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Allow students who study subjects with zero national security implication (early modern English literature or musicology)
Ban students who study subjects with very sensitive national security implications
For the rest, enter into a contract not to return to China for 10 years since first entry (similarly enforced as political refugees; but let the penalty be a lifelong ban from entering the US)Has there been a single-volume edition of the Four Books of Confucianism? It would be best to proceed the way Chinese schoolboys used to, starting from “The Great Learning”, probably the easiest text from the time period, then the Analects, then the Mencius, and finally the metaphysical “The Doctrine of the Mean”.
There is also a significant absence of Legalism in the posts above. If I were to edit a reader of pre-Qin philosophy, apart from the four books, I would present: Zhuangzi, Han Fei, excerpts from the Liji and the Lüshi Chunqiu, plus some fun stories from Zuozhuan or Zhanguoce or Sima Qian for context. I would not recommend Laozi to anyone without at least some language background, simply because even the best philologists don’t quite know what he is saying. Same goes with Mozi, except his prose is even drier.
If we can loosen the time constraint to include the Han, I’d also include selections from Chunqiu Fanlu and Huainanzi (parts relevant to what the reader has been familiar with), and culminating in the “Discourse on Salt and Iron”, which Tanner knows I am a fan of. I believe the last is the most important work of political philosophy in Chinese history.
The contempt for the past generation(s) is shared by the right and the left, to whom everything written in the ’80s was problematic in one way or another.
I think this is overall a solid list: personally I’m also an admirer of Austen, Borges and Rimbaud, skeptical of Albert Camus and Oscar Wilde, and firmly on Team Tolstoy against Team Dostoevsky. But I am dismayed by him calling Bertolt Brecht “a nonentity” – I don’t know if this is a blanket judgment on authors he is not totally familiar with.