and reemerge.

Share

Why Study Meaning?

Scholars have typically given close readings to the words and concepts used in discourse, high and low, and in intellectual and cultural canons. This is especially the case in modernity where there is a greater sense that history is not only something to be studied but something determined by a set of ideas, values, and tools that are themselves historically embedded.10 Carl Schmitt examined liberalism and dictatorship11 as polemical concepts that found meaning in opposing an alternative and then developed through historical (re)interpretations in intellectual work and political action. Dalmacio Negro Pavón followed suit in his study of the “statist mode of thought.”12

Similarly, not concerned with simple definitions or even etymological origins, Raymond Williams13 contributed to understanding the lexicon of the present. He assumed that relying on a definition would be insufficient to understand the meaning of the “class conflict” referenced in a newspaper article, how that was different from “partisan disagreements,” or even the taunting between football fans. This is because, as Reinhart Koselleck wrote, concepts have “historical depth.” Their elucidation contributes to public discourse not only by fostering a more careful discussion but by highlighting the ways in which concepts can contain multiple (ambiguous and/or contradictory) meanings that may change over time.14

The bulk of Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) was developed in the heart of the West,15 in Germany (Schmitt, Koselleck) and England (Williams, Skinner, Pocock), and focused on ideas that had their greatest impact and utility in understanding the modern Western world. In recent decades, building on the methodological and epistemological approaches of the above, admittedly a diverse group, scholarship has come to reimagine key conceptsby applying them more directly to moments tangential or foreign to the modern West. Given the rise of East Asia, especially China—whether understood as a space for geopolitical competition, a center of rapid economic growth and industrialization, or the core of a new transpacific world being shaped out of a transatlantic one—it is not surprising that concepts and words that are part of the critical vocabulary of East Asia and that contribute to its response and conversation with the West have received more attention.16 Noteworthy in this critical reevaluation and global dialogue is Eric Hendricks’s Telos-Paul Piccone Institute webinar series on “China Keywords.” The series of podcasts makes an important contribution by articulating concepts internal to China and Sinocentric East Asian history, as well as highlighting how such concepts may differ from Western alternatives and cognates.17

Subscribe now

Empire and Emperor

Empire has come in for considerable (re)revision in recent years. The traditional separation of empire and nation as opposing forces, with the nineteenth century being the era of nationalism, has been displaced by a more realistic reconsideration, which insists that at the time of the Great War, if not until the end of World War II, the world was one of empires.18 If anything, the growth of the nation and empire seem very connected, although the ideal versions of each remain quite distinct.19 Leigh K. Jenco and Jonathan Chappell have argued that empire is something that is “co-produced” through intersecting histories and global interaction, which allows them to suggest that empire did not end with decolonization.20 But that assumes that empire is a mode of political and economic organization that does not need an emperor. Zheng Yongnian argued that the Chinese Communist Party in contemporary politics is an “organizational emperor,” and Hardt and Negri explained empire through a complex post-nation-state web that has elements of monarchy (the US, G7, IMF, NATO), oligarchy (multinational corporations), and democracy (UN, NGOs).21

Is empire the correct term for the above? For Frederick Cooper empire and imperialism are quite different,22 and Hardt and Negri clearly are thinking of the latter. Empire, after all, has been around for millennia and betrays a remarkable amount of diversity, while imperialism references more specific extractive and exploitive processes over a relatively short time horizon. Daniel Hedinger and Moritz von Brescius helpfully suggest that much of the explicit and implicit assumptions of imperialism—its form, its morality—are impacted by the disproportionate role of twentieth-century Nazi and Japanese imperialism.23 Others highlight American empire to emphasize immoral extensions of late capitalism.24

