This study identifies and compares utopian ideas and practices of four most influential Chinese political leaders in modern Chinese history. They are Hong Xiuquan (1813-1864), the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Kang Youwei (1858-1927), the leader of the Hundred Days Reform, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the leader of the Nationalist revolution, and Mao Zedong (1893-1976), the leader of Communist revolution. One notable feature of these Chinese political leaders is their strong orientation of this worldliness. According to Lewis Mumford, there are two kinds of utopianism: "utopia of reconstruction" which seeks to change the existing world to a better one, and "utopia of escape" which leaves the existing world as it is and seeks an external paradise.^[2] The latter is often seen in religious prophet, such as Buddhist "nirvana," or Daoist “state of nature.” The former is often reflected by many western political thinkers, such as Plato,^[3] B. F. Skinner, ^[4] and F. Bacon. ^[5] The four Chinese leaders all criticize the existing social and political norms, and their radical programs are all aimed at restructuring the society in its entirety. To be sure, there are many differences between Hong, Kang, Sun, and Mao. Their differences, however, lie not in their program designs, but in their choice of means for the reconstruction. For Kang, this means a gradual top-down reform, and for Sun and Mao, this means a bottom-up revolution. Therefore, the utopian elements in the political thoughts of these Chinese leaders can be best characterized as "utopias of reconstruction."

The goals of this study are twofold. First, I want to uncover the utopian elements of the four Chinese political leaders. Secondly, I will illustrate the intellectual roots of their utopian thinking, and try to construct an analytic framework in order to gain a better understand of the nature of the modern Chinese utopianism. To accomplish these goals, I will first exam Hong Xiuquan's Christian utopian ideas and his radical utopian programs carried out during the Taiping Tianguo period. Then, Kang Youwei's Confucian-Buddhist utopia and his one-world philosophy will be analyzed. Next, the utopian socialist elements of Sun Yat-sen's “Three Principles of the People” will be studied. Finally, Mao Zedong's effort to construct the communist utopia through people’s communes and the Cultural Revolution will be scrutinized.

HONG XIUQUAN: THE CHRISTIAN VERSION

The creation of a utopian world tends to be associated with the strong dissatisfaction with the prevailing social and economic order. This is particularly true of Chinese utopian thinkers who lived in an era of political upheavals and economic crises. The late 19^th century and the early 20^th century is one of such critical periods in Chinese history. Many intellectuals at the time were deeply disturbed by the nation’s degeneration into a “sick man of Asia.” They dreamed of creating a better society with economic equality and social justice. Among them, Hong Xiuquan stood out as the first Chinese leader who embraced the idea of utopianism. He attempted to transform China through his Taiping rebellion, and established a Christian utopia called Taiping Tianguo ("The Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace"). Although Hong's Taiping concept derived directly from the Chinese tradition, the blueprint for a Taiping society was strongly inspired and influenced by Christianity. ^[6]

Hong was born in 1813 to a poor peasant family in Southern China. He studied very hard in order to become a civil servant in the imperial bureaucracy, yet he failed repeatedly the increasingly competitive imperial civil service exams. While in Canton for an exam in 1836, Hong heard a Christian missionary preach for the first time and took some Christian pamphlets with him. Later he studied Christianity for two months with an American missionary, the Reverend Issachar J. Roberts. Based on his rudimentary knowledge of this Western religion, he organized "the God Worshipers' Society" and attracted a large number of followers, predominantly disaffected peasants in Southern China. Hong claimed that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, and was commissioned to stamp out all demon worships, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, and to create a heavenly kingdom in this world. In 1851, Hong and his followers launched a rebellion against the Qing dynasty. They pronounced the establishment of "the Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace," which implied the salvation of the world in a Christian sense.^[7] The Taiping army soon conquered Qing's southern capital city Nanking in 1853. The city now became the "Heavenly Capital" of "the Heavenly Kingdom." Hong also became the "Heavenly King."

