Tingyang Zhao - Böcker

In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question Where did China come from? has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the prevailing way scholars have gone about theorizing China according to Western concepts and categories, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars to "rethink China." Zhao introduces what he terms a distinctively Chinese centripetal "whirlpool" model of world order to interpret the historical progression of China’s tianxia (All under Heaven) identity construction. In this book, Zhao forwards a compelling thesis not only on how we should understand China, but also on how China until recently has understood itself.

In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question Where did China come from? has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the prevailing way scholars have gone about theorizing China according to Western concepts and categories, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars to "rethink China." Zhao introduces what he terms a distinctively Chinese centripetal "whirlpool" model of world order to interpret the historical progression of China’s tianxia (All under Heaven) identity construction. In this book, Zhao forwards a compelling thesis not only on how we should understand China, but also on how China until recently has understood itself.

Provides a philosophical, cultural, and historical answer to the question: Where did China come from?In The Whirlpool That Produced China, Tingyang Zhao offers a philosophical interpretation of China's historicity, explaining how the expansion of China was not due to the lures of expansionist behavior but to the offerings of the surrounding contenders as they were constantly being pulled into a whirlpool of growth and amalgamation. The peoples surrounding China on all four sides sought to win the greatest material benefits and greatest spiritual resources by shaping their ways of thinking and living around the evolving core culture of the central plains. Zhao also investigates how the tianxia vision of world order was able to dissolve the fierce currents of contention and create out of them the inclusive model of many cultures and many peoples with many forms of governance. He explains these reasons for why China became China by weaving together ontology with game theory methodology: the "stag hunt." Ultimately, Zhao addresses the question of how ancient China became such an irresistible attraction-a stag-to its vital periphery that once a population and territory was drawn into the game, or the whirlpool, it was difficult if not impossible to withdraw.

Provides a philosophical, cultural, and historical answer to the question: Where did China come from?In The Whirlpool That Produced China, Tingyang Zhao offers a philosophical interpretation of China's historicity, explaining how the expansion of China was not due to the lures of expansionist behavior but to the offerings of the surrounding contenders as they were constantly being pulled into a whirlpool of growth and amalgamation. The peoples surrounding China on all four sides sought to win the greatest material benefits and greatest spiritual resources by shaping their ways of thinking and living around the evolving core culture of the central plains. Zhao also investigates how the tianxia vision of world order was able to dissolve the fierce currents of contention and create out of them the inclusive model of many cultures and many peoples with many forms of governance. He explains these reasons for why China became China by weaving together ontology with game theory methodology: the "stag hunt." Ultimately, Zhao addresses the question of how ancient China became such an irresistible attraction-a stag-to its vital periphery that once a population and territory was drawn into the game, or the whirlpool, it was difficult if not impossible to withdraw.