Classics and Reaction: Modern China Confronts the Ancient West

Concurrent with the growing interest in the Western classics in China is a growing interest in the philosophies of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. The goals of this paper will be, first, to discuss why Strauss and Schmitt are becoming influential in China, and, second, to analyze how the Western classics are being interpreted in China from this Straussian perspective.

China in the 21st century is gathering momentum in returning to its own classics and in promoting cultural exchanges with the West through the study of ancient Greece and Rome. While a few of the pioneering higher institutions are opening up to new branches of learning and introducing new courses in ‘western classics’, the promotion of Greek and Latin classics in China has not been without its share of trials and tribulations and still faces great challenges.

Apart from a fleeting show of interest in Virgil in 1930 in connection with the Two-Thousandth Anniversary of his birth, Virgil has never incurred any serious scholarly or popular attention in China until the end of the twentieth century. First attempted in 1930, the Chinese translation of the complete Aeneid did not appear until 1984. The complete Chinese translation of Eclogues was first published in 1957, while no attempt has been made to translate Georgics into Chinese yet.

Gan Yang, an outspoken and charismatic advocate of the study of Greco-Roman classics in contemporary Chinese higher education, also argues that the construction of a “Confucian-Socialist republic” provides the best hope for China, after more than a century of sociopolitical and cultural turmoil, to rebuild its civilization by synthesizing the major traditions that had left indelible marks on Chinese history.

There has been an increasing tendency toward an alliance, though still tentative and critical, with nationalism in the reception of Plato in contemporary China: besides Leo Strauss, Plato in China is also read alongside with Carl Schmitt, Confucius and Mao in an articulated accentuation of the “Chinese-ness” in the Confucian political tradition and in the historicity of the Maoist era as well as a strategical necessity to resist globalization in this modern age. Hence arises one question.