About This Site:

In the years that I have studied China, one thing has become more and more apparent: there simply still is not enough research being done about China by experts outside of China. 

The intrepid investigator can locate about 1,200 articles published in the last five years related to New Confucianism on the Google Scholar database; yet, there are several thousand more publications listed on Chinese academic databases for the same time period, not to mention all of the movies, TV shows, and times the 1.5 billion people themselves quote the Great Sage on a daily basis. 

Many prominent scholars in the United States and the “West” study modern Chinese political and social sciences, yet very few are focused on any Chinese schools of thought. In 2020, Professor Todd Hall at Oxford University opined that few China-facing scholars today are true area experts, rather the majority are intent on using Western ontologies, metaphysics, and frameworks, merely painting a caricature of China with Western characteristics. 

Meanwhile, an entire school of thought based on Chinese cultural norms is being built with Chinese themes, including: "guanxi" relationalism, moral realism, ritual, guardianship, meritocracy, harmonious society, humaneness, and spiritual humanism. 

For the institutes that bear his name in the West, the doors may be closing; but there are hundreds of communities spanning the “Global South” welcoming Confucius and celebrating his arrival. Considering past eras of sinicization, when looking at the place for the "China Model" in the world today and the relative decline of the West, this situation has strong implications for people everywhere. 

In short, many today argue that a rising China offers no new ideas for the world, but what if they are wrong?