Yao Yang and Qin Zizhong on Confucian Liberalism

Yao Yang and Qin Zizhong, “An Analysis of Confucian Liberalism”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Yao Yang (b. 1964) is a well known economist at Peking University, Director of the China Center for Economic Research and the Dean of the National School of Development.  He is a prolific writer, in both Chinese and English, on a wide variety of issues.  He first caught my eye when, in late April 28, 2020, the Beijing Cultural Review published an online interview with Yao entitled “Is a New Cold War Coming?” in which he lamented the rapidly deteriorating state of Sino-American relations and suggested that things might work out better if China stopped calling herself Communist and started calling herself Confucian.  I at first wondered if he was joking, but subsequently discovered that he was not, and that he has been working on various topics related to Confucianism since roughly 2015, and has published several articles, some together with a younger scholar named Qin Zizhong, as is the case with this text.
 
Their intriguing, pragmatic argument is the following:  Western liberalism is in crisis.  Over the past few decades, the checks and balances that allowed elitism and populism to coexist within Western democratic regimes have ceased to function, giving rise to an “extremist” democracy which manifests itself either in identity politics, understandable and defendable on moral grounds but unworkable politically, or extreme populism, which rejects science and virtually all elite authority, and demands to “drain the swamp” and “take back our country.”  To Yao and Qin, the crux of the issue is the fundamental contradiction in Western liberalism between individual value and individual self-determination on the one hand, and demands for absolute, abstract equality on the other—or phrased more broadly, between “negative” and “positive” freedoms.  And they are of course correct.  If absolute equality is imposed upon us, this defines our value as an individual and throws individual self-determination out the window.
 
Yao and Qin of course did not discover this contradiction, nor do they claim to.  Their innovation is in locating a solution to the problem in pre-Qin Confucianism (and even here, Yao and Qin acknowledge their debt to Xu Fuguan and the other New Confucians who drafted a manifesto on such issues in 1958).  Their argument, in a nutshell, is that Western liberalism gets lost in an abstract world of “oughts,” while pre-Qin Confucian thinkers dealt with the world “as is.”  In other words, while we should be absolutely equal and free to achieve our individual ambitions, in fact, for any number of reasons we are instead born unequal, which means that some people more readily achieve their ambitions than others.  One solution to this is for the powers that be to intervene in order to assure a basic equality of conditions for the population as a whole, a redistributive program that is of course anathema to those who defend negative freedom.  The difficulty of addressing such issues means that, in many liberal regimes, the issue is not addressed, and the resulting contradictions and tensions intensify.
 
Yao and Qin argue that we should stop thinking this way, and replace notions of absolute equality with ideas of relative or relational equality grounded in pre-Qin Confucianism.  In other words, we should acknowledge the manifest differences between people at birth, do what we can to make up for those differences (providing a common starting line), and then also acknowledge that those who work harder and achieve more should receive greater compensation.  A political corollary of this is an endorsement of hierarchical, meritocratic politics, which is unproblematic as long as society achieves a common starting line.
 
It is important to emphasize that Yao and Qin are not attempting to replace liberalism, but to make it work.  Yao, at least, has openly endorsed liberalism, the rule of law, and judicial independence (see here, for example), and his ultimate goal for China is modernization, which he seems to understand in fairly conventional ways—i.e., a functioning, liberal-democratic order with a civil society and an informed, engaged citizenry.  Thus another part of Yao and Qin’s argument is that, since reform and opening, China has, largely unconsciously, returned to tradition and hence to Confucianism.  We can see this, Yao and Qin argue, in China’s meritocratic rule and its attempts to encourage both negative and positive freedom—i.e., entrepreneurship is available to all, but the authorities will push back with “common prosperity” agendas when entrepreneurship creates too much inequality and threatens the common good. 

Thus at the same time Yao and Qin hope that Western liberalism will come to terms with the contradiction at the core of its beliefs, they also encourage China’s Communist authorities to embrace Confucianism as a way to establish a better balance between negative and positive freedoms, thus curbing corruption and authoritarianism.  Clearly, they believe that engagement with this pragmatic, comfortable, updated Confucianism would be less of a stretch for the Chinese people than with the pyrotechnics of Xi Jinping Thought.  And who knows?  Maybe China and the U.S. would get along better, too.
 
Of course, getting from point A to point B will be complicated, both in China and the West, which perhaps lends Yao and Qin’s pragmatic proposition a somewhat utopian hue.  But their arguments are interesting because they are not grounded in cultural pride, which is generally an us versus them argument, but rather in the urge to solve problems that are common to China, to the United States, and indeed to the world at large.  In other words, they are not being tribal, which may of course mean that their arguments fall flat with the tribes of the world.
 
This is one of several long, detailed texts that Yao and Qin wrote together, presumably in an effort to convince fellow Chinese intellectuals (and eventually, intellectuals elsewhere) that they know what they are talking about.  Since their agenda is ultimately political, they write for different audiences and in somewhat different voices.  A shorter, punchier text which makes essentially the same arguments in many fewer words is available here.         

Links to other texts on the site

For texts related to the Chinese Communist Party, click here

For texts related to Confucianism, click here

For texts related to democracy, click here

For texts related to ideology, click here

For texts related to liberalism, click here
 
Translation　　　　
 
Since the Enlightenment, liberalism has gradually become the mainstream way of thinking accepted by modern societies. If Confucianism wants to participate in a worldwide dialogue, it must address the question of its relationship with liberalism. Since the Ming-Qing period, Confucianism has been dominated by Song-Ming Neoconfucianism 理学 and exploited by the authoritarian power of the emperor, leading Confucian doctrine to be consistently associated with terms such as "authoritarian" and "illiberal." Encouraged by the economic success of Japan and the Four Little Asian Dragons, diaspora New Confucians emerging during the 1980s offered a new interpretation of traditional Confucianism, in an effort to bring it into line with modernity. 
 
However, just as in Max Weber’s early 20th work on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, much of the praise showered on Confucianism by diaspora New Confucians was more of an ex post facto cultural rationalization for economic success. New Confucians have also emerged in mainland China in the 21st century; in fact, we are witnessing not only a scholarly revival, but reading the classics and lecturing on the classics have become quite popular, and Confucian theories have begun once again to penetrate everyday life. 
 
However, most contemporary Chinese Confucian scholars are against the reconciliation of Confucianism and liberalism, and only a few have attempted to find a way to make the two compatible.   At the academic level, the first posture seems too extreme, as it hopes to adhere to the original meaning of Confucianism and avoid any modern deviation; the few who have talked about Confucianism and liberalism have been a bit casual about it, taking some of the teachings of Confucianism on cultivating one's moral character as evidence of Confucian liberalism.
 
We need a more balanced approach.  On the one hand, Confucian doctrine needs to be modernized, and, even if our starting point is the original doctrine of Confucianism, we can still find similarities between Confucian doctrine and liberalism; on the other hand, liberalism itself is not perfect, and using Confucian doctrine to improve it can make it better.  From this perspective, it is not only possible but necessary to construct a Confucian liberalism.
　　
In Defense of Liberty 
 
To talk about liberalism, we must first clarify what liberty is. To a certain extent, the contemporary debate over Confucianism and liberalism stems from a failure to clarify this. The first thing to understand is that liberalism has been a doctrine grounded in human relationships from the very beginning, and therefore ideas such as individual free will are not only irrelevant to liberalism, but can even be harmful. 
　　
Prior to the Enlightenment, the idea of liberty in the sense of individual free will had already begun to develop, inspired by the Reformation. Prior to this, the individual could communicate with God only through a priest, and thus, in reality, the individual was not a direct creation of God, but instead a follower under the control of the church. The Reformation broke the Church's monopoly, and the faithful were given the opportunity to speak directly with God. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, some progressive theologians went further and began to raise the question of whether man could have free will outside of God's creation. 
 
For example, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), a professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University, challenged the proposition that man's sense of morality comes from God, arguing that people are instead born with a moral sense. As a result, man is no longer created by God, but is instead an independent being with a sense of self. In this sense, man gained his freedom. However, this freedom is man's freedom from God, and is not yet the same thing as the freedom to which liberalism refers, which belongs to the realm of human will. 
 
There are several reasons why liberalism rejects free will as a basic tenant. On the one hand, free will may ask for too much freedom, so that society finds itself unable to correct for existing unfree conditions.  For example, some may think "I am trapped by the finite nature of life and cannot think about anything else, therefore I am not free." Or someone might say, "I can't travel to the moon, so I am not free." But what can society do in such cases?  Society should not be responsible for the psychological feelings of individuals. 
 
From the opposite perspective, free will cannot be taken evidence of freedom. A prisoner who must follow the orders of his jailers every day can still have a powerful imagination and pray to God for spiritual relief, but can we say that he is free? If we treat this kind of free thinking at the level of the soul as freedom, we are opening the door to cynicism, allowing us to take comfort in the freedom of the soul in the face of power, which is certainly not conducive to the construction of a free society in life as generally lived. 
 
Freedom is a human value constructed by the Enlightenment, and it has been political, not spiritual, from the outset. John Locke (1632-1704), the progenitor of liberalism, constructed his liberal government out of the state of nature. The state of nature is equivalent to the state of freedom:  “a state of perfect freedom to decide their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.”[2]
 
Regarding freedom, this statement has two meanings. One is that freedom only makes sense when there is more than one person involved. If there is only one person, that person does not have to worry about what others might do to him, so there is no point in discussing freedom. Second, to be unfree, one must have to ask someone's permission or be subject to someone's will; in other words, one must be under the control of another person in order to be said to be unfree. But this definition is still too broad. 
 
