His new article, From Regal Way to Political Quietism: Zhu Quan, Disciplinary Communities, and Ming–Qing Daoism, is published in Late Imperial China Volume 46, Number 2, December 2025.
This article examines the shifting status of Daoism in late imperial China through evolving biographical portrayals of the Ming prince Zhu Quan. It identifies a conflict between "textualist" scholars, who redefined Daoism as a set of ancient philosophical texts, and a "ritualist" community that upheld its ritual and political potency. The analysis unfolds in three parts: analyzing Zhu Quan's own presentation of himself as a divine bureaucrat wielding Daoist-derived regal authority; exploring how late Ming scholars reappraised his life to redefine Daoism as political quietism; and finally, showing Zhu Quan's image as presented in official Qing historiography is the byproduct of this new theoretical synthesis, which did not envision Daoism as having a significant role in Qing politics or the Chinese sacrificial field. This article reveals that knowledge production was a contested field where competing "Daoisms" were weaponized in a fundamental struggle over the nature of kingship and political authority.
Bony Schachter is a Daoist studies scholar. His articles have appeared in top sinological journals, including T’oung Pao, Bulletin of SOAS, Monumenta Serica, and Daoism: Religion, History and Society.
Reading link：https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/pub/1/article/977479
| Research Units | Department of Chinese History and Culture |
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