Original post (April 15, 2011): Joseph Chan, of HKU's Department of Politics and Public Administration, has organized a mini-workshop on Confucian Political Philosophy to be held 29 April 2011 (at 2 pm)  in the PPA dept library. The speakers will be Joseph himself and Daniel A. Bell, of Tsinghua (Qinghua) University, along with four commentators: Ci Jiwei and Fan Ruiping, on Joseph's paper, and P. J. Ivanhoe and myself, on Daniel's. Joseph's topic is “Interplay between ideal and nonideal thinking in early Confucian political thought: A reconstruction and application," while Daniel's is “Confucianism and nationalism: A reconciliation.” I'm sure we'll have some lively discussion.

UPDATE (July 26, 2012): Daniel Bell has published several articles in popular media recently whose content overlaps the paper I commented on back in April 2011. So I think it worthwhile to post the full text of my remarks here.