Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

civil war, and the victory of the Communist Party. Other perspectives are introduced by contemporary new Neo-Confucian philosophers. Cheng Chung-ying, in his thesis on the compatibility of Confucianism with democracy, stresses the feasibility of “free individuals whose freedoms [are seen as] the basis for building an orderly and harmonious society and community.”¹⁵

In conclusion, the impact of the West obstaculated and did not facilitate the development of individualistic elements of traditional Chinese thought. This may be understood by taking into consideration the influence of specific historical factors and circumstances: China’s semi-colonization by the foreign powers, the demise of the monarchical system and the notion of universal kingship, the failure of the Republican experiment, the identification of Enlightenment thought with Western Powers, the exigencies of nationalism and the imperatives of state-building, and the absence of clericalism in China.¹⁶

If we leave out the theoretical field for a moment to examine the actual life and praxis in the large urban complexes, we cannot but notice that today’s Chinese society displays a high degree of individualization. This phenomenon can probably be traced back to the metropolitan areas in the late Qing and Republican period, but the consistency and periodisation of the process of individualization is the object of debate among scholars. A recent essay by Yan Yunxiang has, for instance, discussed the paradoxical hypothesis that this process was held during the Maoist era (1949–1976).¹⁷ This individualization would have developed before the profound social changes which took place in the three decades of post-Mao reform (1979–2009) and were engendered by the transition from rural de-collectivisation (lit. “untying,” songbang 鬆綁) to privatization (“individual household,” getihu 個體戶). Therefore, this process would have started long before recent reforms. Relatedly, according to Yan, “modernization” in China has been and still is promoted by the state, and even the active promotion of “individualistic” values and behaviors belong to this process which