"Chinese Just War Ethics: Ancient Thought, Contemporary Explications, and Comparative Analysis"

War and peace is such an important issue for humankind that we need to make use of the richness of global cultural resources for our collaborative moral thinking about this topic.

China’s military has long been the object of worldwide China watch. This research focuses on Chinese military ethics in general and just war ethics in particular by investigating the rich ideas as contained mainly in "The Seven Military Classics" (wujing qishu) and its commentaries. The key questions are: only under what circumstances should a government initiate the legitimate use of military force? What are the moral constraints on the way that such force is legitimately employed? This research further seeks to analyze how contemporary military force, both in mainland China and in Taiwan, interpret and appropriate the traditional military ethics in this set of books. Finally, after scrutinizing the nuances of contemporary Western (mainly American) just war ethics, this research critically assesses the relative merits and shortcomings of the Chinese just war ethics vis-à-vis American just war ethics.