Minor children are subject to their parents' direction, but we do not generally consider them to be unfree. Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) thus further narrows the scope of unfreedom to refer only to the state in which a person is subject to the arbitrary will of another person. Here, "arbitrary will" should be understood as "malice" or as being decided by the personal choices of the person engaged in coercion, or in other words, the coercion is engaged in out of concern for the person on whom the coercion is imposed, but rather out of the selfish desires of the person carrying out the coercion. 
 
Hayek's definition is the typical liberal view of freedom, and in Isaiah Berlin's (1909-1997) words, the freedom so defined is a negative freedom, that is, "freedom from" something.   Usually, this freedom is guaranteed by procedures, such as the rule of law, which protect a weaker person from being bullied by a stronger person. Amartya Sen (b. 1933) defines this freedom slightly differently and talks about "procedural freedom," i.e., freedom determined by procedures (e.g., institutions). The "procedure" here can be arbitrary, but procedural freedom is not substantially different from negative freedom as far as procedural justice is concerned. 
 
However, we are also concerned with the "freedom to X" kind of freedom, what Berlin calls positive freedom. Again, Sen has a slightly different term for this, calling it the "capability approach" or the "substantive aspect of freedom.” In most cases, famine victims starve not because particular restrictions keep them from getting food, but because they are unable to eat. In other words, Sen argues that famine victims starve because the endowments at their disposal that can be exchanged for food (e.g., labor) suffer devaluation due to falling prices, and that the famine thus created is not the result of direct coercion by any one person or force, but instead the result of market failure. 
 
The concerns of negative and positive freedom are at the root of all debates between classical and progressive liberalism. Classical liberals see positive freedom as a danger because it can lead to an all-powerful or a even fascist government, because the state can always use the argument that "I am doing what is best for you" as an excuse for coercion. Classical liberals thus focus only on negative freedom, and their solution for the real world is minimal government and a laissez-faire market economy. This is true of Hayek and of Robert Nozick (1938-2002). 
　　
The advantage of classical liberalism is that its arguments are clear and clean, and it is easy to follow along with Locke's state of nature and the social contract. However, in practice it shows its cold side: as long as there are no procedural problems, the suffering that occurs in society has nothing to do with the state. Progressive liberalism—also known as the new liberalism—which originated with John Rawls' (1921-2002) A Theory of Justice, has surpassed classical liberalism, becoming a mainstream version of liberalism in contemporary European and American societies. Progressive liberals believe that negative freedom alone is not enough; society must focus on what individuals are free to do, otherwise freedom is meaningless. In terms of political proposals, they demand that the government pay attention to the living conditions of the lower classes and support social policies that provide welfare.
　　
It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the differences between classical and progressive liberalism, and we are more interested with how to unify negative and positive freedom, thus providing a general definition for the concept.  One way of thinking about this is to focus on the "choice set" (or autonomous space) of the individual. A choice set is a space in which one can decide one's own affairs, or an autonomous space. The size of a person's choice set determines the amount of freedom he has. 
　　
Negative unfreedom means that the choice set is squeezed by outsiders, while positive unfreedom means that the choice set shrinks due to society-wide economic, social, or political changes, in the absence of significant interventions by outsiders. For example, starving people are not starving because of coercion by others, but because market conditions have changed and their labor has depreciated in value. Of course, if a person's wages were high enough to begin with, some reduction in wages would not affect the food supply to the extent that the person would starve. So, we can define freedom on the basis of choice set: "Freedom is the state in which a person is free from the compulsion to take particular actions when his choice set is limited by external forces." 
　　
For the purposes of this paper, this definition has two implications. One is that it excludes concepts like ontological freedom and freedom of conscience from the discussion of Confucian liberalism. It is not that these freedoms are not worth discussing, but rather that they are not relevant to liberalism as a political philosophy. Political philosophy deals with relationships between people, not the state of individual free will. Second, using this unified definition leads us to principles that both classical liberalism and progressive liberalism respect, although these principles are themselves inherently contradictory. Starting from the analysis of these contradictions, we can understand more clearly the relationship between Confucianism and liberalism.　　　　
 
Liberalism’s Inherent Contradictions 
 
Today, liberalism has become a comprehensive and complex theoretical system covering various theories ranging from the individual to the organization of society, the functioning of the economy and even state governance, and these theories have taken on different political orientations. In the West, the conflict between left-wing progressive liberalism and right-wing classical liberalism has arguably reached the point of incompatibility. But in its essence, liberalism, whether left and right, consists of three principles: the value of the individual, individual self-determination, and egalitarianism.
　　
The value of the individual means that the individual is the ultimate goal of society, and that social goals independent of the individual cannot be imposed on the individual; individual self-determination means that each individual has the right to be free from the coercive power of others, and that the individual can determine his or her own destiny; egalitarianism means that each individual is equal in the sense of the two aforementioned principles, that each individual's value is equal, and that everyone has the same right of self-determination. These three principles can be seen as propositions derived from the definition of freedom. 
 
Freedom is always about the value of the individual, and in the contemporary era, it is meaningless to talk about freedom without including the individual. For example, in the face of foreign invasion, we can talk about the freedom of the nation. However, foreign invasions were frequent in ancient times, and people at the time could also talk about freedom (although the concept had a different meaning), but it is certain that they did not have the concept of "individual freedom." Understanding freedom solely from the point of view of the individual is both a result of the modern respect for the value of the individual and a basic premise of the modern doctrine of freedom. 
　　
Which leads us to ask:  why must the value of the individual always take precedent over the value of society?  From the perspective of Locke's contract theory, the answer is: because society is established by a contract between individuals, the individual comes first and the society second. Even utilitarians start with the happiness of the individual, and then consider the sum of the happiness of society as a whole on that basis.
 
Marx was the greatest critic of capitalism, but he also recognized the priority of individual freedom; in the Communist Manifesto, we find the famous line that he and Engels penned:  "The free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all." For liberals (or at least classical liberals), individual freedom is sufficient to guarantee social values. 
　　
As Adam Smith famously asserted in The Wealth of Nations, the extension of individual values through the "invisible hand" of the market can ultimately lead to the social value of "all for one and one for all:" 
 
“He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.  Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer ,or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”[3] 
　　
On the basis of the recognition of individual value, individual self-determination becomes liberalism’s next inevitable choice. Undeniably, there are good-hearted people in society and good governments may exist as well, and it may be a wise choice for a person to entrust his or her happiness to a good-hearted person or for the people at large to entrust their well-being to a good government. However, such a choice faces two dangers. One is that other people cannot understand my needs better than I do, and the goodness of others may not enhance my well-being; and the second is that in case these seemingly good people are not in fact good, I might wind up being fooled or even oppressed by such people.
 
The latter is precisely Locke's criticism of Thomas Hobbes's (1588-1679) Leviathan (1651): the willingness of people to detach themselves from the state of nature and place themselves in the hands of the Leviathan is as foolish as "tak[ing] care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but [being] content, nay, think[ing] it safety, to be devoured by lions." Since the value of the individual is supreme, a man should be in control of his own destiny; even if he has to cede some of his power to the government, that government should remain under his supervision. 
　　
Finally, egalitarianism is a guarantee of the value of the individual and of individual self-determination. If it is permitted that people be unequal in terms of the value of the individual and individual self-determination, then individual freedom cannot be guaranteed. For example, if one person's value is higher than others, then the value of others will often need to be sacrificed in order to safeguard his value. A simple example is that if one person's life is more important than the lives of others, a hospital will have to invest more in that person, thus inevitably taking resources from other patients and thus violating their value as individuals. Similarly, if one person's power of self-determination is higher than that of others, then he may use this power to squeeze the choice set of others and limit their powers of self-determination.
　　
For this reason, egalitarianism has an instrumental role in guaranteeing individual freedom. At the same time, egalitarianism also has a "decorative" effect on freedom. If the distribution of the signs of freedom can be unequal, the beauty of liberalism is greatly diminished because, in such a society, those who possess fewer signs of freedom will inevitably ask: "Why do I have less than you?" Egalitarianism establishes a sameness among people that reduces differences and jealousies among people.
　　
It is important to note that the three liberal principles are “ought” statements and not “is” statements, i.e., liberalism describes what the world should be, not what it is. The arguments are logically self-consistent at the “ought” level; however, there are contradictions between them at the “is” level, especially between egalitarianism and the first two principles. In reality, individuals are often unequal in the value they possess and in their capacity for self-determination. This judgment applies not only to absolute values and capacities for self-determination, but also to values and self-determination capacities in the sense of Aristotle's principle of proportionality.[4]
　　
The “value of the individual” as discussed here does not refer to abstract values, like the value assigned to God, nor should it refer to values that individuals assign to themselves. What we want to discuss are real-life valuations, the price the market places on a person, how society evaluates that person, the quality of that person’s life, and other such visible and tangible things. The greatest benefit of the market is that it generates prices and provides market participants with accurate information about production and consumption. Under a perfect market, the market prices workers in accordance with Aristotle's principle of proportionality, meaning that workers with higher ability or who contribute more receive greater compensation.
　　
In reality, however, markets are almost always imperfect. For example, an MIT graduate who can go to Wall Street to work in finance can easily earn twice as much as he would if he went into industry and did more technical work. One reason is that finance deals with other people's money, and to avoid moral hazard problems for their employees, companies must overpay them. Companies cannot eliminate potential losses due to employee moral hazards, so the labor market in finance is imperfect. 
　　
In this example, the same person has a different value in the financial world than in the real world. An even more common phenomenon is that, even in a perfect labor market, there is the "long side," which refers to instances of excess supply or demand, and the "short side," which refers to instances of short supply or demand. According to the principle of supply and demand, market participants on the short side—often enterprises looking for workers—have a certain power over market participants on the long side—often laborers looking for jobs. 
 
