On the morning of October 19, as autumn mist lifted from the Mayang River in Fujian province, nearly two hundred scholars from more than fifty countries boarded coaches bound for Kaoting Village in Jianyang District — the site where the Song Dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi established his final academy in 1192 and died in 1200. The field trip marked the close of the Fifth Kaoting Forum (考亭论坛), formally titled the Conference on Zhu Xi Studies and Dialogue Among Diverse Civilizations, which had convened on October 17–18 in Nanping, Fujian.

The forum's institutional architecture makes its purpose plain: it was co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the International Confucian Association, and the Fujian Provincial Government, while the keynote session was chaired by the Standing Committee member and Publicity Department head of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee. That structure places the Kaoting Forum squarely within China's "Global Civilization Initiative" — a foreign-policy framework formally proposed in March 2023 as a philosophical counter to Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis — while its intellectual content reflects genuine and internationally credentialed scholarship on Neo-Confucian thought, AI ethics, and the governance of knowledge in a digital world.

What the Kaoting Forum Is — and What It Does

The Kaoting Forum series was inaugurated in December 2021. By its fifth edition, the event had achieved what its organizers described as a "qualitative leap" in both prestige and reach: the 2026 cohort drew scholars from across East Asia, Europe, and the Americas, including political philosopher Daniel A. Bell (贝淡宁) — formerly Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and now Chair of Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong — and Chen Lai (陈来), Director of the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and one of China's most eminent living authorities on Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, who holds simultaneous positions as Chair of the China Zhu Xi Studies Association and Vice Chairman of the International Confucian Association.

Neo-Confucianism (lǐxué, 理學, "the study of principle") — which Wikipedia describes as a moral, ethical, and metaphysical synthesis that Zhu Xi completed during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), drawing on earlier work by Zhou Dunyi and the Cheng brothers and integrating selected Buddhist and Taoist concepts into a rigorously Confucian framework. It became the official state ideology of China from the Song period through the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, and its influence spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for more than half a millennium. Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Four Books — the Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Analects, and Mencius — became the curriculum for China's imperial civil service examination from 1313 to 1905.

The forum's fifth-edition theme — "Comprehending Principle, Honoring Ritual, Knowledge and Action as One: Civilizational Dialogue and the Construction of Human Social Order" — formalized this intellectual ambition in political-philosophical language. Four parallel breakout panels ran alongside the plenary: one on the "Two Integrations" — the CCP's Two Integrations framework combining Marxist theory with classical Chinese culture, articulated by Xi Jinping in June 2023); one on Chinese wisdom for global governance; one on humanistic care in the era of artificial intelligence; and one on Zhu Xi cultural heritage and cross-strait exchange.

From Song Dynasty Epistemology to Algorithm Ethics

The panel on digital intelligence was the forum's most contemporarily pointed contribution. Professor Fang Xudong (方旭东) of East China Normal University — whose scholarly work spans Neo-Confucianism and practical ethics and who is a Fellow of Fudan University's Shanghai Institute for Research of Confucianism (confirmed on his ECNU faculty page) — offered a Zhu Xi-derived critique of uncritical AI adoption that has since circulated widely in Chinese academic press.

Fang's argument turned on Zhu Xi's distinction between tiānlǐ (heavenly principle / moral order) and rényù (human appetite / desire). For Zhu Xi, the moral task was to ensure that the controlling faculty of will — the zhǐ — remained sovereign over appetite and did not surrender judgment to convenience. "Using AI is not rényù," Fang argued. "Surrendering all power of judgment to the algorithm is rényù." To illustrate, he offered a deliberately domestic example: setting an air-conditioner to 61.7°F (16.5°C) when 78.8°F (26°C) is adequate and ecologically responsible is, in Zhu Xi's terms, allowing appetite to override principle. The capacity for autonomous moral judgment — the insistence that humans retain meaningful override — is, in this framework, not merely a preference but a philosophical obligation.

This argument intersects with a growing body of international scholarship. A 2023 conference at Hong Kong Baptist University — "Ethical and Social Issues in AI: East Asia and Beyond" — produced a volume (Social and Ethical Considerations of AI in East Asia and Beyond, Springer 2024) examining specifically Confucian and comparative AI ethics from Confucianist, Daoist, and Christian philosophical perspectives. Fang's Fifth Forum contribution extends that conversation by grounding it in the specific Zhu Xi framework of rényù and zhǐ, providing a named classical resource rather than a generic appeal to "Chinese values."

