A Challenge to Convention
This is an ambitious and sophisticated study of Chinese political thinking from the 6th century
BC to the present. Youngmin Kim adopts a nonnationalistic, non-essentialist approach that rejects many conventions of Chinese historiography.
Kim challenges the teleological assumptions of Hsiao Kung-chuan, who viewed current Chinese political ideas as the culmination of centuries of prior thinking. He also objects to the assumption that “China” was monolithic or a coherent unitarystate, but rather recognizes that the concept of
China is itself a political and normative construction.
Not only is China’s political identity variable and contestable, it is also not necessarily inherently authoritarian or monarchical. Equally importantly, the tendency by some social scientists to assert overly deterministic notions of “Confucianism” risk cultural essentialism. Kim’s analysis concentrates on a number of key issues, including the notion of an enlightened community, a metaphysical republic, autocracy, politics and civil society, and the idea of empire now and past. Above all, and most importantly, Kim shows that all political thought, including that of Chinese writers, is shaped by one’s particular intellectual inheritance, and in this we find an invaluable insight into the inherent diversity of Chinese political thought both now and in the past.
Kim recognizes that the concept of China is itself a political and normative construction.