Donate to TPPI

But is imperialism something that (only) empires do? Or, if it is, perhaps imperialism needs to be reexamined. In 1877, Queen Victoria was given the title “Empress of India” by the Disraeli government. The greatest sea power belatedly bestowed the title already held by the Kaisers (emperor, caesar) of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, half a century after Iturbide in Mexico and Pedro in Brazil. In 1905, when Emperor Gojong protested the Japan-Korea Treaty, which placed the Great Han Empire under Japanese control, he addressed letters of protest to presidents, kings, and emperors (President Fallières of France, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and King of Hungary, Emperor Guangxu of China, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and King Leopold II of Belgium). One would be hard pressed to know from the title of the head of state or the name given to the regime whether it was involved, and to what degree, in “imperialism.” Moreover, his complaint might seem odd: an empire making a complaint about imperialist behavior to imperialists, even if the perpetrator was a rival imperial power.

The cases examined in this paper are interesting because they are not moments when an empire or the role of the emperor were diminished. Rather, they represent moments of imperial founding, where the role of the emperor was shaped rather than inherited. Although the reasons to elevate a king to emperor or to move from republic to empire might be identical to efforts to restore the role of a (fading) emperor, there is an important difference. In the cases under scrutiny here, there was a deliberate effort to call attention to a sort of regime change that was believed to have public and international impact. This may have been done in a situation of desperation, but that in no way detracts from the fact that the word “emperor” and its cognate “empire” were seen to give rhetorical and symbolic assistance to a broader process of international and domestic recognition, a reorganization of domestic politics, and a greater autonomy in international politics. In many ways Gojong, Puyi, and Yuan Shikai failed, but the idea that this strategy could be pursued in 1897 by Gojong in Korea and then in 1915 and 1917 by Yuan and Puyi in China, and again in 1934 by Puyi in Manchukuo attests to the enduring meaning of emperor and empire as status norms. Importantly, Yuan and Puyi were well-acquainted with the forlorn fate of Gojong and his sire. So why put “new clothes” on the polity? I will address this further in an forthcoming issue of Telos.25

Topics: China Initiative

Anthony Petros Spanakos is Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. He has been a Fulbright Scholar (2002 Brazil, 2008 Venezuela) and visiting researcher at the East Asia Institute (Singapore 2009, 2017). He is co-editor of Reforming Brazil (Lexington), Conceptualising Comparative Politics (Routledge), and “The Legacy of Hugo Chavez,” a special issue of Latin American Perspectives. His work examines questions in the areas of democratization, the use of concepts, international relations, and political theory, giving particular attention to Latin America, East Asia, and U.S. relations with these regions.

The Chinese party-state (党国体制) is the world’s most powerful political machine and a pillar of global politics in the twenty-first century. In today’s episode of the TPPI Podcast, Eric Hendriks, Director of TPPI’s China Initiative and fellow at the Danube Institute, speaks with sinologist and anthropologist Frank Pieke, the foremost expert on the CPC in Western scholarship.

For more information about TPPI’s China Initiative, visit our website.

Topics: China Initiative

The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute Annual Conference

March 20–21, 2026
The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College/CUNY
25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10036

The Chinese New Leviathan: Cultural Subjectivity and Statecraft Today

Co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College/CUNY

Keynote Speaker: Wang Hui (汪晖)

Renowned as a critical theorist and one of China’s leading intellectual historians, Wang Hui (Tsinghua University) will speak on the nexus of state, nation, and empire in modern Chinese history, and its implications for our understanding of modernity as such.

Conference Description

Following the fruitful discussion that took place during our China Keywords conference in March 2025, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute (TPPI) invites paper proposals for our 2026 annual conference on “The Chinese New Leviathan? Cultural Subjectivity and Statecraft Today.” The conference is part of TPPI’s five-year China Initiative, which aims to foster a critical and mutually regarding discussion of social and political theory between China and the West, well beyond the circles of China specialists. This outreach effort across political boundaries continues a tradition established by the journal Telos, which played a pivotal role in fostering dialogue between intellectuals in the Anglosphere and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

As one of the most potent and complex keywords in modern China, nationalism demands our rigorous theoretical engagement. It functions as a source of state legitimacy, a tool of social mobilization, and a site of intense public debate. From official state proclamations of rejuvenation to the pulse of online crowds, nationalism flows through China’s internal politics and its global stance. Its conceptualization has provided the intellectual context for the development of modern Chinese power, and it therefore needs to be understood both on endogenous terms and from a global philosophical perspective.

