Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism

The surprising story of how Greek classics are being pressed into use in contemporary China to support the regimes political agenda

As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand todays China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpretingor is it misinterpreting?the Greek classics. In Plato Goes to China, Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support Chinas political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of Chinas own Confucian classical tradition.

In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the seventeenth century. Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science. No longer. Today, many Chinese intellectuals use these texts to critique concepts such as democracy, citizenship, and rationality. Platos Noble Lie, in which citizens are kept in their castes through deception, is lauded; Aristotles Politics is seen as civic brainwashing; and Thucydidess criticism of Athenian democracy is applied to modern America.

What do antiquitys dead white men have left to teach? By uncovering the unusual ways Chinese thinkers are answering that question, Plato Goes to China opens a surprising new window on China today.