Community Compact By Wang Yang Summary

The Community Compact for Southern Ganzhou is an excerpt written by Wang Yangming in the 1520’s that served the purpose of producing a shared responsibility of the creation of an ideal society between officials and citizens. Yangming, using Zhu Xi’s community compact as a model, attempted to influence every member of the community and urged them to pledge to act in a moral fashion and police their own behavior. During this time, the Confucian scholar served as an official and general whose responsibility was to subdue rebels and outlaws in southern China. His goal was to encourage formal outlaws, and all other citizens, to become more mindful of their behavior and to become better versions of themselves. Yangming’s implementations of Confucian ideals represent his attempt to reform the local government. Yangming notes that in the past, “new citizens have often deserted their own clans, rebelled against their own community, and gone in all directions to
The town was destroyed and many of the residents were sold into slavery and various rebellions occurred in the following years. Nevertheless, the blame cannot all be placed on the community members alone. According to Yangming, “the government failed the citizens by not properly teaching them in addition to a lack of families regulating themselves or exerting good influence on their fellow villagers.” This compact also shows Yangming’s fondness of Confucian ideals by giving community members a list of guidelines they must follow in order to improve society as a whole. By focusing on the ideals of Confucianism, the author thought citizens would become “good.” Confucianism exists to educate people to be self-motivated and to enable people to assume their responsibilities, which cultivates a better self and a harmonious society, which is