The workshop was lectured by professor Qi-xiong Zhang on “discussion by ruling without governance: the difference of international order principle between Occident and Orient”. He considered that different cultural value produced the different ruling way. In the Oriental world, for example, the Chinese order principle would be shown as the following words – suzerains ruling without governance, vassals autonomous in ban on politic and religions. On the contrary, the Occidentals put emphases on the control of the land and the substantial reign and possession of the sovereignty. As a result, intensive conflicts between the Occident and the Orient came into being when western power expanded to the east. Since ancient times China had been a vast and populated country; hence, she took different measures that suited the local circumstances toward the different races and nations such as Mongolian, Tibetan and Korean ethnic groups. Moreover, the aforementioned was stem from the disparity between close and distant relatives, the Han people and non-Han peoples (barbarians). However, ruling without governance did not mean no-rule but active home rule; namely, via the rights of autonomy in domestic affairs the Emperors were able to maintain the flexible tolerate policy. Accordingly, in the period of the Qing Dynasty the territory of China should consist of the directly governed prefectures and counties, incompletely governed Mongol and Tibet, and those places ruled without governance. Furthermore, the adjacent states like Korea, Japan and Vietnam were also influenced by the above thought and they took it as a social standard toward China and other countries. Nevertheless, in the end of the Qing Dynasty the Great Powers invaded China with international law and the strong destructive weapons to challenge the original order of China. For example, Japan queried the dominion of the Qing court over Taiwan with an excuse that there were no local administration and taxation while the similar situations occurred in Korea, Okinawa, Vietnam and Tibet as well. Under these severe conditions the Qing court had no choice but to implement the western international law and to control Mongol and Tibet more extensively.

Listening to professor Zhang’s presentation, professor Whei-ming Chou thought that “ruling without governance” was an innovative concept and he was curious that in ancient China whether there were someone that presented a complete discourse of it. Besides, professor Guang-da Zhang reminded that from the end of the World War II the concept of declaring sovereignty by the actual occupation has become gradually inapplicable. Additionally, professor Jin-sheng Tao signed with emotion on what he saw in the U.S. He discovered that until now the Chinese history textbooks in America still exist the content categorizing the 18 Chinese provinces as the governed districts while without the northeastern area, Mongolian and Tibetan areas; also, American stood for the fact that in the past Chinese lacked of the concept of territory bounders. However, professor Tao contradicted the above words with the historical evidence. Professor Min-shu Liao made an additional remark that sometimes Chinese demarcated the bounders according to the races but not longitude and latitude such as the establishment of “karun” (the border sentry post) in Xinjiang. Nonetheless, the western powers viewed those karun not as the borders of the Qing; what’s worse, the ministers of the Qing court failed to well command the remote administration and often resulted in the dispossession of the land and the forfeiture of sovereignty. In addition, professors Liao and Chang-yi Tong will present their own research topics in the next workshop.