Ge Zhaoguang, "Tianxia and Utopia"

Ge Zhaoguang, “Imagining 'All Under Heaven:' the Political, Intellectual
and Academic Background of a New Utopia”[1]
 
Introduction by David Ownby, Translation by Michael S. Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke.
 
Introduction
 
Ge Zhaoguang’s scholarly takedown of the Chinese literature on tianxia (the idea of Chinese universalism before the arrival of the modern West), published in the Taiwanese journal Reflexions 思想 and translated here, might be read as a warm-up to his unsparing attack on the Mainland New Confucians (“If Horses Had Wings :  The Political Demands of Mainland New Confucians in Recent Years”), published some two years later in the same journal.  In both texts, Ge makes use of his impressive erudition and historical knowledge to skewer the grandiose and often bombastic claims of cultural conservatives trying to peddle myths of China’s past civilizational splendor for present political purposes.  In other words, both are the scholarly equivalent of proclaiming that “the emperor has no clothes.”

Ge (b. 1950) is a well-known liberal historian who teaches at Fudan University in Shanghai.  His destruction of the tianxia myth is thorough (even in this somewhat abbreviated version of his text).  First, Ge asserts, there is no real certainty that anything like what tianxia defenders claim ever existed in China’s past.  These defenders insist that tianxia refers to a fundamentally different way to view the world and international relations based on culture, shared values, and mutual acceptance, rather than the “dog eat dog” world of Social Darwinian competition that defines the current world order. 

Ge points out that, despite some evocative language in ancient texts, classical tianxia ideas always emphasized distinctions between inner and outer, Chinese and “barbarian,” even if, perhaps, such distinctions were not as racialized early in Chinese history as they later came to be.  Nor was China’s traditional empire as “familial” as certain tianxia theorists like to claim, as peoples on China’s peripheries can readily attest.  

Tianxia, Ge argues, is in fact more important to China’s future than to China’s past.  The rediscovery of tianxia was a product of China’s rise and the heady notion that the 21st century might be China’s just as the 20th was that of the United States and the 19th that of Great Britain.  Should “China’s moment” be at hand, she needs an international model to complement Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which champions the China solution see as having succeeded where both American neo-liberalism and Soviet communism failed (see here for the translation of a text of one of these champions), and tianxia, with its promise of harmonious relations and mutual accommodation might be just the ticket.  Hence Ge Zhaoguang argues, as does Liang Zhiping in his much longer piece on tianxia, that the debate is all about ideology.

Ge’s article was translated by Michael S. Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke, both China scholars at the University of British Columbia, and will be published in 2020 in David Der-wei Wang, Angela Ki Che Leung, and Zhang Yide, eds., Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces (Hong Kong University Press, 2020).  My thanks to the translators and to the volume’s editors for allowing us to publish this version on our website. 

Readers interested in Ge Zhaoguang might note that the Dukes have also translated his An Intellectual History of China, Volume One: Knowledge, Thought and Belief Before the Seventh Century , and An Intellectual History of China, Volume Two: Knowledge, Thought and Belief From the Seventh Through the Nineteenth Century (Brill, 2014 and 2018).  Josesphine Chiu-Duke is also a specialist on Yu Ying-shih and Lin Yusheng, and has published considerably on both of these important figures in both English and Chinese.

In carrying out very light editing necessary to make the text fit our style preferences, I also intervened, as is my wont, to shorten or even omit certain footnotes that struck me as interesting only to specialists, who can consult the full version of Ge’s original by clicking on the link in footnote number one.
 
Translation
 
For the last decade or so in China, a future world utopia has been repeatedly written about—this utopia is called “All Under Heaven” or the “Chinese world order 天下”.[2] From a philosophized “world system 天下體系,” to a politicized “world order 天下秩序,” to a conceptualized “Sinocentrism 天下主義,” not only has such discourse been abundant but it has been very influential.[3] This influence has been especially great as more and more people have come to question the validity of the present world order led by the United States. Under these conditions, some people have asserted that a “Chinese world order” as a substitute program could bring fairness, equality and peace to the international world of the future.

With the so-called “rise of China,” some Chinese scholars have already been discussing “the Chinese moment in world history.”  They assert that the nineteenth century belonged to Great Britain, the twentieth century belonged to the United States, and the twenty-first century is the Chinese century. Since the twenty-first century is the Chinese century, then China should naturally lead the world order. According to their theories, this new world order led by China would simply be a re-establishment of the ancient Chinese world order of “All Under Heaven.” They argue that the tianxia described in ancient China represents “the ideal that ‘all the world is one family’” in both the “ethical” and the “political science” sense.

But was it really like that?
 
1. “All Under Heaven” in Chinese History: Inside and Outside, Chinese and Barbarians, Superiors and Inferiors
 
Originally I really did not intend to talk about the history of the concept of tianxia or “All Under Heaven” because for historians it is simply a matter of common knowledge. Given that those scholars who imagine a tianxia always ignore the writings of historians, however, then I had no choice but to revisit the history of the ancient Chinese tianxia. I had to see what sort of “ahistorical history” was actually being purveyed by these new theories of “tianxia.”

There is one interpretation of tianxia that is most full of imagination. That is the idea that the ancient Chinese “All Under Heaven” offers a certain historical experience for our modern world because it was a world in which the “ten thousand nations lived in peace and harmony 万邦协和.”  As Guo Yi 郭沂 writes: “If we want to realize genuinely stable unity in the political and cultural realms, we must employ the stance of Confucian Sinocentrism  and implement the Kingly Way 王道 in government and the tianxia program.”[4]

Is there any historical evidence for such ideas about the ancient Chinese tianxia? Not at all. We already have considerably abundant relevant historical sources for and much modern scholarship on the ancient Chinese concept of so-called “All Under Heaven.” Japanese scholars, from Ogawa Takuji 小川琢治 and Abe Takeo 安部健夫, down to the most recent Shinichirō Watanabe 渡辺 信一郎, and Chinese scholars Xing Yitian 邢义田 and Luo Zhitian 罗志田 have all written about the historical problem of tianxia. All of their writings emphasize one key point: the ancient Chinese tianxia always involved “us” and “the other,” “inner” and “outer,” “Hua 华” (Chinese) and “Yi 夷” (non-Chinese)—that is simply “China” and its “four borders.”