Under General Secretary Xi Jinping, Chinese civilizationalist discourse has surged. This discourse blends traditional Chinese thought with party ideology, positioning the PRC as a civilizational state and depicting international politics as an interplay of civilizations. While some critics warn that civilizationalist discourse establishes an imperialist form of nationalism, essentializes “Chinese characteristics” (the official phrase: “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”), and entrenches a rigid, even antagonistic, East-West divide, others take a more optimistic view. As Jin Huimin of Sichuan University observed in his keynote at our 2025 China conference, an unreflective call for cultural self-confidence can indeed devolve into a closed-door cultural nationalism that polemicizes against Western cultures. Yet if we recognize that cultural subjectivity can encompass “learning from and absorbing all the outstanding achievements of human civilizations, then it in turn can enrich an open-minded cultural self.”

Prof. Jin’s proposal echoes R. G. Collingwood’s The New Leviathan (1942) in advancing a more open-ended conception of a civilizational state. It is partly with Collingwood’s ideas in mind that TPPI issues this call for papers. Are we witnessing in China the emergence of a full-fledged alternative nationalist political modernity? Is the world indeed entering the mysterious New Era prophesied by some Chinese political thinkers? Or will the consequences of the CPC’s effort to refigure the meaning of nationhood, as one critique would have it, be authoritarian repression buttressed with new conceptual tools—and in the West as much as in China? If the latter, then in light of Collingwood’s and related philosophical perspectives, what might be a promising path forward?

Share

We invite papers that move beyond descriptive accounts to theorize the multifaceted nature of Chinese nationalism. We are particularly interested in papers that place Chinese political thought in dialogue with Western critical theory, exploring points of convergence, divergence, and mutual illumination. While some speakers and participants in this conference will be China specialists, we warmly encourage non-specialists to become part of our conversation. We also welcome papers from every political and ideological perspective. Indeed, the clash of radically divergent, often unconventional ideas is one of the hallmarks of our conferences.

Topics and guiding questions include, but are not limited to: how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cultivates, manages, and deploys nationalist sentiment; the relationship between party ideology and popular nationalism; the defining features of nationalism as expressed on Chinese social media and in popular culture; Chinese nationalism and global order; the interaction between Han nationalism and the identities of ethnic minorities; and the contours of nationalist sentiment in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the broader Chinese diaspora.

We are particularly interested in critical deconstructions, analyses, and applications of key concepts in contemporary Chinese political thought. Contributors are encouraged to engage these concepts explicitly in their theoretical reflections—not only as entry points into Chinese political thinking, but also as tools for critically examining sociopolitical idealisms, institutions, and power structures in both China and the West. In the context of Chinese nationalism, the following key concepts are of central importance:

• Civilizational State (文明国家)

• National Rejuvenation (民族复兴)

• Patriotic Education Campaign (爱国教育)

• Online Public Opinion Guidance (舆论引导)

• National Unity (民族团结)

• Historical Revisionism (历史修正主义)

• National Pride (民族自信)

• Sovereign Integrity (主权完整)

• Self-Reliance (自力更生)

• Cultural Confidence (文化自信)

• Patriotism (爱国心)

• Theory Confidence (理论自信)

• System Confidence (制度自信)

• Century of Humiliation (百年国耻)

• Chinese Dream (中国梦)

• Chinese-style Modernization (中国式现代化)

Our 2026 conference will be organized by Prof. Chia-Hao Hsu of Si-Wan College, National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.

Subscribe now

Submissions Guidelines

Presentations at the conference should be no more than 15 minutes long and between 1,500 and 2,000 words. Our conference has a two-stage process for acceptance: first, submission of a presentation proposal and, second, submission of a presentation draft. Both stages must be completed for final acceptance to the conference.

