Chinese Utopianism

= concept and article

Typology

Ori Tavor:

"Most general surveys divide classical Chinese utopianism into two main archetypes: the Confucian ideal state, marked by a strict hierarchy-based sociopolitical order and an adherence to a fixed set of ethical and ritual behavioral guidelines; and its Daoist counterpart, defined by its small scale, simple lifestyle, and the relative lack of governmental control.

..

Adopting a historical approach, it identifies four key junctures in the development of Chinese utopian thought:

(1) the emergence of classical philosophical utopianism during the early and medieval periods;

(2) the role of millenarian utopianism in the rise and consolidation of Daoism and Buddhism;

(3) the interaction between Western utopian ideas and indigenous traditions during the late Qing, Republican, and early Communist eras; and

(4) the rise of new literary, religious, political, and environmental expressions of utopianism in the post-Mao Reform Era. In addition to providing a survey of the state of the field, this article also seeks to offer a theoretical intervention by replacing the classical categorization of Chinese utopias along the sectarian lines of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism with a new framework that organizes them into two archetypes: major and minor utopias."

Examples

Mozism

Ori Tavor:

"Scott Lowe analyzes the Book of Mozi and argues that it offers the theoretical foundations and practical methods necessary for the creation of a religious utopian society (Lowe 1992). A.C. Graham reconstructs the philosophical underpinnings of the peasant utopias proposed by members of the “school of tillers,” who rejected the authority of the state and instead called for the creation of small, independent, and self-sufficient agrarian communities (Graham 1979)."

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)

Legalism

Ori Tavor:

"Legalist thinkers from the state of Qin promoted a variety of political and legal reforms aimed at engineering a perfect, crime-free, utopian society on a much larger scale. As Liang and Cai and Yuri Pines convincingly demonstrate, the Legalist utopian vision remained influential after the unification of China. Pines highlights the messianic elements promoted by the First Emperor of the Qin in his attempts to build an “entopia” (a utopia in the here and now) following the establishment of the Qin Dynasty (Pines 2014). Cai, on the other hand, shows the dark side of utopian thought by showing how the Legalist pursuit of perfection resulted in adverse and unexpected outcomes that undermined the administrative and legal system of the empire (Cai 2026)."

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)

Confucian vs Daoist Utopias

Ori Tavor:

"Evidence for the “utopian tendencies” of Confucian philosophy can be found in the Confucian Analects, where Confucius expresses his admiration for the golden age of the past and his belief that the model of perfect sociopolitical order can be reinstated in the present (L. Zhang 2002, 10). Another often-cited example of Confucian utopianism is the “well-field system” advocated by Mencius, an infrastructure model designed to provide a just distribution of goods between the people and the ruler (Bauer 1976, 24). Most scholars identify the “Evolution of Ritual” (Liyun) chapter, found in the Records of Rites (Liji), as the locus classicus of Confucian utopianism (Callahan 2003). The narrative begins by depicting the Great Unity (datong) utopia of remote antiquity, an ideal society marked by economic prosperity, peace, and good government. This eventually gives way to the age of Modest Prosperity (xiaokang), another type of utopian society managed by sage rulers who created a system of government, behavioral norms, and rituals to maintain order and harmony.

The existence of two different utopian models in the Records of Rites has perplexed readers throughout history. Some scholars argue that the datong society closely resembles Daoist or Mohist utopian ideals and question its inclusion in a Confucian text. Some even claim that it was inserted there maliciously (Tyng 1934; Pokora 1961). Others, such as Ching and Dessein, argue that the text has a pragmatic agenda in mind. Namely, while the Records of Rites believes in the superiority of the datong society, it also acknowledges that this society might be irrevocably lost and must therefore be replaced with a more modest utopia—the xiaokang society (Ching 1972; Dessein 2017). Ing offers the most compelling interpretation of this passage, claiming that utopia is a matter of perspective. In other words, while the datong was seen as perfect for its time, the present historical conditions require an ideal society to be based on the principles of xiaokang (Ing 2019). The desire to restore the perfect society of a past Golden Age remained influential among subsequent reformers, who often drew on the Records of Rites, as well as other classical Confucian texts, in their attempts to promote a wholesale restructuring of society and its institutions (Helman 1988). Others, such as the medieval thinker Ge Hong, rejected the idealization of the past and argued that a utopia can only be achieved through advancement, progression, and adaptation to change (Knapp 2025).