Unlike most of Chinese dynasties, Hong's state was theocratic in nature. Christian influences could be found in many aspects of the new state. First, Christianity was designated as the official religion, and Christian moral codes were used to regulate followers’ conducts. The Book of Heavenly Commandments (Tian Dao Shu), a document officially promulgated in 1852, contained the highest behavior codes. “The Ten Heavenly Commandments” stipulated in the book was a modified version of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testaments of the Bible.^[8] It prohibited worship of Chinese Gods. One official text stated:

Whether to be noble or mean is for you to choose.

To be a real man you must make an effort to improve yourself.

Follow the teaching of the Ten Commandments

You will enjoy the blessing of Paradise.[9]

Secondly, Christian principle of universal brotherhood and sisterhood was used to construct an egalitarian society. For instance, Taiping leaders adopted Christian ideas of universal brotherhood and advocated the equality of men and women. In practice, male and female quarters were created, and no mixing of male and female groups would be allowed. Foot binding polygamy, adultery, and prostitution were strictly prohibited. This rigid religious observance of Christian morality made Taiping closer to the Western Protestant fundamentalism. The following exception from The Principles of the Heavenly Nature (Tianjing Daolii Shu) highlights many of the Taiping’s egalitarian ideas:

Now, basking in the profound mercy of Heaven, we are of one family. Brothers and sisters are all of the same parentage; as all are born of one Spiritual Father, why should there be distinction of ‘you and I,’ or “others and ourselves?’ When there is clothing, let all wear it; when there is food, let all eat of it. When someone is ill, others should ask a doctor to treat him, and take care of his medicine… Safety for the old, sympathy for the young, and compassion for the orphaned, all merged from the Eastern King’s understanding of our Heavenly Father’s love for the living…[10]

Finally, Taiping government determined to create Christian communities. The Land System of the Heavenly Kingdom (Tianchao Tianmu Zhidu), promulgated in 1853, detailed a blueprint for the total reorganization of the society. The most radical feature of the Taiping system was the abolishment of private properties. According to the plan, "nobody should keep private property" and " all things should be presented to the supreme rulers." All lands belonged to the state, but would be distributed for use equally among the people. The plan also asked for an equal distribution of social wealth. The whole country was to be organized into many military districts. The basic social unit within each district was the Twenty-five Families Groups. Each group would select a group officer. A state treasury and a church would be established for each group. Everyone would be given an equal amount in terms of both quality and quantity. All harvests, after allocating for a family’s own use, would be collected and put into the state treasury. The document also endorsed the concept of economic planning. "Each family of the country [was] required to raise five hens and two hogs, in keeping with the proper breeding seasons."^[11] During off-seasons for military services and farming, military men must performing other tasks such as pottery-making, metal-working, carpentry, masonry, etc. All women were required to grow silkworms, to do weavings, and to make clothes.

However, Much of the blueprint was either never fully implemented or only carried out in Nanking and its surrounding areas. The Qing army soon put down the Taiping movement. Despite the failure, Hong’s utopian ideas and experiments are still rather unique in Chinese history. This is the first time Christianity is used to support a revolutionary cause in China. Albeit he never realized his dream of creating an everlasting Christian paradise, Hong certainly contributed to the demise of the Qing dynasty.

Hong’s Christian utopia is a hybrid version, which many Westerners to this day still refuse to acknowledge its religious legitimacy. His claim to be a younger brother of Jesus Christ certainly makes him a heresiarch to many Christian believers in the world. Hong’s real intention was probably to use the new faith as a powerful means to launch his peasant revolution. In order to make it appeal to Chinese intellectuals as well as peasants, the religion had to be recreated. Most of Hong’s preaching came from the Old Testament. Many Chinese traditional values and beliefs, including the concept of Taiping were combined with the alien Christian gospels.

