On Zhang Jian's Wuzhongshan-Townlike Social Ideal

Zhang Jian, who was successful in initiating industry, started to construct his ideal New World in Nantong since the end of the Qing dynasty. The New World attracted much attentions from both internal and external world, and got a laudatory title of a fine example. The headstream of such a society designed by Zhang Jian was unexpectedly Wuzhongshan-town run by Tianzitai in the late Han dynasty. Zhang Jian turned it into his own village-community-ism and local autonomy. Zhang Jian added some new content from the West into his social ideal in pace with his further understanding of the overseas world, but he never gave up Tianzitai-like village-community-ism that he had held up as a criterion. Just because of being restricted by this social ideal, the modern autonomic society designed and managed by Zhang Jian was unable to realize democratization and nomocracy .The quasi-dictatorial autonomy stifled social vigor. With other factors being together, it influenced the economic foundation of the society and hindered the progress of the early modernization that had started in Nantong since the beginning of last century.