For example, in historically rural areas where jobs were limited and landless farmers earned their living entirely by working as sharecroppers for landlords,  these workers were on the long side of the land rental market because of their large numbers and the landlords were on the short side, and the landlords could use the power thus created to divide the land into smaller lots and rent it to more farmers. In order to feed their families, farmers then had to work harder in order to produce as much food as possible on less land. This mechanism of self-exploitation was widespread in pre-modern rural areas. 
　　
Marx discovered the existence of this power in the market in his youth and developed the theory of labor alienation from it. Marx argued that in the employment market, workers are at a disadvantage. When the capitalist's profit rises, the workers do not benefit, and when the capitalist's profit falls, the workers are doomed to follow. Therefore, "the object which labor produces—labor’s product—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer."[5] 
　　
The product produced by the worker is appropriated by the capitalist, who can pay the worker according to his wishes, which does not properly reflect the value of the worker's production. Even if we do not discuss the antagonism between workers and capitalists, as Marx did, and even if we follow Aristotle's principle of proportionality, we still conclude that primitive capitalism diminishes the value workers. In modern capitalist societies, such naked exploitation is no longer common, but the distortion of the value of workers is still widespread—just think of the unemployed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. 
　　
Even if we could imagine something to replace the market, it would be difficult for society (based on the principle of proportionality) to assign equal value to everyone. Imagine a child born to a peasant family in the mountains of Guizhou with an IQ of 150, but because his family is so isolated, people there have no idea what IQ is; moreover, government resources are limited, and thus the quality of teaching in elementary school there is very low, and the teacher never discovers the child's high IQ. 
 
Consequently, the child winds up repeating his parents' life, working as a farmer in the mountains for the rest of his life. There was no external force that prevented this gifted child from realizing his value; what happened to him was the inevitable result of a social system. We have not yet found a social system that can realize the value of each individual, and we are not likely to do so in the future. That is why philosophers are still striving to come up with solutions that will realize the value of each person in an equal manner.　
　　
The social mechanism has an element that diminishes the value of the individual even as it elevates this value, especially in liberal theories. The phrase "all men are created equal" is morally appealing, but it is generally forgotten that it is an “ought” statement, and not an actual description of what people experience. In Western society, children are always told that they are no worse than anyone else and that they have unlimited potential. 
 
As a mode of education, there is nothing wrong with this, and indeed is something that the Chinese education system should adopt. However, children grow up and discover that many people are better than they are, and that "the sky’s the limit" is just an empty phrase. They have to adjust their expectations and eventually find a place for themselves in society, and so lead an ordinary life. 
 
One might say that the distance between one's judgment of one’s own value and social reality is a fact that must be faced in life. The director Gu Changwei's 顾长卫 (b. 1957) debut film "Peacock 孔雀" reveals this harsh reality to us. The sister in the movie vowed to be a paratrooper when she was young, longing to soar across the blue sky, but in the end she not only failed to become a paratrooper, but also married and divorced an ordinary man, and wasted half of her life. At the end of the movie, the camera captures her squatting on the floor of the vegetable market picking tomatoes, her tears silently flowing down her face. This scene is enough to make the viewer's heart ache. 
　　
If movie-goers feel that there are no great surprises in the life of the sister, because, after all, the vast majority of people do not achieve the ideals of their youth, then the elder brother’s love story leads the audience into a moral dilemma. The elder brother had meningitis as a child and was mentally impaired.  He was bullied throughout his life, but he actually fell in love with the "factory beauty" and waited for her at the gate of the factory, holding a sunflower.  The audience's first reaction is to laugh:  is this not a case of the ugly duckling dreaming of the swan? 
 
In this scene Gu Changwei has treated his audience to a sort of black humor, because although he has made them laugh, he may well be expecting them to think:  doesn’t an idiot have the right to fall in love with a “factory beauty?”   Intuition tells us that the idiot is not worthy, and this is also Aristotle's principle of proportionality. But a committed liberal must admit that the idiot is indeed worthy: his value should not be discounted because of his intelligence, while the value of the "factory beauty" should not be inflated because of her appearance. The liberal principle of equal value has dug itself a big hole here.
　　
If the diminishment of the value of an individual is related to society, then the diminishment of an individual's capacity for self-determination is related to society as well as to the individual. In a social context, an individual's capacity for self-determination may be significantly lower than that of others, even in the absence of obvious external coercive forces.
 
The drama "The White-Haired Girl 白毛女" provides a perfect illustration of this. The play takes place in North China during the anti-Japanese War. Yang Bailao is a landless peasant who supports himself and his daughter Xi'er by renting land from the landlord on an annual basis. In early spring, he borrows money from the landlord Huang Shiren, promising to pay back the money at the end of the year, otherwise Xi'er will go to work as a servant girl in Huang Shiren's house. In fact, Huang Shiren set a trap for Yang Bailao, aiming to get his hands on Xi'er. As expected, when year’s end arrived, Yang Bailao had no money to pay back Huang Shiren, so Huang Shiren came with his lapdog Mu Renzhi to ask for Xi'er in a manner suggesting that it was right and proper.
　　
The villagers all came out, as did Xi'er's intended, Da Chun. Mu Renzhi pulled out his Mauser, but the villagers were unafraid.  Yet when Huang Shiren pulled out the contract with Yang Bailao’s seal stamped on it, they all backed off. Xi'er became the Huang family’s servant girl, and to escape harassment at the hands of Huang Shiren, she fled to the mountains and became the white-haired girl. Why did the townspeople retreat in the face of the deed? Because, in their minds, it was signed by Yang Bailao of his own free will. In terms of liberal theory, Yang Bailao had the capacity for self-determination, and thus the contract was one between equals. 
 
However, this judgment is not in line with our moral intuition: if selling one's children can be seen as honest business, then what in the world is not honest? Our view is that Yang Bailao indeed had the capacity for self-determination, but his choice set is so small that he is only left with the option of selling his children. So, behind the seemingly fair contract between Yang and Huang Shiren lies a world of difference in the choice set the two possessed. 
　　
This difference has little to do with the two individuals per se, but is a product of the social system. Huang Shiren owned land and could live on usury, while Yang Bailao was a landless peasant who lived by selling his labor. This was the institutional arrangement that had prevailed for centuries in rural North China at the time, and people were used to it. It was only after the Communist Party carried out land reform that this situation changed and the peasants were no longer confronted with this dilemma because they had no land.
　　
Setting the social system aside, individual capacity for self-determination is also related to the circumstances in which they find themselves and the efforts they make. The judgement of a child born into a privileged family is likely to be better than that of a child born into a poor family because of what the rich child has been exposed to. Conversely, a child born into a poor family can, through his or her own efforts, surpass a child born into a wealthy family. As for politics, some people are interested, while others prefer feel strongly that it is to be avoided; some people have their own strong political convictions, while others are more likely to listen to the lobbying of politicians; some people know right from wrong, while others are easily swayed by rumors.
　　
For this reason, it is unrealistic to expect all people to have the same ability to participate in politics. The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood this, which is why they created the electoral college system, leaving the task of electing the president to a selected few. But a committed liberal would not agree with the standpoint of the founding fathers and, faced with their elitist institutional design, would not hesitate to say, "This is a trampling on the principle that all men are created equal." 
　　
A liberal may recognize differences in individual decision-making abilities, but he will staunchly defend the right of every person to participate in politics: a person can decide not use his rights, but society cannot take them away from him. In general, this belief is necessary to prevent individual dictatorship or arbitrary rule by the few, but if it is taken to the extreme, populism becomes inevitable. 
　　
The way liberalism tries to resolve the above contradictions depends on its political orientation. Right-wing liberals uphold the tenets of classical liberalism, limiting equality to strictly procedural dimensions and limiting the protection of liberty to negative freedoms. However, this cannot fundamentally resolve the contradiction between egalitarianism and the value of the individual and individual self-determination; in fact, it amounts to the suppression of equality in terms of the value of the individual and individual self-determination through recourse to procedural equality. For example, Nozick defines distributive justice in terms of entitlements, which is at least in part based on Aristotle's principle of proportionality, which, as in the earlier example of “The Peacock,” necessarily requires us to recognize that some people are less valuable than others.
　　
Left-liberals, on the other hand, take a radical approach to the realization of individual worth and individual self-determination in a way that expands equality. For example, Sen proposes the doctrine of capabilities, which requires government and society to focus their attention at the level of the individual, taking measures to improve basic individual capabilities according to individual needs, thus aiding the individual to realize his values. Left-liberals categorize such governmental and social policies as "prioritizing aspirations to natural endowments," which sounds very encouraging but faces enormous difficulties in implementation. How do we know what every person needs? Do governments and societies have enough resources to allow everyone to achieve their ambitions?
　　
As a philosophical concept, freedom began in the West, and its origins can be traced to the need for individual autonomy of expression appearing during the Enlightenment, and in China it was a new concept, part of the negotiation between different civilizations as Western influence penetrated China.  But in terms of the autonomous space freedom identifies, it is part of the society of mankind. When freedom becomes a philosophical concept, it appears in plural form. Many concepts of freedom and their theories elaborate and regulate the autonomous space they cherish from different perspectives, leading to a certain competition between them. 
　　
Accordingly, liberalism is a general name for the concept of freedom and its theories, under which there are several schools of liberal theory, such as classical liberalism, modern liberalism, and neoliberalism, and Marxism should be seen as transcending all of these.  That said, Marxism does not reject freedom, but instead believes that liberalism does not do enough to safeguard and enhance freedom. Marxism argues that the liberal establishment only guarantees equal rights to procedural freedom, and permits inequalities in terms of substantive freedom, or to put it in other terms, it only guarantees substantive freedom to a few and not to all.
 
