Debating the Rule of Law and Virtue Politics in China's Twentieth Century

The relations between “rule of law (fazhi)” and “virtue politics (dezhi)” have been repeatedly debated in China over the last century. After a brief introduction to pre-twentieth-century Chinese discussions of these themes, the essay focuses on two such debates, from the mid-1910s and from the late1950s and early 1960s. Within these contexts, the essay pays special attention to the arguments of Zhang Shizhao (1885-1973) and Mou Zongsan (1909-95), respectively. The latter parts of the essay survey more recent Chinese discussions of the inter-relations between law and virtue, and then suggest various ways in which the arguments of Zhang and Mou might contribute to current dialogue, both within and without China, on issues like the limits on moral authority and on the role of virtue in politics, the relations between public and private, and the need for political and legal value to be rooted in morality