Chinese Political Thought from Confucius to Xi Jinping

Catalog description

This lecture-discussion course traces the rich history of Chinese political thinking from the beginnings of written history—when different visions of good governance competed for the attention of the rulers of the day—through to the present. We begin with the study of ancient political ideas, for it is during the earliest periods of Chinese history that the greatest variety of government modes are proposed. Political philosophy is the focus, but we also examine the institutions that were developed to translate ideals into action and to the tensions that arose as a consequence of efforts to reconcile different political philosophies in practice during the imperial period. The last section of the course is devoted to the radical changes in thinking and government institutions that take place over the course of the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.