In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw by Hua LiShaoming DuanHua Li. Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 248 pp., hardcover, $68.00. ISBN 9781487508234.Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw focuses on the years after Mao Zedong's demise, from 1976 to 1983, during which China's politics and culture underwent unusual changes. Li's (...) book is a laudable scholarly endeavor that provides readers with a new interpretation of science fiction (SF) during the post-Mao era. Li connects the production of Chinese SF to a wider context, including mainstream literary perspectives, domestic political demands and predicaments, changing international relations, and Western SF traditions. From my point of view, this book contributes to existing scholarship in four different ways.First, Li offers an explanation for the launching of the "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign" in 1983, and for the withering of SF in the 1980s, that is different from that of many other scholars. According to Zhan Ling, Chinese [End Page 270] officials liked art that closely connected to politics in the 1980s.1 Yet SF writers were very interested in thriller themes during this period, pursuing literary value while neglecting political significance. Science fiction deviated from reality, which went against Deng Xiaoping's idea of "seeking truth from facts," proposed in 1978. For these reasons, Zhan argues, SF was labeled as "bourgeois literature" in the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign and severely criticized.2 Wu Yan offers another explanation, focusing on how, in 1983, renowned scientist Qian Xuesen published an article in People's Daily that accuses then-current SF of being "specimens of pseudoscience" and misleading teenagers.3 Qian's viewpoint caught Deng's attention; he claimed in the same year that SF was a pollution of science.4 Moreover, a growing number of books and films promoted sexual liberation and Western democracy at this time. Faced with this "crisis," Deng called on all levels of judicial and propaganda departments to thwart the spread of these ideas and works in society. This campaign lasted for three years, with approximately twenty-four thousand people being executed for "mental impurity." It dealt a heavy blow to SF as well, causing the number of SF writers as well as the social impact of SF to decline significantly.5Compared to Zhan and Wu, Li places more emphasis on the fact that Deng wanted to achieve political and ideological unity through this campaign. In the 1980s, many voices were opposing Deng at the top of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Although Deng was not the highest leader of the CPC in name, he controlled the standing of the CPC. Many high-level officials accused Deng of destroying socialist democracy. Deng launched the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign under the pretext of fighting the spread of "Western-inspired liberal ideas among the Chinese Populace" (14), while aiming to purge high-level dissidents from the CPC. This campaign, like Mao's Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s, became increasingly violent and difficult to control as it went on. Many officials in the CPC took advantage of the campaign to attack people, policies, and behavior that they disliked (15). Li's account is very convincing because it aligns with the political changes that have occurred since then. Hu Yaobang was dismissed in January 1987 due to "indulging bourgeois liberalization and weakening the Party's leadership."6 As the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC, Hu admired the Western political system with its separation of powers and intended to establish such a system in China to achieve democratic modernization. However, his efforts were obstructed by Deng. The establishment of a modern democratic system would have signified the end of the CPC dictatorship. [End Page 271]Further, Li points out that SF in the post-Mao era lacked a critical awareness of ethical problems. SF writers of this era tended to ignore the moral and ethical implications of the use of modern technology, or they took up modern technology without the reflectiveness and attention to detail that makes modern technology something more than a normative... (shrink)

For quite some time there has been a collective perception of a moral crisis in post- Mao China. This perception is informed by standards held by members of Chinese society rather than by standards outside of it. In this article, the author attempts to lay the groundwork for a philosophical analysis of this moral crisis. He first explains why it is appropriate to speak of a moral crisis and then examines the structure of the crisis. This examination (...) is partly conceptual and partly causal. The conceptual section of the article discusses terms frequently used in connection with the crisis and introduces some terms and distinctions of the author’s own for further clarity. The causal section traces the moral crisis to a crisis of identification with moral authority or exemplars, the latter crisis in turn containing important clues to the structure of self and agency in Chinese moral culture. (shrink)

Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions, edited by Ji Zhe, Gareth Fisher, and André Laliberté. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019. 355pp. Hb. $84.00, ISBN-13: 9780824877347; Pb. $28.00, ISBN-13: 9780824888343.

This book traces ideological trends in China through a range of historical and comparative perspectives, spanning the ancient belief systems of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism to political ideologies of the present day. Chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and post Mao ideology, zoning in on specific historical periods from the Qing and Republic periods to the reform era, as well as the period after (...) the founding of the PRC - through which Mao Zedong's political thought is notably discussed from the perspective of epistemology and the global impact of Maoism. Key topics include Sun Yat-sen as the Father of the Republic, Li Dazhao, the early Marxist theoretician, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Fascism, Liang Qichao's emotional appeals through liberal political discourse, Jiang Zemin's theory of 'Three Represents' de-emphasising the Marxist concept of class, Hu Jintao's theory of 'Harmonious Society' and Xi Jinping's political thought. Contributions from world-leading scholars take both comparative and critical approaches, examining not only how studies of ideology are relevant, but how Chinese ideologies have retained their own characteristics distinct to the West. As the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language, Chinese Ideologywill appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, history, and Asian studies more broadly. (shrink)

A growing group of Chinese students is returning to China following graduation, especially young returnees. This group is seen as one of the most innovative sectors of Chinese society. Based on the theory of planned behavior and three kinds of capital theories, this study explores entrepreneurial intention and its influencing factors among Newly Returned Chinese International Students. A survey of 211 NRCIS showed a low level of EI and little knowledge of supporting policies about entrepreneurship. Influencing (...) factors included culture harmony as culture capital, overseas social networks as social capital, and foreign entrepreneurship education and foreign language proficiency as human capital. Attitude mediated the effects of foreign language proficiency, culture harmony, and foreign entrepreneurship education on EI. Perceived behavior control mediated the effect of foreign language proficiency, Chinese language proficiency, culture harmony, foreign entrepreneurship education, domestic entrepreneurship education, and overseas social networks on EI, and subjective norms have no significant mediating effect in any mediation path. Based on these findings, policymakers could pay attention to examining whether the current policies are working and accessible for NRCIS, and domestic entrepreneurship education could keep cultivating students' cross-cultural communication and understanding abilities, and society and education sectors could encourage positive cognition of entrepreneurship and guide students to form a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship and enhance their confidence. (shrink)

