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Although the people may use force, as the Chinese did when they founded the republic, their
actions cannot be confounded with coercion simpliciter because the capacities that make them
possible are always innate and personal—expressed in their ―heart-and-mind‖—and do not
disappear as the force behind coercion disappears (ZQJ 34-5).
The social contract solves part of the mass and elite paradox for Zhang: as a widely
diffuse capacity for action, ―rights‖ understood as liangzhi are something all—not only elites—
possess and can use efficaciously to transform their society and to establish their government.
Political action, far from being circular and bound up in already-existing institutions, truncates
the moment individuals activate their innate capacities. But Zhang has not yet solved the
original founding paradox: even if these innate capacities, and their successful exercise, is within
the purview of all, the great unanswered question is then why they have not yet been activated.
Who are the prime movers, if any? And how can their limited interventions as individuals have
any real effect on collective, shared environments? The answer may lie in an alternative
founding narrative from China‘s past, one premised more on transmission across time than on
instantaneous political creation.
Another Chinese Founding Narrative: “Creating government lies in people”
In an essay promisingly titled ―The Foundations of Government‖ (《政本》), Zhang
anticipates his social contract vocabulary by insisting that the ―root‖ of government lies in people
and their talent. The essay inaugurated Zhang‘s new journal of public opinion, The Tiger 《甲
Convention