Presentation proposals should describe the topic of a talk or of a full panel in 100 to 250 words. Proposals for full panels, which can include up to four presenters, should include proposals for all presentations as well as for the panel as a whole.

UPDATE: Due to the overwhelming enthusiasm for the conference, we have extended the submission deadline to October 15.

With each proposal, please include the name and institutional affiliation of each presenter, along with a curriculum vitae or résumé. In addition to established university faculty, independent scholars, students, and individuals working fully outside university circles are warmly invited to submit proposals.

Review of proposals will be conducted on a rolling basis until the October 15 deadline. Successful proposals will be invited to submit a presentation draft.

Presentation drafts are due by December 1, 2025. A presentation draft need be only 1,000 words long and need not be polished, though submission of full presentations is strongly encouraged. Final notification of acceptance will take place by December 15. The organizers will provide feedback on drafts to ensure a substantive and intellectually rich conference marked by a fruitful exchange of competing and complementary ideas.

Please note that TPPI is unable to provide travel or accommodation funds, that there will be no option to present via Zoom, and that there will be a conference registration fee. Past registration fees for non-student members of TPPI have been about $300. These fees provide not only for conference attendance but also for a celebratory conference dinner, lunches, and refreshments.

Submit proposals or inquiries to teloschina2026@telosinstitute.net.

For information about the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s China initiative, click here.

Topics: China Initiative

Over the past several decades, America’s Hollywood as a cinematic and entertainment industry has emerged and maintained a successful model of cultural globalization. In the past two decades, Hanliu or the Korean Wave, which first gained popularity in East Asia, has expanded its cultural influence at an exponential rate. It seems that any country with influence naturally seeks to expand its influence from a regional to a worldwide level. For the past two decades, China has also been attempting to increase its “global impact,” or quán qiú yǐng xiǎng lì (全球影响力), especially on the cultural level. Its goal has been to increase the nation’s standing in the world as the purveyor of a Chinese alternative that could displace a Western model of governance and order. Recognizing that its hard power depends on the alliances and good will that arise from cultural soft power—and even more than this, believing that the latter should be put into service of the former—the Chinese government has been pushing Chinese culture out into the world.

One aspect of this cultural campaign has involved film.

As Ying Zhu asserts, in the United States “soft power is more or less synonymous with Hollywood.”1 Accordingly, ever since the KMT’s Republic of China, Hollywood and China have been engaged in a “battle of images.”2 Yet it is only recently that China began to take a leading role in generating and circulating cinematic soft power.

Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese film industry was no longer satisfied by merely copying its Western counterparts and instead started to seek international visibility and global influence on its own terms. This change could be said to mark a new era in which Chinese economic power began to be transformed into cultural appeal. After the 2010s, Chinese cinema in turn became increasingly tied to the political mission of the country, with the specific goal of replacing American hegemony.

Zhu further notes that “China is desperately seeking soft power,” a term “for an older idea about using cultural sex appeal to win friends and influence people.”3 However, these efforts have not been particularly successful in the West. As Stanley Rosen observes, “a massive Chinese governmental effort at a cost of over $10 billion a year in support of its ‘go abroad’ (zouchuqu) strategy, while certainly enjoying some success, has been less effective in the United States and most countries outside the Third World.”4

Subscribe now

Scholars habitually conceive of the rivalry between Hollywood and China in binary terms. Yet, in contrast to Chinese cinema, Hollywood films aren’t directed or promoted by the U.S. government. As Rosen notes, “American soft power has been notably successful in China—and throughout the world—despite the lack of soft power promotion by the American government.”5

While this may be true, the reasons Rosen offers to explain the lack of American government involvement in Hollywood also indicate a political bias underlying his judgment. For Rosen, “American government neglect of soft power promotion is due, in part, to the nature of the American political and electoral systems, and in part to the belief that America is strong enough to do as it pleases with or without approbation from outside its borders.”6

