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How China's political model could prove to be a viable alternative to Western democracy Westerners tend to divide the political world into "good" democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes. But the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” The China Model seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocr...
Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current challenges and offering insights from which we can all learn. The Progressive Confucianism defended here takes key ideas of the twentieth-century Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) as its point of departure for exploring issues l...
China is known for its deep veneration of history. Far more than a record of the past, history to the Chinese is the magister vitae (teacher of life): the storehouse of moral lessons and bureaucratic precedents. Mirroring the Past presents a comprehensive history of traditional Chinese historiography from antiquity to the mid-qing period. Organized chronologically, the book traces the development of historical thinking and writing in Imperial China, beginning with the earliest forms of historical consciousness and ending with adumbrations of the fundamentally different views engendered by mid-nineteenth-century encounters with the West. The historiography of each era is explored on two level...
The narrative of China's history in this book is 'theme-led' rather than conventionally chronicle-based. It covers China's resource endowments, historical contingencies (such as civil wars, invasions and climate changes) and ideologies (including Legalism, Confucianism, Social Darwinism, nationalism, and Marx-Stalinism) that shaped the particular path of growth and development in China over two millennia. This book aims to take the reader through China's remarkably long and colourful saga of growth and development, full of ups, downs, twists and turns. It shows that China's experience has neither been linear nor trouble-free.China's long-term experience showcases the two fundamentals in growth and development: efficiency and equality. The lesson that one can learn from China's long history is that distributing incomes (equality) is as important as producing them (efficiency). By the same token, to secure growth and development, the political economy of government and governance is as critical in determining growth and development as resource endowments, technology, and market exchanges. This applied to China's past, and will inevitably apply to China's future.
This comprehensive collection brings out the rich and deep philosophical resources of the Zhuangzi. It covers textual, linguistic, hermeneutical, ethical, social/political and philosophical issues, with the latter including epistemological, metaphysical, phenomenological and cross-cultural (Chinese and Western) aspects. The volume starts out with the textual history of the Zhuangzi, and then examines how language is used in the text. It explores this unique characteristic of the Zhuangzi, in terms of its metaphorical forms, its use of humour in deriding and parodying the Confucians, and paradoxically making Confucius the spokesman for Zhuangzi’s own point of view. The volume discusses questions such as: Why does Zhuangzi use language in this way, and how does it work? Why does he not use straightforward propositional language? Why is language said to be inadequate to capture the “dao” and what is the nature of this dao? The volume puts Zhuangzi in the philosophical context of his times, and discusses how he relates to other philosophers such as Laozi, Xunzi, and the Logicians.
Covering the time span from the Shang to the Qing Periods (1520BC - 1911AD), Gang Deng examines important factors in the decline of the Chinese economy from medieval sophistication to modern underdevelopment. These factors include: * resource endowments * socio-economic structure * property rights * state and bureaucracy * ideology and values * geo-political environment * internal rebellions * external invasions and conquests The Premodern Chinese Economy is a comprehensive analysis of China's economic history and provides essential background to the study of this country's modern struggle for growth and development. Deng's emphasis on comparative analysis offers new insights into the concept of underdevelopment and theories of transitional economics. This will become a major reference work in the fields of Chinese studies, economic history and development studies.
Guo Qiyong’s edited volume on contemporary Chinese philosophy offers a detailed look at research on Chinese philosophy published from 1949-2009 in Mainland China and Taiwan. The chapters in this volume are broken down into either major themes or time periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. In each chapter after summarizing significant aspects of a particular theme or time period, lists are drawn up of the most important works, along with comments on their individual contributions. This volume allows readers to both familiarize themselves with specific texts and become immersed in the more general philosophical discourse surrounding the history of Chinese philosophy. It provides an in-depth look into serious debates and major discoveries in Chinese language philosophical scholarship from 1949-2009.
The concept of yinyang lies at the heart of Chinese thought and culture. The relationship between these two opposing, yet mutually dependent, forces is symbolized in the familiar black and white symbol that has become an icon in popular culture across the world. The real significance of yinyang is, however, more complex and subtle. This brilliant and comprehensive analysis by one of the leading authorities in the field captures the richness and multiplicity of the meanings and applications of yinyang, including its visual presentations. Through a vast range of historical and textual sources, the book examines the scope and role of yinyang, the philosophical significance of its various layers of meanings and its relation to numerous schools and traditions within Chinese (and Western) philosophy. By putting yinyang on a secure and clear philosophical footing, the book roots the concept in the original Chinese idiom, distancing it from Western assumptions, frameworks and terms, yet also seeking to connect its analysis to shared cross-cultural philosophical concerns.
Can we endorse valuable rights and freedoms—the cherished forms of equality and liberty we might call liberality—without liberalism? This book outlines such a possibility. Humane liberality upholds and deliberates equality, freedom, and justice through the Mencian virtue of humaneness, based in care and compassion. In positing humaneness to be the first virtue of government, Mencius directs us to formulate policies that are responsive to and promote the wellbeing of the people understood in terms of their actual lived and felt experience—their feelings and their flourishing. Rights and freedoms can and should be affirmed in ways that facilitate that flourishing. This pushes against the...