As frequent, violent, and organized peasant protests show, China’s reform regime has lost its once all-powerful control in the countryside. The sharp decline of village cadres’ positional authority in allocating economic resources, which began in post-Mao decollectivization, holds the key to explaining the change. Since the late 1990s, the collapse of village enterprises and the erosion of power over land have cost village cadres their remaining economic levers to engage the villagers as well as their incentives to work for (...) the party-state. The loss of the regime’s grip on village cadres and the loss of command by village cadres on peasants have almost synchronized, causing the traditional structure of organizational control to crumble in vast rural areas. In the new, prevailing patterns of village governance, party power is becoming increasingly irrelevant. (shrink)

China in the post-Mao era was transformed by a veritable economic miracle and simultaneously underwent a series of radical époque-making changes in the Chinese ruling classes’ political and ideological approach to government. The continued rapid growth and the expansion of a consumer society have also contributed to the discrediting of those traditional values which for many years underpinned and fortified the force of communism. In addition to the demise of traditional values, the waning belief in Maoist ideology (...) and the rise of consumerism as the new ideological credo, there have also been transformations in some of the main pillars of Chinese society, in particular the family, as a result of a resurgence of social practices that were thought to belong to the past. The most widespread in contemporary China is the “bao ernai” phenomenon, or the taking of a second wife, which involves mainly businessmen and politicians, strictly related to the increase of corruption. The increasingly worrying proportions assumed in recent years by such practice, while risking to compromise the sustenance of the much exalted harmonious society, have favoured the emergence of a heated debate inside the Chinese society. (shrink)

The societal and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked discussions among academics, policymakers and the public around the world. What has gone unnoticed so far are the likewise vibrant discussions in China. We analyzed a large sample of discussions about AI ethics on two Chinese social media platforms. Findings suggest that participants were diverse, and included scholars, IT industry actors, journalists, and members of the general public. They addressed a broad range of concerns associated with the application (...) of AI in various fields. Some even gave recommendations on how to tackle these issues. We argue that these discussions are a valuable source for understanding the future trajectory of AI development in China as well as implications for global dialogue on AI governance. (shrink)

This paper examines Chinese imagery of smokestacks both as a concrete object and an abstract concept emerging from early futurist eulogy to modernist allergy, and from Maoist propaganda to post-Fifth Generation environmental reflections. In the Republican era, writers from the Creation Society eulogize the smokes of steamboat smokestacks as beautified symbols of modern civilization. Yet members from the Beijing School convey their concerns about the Janus face of industrialization and environmental impairments. After 1949, smokestacks are eulogized as (...) an icon of socialist industrialization and pervade cinematic productions, literary imaginations, and artistic exhibitions. Since the 1980s, smokestacks have been gradually understood as vestiges of problematic socialist practice. The growing ecological deterioration in the 21st century propels public intellectuals and film directors to expose industrial pollution and to invoke environmental protection. Yet another type of representation arises in the post-Fifth Generation films, where smokestacks are visualized as a token of the “insulted and injured” working class, individual discovery, and collective sentiment worn out by the post Mao-Deng global developmentalism and social injustice. The metamorphoses of smokestacks in literary, cinematic, and artistic imaginations envision and exhibit the structural transformation of modern Chinese environmental and ecological consciousness. (shrink)

Li Zehou stands among the most influential Chinese philosophers in the post-Mao era. His notion of subjectality is of paramount importance for current developments in contemporary Chinese philosophy. It belongs to the central concepts in Li's theoretical framework, around which his entire philosophical system is constructed. With his elaboration of this concept, Li expanded the problem of the self in post-revolutionary modernism. The present article analyzes the theoretical bases of this concept, exposes its importance in the (...) scope of contemporary Chinese theory and shows why and how it represents a call for a new humanism. Through a multidimensional comparative perspective, the author also explains why the human subject, which is based upon Li's notion of subjectality, has the potential not only to transform modern alienation into a real “human condition,” that is, into spiritually fulfilled society of autonomous individuals but also to fill up the prevailing “vacuum of values.”. (shrink)

In three decades of reform China has become a society that is radically different both from what it used to be in Mao's time and from a liberal society. This new China poses especially interesting questions about freedom - interesting not only in the Chinese context but also more generally. Pivotal for my treatment of these questions is a distinction I draw between de facto freedom and the value of freedom, the latter in turn understood in terms (...) of a larger notion of agency, and divided into such distinct dimensions as moral resource, right, and mode of subjection. This distinction allows me to argue that while China has no shortage of de facto freedom, it lacks the value of freedom, especially freedom as a mode of subjection. The lack of freedom as a value has serious moral and political consequences, as manifested in a prolonged moral crisis in post-Mao China and in a certain fragility of social order caused by the pitting of order against freedom. Such consequences suggest a strong need for China to develop the value of freedom. But it is possible and important to do so in a critical spirit, as I argue through a critical analysis of the place of freedom in a liberal society. © 2011 by Duke University Press. (shrink)

This book is a study of the transformation of Chinese political consciousness during the post-Mao era.

