Author: Shadi Bartsch

As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand today’s China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpreting—or is it misinterpreting?—the Greek classics.

In “Plato Goes to China,” Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support China’s political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of China’s own Confucian classical tradition.

In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the 17th century.

Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science.