Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity

Hui, Wang; Karl, Rebecca E.

doi:10.1215/9780822381150-006

Cited by 18 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…For Chinese intellectuals to re-examine China's questions in a historical perspective of globalization and the historical conditions of China's pursuit of modernity, a very urgent historical task, they must transcend long-standing China-West, tradition-modernity dichotomies. 27 Wang Hui's problematique and methodology echo other New Leftists from the early period, including a shared reaction to Fukushima's 'end of history'. In 'Question of modernity', Wang stated, 'The last decade of the 20th century was a historical turning point.…”

Section: The Rise Of the New Left: The 'Anti-modernity' 'Liberal Left'mentioning

confidence: 93%

The recasting of Chinese socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000

2018

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In post-Mao China, a group of Chinese intellectuals who formed what became the New Left (新左派) sought to renew socialism in China in a context of globalization and the rise of social inequalities they associated with neo-liberalism. As they saw it, China’s market reform and opening to the world had not brought greater equality and prosperity for all Chinese citizens. As part of China Information’s research dialogue on the intellectual public sphere in China, this article provides a historical survey of the development of the contemporary Chinese New Left, exploring the range of ideas that characterized this intellectual movement. It takes as its focus four of the most prominent New Left figures and their positions in the ongoing debate about China’s future: Wang Shaoguang, Cui Zhiyuan, Wang Hui, and Gan Yang.

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Section: The Rise Of the New Left: The 'Anti-modernity' 'Liberal Left'mentioning

confidence: 93%

The recasting of Chinese socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000

2018

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“…Instead, it was a manifestation of a larger issue, illuminating the deep-seated anxiety of the Maoist regime about its ideal socialist subject’s modern legacies. Wang Hui and Cai Xiang, among other scholars, have demonstrated that China’s revolutionary modernity, for all its antagonism toward bourgeois capitalist modernity, carried within itself traces of its nemesis: its relentless drive for modernization, progress and the future, its sociopolitical egalitarianism, and its valorization of consciousness and action as the constituents of the Maoist version of what Marx called “new-fangled men” (Wang, 1998; Cai, 2016: 6–7; Li, 2012). The appropriation of the progressive, emancipatory, and humanist impulses of modernity within Mao’s vision of modernization helped the revolutionary state establish legitimacy and achieve its national goals, but it also generated many contradictions and conflicts.…”

Section: Hopes and Uncertainties In The New Socialist Subjectmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Write a Diary in Mao’s New China: Guidebooks in the Crafting of Socialist Subjectivities

Windscript

2020

Modern China

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The Maoist regime has conventionally been understood as a totalitarian apparatus hostile to the individual. Yet the mass dictatorship also saw the proliferation of guidebooks on how to write a diary. This article is a pioneering exploration of these didactic texts, situating them within a longer Chinese tradition of popular subjectivation. A close reading of the guidebooks in light of their Republican predecessors suggests that the regime simultaneously anticipated the individual’s role as revolutionary agent of change and viewed it with trepidation. Prescribing paradigmatic frameworks for constructing socialist subjectivities, the manuals propagated journal-keeping as a political routine by which to shape the writer’s life and selfhood. Central in these teachings was the desire to mobilize yet monopolize the individual’s conscious agency. At once empowering and constraining, the “how-to” books rendered creative self-reflexivity indispensable—albeit dangerous—to the Maoist agenda, revealing a deep-seated anxiety of the state about socialism’s modern legacies.

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“…As a matter of fact, China's modernity is a result of its efforts to resist the invasion of Western modernity. That's why Wang Hui (1998) insightfully characterizes this process as a kind of anti-modern modernity which involves "a critique and reconceptualization of modernity" (p. 15). Due to the needs of historical situations, China has refused to follow the dictates of Western countries in the process of modernizing itself.…”

Section: Dewesternization and A Road With Chinese Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges facing China and harmony as a state strategy

2015

Cultural Dynamics

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After its defeat in the Opium Wars, China was drawn into the orbit of Western influence. Since then, dewesternization has always been one of the hotly debated topics among Chinese intellectuals and politicians. With the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, China's economic take-off was almost instant due to its low-cost labor, rich resources, and the government's firm resolution to modernize. The booming of a market economy with Chinese characteristics can be quoted as a success story of China's dewesternization project. However, while enjoying the benefits of its attempts to modernize itself, China also begins to encounter the dark side of modernity. Problems like environmental deterioration, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and food safety are causing anxieties among Chinese people. In order to cope with the detrimental effects of the neo-liberal doctrines, harmony was put forward as a state strategy. Ostensibly disinterested, harmony aims at the well-being, happiness, and welfare of all. However, while harmony can serve as a national strategy to ameliorate the fermenting social discontent in China, it may also be a lofty ideal to attract, unite, and inspire people in other parts of the world. According to the spirit of harmony, different nations can pursue the well-being of their own people in their own ways which is in accordance with the notion of pluriversality as proposed by decolonial thinkers. Besides analyzing the social, economic, and political significance of harmony both within China and abroad, this essay also attempts to address the theoretical problems posed by harmony, if it is to be considered a productive ideal in this globalized world.

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Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

The recasting of Chinese socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000

The recasting of Chinese socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000

How to Write a Diary in Mao’s New China: Guidebooks in the Crafting of Socialist Subjectivities

Challenges facing China and harmony as a state strategy

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