The Essentials of Governance

In the eighth century, Wu Jing selected exchanges between Emperor Taizong and his ministers that he deemed key to good governance. This collection of dialogues has been used for the education of emperors, political elites and general readers ever since, and is a standard reference work in East Asian political thought. Consisting of ten volumes, subdivided into forty topics, The Essentials of Governance addresses core themes of Chinese thinking about the politics of power, from the body politic, presenting and receiving criticism, recruitment, the education of the imperial clan, political virtues and vices, to cultural policy, agriculture, law, taxation, border policy, and how to avoid disaster and dynastic fall. Presented with introductory commentary that offers insights into its historical context and global reception, this accessible and reliable translation brings together ten scholars of Chinese intellectual history to offer a nuanced edition that preserves the organisation, tone and flow of the original.

Hilde De Weerdt is Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University. She has authored and edited books on Chinese political culture and intellectual history including Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1276) (2007), Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China (2015), Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800–1600 (2020), and Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print – China, Tenth-Fourteenth Centuries (2014).

Glen Dudbridge (1938–2017) was Shaw Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford from 1989–2005, Honorary Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1996, and President of the European Association for Chinese Studies from 1998 to 2002. A pioneering scholar of traditional Chinese literature, he published works on The Hsi-yu chi, the legend of Miao-shan and the tale of Li Wa including Books, Tales and Vernacular Culture: Selected Papers on China (2005) and A Portrait of Five Dynasties China: From the Memoirs of Wang Renyu 880–956 (2013).

Gabe van Beijeren is Lecturer at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies at Leiden University where he teaches courses in Classical Chinese and on Chinese history, philosophy and religion. His research focuses on Tang history, in particular the structuring of Tang historical texts as narratives and the rhetorical effects of narratives.