In the wake of the double critique of Marxist theory and practice, various aspects of the structure of human society have been changed or adjusted, and in the process of responding to and absorbing Marxism, the narrative of liberalism has expanded from the original focus on the value of the individual (freedom, dignity, etc.) and individual self-determination (autonomy, choice, etc.) to include egalitarian considerations.  Today, left-liberalism dominates the spectrum of liberalism, but at the same time, liberalism’s inherent contradictions appear in concentrated fashion. It is an impossible task to find logically consistent and realistically feasible solutions to these problems without going beyond liberalism.
 
The greatest dilemma facing liberalism is how to reconcile the contradiction between egalitarianism  and the fact that the value of the individual and the individual's capacity for self-determination are in fact not equal. The fundamental reason for the endless struggle between the left and right wings of liberalism, and even the resort to war, is the extent to which equality should be implemented.  The 19th century confrontation between Marxism and Lockean liberalism, between the socialist and capitalist camps in the 20th century, and between radicalism and conservatism in Western society today, are all basically the same, and the question is the extent to which equality should be implemented in society.　　
 
The Value of the Individual in the Context of Mutual Responsibility 
 
The value of the individual is the core reason we value freedom, and belief in the value of the individual exists in Confucianism as an extremely rich ideological resource. Here, we will elaborate on the value of the individual from the Confucian perspective at three levels: its origin, its meaning, and its realization as the value of the individual. In terms of its origin, unlike its Western contemporaries who appealed to the idea of the gods, pre-Qin Confucianism had already broken free from the bondage of the deities and directly appealed to the natural tendencies of human nature. 
　　
No matter whether we consider Confucius's ideas concerning "benevolence," Mencius's "four sprouts 四端,"[6] or Xunzi's "accumulated deliberate efforts 积伪," all focus on the natural tendencies of human nature and recognize the possibility of each person’s becoming benevolent, and thus affirm the value of the individual in the sense that everyone can become a saint or a sage. Confucius's "Is ren [benevolence] distant? When I wish to be ren, ren arrives,"[7] Mencius's " "every man can become a Yao or Shun [ancient sage kings],"[8]  " and Xunzi's "anyone on the streets can become a Yu [another ancient sage kind]."[9]  and other similar statements not only affirm man’s natural tendency toward virtue, but also make clear the effort required for this to succeed. In addition, statements such as “conquer yourself and return to li [ritual],"[10] "learning for [yourself],"[11] “searching for [your] lost heart,"[12] and "transforming [your] nature and establishing deliberate effort"[13] show the agency of the individual in the process of becoming a sage.
　　
In terms of seeing the basis of freedom as part of individual agency and affirming the value of the individual, Confucianism clearly developed earlier than did liberalism, which emerged in the course of the Enlightenment's opposition to theocracy and autocracy. Under theocratic rule, the sole purpose of human life is to serve God and await His final judgment; man had no worldly encouragement or purpose beyond this. Starting from a natural observation of human nature, Confucianism establishes a secular purpose for the individual and thus provides him with great encouragement. 
　　
As mentioned above, Confucianism recognizes the similarity of human nature in terms of moral potential, but also notes that the difference in the effort invested leads to individual differences in becoming a saint or a sage; this is what Confucius meant when he said “by nature close to one another, through practice far distant."[14]  In explaining this assertion, the American sinologist Irene Bloom (1939-2010) writes: "For Confucius, recognizing universal human nature and similar moral potential did not mean promising ultimate equality of treatment, for he recognized that the process of human development contains many variables that can lead to different behavioral outcomes…Both aspects of this assertion—the affirmation of basic human similarity and the recognition of their acquired differences—are equally important." 
　　
Thus, Confucianism recognizes that the value of all individuals is potentially the same, but says nothing on the subject of the substantive identity of such value, suggesting that individual effort may explain substantive differences. This is a clear difference between Confucianism and liberalism, and shows the moderate nature of Confucianism. At the level of “oughts,” Confucianism recognizes the sameness of the value of all indivduals; at the level of “is,” Confucianism leaves the value of the individual in the hands of that individual. However, like liberalism, Confucianism affirms individual striving and, in the following sense, is superior to liberalism:  liberalism takes the sameness of the value of all individuals as a given and thus provides no incentive for individual effort, while Confucianism encourages the individual to make the greatest possible effort to become a sage. 
　　
This distinction is of great significance in reality. Liberalism provides a beautiful picture of society, but does not tell us how to translate this picture into reality, thus creating the rupture between formal and substantive equality that we know from Western society. Confucianism does not prescribe a particular good outcome for society, but instead provides a starting point for society in which everyone is equal, leaving the outcome in the hands of individual effort; thus, Confucianism achieves the unity of theory and reality. 
　　
However, in order to reconcile the Confucian sense of the value of the individual with the liberal sense of this value, there is still an important question to be answered: Does Confucianism affirm the value of the individual out of the need to maintain order, or does it take individual value as a precondition, as liberalism does? Liberalism starts with the individual and then derives society; what about Confucianism? Since Confucianism has historically been used as a tool of state governance, which in the Chinese context amounts to serving the ruler, it is important to answer the following question:  Does Confucianism's promotion of individual achievement and thus affirmation of individual value serve the social order, or does it treat individual value as a goal alongside or subordinate to the social order? The answer is both. 
　　
What is the social order?  In Mencius' explanation, it roughly corresponds to what he calls offices bestowed by heaven and offices bestowed by man. In commenting on the difference between the treatment of the two by the ancients and the people of his time, he argues that the cultivation of the heavenly offices should be the basis and objective, and they should not be cultivated in order to gain worldly offices. He writes thus:  “There are offices that are bestowed by Tian [heaven] and offices that are bestowed by men. Humanity, righteousness, loyalty, faithfulness, the untiring love of goodness—these are offices bestowed by Tian. Duke, minister, grandee—these are offices bestowed by men. Men of old cultivated their Tian-bestowed offices, and human offices followed. Men today cultivate their Tian-bestowed offices in order to exact from other men an office, and once they have it, they cast away their Tian-bestowed offices. There are no men more deluded than these. In the end, they will surely perish.”[15]
 
Internally, the heaven-bestowed offices are found within the four sprouts of each individual, and externally manifest themselves in the process of each person’s cultivating himself to become a saint or a sage. In this process, from the angle of natural benevolence, everyone is equal, but there are differences when viewed from the dimension of cultivation, meaning that there are interpersonal differences in becoming a saint or a sage.  The essence of becoming a saint or a sage is to cleave to benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and faithfulness, and to do good tirelessly, so that the realization of the value of the individual is ideally consistent with the observance of social order and the achievement of social values. This consistency does not diminish the value of the individual, but rather respects it. In discussing what the three sages, Bo Yi, Yi Yin, and Confucius, have in common, Mencius noted: "Had any one of them ruled over a territory one hundred li square, the lords of the states would have served him at his court, and he would have possessed all the world.  Had any one of them been offered the chance to gain the world merely by doing one unrighteous deed or killing one innocent person, he would not have done so."[16]
　　
More importantly, Confucianism notes the reciprocity of personal responsibility. To Zi Zhang's question about government, Confucius replied, "“Fulfill your office untiringly, perform your duties with loyalty."[17] This answer can be extended to the duties performed by subjects. However, the prerequisite for the subjects to fulfill their duties is that the ruler also fulfills his duties and upholds morality. In the words of Confucius when he answered, respectively, the questions of Duke Jing of Qi and Ji Kangzi, "Let the ruler be ruler, ministers ministers, fathers fathers, sons sons;”[18] and “Governance is setting things upright. If you lead with uprightness, who will dare not to be upright?"[19] 
　　
Mencius more explicitly elaborated on the reciprocal responsibilities of ruler and minister when he wrote: "When the ruler looks upon his ministers as though they were hounds and horses, the ministers look upon the ruler as just another countryman. When a ruler looks upon his ministers as though they were straw to strew over mud, the ministers look upon the ruler as a thieving enemy."[20]  Moreover, if the ruler loses his benevolence and righteousness, then the ruler is no more than a dictator, and his subjects can not only disobey his orders, but can even kill him. When King Xuan of Qi asked, “Is it permissible, then, for a subject to kill his ruling lord?”  Mencius replied, “A man who plunders humanity is called a thief; a man who plunders righteousness is called an outcast. I have heard of the execution of Outcast Zhou; I have not heard of the execution of a ruling lord Zhou.”[21] 
　　
From the above discussion, the realization of the value of the individual lies in the fulfillment of one’s respective responsibilities, and the process of fulfilling respective responsibilities results in the realization of the value of the individual. Conversely, if one party does not fulfill his responsibilities, then it is reasonable for the other party not to fulfill his corresponding responsibilities. In this sense, the roles of ruler, minister, father, and son are embedded in the structure of ritual; herein, the responsibilities of the roles are not only mutually constitutive, but also mutually accomplished. From the perspective of the relationship between the monarch and the individual, the monarch is the embodiment of the moral order, and the duty to be "loyal to the monarch" is not a duty one individual owes another, but the duty of an individual to protect the moral order, so that if the ruler abandons his adherence to the moral order, then "loyalty to the ruler" will become what Mencius called "killing a man.”
　　
Viewed in this way, Confucianism affirms not only the value of the individual, but also the equality of the value of the individual in the sense of becoming a saint and a sage, from the sovereign down to the subject,. This is different from Plato's innate class differences as discussed in The Republic. Although neither Chinese nor Western philosophers of the Axial Age could transcend their class and social attributes, Confucius and Mencius appear to have been more able to give recognition and respect to the value of the individual than Plato and Aristotle. 
 
