The Limits of Change : : Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China / / ed. by Charlotte Furth.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• MitwirkendeR: Alitto, Guy,; Bernal, Martin,; Chang, Hao,; Dirlik, Arif,; Eastman, Lloyd E.,; Furth, Charlotte,; Pollard, David E.,; Schneider, Laurence A.,; Schwartz, Benjamin I.,; Sheng, Lin Yu,; Wei-Ming, Tu,; Young, Ernest P.,
• HerausgeberIn: Furth, Charlotte,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©1976
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard East Asian Series ; 84
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (426 p.)

The Limits of Change disputes the impression that the conservative ideas and styles of China's Republican period were neither strong nor persuasive enough to counter the ideas or the revolution of Mao. As the contributors to the book point out, these conservative movements reflected a modern outlook and shared a framework of common concepts with the radical movements they opposed. In these essays we see the broad range of responses that conservatism in the Republican period took--from a new nativist historical consciousness, to quasi-Fascist theories of political mobilization, to efforts at a revival of Confucianism as a moral faith. Individual writers analyze the early Republican National Essence movement, the new Confucian humanism of the 1920s and afterwards, political ideology under Republican military dictatorships, and the ideas of modern literary conservatives. Two major interpretive essays place Chinese trends in the context of worldwide conservative responses to industrialization, political modernism, and the challenge of secularism. Through its far-reaching, detailed, and sympathetic assessment of the role of conservative ideology in China's modern intellectual experience, Limits of Change makes a distinguished contribution to Chinese studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- I. Introductory Perspectives: The Conservative Idea and Chinese Realities -- Notes on Conservatism in General and in China in Particular -- Culture and Politics in Modern Chinese Conservatism -- II National Essence -- National Essence and the New Intelligentsia -- Liu Shih-p'ei and National Essence -- The Sage as Rebel; The Inner World of Chang Ping-lin -- The Suicide of Liang Chi: An Ambiguous Case of Moral Conservatism -- III. Political Modernization Against Revolutionary Politics -- The Hung-hsien Emperor as a Modernizing Conservative -- The Kuomintang in the 1930s -- IV. The New Confucianism of the Post May Fourth Era -- The Conservative as Sage: Liang Shu-ming -- Hsiung Shih-li's Quest for Authentic Existence -- New Confucianism and the Intellectual Crisis of Contemporary China -- V. Modern Historicism and the Limits of Change -- T'ao Hsi-sheng: The Social Limits of Ghange -- Chou Tso-jen: A Scholar Who Withdrew -- Contributors -- Notes -- Glossary -- Index -- HARVARD EAST ASIAN SERIES