China’s increasing prominence on the global stage has caused consternation and controversy among Western thinkers, especially since the financial crisis of 2008. But what do Chinese intellectuals themselves have to say about their country’s newfound influence and power? Voices from the Chinese Century brings together a selection of essays from representative leading thinkers that open a window into public debate in China today on fundamental questions of China and the world—past, present, and future.
The voices in this volume include figures from each of China’s main intellectual clusters: liberals, the New Left, and New Confucians. In genres from scholarly analyses to social media posts, often using Party-approved language that hides indirect criticism, these essayists offer a wide range of perspectives on how to understand China’s history and its place in the twenty-first-century world. They explore questions such as the relationship of political and economic reforms; the distinctiveness of China’s history and what to take from its traditions; what can or should be learned from the West; and how China fits into today’s eruption of populist anger and challenges to the global order. The fifteen original translations in this volume not only offer insight into contemporary China but also prompt us to ask what Chinese intellectuals might have to teach Europe and North America about the world’s most pressing problems.
Table of Content
Introduction: Thinking China in the Age of Xi Jinping
Part I: The Challenge
1. “Unifying the Three Traditions” in the New Era (selection) (2005), by Gan Yang
Part II: Liberal Voices
2. Liberalism in the Chinese Context (2004), by Liu Qing
3. A China Bereft of Thought (2013), by Rong Jian
4. Original Intentions Start with the People (2017), by Guo Yuhua
5. “The Shadow of Communist Civilization”: A Gongshi Wang (Consensus Net) Interview (2013), by Guo Yuhua
6. Advancing Constitutional Democracy Should Be the Mission of the Chinese Communist Party (2013), by Cai Xia
7. “I Am a Child of the Nineteenth Century”: The Last Twenty Years of Wang Yuanhua’s Life (2008), by Xu Jilin
Part III: Left Voices
8. Mao Zedong and His Era (2012), by Qian Liqun
9. From Authoritarian Government to Constitutional Democracy (2012), by Xiao Gongqin
10. Liberalism: For the Aristocrats or for the People? (1999), by Gan Yang
11. Representative Democracy and Representational Democracy (2014), by Wang Shaoguang
12. The Significance of Borders (2017), by Sun Ge
Part IV: New Confucian Voices
13. Kang Youwei and Institutional Confucianism (2014), by Chen Ming, Gan Yang, Tang Wenming, Yao Zhongqiu, and Zhang Xiang
14. A Century of Confucianism (2014), by Chen Lai
15. Only Confucians Can Make a Place for Modern Women (2015), by Jiang Qing
Glossary of Names and Terms
List of Essays Translated in This Volume, with Original Titles
Contributors
Index
About the author
Timothy Cheek is Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. His most recent book is The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History (2015).David Ownby is professor of Chinese history at the University of Montréal. He is the editor and translator of Xu Jilin’s Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique (2018), among other works.Joshua A. Fogel is Canada Research Chair in Modern Chinese Studies at York University. His many books include Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations (2014).
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