Looking at this from the perspective today's world, we are forced to admit that Confucianism holds an ambiguous attitude toward the value of the individual and social values. This ambiguity, however, essentially reflects an eternal contradiction faced by human society. As revealed in economist Kenneth Arrow’s (1921-2017) classic work Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), social choices based on individual values do not always meet the requirements of rationality. In other words, there is a potential conflict between individual values and social values. 
　　
In the West, communitarianism, which emerged after Rawlsian liberalism, recognized this conflict and attempted to modify Rawlsian liberalism through the use of communal values, while the 20th century Neo-Confucians tried to improve the Confucian approach to this conflict by introducing a discourse on rights. As the philosopher Xie Xiaodong 谢晓东 (b. 1977) put it, they "embraced China at a point where latent possibilities had not developed further in order to integrate it with Western culture, which was a possible way to open up the integration of East and West." 
　　
On the question of where to ground the legitimacy of rights, the West first appealed to God, and only after declaring that "God is dead" did it appeal to the atomized individual, while Confucianism appeals directly to the individual as part of social relations and social order. Starting from a realistic rather than a purely philosophical level, we may have to accept Confucianism's ambiguous attitude between individual and social values, constantly adjusting the balance between the two in a dynamic process.
 
Modern and contemporary Confucianism have been exemplary in this regard. The experience of national crisis encountered by modern China has led modern Confucians (such as Zhang Junmai 张君劢—or Carsun Chang, 1887-1969) to generally take a more pragmatic approach to the social values embedded in the Confucian tradition. Although they gave priority to individual values, they did not deny that in a certain sense, social values interfere with individual values, the result being that there has always been a tension between individual values and social values in their theories. In the current world’s political landscape, where the nation-state is sovereign, this tension may be inevitable, and the liberal doctrine's blindness to it is the reason why it has reached a dead end.
　　
In Confucianism's relational understanding of human nature, the individual and society are mutually reinforcing, and individual values and social values are mutually constitutive. Accordingly, to interpret Chinese individual values in terms of selfishness or selflessness is to inappropriately divide the private from the public, the individual from society, while ignoring the irreducible relational nature of the individual in the Chinese tradition.
 
The sinologist Roger Ames (b. 1947) displays deep insight into this when discussing the differences between the East and the West on the subject of rights, reminding Western readers that: "Western interpreters who assign the idea of selflessness to the Chinese tradition tend to see the state and the individual as opposites, a notion that in our case distinguishes liberal democracy from collectivist thinkers. But this model is difficult to impose on China, because in the Chinese context, self-actualization requires neither a high degree of individual freedom nor submission to the public will, but rather a kind of mutual benefit and reciprocity among members of a community who find themselves enmeshed in ties of mutual loyalty and responsibility, surrounded, motivated, and affirmed by such loyalty and responsibility, which encourages and affirms individual values." 
　　
Out of this comes the contemporary criticism of Confucianism for blurring the boundary between the group and the self. Indeed, Confucianism did not realize the need to establish a rights system to guarantee the value of the individual. The lack of a rights protection structure in traditional Chinese society, and the consequent failure to protect individual values from being subordinated to social values, is a problem that deserves the attention of contemporary Confucians. In today’s society of strangers, the rule of law is the cornerstone of state governance, but this does not mean abandoning tradition; on the contrary, modern Confucians need to creatively elaborate and extend traditional resources in order to nourish modern society. As Hayek put it, "A successful free society will always be, to a large extent, a society closely connected with and constrained by tradition." 
　　
Finally, an insurmountable problem in the discussion of Confucianism and the value of individuals is how to view the family and the equality of men and women. In the time of pre-Qin Confucianism, "family" meant only men, because women were subordinate to men. However, it is unfair to judge the ancients from today's perspective, and a horizontal comparison may be more meaningful. As far as the relationship between men and women is concerned, Confucius and his contemporary Plato both lacked consideration for women's rights, if for different reasons.
　　
Plato made a distinction between commoners, guardians, and philosopher kings. Although women could also be guardians, the class of guards (including the philosopher kings) practiced "communal wives," and female guardians were shared by male guardians, and no one could form a small monogamous family with other people. Confucius, on the other hand, drew distinctions between the family, the state, and the world, and restricted the issue of women's rights to the realm of the family, and although each spouse has its respective responsibilities, men’s rights remained the basis of the system. 
　　
It is obvious that Confucius expresses more humanistic concern than Plato on the issue of women's rights and interests. In fact, this issue was raised after the Enlightenment, and women's rights to participate in politics was not established until after the First World War, while women's social status has not yet reached the same level as men's even today. 
 
Individual Self-Determination amid Relational Trade-Offs 
　　
Individual self-determination, in its basic sense in liberal theory, refers to a space where individuals can make decisions independently, free from outside interference. In reality, this space is constrained by the social structure, which determines its size and the number of people with equal sharing rights. In terms of values, a society has a set of normative narratives regarding individual self-determination (including approval, criticism, and even repudiation).
　　
Human societies have undergone a transition from traditional to modern societies, in which the social structure experienced huge changes, and the nature of individual self-determination changed as well. If we are not clear on this point, comparisons between liberalism and Confucianism on the topics of freedom and rights will be out of sync in terms of time and space. In what follows, we will discuss the Confucian perspective on autonomous space in the context of both traditional and modern societies. 
　　
In traditional Chinese society, Confucianism emphasized the need for everyone to observe the constraints of ritual. Rites define a set of behavioral norms concerning people’s status, seniority, and age, in which there was precious little room for individual self-determination, unless the choice to comply with the behavioral norms is also considered a form of individual self-determination. It is true that compliance with a code of conduct is also seen by modern people as a form of individual self-determination, the opposite of choosing not to comply with it. But in Confucianism, it is not so much a matter of choice in terms of individual self-determination, but rather a question of cleaving to or abandoning individual virtue. In this sense, it is a misinterpretation of Confucianism to deny individual self-determination on the basis of ritual observance.
　　
The problem is not that Confucianism required ritual observance, but that rituals themselves could be too strict. Even here, however, what appears in the Book of Rites cannot be taken as historical reality. Although Confucius was very particular about following the Zhou rites, he did so only in his dealings with monarchs and nobles; in his daily life, he showed more of a pragmatic side. When Emperor Wu of Han 汉武帝 (156-87 B.C. ) accepted Dong Zhongshu's 董仲舒 (179-104 B.C.) proposal to "revere only Confucianism 独尊儒术,"[22] he used Confucianism only as a political philosophy for the governance of the country, and did not demand that everything be done in accordance with Confucian rites, let alone "banish the hundred schools.”[23]
　　
Confucianism is more respectful of individual self-determination in human relationships than in political contexts.  First, Confucianism's relational thinking leaves enough room for individual self-determination. For example, in terms of individual roles, a person is both the son of his parents and the father of his children, the student of his teacher and the teacher of his students, the husband of his wife and the colleague of his colleagues…When a tension arises between these roles, the individual needs to make an autonomous trade-off in order to handle the tension appropriately.
　　
Second, the middle way 中庸, as taught by Confucianism, requires individuals to act in accordance with common sense and not to go to extremes when dealing with specific matters, which in reality means tolerating the different opinions of others. In addition, the middle way contains the idea of the proper way 正道, but the expression of the proper way varies according to the situation, so Confucianism gives room for individual discretion. Finally, the relational character of Confucian thought requires individuals to restrain their own behavior so as to avoid the non-virtue of causing harm to others. This is best expressed by the saying "Do not do to others what you would not wish done to you."[24] 
　　
From today's perspective, the Confucian definition of autonomous space has no clear boundaries, but this is not unique to China. In fact, traditional Western societies also lacked clear boundaries and legal equality. In his discussion of ancient and modern liberties, Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) noted that in ancient societies, "Social authorities intervened in those spheres which seem to us to be the most useful [to the individual], obstructing the will of the individual... And public authority also intervened in the internal relations of most families... Law regulated custom, and since custom involved all things, there were hardly any areas not regulated by law.”
　　
When humanity managed to establish a clearly defined private sphere, this marked a transformation of traditional society towards modern society. Traditional freedom consisted of the collective exercise of some parts of full sovereignty, while modern freedom consists of the enjoyment by the individual of a variety of inviolable rights, backed by the force of the law. However, we have not paid enough attention to Constant’s warning concerning how to deal with the question of traditional and modern freedoms. 
　　
As Constant put it:  "The danger of traditional liberty is that, since people thought only in terms of preserving their share of social power, they may downplay the value of individual rights and preferences. The danger of modern liberty lies is that, in indulging so fully in the enjoyment of individual independence and the pursuit of our respective interests, we may too readily relinquish the right to the joys of political power…Thus, gentlemen, we should in no way abandon either of the two freedoms I have described. As I have already shown, we must learn to combine the two freedoms. A famous author who studied the history of the medieval republics once said that institutions must fulfill the mission of mankind, and that a certain institution can best achieve this goal if it elevates as many citizens as possible to the highest moral level." 
　　
When modern Confucianism reinterprets individual agency in terms of freedom and reinterprets the ritual system in terms of rights, the individual’s autonomous space acquires the legal form of personal freedom from coercion, granted by the system of rights established by constitutional law. In this respect, modern Confucians such as Xu Fuguan 徐复观 (1904-1982) are no different from liberals. Or if there are differences, they are mainly in their understanding of modern concepts such as freedom and rights in response to the problems modernity faces, and in the traditional resources they draw on to interpret these concepts. 
　
When liberalism became a competitor or interlocutor with modern Confucianism, sayings such as "Do not do to others what you would not wish done to you," and "The ren [benevolent] person is one who, wishing himself to be settled in position, sets up others; wishing himself to have access to the powerful, achieves access for others”[25] became the basis of the modern Confucian narrative of freedom, and has been regarded by some scholars in recent times as the equivalent of Isaiah Berlin’s doctrine of negative versus positive liberty, although this comparison is somewhat misleading.
 
