New Asia Scholars and New Confucianism: Tang Chun-i, Mou Zongsan, and CUHK's Standing as a Humanist Stronghold

This is a factual archive entry for the Reference Section (06 People). No credibility badge is marked; individual claims carry academic or secondary sources. It explains a judgment often stated without elaboration: why CUHK is regarded as one of the twentieth century's great centres of Chinese humanistic scholarship. The core of the answer lies in the cohort of "New Confucian" scholars gathered at New Asia College. All scholars discussed are deceased and are named on the basis of published historical records. For the founding history of New Asia College, see 10-colleges/new-asia-college.md.

---

# 1. What "New Confucianism" Is

"New Confucianism" (New Confucianism / Modern Confucianism) is one of the most important currents in twentieth-century Chinese philosophy. According to the English Wikipedia entry "New Confucianism"^※, it is dedicated to reinterpreting and carrying forward the contemporary value of Confucian thought in the modern world — especially in the face of the impact of Western philosophy and science. It is neither wholesale Westernisation nor a clinging to tradition, but a path of modernisation that seeks to "ground itself in Confucianism while integrating Western learning."

The movement inherits the intellectual rupture of the late Qing and early Republican era. Its spiritual godfather generation is commonly traced back to Hsiung Shih-li (Xiong Shili) — according to the Chinese Wikipedia entry on Mou Zongsan^※, while studying at Peking University Mou was "most influenced by Hsiung Shih-li, shaken by the philosophical import of his New Treatise on Consciousness-Only (新唯識論), and the teacher–student bond lasted for decades." The leading figures of New Confucianism would later largely converge on New Asia College in Hong Kong — which is precisely the source of CUHK's weight in Chinese humanistic scholarship.

Academics commonly divide contemporary New Confucianism into three generations. According to Liu Shu-hsien, "The Trajectory of Modern New Confucian Development"^※ and the aforementioned New Confucianism entry:

It is clear, then, that New Asia College did more than simply bring together three core figures of the second-generation New Confucians. Its students (such as Yu Ying-shih) would themselves later join the ranks of the third generation. This chain of mentorship — from Hsiung Shih-li, through Tang, Mou, and Hsu, to Yu Ying-shih — spans three generations and more than half a century, and New Asia College is the one institutional node that runs through it all.

---

# 2. New Asia: The New Confucians' "Hong Kong Base"

Around 1949, a large number of scholars migrated south to Hong Kong. According to the English Wikipedia entry "New Asia College"^※ and the "Tang Chun-i" entry^※, the founding group of New Asia College was itself the core of the New Confucian camp:

According to the sources, this group "represented one of the most original and intellectually rigorous scholarly communities in twentieth-century Chinese philosophy." Yet the college's material conditions were extremely austere: at its founding it sheltered in a few cramped rooms on Kweilin Street in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon (for the full story of the Kweilin Street campus, see 10-colleges/new-asia-college.md). The density of scholarship and the starkness of daily life stood in sharp contrast — and it was precisely in such surroundings that New Asia College, during the 1950s and 1960s, effectively became the Hong Kong base of the New Confucian movement.

From college to university: In 1963, Chung Chi, New Asia, and United Colleges federated into The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and New Asia became a member college of CUHK. The New Asia scholars entered the CUHK system along with it — Tang Chun-i became the first Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Mou Zongsan would later head New Asia's philosophy department. In other words, the intellectual lineage of New Confucianism was injected directly into CUHK through New Asia.

---

# 3. Tang Chun-i: The Philosophical Soul of New Asia

Tang Chun-i (1909–1978) was the philosophical soul of New Asia College. According to the English Wikipedia entry "Tang Chun-i"^※ and the academic assessment published on Peking University's news site^※:

• Tang was born in Yibin, Sichuan, with ancestral roots in Wuhua, Guangdong. He was a Chinese philosopher and one of the principal representatives of New Confucianism;
• In 1949 he moved to Hong Kong, where he co-founded New Asia College with Ch'ien Mu, Tchang Pi-kai, and others, serving as Dean of Studies;
• When CUHK was established in 1963, he was appointed Chair Professor of Philosophy and elected the first Dean of the Faculty of Arts;
• His twin aims in running the college and pursuing scholarship, per the sources, were "to promote China's modernisation while safeguarding the value of Chinese tradition" — a concise expression of the New Confucian spirit.