Such an extrapolation, if not an accusation, presumes the United States is a hegemon that always chooses to conspire against the rest of the world. This presumption shows a misunderstanding of American soft power and how it works politically. The primary example of soft power promoted by the U.S. government is not the film industry but the Voice of America.7 Yet precisely because of its government background, VOA is trivial in its impact when compared with Hollywood, or even with McDonald’s.8

Share

The American government has of course cared about the promotion of liberal democracy since World War II, but this concern is separate from its commercial, mass-cultural system, whose main concern is nothing more than profit and market success. It is the commercial desire for profit, not anything political or ideological, that drives cultural producers to create entertaining products and to win the global market. The reason why American soft power is more successful than its Chinese counterpart is straightforward: the former never tried to use the mass culture industry to pursue political goals, while the latter clearly sees mass culture as a propaganda tool, which reduces its attractiveness and appeal.

In this light, “global impact,” ironically, cannot be achieved through Chinese film as long as the purpose of China’s cinematic storytelling is to create soft power. The country’s potential to achieve the kind of deep cultural influence that the United States has had on the world is limited by its own conceptualization of power and how it works.

Moreover, the logic of “global impact” subjects popular art to the narrow purpose of politics, limiting the very possibilities of intercultural translation. Art can transcend partisan nationalism and the logic of power. But to do so, it must operate within a broader vision of humanistic inquiry and strive to reach a universal, foundational basis of values. For China to truly achieve quán qiú yǐng xiǎng lì, art must be granted full autonomy.

Topics: China Initiative

Sijia Yao (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at Soka University of America and has previously taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has published articles on Chinese and comparative literature, film, music, and culture in journals such as The Comparatist, Comparative Literature Studies, and Tamkang Review. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Love: Utopian Vision in D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang (University of Michigan Press, 2023).

Among the ideological and institutional constraints that China faces in transitioning from a traditional to a modern democratic society—that is, in advancing what Jürgen Habermas has called the “incomplete project” of modernization—one of the most important is its legal culture. At the core of this culture are two traditions of Chinese legal thought.

These two traditions have been balanced in different ways over time, yet today they have achieved powerful integration in what is known as Orthodox Legal Thought, which provides the ultimate balance for authoritarian governance between hierarchical social differentiation and formal uniformity of punishment-oriented application.

The two traditions are Confucianism and Legalism, and the tension between them is ancient. The tension reaches back even prior to the establishment of China’s first unified state under the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), to the Pre-Qin period (Confucius lived from 551 to 479 BC). Their integration as Orthodox Legal Thought in China is similarly old, tracing to the Western Han dynasty (202 BC–8 AD), especially during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (141–87 BC).

The opposition between Confucianism and Legalism lies in their different views on the ideal social order and the methods to achieve the ideal. The difference is between two different types of “rule,” or Zhi, whose Chinese character is 治.

Whereas Confucianism advocates “rule by Li” (礼治 Li Zhi)—that is, rule by “propriety”—Legalism advocates “rule by law” (‘法治’ fa zhi).

A great deal hangs on the difference, including for society and politics today.

The Difference

For Confucianism, society is characterized by natural, hierarchical distinctions. In turn, moral education is central to maintaining these distinctions and the harmonious world that they enable. As Qu Tongzu explains simply in Chinese Law and Chinese Society, “Confucianism believes that the differences in kinship, hierarchy, seniority within families, and social status are . . . essential for maintaining social order. Li is the tool used to maintain these social differences.”

Significantly, the rule of propriety prescribes duties for individuals that differ based on their social position. Although every person should be governed by propriety, what is expected under that rule differs based on rank.

Confucianism does not deny the important role of law in society—it believes in punishment, with which law is strongly equated—but it asserts that law can only serve as an auxiliary to Li Zhi. Therefore, as the basic paradigm of governance it advocates the principle known as “morality as the mainstay and punishment as the auxiliary” (德主刑辅 dezhu xingfu). Most notably, Confucianism asserts that moral education, rather than punishment, is central to preventing crime.

