A new CHINAFILE article: “What Does China Mean by ‘Rule of Law’? It’s more Confucianism than constitutionalism.” In my view the worries expressed in this article show all the more clearly why it is important to make clear that modern Confucianism needs to be responsive to the conditions of modernity: seeing law as independent from governmental authority is not “Western,” but good modern (progressive) Confucianism.
I agree. Probably separation of legal, administrative, and judicial powers is of western origin, at least, historically. Surely, however, Confucians have an internal reason to have law conditionally independent from the governmental authority.