One Principle, Many Manifestations: A Philosophical Counter to Huntington

The forum's governance panel centered on Chen Lai's systematic engagement with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis — the 1993 argument, expanded in a 1996 book, that post-Cold War global conflicts would follow civilizational fault lines, with Western and Sinic civilizations as primary antagonists. Chen traced the thesis's intellectual genealogy, arguing that Huntington had extrapolated a framework originally shaped by Western-Islamic tensions into a universal theory of international relations, and that accumulated evidence had steadily undermined it.

Against this, Chen invoked the "Global Civilization Initiative" language that China formally proposed in March 2023: "advocates transcending civilizational estrangement through civilizational exchange, transcending civilizational conflict through civilizational mutual learning, and transcending civilizational superiority through civilizational inclusiveness." The philosophical basis Chen identified for this counter-framework was Zhu Xi's concept of lǐ yī fēn shū (理一分殊, "one principle, many manifestations") — the metaphysical claim that a single universal ordering principle underlies diverse forms of its expression. In diplomatic translation: universal values that necessarily manifest differently across cultural contexts, providing an alternative to both liberal universalism (which projects one cultural model) and hard relativism (which denies any shared ground).

Yang Zuhan (杨祖汉), a philosopher based in Taiwan and Chair of the Oriental Humanistic Academic Research Foundation, brought Kantian moral philosophy as a comparative lens to Zhu Xi's conception of the moral mind. Yang argued that Zhu Xi's distinctive contribution was giving full expression to moral rationality across the entire domain of human life — scholarship, friendship, filial piety, civic concern — and that every physical site Zhu Xi left behind therefore carries the impress of a life fully governed by principle. "What Zhu Xi left behind is not only his calligraphy, but his poetry, his conversations, his ways of learning, making friends, honoring his parents, and caring for his country," Yang observed, citing the historian Qian Mu's aphorism: "Before, there was Confucius; after, there was Zhu Xi." Yang's presence — as a Taiwanese scholar at a CCP-adjacent forum — also carried unstated political weight, illustrating one function of the forum's "cross-strait integration" panel theme.

The Korean scholar Choi Young-jin (崔英辰), Emeritus Professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul and a founding figure in Korean Zhu Xi studies, described Wuyishan as "a utopia for scholars where one can trace Zhu Xi's spiritual world." His framing captured something real about the forum's structural logic: the physical pilgrimage through heritage sites is not incidental tourism but a deliberate argument — that the philosophical tradition and the landscape that produced it are inseparable.

Daniel A. Bell, who has written extensively on Confucian-inspired "political meritocracy" as an alternative to liberal democracy, addressed the lǐ (礼, ritual propriety) tradition as theorized by Xunzi and developed by Zhu Xi, examining what political and social structures become possible when ritual propriety is understood as the constitutive mechanism of community rather than merely its decoration.

The plenary keynotes included a historical case study offered by Feng Jun (冯俊), former Deputy Director of the CPC Central Committee's Party History Research Office, on the 17th–18th-century Chinese Rites Controversy — the dispute between Jesuit missionaries and other Catholic orders over whether Confucian ancestor veneration was compatible with Christianity. Feng's argument was philosophically precise: both sides in the controversy fundamentally misread Zhu Xi's concept of lǐ (principle) — the Jesuits reading it as compatible with theism, the Dominicans reading it as atheism — and in doing so exported a distorted version of Neo-Confucianism to Enlightenment Europe, where Voltaire, Leibniz, and others constructed their "Sinophilia" on a misunderstanding. The contemporary lesson Feng drew: any credible international transmission of Zhu Xi thought requires "building a Chinese narrative and discourse system" rather than allowing Neo-Confucian ideas to be assimilated into pre-existing Western frameworks.

Li Wentang (李文堂), Vice-President of the Central Party School (National Academy of Governance), drew a direct genealogical line from Zhu Xi's gewu zhizhi (格物致知, "the investigation of things and extension of knowledge") to the CCP's foundational epistemological commitment to shíshì qiúshì (实事求是, "seeking truth from facts"). The argument — that Mao-era materialism had classical-philosophical antecedents in Song Dynasty epistemology — represents the "Two Integrations" thesis at its most philosophically specific.

A Landmark Dictionary, a Living Grove

Two events from the forum's first evening carried symbolic weight beyond their scholarly function.

The first was the launch of the Comprehensive Dictionary of Zhu Xi (《朱熹大辞典》), a multi-volume reference work prepared under the chief editorship of Zhang Liwen (张立文), Emeritus Distinguished Professor at Renmin University of China and one of the last scholars trained in classical Confucian textual methods before the Cultural Revolution. Zhang, 87, was unable to attend in person but transmitted a congratulatory video describing the dictionary as an achievement that would "promote Zhu Xi thought as a vehicle for world civilizational mutual learning." A scholarly reference work decades in preparation, the dictionary's appearance at this forum was described by participants as a landmark analogous in ambition to the great encyclopedic projects of the Song Dynasty itself.

