Other important members of the New Confucian Movement include Xu's two friends and professorial colleagues who also studied with Xiong Shili: Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi.

Hsu's father taught at a private school established for village children who showed academic promise and could sit the imperial examinations to become scholar officials.

Trusted by Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, Xu was sent to Yan'an to discuss Nationalist and Communist cooperation against the invading Japanese.

After leaving the army, Xu then took various teaching positions, published a scholarly magazine, and then involved himself in politics, working as an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek until 1946.

Regarding this manifesto, Xinzhong Yao states: "The first effort in reviving Confucianism in the 1950s was a document drawn up by Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, Zhang Junmai and Xu Fuguan and published on the first day of 1958, entitled 'A Declaration of Chinese Culture to the Scholars of the World' (wei zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan 为中国文化敬告世界人士宣言).

The sense of anxiety leads Chinese tradition to value self-discovery and moral virtue rather the pursuit of knowledge in the external world.

[6] Respectively, Xu provides the examples of ancient Greek culture pursuing knowledge as a leisure activity leading to the development of science and technology, while people in the Zhou dynasty stresses on self-reliance and autonomy of oneself and thus leading to the creation of virtue based moral systems: "During the Zhou dynasty (1459–249 BC), the preoccupation with earthly matters had started: the spirit of self-conscience was beginning to work and those people developed clear will and purpose.

[6] Although this might suggest a hedonistic approach for discovering one's own moral subjectivity, Xu maintains that “bodily recognition” involves the use of reflective reasoning and the reduction of sensual desires.

[9] However, Xu also stresses that one must engage in a “tracing-back bodily experiencing” (zhui tiyan) process to achieve moral perfection and character transformation.

[10] Specifically, Xu examined early Chinese aesthetic implication of Zhuangzi and thus believed that perfection of art is essential in dissolving sensual desires and allowing subjectivity to emerge.

Xu claims that this state of satisfaction is the learning technique of the dao, where perception and thinking ceases and the spirit of the movement freely moves wherever it wants.

[11] Thus, similarly, Xu compares this notion of technique in Zhuangzi to gongfu or “bodily recognition,” in which one gains greater autonomy by overcoming sensual desires and allowing one's own subjectivity to emerge.