Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China

412 Pages·2001·147.72 MB·english

by  Xudong Zhang (Editor)

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GAM FRANCISCO, CA Sales
Whither China?

Whither China
Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China
Duke University Press ¢ Durham and London » 2001
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Contents
Preface, vii
1. The Makingof the Post-TiananmenIntellectual Field:
A Critical Overview, Xudong Zhang, 1
Part I Against the Neoliberal Dogma:
Four Arguments from China
2. Debating Liberalism and Democracy in China
in the 1990s, Gan Yang, 79
3. Whither China? The Discourse on Property Rights
Reform in China, Zhiyuan Cui, 103
4. The Changing Role of Governmentin China,
Shaoguang Wang, 123
5. Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question
of Modernity, Wang Hui, 161
Post-TiananmenArt, 199
Part II In the Global Context
6. King Kong in Hong Kong: Watching the “Handover”
from the U.S.A., Rey Chow, 211
7. The Burdens of History: Lin Zexu (1959) and The Opium
War (1997), Rebecca E. Karl, 229
8. Maoto the Market, Peter Hitchcock, 263
g. Chinese Consumerism andthePolitics of Envy:
Cargo in the 1990s?, Louisa Schein, 285
10. Nationalism, Mass Culture, andIntellectual Strategies
in Post-Tiananmen China, Xudong Zhang, 315
11. Street Scenes of Subalternity: China, Globalization,
and Rights, Michael Dutton, 349
Appendix In the Tiger’s Lair: Socialist Everydayness
Enters the Market Economyin Post-Mao China,
Harry D. Harootunian, 371
Contributors, 383
Index, 385
Preface
Theevolution of this volumehasparalleled the intellectual developments
that it seeks to capture and analyze. At the book’s conception in 1996,
Chineseintellectuallife in thefirst half of the 1990s remained nebulous,
its central contentions obscure. Scholars both inside and outside China
still tended to view China in the shadow of Tiananmenandthecultural-
intellectual excitement of the 1980s, which thattragic event brought to an
end. The renewedandintensified economic reform known as marketiza-
tion (shichang hua)after 1992, and the end of the Cold Wara yearearlier,
have redefined the historical condition for intellectual discussions and a
neweverydayform oflife in China. Whereas the new socioeconomicreality
gave rise to an explosion of mass cultural production, Chinese intellectu-
als, at least for amoment, seemed at loss.Initial discussions amongintel-
lectuals primarily concernedpositions, attitudes, and strategies by which
to fend off or absorb excessive stimuli from the processesofsocial ratio-
nalization, commodification, and globalization.
Yet this origin in historical rupture andsocial-cultural shock proved
to be productive.It also called attention to an increasingly differentiated
and fragmentedsphereofintellectual development,withits allegorical co-
herencerooted in the national situation. Over the past half-dozen years or
so, the Chineseintellectual field has definedits various, often conflicting
positionsand orientations in more articulate and assertive terms.
This last developmentis described and analyzed in the book’s new
introductory chapter, and the newly added chaptersof the volume—previ-
ously published in journal form—create a context within whichtheorigi-
nal essays from the Social Text special issue can be read. The processes
registered here are notonly those ofideological and symbolic association,
viii
butalso those ofpolitical articulation andhistorical reflection. Accompa-
Preface
nied by aninternal drive toward self-autonomyora properly intellectual-
scholarly discourse, current Chinese intellectual discussions and debates
have established a rangeof theoretical strongholds and discursive frame-
works by which to intervene extensively and aggressively in the fast-
changing realities of the Chinese economy,social organization, politics,
andcultural production.In other words,intellectual development in China
in the 1990s wasactualized in its involvement and entanglement with
every significant event in the national andinternational economy,politics,
andculture ofthat decade. The intellectual formulations of this develop-
mentareliterally produced in its encounter with concrete sociopolitical
issues such as privatization, state power, political reform, social democ-
ratization, international finance capital, Taiwan, Kosovo, the World Trade
Organization (wTo), and postmodernity.
In a holistic (and simplistic) way, one can see the contradictions of
contemporary Chinese intellectual life as predicated on thedifficulty for
the Chinese nation (as experienced, imagined, and conceptualized by its
intellectuals) to reassert itself in an enveloping new world order—now
present in every domain andatevery level ofhumanactivity—as the coun-
try rapidly merges with the economic system of global capitalism. Con-
sequently, the general ideological andpolitical battle line among Chinese
intellectuals is drawn between those who seek smooth integration with a
homogeneous “world civilization” (as it is defined by the neoliberal dis-
courseof free-market capitalism and Western triumphalism,i.e., the rhe-
toric of“the endof History”) and those whoenvision andstrivefor a plural-
istic world in which differences in tradition,culture, and social-political
ideals can be viewedasassets rather than burdensforthecreation ofbetter
lives. This profounddifference cuts across various ideological persuasions,
political convictions, theoretical frameworks, andculturalidentities; yetits
expressivity often takes the form ofparticular combinations or configura-
tions ofthose elements. Thus,the situation today can be describednotonly
by how intellectual politics is defined in domestic terms, but by how Chi-
nese intellectuallife relates itself to and participates in international cul-
tural politics. The expectationthat globalization dictates that intellectuals
ofdifferent nationalor regional backgroundsparticipate in, or even submit
to, intellectual and academicpolitics in the West or the United States with-
out the mediation ofthat backgroundis naive and unwarranted. However,
that qualification does not meanthattheintellectual and political struggle
in each andevery national/regional context does not yearnfor an interna-
tional audience and contributeto an internationalcritical consciousness.