{"id":369,"date":"2008-03-01T10:21:46","date_gmt":"2008-03-01T15:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/2008\/03\/first-kill-all-the-legalists\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:38:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:38:50","slug":"first-kill-all-the-legalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2008\/03\/first-kill-all-the-legalists\/","title":{"rendered":"First, kill all the Legalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam at Useless Tree<\/a> draws our attention to a really interesting website called \u65b0\u6cd5\u5bb6<\/a>(in English the New Legalist)<\/a> I’m not quite sure who these people are, but the website is out of Beijing and quite impressive. Sam does not<\/a> much care<\/a> for them<\/a>, seeing them as “nationalists who are appropriating ancient Legalist texts, together with some Taoist volumes, to fashion a neo-traditionalist legitimation for a contemporary Chinese assertion of power globally” That sounds about right to me.<\/p>\n

Sam is much bothered by their attempts to tie together Legalism and Daoism, but to me it just sounds like Huang-Lao<\/a> stuff, as there were lots of links between Legalism and Daoism right from the start. I am also not that surprised to find people looking back to the Legalists themselves, as this was a big item in the early 20th century as people began going through the Chinese tradition looking for the genealogy of a modern nation in the Chinese past. The New Legalists may seem weird, but they have a long way to go before they can match up with Kang Youwei.<\/p>\n

Of course these people are looking into the past to find something different than the Chinese thinkers of a century ago. They are finding environmentalism and anti-globalization ideas, along with lots of occasions for nationalist chest-thumping. As Sam points out it is pretty bizarre to see Han Fei as a Green. Still they do seem to be drawing on a pretty wide range of classical thought. According to their mission statement<\/p>\n

The Chinese people have built up a unique and comprehensive thought system covering medicine, economics and politics. This system aims at a dynamic balance between different parts of the human body, between different groupings of people within a society, and between human society and nature. All its subsystems follow the principle of \u201cguiding changes towards balance\u201d (from The Yellow Emperor\u2019s Four Cannon<\/em> ) economically, arranging production and consumption in accord with the change of seasons and with nature\u2019s productive capabilities at the time; and politically, allocating limited resources among people according to their respective contributions to the society1<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This actually does sound bit like a lot of the Warring States-Han stuff you would find in Mark Edward Lewis’s work. For me the most interesting part is the twisted Marx quote at the end. A lot of the site has an anti-capitalist feel, or at least a feel that China is best off if it does not totally adapt American culture. Part it seems to be vaguely Maoist egalitarianism and concern for the workers, “end capital’s hegemony in the name of liberty” and part of it an even more vague utopianism that owes something to Mao and also a lot various bits of traditional Chinese thought.<\/p>\n

  1. \u4e2d\u56fd\u4eba\u8fd8\u5728\u8fd9\u4e00\u4f1f\u5927\u54f2\u5b66\u7684\u57fa\u7840\u4e0a\u5efa\u7acb\u8d77\u4e86\u72ec\u7279\u7684\u533b\u5b66\u3001\u653f\u6cbb\u3001\u7ecf\u6d4e\u4f53\u7cfb\u2014\u2014\u5979\u8ffd\u6c42\u4eba\u4f53\u5185\u90e8\u3001\u793e\u4f1a\u4e0e\u81ea\u7136\u3001\u793e\u4f1a\u5185\u90e8\u5404\u9636\u5c42\u4e4b\u95f4 \u7684\u52a8\u6001\u5e73\u8861\uff0c\u5979\u7684\u533b\u5b66\u3001\u653f\u6cbb\u3001\u7ecf\u6d4e\u90fd\u6309\u201c\u5e94\u5316\u4e4b\u9053\u3001\u5e73\u8861\u800c\u6b62\u201d\uff08\u300a\u9ec4\u5e1d\u56db\u7ecf\u00b7\u9053\u6cd5\u300b\uff09\u7684\u539f\u5219\u6784\u5efa\u2014\u2014\u7ecf\u6d4e\u4e0a\uff0c\u5979\u6309\u7167\u81ea\u7136\u65f6\u5e8f\u4e0e\u4ea7\u51fa\u80fd\u529b\u8fdb\u884c\u751f\u4ea7\u548c\u6d88\u8d39\uff1b\u653f \u6cbb\u4e0a\uff0c\u5979\u6309\u4e00\u4e2a\u4eba\u5bf9\u793e\u4f1a\u8d21\u732e\u7684\u5927\u5c0f\u5bf9\u6709\u9650\u7684\u8d44\u6e90\u8fdb\u884c\u914d\u7f6e  ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sam at Useless Tree draws our attention to a really interesting website called \u65b0\u6cd5\u5bb6(in English the New Legalist) I’m not quite sure who these people are, but the website is out of Beijing and quite impressive. Sam does not much care for them, seeing them as “nationalists who are appropriating ancient Legalist texts, together with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[165,134,149,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-intellectual","category-post-mao","category-web-sites-and-resources"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-5X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4861,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/4861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}