This article completes a three-part series on Daoism, Stoicism, and the ethics of power. It should be read together with the previous essays on Daoism as restraint and Stoicism as endurance. The previous two   articles  examined Daoism and Stoicism separately as civilizational responses to systemic crisis. Daoism was analyzed as an ethics of restraint emerging against the bureaucratic and militarized state of Warring States China. Stoicism was examined as an ethics of enduran

This article is the first part of a three-part series on Daoism, Stoicism, and their comparative relevance for modern societies. The present study focuses exclusively on Daoism as a civilizational response to systemic crisis. The second article will examine Stoicism as a parallel Western ethics of endurance under imperial power. The third will offer a systematic philosophical comparison of these two traditions in relation to contemporary capitalism, artificial intelligence, a

China did not enter the 21st century as a newcomer to science and technology. It returned. China’s present confrontation with the West over semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and digital sovereignty is not simply a rivalry between latecomer and incumbent. It reflects  a much longer civilizational history  of technical power, institutional coordination, and state-directed knowledge production . No Western thinker did more to restore this depth of memory, and no one unset