Date:
Location:
Ci Jiwei (University of Hong Kong)
Abstract: States deserve to be judged, sometimes stringently, in proportion to the power they wield within or beyond their borders, but they should be judged reasonably. The most stringent reasonable standard for such judgment is a realistic utopia appropriate for the state under appraisal. What exactly one should mean by realistic utopia requires careful spelling out and it will be a further task to put together a realistic utopia for a particular state. I will make a preliminary attempt at both tasks with reference to China. Democracy will have a central place in my discussion, although other issues will be addressed as well. My main aim is to ascertain what we have good reason to expect from China as its citizens or as members of other countries increasingly feeling China’s impact and hence what standard it is suitable to employ in evaluating democratic progress in China.
This is the fourth of five lectures that Professor Ci Jiwei will give in the series Democracy and China: Philosophical-Political Reflections
Sponsored by the East Asian Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School