Statecraft, Practical Learning, and the Order of Family and State: A Literature Review of Scholarship on Lü Kun’s Thought in the Late Ming

This report offers a systematic review of the development of Lü Kun studies based on 135 CNKI-indexed publications directly related to Lü Kun. The report reveals that existing scholarship on Lü Kun has been conducted mainly around five major themes: people-centered thought, economic thought, the xiangjia鄉甲 system, Neo-Confucian thought, and women’s instruction. Within these areas, scholars have developed different interpretations of such key issues as the meaning of junping均平 in socioeconomic life, the nature of the xiangjia system, whether Lü Kun should be regarded as an anti–Neo-Confucian thinker, and the complex coexistence of discipline and sympathy in his writings on women. Overall, Lü Kun studies have developed a relatively clear thematic structure, but the field remains somewhat fragmented, and a more integrated interpretive framework is still needed.