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It has been widely recognized that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in one of the last communist-run countries of the world: the People's Republic of China. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Chinese Christianity as merely a clandestine faith or, as hoped by the Communist Party of China, a privatized religion. Alexander Chow argues that Christians in mainland China have been constructing a more intentional public theology to engage the Chinese state and society, since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Chinese Public Theology recalls the events which have led to this transformation and examines the developments of Christianity across three generations of Chinese int...
Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This discourse has led to a proliferation of contending conceptions of ruxue, as well as proposals for rejuvenating it to make it a vital cultural and psycho-spiritual resource in the modern world. This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise; to identify which aspects of ru thought and values academics find viable, and why; to highlight the dynamics involved in the...
This book comprises 30 chapters representing certain new trends in reconcenptualizing Confucian ideas, ideals, values and ways of thinking by scholars from China and abroad. While divergent in approaches, these chapters are converged on conceptualizing and reconceptualizing Confucianism into something philosophically meaningful and valuable to the people of the 21st century. They are grouped into three parts, and each is dedicated to one of the three major themes this book attempts to address. Part one is mainly on scholarly reviews of Confucian doctrines by which new interpretations will be drawn out. Part two is an assembled attempt to reexamine Confucian concepts, in which critiques of traditional views lead to new perspectives for perennial questions. Part three is focused on reinterpreting Confucian virtues and values, in the hope that a new sense of being moral can be gained through old normative forms.
Explores the interplay of politics and the art of writing in China today to explain the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Chinese culture.
Through a highly sensitive exploration of key concepts and metaphors, Bernard Faure guides Western readers in appreciating some of the more elusive aspects of the Chinese tradition of Chan Buddhism and its outgrowth, Japanese Zen. He focuses on Chan's insistence on "immediacy"--its denial of all traditional mediations, including scripture, ritual, good works--and yet shows how these mediations have always been present in Chan. Given this apparent duplicity in its discourse, Faure reveals how Chan structures its practice and doctrine on such mental paradigms as mediacy/immediacy, sudden/gradual, and center/margins.
After several decades of reform and opening up, China has come to a critical period of transformation and development. How to improve the development strategies to effectively promote China's democratic politics has once again attracted the world's attention. This book compares the commons and differences between western and Chinese theories and practices of democracy model, and proposes a new democracy model for China's political reform — "cooperative-harmonious democracy". Absorbing the core values of democracy, this model draws on Chinese traditional "harmony and cooperation" and "people-oriented" thought, as well as modern cooperative game theory. More importantly, it adopts the new mo...
Discusses contemporary Confucianisms relevance and its capacity to address pressing social and political issues of twenty-first-century life. Condemned during the Maoist era as a relic of feudalism, Confucianism enjoyed a robust revival in post-Mao China as Chinas economy began its rapid expansion and gradual integration into the global economy. Associated with economic development, individual growth, and social progress by its advocates, Confucianism became a potent force in shaping politics and society in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities. This book links the contemporary Confucian revival to debatesboth within and outside Chinaabout global capitalism, East Asian modernity, political reforms, civil society, and human alienation. The contributors offer fresh insights on the contemporary Confucian revival as a broad cultural phenomenon, encompassing an interpretation of Confucian moral teaching; a theory of political action; a vision of social justice; and a perspective for a new global order, in addition to demonstrating that Confucianism is capable of addressing a wide range of social and political issues in the twenty-first century.
This book explores how the traditional ideal of Chinese manhood – the "wen" (cultural attainment) and "wu" (martial prowess) dyad – has been transformed by the increasing integration of China in the international scene. It discusses how increased travel and contact between China and the West are having a profound impact; showing how increased interchange with Western men, for whom "wu" is a more significant ideal, has shifted the balance in the classic Chinese dichotomy; and how the huge emphasis on wealth creation in contemporary China has changed the notion of "wen" itself to include business management skills and monetary power. The book also considers the implications of Chinese "sof...
In this book, Ying Zhou argues that educational reform filled a critical role in bridging the precarious gap between democratic ideals and political realities in late Qing and Republican China, where institutional change in education and the cultivation of a qualified citizenry were two sides of the same coin in the development of democratic education. Through a multi-level analysis of the (re)arrangements of national education and teachings of citizenship, Zhou unravels the complex political and educational nexus in China between 1901–1937, where the hope of education was to bring both political modernity and social progress.