 Positive arguments for rights based on the goal of promoting the common good emerged in Chinese thought soon after it encountered the idea of rights from the West in the nineteenth century. For example, it was argued that individuals ought to have a range of freedom of expression and action so that they can contribute more richly and originally to the welfare of Chinese society. Chinese thinkers such as Liang Qichao and Japanese thinkers such as Kato affirmed both the legitimacy of the individual’s desires and the necessity to harmonize individual and group desires (see Angle and Svensson, 2001; Angle, 2002). Emphasis on the former would be the relatively new element in a contemporary Confucianism, but 1B6 of the Mencius provides a striking anticipation of this element. Here King Xuan tells Mencius that his ability to be a true king for his people is thwarted by his desires for wealth and for sex. Mencius replies that if the King accords the common people the same privileges for wealth and sex, there would be no problem in becoming a true king. Xunzi (see section 2.6) conceives of morality as a way of harmonizing the desires of individuals so that destructive conflict is replaced by productive harmony, and this gives the satisfaction of desire a central role in his version of Confucian ethics. Later on in the tradition, Dai Zhen defended the legitimacy of self-interested desire as long as it is tempered by a proper concern for others (see Tiwald, 2011a; and section 2.8). Rosemont (1991, 2004) has argued that “second-generation”“positive” rights to education and economic security are better grounded in the Chinese tradition than they have been in the West. Such grounding might have very deep roots in Confucian thought, specifically what Chan calls the “service” conception of government, or the idea that government finds its only warrant in protecting and advancing the welfare of the people.