An Essay on Officialism (Guanben Zhuyi): A Political Analysis of Chinese Traditional Society
Tóm tắt
This paper formulates a new paradigm, ‘officialism’ (Guanben Zhuyi or 官本主义), and uses it to analyse China’s traditional society. The author argues that officialism is an official based doctrine and a political culture and socio-political system which takes official power and authority as its core element. Under this culture and system, relationships of official power and authority are the most important social relationships. They become the basic standard for measuring a person’s social value, and they are the determining factor influencing a person’s social status and social attributes. In traditional China, monarchism (Junzhu Zhuyi) (君主主义) was the highest form of officialism. Despotism is the representative characteristic of officialism. People-based doctrine (Minben Zhuyi or 民本主义) is the political ideal that is the antithesis of despotism. Democracy with the rule of law is the only way of smashing officialism and of spurring traditional political civilization to head towards modern political civilization.
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