This means that within this concept of tianxia not only was a distinction made between the center and the four borders, but in ethnic consciousness a distinction between “inner” (central) and “outer” (marginal) was also made. Furthermore, in cultural terms, the distinction was between “Hua” (civilized Chinese) and “Yi” (uncivilized barbarians); and in political status, the distinction was between “superiors” (rulers) and “inferiors” (those who obey the rulers).

“Everywhere under Heaven/Is no land that is not the king’s land/To the borders of the all those lands/None but is the king’s slave.[5]

The key to the Confucian discourse on tianxia is the idea that “All Under Heaven is so vast, and within the four seas only One Man receives all honors.”[6] The idea of an undifferentiated realm in which “in All Under Heaven, far and near, large and small are all one” that some people today think so highly of is nothing more than an ideal of ancient scholars, especially those of the Gongyang School. In reality, if we examine ancient classical texts, we will learn that ever since the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, Zhou), outside of the “central states” controlled by the King were the “four frontiers” where his influence could not reach.

Any general discussion of the ancient tianxia will surely involve the “central states” and the “four directions” (or boundaries, 四方). In the ancient Chinese conceptual world, “inner” and “outer,” “us” and “other,” “Hua” (Chinese) and “Yi” (non-Chinese) were very clearly distinguished. Thus the “Royal Regulations 王制” in the Classic of Rites (Liji 礼记), an early Han text, set down the rules for a unified “All Under Heaven”: “The central states 中国, the barbarians 戎夷, and the peoples of the five directions 五方之民 all have their own particular natures and they cannot be changed.” [7]

To reiterate: from ancient times on, no matter how the concept of tianxia changed, it always contained three fundamental elements: (1) a distinction between “inside” and “outside,” (2) differences between “Chinese (Hua)” and “barbarians (Yi),” and disparities between “superiors” and “inferiors.” In the intellectual world of ancient China, “All Under Heaven” included China (the central states) and the four frontiers (or border peoples). The barbarians (non-Han tribes in the east and north of ancient China 夷狄), regarded as having a lower level of civilization had to obey the Chinese; their political legitimacy depended upon their being recognized by the central authority (King, Son of Heaven, Emperor) through his conferring upon them the title of a (non-Han) tributary state 藩国. They had to acknowledge their allegiance to the center and pay tribute.

Part One of the “Discourses of Zhou” (周语上, 1.1) in the Discourses of the States (国语) records Jigong Moufu 祭公谋父 as saying that if they do not serve the center according to the regulations, “then there will be punishments and punitive expeditions against those who do not make proper sacrifices. There will be condemnation of those who do not present tributes, and warnings for those who do not respect the king. There will also be severe punitive measures, armed forces sent against them, accompanied by written announcements intended to make them yield.”[8]

I want to particularly emphasize the idea that from the point of view of historiography, any reading and interpretation of ancient terms must be situated in their concrete historical context. Ancient concepts are not all “hard facts.” Their meanings and implications frequently need to be understood within the context of contiguous clusters of ideas. Simply taking out the three words “All Under Heaven” and maintaining that it was a type of world view full of “equality” and “harmony,” is, I’m afraid, only an ahistorical imaginary that can represent nothing more than romantic feelings and lofty ideals.

Did ancient China, then, possess a tianxia in which “far and near, large and small are all one” and all compatible and harmonious? Perhaps. Some such ideas are contained in the “Ceremonial Usages 禮運” chapter in the Liji, the “On Standards and Rules 法儀” chapter of the Mozi, the “Teachings of the Ru 儒效” chapter of the Xunzi and other literary sources, and there are those who maintain that they reflect ancient Chinese thought about the Great Unity 大同. One can, of course, call it “thought,” but it would be more appropriate to call it “idealism.” At best this ideal tianxia only existed in the “intellectual writings” of scholars, but it did not exist in the “political reality” of Chinese history.

Even the “Rectifying Theses 正論” chapter of the Xunzi says that no matter what, all the states of Xia Chinese 诸夏and the barbarians had to be clearly differentiated. If the barbarians did not submit to China, then military force had to be used to settle the matter. As the Classic of History 尚书 says: “The King put on his armor and All Under Heaven was completely pacified.”[9] If it were not for military strength, where would the power to pacify All Under Heaven come from? Even scholars who advocate “Sinocentrism” are forced to admit that “in reality the ancient Chinese empire 中国帝国 was actually quite far from the ideal of a “Celestial Empire 天下帝国.”

Strangely enough, though, in spite of this they still stubbornly insist on this imaginary idea by asserting that in its “cultural pursuits” the ancient Chinese empire “always attempted to carry out its affairs according to the cultural standards of a “Celestial Empire.’” There was no heresy then; “the nation existed for the sake of all 天下为公;”  the whole world was an integrated polity; the priority consideration was not territorial expansion, but questions of permanency; the tributary system was purely voluntary.

Was ancient China really like that? Let us take the Han and the Tang dynasties as examples. The Han dynasty was rich and powerful during the reign of the Martial Emperor Han Wudi, (r. 141-87 B.C.E.). He sent many punitive expeditions against the Xiongnu, attacked the kingdom of Nam Viet from five directions, attacked the western Qiang and pacified the southwestern barbarians at the same time, and he also mounted a long expedition that destroyed Chaoxian (Korea). Only by employing both strategies of division and isolation and powerful force of arms, was he able to create the far-reaching tianxia of the Great Han Empire.

The Tang dynasty was equally as wealthy and powerful during the reign of Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649). He attacked the Tujue (Türks), opened up the Tangut lands and established sixteen prefectures and forty-seven counties, attacked the Turkic Tuyuhun (Xianbei or Särbi people), sent a punitive expedition against the kingdom of Goguryeo in Korea, and invaded the far off kingdoms of Karasahr (Karashar) and Kucha (Kuche). Only after all of these battles, was he called the Heavenly Qaghan 天可汗.

The ancient Chinese clearly expressed the main tendency of All Under Heaven as follows: “When we are in decline, then they flourish; when we flourish, then they decline; when they flourish, then they invade across our borders, and when they decline, then they submit to our teaching and instruction.”[10]

After the Han and Tang, people continued to have dreams of becoming a Celestial Empire and Great Nation 天朝大国 again. For example, even though in reality China was already just one state within a multi-state world, the Song dynasty persisted in cherishing the old dream of “All Under Heaven.” Perhaps those scholars who advocate a Sinocentric tianxia in today’s world are still perpetuating this ancient dream of Celestial Empire.

