 William de Bary, one of the most influential Western scholars of Neo-Confucianism, has said an important “trouble with Confucianism” is that it imposed tremendous moral demands on the Confucian superior person (junzi) without providing the political power to fulfill them. The superior person shoulders the responsibility of cultivating humane monarchs and fashioning social and political institutions that work for the public weal, but Confucians are also committed to a system that gives superior people very little leverage with which to accomplish these herculean tasks. They deprive themselves of this leverage in various ways, some of them obvious (Confucianism embraces powerful and largely unchecked monarchical government) and some of them subtle. One of the ways of undermining Confucians’ own power is by refusing to pander to specific constituencies or factions, standing on the side of the right and the public good rather than with allies or friends of convenience. Their weakness, de Bary argues, is