Realistic Revolution
Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989

This is a novel, transnational exploration of the major Chinese intellectual debates on radicalism in history, culture, and politics after 1989.

Els van Dongen (Author)

9781108421300, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 June 2019

286 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.54 kg

'Van Dongen's study is … most timely and vital for readers interested in China's conservative tradition. In additional to her sophisticated close readings and historical analysis, the short biographies that conclude the book form a brilliant primer to the movers and shakers of intellectual discourse in the Chinese-speaking world.' Brian Tsui, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

Between 1989 and 1993, with the end of the Cold War, Tiananmen, and Deng Xiaoping's renewed reform, Chinese intellectuals said goodbye to radicalism. In newly-founded journals, interacting with those who had left mainland China around 1949 to revive Chinese culture from the margins, they now challenged the underlying creed of Chinese socialism and the May Fourth Movement that there was 'no making without breaking'. Realistic Revolution covers the major debates of this period on radicalism in history, culture, and politics from a transnational perspective, tracing intellectual exchanges as China repositioned itself in Asia and the world. In this realistic revolution, Chinese intellectuals paradoxically espoused conservatism in the service of future modernization. They also upheld rationalism and gradualism after Maoist utopia but concurrently rewrote history to re-establish morality. Finally, their self-identification as scholars was a response to rapid social change that nevertheless left their concern with China's fate unaltered.

Dedication
Acknowledgements
Notes on transliteration
Abbreviations
1. Goodbye radicalism: the early 1990s
2. Neo-conservatism and doing things with Isms
3. Xiao Gongqin and the 'Yan Fu Paradox'
4. A tale of two revolutions
5. Chen Lai and the 'Max Weber dilemma'
6. Of post-Isms and May Fourth
7. The double nature of realistic revolution
Biographies of prominent intellectuals
Glossary
References.

Subject Areas: Political geography [RGCP], Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies [JPFK], Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies [JPFF], Cultural studies [JFC], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Asian history [HBJF], General & world history [HBG]