 Several questions are central to the teachings and debates that make up Chinese social and political thought, among which the issue of how to sustain “order (zhi)”—often understood more particularly as “harmony (he)”—is the most basic. To what degree should we rely on institutions (and of what kinds?), and to what degree is human leadership crucial? What sorts of roles, relationships, or hierarchies should structure our societies, and how are they justified? Can they be challenged or changed? Insofar as society is divided into rulers and ruled, what are the responsibilities that each owes to the other, and why? We will see that social and political topics routinely connect up with other aspects of Chinese philosophy—for example, answers to some of the questions just raised lead to further ethical, epistemic, or metaphysical questions—but for the most part it is still possible to make sense of social and political thought in its own terms.