Revisiting Chinese Political Culture: The Historical Politics Approach

Western Political science cannot adequately address China’s development in the twenty-first century. The inadequacy is due to a general neglect of historical methods and an obsession with progressive views in the discipline. As a result, the study of China’s political culture is torn away from Chinese history and loses itself to become another version of modernization thesis. This article calls for the application of a historical politics approach and a poly-chronic view of history to the study of China’s political culture. The article examines four potential core value components of China’s political culture, namely the quest for great unification, the preference for political order, the orientation towards substance, and the deference to authority and hierarchy. Results show that those values have historical continuity and China-specificity thereby demonstrating the value of the historical politics perspective.