The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations

摘要

Christopher A. Ford. Lexington, KY:The University Press of Kentucky, 2010. ￡39.95/$45.00. 380 pp.Christopher Ford, a former US government official, has written a provocative book. Instead of following mainstream scholarship on China, which assumes that the Confucian tradition has created a world view that prefers a 'harmonious world' to a conflict-ridden one, Ford argues that Confucianism has actually led to a national policy oriented towards 'a struggle for primacy', and a view that 'legitimate, stable order is possible only when one power reigns supreme' (p. 4).