Many scholars identify chapter 80 of the Book of the Way and its Power (Daodejing), traditionally attributed to Laozi, as a Daoist utopia. This chapter offers practical advice for the ruler regarding the creation of small self-sufficient agrarian communities that could be governed with minimal state supervision. While not conceived with a utopian agenda in mind, this description is similar enough to Western depictions of an ideal society to be heralded as the quintessential “Daoist utopia.” While label it as “escapist” (Fokkema 2011, 179), others argue that it reflects a real belief that an ideal future is attainable through a restoration of the past (Bender 1990). Given its critique of paternalistic governmental intervention, this passage has also been interpreted as anarchistic, individualistic, and even libertarian (Rapp 2012; E. Y. Zhang 2019; Coutinho 2013). Dominic Steavu, on the other hand, represents a different approach by rejecting the use of such Western categories to describe Daoist utopianism. Drawing on the Daodejing, as well as later texts such as the Zhuangzi, the Liezi, and the Wunengzi, Steavu utilizes the concept of “de-growth” (or “de-civilization”) as its common theme. According to this model, human social and cultural evolution has alienated us from nature; and, in order to mend this rift, we must revert to a simpler, quasi-primeval, lifestyle. This can only be achieved through a gradual transition from a conventional state-led society to small-scale collectivist communities (Steavu 2014).

The ideal of a small, self-sufficient community can also be found in Peach Blossom Spring. Written by Tao Yuanming in 421 CE, this story depicts a peaceful agrarian community located inside a large grotto, isolated from the outside world. As one of China's most celebrated literary utopian narratives, the phrase “Peach Blossom Spring” became synonymous with the notion of an ideal society, and it serves as an equivalent term of the word “utopia” in the West (Ho 1983–1986, 29). While some scholars hail Peach Blossom Spring as the quintessential Chinese utopia due to its striking resemblance to ancient Greco-Roman narratives of the Golden Age (Engels 2021) and structural similarities with More's Island of Utopia and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis as “a place out of space and time,” others reject such comparisons and argue that the story actually promotes an anti-utopian agenda by demonstrating the impossibility of realizing utopia in the real world (Chiang 2009). While the utopia of Peach Blossom Spring is devoid of any supernatural elements (L. Zhang 2002), it has inspired a variety of religious interpretations, including numerous premodern narratives depicting paradisical grotto-heavens inhabited by immortals (W. Li 2024) and novels such as Flowers in the Mirror (Fokkema 2011)."

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)

Status

Ori Tavor:

Modern Utopianism

"The growing impact of Western colonialism in China signaled a new stage in the development of Chinese utopianism. Much like the millenarian kingdom of the Taping Rebels, which combined Christian and native religious ideas and practices, late 19th and early 20th century utopian discourse in China was shaped by the encounter with the West. The Chinese neologism for “utopia,” wutuobang, was coined by Yan Fu (1854–1912) in his translations of Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Western utopian writings began to circulate in China during the 20th century, with a partial translation of Thomas More's Utopia first appearing in 1903 (Liu 2006; Jiang 2024). More's vision is also mentioned in a letter exchange between Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929). These two intellectuals played a leading role in the Hundred Days' Reform, a short-lived attempt to modernize the Chinese imperial state in 1898, and their writing became extremely influential in the first decades of the 20th century. Peter Zarrow has described this period as China's moment of “peak utopianism” (Zarrow 2021, 3).

