This volume is intended to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue and to
contribute to a better understanding of institutions and the law as central
to the discourse on China in comparative law and in the history of ideas
and cultural history. It tries to achieve this by assuming both a European
and a Chinese perspective and moving from eighteenth-century perceptions
and representations to the reform initiatives and theoretical discussions that
continue to this day. The final result is hopefully an enhanced awareness of
the extremely important role that Sino-Western encounters and comparisons
have played, not only at a cultural level in global history over several centuries,
but also in today’s global politics and economics in which we are coping
daily with concrete, pressing issues of reciprocal understanding in our efforts
to achieve an enduringly peaceful and fruitful coexistence.