The second was a collective tree-planting ceremony — scholars from more than a dozen countries planting trees in a grove designated the Neo-Confucian Grove (理学林). In Confucian symbolism, the gesture was layered: the grove as a living archive, growth as a model of education, shared labor as an enactment of the communal moral responsibility that Zhu Xi placed at the center of ethical life.

Walking the Sites: Four Counties, Eight Centuries

The October 19 heritage field study fanned across four districts of Nanping prefecture: Jianyang, Wuyishan, Jian'ou, and Zhenghe.

Kaoting Academy (考亭书院), in Kaoting Village, Jianyang, was the anchor stop. Zhu Xi moved here in 1192, past the age of sixty, and established what he initially called the "Bamboo Grove Hermitage," expanded and later renamed the "Cangzhou Hermitage." He died here in 1200. Emperor Lizong of the Song Dynasty conferred the Kaoting Academy plaque in 1244, and the site gave both its name and its intellectual lineage to the scholarly circle — Cai Yuanding, Huang Gan, Chen Chun — that became the "Kaoting School." The present rebuilt complex, which opened in 2019, received more than one million visitors in its first years. Its stone staircase is deliberately designed in three counted groups of steps — 49, 71, and 41 — marking three pivotal moments in Zhu Xi's educational biography: his restoration of White Deer Grotto Academy and codification of its Rules (which became the governance model for academies across East Asia) at age 49; his death at Kaoting at 71; and his founding of Hanquan Hermitage at 41, to honor his late mother.

Wang Ying (王鹰), Professor at Sichuan International Studies University, described an unexpected interior shift on entering the courtyard: "I came as a scholar conducting a survey. But when I stepped into this courtyard, faced with the thought that Zhu Xi left behind, I suddenly felt more like a humble student." He added that Zhu Xi's thought "is not confined to a specific era or geography — it carries universal meaning that transcends time and borders."

Hanquan Hermitage (寒泉精舍), in Jukou Township, Jianyang, holds a distinct biographical significance: it was the first academy Zhu Xi ever founded, built when he was 41 years old while in mourning for his mother, whose grave is on the hillside above. Here, in enforced withdrawal from official life, he began his serious work on the texts that would eventually form the Four Books with Collected Annotations — one of history's most consequential editorial decisions, shaping civil examinations in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for six centuries. The restored site now includes interactive digital installations where visitors can write Zhu Xi poetry on touchscreens and watch it rendered as graphic animation.

Tian Bingyu (田炳郁), Professor of Philosophy at Nanchang University, who had visited the site previously, remarked that the passage of time makes it the more urgent to think carefully about how to carry forward the academy tradition in new contexts: "The function changes, but the question remains."

Wuyi Hermitage (武夷精舍) — now administered as the Zhu Xi Garden (朱熹园) beneath the cliffs of Hidden Screen Peak in the fifth meander of the Wuyi Ravine — was built in 1183 after Zhu Xi's political exile. Here, in a community of scholars that at its height numbered in the hundreds, he completed and published in 1190 the Four Books with Collected Annotations. Wuyishan was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in December 1999; the UNESCO evaluation specifically designated it as "the cradle of Neo-Confucianism." In October, the site's osmanthus trees are in full flower.

Wu Jianshe (吴建设), researcher at the Ercheng Academy in Songxian County, Henan — a leading institution for the study of Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, whose "Luo Learning" (洛学) was the immediate predecessor of Zhu Xi's synthesis — used the visit to name the intellectual lineage plainly: "Zhu Xi was a student of Li Tong, who was himself a student of the disciples of the Cheng brothers. What we call Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism began in Henan and reached its culmination here in Nanping." He proposed extending the "Zhu Xi Road" (朱子之路) youth study program — now in its eighteenth year and having drawn nearly 30,000 participants from approximately 30 countries — to include Songxian, so future cohorts might trace the full "Cheng-Zhu Road."

At sites in Jian'ou and Zhenghe, scholars visited additional nodes of Zhu Xi's network. At the Zhenghe sites, the Zhu Xi Filial Piety Museum (朱子孝道馆) and the China White Tea Museum (中国白茶博物馆) were presented in an integrated cultural-tourism frame. Wang Shaosen (王绍森), Professor and inaugural Fujian Excellent Design Master at Xiamen University's College of Architecture and Civil Engineering, observed that Zhenghe's tea-culture identity offers a distinctive vehicle for developing the Zhu Xi narrative in that district.

