Idealized views of China were challenged by other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Montesquieu, who represented the aristocratic opposition to absolutism and saw China as an example of extreme despotism. These contrasting views on China in the early eighteenth century reflected conflicts between absolutist monarchs and the aristocracy. The idealized portrayal of China as a model for Europe, championed in Voltaire’s writings, gained ground with the rise of absolutist states. The debate about China and the dominance of the idealizing view among early Enlightenment thinkers eventually gave way to widespread disdain for China in the late Enlightenment, seen in the works of Diderot, Kant, Hegel, and others. This late eighteenth-century contempt for China was linked to Europe’s growing confidence stemming from renewed economic and geopolitical expansion, as well as the rise of the bourgeoisie as the new patrons of intellectual pursuits. Under the idea of Europe as a progressive continent, all ancient civilizations – including China and Christianity – were attacked as stagnant, superstitious, and obstacles to human reason and progress.