Zhang's interventions in the rule-by-man debate turn on two iconoclastic commitments. Both of them seem to efface the “political” element of his theory despite the usual ascription of Zhang to a simple fazhi (rule-by-law) position. First, he insists that individuals can effect broad transformations of Chinese society and politics, while rejecting those notions of virtue that in imperial Confucian discourse tied such individuals to cosmological patterns and assured their efficacy; second, he elaborates a role for institutions and their mutual interaction with individuals, while recognizing the utter absence of functioning institutions. Both commitments, as I explained in the previous chapter, undermine traditional, elite-controlled sources of political power and transformative change. They thus complement contemporary democratic political theories that see hope for change in the actions of ordinary citizens, rather than of social elites or other powerholders. Yet both commitments, by turning on the uncoordinated actions of individual citizens, also collude to produce an unusual reading of the political that starkly departs from the reliance of much democratic theory on collective action and the prior existence or memory of functional democratic institutions.

The chapters in the next section of the book separately consider the specific actions Zhang recommends – including the cultivation of self-awareness, the self-use of talent, and the practice of accommodation – and show how they do typically political work, such as initiating the non-tyrannical transformation of shared environments, negotiating the demands of others, confronting power imbalances, and according each person a place in a shared community.