Mar 2006, Volume 1 Issue 1
    

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  • Qu Lindong
    Historical studies in ancient China have left us many bountiful legacies. One of them is the theory of (objective) history, whose major characteristics can be loosely divided into the following categories: (1) a wide variety of literary forms, including theoretical remarks affixed to historical narratives and even special chapters and books on historical criticism; (2) continuity of research at many levels of historiographic theory; (3) reasoning through facts (i.e., basing theory on facts and offering arguments by following historical evidence); and (4) a wealth of masterpieces.
  • Liu Zehua
    The dominant views regarding the concepts of the public  (gong) and the private  (si) took shape in the Spring and Autumn period and matured in the succeeding years of the Warring States period. This paper is an attempt to trace both the growth of the vocabulary containing gong  and si  and the development of philosophical views regarding issues that center on the relation between the individual and the larger social/communal/political body, of which that individual is a member; it also touches on issues related to the proper handling of public affairs and the relation between state, sovereign, and the individual. The era is often characterized as The Contention of the Hundred Schools of Thought,  notwithstanding it ended with but one view that is universally accepted by thinkers of diverse persuasion, namely, si is the source of all social evil and, therefore, should be condemned. This is the doctrine known as ligong miesi (abolishing si so gong may be established), which contributed to the orthodox for that era and the millennium to come. By extolling gong and condemning si, it painted a portrait of the pair as two irreconcilable norms or forces in social and political life; it provided a justification for the then emerging new social arrangement and ways of distribution of power and resources, and it also led to acute conflicts between the sovereign and the state, the ruled and the ruler, the state and the subject, as well as the public sphere and the private domain.
  • Feng Tianyu
    The cluster of technical terms that the Jesuit Matteo Ricci and his Chinese partners Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao cotranslated and introduced into Chinese in the late Ming dynasty was of significance for China s cultural transformation. For instance, brain  replaced heart  as a specific term referring to the organ of consciousness and memory. The classical Chinese interrogative numeral jihe was used to represent the core mathematical term geometry . Diqiu, meaning the globe of the earth  in English, was minted to amend the traditional hemispherical dome cosmology. The identification of Cathay  with China clarified the ambiguity in the Western geographical concept of the Far East, which had existed since the Middle Ages.
  • Ge Zhaoguang
    Discussions on the contrast between the Tang and Song dynasties are common in Chinese cultural and intellectual history. Will it make more sense if the continuity between Song and Ming are emphasized instead? This shift in research perspective will have multiple effects. Instead of paying exclusive attention to the elites and classics, we will focus on common knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs. As a result of this shift in the core of our research interests, the process by which ideas and cultural novelties are institutionalized, popularized, and conventionalized  will become an important focus of historical research. Shifting our concern from the original thinking  of the Tang and Song to the compromise thinking  of the Song and Ming will cause an increase in the kinds of documents about cultural and intellectual history. Such changes in periodization and research perspective can stimulate fundamental changes in the study of Chinese cultural and intellectual history.
  • Qiao Zhizhong
    To promote historical research today, one needs to create a vigorous environment for historiographic criticism, to summarize the progress and state of all fields and topics of history, and to enhance the study of historiography. All these three aspects, which share similar characteristics, can be called historiography.  Their essence is the basic method for deepening the study of historiography as a whole and refining its branches fromthe perspective of intellectual history. They can help us to form a healthy scholarly mechanism to review historical achievements, which would be crucial to the development of academic research.
  • Wei Guangqi, Ding Haixiu
    In ancient China, formal government institutions stretched to the county level. This system witnessed a radical transformation during the late Qing and the Warlord period, with various types of township/village administrations mushrooming in many places across the country to meet the requirements of institutional reform and the demands for modernization in local regions. These township/village administrations can be divided into two types: one is the newborn township/village administration in the late Qing dynasty, and the other is the township/village or quasi-administration that evolved from the old localized Xiangdi (local administrative system). Functionally, the former can be further divided into two kinds, the monofunctional township/village administration, which might include education, or police and security, and the multifunctional administration. The latter falls into three categories: some were new-model administrations directly translated from the old rural Xiangdi system; some were subdivisions of the neonatal administration composed of the old local Xiangdi system; and still, others basically reserved the intrinsic property and function of the old Xiangdi system. As political entities, township/village administrations of this era can be further differentiated into those bordering on self-government  and those lingering under the official system.  Township/village administration at this time mostly consisted of a standing body, with their personnel, who enjoyed the status of professional civil servants, set up by legal proceedings. Government outlay was sponsored by public finance or tax income, and it assumed all kinds of modern administrative functions, basically of a modern character. Meanwhile, of course, it retained much of its traditional flavor in actual operation. All in all, the birth of this form of township/village administration constituted an important dimension of the modernization of China s local administration system.
  • Zhang Shiming
    Studies of suzerain vassal state relationships in the Qing dynasty have been a focus of domestic and overseas academic circles. This paper examines the origins, semiotics, and legal principles of suzerain vassal state relationships in the Qing dynasty with some innovative viewpoints.