scholarly journals Ancient Chinese Political Thought

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archeological Evidence ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Chinese Political Thought

“Ancient Chinese political thought” refers to the reflections and discussions about politics during the period before the First Emperor established the Qin dynasty in 221 bce. Although one could also infer some political thought of that period from the other archeological evidence, the main sources of such reflections and discussions are texts believed to date back to that period, some of which became the foundation of Chinese education that began in the Han dynasty (210 bce–220 ce) and lasted till the beginning of the 20th century. Although disrupted by the turbulent history of China’s encounter with modernity in the early 20th century, the study of ancient Chinese texts has become the center of what is known as “national studies (guoxue国学)” in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, with institutes devoted to it in many Chinese universities, supporting researchers from various disciplines. In the revival of Confucianism coupled with the rise of cultural nationalism in mainland China, many Chinese scholars have turned to ancient Chinese political thought for inspiration in their search for distinctively Chinese perspectives on politics, both local and global, and they advocate Chinese alternatives or models to address contemporary challenges. With limited space, the publications selected for this article make up only a small fraction of the works in English and even fewer in Mandarin that discuss ancient Chinese political thought. (The focus on English works is due to the consideration that not all readers of this article would be able to read Mandarin.) In addition to being studied as part of early Chinese civilization that has influenced Chinese society through subsequent centuries, political theorists and philosophers engage ancient Chinese political thought to address perennial or contemporary political problems, contributing significantly to the growth of comparative political theory and comparative political philosophy.

Republican China, 1911–1949

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Wright
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Trend ◽  
City States ◽  
Economic Developments

There have been major changes since the mid-20th century in the way in which the history of republican China (1911–1949) is conceptualized by scholars in the West and elsewhere. Up to the 1970s, scholarship was dominated by a somewhat teleological revolutionary paradigm, in which developments in republican China were seen predominantly in terms of their relationship to the 1949 revolution and thus, of their contribution to the total transformation of Chinese society. This teleological approach has more recently been challenged in at least two respects. First, scholars have affirmed that ideas and actions in Nationalist China are worthy of study in their own right, rather than merely in terms of the contribution they did or did not make to China’s Communist revolution. This was partly, though not exclusively, a reflection of the economic and, to some extent, political success of Taiwan and the ethnically Chinese city-states outside the People’s Republic of China, which suggested that the Chinese past could generate paths other than those outlined by Mao Zedong. Second, the degree to which 1949 actually represented a radical break or complete transformation of Chinese society has come increasingly under question. Developments after 1949 have come more and more to be seen as the continuation of a process of state building that was under way, certainly, during the Nationalist regime of 1927–1949 and, to some extent, even before that, back to the warlords or even the late Qing. A further change, and one that reflects the emergence of postmodern views of history way beyond Chinese studies, is to downgrade metanarratives of all types (not just the revolutionary teleology) and to focus more on the local and the contingent. Local studies have therefore been a major trend in republican history since the 1990s. The field covered by this article is vast, and in order to reduce it to manageable size, the author has decided to concentrate mainly (though not exclusively) on topics linked to politics (though in the Chinese case many social, cultural, and economic developments had a strong political element, and they are touched on) and on works that focus centrally on the 1911–1949 period rather than, for example, the whole 20th century.

Chinese Muslims in Transregional Spaces of Mainland China, Taiwan, and Beyond in the Twentieth Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Wlodzimierz Cieciura
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Chinese Nation ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Chinese Muslims ◽  
History Of

This article examines the modern social history of Chinese Hui Muslims in the context of transregional connections within and beyond the borders of the two modern Chinese nation-states, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan. The article applies Engseng Ho’s concepts for the study of Inter-Asia to the biographical study of several prominent Hui religious professionals and intellectuals. The experiences and personal contributions to the development of modern Chinese Muslim culture of people like Imam Ma Songting are scrutinized, along with political and ideological conflicts over different visions of Chineseness and “Huiness” during the turbulent twentieth century. It is argued that when studying the social history of Chinese Muslims, researchers should not limit themselves to the religious activities of Hui elites that occurred within the confines of the two Chinese nation-states, but should also take into consideration the expansion of those elites’ religious activities abroad and the intensive circulation of knowledge across Inter-Asian spaces in which they participated.

