Starting from the late nineteenth century, one can observe an increasing influence of concepts related to the idea of ‘society’ in China. In this period, ideas of ‘society’ and ‘the social’ tended to be future oriented all over the world. Moreover, they typically were tied to the experience of a fast-paced world characterized by painful historical ruptures, and China was no exception. This is not to say that all discourses surrounding the idea of society in this period were radically progressivist and iconoclastic. But even intellectual and political positions which may be loosely grouped under general markers such as ‘traditionalism’ emphasized the necessity of altering long-established patterns when reflecting upon society. Hence during the first decades of the twentieth century almost all significant interpretations of society defined the concept as a project, and the concept was semantically closely related to other ideas such as modernity, newness or change.

Visions of Society in China

In the early 1900s, most opinion-leading and decision-making circles in China shared the idea that it was necessary to find adequate social forms and political models in a rapidly changing environment. Since the concept of society was seen as a central part in an enormous transformation, it was debated in conjunction with a plethora of fundamental questions that were being raised about China and the future world at large.