Guanzi 1

Cheng & Tsui is pleased to offer the first revised paperback edition of this monumental work. First published in 1985, W.

The rise of China could be the most important political development of the twenty-first century. What will China look like in the future? What should it look like? And what will China's rise mean for the rest of world? This book, written by China's most influential foreign policy thinker, sets out a vision for the coming decades from China's point of view. In the West, Yan Xuetong is often regarded as a hawkish policy advisor and enemy of liberal internationalists. But a very different picture emerges from this book, as Yan examines the lessons of ancient Chinese political thought for the future of China and the development of a "Beijing consensus" in international relations. Yan, it becomes clear, is neither a communist who believes that economic might is the key to national power, nor a neoconservative who believes that China should rely on military might to get its way. Rather, Yan argues, political leadership is the key to national power, and morality is an essential part of political leadership. Economic and military might are important components of national power, but they are secondary to political leaders who act in accordance with moral norms, and the same holds true in determining the hierarchy of the global order. Providing new insights into the thinking of one of China's leading foreign policy figures, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in China's rise or in international relations. In a new preface, Yan reflects on his arguments in light of recent developments in Chinese foreign policy, including the selection of a new leader in 2012.

Challenging the Eurocentric misconception that the philosophy of history is a Western invention, this book reconstructs Chinese thought and offers the first systematic treatment of classical Chinese philosophy of history. Dawid Rogacz charts the development from pre-imperial Confucian philosophy of history, the Warring States period and the Han dynasty through to the neo-Confucian philosophy of the Tang and Song era and finally to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Revealing underexplored areas of Chinese thought, he provides Western readers with new insight into original texts and the ideas of over 40 Chinese philosophers, including Mencius, Shang Yang, Dong Zhongshu, Wang Chong, Liu Zongyuan, Shao Yong, Li Zhi, Wang Fuzhi and Zhang Xuecheng. This vast interpretive body is compared with the main premises of Western philosophy of history in order to open new lines of inquiry and directions for comparative study. Clarifying key ideas in the Chinese tradition that have been misrepresented or shoehorned to fit Western definitions, Rogacz offers an important reconsideration of how Chinese philosophers have understood history.

In Confucius Beyond the Analects, Michael Hunter challenges the standard view of the Analects as the earliest and most authoritative source of the teachings.

Explores how sovereign space in early China was imagined and negotiated in the ancient world.

How do social relations, or guanxi, matter in China today and how can this distinctive form of personal connection be better understood? In Guanxi: How China Works, Yanjie Bian analyzes the forms, dynamics, and impacts of guanxi relations in reform-era China, and shows them to be a crucial part of the puzzle of how Chinese society operates. Rich in original studies and insightful analyses, this concise book offers a critical synthesis of guanxi research, including its empirical controversies and theoretical debates. Bian skillfully illustrates the growing importance of guanxi in diverse areas such as personal network building, employment and labor markets, informal business relationships, and the broader political sphere, highlighting guanxi’s central value in China's contemporary social structure. A definitive statement on the topic from a top authority on the sociology of guanxi, this book is an excellent classroom introduction for courses on China, a useful reference for guanxi researchers, and ideal reading for anyone interested in Chinese culture and society.

The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China makes an innovative contribution to studies of language by historicizing the Chinese notion that words have "meaning" (content independent of instances of use). Rather than presuming that the concept of word-meaning had always existed, Jane Geaney explains how and why it arose in China. To account for why a normative term (yi, "duty, morality, appropriateness") came to be used for "meanings" found in dictionaries, Geaney examines interrelated patterns of word usage threading through and across a wide range of genres. These patterns show that by the first millennium, as textual production exploded—and as radically different writing forms (in Buddhist sutras) were encountered—yi already functioned as an externally accessible "model" for semantic interpretation of texts and sayings. The book has far-reaching implications. Because the idea of word-meaning is fundamental to theorizing, the book illuminates not only semantic ideas and the normativity of language in Early China, but also aspects of early Chinese philosophy and intellectual history. As the internet supplants one form of media (print), thereby reducing knowledge to vast digital databases, so too, this book explains, two thousand years ago a culture that prized oral and visual balance became an "empire of the text."