INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Christian Wolff is correct in his interpretation of Chinese political theory, as the Great Learning also demonstrates. And Wolff's works were read with admiration by Frederick II of Prussia, the European Enlightenment's model despot, a patron, for some time, of France's Voltaire, and like Wolff a friend of Chinese civilisation.

Enlightened despotism appears to have been a theory born of necessity, at a time when kings were all powerful. But there was no way to assure that a despotism, in Europe or China, would be enlightened. For China, the effects were and remain more serious, as the land area is large, and the population huge. We might add to geography and demography the dimension of time: the unusual dynamism of Chinese civilisation, and with it, the rule of the absolute monarchy, through history. Even in our own days, China's political behaviour behind a Bamboo Curtain and also otherwise has led to charges that it still considers itself centre of the world, refusing to accept norms from elsewhere.

If there are parallels, there are also differences with Western European civilisation.