Documented Study and Practice in Chinese History

Throughout Chinese history, there are ample records on persuasive communication practices at different times, especially those in the Pre-Chin Autumn-Spring and Warring States period (770-250BCD). According to the history, this was a time where persuaders (shuike meishi) traveled from state to state, recommending themselves to the ruler or the lord of the land. Aided by eloquent talks and persuasive speeches, they presented to the rulers their ideas on political strategization. Youshui (traveling around to persuade) and jinjian (offering opinions to the ruler to do the right) have since become part of the long tradition in Chinese politics. In spite of the prevalence of such practice, there is no available documentation on the study of this practice as a scholarly subject. It defies the common sense that in the over two thousand years of Chinese civilization, no scholars had paid attention to this most basic of all communication practice. In fact, ancient scholars (up to 280AD) had devoted extensive and intensive study to the practice of persuasion, although it was not a direct subject of inquiry, but exclusively studied as part of some other subjects, such as politics and government, or philosophy. Indeed, one of the ancient schools of Chinese philosophy, known as mingbian (nam