The Traditional World Vision and Its Modern Fate

Focusing on tensions and links between national formation and international outlooks, this talk shows how classical world visions persist as China’s modernizers and revolutionaries adopted and revised the Western nation-state and cosmopolitanism. The concepts of tianxia (all under heaven) and datong (great harmony) have been updated into outlooks of global harmony that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as strategies of overcoming interstate conflict, national divides, and social fragmentation. The talk will delve into two debates: the embrace of the West vs. aspirations for a common world, and the difference between liberal cosmopolitanism and socialist internationalism.
Event date: 16/9/2022
Speaker: Prof. Ban Wang
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese Culture