In the years since its introduction, Edward Said’s celebrated study Orientalism has acquired a near-paradigmatic status as a model of the relationships between Western and non-Western cultures. Said seeks to show how Western imperialist images of its colonial others—images that, of course, are inevitably and sharply at odds with the self-understanding of the indigenous non-Western cultures they purport to represent—not only govern the West’s hegemonic policies, but were imported into the West’s political and cultural colonies where they affected native points (...) of view and thus served as instruments of domination themselves. Said’s focus is on the Near East, but his critics and supporters alike have extended his model far beyond the confines of that part of the world. Despite the popularity of Said’s model, however, comparatists and sinologists have yet to make extensive use of it in their attempts to define China’s self-image or the nature of the Sino-Western social, cultural, and political relationships. Xiaomei Chen is assistant professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Ohio State University. She has recently completed a book on the politics of cross-cultural “misunderstanding” in modern China and the West, and is now working on a cultural study of post-Mao Chinese theater. (shrink)

From Comrades to Bodhisattvas is the first book-length study of Han Chinese Buddhism in post-Mao China. Using an ethnographic approach supported by over a decade of field research, it provides an intimate portrait of lay Buddhist practitioners in Beijing who have recently embraced a religion that they were once socialized to see as harmful superstition. The book focuses on the lively discourses and debates that take place among these new practitioners in an unused courtyard of a Beijing temple. (...) In this non-monastic space, which shrinks each year as the temple authorities expand their commercial activities, laypersons gather to distribute and exchange Buddhist-themed media, listen to the fiery sermons of charismatic preachers, and seek solutions to personal moral crises. Applying recent theories in the anthropology of morality and ethics, Gareth Fisher argues that the practitioners are attracted to the courtyard as a place where they can find ethical resources to re-make both themselves and others in a rapidly changing nation that they believe lacks a coherent moral direction. Spurred on by the lessons of the preachers and the stories in the media they share, these courtyard practitioners inventively combine moral elements from China’s recent Maoist past with Buddhist teachings on the workings of karma and the importance of universal compassion. Their aim is to articulate a moral antidote to what they see as blind obsession with consumption and wealth accumulation among twenty-first century Chinese. Often socially marginalized and sidelined from meaningful roles in China’s new economy, these former communist comrades look to their new moral roles along a bodhisattva path to rebuild their self-worth. Each chapter focuses on a central trope in the courtyard practitioners’ projects to form new moral identities. The Chinese government’s restrictions on the spread of religious teachings in urban areas curtail these practitioners' ability to insert their moral visions into an emerging public sphere. Nevertheless, they succeed, at least partially, Fisher argues, in creating their own discursive space characterized by a morality of concern for fellow humans and animals and a recognition of the organizational abilities and pedagogical talents of its members that are unacknowledged in society at large. Moreover, as the later chapters of the book discuss, by writing, copying, and distributing Buddhist-themed materials, the practitioners participate in creating a religious network of fellow-Buddhists across the country, thereby forming a counter-cultural community within contemporary urban China. Highly readable and full of engaging descriptions of the real lives of practicing lay Buddhists in contemporary China, From Comrades to Bodhisattvas will interest specialists in Chinese Buddhism, anthropologists of contemporary Asia, and all scholars interested in the relationship between religion and cultural change. (shrink)

Modern Chinese history told from a Buddhist perspective restores the vibrant, creative role of religion in postimperial China. It shows how urban Buddhist elites jockeyed for cultural dominance in the early Republican era, how Buddhist intellectuals reckoned with science, and how Buddhist media contributed to modern print cultures. It recognizes the political importance of sacred Buddhist relics and the complex processes through which Buddhists participated in and experienced religious suppression under Communist rule. Today, urban and rural communities alike engage (...) with Buddhist practices to renegotiate class, gender, and kinship relations in post-Mao China. Using fresh archival and primary sources, along with extensive ethnographic research, this volume vividly portrays these events and more, recasting Buddhism as a critical factor in China's twentieth-century development. Each chapter connects a moment in Buddhist history to a significant theme in Chinese history, creating new narratives of Buddhism's involvement in the emergence of urban modernity, the practice of international diplomacy, the mobilization for total war, and other transformations of state, society, and culture. Working across an extraordinary thematic range, the book reincorporates Buddhism into the formative processes and distinctive character of Chinese history. (shrink)

Qin Dynasty Confucian ethics is an ethical elite, there is such a universal ethical issues. From the Song Dynasty of China post-social, ethical Chinese society began to truly grass-roots family or clan ethics that ethics form, thus has a universal significance, and, to some extent and it is Abraham, ethical and religious system its universality is considerable. Specifically, this ethics is to achieve or expand the clan as a platform, on this platform, to stand by the family (...) rules of ethics, was by the Code of ethics, by forcing the line of ethics, ethics through education to support. the Confucianism ethics in the Early Qin period was an elite ethics that had the problem of generalization. In the late Chinese society after the Song Dynasty, the ethics in China came out in the form of a real grass-root ethics or the clan ethics, therefore it had the significant of generalization. Moreover, this ethics was similar to the religious ethics and its generalization to some contents in the Abraham system. In a more concrete way the realization and unfolding of this ethics was in mi arena of clan on which the ethics was established through the code of clan. It was through observing the code to reflect the ethics, through enforcement to implement the ethics, and through education to cultivate ethics. (shrink)

