This article examines the evolution of the vocabulary “feudal (fengjian)” in early twentieth-century China. Despite having served as a symbol of local autonomy and countervailing against imperial authority as emphasized in the Confucian tradition, the term had descended into an object of scorn, oppression, and retrogression in the latter half of the twentieth century until today. An alternative interpretation toward the modern misuse of fengjian may be found by focusing and comparing the two seemingly unrelated and radically different (...) portrayals of fengjian by: political thinker Zhang Taiyan’s federalist ideology; and Marxist historian Guo Moruo’s manipulation of Chinese classics. Under the historical context surrounding the turmoil of 1920s China, this article argues that much more than a mistranslation, the redefinition of fengjian was an intentional slander to, through the ambiguity surrounding its definition, destroy the Chinese tradition of liberty and local autonomy, further justifying a unified, highly centralized Chinese nation-state. (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)