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Political thought has been an abiding concern of China’s rich philosophical tradition for over twenty-five hundred years. Of course, much changed over this time span, including the nature of the Chinese polity along with relations to other peoples and other intellectual traditions. The twentieth century witnessed some of the most dramatic changes in all of China’s history. Nonetheless, certain debates seem perennial, and various ideas continue to resurface. One example is the question of authoritative leaders versus authoritative standards or institutions. For many traditional thinkers in China, rule by a sage-king is an achievable and appropriate goal for politics, and it should result in harmonious flourishing for all. Objective standards play varying roles, but even in the twentieth century, it is rare to find a thinker who views standards merely procedurally, and countenances deep-seated pluralism, dissonance, or conflict: harmony or even uniformity are still widely sought. While twenty-first-century Chinese political thought is sure to undergo many changes—as Chinese thinkers reflect both on dramatic developments in Chinese society and their ongoing interactions with various foreign political philosophies—in all likelihood, political thought will also continue to be concerned with harmony, perfectionism, and similar ideas. As such, it may yet lead to new types of political institutions and political theories that will challenge the global hegemony of liberal democracy.

Classical Political Thought

Classical Chinese political thought (pre-221 BCE) revolved around three sets of questions: (1) How should a state be organized and governed? In particular, who or what should the people be expected to take as authoritative? (2) What are the proper goals of governance? Which goals are most fundamental? (3) How are the answers to the previous questions justified? What renders the means and ends of governance legitimate?

Two types of answers dominate efforts for addressing the first question. First are those emphasizing adherence to some sort of objective standard (fa). Historians have labeled some but not all of the thinkers taking this approach as belonging to the school of standards (fajia), an older and misleading translation of which is “legalism.” According to early chapters of the Guanzi (a collection of philosophical and other essays, begun in the early fourth century BCE and compiled around 26 BCE), for instance, if the people are well fed and put to work at tasks well suited to them, they are likely to accord with propriety and moderation. Yet, the author adds that rulers must “make clear the road to certain death,” by which the author means “severe punishments” must be in place for those who go astray. In another chapter of the text, possibly by the same author, it states, “Those who shepherd the people desire them to be controllable. Since they desire them to be controllable, they must pay serious attention to standards (fa).” These standards are then enumerated, and include honoring ranks and ceremonial dress, giving salaries and rewards to the deserving, granting offices, and applying punishments. Standards, in short, mean objective criteria for punishment and reward. Legal codes are one sort of standard, but the Guanzi and many other texts make it clear that fa is understood more broadly than mere penal codes.

The main alternative to an emphasis on standards is the Confucian focus on virtuous rule and moral transformation. In the Analects (a collection of the sayings of Confucius and his school, begun shortly after 500 BCE), the dynamic of people identifying with and modeling themselves on the ruler permeates the text’s understanding of governance. When asked whether a ruler should kill those who fail to follow the way (dao), Confucius responds, “You are there to govern; what use have you for killing? If you desire the good, the people will be good. The virtue of the gentleman is the wind; the virtue of the little people is the grass. The wind on the grass will surely bend it” (12:19). Unlike the emphasis put on punishments as one kind of standard in the Guanzi, the Analects here minimizes the importance of killing. This point is reinforced in perhaps the most famous saying in the text about governance: “Lead them with government and regulate them by punishments, and the people will evade them with no sense of shame. Lead them with virtue and regulate them by ritual, and they will acquire a sense of shame—and moreover, they will be orderly” (2:3).

These contrasting emphases—objective standards opposed to virtuous rule—can be found to varying degrees in all subsequent treatments of political thought. A related, and important, distinction is that between harmony (he) and uniformity (tong). Texts that stress objective standards tend also to demand strict uniformity with those standards and to leave little, if any, room for complaint or remonstrance. (One partial exception is the Mozi, a collection of essays by the philosopher Mozi and his school, begun in the late fifth century BCE. In one plausible reading, its objective standard of benefit is readily accessible to all, and thus could ground criticism of a leader who does not follow it.) Confucian texts, in contrast, emphasize individual judgment—at least among the cultivated—and despise uniformity. Drawing on the metaphors of balanced flavors in a soup or the blending of different notes in music, Confucians argue that harmony depends on situation ally apt judgment. This enables the whole (of which one is a part) to flourish more than before. Confucian standards for judgment tend to be internal and based on virtue. While ritual propriety is important, Confucius makes clear that without an inner, emotional commitment, an external show of ritual is next to worthless.