Discusses contemporary Confucianism's relevance and its capacity to address pressing social and political issues of twenty-first-century life. Condemned during the Maoist era as a relic of feudalism, Confucianism enjoyed a robust revival in post-Mao China as China’s economy began its rapid expansion and gradual integration into the global economy. Associated with economic development, individual growth, and social progress by its advocates, Confucianism became a potent force in shaping politics and society in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas (...) Chinese communities. This book links the contemporary Confucian revival to debates—both within and outside China—about global capitalism, East Asian modernity, political reforms, civil society, and human alienation. The contributors offer fresh insights on the contemporary Confucian revival as a broad cultural phenomenon, encompassing an interpretation of Confucian moral teaching; a theory of political action; a vision of social justice; and a perspective for a new global order, in addition to demonstrating that Confucianism is capable of addressing a wide range of social and political issues in the twenty-first century. Tze-ki Hon is Professor of Chinese and History at City University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960–1127, also published by SUNY Press; Revolution as Restoration: Guocui Xuebao and China’s Path to Modernity, 1905–1911; and The Allure of the Nation: The Cultural and Historical Debates in Late Qing and Republican China. Kristin Stapleton is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895–1937 and Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin’s Family. (shrink)

This article compares the growth trajectories of Catholicism and Protestantism in modern China and tackles a puzzle: Why did Catholicism, which maintained a substantial numerical advantage in Chinese converts over Protestantism before 1949, come to lag so far behind Protestantism today? The article identifies three crucial differences in the institutional features of Catholicism and Protestantism, but shows that an institutional argument alone is insufficient to explain their reversal of fortune. It argues that the growth trajectories of Catholicism and Protestantism (...) changed less because their institutional features have experienced major changes, but more because their institutional features played out differently in the sociopolitical contexts of pre-1949 China, Maoist China, and post-Mao China. The article advances a new approach that combines the currently dominant institutional argument with a historical perspective that stresses the importance of political forces in order to understand the growth dynamics of religions. It concludes by making some preliminary observations on the generalized patterns of how institutional features of Catholicism and Protestantism play out under different kinds of political structures, shaping their waxing and waning in a global context. (shrink)

Within cognitive science, narratives are regarded as crucial and fundamental cognitive instruments or tools. As Roger Schank suggests, the identity of (sub-)cultures is to a considerable extent based upon the sharing of narrative structures (Schank. 1995.Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.). According to Schank, culturally shared stories, as do many other stories, occur frequently in highly abbreviated form, as “skeleton stories” or “gists.” Collective identities are conveyed in and between cultures not only through verbal (...) discourse, but also by pictorial means. Many pictures and visual artworks have indeed been produced in order to establish and to consolidate a home-culture and to demarcate it from conceived extra-cultural counterparts.Some of my previous work on these lines has been concerned with demarcation efforts in visual media of “Jews” as extra-cultural, since the Middle Ages onwards, in the Third Reich’s iconography, as well as in modern, radicalized forms of anti-Semitic picturing in Arab media (Ranta. 2016. The (pictorial) construction of collective identities in the Third Reich.Language and Semiotic Studies2(3). 107–124, Ranta. 2017. Master narratives and the (pictorial) construction of otherness: Anti-semitic images in the Third Reich and beyond.Contemporary Aesthetics15.https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=765(accessed 17 November 2019.). In building upon and extending this work, I shall focus in the current paper upon attempts of creating cultural and political cohesion by means of pictorial propaganda in post-war China from the early 1950’s onwards, as promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership by Mao Zedong. Some concrete pictorial examples indicating these attempts will be discussed from a narratological and cultural semiotic perspective. (shrink)

This study analyzes the cognitive and discursive process through which the issue of learning from the West is addressed in four of People's Republic of China founder Mao Zedong's political speeches – On New Democracy (1940), On Coalition Government (1945), On the Ten Major Relationships (1956), and Conversation with Musicians (1956). The study adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective and utilizes blending theory to investigate the metaphorical conceptualizations Mao uses to cope with the cultural dilemma of learning from the (...) West. The study finds that the focus in Mao's conceptualizations is not on a ‘positive Us’ vs. ‘negative Them’ dichotomy between Chinese and Western cultures, but on a good vs. bad dichotomy inside Western culture, implying that only certain parts of Western culture should be (selectively) emulated. While the natural compatibility between Western culture and Chinese society is constructed as out of the question, the possibility of compatibility after human effort is not rejected: the selected part of Western culture should be transformed to serve a new socialist culture in China. In this process, the agency and rational thinking of the Chinese are emphasized. (shrink)

Twenty years ago our great teacher and leader Chairman Mao published "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," an epoch-making piece of Marxist literature. In this brilliant piece, Chairman Mao applied the fundamental law of the universe, the law of the unity of opposites, to sum up comprehensively the historical experience of China's socialist revolution and construction and the international Communist movement and to analyze profoundly the nature, peculiarities and laws of socialist society. He was the first (...) in the history of the development of Marxism to point out clearly that the fundamental contradictions of socialist society are still the contradiction between the productive forces and production relations and the contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base. He was the first to demonstrate clearly that even after the system of ownership of the means of production has been transformed into that of a socialist country there still exist classes, class struggle, and the danger of capitalist restoration. He was the first to indicate clearly that there exist two different kinds of contradictions in socialist society which must be rigorously distinguished and correctly handled, for which he established the great theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the basis of the unity of theory and practice, he resolved the issue of preventing and combating revisionism, consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat, and stymied the threat of capitalist restoration. It was an important essay for our time concerning carrying the cause of socialist revolution through to the end, a great enrichment and development of Marxism-Leninism. To study this brilliant essay by Chairman Mao is of the greatest significance for China's current investigation and criticism of the Wang-Chang-Chiang-Yao "gang of four" anti-Party clique. (shrink)