KANG YOUWEI: THE CONFUCIAN-BUDDHIST VERSION

Kang Youwei was also a brilliant Confucian scholar in the late Qing dynasty. He was lucky enough to pass each of the imperial exams, and became a Ju Ren, the highest academic honor a scholar could get at the time. Kang, however, did not accept Christianity, even though he might have had a better understanding of the religion than Hong. He chose to commit himself to the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western science and technology. His greatest contributions to Chinese utopian thinking include the incorporation Confucianism and Buddhism, and the formulation his one-world philosophy. He re-interpreted Confucianism in an effort to make it compatible with his reform needs. He applied Buddhist worldviews to his analysis of the worldly problems laid before him, and designed a perfect Confucius-Buddhist utopia that would be free from all sufferings.

Kang's utopian ideas were first formulated in 1888 when he was only twenty-seven years old. In the same year, he began to petition the Emperor Guangxu for moderate reforms. In 1898, he finally had his chance. But the intervention by the Empress Dowager ended the Hundred Days Reform abruptly, and Kang was forced to flee China. While in exile, he completed his book Datong Shu in1902, five years after the failed reform. This fascinating book swept away his commonly perceived image as a conservative political thinker. In the book, he called for the abolishment of private properties, social classes, nation-states, families, and all racial distinctions. Those ideas were indeed so radical, that the complete version of this book was not published until 1935, eight years after his death and twenty-three years after its completion.

The principal theme of this book is the dichotomy of suffering (Ku) and happiness (le), apparently borrowed from the Buddhist suffering-craving interpretation derived from the Four Noble Truths.

Thus we see that the whole world is but a world of grief and misery, all the people of the whole world are but grieving and miserable people, and all the living beings of the whole world are but murdered beings. The azure Heaven and the round Earth are nothing but a great slaughter-yard, a great prison.[12]

According to Kang, there were six kinds of suffering of all human beings. They included sufferings from living, natural calamities, conditions of life, governments, and human feelings being objects of honor and esteem.^[13] All of these sufferings, Kang believed, originated from nine distinctions: distinctions between states, classes, races, sexes, families, occupations, sphere of chaos, species and sphere of suffering. The states system divided the world into territories and tribes, which caused wars. The social classes divided people into rich and poor, honored and humble, which caused inequalities. The existence of different races further divided people by their skin colors. The distinctions between males and females produced gender inequality. The family structure confined human love and prevents universal love. The occupational distinctions made people "consider the products of farmers, artisans, and merchants as their own." The sphere of chaos " [had] systems that are unfair, unreasonable, non-uniform and unjust." The distinctions between species divided species into human beings and animals. The spheres of suffering gave rise to the cycle of suffering. ^[14]

Kang was a strongly believer of the Hua-yen philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. “Central to the Hua-yen world view, “ according to Hao Chang, “is a radical vision of undifferentiated oneness that precludes any dualistic mode of thinking, including the dualism of this world versus the other world.”[15] Therefore, the solution to all the sufferings, in Kang’s view, was not to abandon this world; instead, human being must build a one-world, a world that is a universal community.[16] This world community would be based on the foundation of Confucian “universal love” and the “Buddha’s Doctrine of Equality.”[17] Kang held that this moral-spiritual world of perfection was attainable in this world. Kang’s solution to attain this world was to eliminate all states, and establish a world government. In this new world, there would be no kings, emperors, rulers, official titles or ranks; there would be no needs for military since humanity would prevail. There would be no taxation, conscription, crime, and punishment. All peoples would be truly equal because there would be no class differences, no rich and poor, and no slaves. What about families? Kang's utopia would allow men and women to sign a one-year (renewable) marriage contract. There would be no permanent families, no private properties. All husband-wife or parents-child bonds would disappear. Welfare was to be provided from “cradle to grave.” Five public institutions, namely, Taijiao Yuan (Prenatal Care Institute), Yuying Yuan (Kindergarten), Mengyang Yuan (Schools), Yangbin Yuan (Hospitals) and Yanglao Yuan (Elderly Home), would take care of the human needs in their life cycles. Mature adults would be required to work in those institutes as a part of mandatory services. In addition, adults would be assigned jobs by the government. They would live in public housing, eat in public dinning halls. Those proposals seem to foreshadow the Great Leap Forward engineered by Communist leader Mao Zedong in the 1950s. No wonder Liang Qichao, Kang's students, characterized his teacher's program as essentially socialist.^[18]

Kang provides the most radical criticism for all existing social, political and economic institutions. His solution is also earthshaking. However, Kang never called for the realization of Datong immediately. Throughout his life, Kang had never become a radical revolutionary; instead, he was only a radical dreamer.