After the failure of his reform movement, Kang Youwei spent the remainder of his life in exile. Kang's utopian manifesto, The Book of Great Unity (Datongshu), was written in India in 1902 but only published posthumously in 1935. This book describes a future “one-world” utopia with no nation-states, armies, or borders. Run by a democratically elected global government, this ideal society would have no wealth disparity, no private property, and no discrimination based on race or gender. Described as a “mixture of Chinese and Western utopian thinking” (Fokkema 2011, 279), Kang's vision utilizes the Confucian vocabulary of Great Unity and Great Peace (L'Haridon 2023), as well as Buddhist millenarian utopianism. It was also inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution and the works of socialist utopian thinkers such as Charles Fourier and Edward Bellamy. The result is a composite construct motivated by an attempt to envision a truly cosmopolitan utopia (Thompson 1958; Hsiao 1975). Brusadelli and Zarrow highlight Kang's evolutionary conception of history, as well as his belief that a “one-world” utopia is historically determined and inevitable. They also stress that, unlike utopian thinkers who focus on structural societal change, Kang's utopianism stresses individual moral and spiritual self-transformation while arguing for the cultivation of the Confucian value of empathy (ren) as one of the conditions for a utopian society (Brusadelli 2020; Zarrow 2020).

The trauma of colonialism and the cross-cultural conversation that took place in the early 20th century combined to produce what Peter Zarrow calls a “utopian impulse,” or a radical commitment to envision a better future for China (Zarrow 2021, 9). In the realm of literature, futuristic utopian stories inspired by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and William Moris's News from Nowhere began to proliferate. David Der-wei Wang and Lorenzo Andolfatto demonstrate that the utopian genre played a large role in inspiring a new political agenda and new national ethos. Liang Qichao's unfinished The Future of New China and Wu Jianren's The New Story of the Stone, the two most influential utopian novels of the early 20th century, exhibit a techno-optimist vision of a prosperous future in which China is finally able to surpass its Western colonial rivals, thus allowing readers to come to terms with China's present situation while giving them hope for the future (D. Wang 2020; Andolfatto 2019). “New Year's Dream,” an influential short story published in 1904 by Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), features a utopian vision of the future but demonstrates that it must be preceded by the radical dismantling of society's traditional institutions through violent struggle (G. Li 2013).

Anarchism played a central role in the utopian visions promoted by Buddhist reformers in the early 20th century. Faced with a call to modernize their institutions and remove “superstitious” beliefs and rituals from their religious doctrine, activists such as the monk Taixu (1890–1947) attempted to reshape Buddhism into a socially engaged movement focused on tangible goals (Ritzinger 2017). Inspired by Western revolutionary utopianism, Taixu's 1926 essay “On Establishing the Pure Land in the Human Realm” offers a detailed blueprint of a self-sufficient terrestrial utopia of abundance where Buddhist believers can pursue their spiritual goals. In his translation and study of the essay, Charles Jones demonstrates that, unlike medieval Buddhist millenarianism, Taixu's utopia was a human-created and human-centered community dedicated both to secular and religious goals (Jones 2021). Taixu's utopian vision inspired other Buddhist thinkers, such as the philosopher Tang Dayuan (1885–1941) and the Taiwanese Marxist monk Liu Qiuwu (1903–1934), to devise their own plans for building a radical version of the Buddhist Pure Land on earth (Zamorski 2019; Brons 2022).

The egalitarian, anarchic, and radical utopian visions of the early 20th century played a key role in shaping the philosophy of China's most influential modern utopist, Mao Zedong (Guo 2003). Mao repeatedly alludes to the ideal of a datong society in his early speeches and essays, praising its rejection of the family unit and the strict hierarchies of traditional society, as well as its egalitarian economic vision (Brusadelli 2020). Chi Wen-shun argues that these ideas “heavily influenced” Mao's first utopian experiment—the creation of the “People's Communes” (Chi 1992, 30). Conceived as part of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), a campaign designed to industrialize China's predominantly agrarian economy, the stated goal of this project was to create a new basic social unit, the commune, to replace the traditional structures of Chinese village life in preparation for a “great leap” to a communist utopia, not as an aspirational goal in an undetermined future, but in the here and now (MacFarquhar 1974; Meisner 1982; Lu 2007). While more than 20,000 communes were built, the experiment was eventually deemed a failure, leading to rising criticism of Mao's leadership.