This paper analyzes post-Mao China as a complex risk society in which social, economic, and ecological risk syndromes pertaining to highly diverse levels and systems of development are manifested simultaneously. Complex risk society is a theoretical extension of Ulrich Beck’s thesis on risk society, focusing on complex developmental temporalities that are pervasively symptomatic of rapidly but asymmetrically developing political economies. In my earlier study, Korea was defined as a complex risk society in which risk syndromes (...) of developed, undeveloped, and compressively developing societies are concurrently generated. In the current study, post-Mao China is also analyzed as a complex risk society which is, in fact, more complex than Korea. Paradoxically, due to its explosive development in the post-Mao era which even dwarfs Korea, China is now confronted by all of its capitalist neighbour’s risk syndromes. Besides, due to its so-called gradual approach to reform, China is beset with a complicated mix of socialist and post-socialist syndromes of risks. Gradual reform is in practice a sort of peripatetic pluralism in economic and social reform for maximizing developmental utilities of all types of human, material, and institutional resources—a policy line inevitably accompanied by similarly plural sources and factors of social, economic, and ecological risks. The unprecedented temporal and systemic complexity in China’s risk structure has crucial implications for the country’s much deplored tendency for inequalities. In particular, class inequalities and regional disparities seem to be manifest in risk dimensions no less critically than in material dimensions. The state’s developmentalism alone is no solution for risk complexities or inequalities. (shrink)

For four decades _Sources of Chinese Tradition_ has served to introduce Western readers to Chinese civilization as it has been seen through basic writings and historical documents of the Chinese themselves. Now in its second edition, revised and extended through Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin--era China, this classic volume remains unrivaled for its wide selection of source readings on history, society, and thought in the world's largest nation. Award-winning China scholar Wm. Theodore de Bary -- who (...) edited the first edition in 1960 -- and his coeditor Richard Lufrano have revised and updated the second volume of Sources to reflect the interactions of ideas, institutions, and historical events from the seventeenth century up to the present day. Beginning with Qing civilization and continuing to contemporary times, volume II brings together key source texts from more than three centuries of Chinese history, with opening essays by noted China authorities providing context for readers not familiar with the period in question. Here are just a few of the topics covered in this second volume of _Sources of Chinese Tradition:_ • Early Sino-Western contacts in the seventeenth century; • Four centuries of Chinese reflections on differences between Eastern and Western civilizations; • Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reform movements, with treatises on women's rights, modern science, and literary reform; • Controversies over the place of Confucianism in modern Chinese society; • The nationalist revolution -- including readings from Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek; • The communist revolution -- with central writings by Mao Zedong; • Works from contemporary China -- featuring political essays from Deng Xiaoping and dissidents including Wei Jingsheng. With more than two hundred selections in lucid, readable translation by today's most renowned experts on Chinese language and civilization, _Sources of Chinese Tradition_ will continue to be recognized as the standard for source readings on Chinese civilization, an indispensable learning tool for scholars and students of Asian civilizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Found in Translation: “New People” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Science Fiction by Jing JiangYingying HuangJing Jiang. Found in Translation: “New People” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Science Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. 144 pp. Paperback, ISBN 9780924304941.One of the Association of Asian Studies’ Asia Shorts series, Jing Jiang’s monograph is a delightful 130-page read including notes and a bibliography. It contributes new and cross-cultural perspectives to the (...) Chinese SF scholarship that has recently been invigorated by a plethora of translations into English, animated discussions at conference panels and themed lectures, and book-length studies such as Nathaniel Isaacson’s Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction (2017), which focuses on China’s early twentieth century, and Hua Li’s Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (2021), which deals with works published between 1978 and 1981, to name just a couple. Jiang’s book covers both periods and the time in between with a purpose to investigate “how Chinese science fiction participates and intervenes in Chinese conceptualizations of the modern at critical junctures over the last century” (1), which Jiang achieves through comparative readings of texts brought into dialogue via translation. A shared theme of the texts studied is, as the book title suggests, the creation of a “new people,” either through edification or high-tech means such as bioengineering. Therefore, the interventions by science fiction that this study is concerned with are chiefly in debates about modern citizenry, subjectivity, and humanity in China’s twentieth century, when science fiction enjoyed its first two “booms.”This book has an introduction, four chapters, and an epilogue. The introduction offers a brief history of Chinese science fiction and announces the author’s intention to “situate Chinese science fiction within a dynamic model of world literature” (2). Jiang makes two crucial points: first, Chinese science fiction is a product of translation and transculturation, which [End Page 591] requires an intertextual and comparative study; second, contrary to its designation as a popular genre in the West, science fiction in China has been a form of elite literature and even a part of statist thinking. While this introduction may seem a bit long for a short book with “conciseness” as one of its marketing guidelines—the account of Lu Xun’s early life and turn to literature, for example, may be a little too elaborate for its purpose (10–12)—it lays a solid foundation for discussions about science fiction’s translingual dimensions and role in China’s nation-building discourse to develop through the chapters.The expansive first chapter, “Medicine for the Mind, Panacea for the Nation: How Did the Stories of Science and Fiction Become One?” is yet another historical survey, occasionally repeating points from the introduction, but this time of the background, genesis, and early growth of science fiction in China from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century (i.e., the late Qing dynasty [1644–1911] and early Republican era [1912–49]). Jiang gives a detailed account of occurrences deemed important to the rise and confluence of fiction and science within China’s nation-building discourse, including literati intellectuals’ promotion of “new fiction” and the dissemination of scientific knowledge, highlighting the roles played by central figures like Liang Qichao, Lu Xun, and John Fryer. Jiang makes the illuminating observation that Fryer’s stipulation of a “new novel” for a fiction contest he organized in Shanghai in 1895 foreshadowed China’s literary realism and the vernacular movement (30), and her remarks about translation, Chinese science fiction’s inherent hybridity, and its mission to cure the nation well echo the book’s central argument about the genre’s interventions.A shorter chapter follows, entitled “Scientifically Formed or Reformed: Bioengineering and Other Fantasies about a New Species of National Subjects,” which examines early science fiction stories about manufacturing humanity and argues that these texts “gave rise to a literary vision that believed literally in the malleability or programmability of the soul” (39). During the first boom of Chinese science fiction in the 1900s, translations of and sequels to Western stories showcase the debate about science’s power of shaping the soul... (shrink)

