20
person(s) is amenable to government as the way of the land is amenable to
growing vegetation. Thus [their?] government is [as] an easily-growing rush.‖
Therefore, the creation of government lies in person(s); selecting person(s) lies in
character; the cultivation of one‘s own individual character proceeds on the basis
of the Way; and the cultivation of the Way is grounded in benevolence (仁)
(Doctrine of the Mean, Ch. 19).
10
As indicated by my frequent use of brackets, this Chinese founding narrative is rich with
ambiguity, much of it traceable to the lack of number, gender, or identifying articles (such as
―the‖ or ―this‖) in classical Chinese. Zhang‘s own invocation exploits this acrobatic versatility,
even as he anchors his invocation of ―doing government lies in people‖ firmly within the
received meaning of the text. Combined with his reading of Rousseau, Zhang‘s allusions to this
neo-Confucian text suggest both a way of situating action and a way of generating it that relies
exclusively neither on the raw capacity of autonomous, pre-political individuals nor on pre-
existing constituents of an established political community.
The traditional (and, for the imperial civil exams, authoritative) meaning of the Doctrine
narrative, as interpreted by the twelfth century neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, holds that once
individuals of King Wen and King Wu‘s extraordinary stature exist, then government can be
established. ―The creation of government‖ lies more specifically for Zhu in ―the selection of
persons‖ for government service, which interpolates into the original text a specific capacity for
the sage kings Wen and Wu (Zhu 1983 reprint, 28). These kings are not only sagely founders,
but also, necessarily Zhu thinks, discriminating judges of men. The ―people‖ of which the
10
This translation is my own, but I draw heavily on Wang Yunwu‘s annotated Chinese edition (1977) and James
Legge‘s English translation (Legge 1971 (1893)).
Convention