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Home > JOURNAL > Vol. 11 (2022) > Number 2

 

Abstract

This article attempts to explore what a “philosophical” China is like as well as its political economic implications in historical perspective since the age of the ancient sage emperors. The periodic floods of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River and the frequent nomadic incursions had created the “collectivism” character of the Chinese civilisation. To effectively fight floods, control rivers, and resist nomadic incursion, the political system of “collectivist” China gradually morphed from the enfeoffment system of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the centralised power system or the system of prefectures and counties during the Qin and Hàn Dynasties. To maintain the unified ideology of the country, Emperor Wudi of the Western Han Dynasty adopted Confucianism and banned all other schools of thought. Under the imperial examination system, and since the Sui, Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties, China carried out the recruitment of imperial officials from the elites who studied Confucianism and had passed the examinations. Therefore, the emperors governed the country together with the elites collectively. This might be called a “Confucian open society.” After the middle of the seventeenth century, China fell behind in the tide of industrialisation, and hence was continually defeated by the West and Japan. After completing its political, economic, and social reconstruction in the aftermath of these defeats, the “collectivist” Chinese people finally ushered in the birth of the PRC in 1949. Since its foundation, the PRC has successfully realized industrialisation and the creation of its “open society” while also brought revolutionary changes.

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