SUN YAT-SEN: THE LIBERAL-SOCIALIST VERSION

Unlike Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen received his education in modern western medicine. His concern was centered primarily on how to modernize China with Western science and technology, and how to bring democracy into Chinese society. This practical concern, however, did not stop him from incorporating some of the traditional Chinese idealism, messianism and utopianism into his liberal philosophy of the Three Principles of the People, which include nationalism, democracy and people’s livelihood.

While his immediate goals were to restore China’s sovereignty, to establish a liberal republic, and to strengthen China with Western science and technology, Sun did consider this to be merely a first step towards his cosmopolitan goals, namely to unify the world and to build a Datong world. For Sun, Datong means "the Great Commonwealth,” rather than the "Great Unity." Datong, according to Chiang Kai-shek's interpretation, " is the highest ideal which Dr. Sun Yat-sen has aimed at throughout his revolutionary career."^[19] In his work, he mentioned the “divine obligation” of China to create peaceful word. If we want China to rise to power, we must not only restore our national standing, but we must also assume a great responsibility towards the world… We must aid weaker and smaller peoples and oppose the great powers of the world.[20]

Sun's ideal of great commonwealth includes the following elements: a universal government based on the principles of democracy and popular sovereignty; a socialist economic system without competition and wage labor; a well-established social security system to take care of the old, sick and young; and social equality for men and women. There shall be no distinction in social classes, genders, occupations and religions. Economy will be carefully planned to meet everyone’s needs. Everyone will get what he or she needs and work according to what he or she is capable of. Sun states: "The meaning of the Three Principles of the Peoples simply means ownership by the people, government by the people, and sharing of social wealth by the people. It also means the¼ the Great Commonwealth that Confucius had hoped for."^[21] He mentioned specifically that Minsheng Zhuyi (People's Livelihood) was a synonym of socialism, communism and Datongism.^[22]

Sun interprets the Chinese tradition of "governing the states and pacifying the world” as a Chinese moral obligation to unify the world with Chinese moral foundation. He considers the restoration of the Chinese nation to be a prerequisite for embracing universalism, and to the realization of the Datong world.

If we want to be able to reach this ideal [“governing the state and pacifying the world”—omitted by the translation] in the future, we must now revive our national spirit, recover our national standing, unifying the world upon the foundation of our ancient morality and love of peace, and bring about a universal rule [datong—original words] of equality and fraternity. ^[23]

As one scholar put it, " in his turn Sun Yat-sen was haunted by the yearning of an ultimate universal peace founded upon a sense of brotherhood that would unify the peoples of the entire world. He wanted to procure the welfare of his people as of other peoples; he wanted to give peace within and without¼"^[24]

In general, the utopian elements of Sun’s idea are limited into two areas. First, he holds a strong feeling of Chinese nationalism and messianism, which in turn gives rise to his belief that Chinese can create a unified world based upon Chinese traditional morality, and that Chinese have the obligation to promote the formation of the new world commonwealth. Secondly, he believes that a socialist and communist society is compatible with the capitalist one, and the difference between the two lies only in the methods used to achieve the shared goals. [25] Sun devoted his whole life to his liberal revolution. He was a memorized as real revolutionary pioneer. His idealist and utopian goal of unifying the world with Chinese values has remained to be a distance dream for his successors.