It is perhaps unfortunate that this may remind us of the “law of the jungle,” but Chinese history really was not so wonderful. Some scholars starting only from various texts simply maintain that the ancient Chinese concept of tianxia “indicated a kind of ideal of the whole world as one family.” They even go so far as to assert that “this is the reason why Chinese thought could never give rise to a concept of ‘heresy’ like that in the West, nor could it, for the same reason, give rise to a form of nationalism with such clearly and categorically defined boundaries as in Western history.” “All Under Heaven,” they claim, transcended “nations” (states, countries, 国家) and “deserves to be called a harbinger of a perfect world system.”[11]

If we examine the history of East Asia, however, under the so-called “tianxia system,” when did the powerful states not control the rules of the game? If the weaker states did not submit to those rules, when would bloody warfare not be directed at them? Some scholars say that the ancient Chinese tianxia was a world without borders, without “inside” and “outside” or distinctions of “us” and “them,” a world in which everyone was treated equally. Although they have given it a great deal of thought, and I’m certain that their intentions are good and we cannot say that their views are the ravings of lunatics, they definitely do not represent history. And that is why I say what they present is simply utopia.
 
2. From Rising China to the Land of Dreams: the Political Background of an Imagined Sinocentric Tianxia
 
Even though discussions of tianxia had already begun in the middle of the 1990s, I will still take Zhao Tingyang’s 赵汀阳 2005 book The Tianxia System: Introduction to the Philosophy of World Systems天下體系：世界制度哲學導論 as the starting point for my examination of this issue. This is not only because Zhao’s book is a rather early and comprehensive philosophical discussion of tianxia, but also because it reveals many things about the political background of contemporary tianxia discourse and the origins of such thought.

Three elements of Zhao’s work are worth paying close attention to: (1) His “Introduction” starts right off by affirming that “re-thinking China” comes about because of “China’s economic success.” That makes it clear that tianxia as an important topic is closely related to “the rise of China.” This is the political background to the contemporary imagination of Sinocentrism. (2)

Before he discusses tianxia, he conspicuously cites passages on the subject of “empire” by Edward Said, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. This reveals that the new Chinese interpretations of Sinocentric tianxia bear a certain relation to the international theoretical world’s discourse on “empire.” (3) In his discussions of tianxia, he particularly cites Chinese discourse from pre-Qin to Ming and Qing times. This allows us to discern that this so-called new discourse on tianxia comes from the old theories of traditional Confucianism. It is just that these ancient Chinese ideas have been given new interpretations and linked together with the contemporary world order and the discourse of the state. In what follows, I will discuss each of these elements in order.

First, let us examine “the rise of China” as the political background of Sinocentrism. At first tianxia zhuyi may have only been the opposite of “nationalism 民族主义;” that is, it was put forth as a synonym for “globalism 全球主义.” But in 1996 Sheng Hong 盛洪 published his essay formally proposing the concept of tianxia zhuyi or Sinocentrism, only he emphasized it as “starting a challenge to the fairness and moral legitimacy of the international order led by the West.”

Although I should explain that perhaps Sheng Hong does not necessarily identify himself with nationalism, what is interesting is that his dissatisfaction with it stems from his belief that Chinese nationalism “is an insufficiently pure nationalism” and even more because “in modern times, China’s nationalism has only been a form of moral concession. On this account, China should now move away from its concessive and defensive nationalism toward a comprehensive and proactive Sinocentrism.

What, then, caused tianxia zhuyi to be transformed from “globalism” into “a form of nationalism disguised as globalism” among Chinese academic circles? It was simply “the rise of China.” Starting in the 1990s, slogans like “China can say no,” “China is not happy,” and “China has stood up” began to emerge. Spurred on by a sense of national sadness or humiliation, people felt that since the Chinese economy and national power had expanded so rapidly, in order to protect China’s global interests, China should not only engage in trade throughout the world from a position of military strength, but it should also triumph over the strong and bring peace to the masses. Even more, China should “manage many many more natural resources than the nation itself now possesses.” That is the only “road to victory for a great nation on the rise.”[12]

In light of this, left-wing academics intent on criticizing American hegemony and Confucian scholars who want to revive traditional doctrines reached a consensus on one point. They asserted that “a China whose national power is increasing daily should carry on the Confucian orthodoxy (daotong 道統) and revive the Confucian world view of ‘regarding All Under Heaven as one family.’ This conceptual system is more appropriate for maintaining justice and peace in a world full of conflicts and mutually connected interests.” They declare that it is “China’s Heavenly Mandate (tianming 天命)” to take responsibility for the world.

They ask “is this one world or two? Can China and the United States jointly govern the world? China is now in the process of rising, and once it surpasses the United States, what will the world be like?” Wang Xiaodong 王小东, “the standard bearer of Chinese nationalism,” published a book entitled The Mandate of Heaven Settles on a Great Nation 天命所歸是大國 in 2008 with the subtitle “We Want to be a Heroic Nation and the Leader of the World.”[13] A self-styled Confucian, Yao Zhongqiu 姚中秋, also asked: once China displaces the United States, how should we arrange the international order? His answer was: internally, let Confucianism protect Chinese values; externally, employ the Chinese world order to arrange All Under Heaven. He believes that would be “the Chinese moment in world history.”

Such emotionally rousing language becomes even more agitated with Mo Luo 摩罗. He says that for the past century and more the West has plundered, oppressed, and plotted against China, but now it is in crisis and China is growing more powerful. Thus, “in the world of the future the Chinese will politically unify all of humankind and establish a world government.”[14]

The political background of Sinocentrism is very clear. We only have to look at changes in the mainstream political ideology in China during the past ten or so years, from “the rise of a great nation” to “the road to restoration.” These changes taking place in an era of rising economic power represent China's gradual abandonment of its early strategies of “concealing strengths and biding time” or “non-combativeness” and the beginning of the “China dream” of being a “world power.” If we bring together all that military scholars advocating hawkish strategies have been saying about the battle for hegemony, unrestricted warfare, for superiority and the power to control the seas, and so on with the recent media blitz of continuous discussions about and showing off of China's advanced weapons, we can see that this Sinocentrism in the intellectual world has a very strong political background in the real world of power.
 
3. “Empire” or “Civilization-State”: How Do New Theories Echo Imagined Sinocentrism?
 
Next let us examine how the new Chinese interpretations of tianxia and international discussions of old and new “empires” and the discourse of “China as a civilization-state” are related.

