A Study On The Zhu Qi’s Statecraft Ideology

Zhu Qi was a cultural celebrity in the Guang Xi province during the late Qing Dynasty. Benefiting from Gui Lin’s strong cultural atmosphere and good home education, he had a strong sense of social responsibility in his youth. After became a Beijing official, he studied Wo Ren with Neo-Confucianism and studied Tong Cheng with writing who stressed writings are for conveying truth. In his lifetime, he had a wide acquaintance and improved himself from it. Because of the internal and external troubles during the Dao Guang and Xian Feng period, statecraft ideology renewed and the scholars widely advocated practical thought. Zhu Qi put himself in the trend of times, presented some strategies and put his idea into practice, which constantly enriched his statecraft ideology.Zhu Qi’s statecraft ideology was concentrated reflected on his political claim and academic idea. As a traditional Confucian official, he advised the emperor to be wise and benevolent and reused the talented person. At the same time, he demanded the Confucian officials to regulate themselves and serve the people. He thought profit is the root of social instability, so he hoped that the Confucianism can redeemed people’s minds and even reversed the troublous social order. As a celebrity, he absorbed theories of different schools and regarded the scholarship as an explanation the doctrine of the sages and pragmatic teachings. Besides he had a great achievement on poetry which conveyed his political appeal and academic concept. On one hand Zhu Qi’s statecraft ideology had an obvious retro tendency, on the other hand his opinion towards new learning and appreciation of new talents indicate an enlightened side.Zhu Qi’s statecraft ideology was very profound and insightful, but because of his character, limitation of the thought itself and the objective situation, the effect of ideology was not obvious in practice. Zhu Qi’s ideology did not have a significant impact during his time, but some of his concepts and ideas is still worth learning for us.At the same time, we should realize the historical limitation of Zhu Qi’s identity. As a traditional feudal official, he contended that in order to maintain the feudal rule the government suppress peasant uprising cruelty which is the downside of his ideology. So from this point his ideology should be denied.