MAO ZEDONG: THE COMMUNIST VERSION

Communism has been proven to be the most influential utopianism of the 20^th century. Although its founders Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels tried carefully to distinguish themselves from utopianism of all kinds,^[26] their disciples in the former Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and many other places built various utopian communities in their countries respectively. While Marx and Engels anticipated that the proletarian revolution would take place in an advance capitalist country such as the United States or Great Britain, all of the self-proclaimed communist revolutions in the 20^th century took place in economically backward countries like Russia and China. These “coercive manipulations” did what Marx would have considered to be impossible: to make a post-capitalist social revolution in a pre-capitalist agrarian society. In doing so, they violated the basic assumption of Marxism: the law of history must not be altered by human will, and human beings must follow the law of history.^[27]

Opening the pages of the history book of the Communist revolution, we see an idealist Mao Zedong and his radical comrades initiating several utopian projects to construct a utopian paradise in China. Peter T. Manicas’s article in this volume has a detailed discussion on Mao and his utopian ideas. I will focus primarily on some of the utopian projects Mao initiated during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

The most important utopian project Mao had supported was probably the experiment with the people's commune. The people’s commune was a rural organization that was first invented by rural Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres in 1957. Mao regarded the commune as a new form of political and economic organizations. Seeing the potential for using the new community to reconstruct a peasantry-based communist society, Mao pushed it with fanatic zeal. The CCP formally launched the communization movement in rural areas in August 1958. In just four months, people's communes spread across the entire country. More than twenty-six thousands communes were established, which included one hundred twenty million farm households. ^[28] More than three million public dinning halls opened for business, and three million collective nurseries were set up. The communes also established seventy thousand small-scale industrial enterprises^[29]. Mao wanted to develop an even bigger system of “federation of communes” and urban communes, but that effort was soon halted by the CCP Central Committee. The organization of the people’s commune not only achieved the goal of collectivization of farmland; it was also used to replace the existing local governments. Mao pointed out,

The essence of the commune is to be the basic unit of socialist social structure, combining industry, agriculture, commerce, education, and military [affairs]. Its main function is to be the organizer of production and life while at the same time embodying some functions of political power, which it must retain.^[30]

Peasants were organized into a three-level system of production units: commune, production brigades and production teams. All farmers, both males and females, worked together on the collective farms, and ate in the collective dining halls. Each commune was equal to a xiang, ^[31] with about two thousand households. The traditional role of family, patriarchal system, and monetary relations were to be destroyed due to “widespread social security.” ^[32] Mao indicated that commune members would have a two-day rest-time (for women it was five days) each month. There shall be a six-hour work system with four hours for study. When one of the county party secretaries in Shandong province proposed to enter communism in three years, Mao praised his boldness and his definition of communism.^[33] Under the influence of Mao the communes were pronounced by the CCP as the basic social units of a future communist society.^[34]

The Great Leap Forward involved an enormous amount of experimentation. It had no detailed blueprint and soon encountered a major setback. Famines and extreme economic hardship soon followed. After the economic difficulties of 1959-61, the communes were reorganized. Their average size was reduced, more autonomy was granted to the local production teams, a limited number of private plots were given to farmers, and wages were paid according to the work performed.

The failure of the Great Leap Forward did not stop Mao from trying even larger scale utopian projects. He single-handedly launched the Cultural Revolution and brought China into a decade of chaos. Radical factions headed by General Lin Biao and “the gang of four” headed by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, pushed for political puritanism with fanatic fervor. The utopian elements of this new political campaign, according to Wang Lixong, were manifested mainly in three areas. First, Mao determined to create a generation of new “red” men and women. Second, Mao mastered the use of “grand democracy,” to manipulate mass support to smash his political enemies. Finally Mao was also responsible for the creation of his own personality cult. ^[35] Mao realized that he could not easily bring economic modernization to China in his lifetime. But he thought he might be able to create a generation of communist men and women, and to prevent the so-called revisionists from changing the course of the revolution that he had engineered. To achieve this goal, he promoted many role models such as Lei Feng, Wang Jinxi, Jiao Yulu and many others. He wanted all people to become “Da Gong Wu Si” (serving public interests and being selfless). With his support, Red Guards attacked all traditional values and establishments. Mao’s little Red Book became their new bible. Mao sanctioned Red Guards’ radical actions and gave them ultimate freedom to wage a new kind of revolution aimed at destroying the entire bureaucratic system. The damages to that system were profound, yet the goals of creating a socialist “new men” and a new socialist society remained elusive. For all those efforts, he will forever be remembered as “the utopian prophet of our age.”^[36]

