Siji Chen, Jie Li

Jie Li

Volume 21, Issue 4, 2025

Cross-cultural comparison, Construction of Legitimacy, Declaration of Independence, Announcement to the People of All Directions for Punishing the Barbarian Qing by Divine Command.

This study compares the 18th-century American the Declaration of Independence and the 19th-century Chinese Taiping Heavenly Kingdom’s Announcement to the People of All Directions for Punishing the Barbarian Qing by Divine Command. Drawing on a cross-cultural research framework and combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, the study conducts a comparison from four dimensions: textual analysis, argumentative logic, historical context, and discursive strategies to explore the similarities and differences in constructing legitimacy within cross-cultural contexts. The study finds that both are political declarations of resistance against authority, sharing a similar argumentative logic in legitimacy construction: From building legitimacy premises to criticizing existing regimes and calling for action. Meanwhile, they exhibit significant differences in sources of power, discursive strategies, and visions of power. These differences stem from the cultural divides between Puritan and Confucian civilizations and reflect the unique responses of different civilizations to legitimacy during the process of modern transformation. The research provides a new perspective for understanding the logic of legitimacy argumentation in cross-cultural political practices and reveals the dialectical relationship between local traditions and universal values in legitimacy construction.

© 2025, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license