The Limits of the State

As I construct this essay to honor one of my teachers, Charles Hucker, I think back to two little red books that graced my brick and board bookshelves in an Ann Arbor married student's apartment. The most important of the two red books in the long run was not Mao's handbook for creating good socialist citizens, but Charles Hucker's The Traditional Chinese State in Ming Times (1368–1644). I did not truly appreciate my teacher's talent for synthesizing vast quantities of information, so evident in this small, information-packed volume, until I tackled similar tasks myself. Indeed some of the questions Hucker raised in his book about Chinese political culture and institutions have informed my work since graduate school. I would like to think that while Hucker might not agree with all of the conclusions I reach in this essay, he would appreciate the importance of the questions I raise

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