Recently, I came across a Chinese article by Xue Zong Zhang (张雪忠),Why is Hu Shi (a famous Chinese intellect and author in 20th century; he is regarded as a promoter of liberalism not only in his time but beyond through his writings) a Half Baked Liberal?, on the “Baodiao Forum” (an intellectual  forum devoted to discussions on Chinese governance and Chinese Sovereignty issues such as the Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands) . Mr. Zhang criticized Hu Shi not really understanding liberalism, but the article written in a Q&A format did not leave a clear description of liberalism and how it should be promoted. Personally, I find myself constantly swinging between liberalism and conservatism when facing different issues. The above article with its fuzzy arguments on true liberalism has triggered my long time desire to define liberalism and its workability in real world. This desire is confined to define liberalism from basic philosophical principles and how it may be practiced under different real world conditions and political systems. The following is my attempt of doing an intellectual exercise to define liberalism and the constraints the real world will bring to limit liberalism. These constraints working against liberalism, for convenience, may be characterized by the term, conservatism, which often restricts and works against liberalism.
 
From dictionaries, liberalism has the following definitions: