Although there is consensus that democracy has to be established in China, there are huge disagreements on what kind of democracy China should establish. Those disagreements can be divided into four major groups. New Leftists hold that the state should play the role of leadership and that the state capacity should be strengthened. They insist that the rule of the state should conform to the ideal of governance. However, the people are excluded from determining what the ideal of governance is. Also, the economic democracy they advocate would undermine the individual right to property, which would in turn impair people’s private freedom. Liberals hold that the unlimited state intervention in the market economy is the source of social injustices. They advocate the development of free market economy and the establishment of liberal democracy. At the same time, they also reflect on the problems of liberal democracy. There are two major problems. The first is that people are politically apathetic, which causes the crisis of legitimacy. The other is that liberal democracy is unlikely to result in morally good political decisions. So, it is argued that China’s democracy should meet the requirements of both legitimacy and justice. Confucian constitutionalism argues to restore Confucian values in the contemporary political reconstruction and thus advocates Confucian meritocracy with democracy only retained for instrumental reasons. It holds that only the politically competent and morally superior persons are eligible to participate in politics. However, there is no way to ensure that those selected through meritocracy are intellectually and morally superior. It is also hard to make Confucianism compatible with reasonable pluralism, causing the risk of undermining personal rights and freedom. The official opinion on democracy recognizes the necessity to develop democracy and stresses the Party’s leadership in its development which it holds should be implemented in accordance with China’s current political, economic and cultural conditions. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-303).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-220).

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

by Chui Wing Tak, Ernest. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-200). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

published_or_final_version / Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Hu, Peng. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-193). / Abstracts also in Chinese; appendix 2 in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 14, September, 2016).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-59).

This thesis explores cross-cultural encounters between China and three British left-wing writers – Harold Laski, W. H. Auden and Joseph Needham. The motivations underlying this study are the diversity and intensiveness of the British left’s engagements with China’s search for modernization in the twentieth century. Laski, Auden and Needham were all prominent British left-wing intellectuals, and each exerted a remarkable influence on the Chinese pursuit of modern democracy, literature, and science, the three important pillars of China’s modernization since the May Fourth period. Grouping them together, the thesis makes a contribution to the study of the international impacts of the British left in general and the study of Sino-British cultural exchanges in particular. The conventional view emphasizes Western influences on China in modern times as unilateral knowledge transplantation from the advanced West to the backward East, thus the important role of the Chinese intelligentsia as cultural agency is often marginalized. This thesis, by contrast, interprets the British left’s encounters with China as a process of interactive, dynamic, even dialectical transformation, from which both sides derived intellectual benefits. It not only demonstrates the initiative taken by the Chinese intellectuals in translating, interpreting, and applying Western knowledge to address their own particular problems, but also attempts to show the inspirations the British left-wing writers took from China in their own humanitarian struggle for a more liberal, equitable and peaceful world. The thesis is organized in chronological order with the earliest encounter discussed first. Chapter One examines Laski’s impact on Chinese liberals’ imagination and construction of an equitable and democratic China. It shows that the Chinese applications of Laski’s political theory to their local concerns were highly selective, and it was difficult for Chinese liberals to fully embrace Laski’s thought because of the inner conflict between the liberal and Marxist aspects of Laski. Chapter Two discusses Auden and Isherwood’s co-authored book Journey to a War (1939) in the critical tradition of travel writing. It argues that their ironic self-consciousness of the travel book genre itself makes the book unique in Western representations of China, but exposes them to the critical charge of immature frivolity. It also shows that Auden worked towards a symbolic solution for the conflicting demands of the public and private worlds by interpreting the China war into a global human history in his sonnets. Chapter Three focuses on the reception of Auden’s poetry in China. Exposing the limitations of the prevailing formalist-aesthetic approach, it unearths Zhu Weiji’s Marxist interpretation of Auden and proposes an ideological criticism to re-examine Auden’s influences on Chinese modernist poets. Chapter Four explores Needham’s conversion to Chinese culture and his influences on China’s understanding of its own science. By tracing various Chinese responses to the Needham Question, it argues that although Needham’s research boosted the confidence of Chinese in their scientific tradition, the Chinese hunger for modern science is closely associated with nationalism, which is contradictory to the socialist universalism that behind Needham’s intellectual project. / published_or_final_version / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-59). Also available in print.