Tang's scholarly project was to provide a philosophical justification for "the contemporary value of Chinese culture." According to the Peking University assessment, his body of work was prodigious: in his early years, The Establishment of Moral Self (1944), Experiences of Life, and Mind, Matter, and Human Life; in mid-career, The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture (1953); and in his later years, the Treatises on Original Chinese Philosophy series (1966–1975, four volumes covering introduction, original nature, original Way, and original teaching, among other topics) and his final systematic magnum opus, Life, Existence, and the Horizons of Mind (1977). According to the sources, in Life, Existence, and the Horizons of Mind he "constructed a system of idealist philosophy of the mind's transcendence, running through three orientations and nine horizons," establishing a school of his own within contemporary Chinese philosophy.

For New Asia, Tang was both founder and philosophical soul. He elevated the college's founding ideal from "preserving culture" to "arguing philosophically for the modern worth of Chinese culture," making New Asia not merely a teaching institution but a scholarly community that produced thought.

According to the CUHK official "Masters' Shadows" exhibition page on Tang Chun-i^※, after retiring from the CUHK philosophy department in 1974, he continued as Director of the New Asia Research Institute and taught part-time at National Taiwan University until he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1975. He died of the disease in Hong Kong on 2 February 1978, aged 70. In 1991, his complete works were issued in thirty volumes, and scholars universally recognise that this established his standing in modern Chinese humanistic philosophy.

---

# 4. Mou Zongsan: Reading Kant as "a Western Confucius"

Mou Zongsan (1909–1995) was one of the most influential philosophers in the New Confucian movement. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "Mou Zongsan"^※ and Chinese Wikipedia^※:

• Mou was born in Qixia, Shandong; he trained in the philosophy department of Peking University under Hsiung Shih-li, was deeply rooted in the classical Chinese philosophical tradition, and was known for harmonising Chinese and Western thought;
• In 1968 he became Chair of the philosophy department at New Asia College, CUHK; after retiring from CUHK in 1974 he taught at the New Asia Research Institute — a key carrier of the New Asia intellectual lineage within the CUHK system;
• According to the IEP, he made a famous claim: Kant was, in many ways, a Western Confucius — thereby bridging Kantian philosophy and the Confucian philosophy of mind-and-nature.

Mou's work represents one of the highest achievements of the New Confucian project of "reinterpreting Confucian doctrine with the rigour of Western philosophy." According to Chinese Wikipedia, his lifelong bibliography is vast, including Mind and Human Nature, Talents and Metaphysical Principles, Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy, Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself, On Perfect Goodness, and Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy, as well as a solo translation of Kant's three Critiques. Taking Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism and Kantian philosophy as his two poles, he built a vast philosophical system known as "moral metaphysics" — whose ambition was to show that the Chinese philosophy of mind-and-nature could open up the "intellectual intuition" that Kant could not. In his later years he received the 1983 Republic of China (Taiwan) Executive Yuan Culture Award and an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Hong Kong in 1987.

---

# 5. Tchang Pi-kai: New Asia's "Man of Action"

If Ch'ien Mu and Tang Chun-i were New Asia's "idealists," then Tchang Pi-kai (1905–1970) was the "man of action" who made their ideals real. According to the Baidu Baike entry on Tchang Pi-kai^※:

• Tchang studied at the University of Freiburg in Germany in his early years, earning a doctorate in economics; during the War of Resistance he held various posts, including full member of the Ministry of Education's Agricultural Education Committee, member of the Northwest College of Agriculture's administrative council, and Dean of the Agricultural College of Guizhou University;
• In 1949 he came to Hong Kong and co-founded New Asia College with Ch'ien Mu and Tang Chun-i; when the college was reorganised in March 1950, Ch'ien Mu became President and head of the Department of Literature and History, Tang Chun-i became Dean of Studies and head of the Philosophy Department, and Tchang Pi-kai became Dean of General Affairs and head of the Economics Department — a division of labour that formed a perfect triad of "administration — scholarship — operations";
• He subsequently served as head of the economics department, head of the journalism department, and dean of the School of Commerce and Social Sciences at New Asia College, teaching in Hong Kong for twenty years in all; he died in Hong Kong in 1970, aged 66.

According to the assessment of New Asia alumnus Sung Hsü-wu, quoted in the source, "Ch'ien and Tang were idealists; Tchang Pi-kai was the man of action." It was Tchang who single-handedly shouldered the petty but life-or-death administrative work of the Kweilin Street era — unpaid tuition, rent for the premises, teachers' salaries — and it was this that gave New Asia's philosophical and historical ideals the material basis to survive its founding years.