Christian Women in Chinese Society

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Women ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich

This volume expands on the long-standing debates about whether Christianity is a collaborator in, or a liberating force against the oppressive patriarchal culture for women in Asia through the accounts of the Anglican church in China. Women have played an important role in the history of Chinese Christianity, but their contributions have yet to receive due recognition, partly because of the complexities arising out of the historical tension between Western imperialism and Chinese patriarchy. Single women missionaries and missionary spouses in the nineteenth century set the early examples of what women could do to spread the Gospel. The education provided to Chinese women by missionaries, which was expected to turn them into good wives and mothers, empowered the students and allowed them to become full participants not only in the Church but also in the wider society. Together, the Western female missionaries and the Chinese women whom they trained explored their newfound freedom and tried out their roles with the help of each other. These developments culminated in the ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi to priesthood in 1944, a singular event that fundamentally changed the history of the Anglican Communion. At the heart of this collection lies the rich experience of those women in the Anglican church, both Chinese and Western, who devoted their lives to their evangelizing and civilizing mission across mainland China and Hong Kong. Contributors make the most of the sources to reconstruct their voices and present sympathetic accounts of these remarkable women’s achievements.

scholarly journals Children’s Culture and Social Studies

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald ◽  
Zitong Qiu ◽  
Zhenhui Yan
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Youth Music ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

The study of childhood is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society and culture. Successive generations of childhood since the mid-20th century have been given the burden of succession—of revolution, of reform, and now of globalization and national pride. They have been involved in wars as child soldiers; they have found themselves at the forefront of internal struggles for the very meaning of culture; and they have been assigned the task of taking Chinese science and technology to the pinnacle of modernity. Chinese society expects a lot from its children. Nonetheless, there are relatively few academic studies of the subject, although that situation is changing in line with the increasing academic focus on Chinese media, an area where younger generations are leading the way. This article seeks to provide an account of key foci in the study of childhood, while also extending the reach of the works cited to certain writings on “youth.” Childhood is a difficult category to pin down, as cultural and social norms can mean that a sixteen-year-old is a child in one place, but a working adult somewhere else. Here we keep to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of a Child (1988), of which China is a signatory, and mark infancy up to age two, and childhood up to seventeen years of age. However, we have still included titles that are concerned with youth over seventeen (approximately), when those discussions are also pertinent to an overall study of generational change. The twelve sections of this article are not exhaustive, but they tease out important themes: Annual Reports, Premodern History of Children and Childhood, Modern Histories of Childhood and Youth, the Child as a Sign of Value, Youth, Music and Literature, Television and Film, Media Use, Education, Anthropology, Politics and Psychology, and Rural Children. The overwhelming impression is one of a double contradiction. The study of the child entails a focus on the future, on abrupt change, and on China’s potential in the world. At the same time, it leads us back to longstanding discourses of social value, discourses that have been forged in the political philosophies of the Confucian tradition but that have developed through the governmental necessities of imperial systems, whereby education underpinned an imperial bureaucracy that spread across the imperial sphere of influence. Indeed, the Book of Rites is clear that the job of a ten-year-old is to study. Yet it was childhood that became the working metaphor for 20th-century critiques of that tradition, whereby lost childhoods such as of that of the peasant Runtu in Lu Xun’s seminal short story “Old Home” (first published in the radical magazine New Youth, 1921; see also Lu 1972, cited under Premodern History of Children and Childhood) were taken as causes and effects of an impoverished and emasculated China.

Main trends of the political thoughts in Albania in 20th century

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10_3) ◽  
pp. 211-215
Author(s):  
Petr Iskenderov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Of

The article focuses on the two key currents of political thought in Albania in the twentieth century - “Nolism” and “Zogism”. The author traces their influence on the modern history of Albania. Special attention is paid to the problems of Albanian nationalism.

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