Abstract

This article explores the public debate between New Confucianism in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Political Confucianism in Mainland China, which erupted in 2015, and considers the political background. Based on a brief examination of the political theories of Mou Zongsan and Jiang Qing, it is argued that the main criticism of Political Confucianism, represented by Jiang Qing, is not that New Confucianism ignores the Confucian tradition on the construction of political institutions or that it places too much emphasis on internal morality at the expense of political theory, as they claim. Rather, it is the case that Political Confucianism rejects liberal democracy based on cultural nationalism and on Kang Youwei's alternative proposal for modernization. Arguably, the position taken by Political Confucians in this debate coincides with the political trend in China in the last decade, and this coincidence is a cause for concern.