For four decades _Sources of Chinese Tradition_ has served to introduce Western readers to Chinese civilization as it has been seen through basic writings and historical documents of the Chinese themselves. Now in its second edition, revised and extended through Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin-era China, this classic volume remains unrivaled for its wide selection of source readings on history, society, and thought in the world's largest nation. Award-winning China scholar Wm. Theodore de Bary--who edited the (...) first edition in 1960--and his coeditor Richard Lufrano have revised and updated the second volume of Sources to reflect the interactions of ideas, institutions, and historical events from the seventeenth century up to the present day. Beginning with Qing civilization and continuing to contemporary times, volume II brings together key source texts from more than three centuries of Chinese history, with opening essays by noted China authorities providing context for readers not familiar with the period in question. Here are just a few of the topics covered in this second volume of _Sources of Chinese Tradition:_ • Early Sino-Western contacts in the seventeenth century; • Four centuries of Chinese reflections on differences between Eastern and Western civilizations; • Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reform movements, with treatises on women's rights, modern science, and literary reform; • Controversies over the place of Confucianism in modern Chinese society; • The nationalist revolution--including readings from Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek; • The communist revolution--with central writings by Mao Zedong; • Works from contemporary China--featuring political essays from Deng Xiaoping and dissidents including Wei Jingsheng. With more than two hundred selections in lucid, readable translation by today's most renowned experts on Chinese language and civilization, _Sources of Chinese Tradition_ will continue to be recognized as the standard for source readings on Chinese civilization, an indispensable learning tool for scholars and students of Asian civilizations. (shrink)

Interrogating the totalizing perspectives on Chinese gender studies that typically treat China only in binary opposition to the West, “Other Genders, Other Sexualities” focuses on the dynamics of difference within China and probes the complex history of Chinese sexuality and gender formations. The centerpiece of this special issue is the first English translation of Li Xiaojiang’s 1983 post-Mao feminist retheorization of women’s emancipation and sexual differences. Other topics addressed include the emergence of the “modern girl” in early (...) twentieth-century China, the legacy of socialist gender practices in rural cultures, transgender performance on Chinese television, the political ambivalence of Chinese gay identity in the cinema, and early Chinese gender configurations in East Han art and writing. By recognizing the gender implications of China’s competing economic ideologies, this issue generates critical insights and new perspectives for the study of Chinese history, gender and sexuality, and feminist culture. Contributors:_Hongwei Bao, Tani Barlow, Dong Limin, Chengzhou He, Sarah Kile, Li Xiaojiang, Lingzhen Wang, Yu Shiling Lingzhen Wang_ is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University. She is the author of _Personal Matters: Women's Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-Century China_. (shrink)

Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far (...) from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology. (shrink)

In response to the rising obesity rate in China, the Chinese government has used the social media platform WeChat to encourage the public to lose weight. This article investigates the losing weight posts in 健康中国 [Healthy China], the official WeChat account of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Taking a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, I identify the dominant discourses used to represent obesity and individuals related to obesity. One of the most prominent features of (...) the discourses is a trend of responsibilizing weight management by three sub-discourses surrounding obesity, i.e. medical discourse (obesity as a disease), moral discourse (obesity as a self-management issue) and gendered discourse (obesity as a female and mothering issue). I explore how the responsibilization discourse might be understood in the context of China’s efforts in facilitating the making of health-conscious citizens, which echo neoliberal ideas that normalize individual responsibility for obesity. A special note is paid to women. Apart from the neoliberalism-underpinned responsibility, the posts also position women under the Confucian expectation of ‘responsible mothers’ in terms of childhood obesity. This may lead to dual-responsibilities for women and heighten the weight stigma women experience in the society. (shrink)

The articles in this collection were all selected from the first five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform, particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research in (...) these fields. This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu Guangyuan's `On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's `Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on the history of both classical and modern science and technology, the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science, the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in China and the history of regional development of Chinese science and technology. Also included are biographies of three post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882), Hua Hengfang (1833–1902), and Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three short papers have been included introducing the interactions between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan. (shrink)

Over three decades after China ventured onto the market path, the Chinese state’s reform programme, which was intended to invigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a capitalist path. This paper situates China’s post-Mao transition in the context of the crisis of the party-state during the Cultural Revolution. Using Gramsci’s idea of ‘passive revolution’, it examines the state’s tactics of crisis management aiming to contain and neutralise emergent opposition and pressure from below. As the combined result of (...) state repression, ideological appropriation and socioeconomic incorporation, a new reform paradigm emerged to rearticulate popular demands and initiatives to an official socialism centring on economic modernisation and market liberalisation. (shrink)

This article analyzes a popular meme that has spread rapidly among Chinese internet users in the last few years, ‘garlic chives’ ( jiucai), as a self-mockery of the bio-economic subject in contemporary China. This metaphor refers to those ordinary Chinese people who are constantly lured to participate in all kinds of economic activities, but whose investments are destined to be consumed by the establishment. Through a close study of this popular meme and the social conditions from which it (...) arises, this article demonstrates two main features of the Chinese economic subject that supports the state’s economic sovereignty: the thriving of self-sufficient and rule-abiding individuals, and the quality of these individuals as hard working and capable of producing wealth on their own. This article offers a critique of PRC’s post-socialist governmentality, and it provides insights about the relation between the biological and the political in our complicated world order. (shrink)

Some of the authors of the essays on Chinese philosophers prefer the pin yin system of romanization for Chinese names and words, while others prefer the Wade‐Giles system. Given that both systems are in wide use today, important names and words are given in both their pin yin and Wade‐Giles formulations. The author's preference is printed first, followed by the alternative romanization within brackets.