As noted above, in the opening chapter of his Tianxia System, Zhao Tingyang quoted from Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire as introduction. This is not surprising. At the turn of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century in China, Said’s theory of “orientalism” and his critique of “cultural imperialism” and Hardt and Negri’s discourse on “empire” were very influential. These scholars are all critics worthy of our respect, but when their theories are transplanted to China, however, strange things often happen. Critiques originally aimed at mainstream Western thought and ideas may sometimes give rise to emotional opposition to a common enemy in the non-Western world, and this opposition in turn may stir up extreme nationalist feelings against universal values and the present social order.

At the turn of the century among Chinese intellectual circles, this sort of critique of the West, especially of the world order led by the United States, gradually separated from its original context and activated the latent nationalism in the hearts and minds of the Chinese academic world as well as echoing the Chinese left-wing trend of thought. These new theories, full of a sense of justice, were originally criticisms of the West from within the West itself. On the political side, they fiercely criticized the political hegemony of imperialism in modern times. On the cultural side, they reflectively questioned the discursive hegemony of imperialism. They made “empire” into a hotly contested concept. Many Western-language books on “empire” and “cultural imperialism” such as Hardt and Negri’s Empire, Niall Ferguson’s Empire, John Tomlinson’s Cultural Imperialism: a Critical Introduction, and Said’s Culture and Imperialism were translated into Chinese.

Frankly stated, the orientation of these discussions of “empire” were really not identical. The only common element in these differently oriented theories is that they all emphasize that “empire” transcends “nation” and no matter whether you are dealing with old pre-modern empires or new post-modern empires, “the concept of empire is characterized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empire’s rule has no limits.”[15] Interestingly enough, in China this discourse on “empire” echoed China's traditional concept of “All Under Heaven.” These critiques of globalization, modernity and the present world order, then, activated China's emotional drive to end “a century of humiliation” and its great ambition to critique the intellectual tide of “modernity” and re-build a system of Sinocentrism.

“Empire is materializing before our very eyes,” say Hardt and Negri, because “along with the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a global order, a new logic and structure of rule—in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world.” And “if the nineteenth century was a British century, then the twentieth century has been an American century, or really, if modernity was European, then postmodernity is American.” In this way Hardt and Negri aim their critique at the United States.

What about the twenty-first century, then? Does China follow the United States? They do not say. The interesting thing, however, is that among the various Chinese writings about the tianxia that I have read, they both juxtapose tianxia with empire (Zhao Tingyang writes All Under Heaven/Empire 天下／帝国) and feel very strongly about All Under Heaven (Sinocentrism) being an alternative program to replace empire. They also suggest that the twentieth-century “empire” dominated by the United States and the twenty-first-century “tianxia” being built up by China may well soon constitute a historical sequence. Even though “empire” and “All Under Heaven” are equally without boundaries or limits, in some Chinese scholars’ theories, “All Under Heaven” is simply more just, compassionate and benevolent than “empire.”

We need not be in a hurry to discuss why “All Under Heaven” is better than “empire,” but we might as well look first at another idea that has spurred on the imagination of tianxia. That is the definition of traditional China as a so-called “civilization-state,” a concept that was originally put forward by Lucian W. Pye. Some mainland scholars are particularly enthusiastic about this idea and have attempted to support a “theory of Chinese exceptionalism” on the basis of this “state” characteristic.

The problem is, though, that Pye did not really offer any deep historical analysis of China as a “civilization-state,” nor did he demonstrate just what particular characteristics this category of “civilization-state” actually had; and even more, he did not present any clear argument about how a “civilization-state” should act within the modern world order. It has been rather another group of academics, relying on works by two other Western scholars, who have enthusiastically promoted the “China Model” and the “theory of Chinese exceptionalism.” They have relied on the advocacy of Henry Kissinger, On China, and Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, to revitalize these specious concepts. They have tried to exceptionalize Chinese history in an attempt to dress up ancient China’s tribute system as a very civilized institution and to spare contemporary China from the restraints of the modern international system.[16] In this way a Sinocentric “empire” or “All Under Heaven” will become both justifiable and legitimate.

We know, of course, that there are many differences between modern nation-states and traditional empires. To mention five simple differences that exist today: (1) there are clearly demarcated borders, (2) there is the concept of national sovereignty, (3) there has been the formation of the concept of people 国民, (4) there are national (state) institutions that control politics, economics and culture, and (5) there are the international relationships between various nation-states.

What, then, is a “civilization-state”? Is it that it has no distinct “national boundaries” and no clearly defined “sovereignty?” Is it that the people of the country only “identify” with the culture and not with the state? And that the country is really not controlled by a modern government but by a traditional imperial power? Is it that its relations with the various surrounding countries are not really state-to-state relations, but a system of ritual relationships between Chinese and barbarians?

Was ancient China actually this sort of a nation? If it was, then where was it different from an “old-style empire?” If it transcended nations and its culture embraced the four corners of the earth, then where was it different from a “new empire” (“neo-imperialism”) or “cultural imperialism?” If “the concept of empire posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality, or really, that rules over the entire ‘civilized’ world,” then what is “All Under Heaven” or tianxia? Is it not the same as an “empire” that is attempting to establish a new order? Is there not behind this “empire/All Under Heaven” a power that dictates what the world system should be? By what criteria can it designate itself as “civilized” and others as “barbarian?” If everyone has to submit to its culture and political system, then do we not have to revert to the ancient Chinese traditional order of differentiating between Hua (Chinese) and Yi (non-Chinese barbarians)?

Interestingly enough, in a discussion of the “Sinocentric system,” a French scholar once asked the following series of questions: Who is going to select the ruler (“paterfamilias 大家长”) of the tianxia? How will he be selected? Who will he be responsible to? How will his laws be enacted? Will his statements to the people be written in the Latin alphabet or in Chinese characters? Reportedly, “In the face of these questions, Zhao Tingyang frankly admitted that he was only demonstrating the political principles and universal system of values of the ‘tianxia tixi’ from a philosophic point of view and could not without great difficulty advance any imaginative ideas about its concrete institutions of political power. He also said that he had never figured out a good way to solve the problem of the ruler 大家长.” Who, indeed, is “the ruler?” Who establishes the governing rules for this tianxia? Who sets up this world order and judges its reasonableness?

The answers to these questions are the keys to resolving the question of superiority between “All Under Heaven” and “empire.”[17]  If these questions are not resolved, “All Under Heaven” will simply end up being an “empire” again. In that event, would it make any difference whether this world system that transcends nationalities or nation-states was called “All Under Heaven” or “empire?”
 
