The Limits of Change Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China

In these essays we see the broad range of responses that conservatism in the Republican period took—from a new nativist historical consciousness, to quasi-Fascist theories of political mobilization, to efforts at a revival of Confucianism as a moral faith. Individual writers analyze the early Republican National Essence movement, the new Confucian humanism of the 1920s and afterwards, political ideology under Republican military dictatorships, and the ideas of modern literary conservatives. Two major interpretive essays place Chinese trends in the context of worldwide conservative responses to industrialization, political modernism, and the challenge of secularism. Through its far-reaching, detailed, and sympathetic assessment of the role of conservative ideology in China’s modern intellectual experience, Limits of Change makes a distinguished contribution to Chinese studies.