Huang Zongxi

Huang Zongxi was a Ming loyalist scholar-official who contributed to the armed resistance against the Manchu invasion, and who later wrote significant critiques of government.

Huang's father was executed in 1626 on the orders of eunuch Wei Zhongxian, contributing to his later critiques of the power of the eunuchs.

Following the fall of Beijing in 1644, Huang fought alongside Ming loyalists in southeast China, retiring to his home province of Zhejiang in 1649, where he then devoted himself to the compilation of political critiques, and biographies of major Ming figures. In his writings, he invoked the ideal government of the sage kings and advocated for the moral force of virtuous administrators. He also argued for a more decentralized governmental structure, in which less power was lodged in the emperor's person, and more in virtuous local and regional administrators.

References

• Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, Second Edition, W.W. Norton & Co. (1999), 61-62.