The Confucian path to utopia : Liao Ping’s theory of great harmony, 1897–1918

Seeing utopia as “the expression of the desire for a better way of being” and a term that encompasses both the meanings of “good place” and “no place,” this thesis examines the theoretical interaction between Western utopianism and the concept of great harmony, or Datong, which emerged from the study of ancient Chinese classics. It focuses on the late Qing to early Republican period through the case of Liao Ping (1852–1932), a new-text Confucian scholar from Sichuan province, China. As an eminent scholar, Liao was deeply exposed to and influenced by Western concepts and literature during the time of political and intellectual crisis in the late Qing and the early republican period. For instance, he may have read the Chinese translations of Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) and The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells (1866–1946). This thesis explores how Liao Ping absorbed and incorporated these new ideas into his reform of Chinese classics studies and his theory of great harmony during his third to fifth stages (1897–1918). Furthermore, the paper compares Liao Ping’s and Kang Youwei’s (1858–1927) different interpretations and applications of Datong, particularly in their utopian narratives, such as Kang’s Datongshu (1913) and Liao’s The Theory of Great Harmony (1913). This thesis argues Liao Ping’s theory of great harmony represents a form of “Confucian utopia,” bridging the gap between utopia and great harmony, which originate from distinct cultural backgrounds. Moreover, influenced by utopianism, Liao Ping’s reconstruction of ancient classical studies ultimately led what he sought to preserve to a place of nowhere, more specifically, to the disintegration of Confucianism following the 1911 Revolution in China.