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In this dissertation, I address a foundational problem in political theory: the conceptual and normative status of the state. While recent scholarship has revived interest in state theory, dominant models remain constrained by liberal, contractarian, and individualist assumptions. As a result, the state is often reduced to an instrument of government or abstracted as a symbolic container of legitimacy. I challenge these assumptions by developing a non-liberal theory of limited government grounded in Chinese political thought. I ask: Can Chinese political thought offer the resources to rethink the nature of the state and the normative foundations of limited government? Drawing on late Qing and early Republican thinkers such as Liang Qichao and Zhang Junmai, as well as classical Confucian and Daoist sources, I introduce a new conceptual framework: holistic dynamism. This framework reimagines the state as a concrete political person—holistic in structure, dynamic in function. Such a state is strong enough to resist elite capture and dismantle entrenched hierarchies of private power, yet flexible enough to preserve institutional autonomy and uphold individual integrity. My thesis is threefold: (1) that limited government need not be liberal or contractarian; (2) that Chinese political thought offers underutilized philosophical resources; and (3) that holistic dynamism provides a compelling model of non-liberal political agency. Methodologically, I employ comparative political theory as philosophical reconstruction, placing Chinese sources in close engagement with Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, Pettit, and Skinner. Chapter 1 introduces holistic dynamism as a theory of integrative, adaptive agency. Chapter 2 claims that the state is a real organismic person with judgment, continuity, and selfhood. Chapter 3 theorizes supreme authority as a form of sovereignty that reconciles monolithic unity with polycentric flexibility. Chapter 4 extends the theory globally by reviving Liang Qichao’s vision of a “cosmopolitan state” and developing a non-hegemonic model of world order grounded in the moral agency of reformed state-persons. I contribute to the revitalization of state theory and comparative political thought by showing that limited government can emerge from within the state’s organismic agency, and that democracy may reside in the structure and coherence of the state itself.