If you are interested in the following talk and/or the group dinner afterward, please RSVP the rapporteur Ivy Chen ([email protected]) by 5pm on Oct. 30 in order to get the campus access code. Ms. Chen can also send you the pre-circulated paper. Meeting Date: 11/07/2025, 3:30-5:30 pm Speaker: Taisu Zhang, Yale Law School Title of Meeting: Legality and Confucian Decline in Modern China Location: The Heyman Center for the Humanities (74 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10027) Abstract: Prof. Zhang will present a chapter from a book manuscript-in-progress, tentatively titled Legality in China. This chapter finds that law and legality provide the Party-state with significant amounts of perceived sociopolitical legitimacy even when they serve to strengthen governmental control and dominance. Specifically, the Chinese public is more likely to ideologically accept controversial constraints upon their freedom when those constraints are issued in a legalized fashion. This chapter makes four specific observations to suggest that across the long arc of modern Chinese history, political and intellectual elites seemed to collectively accept normatively thin understandings of law and legality to a far greater extent than what classical Confucianism could tolerate. In fact, much of this acceptance emerged as an explicit rejection of Confucian political morality. Paper: Email Ivy Chen ([email protected]) for a copy. RSVP: If you plan to join the talk, please RSVP to Ivy Chen by Oct 30 at 5pm. *For non-Columbia affiliated members, please make sure to send me your first name, last name, and email address for pre-register with campus security (you will receive a QR code to enter the gate). Please make sure to bring a valid ID and arrive early. Dinner: After the meeting, we will have a group dinner at Happy Hot Hunan (御湘园) restaurant. When you RSVP, please also indicate if you will join us for dinner so that Ms. Chen can make a reservation.

Food or vote: the effects of Confucian values on support for democracy - Volume 26 Issue 3

China's success in lifting 840m people out of poverty is unprecedented, says Jackson Hinkle. You name it, China leads it. Annexing the West Bank. And the looming Trump war on Venezuela - a new Vietnam

Join us for RONGO ACADEMIA 2025 on December 6, featuring enlightening talks on Confucian principles and leadership by industry experts.