Adherent to the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, Qiu Jun’s magnum opus demonstrates the nature of Neo-Confucian learning, which is a knowledge practice rooted in the Confucian Classics, corroborated by orthodox histories, and oriented to statecraft – a mixture of humanist antiquarianism (or Confucian Classicism) and pragmatism. Preoccupied with the Confucian qualities and the piety towards Confucian institutions and traditions, Neo-Confucian scholars were concerned with China’s secular constitutional structure beyond moral self-cultivation. In their socio-politically oriented programs, the Classics were presumed to be instrumental, and histories useful, for maintaining the Confucian institutions and traditions that are reciprocal to Chinese identity and qualities.