Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice: A Chinese Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Global Perspective. Edited by Zhibin Xie, Pauline Kollontai, and Sebastian Kim. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2020. Pp. 239. $149.99 (cloth); $149.99 (paper); $109.00 (digital). ISBN: 9789811550805.

It does not take too long reading the news to see that US–China relations are not exactly at a high (or even a normal low). From their tensions over trade and technology, to their clashes over Xinjiang that spilled over to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the United States and China have repeatedly shown that they are not just geopolitical rivals, but rivals with deep differences on the basics of justice and political life. In the heat of deep, cross-cultural differences like these, editors Zhibin Xie, Pauline Kollontai, and Sebastian Kim’s Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice: A Chinese Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Global Perspective provides timely and provocative insight on what it means for individuals and institutions “to do justice, and to love kindness” (Micah 6:8 [English Standard Version]) in China and worldwide. With contributions from fourteen scholars in numerous countries and disciplines, Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice wrestles with the concepts announced in its title by movingwell beyond the confines of Rawlsian ethics or Lockean political philosophy. Instead, the fourteen chapters challenge readers to think deeply about justice with tools from Confucian thought, Christian ethics, and the lived experiences of people in China, the United States, Australia, Israel, and beyond. Readers who chew on the book’s material patiently and charitably, will find themselves richly rewarded. The book begins by exploring a Confucian conception of social justice. As Yunping Wang explains in chapter 1, a Confucian take on social justice would start from inherently relational ideas of human nature, virtue, and the good life (13). Rather than conjure up independent individuals controlling their own destinies without outside interference, a Confucian notion of the good life envisions relational beings living together in harmony, fulfilling the familial and societal roles they owe one another (12–13). The reason, then, for a ruler to provide materially for the ruled—that is, to bring about what somemight call social justice—is not that the ruler must fulfill the individual rights of his subjects (13); rather, it is that a ruler should be benevolent, and the virtue of benevolence does not accordwith letting one’s community die from starvation (13). Focusing further on virtue, Yong Li (chapter 2) affirms the argument that Confucianism can ground human rights in humanmoral potential—a potential that differentiates humans