4. Over-interpretation of Traditional Confucian Sources: Early Texts, Dong Zhongshu and He Xiu
 
Lastly, I want to discuss how expositions of “All Under Heaven” in traditional Chinese Confucian texts were step-by-step interpreted into the contemporary version of “Sinocentrism.” Ancient Chinese discussions of “All Under Heaven” can be traced back to very early times, but here I only want to make a historical examination of those ideas that have been most able to stimulate the modern imagination of tianxia. I want especially to look at the origin and development of the Gongyang School of thought.

When modern scholars discuss “All Under Heaven,” they always quote the theories of the Gongyang School of Spring and Autumn Annals study. According to the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋公羊传, because its time was so remote, in the Spring and Autumn Annals  records of events “there are different expressions concerning that which has been seen, heard, and passed down.”[18] That is to say that the records in the Spring and Autumn Annals are derived from three different periods of historical memory, and so they contain “different expressions.” If things remained at that, there would certainly have been nothing unusual about these ideas.

However, He Xiu 何休 (129-182) of the Eastern Han, further elaborated on this theme and transformed these three different eras of historical memory into three eras with different political systems and moral levels. In the first age, “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” in the second, “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside,” and in the third and final age, “in All Under Heaven, far and near, large and small are all one.” The interesting thing is that it was just this differently oriented interpretation that became an important discourse concerning the real “system of Chinese-barbarian relations” and the ideal “order of All Under Heaven.”

The phrases “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” and “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside,” are from the Gongyang Commentary.[19]  Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 179-ca. 104 B.C.E.) of the Western Han, in his Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋繁露, elaborated further by asserting that ancient China’s “All Under Heaven” was originally close to an ideal world. Unfortunately, however, history steadily declined. Because the political system of later generations increasingly deteriorated, the royal house was powerless and could only rely on Regional Rulers like Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin to “resist the barbarians and save the Central States (China).”[20]

When Confucius came to compose the Spring and Autumn Annals, he thought the best thing to do was to institute a principle that required the Son of Heaven, the Regional Rulers, the high officials and the even more distant barbarians to abide by a system of hierarchical order among superiors and inferiors. It was then hoped that an effective political order could be established by relying on this structure of deferential sequences of near and far and inside and outside in different periods of time, first “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” and then “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside.”

It must, of course, be pointed out that Dong Zhongshu’s method of different treatment of unequal groups, beginning by dividing All Under Heaven into a “capital region 国,”  “various Chinese states 诸夏,” and “barbarians 夷狄” from near to far off and from inner to outer, is completely at variance with today’s unrestrained exaggeration of supposed harmony and equality in the ancient Chinese tianxia (“All Under Heaven, far and near, large and small are all one”).

We need to remember that Dong Zhongshu lived in an age in which the Martial Emperor Han Wudi, was engaged in a supreme effort to open up new territory on the frontiers. Although what Dong Zhongshu put forth on behalf of the Han dynasty was an ideal of “all within the four seas are one family,” this “one family” had to be under the overall control of the Han empire. In this Han dynasty version of “All Under Heaven,” there was a differential order of status ranks between barbarians and Chinese and near and far. Only in this way would it be in accord with the Gongyang School theory of so-called “unfolding of the three stages of history 張三世,”  “preserving the three sources of political legitimacy 存三統, and “differentiating between inside and outside 異外内.”

In the Eastern Han, however, He Xiu employed Dong Zhongshu’s discourse, but he imagined that this originally “not unified 不一” tianxia could gradually change into one that was “as if unified 若一.” He borrowed the ancient Chinese ideas of a “Golden Age of antiquity” and “history constantly moves backward,” but he used them to imagine that there would be a reborn “All Under Heaven” which sloughed off the past and in which all within the four seas would be one family.

Although in later generations He Xiu’s theory was enlarged, in ancient China it was nevertheless only the ideal of a classical exegete. This ideal that even He Xiu himself said contained “extremely divergent and strange” discourse was indeed not considered to be of much importance for a very long period of time. Just as Liang Qichao put it: “from the Wei-Jin on, no one dared to talk about it . . . and the Gongyang School vanished for nearly two thousand years.[21]
 
5. Imagination in the Face of Western Influence: the Misinterpretations of Kang Youwei and Contemporary Scholars
 
Such thoughts were said to first appear again in the intellectual world when the Gongyang School of Changzhou was revitalized. Comparatively early modern discussions of the Changzhou Gongyang School appeared in Liang Qichao’s 1920 Intellectual Trends in the Qing Period 清代学术概论 and his posthumously published 1929 Three Hundred Years of Recent Chinese Intellectual History 中国近三百年学术史. Liang Qichao wrote that “the masters who initiated the New Text School” were first Zhuang Cunyu 莊存與 (1719-1788) and his Correcting Terms in the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋正辞 and then Liu Fenglu 刘逢禄 (1776-1829) and his Master He’s Xiu’s Explication of the Precedents in the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals 公羊春秋何氏释例. They inspired Gong Zizhen 龚自珍 (1792-1841) and Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794-1857) “to establish the study of the ‘practical use of the Confucian principles in reordering the society 经世致用’” of the Shunzhi and Kangxi (1644-1722) eras based on the foundations of the evidential research of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras (1735-1820).[22]

One particular phenomenon is often seen in Chinese intellectual history: promoting the appearance of new ideas on the basis of “mistaken readings” of the classic texts. This has been especially the case because these “misreadings” are capable of considerable elaboration. Just as Qian Mu 钱穆 (1895-1990) said, “the higher they are valued, the more abundantly they are  debated.”[23] If we return to the historical context and examine the materials concerning Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu, we will probably be able to discern several important elements of their thought. First, they were worried about the disappearance of the long history of explication of the “great meaning of the subtle words 微言大義” of the classics. And second, they criticized the use of historical methods, common in the contemporary Qianlong period, to explicate the meaning of the classic texts. To put it simply, we can say that there were three main elements in Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu’s Gongyang School of Spring and Autumn Annals studies.

First, they elucidated the idea of “the king’s tianxia” (that is the search for political uniformity throughout the country). Second, they sought the “great unity 大一统,” that is, China’s search for a unified polity (dynasty, empire) throughout its history. Third, they imagined that after All Under Heaven was unified, then “the whole world would have the same customs and the nine continents would be joined together 六合同风，九州共贯” (what the ancient Chinese had sought throughout history, the so-called realm in which there was “a uniform morality and identical customs.”