It was only until Mao's death in September, 1976, and the purge of the “gang of four” by a coalition of moderate and conservative political leaders in October 1976, that the Cultural Revolution was finally brought to an end. The post-Mao repudiation of both the objectives and the consequences of the Cultural Revolution broke the living nightmare of millions of innocent Chinese people, and brought about a general disillusionment with communist ideas. It has thus far resulted in two consequences: one is the “inevitable descent of Chinese society from initial idealism into nihilism and cynically unbridled hedonism,” ^[37] and the other, the acceptance of Deng Xiaoping’s no-nonsense pragmatism and his down-to-earth economic reform.^[38]

CONCLUSION

At the beginning of this paper, I laid out two objectives for this study, namely, to discover the utopian elements of some of the leading modern Chinese political thinkers, and to build an analytical framework of modern Chinese utopianism. Now let’s summarize some of the findings we have shown so far.

All four Chinese political thinkers we have examined manifest some level of utopian thinking. Hong Xiuquan and Kang Youwei are both traditional and learned scholars. Hong chooses to use Christian faith to construct his Taiping paradise, and Kang accepts Buddhism as the foundation of his Datong world community. Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong are both influential revolutionaries who also embrace different Western ideas. Sun, on the one hand, wants to build a liberal democracy in China and to unify the world with Chinese morality, and Mao, on the other, accepts the radical Marxism and attempts to construct a communist utopia in China. Despite their differences, there are still many similarities among them. All of these political leaders share a common root in Chinese ancient utopian tradition. They all adore the ancient Chinese mental image of the final destination of mankind, the Datong society, and all of them try to link their reforms and revolutions with that ultimate goal. All of them share the Confucian dream of uniting the world into a global community. In order to build a perfect world of equality and justice, they all support the abolishment of private property ownership and the establishment of the public ownership.

Implied in all of these is a strong emphasis on the role of the state, and a strong rejection to some of the prevailing features of capitalism, such as competition and individualism. This anti-capitalist tendency, however, did not serve the purpose of modernizing China well. Indeed, the unrealistic adventures and experiments in the periods of Taiping Tianguo and the Great Leap Forward brought some disastrous consequences, and were indeed detrimental to China's transition to modernity. A utopia by its very nature is unattainable. Why, then, is utopianism, either ancient or modern, so appealing to Chinese leaders? Many European utopian writers construct a utopia for the sake of escape, satire, and criticism. But Chinese leaders are attracted to this fantasy of utopia of reconstruction mostly for the sense of urgency to revitalize China. The sharply declining national strength and the terrible sufferings the Chinese people have endured stimulate radical thinkers to provide shock treatment and to move China on a fast track. They consider utopia to be a solution rather an escape from the existing world.

Max Weber is wrong in believing that utopianism is absent in Chinese history.^[39] China indeed has rich history of utopian tradition, as other three authors in this special edition have shown. Utopianism has had profound impact on Chinese political thinkers, especially in the modern era. It has played an important role in promoting radicalism in China. Only after some costly defeats have the Chinese begun to realize its destructive roles. There is nothing wrong in being a good dreamer; but it is dangerous to try to establish the dreamland through some radical reconstruction projects. Indeed, the utopias of reconstruction have not served the Chinese well. .

ENDNOTES

* Baogang Guo is an assistant professor of political science in Dalton State College, Dalton, Georgia. He wishes to thank for the comments made by Pat Carmoney, He Li, Shiping Hua and other anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this article.

^[1] Book of Rites (Liji), “Li Yun Pian,” see the English translation by James Legge, The Li Ki, Books I-X, in Sacred Books of the East, Volume XXVII (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1885), P. 365-367. There have been many different translations of the Chinese word "Datong," including "Great Commonwealth," "Great Unity," " Universal Commonwealth," "Grand Unity," and "Great Community."

