The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism

This book is about how Yan Fu introduced the Chinese intellectual world to the liberalism of John Stuart Mill by partly grasping Mill’s ideas, partly misunderstanding and projecting onto them indegenous Chinese values, and partly criticizing or resisting them. Rather than bending Western liberalism to the purposes of Chinese nationalism. Yan initiated a distinctively Chinese liberal tradition that became a major strand of China’s modern political culture.