ABSTRACT
Two fairly standard features of a liberal political order are a realm of public activity, including organized nonpolitical activity, not dominated by the state (in effect, civil society), and regular and open political competition (in effect, competition between political parties). Chinese exposure to images of Western society around the turn of the century stimulated an intense interest in the question of the proper relation of citizen/subject to state, and the scope of proper autonomous individual or group activity on behalf of the nation. Those Western voluntary associations were discussed in the context of such cosmic processes as qun, and the inexorable advance of the principle of the common interest is an indicator of the importance attached to them, and helps explain the excitement they aroused.
