Assistant Professor of History Minghui Hu (UC Santa Cruz), Johan Elverskog (Southern Methodist University USA)
At the height of the Cultural Revolution and the Cold War in 1971, the historian Joseph Levenson made the astute observation that China used to be cosmopolitan on account of Confucianism. At that time, the notion of China, much less Confucianism, as somehow being cosmopolitan may have surprised many of his readers, especially because so many conventional ideas about China-ranging from its "kith and kin" social structure to its purportedly eternal and monolithic state structure-seem to reflect a society that was the very antithesis of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, even now, or perhaps even more so...
At the height of the Cultural Revolution and the Cold War in 1971, the historian Joseph Levenson made the astute observation that China used to be cos...