A book symposium was recently published in the Journal of Social and Political Philosophy about Shuchen Xiang’s book Chinese Cosmopolitanism. It comprised comments by David C. Kang, Byung-ho Lee and Huaiyu Wang and a response from the author. The issue is here; direct links to the comments and response, as well as summaries of a couple of the comments, follow below.
Direct links to comments
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jspp.2025.0115
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jspp.2025.0116
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jspp.2025.0117
Direct link to response from author:
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jspp.2025.0118
The distinguished IR scholar, David C. Kang writes:
Shuchen Xiang’s Chinese Cosmopolitanism is a wonderful book. Deeply researched and deeply provocative, Xiang argues that there is an inherent racism in the West’s academic views of itself and that of Chinese philosophy. […] In conclusion, Xiang’s book is important for the social sciences and the humanities. Xiang has taken a courageous stand by pointing out the diversity of philosophical ideas across the globe. More than that, her critiques of the Western academy are sure to be met with resistance, if not hostility. But in this instance, hopefully, Xiang’s book will be widely read and provide a path forward across various scholarly disciplines. Truly global and international scholarship that explains the bases of state formation across time and space has only begun and, slowly, it appears there is more room for this type of argument than ever before.
The Korean sociologist Byung-Ho Lee writes:
The characteristics of Chinese civilisation and thought have been widely studied. However, comparatively little research has focused on what distinguishes the Chinese cosmopolitan mentalité from the worldview of other civilisations, especially the Western ideal derived from its Graeco-Christian tradition. This is largely because positioning China’s place in world history and identifying Chinese characteristics require comparative perspectives in history and philosophy, and it is almost impossible to master both. The publication of Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Xiang 2023a), which efficaciously accomplishes such a challenging intellectual task, is a great boon not just to global Sinology but also to comparative philosophy, comparative and historical sociology and other related fields.