By contrast, Legalism is a matter of the carrots and sticks, and it believes, especially, that the deterrent effect of severe punishment is central to maintaining social order. Importantly, while Legalism stresses the need for the strict application of law to everyone, it is not concerned with social equality. It maintains a spirit of formal equality in the face of social differences—thereby preserving them.

As Qu Tongzu explains, “Legalism does not deny or oppose the distinction and existence of high and low status, superiority and inferiority, seniority and immaturity, or closeness and distance.” Yet in asserting that that governing a country is a matter of “rewards and punishments, one to persuade goodness and the other to stop treachery,” it maintains that “what kind of behavior should be rewarded and what kind of behavior should be punished should not vary from person to person, and there must be the same published law.”

On the surface, the two schools of thought are at odds with each other. Confucianism advocates rule by Li based on social difference, while Legalism advocates rule by law that seeks formal uniformity. But they also share deep commonalities, in at least four respects.

First, whether it is the Confucian advocacy of rule by Li or the Legalist advocacy of rule by law, both traditions rely on the “rule of sages,” and their essence is autocratic. Both ideologies treat the people as the objects of governance; their common goal is to establish an orderly society where the people abide by rules, but they refuse to recognize people’s autonomy to determine their own lives, let alone the power to oversee their rulers. For similar reasons, the norms of criminal law are seen to cover nearly all social relationships.

Second, both Confucianism and Legalism emphasize the uniqueness of ruling ideology, advocate for the suppression of contrary opinions and thoughts, and regard the elimination of disputes or punishment as the ultimate goal of social governance, norms known as “no litigation” (无讼 wusong) and “no punishment” (无刑 wuxing).

Third, as noted, although Confucianism envisions a social hierarchy of superiority and inferiority of rank, Legalism by no means rejects hierarchical social relationships. Likewise, Confucianism does not deny the effectiveness of the rule by law but rather believes that it should merely play an auxiliary role in social governance.

Finally, the Confucian and Legalist ideas that emerged in the early Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BC) and the Warring States period (476–221 BC) possess a variety of mutual, interpenetrating intellectual influences. Not only did most of their representative figures come from the aristocratic class, but also a considerable number of Legalist representatives studied under Confucian masters. The thoughts of Guan Zhong, the pioneer of Legalism have a strong Confucian color, for instance, and Zi Chan, an early Confucian politician, published laws to make the people understand the basis and standards of punishment.

Subscribe now

During the Warring States period, indeed, the basic views of Confucianism and Legalism on law grew relatively close, as Confucian scholars’ views about human nature shifted from the “theory of good nature” to the “theory of evil nature” under the pressure of social and political chaos. In turn, some Confucian scholars maintained the importance of imposing severe punishments on common people who could not be sufficiently educated.

The history of Chinese legal thought involves the shifting fortunes of these two schools of thought, and their eventual harmonization. This history and its underlying concepts will be unfamiliar to many traditional members of the Telos circle. Yet understanding them and making bridges between these ideas and those of Western social and legal thought is essential for the future of relations between China and the West.

The Integration of Traditions

The rapid collapse in 207 BC of the Qin dynasty, which had established a centralized and unified empire with the help of Legalist thought, revealed the danger of relying solely on Legalism to govern China. The Legalist doctrine of pure reward and punishment as power put the king in opposition to the interests of his closest subjects, and even to those of his sons. It was a regime without the ethical support of Li.

By contrast, the rulers of the early Han dynasty—which began in 202 BC and, with a brief interruption, came to an end in 220 AD‚ provided an opportunity for Confucianism’s reemergence in state governance. Beginning early in this period, Confucian scholars began to assert their role as “imperial teachers” and professional managers, seeking to obtain the “procurement” of rulers for its political propositions and services.