In response, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a mass-scale utopian project that called for sweeping moral and spiritual transformations of culture and the creation of a radically reformed society in the immediate future. Maurice Meisner highlights Mao's promotion of his own cult of personality as a messianic utopian prophet while demonstrating that, unlike previous utopian visions that aimed at harmony, Mao's “kinetic” ideal society was characterized by perpetual class struggle (Meisner 1982). Knight identifies the gradual shift from Mao's early optimistic Great Unity-style egalitarian utopianism to a pessimistic vision of the future as an endless cycle of revolutions as one of the key factors responsible for the eventual failure of the Cultural Revolution and the demise of Maoist utopianism (Knight 1996)."

Contemporary Utopianism

"When Mao's promise of a better future failed to materialize, a sense of nihilism accompanied by anti-utopian sentiments began to spread through Chinese society (Ci 1994). In the realm of literature, the Reform Era saw the emergence of what David Der-wei Wang describes as a “dystopian turn,” an antithetical “uncanny recapitulation” of early 20th century optimistic utopian fiction (D. Wang 2020, 65). Ho and Kinkley argue that the trauma of the Cultural revolution gave rise to the belief that utopia is fundamentally incompatible with human nature and that all utopias are predestined to mutate into dystopias (Ho 1997; Kinkley 2015).

This theme also features heavily in science fiction, a genre that has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the 21st century. Chan Koonchung's The Fat Years and Han Song's 2066: Red Star over America offer a dark rendition of the early 20th century vision of a future in which China becomes a global superpower. The dream turns out to be a nightmare, a “counterfeit utopia” designed to subjugate society (Featherstone 2014; D. Wang 2020). Minwei Song, on the other hand, points to the prevalence of a “heterotopian” strand in contemporary Chinese sci-fi narratives that is indicative of a deep ambivalence and uncertainty about the future (Song 2023). This is best exemplified in the work of Liu Cixin, which celebrates techno-utopian optimism and a belief in the collective power of humanity (Thieret 2015) while also featuring a dark vision of an apocalyptic future (Song 2013).

Despite the anti-utopian attitude and dystopian themes in literature, the 21st century also saw the emergence of a variety of intentional communities, real-world experiments in utopian living (Sargent 1994). Often located in the countryside, these communities offer an alternative lifestyle away from the hectic consumerism of contemporary urban life. Tracing their roots to Y. C. James Yen's Rural Reconstruction Movement and the New Village Movement, established in the 1920s with the aim of reimagining village life for the modern age (Zhu 2022), these communities emphasize ecological sustainability, communal living, and opposition to the values of mainstream society. One of the most well-known examples is the Bishan Commune, established in 2011 by the avant-garde artist Ou Ning. Corlin demonstrates that, despite their best efforts, the anarchist urban artists who moved to Bishan to revitalize village life eventually clashed with the rural population, and the local authorities shut down their short-lived utopian experiment in 2016 (Corlin 2020).

In his ethnography of AnotherLand, a utopian eco-village formed by artist Tang Guanhua in 2009, Wang Peng highlights the flexible and accommodating nature of the community, which attracts disaffected urbanites by allowing them to combine a communal agricultural lifestyle with an independent pursuit of their own interests and careers (P. Wang 2019). Boewe sheds light on Life Chanyuan (also known as New Oasis for Life), a millenarian intentional community established in Yunnan Province in 2009. Labeled as China's “first and only free-love spiritual community,” it promoted a polyamorous lifestyle and a belief in the upcoming apocalypse, prompting the state to designate it as an “illegal cult” and push its activities abroad (Boewe 2016).