"Do not do to others what you would not wish done to you" is indeed consistent with Berlin's negative freedom, but here Confucius is looking at negative freedom obtained in a positive way. "What I do not wish for myself” refers to what I think I should not do, and by “not imposing it on others,” I give them negative freedom. In Berlin or Hayek, negative freedom ultimately requires the protection of the law; for Confucius, negative freedom in a group can come from the self-restraint of each individual.  But when we put it this way, we seem to be falling into the trap of “the West emphasizes the rule of law and China emphasizes the rule of man.” 
　
However, it may be better to see the two in terms of complementary relationships: the law is foundational, but it cannot be all-encompassing; thus, individual self-restraint is necessary. In the context of state-to-state relations, this may be even more important. In today's world, a framework for global governance has yet to emerge, international law is not yet complete, and the enforcement of this law is even weaker. Under such circumstances, self-restraint on the part of each state, especially the great powers, is particularly important. Thus, the Confucian principle of "do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself" may be more important in international relations than any liberal principle.
　　
It is more problematic to consider "do not impose on others what you do not desire" as positive freedom. Berlin rejected positive freedom on the grounds that it could easily lead to totalitarian interventions. In contrast, modern Confucianism generally does not deny the enterprising spirit of "the ren [benevolent] person is one who, wishing himself to be settled in position, sets up others; wishing himself to have access to the powerful, achieves access for others " (the "enhancement principle"), but treats it as a supplement to "do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire" (the “do not impose” principle).
　　
However, taking the “enhancement principle” as positive freedom does not fit with Berlin's definition of positive freedom:  Berlin’s idea of positive freedom as “the freedom to do X" is about individual capacity in terms of creative energy, while the enhancement principle is, in Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130-1200) words "starting from oneself and extending to others is the heart of benevolence, in which we can see the seamless flow of heavenly principle.” It is about achieving one's own virtue, and by extension, the virtue of others, such as "if you want to practice virtue, you must lead others to practice virtue, which is called loving people through virtue,” as Cheng Shude 程树德 (1887-1944), a late Qing and Republican-period scholar, put it. 
 
For the morally virtuous (as Voltaire believed himself to be), adherence to the enhancement principle seems to be a matter of course; otherwise, there would be no need for them to preach their ideas to the public. However, in a general sense, there is a conflict between the enhancement principle and the do-not-impose principle, because others may not agree with what I think is good, and if I persist in trying to encourage people to do such things, I am violating the do-not-impose principle. On this basis, some scholars have thus denied the contemporary moral value of these two principles. 
　　
But if we return to what Constant said about the dangers of modern freedom and how to deal with these dangers, or if we look at Western left-liberals and contemporary theories of justice, we find that the real question is not whether to reject the enhancement principle, but how to rank the enhancement principle and the do-not-impose principle. In our view, if the enhancement principle is constructed on the basis of superior morality, then, in a moral sense, the enhancement principle and the do-not-impose principle are equally important.  In institutional terms, however, the do-not-impose principle should take precedence over the enhancement principle in order to ensure that the enhancement principle is not exploited by people with ulterior motives. 
 
There is also a difference between the Confucian view of freedom and Amartya Sen's view of freedom. Sen’s view of freedom is based on the individual's ability; moreover, the amount of individual abilities and the ability to put them to use determine the degree of opportunity for individual freedom and the degree of autonomy of the individual to pursue his or her goals. The do-not-impose principle establishes, in a negative sense, the autonomous space necessary for individual freedom (corresponding to Sen's "set of opportunities"), while the enhancement principle establishes the scope of reasonable intervention when the boundaries of others’ self-determination of others are in play—here, "reasonable" is understood as by "establishing or enhancing both oneself and others." 
　　
Sen's view of freedom is substantive, and it is not institutional in terms of opportunity. Thus, later on, Sen repeatedly argues that his view of freedom as capability can only be perfected if linked to a procedural system. In contrast, the Confucian view of freedom is not concerned with procedures, but instead begins with the self, and asks how to accord others their necessary autonomous space, and under what conditions the self can intervene in the autonomous space of others. Below, we further discuss the role of the do-not-impose principle and the enhancement principle in determining the autonomous space (choice set).
　　
As noted in the above analysis, both the do-not-impose principle and the enhancement principle start from the self.  This point distinguishes Confucians from classical liberals. Classical liberals, such as Berlin and Hayek, defined freedom from a passive perspective, demanding “freedom from” something.  In their liberalism, the party imposing constraints is absent. Is this passive definition of freedom sufficient to deter those who might be capable of imposing restrictions? In a situation where autonomous space is conferred by nature—as in the theory of "natural human rights"—the answer may be yes.
　　
The problem is that such an autonomous space does not exist. In a short, incisive paper, Sen convincingly argues that a priori private domains (or what we are calling autonomous spaces) do not exist when the "Pareto principle" is in play, but must be defined through collective decision-making. Consequently, it becomes important to put some restrictions on the individuals who participate in collective decision-making. In reality, these individuals are often the ones who enjoy more power in society and are highly likely to make decisions that are beneficial to them. 
　　
It is only when the do-not-impose principle and enhancing principle are understood at this level that they can be accurately linked to the modern concept of freedom. The do-not-impose principle requires the designer of the system to put himself in the shoes of others and think as ordinary people do about what kind of constraint they would not want.   The challenge is a bit more demanding in the case of the enhancement principle, requiring that a certain amount of education be carried out at the level of the general population while respecting the do-not-impose principle. Doing things in this way does not necessarily impose restrictions on the autonomous space of others, but it does require other people to take the initiative to do something that is consistent with high moral standards. 
 
This is a major difference between Confucianism and classical liberalism, and distinguishes Confucianism from Sen's version of capacity-based freedom .  Sen's emphasis is on "I can do X," Confucianism's emphasis is on "I should do X.”  Of course, Berlin’s warning must not be forgotten, and the question of how to safeguard negative freedom from infringement is also a matter that Confucians must consider. This is the reason why we put the do-not-impose principle before the enhancement principle.
 
In terms of autonomous space, there is not only the question of whether it exists, but also of how big it is.   The size of the autonomous space is related both to an individual's capacity and to the social structure. From the Confucian perspective, everyone has the same potential, so in the original sense, everyone enjoys equality of opportunity. In reality, however, due to differences in personal preferences and effort, individuals end up with a variety of capacities, which also vary in terms of strength and weakness, so that people have different autonomous spaces. For example, both A and B have the same opportunities (guaranteed by law), but if A is handicapped and B is an able-bodied person, then all other things being equal, B enjoys a larger autonomous space in terms of career choices, migration options, etc., than A does. 
　　
In terms of institutional design, right liberals advocate leaving the differences in people’s autonomous spaces alone (promising only equal rights to freedom), while the liberal left advocates reducing differences in people's autonomous spaces (promising both equal rights to freedom and egalitarian institutional arrangements).  In contrast to these two claims, Confucianism advocates modifying differences in people's autonomous spaces by promising symmetrical rights to freedom but insisting on a meritocratic institutional arrangement. 
　　
Concretely, Confucianism believes on the one hand that individuals may have equivalent sets of abilities in terms of original potential, and thus Confucianism affirms formal equality of opportunity; on the other hand, Confucianism believes that there is a difference between the abilities of individuals in reality, and that those who are more capable should take on more responsibilities, hold higher positions, and enjoy the correspondingly larger autonomous space. This latter point means that the political structure will be hierarchical. 
　　
The question arises as to what are the boundaries of the autonomy of each individual in a society composed of a certain population size? In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) takes the principle of non-injury as the boundary, that is, your autonomous behavior cannot injure others, which in practice establishes the boundaries of your autonomous behavior.  However, this cannot reasonably solve the problem of the inequality of autonomous spaces. 
　
For example, although B does not infringe on A's autonomous space, A’s autonomous space is nonetheless extremely small due to lack of ability or economic hardship.  This is intuitively unfair, especially when A's lack of ability or economic hardship is not his subjective fault, and when his autonomous space could be readily expanded by giving reasonable assistance, the unfairness stands out even more. 
 