Lu Jia (陆贾 240–170 BC), for instance, asserted the principle of “not governing the world on horseback” to Emperor Gaozu of Han (汉高祖 256–195 BC). Shusun Tong (叔孙通 ?–?) formulated rules of court etiquette. In his “Public Security Strategy” (治安策 zhian ce), Jia Yi (贾谊 200–168 BC) argued for the importance of granting special legal treatment to the literati class, as rulers and literati formed a historical alliance of political interest. Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒 179–104 BC) received official favor with his theory of the Three Obedience and Five Constants (三纲五常 sangang wuchang), which justified the supreme nature of the monarch.

Although law under the Han dyansty followed the tradition of Qin law as formulated by the Legalists, Confucianism took the ideological field and became a kind of law de facto. Chen Chong of the Eastern Han dynasty characteristically asserted that “disobedience of Li will lead to punishment.” Li and law became substantially unified.

Yet there was an important difference from early Confucianism.

Beginning with the teachings of Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BC), Confucianism transformed the relationship between “kinship” and “respect” as articulated in the pre-Qin teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Specifically, it came to see loyalty to the monarch as being more important than filial piety to parents. Unconditional obedience to the monarch became the way of Heaven (天道 tian dao).

Share

At the same time, the centralized system of supreme power of the monarch—and a governing philosophy relying on bureaucrats to manage social affairs—was maintained. Likewise, the fundamental ideas of Legalism about punishment were preserved.

One might say that centralized bureaucratic rule by law had become a consensus among both monarchs and Confucian literati. The process of its formation is called the “legalization of Confucianism” (儒家思想法律化 rujia sixiang falvhua).

What emerged, then, was the political ideology of Orthodox Legal Thought in China, which has been mainstream for two thousand years. It consists of: (1) Confucianism, based on unequal treatment of superior and inferior; (2) the tradition of the Legalists, which at its core emphasizes the supreme power of the monarch and loyalty to the monarch personally; and (3) the continuation of Legalism’s centralized power and bureaucratic system.

In time, after the collapse of the Han dynasty, Confucian officials during the Wei, Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, and Sui dynasties gradually codified this tradition. The unified code implemented under the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) was a summary of the institutional experience of combining Confucianism and Legalism in previous periods, integrating Confucianism and Legalism into a single alloyed paradigm—Orthodox Legal Thought—which lasted until the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912).

Orthodox Legal Thought Today

Orthodox Legal Thought was formally abandoned under the Republic of China (1912–1949), but the continuity of legal culture determined that this paradigm would not disappear. Through its various carriers—customs, language, ways of thinking, institutional settings—legal culture, and its core, legal thought, still influences the legal thought and practice of future generations. Today, the fusion of Confucianism and Legalism is present in important ways:

1. Restrictions on Freedom

The ideological concept “one position as the highest authority” (定于一尊 dingyu yizun) in contemporary party discipline, which emerged in political discourse beginning around 2017, upturning its traditionally negative connotations, follows in the tradition of Confucianist-Legalist fusion. The tradition of censorship that follows in turn from this centralized vision has left a shadow over intellectual freedom, including in legal research, and it has hindered the democratic transformation of the country and society.

2. Legacy of Legalist Thought

The proposition that “the Party leads everything” reflects the Legalist view of comprehensive, centralized control, and the party’s emphasis on “seizing leading cadres as key minorities” (抓住领导干部这个关键少数 zhuazhu lingdaoganbu zhege guanjian shaoshu) reflects the Legalist emphasis on the importance of state power. In social governance, the emphasis on the core significance of government leaders, the goal of “maintaining stability” through legislation, and “instrumentalizing the functions of law and judicial organs” are all extensions of traditional orthodox thinking.

3. Legacy of Confucianism

Contemporary ideology emphasizes the role of moral governance, harmony, the exemplary role of party organizations and members, and the combination of “governing the country by law” and “governing the country by virtue”—all echoes of traditional Confucian thought.

In an officially released authoritative interpretation of Xi Jinping Thought, allusions related to traditional legal thought are cited far more frequently than Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory. This is no accident.

