Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mencius, born Meng Ke in the state of Zou, was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who lived around 371 to 289 BC. He is called the Second Sage to reflect his traditional esteem relative to Confucius, whose fourth generation of disciples he belonged to.
Mencius held that human nature is innately righteous and humane. He argued that bad environments corrupt the will without proving the will was evil to begin with, and that the four beginnings of humanity, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom are as natural to people as their four limbs.
Meng Mu, Mencius's mother, moved their household three times to find a suitable environment for her son's upbringing, first away from a cemetery, then away from a market, finally settling beside a school where Mencius began to study. The story gave Chinese culture a lasting idiom about the importance of a child's environment.
Mencius argued that citizens may legitimately overthrow a ruler who ignores the people's needs and rules harshly, because such a person is no longer a true ruler. He placed the common citizens above the ruler in social importance and viewed the king as a steward obligated to act benevolently before expecting loyalty.
Mencius supported free trade, low tax rates, no taxes on imports, and a mostly hands-off government approach to the marketplace. He favored progressive property taxes and argued that resources should be treated as abundant and harvested according to natural cycles of replenishment.
Francois Noel published the first full European edition of the Mencius at Prague in 1711. His edition appeared shortly after the Chinese Rites controversy was decided against the Jesuits, but it circulated mainly in central and eastern Europe and did not gain wide influence beyond that region.