^[2] Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: Viking Press, 1962), p. 15

^[3] Plato, Plato: the Republic, trans. by Desmond Lee (New York: Viking Press, 1979)

^[4] B.F. Skinner, B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two (San Mateo, CA: IDG Book Worldwide, 1984)

^[5] Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, ed. by G.C. Moor Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900)

^[6] Jonathan Spence, The Taiping Vision of Christian China (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 1996), p. 14.

^[7] John E. Schrecker, The Chinese Revolution in Historical Perspective (New York: Praeger

Publishers, 1991), p. 98.

^[8] Mao Yongzhang, Taiping Tianguo Shimo Ji (The Whole History of Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace) (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshu Guan, 1973), pp. 23-24.

[9] A Primer in Verse (Yu Xue Shi), in WM. Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), Vol. II., p. 28.

[10] de Bary, op cit., p. 41.

^[11] Ibid., p. 32.

[12] Laurence G. Thompson, The One World Philosophy of Kang Yu-wei (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1958), p. 63

^[13]Ibid., pp. 73-75

^[14] Ibid., p. 73.

[15] Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890-1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 57

[16] Thompson, op cit., pp. 66-67

[17] Kang Youwei, “Jen-wo p’ien,” cited in Kung-Chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), p. 421

^[18] Hao Chang, op cit., p. 63. See also, Hsiao Kung-chum, In and Out of Utopia: Kang Yu-wei’s Social Thoughts (Seattle: University of Washington, 1969).

^[19] Chiang Kai-shek, "Chapters on National Fecundity, Social Welfare, Education and Health and Happiness, " in Sun Yat-sen, Three Principles of the People (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1992)

[20] Sun, op cit., pp. 82-84

^[21] Ibid., p. 367

^[22] Ibid., Chinese version, p. 299. The original text is "Min Sheng ZhuYi is socialism, also called communism, or Datongism." The official English translation by the Party History Commission of the Nationalist Party in Taiwan omitted the entire sentence for some reason.

^[23] Ibid., pp. 83-84

^[24] Chai Winberg, The Political Thought of Kang You-wei: a Study of Its Origin and Its Influences, Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1968, p. 188.

[25] Sun again specifically pointed out in one of his lectures that “Minsheng Zhuyi is communism and socialsim”, op cit., Chinese version, p. 354

^[26] Fredrich Engels, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian, in Marx & Engels, Selected Works of Marx and Engels (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1950), Vol. 2.

^[27] For a discussion of the utopian nature of Marxism, see Alexander Yakovlev et al., The Fate of Marxism in Russia, translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Immanuel Walestein, “Marxism as Utopias: Evolving Ideologies,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, No. 9 (May 1986), pp. 1295-1308.

^[28] Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1968), p. 493.

^[29] The State Statistic Bureau: Wei Da De Shi Nian (The Glorious Ten Years) (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1959), p. 28.

^[30] Mao Zedong,” Talks at the First Zhengzhou Conference,” in The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao, ed. by Roderick MacFarquhar et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

^[31] An administrative region that is in between counties and villages.

^[32] Mao, op cit., p. 454

^[33] Wang Lixuong, "Maoism and Worldly Paradise," [on-line] Duowei News http://www.duoweinews.com/MainNews/Opinion/Sat_Dec_25_11_15_35_1999.html (12/26/1999)

^[34] CCP Central Committee, “Resolution on Questions Concerning People’s Commune,” adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the CCP, Dec. 10, 1958, cited from Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 67.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] Ibid., p. 184

^[37] Jiwei Ci, Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 1-9

^[38] Franz Michael, “The End of Utopianism,” Modern Age, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Fall 1991) pp. 31-37; Xueliang Ding, The Decline of Communism in China: Legitimacy Crisis 1977-1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

^[39] Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth (Glencore, IL: the Free Press, 1951), p. 155.