Thomas A. Metzger

Senior Fellow
Biography: 

Thomas A. Metzger was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1990 to 2005. He taught at the University of California, San Diego, from 1970 to 1990. Metzger was born in 1933 and obtained a PhD from Harvard University in 1967.

In both English and Chinese, his publications concern China's intellectual and institutional history, policy issues pertaining to China and Taiwan, and contemporary political philosophy. They include The Internal Organization of Ch'ing Bureaucracy: Legal, Normative, and Communication Aspects (1973), Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Political Culture (1977), A Cloud across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today (2005), The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel: Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures (2012), and The Confucian Source of Chinese Modernity: Essays on Chinese Intellectual and Institutional History (forthcoming).

He has held visiting professorships at National Taiwan Normal University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, Wuhan University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He gave the 1994 Ch'ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture at New Asia College and the Chinese University of Hong Kong; in 2001, he was appointed adviser to the Department of History at Tsing-hua University.

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Recent Commentary

The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel: Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures

by Thomas A. Metzgervia The Chinese University Press
Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel opens up a new way of pursuing the critical development of political philosophy in today’s intercultural intellectual arena.

David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Analysis and Commentary

Letter: Open Societies, Their Enemies and Multiculturalism

by Thomas A. Metzgervia Wall Street Journal
Monday, February 14, 2011

British Prime Minister David Cameron's excellent call for a "muscular liberalism" involves important philosophical difficulties going back to the lack of logic in Karl Popper's concept of "The Open Society and Its Enemies..."

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The Dragon Next Door

by Thomas A. Metzgervia Hoover Digest
Monday, October 30, 2006

How China and the United States can learn to become good neighbors—and why they must. By Thomas A. Metzger.

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Enigma in Beijing

by Thomas A. Metzgervia Hoover Digest
Saturday, April 30, 2005

China may have embraced capitalism with enormous zeal—but it remains unlikely to embrace American-style democracy anytime soon. By Thomas A. Metzger.

Collision Course?

by Thomas A. Metzgervia Hoover Digest
Friday, July 30, 2004

Politicians and intellectuals in Washington and Beijing view the world in radically different ways. Is a showdown inevitable? By Thomas A. Metzger.

The Problem of Chinese Nationalism

by Ramon H. Myers, Thomas A. Metzgervia Hoover Digest
Thursday, April 30, 1998

Its economy thriving, its military growing, will China embark on an expansionist foreign policy? Hoover fellows Thomas A. Metzger and Ramon H. Myers argue that the Chinese are far too realistic for that—and have been for more than a thousand years.