There are various answers to the question of what grounds the objective standards found in texts like Guanzi and Mozi, as well as in two other famous collections of realist ideas from the classical period, Shangjun Shu and Hanfeizi. Especially in Mozi, one apparent answer is heaven (tian). This, however, is somewhat complicated. While tian once clearly referred to a religious entity, it eventually comes to be understood in more naturalistic terms. For the most part, classical philosophers of governance do not appeal to supernatural standards to justify their claims. Even in the Mozi, other chapters record that just as carpenters can use a compass to determine what is circular, so an understanding of the “will of heaven” leads one to reliably judge what is right. The striking thing about a compass is that no special knowledge is needed to use it: It is a public, objective standard for circles. If the will of heaven is to be analogous, then there must be a public, objective standard for right. Mysterious knowledge of the will of a deity does not sound like a good candidate for such a public, objective standard. The text offers an alternative, though, when it regularly speaks of maximally benefitting (li) the people as a standard. A neat way of resolving all these loose ends, then, is to conclude that the will of heaven is a metaphorical reference to the standard of benefit. Proper Mohist governance thus would ultimately be a matter of utilitarian judgment.

Along somewhat similar lines, the Shangjun Shu argues that “the greatest benefit to the people is order [zhi],” which is to implicitly accept that benefit is the standard by which theories of governance are judged. At the same time, it places particular stress on the collective character of benefit. In a war-torn world, the text relays, only when the state is strong can its inhabitants flourish. Those who act for their own interests rather than for the benefit of the state, therefore, are to be punished. One result of the fuzziness surrounding the idea of benefitting the people is that if clearer criteria can plausibly be seen as necessary conditions for benefitting the people, these criteria take center stage. A prime example is order. Disorder, it is natural to assume, is incompatible with the people’s well-being, so rulers could concentrate on order and allow benefit to follow in its wake. Especially when combined with the idea that the people tend to be selfish and not understand what is really good for them, though, a focus on order can rapidly lead to tyranny. It is perhaps with this in mind that another early Confucian, Xunzi, maintained that “there is only governance by men, not governance by standards” (Xunzi 8). Just claiming to be virtuous is not enough, of course; in fact, Mencius famously asserted that rulers who abandon their virtuous commitments can be treated like bandits and slain (Mencius 1B:8). Indeed, others saw that the doctrine of rule by virtue is by no means a panacea. The Hanfeizi argues that while objective standards and their attendant institutions will make no difference if the ruler is supremely good or supremely bad, for the vast majority of rulers, such institutions are critical (Hanfeizi 40).

Postclassical Thought

The general shape of political thought in the postclassical period (221 BCE–1911 CE) followed on the foundations classical political thought. Scholars have used the term imperial Confucianism to describe the philosophy-cum-state ideology that emerged. There was enormous institutional innovation, partly because of great social changes, but the mainstream Confucian discourse continued to see institutions and standards with secondary importance, compared to the cultivation of virtuous individuals. The language of sage ruler was regularly applied to emperors—not least by the emperors themselves—and rulers efforts to educate or transform their subjects sometimes led to horrific excesses. The idea that people were beholden to a standard of personal moral judgment was fleshed out; the source and justification of the judgment came to be seen as the underlying harmonious coherence (li) (also sometimes translated as “principle”) of the cosmos.

One critical episode in this lengthy period was the failure of an ambitious program of top-down institutional reforms advocated by Wang Anshi (1021–1086), which led many subsequent Confucians to stress local institutions and local autonomy. A related trend, which both supported and was supported by the flourishing commercial economy of the sixteenth century and thereafter, was the increasing emphasis on legitimate personal (si) desires. A range of thinkers came to make explicit the importance of a legitimate sphere of personal concern, and this trend was one significant source of subsequent Chinese reflection about rights. Indeed, the Chinese term that came to be accepted as a translation of rights meant, to nineteenth century Confucian thinkers, something close to “legitimate powers and interests.”

Among the most significant political texts of the entire period was the trenchant manifesto Waiting for the Dawn, completed in 1663 by Huang Zongxi. Huang argues that a healthy polity is based on well-designed institutions (using fa, or standard, in a broad sense) like schools, property regimes, and ceremonies that train people to be social citizens, rather than selfish egoists. Huang contrasts these institutions with those promoted by recent rulers, which he characterizes as “anti-institutional institutions” (fa that are not fa): In this case, the educational system, property regime, and ceremonies are designed solely to glorify the one family who happens to occupy the throne—whether the family deserves it or not. Huang then famously asserts, “Should it be said that ‘There is only governance by men, not governance by institutions [fa],’ my reply is that only if there is governance by institutions can there by governance by men.” He goes on to explain, “If the institutions of the early kings were still in effect, there would be a spirit among men that went beyond the institutions. If men were of the right kind, all of their intentions could be realized; and even if they were not of this kind, they could not slash deep or do widespread damage.” Huang’s argument may bring to mind the similar-sounding argument of Han Feizi, cited earlier, although for the most part Huang’s institutions are designed to nurture people’s good natures, rather than impose objective punishments along Han Feizi’s lines. In any event, the tension between relying on virtuous rulers, and seeking to provide some sort of objective guidance or institution, clearly continued throughout the imperial period.

