 The last years of the Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1911, were marked by a flourishing of political thought under the twin stimuli of domestic challenges and encounters with foreign political philosophies. The Russian Revolution of 1917 added further fuel to the fire, at a time when the nascent Republic of China was struggling with both internal and external threats. The nature and sources of political authority once again were topics of debate. Many now took it for granted that the goal was some sort of “democracy” in which the people were (at least in principle) sovereign. But who counted as “the people”, how they were to be led or represented, and how collective versus individual goals were to be balanced all were up for grabs. At a broader level, there was a debate between those who felt the answer lay in one or another “ism”—that is, an all-encompassing ideology like Marxism—and those who favored working more pragmatically, via institution building, on one “problem” at a time. A few decades later, after the founding of the People’s Republic, similar issues were addressed in the contrast between “Red” (ideologically and morally pure) and “expert” (possessing technical expertise). In various ways, these twentieth-century debates resonated with classical and Neo-Confucian contention between insitutional and character-centered theories of governance. Were morally advanced individuals the key to an ideal society? Or should objective standards of success, coupled with objective institutions, be society’s political foundation? In cases of conflict, which had priority?