Abstract
Liang Shuming's 梁漱溟 (1893–1988) Rural Reconstruction Movement was a twentieth-century instantiation of the gripping two-millennia-long struggle between Confucian aspirations and the requirements of a centralized bureaucracy. It might also be seen as the interminable competition between Confucian and Legalist ideals of governance. Liang's Rural Reconstruction or Local Self-government theory was heavily influenced by an historical exemplar of this ideological and institutional competition, the "Xiangyue 鄉約 (Village Covenant) of the Lü Family" ( "Lüshi xiangyue" 呂氏鄉約). This Northern Song-period experiment also inspired the design of Liang's uniquely innovative systems of "rural school cum government," i.e., xiangnong xuexiao 鄉農學校 (rural schools) and later xiangyue cunxue 鄉學村學 (township and village schools) that he established during the 1930s in Zouping county 鄒平縣, Shandong province.
Keywords
Liang Shuming, Confucianism, rural reform, Village Covenant, village compact, xiangyue, Zouping, rural reconstruction, cultural revival, Chinese cultural conservatism
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