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China has undergone a unique path of development in the post-Maoist era. Especially, the last decade witnessed China's rapid rise to economic wealth and superpower status vis-à-vis the severe developmental predicaments of the West (financial crises, socio-political turbulences, etc.). This book analyzes how the leading Chinese thinkers understand China's prosperity and rapid development today, and whether there is any hidden mechanism that has been playing a crucial role of forming contemporary Chinese thinkers' shared passionate endeavor of resuscitating classical Chinese ideas, and thus shows how the fervor for discovering “essential characteristics” of Chinese thought reveals a hidden psychological mechanism.
Fractured Rebellion is the first full-length account of the evolution of China’s Red Guard Movement in Beijing, the nation’s capital, from its beginnings in 1966 to its forcible suppression in 1968. Andrew Walder combines historical narrative with sociological analysis as he explores the radical student movement’s crippling factionalism, devastating social impact, and ultimate failure. Most accounts of the movement have portrayed a struggle among Red Guards as a social conflict that pitted privileged “conservative” students against socially marginalized “radicals” who sought to change an oppressive social and political system. Walder employs newly available documentary evidence...
This vivid narrative history of Chinese intellectuals and public life provides a guide to making sense of China today. Timothy Cheek presents a map and a method for understanding the intellectual in the long twentieth century, from China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 to the 'Prosperous China' since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cheek surveys the changing terrain of intellectual life over this transformative century in Chinese history to enable readers to understand a particular figure, idea or debate. The map provides coordinates to track different times, different social worlds and key concepts. The historical method focuses on context and communities during six periods to make sense of ideas, institutions and individual thinkers across the century. Together they provide a memorable account of the scenes and protagonists, and arguments and ideas, of intellectuals and public life in modern China.
The narrative has two parallel lines of development, which constantly interact with each other: the political transformation of China during the critical dozen years 1977-89; and the cultural movement itself. The latter is followed from an abortive attempt in 1982 to publish the minjian journal Youthful Manuscripts, through the blossoming of many popular cultural enterprises, including the potent River Elegy television series, and finally to the Tiananmen tragedy, at which point the two lines of development finally coalesced. The book is filled with details, including the background, character, and personal connections of a large number of people who are related to the movement, which make interesting reading and can be a useful source for further studies.
Of all the issues presented by China’s ongoing economic and sociopolitical transformation, none may ultimately prove as consequential as the development of the Chinese legal system. Even as public demand for the rule of law grows, the Chinese Communist Party still interferes in legal affairs and continues in its harsh treatment of human rights lawyers and activists. Both the frequent occurrences of social unrest in recent years and the growing tension between China’s various interest groups underline the urgency of developing a sound and sustainable legal system. As one of China’s most influential law professors, He Weifang has been at the forefront of the country’s treacherous path ...
China has undergone a unique path of development in the post-Maoist era. Especially, the last decade witnessed China''s rapid rise to economic wealth and superpower status vis-a-vis the severe developmental predicaments of the West (financial crises, socio-political turbulences, etc.). This book analyzes how the leading Chinese thinkers understand China''s prosperity and rapid development today, and whether there is any hidden mechanism that has been playing a crucial role of forming contemporary Chinese thinkers'' shared passionate endeavor of resuscitating classical Chinese ideas, and thus shows how the fervor for discovering OC essential characteristicsOCO of Chinese thought reveals a hidden psychological mechanism. Contents: The Fantasmatic Narrative of Contemporary Chinese Thought; OC Descendants of a Blurry-Eyed DragonOCO New Enlightenment as Modernization; OC TraumaticOCO Encounters with Postmodernism; Liberals and New Leftists as OC Discursive EnemiesOCO China''s New Nationalism and Its Obscene Core; Traversing the Fantasmatic Past and Future. Readership: Academics, professionals, Sinologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in China studies.
The violence of Mao's China is well known, but its extreme form is not. In 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, collective killings were widespread in rural China in the form of public execution. Victims included women, children, and the elderly. This book is the first to systematically document and analyze these atrocities, drawing data from local archives, government documents, and interviews with survivors in two southern provinces. This book extracts from the Chinese case lessons that challenge the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings and contributes to the historiography of the Cultural Revolution, in which scholarship has mainly focused on events in urban areas.
Little is known about the political views of non-dissident Chinese intellectuals. For this book, Émilie Frenkiel has been granted unprecedented access to the discussions of politically committed Chinese who have been part of the intellectual debate on post-Tiananmen reform. Her in-depth research elicits lively views that reflect the yearnings and fears of the country’s political elite, and reveal the diversity of approaches to China’s democratisation.
This book examines the political use of China's traditions by the party-state in contemporary China. It argues that the party-state has taken an official Marxist stance in terms of the political use of tradition. Besides looking at the official Marxist stance, this book also looks at critiques of the party-state's use of traditions by the Liberalists and Neo-traditionalists. The underlying political ideologies of these three camps are Marxism, Liberalism and Neo-traditionalism. These three political ideologies have been the most influential in Chinese politics since the Republican Revolution in 1911. The contemporary political use of China's traditions is a competition between Marxism, Liber...
A leading scholar of China's modern political development examines the changing relationship between the Chinese people and the state. Correcting the conventional view of China as having instituted extraordinary economic changes but having experienced few political reforms in the post-Mao period, Merle Goldman details efforts by individuals and groups to assert their political rights. China's move to the market and opening to the outside world have loosened party controls over everyday life and led to the emergence of ideological diversity. Starting in the 1980s, multi-candidate elections for local officials were held, and term limits were introduced for communist party leaders. Establishmen...