Guy Salvatore Alitto () is an American academic in the History and East Asian Languages and Civilization Departments at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He is known in China for revitalizing the scholarship on Chinese Confucian scholar

Liang Shuming Liang Shuming (, Wade-Giles ''Liang Shu-ming''; sometimes ''Liang Sou-ming'', October 18, 1893 – June 23, 1988), born Liang Huanding (), courtesy name Shouming (), was a Chinese philosopher, politician, and writer in the Rural Reconstruc ...

. He is also often quoted in popular Chinese media sources. He is best known in America for his scholarship and for his role as translator for the first official Chinese delegations to the United States after Richard Nixon's first visits to China.

Career

Alitto received his Ph.D. at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

in 1975 in Chinese history. His advisors were

Benjamin I. Schwartz Benjamin Isadore Schwartz (December 12, 1916 – November 14, 1999) was an American political scientist and sinologist who wrote on a wide range of topics in Chinese politics and intellectual history. He taught at Harvard his entire career, sta ...

and John Fairbank. Alitto did not immediately find a faculty position in the United States. Instead, he took a part-time role in Donghai University in Taiwan. His first book (published by University of California Press in 1979), ''The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity'', won the

John K. Fairbank Prize The John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History is offered annually for an outstanding book in the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, substantially after 1800. It honors the late John K. F ...

. In it, Alitto studies Liang as a forward looking Confucian who put his thought into action. Liang, along with James Yen and

Tao Xingzhi Tao Xingzhi (; October 18, 1891 – July 25, 1946), was a renowned Chinese educator and reformer in the Republic of China mainland era. He studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, and returned to China to champion progressive education ...

, was a leader in the

Rural Reconstruction Movement The Rural Reconstruction Movement was started in China in the 1920s by Y.C. James Yen, Liang Shuming and others to revive the Chinese village. They strove for a middle way, independent of the Nationalist government but in competition with the ra ...

of the 1920s and 1930s. His Rural Reconstruction project in

Zouping County Zouping () is a county-level city of Shandong province. The population in 2020 was 774,517. Geography The city is located on the northern edge of the mountainous central portion of the province. It is under the administration of the prefecture-le ...

, Shandong, drew national attention but was destroyed in the Japanese Invasion of 1937. The Yale historian

Jonathan Spence Jonathan Dermot Spence (11 August 1936 – 25 December 2021) was a British-American historian, Sinology, sinologist, and author specialised in History of China, Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 199 ...

wrote in the ''New York Times'' "Sunday Book Review" that it was an "engrossing study" in which Liang was "lucky to have found a biographer who takes him seriously." Alitto was one of the first foreign academicians allowed into rural China and observed Zouping between 1987 and 1991. He continued visiting the area throughout the 80s and 90s, and it is reported in

China Daily ''China Daily'' ( zh, s=中国日报, p=Zhōngguó Rìbào) is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Overview ''China Daily'' has the widest print circulation of any ...

that the academic became a regular figure in the area.

Influence in China

Alitto is best known in China for revitalizing scholarship into

with his ''The Last Confucian''. Before this book, Liang had been "consigned to the dustbin of history." Alitto was widely popularized in the China Central TV episode ''The Last Confucian and Me''. Alitto is often cited in Chinese national media sources. Examples include Alitto's support of Chinese jurisdiction in the

Senkaku Islands dispute The Senkaku Islands dispute, or Diaoyu Islands dispute, is a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, the Diaoyu Islands in China, and Tiaoyutai Islands in Taiwan. Aside from a 1945 to 19 ...

, his statement that the

Falun Gong Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a new religious movement founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near t ...

"represents more of a rupture than a continuity with Chinese religious traditions," or his interest in rural areas of China.

Select publications

* --, ed. ''Contemporary Confucianism in Thought and Action''. Berlin: Springer Berlin, 2015. * "Ershiyi shiji de shijiewenhua hui yanhuazhi rujiahua de wenhua ma?" (Will 21st century culture evolve into a Confucianized culture?) in

Dushu ''Dushu'' (, ''Reading'' in Chinese) is a monthly Chinese literary magazine which has great influence on Chinese intellectuals. It is based in Beijing. History The journal was first published in April 1979 with its lead article entitled "No Forbi ...

(Beijing 1996). * "Zhongguo wenhua xingcheng de yaosu ji qi tezheng" (The essential elements in the formation of Chinese culture and their special features) in ''Guo Tingyi xiansheng jiuzhi danchen jinian lunwenji'' (Taipei 1995). * ''世界范围内的反现代化思潮 Shijie fanweinei de fanxiandaihua sichao: lun wenhua shouchengzhiyi'' (Anti-modernization thought trends in a world-wide perspective: on cultural conservatism) (Guiyang: Guizhou Provincial Press 1991). * * . * “Zouping in Historical Perspective” (Chap. 2), in Oi, Jean C. and Goldstein M, eds. ''Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County''. Stanford, Ca. Stanford University Press. 2018 * 最后的儒家：梁漱溟与中国现代化的两难. 大学教育与研究出版社 (Beijing: Foreign Studies University Teaching and Research Press, 2014. Alitto's own translation of ''The Last Confucian: Liang Shuming and the Dilemma of Chinese Modernity.'' *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Alitto, Guy Living people Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University of Chicago faculty American sinologists Historians of China American translators Chinese–English translators Year of birth missing (living people)