The article is devoted to the review of the most significant provisions of philosophical thought in China, starting from the XIX century and up to the 40s of the XX century. The author examines the views of both Western and Chinese intellectuals who have contributed to the formation of the new or modern Confucianism main issues. One of the most important aspect is the influence of historical events that have occurred since the XIX century. For example, the two Opium (...) Wars (1840-1842 and 1856-1860) and the policy of self-isolation pursued by the Manchu court, the Qing dynasty challenged the trade interests of the European colonial powers, and the crushing defeats suffered by China during these wars marked two important phenomena: the conclusion of unequal treaties with the victorious powers and the ruling dynasties discrediting. Such circumstances forced Chinese society to pay attention to the current state of affairs and therefore ask relevant questions, even more urgent from the fact that the results of the Opium Wars changed the usual ideas of the Chinese about their statehood. As a result - China faced a crisis that needs to be overcome (some of the intellectuals in China still try to find the most comprehensive way to effectively overcome it). Gradually, a different perception of the Chinese tradition begins to take shape in the XX century. The author notices a gradual break from blind imitation of Western thought patterns to a further rethinking of the main Chinese philosophy provisions that already proceeding from the established modern discourse and the search for common points of contact in the East-West intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

Contemporary Chinese society has witnessed ongoing complex institutional and cultural reconfiguration, driven by the transition from the socialist planned economy to marketization and later its deep engagement in globalization and neoliberalism. In this reshaping of Chinese society, tradition and modernity, the resurgence of patriarchal Confucian tradition, the socialist version of modernity, the capitalist version of modernity, and the socialist heritage intermingle, and all seem to define a mosaic temporality.Facing the increasing uncertainties of the market, family members (...) in post-reform China have to stick together as an economic safety net, emotional harbor and spiritual fortress. Chinese parents heavily invest in their children and continue to support them in their adulthood; whereas, the youth is under great obligation to providing old age care for their parents; and parents may regard this heavily-invested offspring as their private product. This resurgent but modified familialism, is not an exact replication of traditional familialism, but is definitely different from the family modes featured by individualism in Western contexts. Mosaic familialism is characterized by a sequential symbiosis between parents and children facing financial constraints and unforeseeable uncertainties with a lack of a social safety net. At the same time, patriarchal Confucianism is rejuvenated to a certain degree, women’s traditional wife and mother role is once again stressed, if not glorified; and the neoliberal discourse articulating personal choice and responsibility, but not individual right, stands by seamlessly. Parents and children, husband and wife are dependent on each other in the intimate family, following a clearly gendered pattern. (shrink)

When the Chinese Communist Party gained control of the entire country in 1949, it faced a country that had been long plagued by civil and foreign wars, [and] was politically disintegrated and economically in shambles. During the civil war, the corrupt Guomindang regime brought the country to the brink of destruction and ruins rarely seen in China's history. In terms of economic formation, the Four Big Families [Jiang, Song, Chen, and Kong] of the Guomindang represented the interests of the (...) major bureaucrat-comprador bourgeoisie and seriously hindered the growth of the national bourgeoisie. Right after liberation, industry accounted for less than 10 percent of the gross national product, while the remaining 90 percent was composed of either an enormous small peasant economy or a feudal-patriarchal economy. In the old liberated areas in the North, the land reform led by the Chinese Communist Party freed the peasants from the feudal-patriarchal economy and enabled the emergence of groups of small private owners. However, in the newly liberated areas in the South, land reform had not yet been carried out. Therefore, whether in the urban or rural areas, complete transformations of a capitalist nature must take place to clear the way for the development of the capitalist mode of production. The period of recovery of the national economy during the three years after the founding of the People's Republic of China happened to be the same period when capitalism was fully developing. As described by Liu Shaoqi, China during that time was in an early stage of capitalist development. All reform measures of a capitalist nature had been successful, and indeed greatly helped with the recovery of the national economy. The Movement to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and the Movement to Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries were both highly necessary and correct in wiping out the destructive elements of the surviving forces of the Guomindang and consolidating the political basis of the new society. The divisive activities of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi1 did not affect the general historical situation. (shrink)

