The Democracy and Equality Interpretation of Mencius in the Later Period of the Qing Dynasty

Mencius's conspicuous thought that the people are the most important thing and equality tendency received some kind of notice and development in the later period of the Qing Dynasty: 1. The debate between Mencius's skeptics and advocates that once occurred during the course of Mencius's entering the classics system of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty revived; 2. Mencius's thought that the people are the most important thing and equality tendency were sometimes interpreted as the Western idea of democracy and parliament system. However, Mencius's status of adhering to Confucianism and Mencius's status of being one Confucianism classic never changed. Therefore, Mencius cannot be the native classics support for the idea of democracy and its corresponding system, which has been introduced from the West. We call for a thinker's point of view toward tradition and classics, rather than an annotational one.