Five Years, Five Forums: Heritage Infrastructure as Diplomatic Platform

The Kaoting Forum series has now established a stable institutional form over five editions since December 2021. The rotating of the field-study component across the full breadth of Zhu Xi heritage sites — Kaoting, Hanquan, Wuyi, and the lesser-known Jian'ou and Zhenghe clusters — means each cohort of scholars encounters not only ideas but places. The combination is the event's distinctive architecture: academic exchange grounded in physical encounter with the landscape that produced the tradition being debated.

Nanping municipality has in recent years pursued what officials describe as an "ecological-humanistic integration" policy, treating these sites not as separate monuments but as nodes of a single connected landscape, merged with national park protection around Wuyishan. The 2017 enactment of Nanping's Municipal Regulations on the Protection of Zhu Xi Cultural Relics — confirmed in the Xinhua wire release — provided the formal legal basis; the provincial-level Zhu Xi Cultural Ecology Reserve was approved for establishment at the end of 2023. More than 100 immovable cultural relics have been registered under Fujian's Zhu Xi heritage protection program.

Whether the forum's institutional architecture reinforces or constrains the intellectual work it hosts is a question that academic observers in and outside China are actively debating. What is not in question is that the Fifth Kaoting Forum assembled a genuinely international cohort of scholars to engage with an 800-year-old philosophical tradition that remains alive as both academic object and political resource. At the entrance to Kaoting Academy, participants gathered for a photograph beneath the 500-year-old stone archway. In the autumn light, the gateway framed what it has framed for centuries: a passage between the world of affairs and the world of learning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Zhu Xi and why do contemporary scholars consider his philosophy relevant?

Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was a Southern Song Dynasty philosopher who synthesized Confucian ethics, Buddhist metaphysics, and Taoist cosmology into what became Neo-Confucianism — the most systematic and influential philosophical tradition in Chinese history. His commentaries on the Four Books served as the curriculum for imperial civil service examinations from 1313 to 1905, shaping governance across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for six centuries. Contemporary scholars find his framework relevant for at least two reasons: his concept of lǐ yī fēn shū (one principle, many manifestations) provides a philosophical basis for cross-cultural dialogue that neither imposes a single universal model nor collapses into pure relativism; and his distinction between rényù (appetitive desire) and the sovereign will — which requires humans to govern, not simply follow, their appetites and impulses — has been applied by scholars at the Kaoting Forum to debates about whether humans should retain meaningful override authority over AI systems.

How is China deploying Neo-Confucian philosophy in international diplomacy?

China's "Global Civilization Initiative," formally proposed by Xi Jinping in March 2023, uses the philosophical vocabulary of civilizational diversity and mutual learning — directly resonant with Zhu Xi's lǐ yī fēn shū — as a counter to Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis, which China's scholars argue extrapolated a Western-Islamic tension analysis into an illegitimate universal framework. The Kaoting Forum, co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and chaired by CCP Fujian Publicity Department officials, institutionalizes this counter-narrative by convening international scholars around a UNESCO-designated heritage landscape. At the Fifth Forum, Tsinghua's Chen Lai directly engaged and rejected the Huntington framework, positioning Zhu Xi's philosophical resources as the intellectual basis for China's alternative vision of world order.

What is the significance of the heritage sites scholars visited in Nanping?

The sites form a biographical and intellectual map of Zhu Xi's life. Hanquan Hermitage (1171) was where he founded his first academy and began the Four Books project while mourning his mother. Wuyi Hermitage (1183) — now within the UNESCO World Heritage area — was where he completed and published the Four Books with Collected Annotations in 1190, a text whose adoption in civil examinations would prove one of the most consequential editorial decisions in world history. Kaoting Academy (1192) was where he spent his final years and died in 1200. Walking these sites in sequence is understood by participants not as tourism but as a physical argument: that philosophical traditions are inseparable from the landscapes, communities, and personal biographies that produced them.

What did the panel on AI and digital ethics actually argue?

Professor Fang Xudong of East China Normal University applied Zhu Xi's moral psychology to contemporary AI adoption, arguing that the key concept is not whether AI is used — which is neutral — but whether the user retains sovereign judgment. Zhu Xi's framework identifies rényù (disordered desire or appetite) as the failure mode in which the will surrenders its governing role. In Fang's application, setting an AI system to make decisions the user could and should make independently is precisely this kind of surrender: not a technological mistake but a moral one. This draws on a growing body of academic work — including a 2023 Hong Kong Baptist University conference volume on Confucian and comparative AI ethics — that explores classical Chinese philosophical resources as substantive, rather than merely decorative, contributions to the global AI ethics conversation.