Prof. Sreemati Chakrabarti (Institute of Chinese Studies New Delhi), Prof. Shih Chih-yu (National Taiwan University), Prof. Sabaree Mitra (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Dr. Pahi Saikia (IIT Guwahati), Dr. Chiranjib Sinha (Visva Bharati University)

The notion of “authoritarian resilience”, designed to explain how, by institutionalizing and professionalizing political control, the CCP seems to have nullified the expectation that civil society will rise to democratize the regime, reflects a libertarian anxiety about any alternative cosmology. The talk attempts to present a critical translation of democracy between Chinese & Western thought. In addition, a relational lens sensitizes the way in which the population & its leaders are related & explains why Confucian leaders care about being benevolent even without a power-limiting autonomous society. Specifically, a comparison of the social contract theory and the analogy of a “natural (or heavenly) contract” is intended to critique the imagined dichotomy between the state & society in libertarian China studies. The critical translation as well as the comparative critique reveals a cyclical view of history that neither romanticizes nor demonizes democracy, authoritarianism, or China.