Enlightenment Under Autocracy: The Origins of Liberalism in China

Abstract

This paper examines how liberal ideas can emerge and exert political influence within autocratic settings by studying the diffusion of Wang Yangming’s phi- losophy in late imperial China. Using a dataset of over 24,000 historical texts from 1000 to 1900, we trace the spread of Yangming’s core tenets—–innate moral knowledge, personal responsibility, and the unity of thought and action—– principles that emphasized individual moral autonomy and challenged hierarchical authority. We construct two main measures of diffusion based on the frequency of key concepts and the number of associated authors, and introduce an alterna- tive semantic similarity measure comparing local texts to Yangming’s writings. A difference-in-differences design shows that his ideas rose sharply after 1500, par- ticularly in regions where public lectures were held. To identify causal effects on political behavior, we instrument for exposure to Yangming’s philosophy using geographic proximity to public lecture sites. We find that greater exposure to his philosophy significantly increased the likelihood that a prefecture produced reformist leaders in the Donglin Movement (1604—1627). These findings suggest that liberal principles can take root through moral philosophy, and that their dif- fusion can generate measurable political consequences even in autocratic regimes.