The Reform Era also saw a renaissance of Confucian utopianism. Throughout most of the 20th century, Confucianism was decried as a relic of the past and an obstacle in China's quest for modernization. The death of Mao in 1976 brought a turn in perspective. In her ethnography of the resurgence of Confucian-style academies, Sandra Gilgan offers a reading of the intellectual re-embrace of Confucianism as a “grounded utopian movement” that seeks to create a concrete spatial practice aimed at building a better future informed by Confucian values (Gilgan 2022). Tavor recounts a project promoted by the philosopher Zhang Xianglong (1949–2022) to establish Special Districts for Confucian Culture, small-scale sustainable utopian communities located in rural areas designed to prevent the extinction of Confucianism by preserving its traditional way of life (Tavor 2024).

In addition to modest grassroots ventures, the rise of Xi Jinping in 2012 prompted a renewed interest in grand utopian theories. Mao's successors drew on the idea of Modest Prosperity utopianism designed to help Chinese society heal from the wounds of the Cultural Revolution. The Xi era marked the resurgence of more ambitious plans to establish a new world order centered around China (Smith 2019). This led to a renewed interest in Kang Youwei's vision of a “one-world utopia.” The most prominent exponent of this vision is Zhao Tingyang, who draws on traditional Chinese utopian concepts such as the Great Unity and All under Heaven (tianxia) to endorse a vision of “patriotic cosmopolitanism”—a utopian global society centered around traditional Confucian values (Callahan 2013; Zhao 2021)."

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)

History

Ori Tavor:

"Early scholarship on Chinese utopianism was driven by the desire to challenge the claim that utopianism is a purely Western invention. Scholars demonstrated that, while China never developed its own version of the Western utopian tradition, discourses related to the creation of an ideal society occupied a central role in its intellectual, religious, and literary history. Jean Chesneaux argues that the popularity of Western socialist utopianism in China during the twentieth century can be explained by the existence of archaic pre-socialist “muddled traditions of justice and equality” (Chesneaux 1968, 77). Forest Lin similarly views Chinese utopianism as “naïve and primitive” compared with the more nuanced and complex Western works, arguing that the fascination with a past golden age of the past demonstrated by Chinese thinkers limited their utopian imagination (Lin 1980). Likewise, Koon-ki Ho accepts the claim that China never had a tradition of “literary planned utopias” like those of Plato and More, but its writers nevertheless produced a variety of escapist and satirical works of fiction, as well as a flourishing body of philosophical and religious utopian treatises that depict a society defined by good government, harmony, and perfect order (Ho 1983–1986).

As the academic field of utopian studies matured, this polemical approach gave way to more nuanced analyses that situate depictions of ideal societies within their specific cultural contexts. Leading scholars of Western utopianism, such as Lyman Tower Sargent, expanded the definition of utopianism as a universal mode of “social dreaming” and acknowledge the existence of non-Western utopian traditions, particularly in China (Sargent 1994). Encouraged by this shift, scholars such as Zhang Longxi, Douwe Fokkema, and Jacquline Dutton began stressing the importance of overcoming the Eurocentric bias of the field. They argue that the study of Chinese utopianism as an alternative form of utopian thinking is essential for gaining a deeper understanding the universal human tendency to imagine a better future (L. Zhang 2002; Fokkema 2011; Dutton 2010). Some scholars, such as the Marxist philosopher Ronald Boer, go as far as to claim that the Chinese utopian tradition is superior to that of the West, as it was able to move away from the religious undertones of Western utopianism and thereby produce more concrete visions of an ideal society much earlier (Boer 2023).

Recent years have seen a surge in studies dedicated to the history of Chinese utopianism. This article offers a survey and analysis of the most influential works in the field.'

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)

The Article

* Article: Tavor, Ori. 2026. “Chinese Utopianism: A Historical Overview,” Religion Compass: e70056. doi

URL = https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056

Abstract

"This article surveys the historical development of Chinese utopianism and its relationship to broader debates in the field of utopian studies. While early scholarship often dismissed utopianism as a uniquely Western tradition, subsequent research has demonstrated that discourses related to the creation of an ideal society occupied a central role in Chinese intellectual, religious, and literary history.