In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls uses two principles of justice as boundaries. The first principle establishes that everyone has equal rights to roughly similar types of freedom.  Provided that it does not violate the first principle, the equal opportunity part of the second principle of justice establishes that socially structured work positions are open to all, and the difference part of the second principle establishes that economic and social inequalities be arranged in such a way as to maximize the interests of those who benefit the least.[26] 
 
Rawls' two principles of justice well address the inequities and inequalities in the autonomous space as defined by Mill, but his difference principle does not consider the issue of individual autonomy and responsibility.  In addition, his egalitarian tendencies will tend to cause frustration among the more capable, while the incentive argument he provides does not justify the difference principle. In contrast, Confucianism takes the principle of relational equality as the boundary of the space of individual autonomy. Thus, let us turn to a discussion of the Confucian view of equality.　　　　
　　
Confucianism's Concept of Equality 
 
By today's standards, Confucius' political ideas appear to be extremely unequal, reflecting a strong hierarchical concept based on "submission.” However, Confucius' ideas are no more inclined to maintain a fixed hierarchy than the ideas of his contemporaries (for example, in ancient Greece).  Indeed, Xu Fuguan argues that in the context of Western Zhou society, Confucius' thought stood out for its egalitarianism. 
 
"In the history of Chinese culture, it was truly Confucius who discovered the world of ordinary people, meaning that he broke down all the unreasonable boundaries between human beings and acknowledged that truth that all people are the same and equal…Confucius’s discovery consisted of three basic points. 
 
First, Confucius destroyed the class restrictions found in society and politics at the time, and transformed the traditional class distinction between the superior man and the small man into a moral distinction between the two, meaning that these statuses were hereafter decided by individual effort, and the superior man thus became the symbol of anyone who strives for betterment, instead of being a class oppressor… 
 
Second, Confucius destroyed the political myth that overthrowing an illegitimate ruler is a rebellion, thus removing the ruler from his privileged position, meaning that he would be judged by the same principles of conscience and reason as the common people… 
 
Third, Confucius not only destroyed the regionalisms created by the various kingdoms at the time, but also broke with existing ethnic views, viewing peoples seen as 'barbarians' at the time as equals." 
　　
Mencius was more enlightened than Confucius, and his saying that "every man can become a Yao or Shun” means that everyone has an equal opportunity to become a virtuous and talented person. This means that all men start out equal. And although not all men wind up becoming virtuous and talented, this is less a result of inequalities in terms of status and position and more a result of inequalities in terms of commitment and effort.  Some people are more capable than others, so this inequality is the result of the accumulation of effort.  
　　
Those who become a saint or a sage on the basis of accumulated effort are superior to everyday people in a moral sense, and are a model of the kind of person described by Confucius when he said “benevolence means cherishing people” and talked about “extending oneself to others.”   In this sense, this inequality is not oppressive, but, as Sen suggests, can be the basis for the enforcement of unilateral obligations. Sen writes: "The idea of unilateral obligations arising from power inequalities is not only widely used in human rights activism today, but can also be seen in the early struggles for freedom and corresponding human rights." 
 
In Mencius, the worthy voluntarily choose to take on more responsibilities and duties, and the resulting inequality is not a substantive inequality. Xunzi returned to Confucius' theory of difference in terms of human nature, but we can also deduce the idea of equality from his thought. His saying that "anyone on the streets can become a Yu" suggests that everyone can become a man like Yu through constant "deliberate effort" or by cultivating goodness in himself. This takes us to a similar place as Mencius' idea that "all men can become Yaos and Shuns." 
　　
On the basis of classical Confucian thought, modern Confucians can develop a modern concept of relational equality. In fact, the focus in contemporary Western political philosophy is currently shifting away from absolute equality toward relational equality. Consequently, the richness of the relational ideas accumulated in the Confucian tradition has become the subject for considerable attention. Formally speaking, sameness and symmetry are two facets of equality, which can be traced back at least to Aristotle's numerical equality and proportional equality. During the Enlightenment, sameness achieved great success as a critical weapon against hierarchy, but by the same token also weakened notions of symmetry, i.e., by destroying proportional equality along with hierarchy. 
　　
But in reality, what was really destroyed was the entrenched hierarchical order, not all notions of social levels.  Setting aside the staying power of history, even in abstract terms, some kind of hierarchy is necessary. First, any society with a certain population level must have a certain level of hierarchy in their political structure, otherwise they cannot be governed effectively; second, as long as we recognize the diversity of human nature and the differences in human abilities,  the system should allow for a certain level of hierarchy. The key here is not the presence or absence of hierarchy, but the amount of mobility it allows. 
 
Traditional Chinese culture is rich in ideas of numerical and proportional equality. Enlightenment ideas, which rejected proportional equality and promoted numerical equality, came to China quite late, and modern Confucianism has been able to draw on the ideas about equality from the Confucian doctrinal tradition on the basis of a more comprehensive interplay of Chinese and Western theories. On the basis of Confucianism's abundant relational ideas and its grasp of proportional equality, focused on symmetry (e.g., the notion that you reap what you sow, the good being rewarded with good and the bad with bad, etc.), a Confucian theory of relational equality can be readily derived and developed. 
　　
Specifically, Confucian relational equality is an equality based on qualifications, meaning that everyone with the same qualifications is equal in terms of politics. A given level in the Confucian political structure is not open to everyone, but only to those who meet the qualifications required for that level, including competence and virtue (hereafter referred to as a "competence set" for simplicity’s sake).  This is clearly different from the abstract equality promoted by liberalism. 
　　
For the sake of illustration, let us imagine a simple social structure that contains a three-tier political structure, from low to high, with each tier corresponding to an opportunity set denoted as opportunity one, opportunity two, and opportunity three. We can imagine that the first tier includes the basic constituent units of society and the rights attached thereto, such as schools, businesses, social groups, etc.; the second tier includes basic activities related to political participation, such as elections and representation, and the rights attached thereto; and the third tier includes the government positions necessary to manage the state and the rights attached thereto. 
　　
According to the logic of liberalism, all opportunities are open to all. By contrast, Confucianism would treat the three opportunity tiers differently. Specifically, "opportunity one" is open to all. Because everyone has the potential to become a sage or a saint, keeping this tier open to all opens the door to sainthood and wisdom. At this lowest level, modern Confucians, just like liberals, recognize the substantive freedom and equal rights of all people. Since everyone has equal value, each person therefore has the freedoms that go with that value, including freedom of choice, freedom of speech, and so on. 
　　
In terms of political participation, a person can choose whether—or not—to enter the hierarchy. If one chooses to enter, he must obtain the appropriate qualifications. This requirement is not excessive, the logic being that a person must pass certain exams in order to attend college. However, if he chooses not to enter, it does not mean that he is inferior in a general sense; the political hierarchy is only one part of life, and there is a huge space outside of politics for people to pursue excellence. 
　　
Thus, "opportunity two" and "opportunity three" are only open to those with the appropriate qualifications, and the latter has higher requirements than the former. In reality, people have different sets of abilities, and higher positions correspond to higher responsibilities (influence) and therefore require matching sets of abilities. In this regard, the Confucian view of equality is defined by symmetry, in the form of the age-old proportional equality common to both Eastern and Western cultures. 
　　
Compared to the liberal view of equality, the Confucian version can better address the issue of individual responsibility. The liberal view of equality is based on the norm of sameness, so the question of individual responsibility is the central issue that the post-Rawls liberal left has to grapple with. Ronald Dworkin's (1931-2013) solution is to distinguish between resources and preferences. 
　　
For Dworkin, resources (including impersonal resources such as social environment, family background, etc., and personal resources such as an individual's gender, height, personality, etc.) are objective facts for which individuals are not responsible, and thus egalitarian aid should be given to those who lack resources; in contrast, preferences are subjective and are thus the responsibility of the individual, and thus inequalities resulting from preferences should be allowed. 
　　
This distinction between resources and preferences does indeed allow Dworkin to focus on issues of personal responsibility within a framework of liberal egalitarianism, but in terms of resources, the development of individual character and ability is not purely objective; and in terms of ambition, we cannot exclude objective factors, for example, the formation of personal preferences and goals cannot be entirely subjective; therefore, Dworkin does not deal perfectly with the issue of personal responsibility.
　　
In contrast, Confucianism's relational equality is based on symmetry, and therefore it deals with the issue of personal responsibility in a very reasonable way. Relational equality directly focuses on the correspondence between its constituent elements, and provides the normative expression of this correspondence. The Confucian tradition is not only full of ideas focusing on relationality and symmetry, but also full of ethical concerns, as seen in:   Confucius’ statement that benevolence means to “cherish people”[27]; Mencius' "All people possess within them a moral sense that cannot bear the suffering of others,"[28] and Xunzi's "The five types of handicapped people should be received by their superiors and nurtured…Take in those who are orphaned or widowed.  Assist those who are poor and in dire straits."[29] From these ideological resources, we can develop the relevant principles of Confucianism's relational equality. To deepen the discussion further, let us consider a relational equality that contains the four elements of endowment, opportunity, effort, and efficiency. 
　　
There are two aspects of symmetry in relational equality. The first aspect of symmetry is that each individual's endowment, opportunity, effort, and efficiency must fall under the same set of laws (such as a constitution), which relates to the question of whether the individual as a whole is treated fairly; the absence of this symmetry means that the members of society are in an unequal or unjust social relationship, so we can call this the overall principle of relational equality.  
　　
Accordingly, if opportunities one, two, and three in the previous section are not open to all according to the principle of equal qualifications, then the overall principle fails. The second aspect of symmetry is the interpersonal comparison of the individual's endowments, opportunities, efforts, and efficiency at the elemental level, which is related to the equivalence of the elements that make up a person, and the absence of symmetry at the elemental level would imply a certain inequality, but this inequality is different from the overall inequality, and it can be corrected by the compensation principle.  For instance, if a person's endowments, opportunities, efforts, efficiency, etc., are lower than some corresponding given value, he is compensated accordingly.　
　　
This second aspect of symmetry requires more explanation. First, Confucian relational equality not only recognizes interpersonal differences in individual endowment, opportunity, effort, and efficiency, but also accepts such differences as reflected in the social structure. This may seem to conflict with the value of equality, but it does not. Unlike left-wing liberals such as Rawls, who advocate the elimination of individual endowment differences, Confucianism recognizes and differentiates between the differential nature of individual endowments. In our view, the differences in individual endowments are objective and unchangeable, and the differences in individual endowments neither necessarily lead to unreasonable inequalities nor deny the possibility of individual sainthood and virtue, unless one believes that there is only one path to sainthood and virtue. 
 
