Table Of ContentChina Turning Inward
HARVARD EAST ASIAN MONOGRAPHS
132
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CHINA TURNING IN WARD
In tellectual-Poli tical Changes
in the
Early TweIfth Century
JAMES 7: C. LIU
Published by COUNCIL ON EAST ASIAN STUDIES, HARVARD
UNIVERSIW and distribated by HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS,
Cambridge (Massachusett$ and London 1988
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O Copyright 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Printed in the United States of America
Chapter Seven is a revised version of the author's article, "How Did a Neo-Confucian
School Become the Orthodoxy?" and is reprinted with permission from Philosophy
East and West Vol. 23, no. 4 (1973).
The Council on East Asian Studies at Harvard University publishes a monograph
series and, through the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the
Edwin 0. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, administers research projects de-
signed to further scholarly understanding of China, Japan, Vietman, Inner Asia, and
adjacent areas.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicatioDn ata
Liu, James T. C., 1919-
China turning inward : intellectual-political changes in the early
twelfth century / James T. C. Liu.
p. cm. - (Harvard East Asian monographs : 132)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-674-11725-5 :
1. China-History-Sung dynasty. 960-1279. 2. China-Intellectual
life-960-1644. 3. Neo-Confucianism. I. Title. 11. Series.
DS751.L56 1988
951'.02-dc19 88-3579
CIP
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Contents
vii
1
PART I;' FROM THE NORTHERTNO THE
SOUTHERN SUNG
A Focus ON CONTRASTS
The Clues and the Approach 11
The Data and the Hypothesis 16
Literature 22
Studies of the Classics 27
Historical Writings 31
Confucian Ideology and Institutions 37
Varieties of NeoTraditional Thought 43
PART II;' THET WELFTCHE NTURY
THEM ORALISTIC CONSERVATIVES
The Shock of Shame 55
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vi Contents
The Reform Avenue Closed 63
The Conservative Claim to Orthodoxy 68
The Shifting Councilors (1127-1134) 87
The Team of Councilors (1135-1136 and after) 91
The LongReigning Sole Surrogate (1139-1155) 98
A Former Councilor Serving Elsewhere (1161-1162) 101
Who Qualified as a Model? 106
Rise to Deputy Military Commissioner 107
The Team of Councilors and State Policy ul
The Political Style of Moralistic Conservatives 115
From Peak to Pit 122
A Scheme of Analysis 132
The Transcendental Moralists' Claim of Orthodoxy 13s
A Concern for the Propagation of Ideas and Moral
Fellowship 137
An Alienating Mode of Life 140
The Miscalculated Ban of the "False Learning" 143
From Crisis to State Ideology 146
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A fascinating turn occurred in China's long history during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. With much dynamism, it seems that the on-going
cultural transformation might have pushed on further toward more out-
reaching changes. Yet the opposite took place. The cultural pattern
settled into a stable, internally reinforcing and therefore rigid one. In
fact, this pattern permeated the whole country and persisted till the be-
ginning of the twentieth century. What happened? The problem con-
cerns not only Chinese history but represents an important case in
world history.
Some textbooks describe this period, Sung China, as "early modern."
Impressive were the rise of enormous cities, the flourishing of urbanism,
the technological progress in handicraft industries, the expansion of
trade, and the amazing use of paper currency which was hardly conceiv-
able in other cultures. These and other economic developments were
accompanied by a mature civil service system, civilian supremacy in the
government, respect for law, the spread of education, manifold achieve-
ments in arts and literature, and last, but by no means least, the Neo-
Confucian reconstruction of the ancient heritage. Sung China thus
looks quite similar in development to modern Europe, except that it
occurred much earlier.
The present research holds a different view. It rests on the hypothesis
that different cultures do not conform to a universal model, because they
do not evolve along a single track through the same sequence of definite
stages. On the contrary, the center of gravity often varies in one culture
as opposed to another.
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Historians in Asia as well as the West who see Sung China as an "early
modern" ~eriodha ve understandably used European history as a yard-
stick in the interest of comparative history or global history.
Likewise, they put much emphasis on economic factors. But such
factors, no matter how important, did not necessarily constitute the ten-
ter of gravity in the pre-modern Chinese culture. In the case of Sung
China, it seems, politics in close relation to intellectual trends, occupied
the central stage. They were not the full or direct reflections of economic
interests.
One may describe Sung China as having an absolutist head, a bureau-
cratic body, and many plebeian hands and feet. By and large, the bureau-
cratic ruling class imposed regulations on and took advantage of the
economic progress. It would not allow merchants or merchant interests
to have a strong voice in determining policies. While some descendants
of merchants through the vertical social mobility of the examination
system did join the ruling class, they were by then assimilated into the
scholar-official subculture, thereby ceasing to represent their family
economic background.
Sung China cannot be described as "early modern," for there was no
late modern afterwards, not even with the coming of the modern West.
In the Chinese path of evolution, the Sung pattern was a most developed
and advanced bureaucratic society. Only some of its achievements super-
ficially resemble what is known later as modern in the European sense
of the term.
If this is so, how did the Sung ruling class, developing and advancing
in many ways, stop short of becoming outreaching? How did it on the
contrary tend to turn inward? This is the focal question the present book
seeks to explore.
To many, the author has been much indebted: to my wife, Dr. Hui-
chen Wang Liu, for her sustaining forbearance and forgiveness; to the
late Professor William Hung (Hung Yeh) of Yenching University in
China and HarvardYenching Institute in this country, for his various
demonstrations of scholarship; to the late Professor Leland D. Baldwin
and Professor George B. Fowler at the University of Pittsburgh, my alma
mater, for their stress on balanced views; to Professor Emeritus Lien-
sheng Yang of Harvard University, for his encyclopedic knowledge and
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generous advice during my visits to Cambridge through the years; to the
late Professor Anatole Mazour and also Professor Albert E. Dien, for
encouraging me in my years at Stanford; to Professor Tu Wei-ming, for
constantly stimulating me during our joint efforts of course work and
book editing when he was at Princeton before going on to the Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley and then back to Harvard; and to Professor
Willard J. Peterson of Princeton, who joined me in a seminar and kindly
remains interested in my research.
While errors in this volume are exclusively my own, I have also
benefited from numerous exchanges with a number of scholars overseas:
Professor Sung Shee and Professor Wang Teh-yi among others in Taipei;
Professors Teng Kuang-ming (Deng Guangming), Wang Tseng-yii
(Zengyu), and Ch'en Chih-ch'ao (Zhichao) in Beijing, to mention but a
few; the late Professor Aoyama Sadao and particularly professor Shiba
Yoshinobu in Tokyo; and last, but by no means the least, Professors
Miyazaki Ichisada, Saeki Tomi, Chukusa Masaaki, Umehara Kaoru, and
Kinugawa Tsuyoshi in Kyoto.
Finally, thanks are due to Dr. Katherine Keenum of the Council on
East Asian Studies Publications, Harvard University, a most helpful and
patient editor who put this manuscript in good shape. Dr. James Geiss,
my colleague in the Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton Uni-
versity, has also given me numerous suggestions on writing.
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