The transition from mutual opposition to mutual integration of Confucian and Legalist legal thought reflects the ultimate balance between the “differentializing” and “uniformizing” paths of governance in authoritarian societies. The continuation of Orthodox Legal Thought and its corresponding institutionalized governance system for two thousand years reflects the stability and profound historical significance of the social order structure brought about by this balance.

When the supporting forces behind this balance are washed away by the historical tide, this combination will not disappear.

Topics: China Initiative

Peter William Wang is an independent legal scholar.

In this webinar, TPPI’s Eric Hendriks talks with philosopher Daniel A. Bell about the topic of New Confucianism (新儒家). Among Western audiences, Bell is best known as a critic of liberalism. Still, he is also a critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), specifically of its legalist and Leninist legacies. What sets him apart from the typical Western critic is skin in the game, as he writes from within China, with nuance and empathy for China’s modern challenges and an understanding of the intellectual alternatives within Chinese tradition. In Bell’s words: “I’m a critic of the CCP, but I also see positive things to build on and I do not favor overthrowing the whole system.”

A prominent advocate of Confucian political meritocracy as an alternative to Western liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism, Bell serves as the Chair of Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law. Previously, he was the Dean of the School of Political Science at Shandong University and a professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University. His books include The Dean of Shandong (2023), Just Hierarchy (co-authored with Wang Pei, 2021), The China Model (2015), and China’s New Confucianism (2008), all published by Princeton University Press.

Moderating the webinar is Dutch sociologist Eric Hendriks, the director of TPPI's China Initiative, streaming live from Budapest, where he is a Danube Institute fellow.

The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is pleased to present this webinar in cooperation with the Danube Institute.

For more information about TPPI's China Initiative, visit our website.

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars

Johannes Thumfart works at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and security studies, political philosophy, international law, and intellectual history. He is a fellow at the research group Law, Science, Technology, and Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research has been published in the Journal of Global Security Studies, Global Studies Quarterly, Grotiana, and AI and Ethics. He has held academic positions in Berlin, Paris, Mexico-City, and Cincinnati.

Mark D. Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect, and ex–Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, digitallife.center) and co-founder of its educational project Trivium University (TrivU, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group, and on the editorial staff of its Substack publication, EXO: Digital Bomb!. He is the godson of cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener, and he considers CSDL to be a continuation of Wiener’s “Genius Project.”

Moderating the webinar is Dutch sociologist Eric Hendriks, the director of TPPI's China Initiative, streaming live from Budapest, where he is a Danube Institute fellow.

The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is pleased to present this webinar in cooperation with the Danube Institute.

For more information about TPPI's China Initiative, visit our website.

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars

David Moser is a Beijing-based linguist, academic, and public intellectual, who watched the six-part CCTV miniseries River Elegy in his dorm room at Peking University in June 1988 and witnessed it "hit academic circles like an atomic bomb."

The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is pleased to present this webinar in cooperation with the Danube Institute.

For more information about TPPI's China Initiative, visit our website

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars

Shadi Bartsch is the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago and the author and editor of a dozen books on Greek and Roman Antiquity. For her latest monograph on the reception of the ancient Greeks in China, she spent ten years studying Mandarin. The effort paid off: its fruit is Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism (Princeton University Press, 2023).

The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is pleased to present this webinar in cooperation with the Danube Institute.

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars

Among China's most influential foreign policy thinkers, Yan Xuetong is the author of numerous books, including Analysis of China's National Interests (1996), Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton University Press, 2011), and Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is a distinguished professor and dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University.

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars

Prof. Ban Wang, Stanford University, is a key scholarly interpreter of tianxia thought and Chinese socialist internationalism. His most recent book is China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision (Duke University Press, 2022).

Ian Buruma is a leading public intellectual, editor, and cultural historian who has published extensively on imperial legacies in China and Japan.

Eric Hendriks is a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary. His research concerns the ideological tensions involved in China's integration in the global order. His essay “The Polemics of China's Counter Cosmopolitanism” appeared in Telos 201 (Winter 2022).

Topics: China Initiative • Webinars