Intellectual Discourse in Reform Era China

Intellectual Discourse in Reform Era China
Author: Giorgio Strafella
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2016-11-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315523434

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This book explores intellectual discourse in reform era China by analysing the so-called “debate on the spirit of the Humanities”, which occurred in the years 1993-95, and which is recognised by scholars as one of the most interesting, influential and important debates of the 1990s. This debate, in which Chinese intellectuals reflected on reform-era mass culture and on their role in society, was the first debate in China after the crackdown of 1989 and the launch of new economic reforms after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 “southern tour”. The book, drawing on a large corpus of texts and a wide range of individual positions, demonstrates how Chinese intellectuals, having to face the combination of political repression and economic liberalisation, conceptualised and reacted to both. The book reveals the scale and complexity of the debate, the nature of intellectual life in China, the status and relevance of intellectual voices in society, the divisions within the intellectual sphere as well as shared concepts and ideals, and how the key factors of political repression and economic liberalisation which remain central in China today were defined and articulated.

The Search for Modernity

The Search for Modernity
Author: Min Lin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 271
Release: 1999
Genre: China
ISBN: 9780333800232

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The post-Mao era has been one of the most important and exciting stages in the history of the People's Republic of China. The economic reforms instigated by Deng Xiaoping have brought about a remarkable degree of social transformation, creating the most liberal atmosphere China has witnessed since 1949. Over the last 15 years, Chinese intellectuals have actively participated in the re-construction of a new multi-dimensional intellectual discourse, generated from the complex interaction between intellectual ideas and social context. Virtually every major modern Western current of thought has exerted an impact on the development of this discourse, with Marxism even becoming the dominant official ideology. In The Search for Modernity, Min Lin looks at the changing relationship between Chinese intellectuals and society, and examines the role of Chinese intellectuals in the turbulent process of modernization, comparing them to their Western counterparts. Intellectuals in China are facing a period of confusion and uncertainty during this time of transition, and now more than ever, they are drawing intellectual inspiration from both the West and the changing Chinese reality.

Chinese Intellectuals Between State and Market

Chinese Intellectuals Between State and Market
Author: Edward X. Gu
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0415325978

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In the post-Mao era, China's intellectuals have had a degree of intellectual freedom in the last twenty year not experienced since the 1949 revolution. Although China remains a Lenninist party state whose intellectuals still cannot criticize the political leadership or party without impunity, its economy has moved to the market and its society is in contact with the international community. Whereas in the Mao Zedong era intellectuals, with few exceptions, obediently carried out Mao's orders and expounded Maoist doctrine, in the post-Mao era intellectual life has become pluralistic and complex. This edited volume highlights how Chinese intellectual activity has become more wide-ranging, more independent, more professionalized and more commercially oriented than ever before. The future impact of this activity on Chinese civil society is discussed as is the continually changing relationship between intellectuals and the party-state. With Contributions form China scholars living both within and outside China, this volume provides the first comprehensive description of China's intellectuals in the post-Mao era. It is a topic, which will appeal to scholars of China as well as those whose research interests lie in Asian cultural studies and intellectual history.

Uneven Modernity

Uneven Modernity
Author: Haomin Gong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2011-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0824860403

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Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong’s dynamic study of these paradoxes, or “unevenness,” provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of “uneven modernity” in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the “uneven developmentalism” that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period. Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li’s neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai’s filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age. Uneven Modernity makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible.

Political Thought and China’s Transformation

Political Thought and China’s Transformation
Author: H. Li
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2015-04-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137427817

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Since the late 1970s China has undergone a great transformation, during which time the country has witnessed an outpouring of competing schools of thought. This book analyzes the major schools of political thought redefining China's transformation and the role Chinese thinkers are playing in the post-Mao era.

A Social History of Maoist China

A Social History of Maoist China
Author: Felix Wemheuer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107123704

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This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

How China Escaped Shock Therapy
Author: Isabella M. Weber
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-05-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 042995395X

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China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization—but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

The China Model

The China Model
Author: Daniel A. Bell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2016-08-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400883482

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How China's political model could prove to be a viable alternative to Western democracy Westerners tend to divide the political world into "good" democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes. But the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” The China Model seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? Daniel Bell answers these questions and more. Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, Bell argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. He discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. Bell summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. A timely and original book that will stir up interest and debate, The China Model looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.

Chinese Democracy after Tiananmen

Chinese Democracy after Tiananmen
Author: Yijiang Ding
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774842105

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In 1989, most observers believed that China's political reform process had been violently short-circuited, but few would now dispute that China is in a very important transition. Central to this transition has been an extraordinary change in the formal intellectual conception of 'democracy.' In this book, Yijiang Ding presents a multi-dimensional picture of China at the political crossroads. Chinese Democracy looks at the significant change in the state-society relationship in contemporary China in three interrelated areas: intellectual, social, and cultural. Drawing heavily on recent Chinese scholarship, Ding shows that the emergent theory on the dualism of state and society is contemporaneous with a new cognitive and cultural appreciation of the people's independence from state authority. Is China moving toward liberal democracy? Does Western engagement with China contribute economically and politically to this shift? These are the questions at the heart of the book. Which are especially timely, given the recent reconstruction of political regimes worldwide.

Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era

Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era
Author: Cheng Li
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815726937

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Chinese politics are at a crossroads as President Xi Jinping amasses personal power and tests the constraints of collective leadership. In the years since he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi Jinping has surprised many people in China and around the world with his bold anti-corruption campaign and his aggressive consolidation of power. Given these new developments, we must rethink how we analyze Chinese politics—an urgent task as China now has more influence on the global economy and regional security than at any other time in modern history. Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era examines how the structure and dynamics of party leadership have evolved since the late 1990s and argues that "inner-party democracy"—the concept of collective leadership that emphasizes deal making based on accepted rules and norms—may pave the way for greater transformation within China's political system. Xi's legacy will largely depend on whether he encourages or obstructs this trend of political institutionalization in the governance of the world's most populous and increasingly pluralistic country. Cheng Li also addresses the recruitment and composition of the political elite, a central concern in Chinese politics. China analysts will benefit from the meticulously detailed biographical information of the 376 members of the 18th Central Committee, including tables and charts detailing their family background, education, occupation, career patterns, and mentor-patron ties.