Jiang Qing, edited by Daniel A. Bell & Ruiping Fan: A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future

Excerpt

As Marxism and Maoism lost momentum, there has been a revival of interest in classical learning (guoxue) in general and in Confucianism in particular. New-Confucianism has emerged as one of the most influential schools of thought in contemporary China. A Confucian Constitutional Order, the latest book by Jiang Qing, edited by Daniel Bell and Ruiping Fan, is a detailed description about the practicality of a Confucian constitutional design in contemporary China. Unlike many other Chinese thinkers left or right, Jiang refuses to invoke Western ideas and conceptual schemes to interpret the Chinese experience. Jiang Qing calls for a restoration of Confucianism as the state ideology, distinct from both Western-style democracy and Soviet-style communism. The fundamental premise of his book is the argument that the official embrace of Confucianism in China could become an important part of the solution to China’s “moral and political predicament.” …