If we look at these ideas in the political context of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras, how many modern implications would they have anyway? Even in Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan, who already had a premonition of changes to come, we cannot see where the Qing dynasty Gongyang School exhibited much “modern” significance. One scholar has pointed out that “the significance of the Changzhou Gongyang School in intellectual history belongs to the middle Qing and not the late Qing; its face is turned toward tradition and not toward the modern era.”[24] I quite agree with this assessment. To separate oneself from the intellectual context and the scholarly discourse of the period from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and to interpret Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu as seeking a new identity for China and establishing new laws for the world of the future, is, I’m afraid, only the excessive imagination and over-interpretation of modern people.

If we look at scholarly history, we will find that there were two most important historical moments when the Qing dynasty Gongyang School was rediscovered, placed at the center of recent intellectual history, and given a new interpretation. The first was in the late Qing. In the face of the raging thought tide from the West, Kang Youwei (1858-1927) tried to hold back the surging waves that had already crashed onto the shore. Borrowing from ancient Chinese resources, he tried both “to support the old and to reform the system.” And so he continued the Gongyang School and further elaborated on “the great meaning of the subtle words” of the classics. The second was at the end of the twentieth century when the works of a Chinese scholar of Confucianism and an American historian stimulated the Chinese academic world.

The idea of taking the “theory of the three stages of human history 三世说” as a blueprint for the design of the future world unexpectedly came into being with Kang Youwei in the late Qing. Reading his works, such as Dong Zhongshu’s Studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋董氏学, A Study of Confucius as a Reformer 孔子改制考, The Book of Great Unity 大同书, and so on, we can see that he heavily politicized and modernized the ancient Gongyang School theories. As many scholars, like Xiao Gongquan (Hsiao Kung-ch’uan 萧公权) and Zhu Weizheng 朱维铮, long ago pointed out, from Liao Ping 廖平 (1852-1932) to Kang Youwei, several late Qing scholars attempted to use materials from the traditional classics to respond to the challenges of Japan and the West.

Liao Ping only had one foot beyond the borders of the study of the classics, but Kang Youwei had already jumped completely outside the threshold of traditional classical studies. He employed the ideas of the “three stages of human history,” the “three sources of political legitimacy,” and “inside and outside” in the Gongyang Commentary and its annotations to respond to China's internal crises and the international order. On the one hand, he admitted that these new internal crises and the new international order meant that “China” was no longer a Celestial Empire. The times had already reverted to “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” or “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside.” On the other hand, he strove mightily to make China once more envelop the world through its civilization and to restore its confidence on the basis of taking the idea of Great Unity of All Under Heaven where “far and near, large and small are all one” as a future ideal.

Only at that time did the Gongyang Commentary and those interpretations of the “great meaning of the subtle words” in the classics start to seem as though they could provide materials for the modern world and a modern political system. From 1885 to 1890, Kang Youwei began to write his Common Principles for the World 人类公理 and Inner and Outer Chapters 内外篇, using Confucius’ “principles of chaos, order and great peace to talk about the world.” In 1890 he met Liao Ping and began to propagate Gongyang studies. The next year he built his private academy, the “Hut of Ten Thousand Trees,” and began to teach what He Xiu had called “extremely divergent and strange discussions.”

In General Discourse on Teaching 教学通义, he first used the “three stages” to periodize Chinese history, and in Dong Zhongshu’s Studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals, he also emphasized that the “theory of the three stages of human history” was “Confucius’ extremely important principle.” But only in A Study of Confucius as a Reformer, did he formally assert that Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals “on the basis of the state he was born in, and thus he established the principle of the three stages of human history and paid attention to the great unity in which far and near, large and small are all one.”  Later on when he wrote The Book of Great Unity, he based himself even more on the Gongyang Commentary to imagine a world where “the four seas are as one” and “All Under Heaven is one family.”

The question is:  Can Kang Youwei’s ideas about the “three stages of human history” and especially the “Great Unity” really be turned into a system for the world of the future? Someone has done a rather modern interpretation of this question and concluded that “in China's self-transformation from empire to sovereign nation,” Kang Youwei performed the function of a “legislator 立法者.” Why? For four reasons. First, Kang used the term “struggle between nations” to describe the contemporary world situation and advocated “changing China's imperial system into a nation-state system.” Second, he reinterpreted the meaning of “China,” excluded the ethnic element, sought the origin of “China's” identity in culture, and discovered in Chinese politics a theory of anti-nationalist (anti-ethnic) nation (state) building.

Third, he combined the Confucian vision of universalism and Western knowledge politics  to conceive a long-range prospect of a Great Unity tantamount to a great utopia. Finally, Kang combined this prospective utopia with nationalism  and the ideology of Confucianism as a religion and thus created some flavor of religious reformism.

Was Kang Youwei really such a modern legislator? I have always remained skeptical of this idea. In the context of the national crises of the late Qing, it is understandable that Kang Youwei would modernize Gongyang thought to construct his own imaginary world of the future. But for contemporary scholars to make him into a prophet and to use modern theories and concepts to re-interpret his ambitious but specious statements may just be simply to ignore Kang Youwei’s historical position. As an ethnic Han Chinese scholar who had lived under the rule of the Qing empire for a long time and as a political leader who wanted to “protect the great Qing,” when he designed his new nation, he could not but consider his own “status or role” and be constrained by the “ethnic group and nation” that he lived in.