---

# 6. Hsu Fu-kuan: The Democratic Review and the Fourth Signatory of the Manifesto

Hsu Fu-kuan (1904–1982) was another heavyweight of the second-generation New Confucians and one of the four co-signatories of the 1958 Manifesto. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry on Hsu Fu-kuan^※:

• Hsu's original name was Ping-ch'ang; his courtesy name was Fo-kuan. In 1943 he called on Hsiung Shih-li at Pei-pei, Chongqing, and the two became teacher and student; Hsiung Shih-li changed his name to "Fu-kuan" ("re-viewing") — a renaming that closely mirrors Mou Zongsan's account of being "most influenced by Hsiung Shih-li," for both men came from Hsiung's school;
• In May 1949 he founded the political commentary journal The Democratic Review in Hong Kong and served as its publisher; the journal became the most important platform for modern New Confucianism in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s — including the 1958 Manifesto, which first appeared in its January 1958 issue;
• In 1969, at Tang Chun-i's invitation, he came to Hong Kong as Visiting Professor at New Asia College, CUHK, Professor and supervisor at the New Asia Research Institute, and concurrently Research Fellow of CUHK's Institute of Chinese Studies; in 1973 he helped found New Asia Middle School;
• His major works include A History of Chinese Theories of Human Nature, The Chinese Spirit of Art, and A History of Han Dynasty Thought; equally at home in intellectual-historical textual criticism and political commentary, he is regarded as the "most this-worldly" of the New Confucians;
• In 1980, while in Taiwan for an international sinology conference, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer; he died at National Taiwan University Hospital on 1 April 1982.

Hsu formally landed at New Asia a full decade later than Tang and Mou, but his Democratic Review had given the New Confucians a voice as early as 1949, and through the New Asia Research Institute and CUHK's Institute of Chinese Studies he carried that bond into his final years.

---

# 7. The 1958 Manifesto: New Confucianism Speaks to the World

The single most emblematic collective act of the New Asia scholars in intellectual history was the programmatic document of 1958. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry "A Manifesto on the Reappraisal of Chinese Culture"^※ and the English Wikipedia entry^※:

• Its full title is A Manifesto on the Reappraisal of Chinese Culture: Our Joint Understanding of the Sinological Study and the Future of Chinese Culture and World Culture; it was drafted by Tang Chun-i and revised repeatedly by Carsun Chang, Mou Zongsan, and Hsu Fu-kuan;
• It was co-signed in the names of all four and published in the January 1958 issue of The Democratic Review; in academic circles it is commonly known as the "New Confucian Manifesto";
• The origin, per the sources: in 1957, while visiting the United States, Tang Chun-i discussed with Carsun Chang how Western scholars studying Chinese culture were "frequently in error"; they proposed issuing a joint statement to correct Western academia's prejudices about Chinese culture;
• During drafting, Hsu Fu-kuan proposed revisions urging that those elements of the Chinese cultural spirit "compatible with democratic politics" be drawn out and articulated — a suggestion Tang accepted.

Of the four co-signatories, Tang and Mou had the deepest ties to New Asia; Hsu Fu-kuan (1904–1982), another New Confucian heavyweight, had also taught in Hong Kong. According to the sources, the Manifesto "marked the true rise of overseas New Confucianism and signified that the modern transformation of Chinese Confucianism had entered a new phase," and is regarded as a watershed in modern Confucian thought.

The weight of the Manifesto: it binds the New Asia scholars — Tang and Mou above all — directly to a thought-document of world influence. A college born in cramped rooms on Kweilin Street, perpetually short of funds, nevertheless had as its core members the drafter and co-signatories of a manifesto setting out the contemporary value of Chinese culture to the whole world. That is among the hardest evidence of CUHK's standing as a humanistic stronghold.

---

# 8. The New Asia Research Institute: The Institutional Vessel of the New Confucian Lineage

The scholarly inheritance of the New Asia scholars was not confined to the college lecture hall; it had a dedicated institutional vessel — the New Asia Research Institute. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry on the New Asia Research Institute^※:

• The Institute was founded in autumn 1953 by Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i, Tchang Pi-kai, and other scholars who had come south; it began as an affiliated research body of New Asia College, with the stated mission of "teaching and researching Chinese humanistic learning, so as to preserve and advance Chinese culture," specialising in the three broad fields of Chinese literature, history, and philosophy;
• When CUHK was founded in 1963, the Institute entered the University along with the College; but on 15 August 1974, the Institute formally left the CUHK system, transferring to the "New Asia Education and Culture Foundation" as an independent scholarly body outside the University, and it still shares premises with New Asia Middle School to this day;
• Its successive directors have been, in order: Ch'ien Mu (1953–1964), Wu Chun-sheng (1964–1968), Tang Chun-i (1968–1978), Yen Keng-wang (acting), Sun Kuo-tung, Ch'üan Han-sheng, Ch'en Tso-shun, Li Tu, Ch'en Chih-ch'eng, Liao Po-yuan, and Lau Chor-wah (incumbent).