La politique de « réformes et ouverture » vers l’étranger, initiée par Deng Xiaoping au sortir de la Révolution culturelle en 1978 s’est avérée, d’un point de vue économique, une véritable réussite qui a amené la Chine au rang des grandes puissances mondiales en à peine trente ans. D’un point de vue social par contre, le résultat est tout autre : transfigurée par ces réformes qui ont acté le basculement d’une économie planifiée vers une économie de marché, la société chinoise (...) s’est retrouvée bouleversée par la disparition de l’État-providence et la restructuration du secteur de production étatique, autant de dommages collatéraux qui vont brutalement vulnérabiliser et « précariser » des millions d’individus. Dès la fin des années 1980, vont se constituer de nouvelles « classes dangereuses » de paysans sans terres, de chômeurs et de pauvres, des « masses dangereuses » que l’État-parti chinois va devoir discipliner, puisque c’est sur leur exploitation que va se construire le miracle chinois. C’est donc un véritable arsenal discursif, une langue de bois élaborée et complétée sur trois décennies, que les dirigeants du Parti communiste chinois vont mettre en place pour formuler les perceptions et « corriger les consciences erronées » de ces populations vers une acceptation d’un ordre social qui leur est foncièrement défavorable.From the economic point of view, the policy for « reform and openness » to other countries initiated by Deng Xiaoping as the Cultural Revolution ended in 1978 was a genuine success that made China a top-ranking world power in the space of barely thirty years. The outcome was very different from the social point of view, however: the reforms that turned a planned economy into a market economy caused radical upheaval in Chinese society as collateral damage from the demise of the welfare state and the restructuring of the State-controlled production sector plunged millions into precariousness and insecurity. The late 1980s saw the emergence of a new « dangerous class » of landless peasants, unemployed workers and poverty-stricken individuals: the « dangerous masses » that the Chinese party-state would have to discipline so that the « Chinese miracle » could be built by exploiting their labour. Thus did China’s Communist party leadership deploy a whole arsenal of political doublespeak, developed and honed over three decades, designed to formulate perceptions and « correct » the « erroneous conceptions » of these populations to lead them to acceptance of a social order which is fundamentally opposed to their interests. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If phenomenology is a research methodology uniquely positioned to enable us to learn from others, I aim to demonstrate the idea that cinema is a privileged site from which to investigate the notion of virtuality (sight and reality), even in an age where vision’s predominance is waning. In order to do so, I consider the painfully disruptive mother-daughter relationship found cross-culturally and discourse-analytically in contemporary patriarchal societies. This bond is arguably of central concern to feminists (and women in general) (...) since previous research has found that the fractious nature of this dynamic points to a very specific psychological deformation of the female psyche under conditions of sexist oppression. The views of French psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva and other feminist contributors to the debate on this psychological construct are considered. The possibility of a cultural remedy inspired by a secularised trend of Chinese Buddhism in post-Maoist China, a society very different from that of the West, is investigated. This will involve the analysis of the film Curse of the Golden Flower (Chinese Mandarin soundtrack and English subtitles). I subsequently explore whether or not a valuable model for the compromised mother/daughter relationship is available within the context of the notion of a “slave economy” in the comparatively healthier mother/son relationship of (contemporary) Han Chinese culture. By means of cross-cultural analysis as research tool, this article finds confirmation for the proposition of a positive mother/daughter dynamic in the French novelist Colette’s relationship with her mother, Sido. In conclusion, I find that cinema (as an art form serving the eye, i.e. virtuality) is particularly well suited as a site to investigate psychological phenomena by way of interpretative phenomenology as a research methodology, even as vision – as the human sense of choice – has begun to wane amid a global crisis in masculinity. (shrink)

Whereas the concept of "socialist rule of law" punctuated political discourse in the late 1990s, the idea of a "socialist harmonious society" is today casting a strange light on Chinese legal reform. Is there a Confucian vision of China's marketing law and practice? To what extent have China's norms for marketing, mainly intellectual property and advertising law, been challenged by the new government policy toward a harmonious society? In the post World Trade Organization accession period, the (...) theoretical framework of the "socialist harmonious society" has turned law into a disciplinary principle given over to society's moral construction. If law is seen as an instrument for legitimizing power, it remains implicitly bound primarily to ensure the regime's durability. Although more and more ordinary citizens and foreign companies are seizing hold of normative tools being put at their disposal, this does not necessarily mean that Chinese law is implemented in a uniform and timely manner throughout China's territory. China still suffers from a lack of coherence and political will in the drafting of a legal reform that aims mainly at preserving the current fragile political balance. Contradictory forces are indeed at work in this legal construction that is torn between liberal leanings and socialist authoritarianism. Without a deep change in perspective, one can expect only relatively slow progress in protecting the intellectual property rights of the many Chinese and foreign goods and services that can be found on the Chinese market. (shrink)

This article investigates the origin and the earliest, formative period of one of the major concepts in post-classical Chinese medicine, the concept of phlegm, tan 痰. It is the first study that examines both Chinese- and Sanskrit-language sources in seeking to answer the question whether the development of the concept of phlegm in Chinese medicine is owed to Indic influences. Following traditional Chinese scholarship, it argues that the initial emergence of the substance tan 痰, which (...) later was to become “phlegm,” should be understood as an indigenous development from the fluid yin 飲. The subsequent formation and development of the concept of phlegm in Chinese medicine, however, was influenced by Āyurveda. The influence hinges on the coincidence of Indic and Chinese intuitions about digestion. Previous scholarship on early Chinese Buddhist translations of Indic terms for phlegm and the tridoṣa has either claimed that variations in the terminology betrayed the Chinese translators’ poor understanding of Āyurvedic concepts or that the translators creatively manipulated the terminology with a view to the cultural background of their intended audiences. By contrast, this article argues that the early terminology the Chinese translators crafted was highly accurate and faithful to their Indic source texts. It shows, by going back to the Indic classics, that the variations in Chinese terminology reflect an ancient and long-forgotten temporal shift in the perception of humors in India itself. (shrink)

The essence of Chinese modernization is fundamentally about human development. This process unfolds within the dialectical interaction where individuals shape society and are in turn shaped by it. The new path of Chinese modernization challenges the prevailing logic of modern capitalism by fostering the emergence of the "real human," recognizing and reinforcing the masses' role as the primary agents in creating, enjoying, and evaluating values. These values are integral to the fabric of societal development, aligning with inclusive, (...) autonomous, and comprehensive growth. Crucially, this pathway transcends mere economic metrics, aspiring towards a value framework rooted in post-developmental goals such as peaceful advancement, shared prosperity, and high-quality development. In this context, the value activities on this new road are guided by a philosophical and, significantly, a religious ethos that emphasizes holistic development, resonating with themes of moral and spiritual growth. This abstract offers a perspective where the value philosophy intrinsic to Chinese modernization is not only a secular agenda but is deeply interwoven with spiritual dimensions that reflect broader, universally resonant themes in religious philosophy. (shrink)