However, it is undeniable that (1) those who receive excellent natural endowments are more capable of becoming sages at the same level of effort; (2) those which average endowments need to put in more effort to achieve the same level of achievement; (3) as for those born handicapped or with unfortunate family backgrounds, unless these misfortunes are corrected on the basis of human dignity and other values, they will have difficulty realizing their life value.  Together, these three situations demonstrate asymmetry (i.e., de facto inequality) at the level of endowment; and, if left uncorrected, they undermine values such as human dignity, and thus the principle of compensation applies.
 
The question is how to determine the threshold of the compensation principle. In these three cases, although there is some difference between (1) and (2), this difference does not constitute an obstacle to the realization of life values, so the threshold should not be drawn between (1) and (2); what really constitutes an obstacle to the realization of life values is (3), so the threshold should be drawn between (2) and (3), and thus the compensation principle only needs to correct (3), such as improving the conditions of people with disabilities, the education and living conditions of children from poor families, etc., in order to enhance the level of realization of their life values. This division is in line with the spirit of Sen's doctrine of capabilities, and does not require full equality of capabilities, but instead an equality that points to capability building. 
　　
Conclusion 
 
Confucianism does not require individual values to precede social values in a general sense. For Confucianism, individual values are part of social values. However, in Mencius's discourse, the people are at the forefront, and Mencius emphasizes the equivalence of the value of the individual in a moral sense, which means that killing an immoral ruler is like killing anyone else. Nonetheless, we must admit that Mencius did not understand the distinction between the group and the self. The same is true of Xunzi's "clear distinctions between lord and minister."[30] 
　　
But we can't be hard on the ancients, after all, because in their time, no one could put the individual above society. This is true for both the East and the West. From the perspective of Confucianism, which attaches importance to the cultivation of the individual, the value of the individual includes the component of individual effort, and society should support the individual, as reflected in:  "There is a teaching; there are no divisions,"[31]  " regulation of the people’s means of support,"[32] "take in the orphaned and widowed.  Assist those who are poor and in dire straits.”  Furthermore, Confucianism does not require individuals to make sacrifices for society, only that each individual should have his or her own place in the social order. Thus, Confucianism can accept a thin version of the individual value theory. 
　　
Confucianism explores the issue of individual self-determination in the two following relational dimensions: one is the relationship between the individual and the social organization. In this dimension, Confucianism favors the denial of individual self-determination in the following sense: each individual is subject to the constraints of ritual. Ritual determines social hierarchy, which leaves relatively little space for individual self-determination.  The other dimension is the relationship between individuals. In this dimension, Confucianism respects individual self-determination. This is best exemplified by the saying "do not do to others what you would not wish done to yourself;" the same is true of the middle way. The middle way is to act according to common sense and not to go to extremes, which means that one can tolerate the different opinions of others. 
　　
However, unlike classical liberals who emphasize only negative freedom, Confucianism approves of the act of guiding individual choices based on high moral principles, as expressed in the phrase, "wishing to be enhanced himself, he seeks also to enhance others.”  What modern Confucians must achieve is the balance between the do-not-impose principle and the enhancement principle.  Based on the modern theory of rights, we can explain Confucianism's approach to individual self-determination, and describe its principles, as follows: morally, the "do-not-impose” principle and enhancement principle are equally important, but in institutional terms, the " do-not-impose" principle takes precedence over the enhancement principle, and the establishment of the principle of the enhancement principle presupposes that the establishment of the "do-not-impose" principle is not violated.
　　
Confucian equality can be divided into two levels. First, at the level of individual comparisons, Confucianism affirms that everyone has an equal right to pursue sainthood; second, at the political level, equality is based on qualifications, i.e., only those who meet certain qualifications can compete equally among themselves for political positions, which takes the form of a symmetry between the set of individual abilities and the corresponding political positions. 
　　
In this essay, we have made a preliminary effort to draw on modern equality theory and to develop the Confucian view of equality from the perspective of social relations to obtain a kind of relational equality and outline the meaning of its equality principle. Confucianism's relational equality is based on symmetry, which in turn has two aspects. The first aspect of symmetry concerns whether the individual as a whole is treated fairly, and it regulates the overall principle of relational equality; the second aspect of symmetry concerns whether the elements that constitute a person are equal, and it regulates the principle of compensation for relational equality. 
　　
Thus in sum, Confucianism treats liberalism in two different ways: at the individual level, Confucianism has a high degree of overlap with the various principles of liberalism; at the political level, Confucianism emphasizes that individual values and choices must be subordinated to order, and that equality among individuals can only be based on qualifications. This notion of relational equality unifies two seemingly contradictory traits of Chinese life: in private life, the Chinese uphold individualism; in political life, the Chinese uphold collectivism. 
　　
Our work further develops Confucian liberalism, articulating it as a liberalism based on order and qualifications, and demonstrates that the part of Confucian liberalism that cannot be reduced to Western liberalism constitutes the very foundation of the survival of Chinese culture. Moreover, the concept of harmony, which is nurtured in Confucianism's middle ground, has a clear advantage in dealing with the conflicting interpersonal relationships and the imbalance between human beings and nature caused by Western liberalism. Accordingly, Confucian liberalism can contribute to the peaceful co-prosperity of humankind. 
　　
Notes

[1]姚洋, 秦子忠, “儒家自由主义辨析,” originally published in Wenshizhe/文史哲 2021.3, posted to Aisixiang on May 27, 2021. 

[2]John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Gutenberg Ebook, p. 4.

[3]Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Liberty Classics Edition, Oxford University Press, 1976, pp. 26-27.

[4]Translator’s note:  “The general principle of proportionality (means end rational review with strict scrutiny for suspect classes) represents a key aspect of contemporary legal thought. It is the methodological capstone of the current post-positivist, neo-naturalist perspective on law, which unites both positive and natural law. Aristotle saw the co-existence of a universal natural law, valid in all places and times, alongside positive national laws which hold true in one land but not in another. As Aristotle pointed out, positivism and natural law are complementary, not dichotomous.”  See Eric Engle, “The History of the General Principle of Proportionality:  An Overview,” p. 2.

[5]Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 29.

[6]Translator’s note:  Mencius argued that people are born with four sprouts or seeds—concern for others, sense of shame, sense of humility, and sense of right and wrong— that should naturally develop into four virtues:  benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom.

[7]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 34.

[8]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 115. 

[9]Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi:  The Complete Text, p. 254.    .

[10]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 59.

[11]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 77.

[12]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 112.

[13]Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi:  The Complete Text, p. 251.

[14]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 94.

[15]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 113. 

[16]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 41.

[17]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 62.

[18]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 62.

[19]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 63.

[20]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 80.

[21]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 31.

[22]Translator’s note:  This moment is generally seen as key in the Chinese state’s adoption of Confucianism as official ideology.

[23]Translator’s note:  The “hundred schools” refer to the flourishing of Chinese intellectual and philosophical life in the period leading up to China’s first unification under the Qin empire in 221 B.C.  The Qin were firmly against the pluralism of the “hundred schools,” while the Han were not.

[24]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 59.

[25]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 29.

[26]Translator’s note:  A succinct summary of Rawls’s views is available here.

[27]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 64.

[28]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 43.

[29]Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi:  The Complete Text, pp. 68-70.

[30]Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi:  The Complete Text, p. 83, with slight modifications for reasons of style.

[31]Robert Eno, The Analects, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 87.

[32] Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 24.