ABSTRACT
The revival of Confucianism has become entangled with cultural nationalism in the People's Republic of China. This chapter argues that, although the concepts of tianxia and guo in early Confucian texts have meanings and raise issues that are relevant to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In some discussions they also render problematic the choice between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and any attempt at reconciling them in modernizing Confucianism, because Confucian understanding of human association in their ethical-political ideal is very different from that which drives the contest between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Nationalism assumes that there are "peoples" or "nations"—usually understood as ethnic groups with common culture and possibly but not necessarily common descent—each of whom has a right to self-determination, and often also a right to sovereignty in their traditional homeland. Early Chinese texts use tianxia to refer to actual political rule which, even for legendary sage kings, extended over only a limited area and not literally the whole world.
