Whether China should be more democratic has been a continuous debate among political theorists inside and outside of the country. Over the last decade or so, much scholarly discussion on the question surrounds the ideas of the political meritocrats, who hold that democratically elected officials should be constrained, if not replaced, by meritocratically selected officials, chosen by means of, for instance, examinations and peer recommendations. This institutional arrangement, most of them argue, is particularly suitable for the circumstances of China. The (...) political meritocrats construct the dichotomy between democracy and political meritocracy by showing that political meritocracy is intimately connected to Chinese culture, and that democracy is in many ways Western. I argue, however, that this dichotomy is artificial and misleading. First, the ‘Chineseness’ of political meritocracy as well as ‘Westernness’ of democracy are often exaggerated by the political meritocrats. Second, the cultural considerations underpinning the Chineseness of meritocracy and Westernness of democracy are not taken as seriously by the political meritocrats’ view on the superiority of ideal meritocratic politics to non-ideal democratic politics, which renders the political meritocrats’ argument about the democracy–meritocracy dichotomy inconsistent. (shrink)

In The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2023), Wang Hui unfolds two interrelated threads to help us understand China’s historical transition from the pre-modern to modernity. The first thread reveals institutional change in the socio-political realm, tracing the transition from a society based on enfeoffment (fengjian zhi) in the pre-Qin period, to an empire characterized by centralized administration (junxian zhi) during the Tang–Song eras, and eventually to the modern society that began to emerge in the late Qing period. The second (...) thread concerns the paradigm shift in the intellectual realm, with particular emphasis on moral (including social and political) philosophy—or "worldview" in Wang’s terms. This shift moves from the worldview of the rites and music (liyue), to the worldview of heavenly principle (tianli), and finally to the worldview of universal principle (gongli). This essay reframes Wang’s rich depiction of China’s intellectual history through the evolving relationship between the concepts of "principle" (li) and "things" (wu). Based on Wang’s work, it identifies three fundamental stances of Chinese moral philosophy and suggests the possibility of a fourth kind. (shrink)

Confucian meritocrats argue that moral education should not aim to make people politically active because doing so is not only inconsistent with the underlying assumptions of Confucian virtue ethics, but it is likely to make people more adversary and uncivil. According to Confucian meritocrats, moral education should aim at inculcating a particular set of virtues that are directly conducive to political meritocracy such as deference, dependence and paternalistic gratitude, or what I call ‘passive virtues’. This paper argues that unless public (...) purposes are set clearly by the people themselves, it is impossible to know ex ante what sorts of character traits are to be considered good. The virtuous circle between active and virtuous citizenship and effective and virtuous political leadership is possible only when the regime is democratic, facilitating the extension of the self to the wider political world predicated on public purposes that bind all to one political community. (shrink)

Thomas Carlyle’s knowledge of ancient Chinese literature and political thought, specifically Confucianism, helped shape his political view of heroes and meritocracy. His view of ‘ good government’ might have inspired, in a reverse way, John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy of ‘representative government’, which somewhat converged with Carlyle’s idea of meritocracy by integrating bureaucracy with democracy in government. Carlyle’s advocation of meritocracy in the past finds an echo in contemporary China’s ‘vertical democratic meritocracy’ or rather ‘China Model’. An investigation of the (...) Western political theories raised by Joseph Schumpeter and Daniel Bell as well as the political proposals upheld by some Chinese Neo-Confucianists demonstrates that the traditional dichotomy of meritocracy vs democracy could be problematic under the complicated circumstances of contemporary China. The exercise of ‘selection plus election’ as a model of democratic meritocracy in the mainland of China seems arguably practicable in spite of its many potential problems such as legitimacy of election, abuse of power and vulnerability to corruption. (shrink)

During the Warring States period of Chinese history, both Confucian and Legalist (as well as Mohist) thinkers proposed meritocracy as an ideal way of governance. Despite this apparent agreement, they differed from each other on what should be counted as merits. In this paper, I will reconstruct Han Fei Zi (a so-called Legalist thinker)’s critique of Confucian virtue-based meritocracy. In this reconstruction, we can imagine a dialogue between Han Fei Zi and a Confucian, and there are actually a few rounds (...) of ever-deepening debates in which Han Fei Zi eventually won. Although, as it will be revealed, the Confucian that is under serious attack is of a Mencian kind (whose ideas are akin to Mencius’s), Han Fei Zi’s critique can be applied to virtue-based meritocracy in general. An adequate defence of this kind of meritocracy, then, will need to address challenges from Han Fei Zi. (shrink)