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Argument Essay: The Mandate Of Heaven In China

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Far from turbulent European continent, Chinese agrarian society was uninterrupted until westerners opened China’s gate by military force. The pride of Chinese people for their five thousand years’ glorious civilization collapsed along with many unequal treaties signed between China and other countries. After the fall of Qing dynasty, although there were many struggles such as foreign invasions, especially Japanese brutal invasion, civil war between Nationalist (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), calamitous Great Leap Forward and subsequent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, China successfully transformed from a weak agrarian country humiliated by western countries and Japan for one hundred and fifty years to a rising global power emerging …show more content…

In Chinese traditional thinking, there are various way to rule a country, but the mandate of heaven only comes from ruler’s good morality. Xu Jin argues that Confucians like Mencius defines the mandate of heaven as people consciously submitting to the ruler because of not his coercive power but his superb morality. (Xu, 166-167) Hence, rulers’ morality is the core of mandate of heaven and embodies into Chinese traditional thinking. Without leaders’ and exemplars’ morality, ordinary people may not be able to perceive what is the right thing to do and behave immorally pursuing merely materialistic power and money. In other words, immoral behaviors are restrained and minimized by righteous social norms set up by sage rulers. Meanwhile, Ci Jiwei also contends in his book Moral China in the Age of Reform that there is a leader-centered morality tradition in Chinese culture that is, “leader-centered in the sense that when people comply with moral norms it is the ego’s relation to the leader to the leader that does the work.” (Ci, 111) It reveals that for Chinese, once they accept one as their ruler, either imperial emperor in ancient China or contemporary communist party by acknowledging their legitimacy, they will comply with the moral codes the leader they trust sets up for them. “Guidance and instruction” to the masses are internalized by the leader as his own obligation and people voluntarily devote their power to their trusted leader, since “individual powerlessness is turned into a form of collective power in which all individuals partake and which gives each powerless individual a feeling of power as part of a whole. (Ci, 113) It is essential for definition of justice in China because personal virtue of the leader is a deciding factor for the leader in China to possess

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In the discussion on the methods of governing and administration of a state, one cannot leave out the models proposed by Confucius as well as Mencius. Both advocated that the ruler or the government has to rule by virtue and strengthen moral education among its people. Political leaders have to set moral examples for the people to follow, and to be benevolent towards their subordinates and citizens. By doing so, that would bring about social stability and population growth within the state, also creating conditions that would lead to an improvement in the welfare of the people. By fulfilling his duties to the people, a just and benevolent ruler would then be justified to rule by the Mandate of Heaven.

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