To establish their political legitimacy the Manchu-controlled Qing empire always emphasized three principles: (1) to make no distinctions between Chinese and non-Chinese, and so “no one should be disloyal due to his Chinese or non-Chinese origin.” (2) “the morally great will definitely receive the Mandate.” That is to decide on the basis of morality who is to govern All Under Heaven. (3) to discuss ethnicity on the basis of culture. That is to say, “when Chinese behave like barbarians, they will be treated like barbarians and when barbarians behave like Chinese, they will be treated like Chinese.” Thus, the Yongzheng emperor’s A Record of Rightness to Dispel Confusion 大义觉迷录 states:

Since our dynasty entered and governed China, we ruled All Under Heaven, we integrated the Mongols and various other far off border tribes into our territory. This led to a vast expansion of China’s territory and is a great good fortune for our Chinese subjects. How can there be any distinction between Chinese and non-Chinese or inside and outside?[25]

If these principles of the Qing empire that contain both the idea of equality of ethnic groups and that All Under Heaven is one family were to be given a modern interpretation, would this not amount to saying that the Yongzheng emperor was “designing a future for China” and setting up laws for the modern (world)”?[26]

Why, then, at the end of the twentieth century, did Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu again become the fountainhead of modern thought and Kang Youwei turn into a prophet?[27] Perhaps this was related to the two works mentioned above. In 1995, Jiang Qing 蒋庆 (b. 1953) published his Introduction to the Gongyang School 公羊学引论. Through his interpretations of the Gongyang Commentary, he moved the “great meaning of the subtle words” of the Gongyang School from a simple intellectual doctrine into the political arena. In this light, he emphasized that “Zhuang Cunyu, Liu Fenglu, Song Xiangfeng and Kong Guangfen of the Qing dynasty Changzhou Gongyang School had led the way and Ling Shu, Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan and Chen Li had followed their lead.

And so “the thousand-year-old principle, again became illuminating during this time.”[28] Unlike Jiang Qing, in 1990, the American scholar Benjamin A. Elman, sorting out the historical context of Qing dynasty political and intellectual change, provides a historical explanation that brings Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu back onto the center of the intellectual stage. Elman’s Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: the Ch’ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China particularly emphasizes the importance of Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu in recent Chinese intellectual history: “Zhuang Cunyu was on center stage in the political world of late imperial China. Indeed, by comparison Wei Yuan and Gong Zizhen were marginal figures whose historical importance has been determined largely by a consensus of twentieth-century scholars.”[29]

These two works received widespread attention. Jiang Qing’s study aimed to illustrate the political significance of the Gongyang School. He explained how the Gongyang School was “a political Confucianism that is different from the Neo-Confucian School of Mind.” It was “a practical Confucianism that offered hope in a dark age.” He emphasized that “their ideal world of Great Peace and Great Unity was the life hope that the Gongyang School offered for a chaotic age.” This “Gongyang School’s debate about barbarians and Chinese was based on culturalistic nationalism; it was precisely a healthy and reasonable form of nationalism” that inspired Sheng Hong to advocate “Sinocentrism.”[30]

Elman’s study was translated in 1998 and received very positive reviews. In his “Afterword”, he writes: “Standing for new beliefs in a time of political, social, and economic turmoil, New Text Confucians championed pragmatism and the imperative of change.”  And he continues:   “Beginning with Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu, New Text Confucians appealed to a reconstruction of the past to authorize the present and to prepare for the future.”[31]  These ideas provided some inspiration for academics like Wang Hui 汪晖 (b. 1959) who trace the origins of Chinese thought back to scholars of the Qing dynasty Gongyang School.[32]

Due to the efforts of a few influential Chinese scholars who began to explore the modern significance of the Gongyang School, Zhuang Cunyu, Liu Fenglu and scattered remarks about the Gongyang Commentary gradually grew into a hot topic of interpretation. Those “extremely divergent and strange discussions” were transformed into prophecies of a future world. It should be pointed out here, though, that as much as Jiang Qing tried to promote political Confucianism, he was the first to admit that this was only his own personal belief. His aim was to bring out the “great meaning of the subtle words” of the Gongyang School, and his discussion did not have to accord completely with textual sources and history.[33]

And as a historian, Benjamin Elman, emphasized that “the contemporary political background to the rise of the New Text study of the classics was the He Shen affair.” He remained extremely cautious about the modern political significance of the Gongyang School. He wrote that “Changzhou scholars had not yet reached a concept of political revolution or demonstrated a full understanding of social progress . . . .”[34] The Qing dynasty Gongyang School, then, could not necessarily have anticipated and designed in advance a world of Great Unity in which ethnic boundaries had been eliminated.

Now we need to ask some questions about all of this. From an examination of history, can the Qing dynasty Gongyang School be interpreted as “providing theoretical premises and an intellectual vision for a new historical practice— political reform under conditions of colonialism?” Can the ancient Chinese Confucian “All Under Heaven” provide a critique of the world system led by Great Britain in the colonial era and the contemporary world order led by the United States? Can it also become an alternative program for a more reasonable and more just world order? Some people say that this alternative program comes from Dong Zhongshu and He Xiu and was refined by Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu to finally culminate in Kang Youwei’s Gongyang thought. This program “offers values and norms for a world governance that is oriented toward Great Unity. . . . this conception of ‘Great Unity’ will gradually develop from the activity of reconstructing a view of the world. Its sharp critical analysis of capitalist world relations, especially of the national, boundary, class, and sexual status distinctions these world relations depend on, are full of profound foresight and insight.”[35]  I’m afraid, however, that this is nothing more than an excessive modern interpretation.
 
Conclusion: An Imaginary Utopia of “All Under Heaven”
 
At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, stimulated and encouraged by theories of “new empire” from Europe and America and with the “rise of a great nation” as its political background, the Chinese intellectual arena witnessed an attempt to formulate a program to substitute a re-interpreted ancient Chinese tianxia or “All Under Heaven” for the current world order

Several Chinese scholars now imagine that the ancient Chinese “All Under Heaven” can be transformed into a form of “Sinocentrism” that is aimed at the contemporary world order. This tianxia, they believe, can lead the world from the age of chaos, through the age of order and into the age of great peace following the ancient theory of the three stages of history. They say that ancient China had already designed a world system that “no longer had distinctions between large and small nations and no longer had distinctions between civilized and backward peoples; that is, it had simply eliminated national and ethnic boundaries (in All Under Heaven, far and near, large and small are all one).”[36]

For this reason, it not only established the foundation of modern and contemporary China, but also set up laws for the future of the world (as in Kang Youwei, A Study of Confucius as a Reformer).

If these were only academic ideas from scholars’ studies, there would, of course, not be any problem. But if this theory of Sinocentrism attempted to become the basis of government, politics and strategy, then they would be cause for concern. Distinctions between “Hua” (civilized Chinese) and “Yi” (uncivilized barbarians), between “inner” (central) and “outer” (marginal) and between “superiors” and “inferiors” were originally implicit in the ancient Chinese theory of “All Under Heaven.” And moreover, war tactics of blood and fire could always be used to make “All Under Heaven return to One 天下归一.”