Adopting a historical framework, this study identifies four key junctures in the evolution of Chinese utopianism:

(1) the emergence of classical philosophical utopianism during the Warring States and Early Imperial periods;

(2) the rise of millenarian utopianism in Daoist and Buddhist traditions;

(3) the dynamic encounter between the Chinese tradition and Western models of anarchic, socialist, and radical utopias in the late Qing, Republican, and early Communist eras; and

(4) the diverse utopian expressions of the post-Mao Reform Era, including dystopian literature, eco-villages, revived Confucian projects, and new cosmopolitan theories of world order.

In addition to tracing this longue durée trajectory, the article offers a theoretical intervention that moves beyond the conventional sectarian framework of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist utopias. Instead, it proposes a typology of “major” and “minor” utopias, distinguishing between large-scale, transformative projects and smaller, localized experiments.'

Excerpt

From the conclusion:

Ori Tavor:

"In the 20th century, sinologists had to challenge the dominant assumption that utopianism is a singular Western phenomenon by showcasing the wide variety of Chinese utopias throughout history, comparing and contrasting them with their Western equivalents. Now that a scholarly consensus regarding the universality of utopian thought has been reached, contemporary scholarship has involved developing a new paradigm for classifying and understanding Chinese utopianism as a historical phenomenon.

Chinese intellectual and religious history has been largely dominated by a framework of “schools of thought” or “traditions” such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Recent scholarship on early Chinese thought, however, highlights the limitations of this heuristic division and the anachronistic biases it preserves (Pines 2009). In the field of Chinese religions, scholars have resorted to using neologisms such as “Buddho-Daoism” to emphasize the hybridization and mutual borrowing between traditions and stress the permeability and flexibility of religious identity in China (Mollier 2009). This critical intervention should also be applied to the study of Chinese utopianism. While the classification of ideal societies as “Confucian,” “Daoist,” or “Buddhist” persists, this article demonstrates that common terms, ideas, and authoritative blueprints of utopia, such as the Great Unity or the Great Peace, have been consistently utilized by thinkers and activists with very different political and social agendas. Throughout Chinese history, scholars, religious innovators, and artists have often received a comprehensive non-sectarian education. In describing their perfect societies, they draw on a shared pool of ideas that transcend and challenge the divisions suggested by traditional labels.

The field would therefore stand to benefit from alternative theoretical models and systems of classification. One such framework is Jay Winter's differentiation between major and minor utopias. The former refers to large-scale attempts to change China, or even the entire world, through radical social engineering. Minor utopias, on the other hand, are more modest in scale and aim at a partial transformation of a smaller society. Such imaginings, argues Winter, “sketch out a world very different from the one we live in, but from which not all social conflict or all oppression has been eliminated” (Winter 2008, 5).

The classification of utopian visions into two main archetypes according to their scale and ultimate goal can be effectively applied in the field of Chinese utopianism. Kang Youwei's cosmopolitan global society of Great Unity, Mao Zedong's communist utopia, and Zhao Tingyang's Sinocentric new world order, much like the millenarian worldly paradises of the Buddhists and Daoists, can be understood as major utopias—attempts to radically reimagine society on a large scale. The agrarian utopia described in the Peach Blossom Spring, on the other hand, are minor utopias that can be grouped together with Taixu's mountaintop Buddhist community, Zhang Xianglong's vision of Special Districts for Confucian Culture, and 21st century intentional communities. Even as they resist the boundaries of traditional categorizations, minor utopias are especially noteworthy to contemporary scholars in their attempts to create an alternative space for younger generations who feel alienated and marginalized by mainstream society. A shift in classification will therefore allow sinologists to transcend the boundaries of their field and offer a more substantial contribution to expanding and diversifying utopian studies."

(https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.70056)