The Institute's trajectory is a miniature of the New Confucian lineage's path of "entering the establishment, then leaving it": born in the College's founding years, it joined CUHK with New Asia, then in 1974 — the very year Tang Chun-i retired from CUHK and took over as its director — it left the University and returned to its origins as a private scholarly body. This also explains why Tang's title in his later years remained "Director of the New Asia Research Institute" rather than a CUHK professorship: it was the choice by which the New Confucian scholars kept the scholarly flame alive, straddling the line between inside and outside the establishment.

---

# 9. Ch'ien Mu: A Master Historian and His Departure

The other pillar of New Asia was the historian Ch'ien Mu. According to published historical records, Ch'ien came to Hong Kong after the fall of the Nationalist government in 1949 and, with Tang Chun-i, Tchang Pi-kai, and others, founded the Asia College of Arts and Commerce in Hong Kong; in autumn 1950 the school moved into its new premises on Kweilin Street in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, and was formally named "New Asia College," with Ch'ien as its first President. His Outlines of National History (《國史大綱》), written during the War of Resistance and designated by the then Ministry of Education as the national university textbook, is the most celebrated work of his career.

Ch'ien's relations with New Asia and CUHK were not smooth throughout. According to published accounts, after CUHK was founded, Ch'ien had reservations about such matters as the shrinking of college autonomy under the federal system, and gradually formed the intention to leave; in June 1965 he resigned as President of New Asia College, ending a sixteen-year career of higher education in Hong Kong (the divergence between Ch'ien and the first Vice-Chancellor over educational philosophy is a matter of university governance; see 13-governance-and-reform/chien-mu-li-choh-ming-founding-clash.md). After stepping down he devoted his remaining energies to the five-volume New Studies on Chu Hsi (《朱子新學案》), leaving another landmark work in the study of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism.

Ch'ien left his post in 1965, but the decade-plus he spent alongside Tang Chun-i and Mou Zongsan at New Asia had already forged the College into a high ground of Chinese humanistic scholarship. That lineage continued through his students — among them Yu Ying-shih, a first-batch graduate of the Department of History and Literature, who would become a historian of international renown (see notable-alumni.md).

---

# 10. Why This Established CUHK's Standing as a Humanist Stronghold

Once the relationship between these scholars and CUHK is set out in order, the judgment that "CUHK is a stronghold of Chinese humanistic scholarship" acquires a concrete basis:

1. A cradle of intellectual currents: the Hong Kong base of New Confucianism, one of the most important currents in twentieth-century Chinese philosophy, was New Asia College (later incorporated into CUHK);
2. A gathering of masters: Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i, Mou Zongsan, Hsu Fu-kuan, Tchang Pi-kai, and other recognised masters or key figures taught side by side in the same college — a concentration of scholarly talent that is extremely rare;
3. Entry into the university system: these scholars did not merely lecture at a college; through the 1963 federation they substantively entered CUHK's academic structure (Tang as first Dean of Arts, Mou heading New Asia's philosophy department);
4. World impact of their thought: documents such as A Manifesto on the Reappraisal of Chinese Culture carried the influence of the New Asia scholars beyond the campus and into the world history of ideas;
5. Institutionalised continuity: the New Asia Research Institute has operated continuously since 1953 for more than seventy years, serving as the concrete vehicle for these scholars' intellectual legacy, and the chain of mentorship extends from the second generation (Tang, Mou, Hsu) to the third (such as first-batch New Asia graduate Yu Ying-shih).

CUHK often describes itself as a place where "the humanities flourish." If those words are to be made good, the New Confucian scholars of New Asia are the firmest foundation: they made CUHK not merely a university "with Chinese in its name," but an institution that genuinely inherited and advanced the lifeblood of Chinese humanistic learning. Together with the Christian humanist tradition of Chung Chi College (see 10-colleges/chung-chi-college.md), this humanistic character constitutes the fundamental temperament that distinguishes CUHK from purely technological or purely commercial institutions.

Related reading: In-depth archive on New Asia College (including the austere founding on Kweilin Street), The clash of visions between Ch'ien Mu and the first Vice-Chancellor, Notable alumni (including Yu Ying-shih), Overview of top scholars.

---