The Twentieth Century

A flourishing of political thought, under the twin stimuli of domestic challenges and encounters with foreign political philosophies, marked the last years of the Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1911. The Russian Revolution of 1917 added further fuel to the fire, at a time when the nascent Republic of China was struggling with both internal and external threats. The nature and sources of political authority once again were topics of debate. Many now took it for granted that the goal was some sort of democracy in which the people were (at least in principle) sovereign. But who counted as “the people,” how they were to be led or represented, and how collective versus individual goals were to be balanced, all were up for grabs. At a broader level, there was a debate between those who felt the answer could be in one or another “ism”—that is, an all-encompassing ideology like Marxism—and those who favored working more pragmatically, via institution building, on one problem at a time. A few decades later, after the founding of the People’s Republic, similar issues were addressed in the contrast between “Red” (ideologically and morally pure) and “expert” (possessing technical expertise). In various ways, these twentieth-century debates resonated with classical rule-by-virtue versus rule-by-standards contention. Were morally advanced individuals the key to an ideal society? Or should objective standards of success, coupled with objective institutions, be society’s political foundation? In cases of conflict, which had priority?

There was certainly no single answer offered to these questions by any of the groups constituting twentieth-century China’s political landscape, ranging from new Confucians to nationalists to liberals to Marxists. However, the “isms” approach won out through much of the century, and Thomas Metzger has shown that Chinese political thinkers of all camps tended toward what he calls epistemological optimism, which is a confidence that the one, universally applicable moral and political truth is knowable, and so great that authority should be vested in those gifted individuals able to perceive this truth. Another way to put this would be to say that there is a strong utopian strand in much twentieth-century Chinese political thought, which has both pushed toward radical solutions and led to dissatisfaction with continued dissonance or piecemeal progress. Even Chinese liberals have, in many cases, envisioned harmonious societies in which individual self-realization goes hand-in-hand with the realization of the larger collectivity, which they often called the larger self (dawo). From a Western perspective, they have leaned more towards the ideas of French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau than toward those of British utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill.

Twentieth-century China was home to a number of creative Marxist political thinkers, the most famous of whom was Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Mao was instrumental in redefining the Marxist revolution so that peasants rather than urban workers were its foundation—a shift that was facilitated by the fact that the Chinese translation for proletariat literally meant “the class without property [wuchan jieji].” In philosophical essays like “On Practice” and “On Contradiction,” Mao elaborated an understanding of knowledge and of political progress that emphasized the roles of experience and ongoing process, rather than abstract principles. Marxist theory certainly had a role, but pride of place went to individuals who are able to negotiate the dialectical relations between theory and concrete experience. The end result is a framework that allows leaders to claim authority to institute radical policies and even “permanent revolution”; neither objective standards nor rule of law could resist the claims to experiential insight on the part of individuals.

Some philosophers in the twentieth century have been more aware than others of the problems with utopianism. Mou Zongsan (1909–1995), a leader of the new Confucian movement, was not only aware of these problems, but also offered a particularly creative way out of the recurrent tension between personal virtue (or morality) and public standards (or politics). Mou’s insight is that the relation between morality and politics is “dialectical.” Rather than seeing a leader’s political virtue as a direct extension of the leader’s personal moral virtue, Mou argues that there needs to be an indirect relation between them. Politics and political virtue must develop out of morality, but nonetheless have an independent, objective existence. This means that human rights, for example, must have a basis in morality, but come to be measured by standards that are separate from moral standards. The converse is also true: Full moral virtue requires that which partly “negates its essential nature [ziwo kanxian],” namely objective structure (Mou, 59). Objective structures (like laws) are fundamentally different from the subjectively felt, internalized morality for which all should all individually strive. The concrete implication of this is that no matter what one’s level of moral accomplishment, “insofar as one’s virtue is manifested in politics, one cannot override the relevant limits (that is, the highest principles of the political world), and in fact must devote one’s august character to the realization of these limits” (128). In short, sages cannot break the law or violate the constitution. Politics thus has its independence from morality.

Philosophers have differed in their evaluations of Mou’s argument, but it can stand as an instance of the continuing creativity to be found in contemporary Chinese political thinking. China’s dynamic society offers a crucible within which new ideas and new political forms may be forged and tested in coming years. To be sure, genuinely novel and intellectually challenging ideas do not form the majority of contemporary Chinese political discourse, but they are there on all sides of the spectrum. It remains to be seen whether robust political values and institutions will emerge as alternatives to more familiar models of Western political theory, just as the role is unforeseen for the Marxist, Confucian, liberal, and other traditions in future Chinese political thinking. Concerns with harmony and virtue are unlikely to disappear, but (as Mou’s example shows) this by no means limits the future interest of whatever political institutions and theories emerge in China.

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