The Poland of Asia: Korea and the March 1st Movement
Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the March 1st Movement, which sparked the Korean resistance to Japanese colonial rule (1910-45) and now is celebrated in South…
China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination
China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination. Ji-Young Lee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. In spite of its status as the sole great…
Symbolic Forms, Political Ideas and the Encounter of Civilizations
The following reflections are a hermeneutical exercise in intercivilizational interpretation. They are undertaken in order to clarify some important problems that arise in the course of comparative…
Jaded Mandarin? Mo Yan’s Search for Order in a People’s Republic
A cursory glance at the news coming out of China is sufficient to let us know all is not well with the People’s Republic. Workers protest against…
Shang Yang’s Proposal for Fundamental Reform
This article presents an analysis of Sima Qian’s account of Shang Yang’s proposal for fundamental reform, a passage from the Records of the Grand Historian. Shang Yang…
The Political Thought of Asia: A Contextual Pedagogical Essay”
The purpose of this course (and convention paper) is to call attention to the fact that political theory is rich in Asia, despite its heavy religious content…
Eric Voegelin’s Reception in China
Eric Voegelin wrote about China, once taught courses related to China, and even could read Chinese text. Nevertheless, he never traveled to China. During his life time,…
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Political, Kai Marchal and Carl K.Y. Shaw, eds. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2017. Carl Schmitt and…
Varieties of Chinese Nationalisms and Their Implications on Religions
Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies. Cheng-tian Kuo, ed. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. A Varieties of Chinese Nationalisms and Their Implications on Religions This volume is…
How to Recover China’s Censored Reality
Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China. Li Ma and Jin Li. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock Publishers),…
Modernity, Friendship, and the Purpose of Liberal Education
Thank-you Professor Cheng, the Lingnan University Office of Global Education, and the sponsors of this conference for inviting me to join you at this crucially important conference…
Reading Augustine’s Confessions in Dalian Labor Camp with Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo was the Chinese dissident writer and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who passed away this past June. He died of liver cancer while serving out…
The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao
The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. Ian Johnson. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017. “For I saw it was impossible to do anything…
The Disintegration of Traditional Civilizations
In the summer issue of 1993 the journal Foreign Affairs published an article by Samuel Huntington under the title “The Clash of Civilizations?” whose themes he enlarged…
Learning Chinese
There are lots of travel books, and most of them have the same structure: Why I traveled to Upper Revolting; What happened to me in Upper Revolting;…