Will it come to pass that under the emotional appeal of “washing away a century of humiliation” and in the name of “promoting Chinese civilization” the theory of “Sinocentrism” is going to be dressed up as a form of Chinese nationalism under the banner of internationalism? We can already see that the discussion of “Sinocentrism” has now gone beyond history and entered into contemporary reality. A number of scholars who are not historians have begun to suggest strategic road maps to the government. That is, to go from centrism (moderation) and isolationism toward expansionism and Sinocentrism. They suggest that “new Sinocentrism” must become “a unique Chinese diplomatic asset to replace the world system of national states.[37]

I do not have the ability to make a judgment regarding this “Sinocentrism” as a political system; I have only analyzed the politics, thought and scholarship behind this utopian kind of imagination from the point of view of Chinese history. At present some Chinese scholars are extraordinarily enthusiastic about this ancient concept of “All Under Heaven” and they are constantly asserting that it can save the future of the world. But really, can this actually be the case?


Notes
 
[1] 葛兆光, “对‘天下’的想象：一个乌托邦想象背后的政治，思想和学术,” originally published in the Taiwanese journal Reflection 思想 29 (2015), it is also available online here:  http://www.aisixiang.com/data/92884.html.  This translation is an abbreviated version of the longer published text.  The print version of this translation will appear in David Der-wei Wang, Angela Ki Che Leung, and Zhang Yide, eds., Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces (Hong Kong University Press, 2020).  My thanks to the translators and to the volume’s editors for allowing us to publish this version on our website.

[2] This kind of discourse is quite abundant; here are a few important examples. Sheng Hong 盛洪,为万世开太平 (1999, 2010);  Zhao Tingyang 赵汀阳, 天下体系：世界制度哲学导论 (2005); Yao Zhongqiu 姚中秋,华夏秩序治理史 (2012); Gan Chunsong 干春松,重回王道—儒家与世界秩序 (2012); Li Yangfan 李扬帆,涌动的天下: 中国世界观变迁史论 (2012).

[3] Translators’ note:  Most of the time we translate tianxia zhuyi (literally: tianxia-ism, All Under Heaven-ism) as Sinocentrism because the idea of Sinocentrism is in the background of these theories of a new utopia.

[4] Guo Yi 郭沂, “天下主义: 世界秩序重建的儒家方案,” 人民日报, March, 2013, 35.

[5] Classic of Poetry, Mao #205, Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs, (1960), 320 with one change.

[6] Chen Li 陈立, 白虎通疏证, (1994), juan 2, 47.

[7] Liji Zhengyi 礼记正义.

[8] Guoyu 国语, “Zhouyu shang 周语上,” Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988, 4.

[9] Shangshu, “Wu cheng”: “Once the King (Wu) put on his armor and All Under Heaven was completely pacified.” Although the “Wu cheng” chapter is an ancient forgery, it was regarded as a classic text from the Eastern Han on, and so its ideas still have the authority of a classic. See Shisanjing zhushu 十三经注疏, 185.

[10] Jiu Tangshu 旧唐书, juan, 196B, 5269, Zhonghua, 1975.

[11] Zhao Tingyang, Tianxia tixi, preface.

[12] Zhongguo bu gaoxing 中国不高兴 (2009).

[13] Wang Xiaodong 王小东, 天命所归是大国 (2008).

[14] See Yao Zhongqiu, “世界历史进入中国时刻,” abstract available here:  http://www.opentimes.cn/Abstract/1858.html .  For Mo Luo’s words, see his中国站起来 (2010), 255.

[15] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (2000).

[16] For example, Zhang Weiwei 张维为,中国震撼 (2011).

[17] See Régis Debray and Zhao Tingyang,两面之词—关于革命问题的通信 (2014).

[18] Gongyangzhuan, http://ctext.org/gongyang-zhuan/yin-gong-yuan-nian .

[19] See Chunqiu gongyangzhuan zhushu 春秋公羊传注疏, juan 18, Shisanjing zhushu edition, Beijing: Zhonghua, 1980, 2200 and 2297.

[20] Ibid., 2297.

[21] Liang Qichao 梁启超, Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代学术概论, in Liang Qichao lun Qingxueshi er zhong 梁启超论清学史二种 (1985), chapter 22, 61.

[22] Ibid., 61-62. Translators' note:  “Practical use of the Confucian principles in reordering the society” is Professor Yu Yingshi’s translation. See “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Chu-yuan Cheng, ed., Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and the Modern World (1989), 79-102.

[23] Qian Mu, Zhongguo jin sanbainian xueshushi中国近三百年学术史, (1986), 524.

[24] Cai Changlin 蔡长林, 从文士到经生—考据学风潮下的常州学派 (2009), 511-512.

[25] 大义觉迷录, juan 1, (1999), 135.

[26] Ibid. Interestingly enough, recently a group of Chinese scholars have been clamoring for a “return to Kang Youwei.” See 康有为与制度化儒学, partial translation available here: https://www.readingthechinadream.com/kang-youwei-and-institutional-confucianism.html .

[27] In twentieth-century academic history, Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu did not attract much attention. Their light was always rather dim when compared to luminaries such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Dai Zhen, Zhang Xuecheng and even their contemporaries Ling Tingkan and Ruan Yuan. In intellectual history, Kang Youwei also did not rank as high as a “legislator for modern China.” Neither did he seem like a prophet of the modern or even the future world. He was rather more frequently considered a representative of modern Chinese conservative thought.

[28] Jiang Qing, 公羊学引论 (1995).

[29] Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, xxii with changes to pinyin romanization.

[30] Jiang Qing, 公羊学引论, chapter 1, 47 and chapter 4, 231. In 2002 Sheng Hong and Jiang Qing had a long dialogue on Sinocentrism and related issues; it was published as以善致善, (2004). The preface, “在儒学中发现永久和平之道” was published in 读书4 (2004).

[31] Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, 321, 322.

[32] In 1993 Wang Hui and Benjamin Elman had a dialogue that was later entitled谁的思想史? In it Elman told Wang Hui that my situating Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu in the central position in the revival of New Text classical studies is only a form of historical reconstruction that presents a different picture from the historical picture of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao as central to that revival.” See 读书2 (1994). Also see http://www.iqh.net.cn/info.asp?column_id=3794 .

[33] Jiang Qing, 公羊学引论, zixu, 2.

[34] Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, 322.

[35] Wang Hui, 现代中国思想的兴起, (2004), volume one, part two, 735.

[36] Jiang Qing, 公羊学引论.

[37] See Ye Zicheng 叶自成,中国大战略：中国成为世界大国的主要问题及战略选择 (2003).