Great Unity in the Ideas of Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei, Datong shu, Part 10, Trans. from Chinese and Comment. by Dmitry E. Martynov

This article introduces the Russian translation of the final, tenth part of “The Book of Great Unity” (Datong shu) by the outstanding Chinese reformer and philosopher Kang Youwei (1858–1927). It is in this part that the modernized utopian social ideal that Kang Youwei proposed to his contemporaries is revealed. Many authoritative scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries have called this ideal the first real utopia in the history of Chinese philosophy. The Datong shu, on the one hand, correlates with all sources of the social ideal of traditional China – Confucian canons, early Taoist texts, and folk beliefs colored by the influence of Buddhist sects. It was these folk cults that created a complex of soteriological ideas rejected by official imperial Neo-Confucianism. Most modern scholars consider the Datong shu to have been written in the late period of Kang Youwei’s life – in the decade leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. The utopian ideal of the Great Unity was influenced by Western socialist utopias (including those of Charles Fourier) and the utopian novels of E. Bellamy and H.G. Wells. Similarly, the future society is globalized, open, and dynamic. All of this is combined with Confucian ritualism and a belief in the goodness of human nature, which does not require violent re-forging.