Interpretation Of The Concept Of Competition In Liang Qichao's The New Citizen

In this paper, concept of competition in The New Citizen written by Liang Qichao is the object of interpretation, the purpose of which is to revalue The New Citizen in new field of view. The author found that scholars lacked for adequate attention on the concept of competition in The New Citizen.Competition, as one of the notional spectrums of Chinese modernity, had risen to the height of value from an existing concept. Liang in The New Citizen had built a competitive system of philosophy. Progress is the premise of competition, the competition between people relys on the power, the theory of power is the metaphysical dimension of competition, the subject of competition is group. In order to win the competition, people need to acquire the competitive ability. He focused on the armed strength, intelligence, and moral strength. In the view of Liang, the final competition of power pointed to a series of conceptions of contemporary values, such as rights, freedom and responsibility. From this perspective, Liang wanted to inject competition values into modern Chinese, and then shaped new citizen.The concept of modernity is actually a very complex spectrum, which specifically covers progress, competition, creativity, democracy, science, freedom, rights, responsibilities and so on. Therefore, when we discuss the concept of competition, we can not ignore the correlation between competition and other concepts of modernity. Only in a complex spectrum, we can understand the profound meaning of the concept of competition. Obviously, this is often neglected by Liang. The author found that Liang's concept of competition is not the full sense of the modern concept, during which he mingled with inherent ideological tensions and limitations of history.In any event, the concept of competition in The New Citizen provided an important basis of text for our in-depth understanding on the concept of competition under the Chinese context.