ABSTRACT
The Confucian Empire was overthrown by the republican revolution; the ideals of democracy were introduced to China, misused, abused and cast aside. The comparison between the proverbial expression of the power and authority of the old Empire and the specific claims to similar authority made for the new Communist Republic reveals both the basic similarity of several systems and their more superficial differences. The Communists live in a wider world, and in a post-revolutionary age. The political revolution which changed China from a monarchy to a republic and then from a Nationalist to a Communist authoritarian State was paralleled by a literary and cultural revolution which had an equally profound effect on thought. The Chinese language is written in an ideographic script, of great antiquity. Independence of time and independence of sound had the effect on Chinese style of rendering it extremely concise, lapidary and, to the uneducated, obscure.
