Compare to Compete: Wang Huning’s Political Thought and the Twenty-first-century Geopolitics of Concepts

Wang Huning 王沪宁 (1955-) is widely considered as the most powerful intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. A former professor of Political Science and prolific author of studies in comparative politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wang rose to the prominent position of advisor to three different presidents, eventually joining the Standing Committee of the Politburo. His influential role as a seemingly ‘hidden ruler of China’ (Patapan and Wang 2018) has stimulated a growing attention on his figure and his production, especially among political commentators and political scientists. This paper intends to approach Wang Huning as a global thinker, focusing on his contribution to the de-mythization of Western democracy and concurrent conceptualization of a ‘Chinese democracy’. A special attention will be placed on Wang’s usage and theorization of ‘comparative conceptual history’ as a powerful framework for the construction of an anti-hegemonic (or anti-Western) geopolitical agenda in the 21st century.