CHINESE PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
Once I discovered the many articles and books by Chinese intellectuals translated into English, I plunged into Chinese public discourse with enthusiasm. Intellectuals have always played a central role in maintaining the health of the nation, despite restrictions on thought and expression in modern times by the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party. Since the 1980s, there have been vibrant political and cultural discussions about China’s past, present, and future. The three major political philosophies, liberal, new left, and Confucian have engaged in exciting intellectual combat with efforts to integrate and synthesize China’s various intellectual traditions. But Xi’s intensified control of expression has made intellectual life less stimulating, less adventurous, less enriching.
Chinese thinkers stand out for their mastery of two vast and rich traditions, their own and that of the West, plus appreciation of Asian traditions in some cases. Their erudition and sophistication, skill at weaving together ideals and practice, and appreciation for the big picture as well as the details caught my attention. From Wang Hui, I gained a superb overview and appreciation of Chinese thought and politics from a historical perspective that brought together the best progressive scholarship, mostly Western. But it took time to digest his complex arguments and see what he was getting at. The work of Xu Jilin, a more accessible writer than Wang Hui, was equally remarkable. In an essay, “What Kind of Civilization? China at a Crossroads” (2013), Xu’s reflections on history, culture, and civilization applied to China’s experience brought all my scattered observations acquired over decades into a coherent vision. His choices of Western sources for his far-ranging arguments were unerring.
Reading Wang Hui, China’s foremost intellectual, I realized how little I understood about the connections between Chinese past and present thought. Wang explains that Chinese intellectuals came to realize the 1989 movement failed due to a rupture with the past, thereby repeating the same mistake made by the May 4th movement of 1919. They were attacking traditional ideas in the name of Western concepts such as science and democracy, while neglecting their presence in late Qing dynasty thought.
In his landmark four-volume The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004), Wang finds new possibilities for China’s modernity in its own intellectual traditions stretching back to antiquity, an alternative to Western modernity that could avoid many of its pathologies. His Twentieth Century China (2015) diagnoses the ills that have arisen due to China’s integration with global capitalism: heightened inequality, exploitation of internal migrants, and little political awareness. The contrast with Mao’s egalitarianism, emphasis on social mobilization, and suspicion of the profit motive helped me understand why the CCP’s use of state power to address the effects of unbridled capitalism makes sense to the New Left.
The historian Xu Jilin recognizes that modernity has brought wealth and power but not true civilization. China aspires to American levels of economic prosperity but the priorities of the Confucian literati, such as righteousness over profit and contentment and moderation over lust for power, are nowhere in sight. The “China model” is only a replica of the Western quest for economic and military dominance coupled with East Asian authoritarianism. Xu instead calls for joining mainstream civilization while revitalizing China’s cultural traditions to help produce a truly universal world order. He recognizes that all late developing nations from Germany at the time of Napoleon’s conquest onward have been challenged to preserve their cultural traditions in the face of powerful Western empires.
For Xu, a successful resolution of that dilemma is not a nativist response but a rejection of nationalism as well as aristocratic and authoritarian capitalism. In place of China’s prevailing cultural and political values, he recommends a judicious mixture of the best that China and the West can offer: Confucian care for the people, liberal freedom and rule of law, and socialist equality.
There have been attempts by Chinese thinkers and the Chinese government to come up with political notions in the sphere of international relations that could serve as alternatives to the dominant Western conceptions of the world order. The philosopher Zhao Tinyang advocated tianxia as a Chinese contribution to international relations theory, a cosmopolitan outlook originating in the early Confucian tradition. Rather than viewing the nation state as the essential unit in a world of competing states lacking any higher principle, tianxia sees the world as unitary, all existing under heaven. In such a world order, there are common ethics and rituals and a single set of institutions that ensure harmony among the different cultures and ethnicities of equal status. This concept has been adopted by Xi Jinping as a pillar of his foreign policy as China promotes the economic development of poorer countries while not imposing any ideological demands on them.
My study of Chinese history and, above all, the development of its political culture gave me perspective. China’s past offered Mao Zedong what Marxist-Leninist philosophy didn’t, an appreciation of rural life with its communal aspects. And the search to find the right blend of Chinese and Western ideas can lead to socialism enriched by China’s precapitalist path or liberalism uplifted by Confucian ethics. China’s intellectuals are leaving behind the spell of Western ideas and Western modernity to take advantage of the availability of two splendid intellectual traditions. But integration is elusive, and Xi’s emphasis on order and equality while harshly clamping down on freedom of thought and expression is not the answer.
I have singled out three leading Chinese public intellectuals to give just a taste of what is available in English translation. There is no excuse for ignoring the perspectives of Chinese public intellectuals on China today. We get an inside view and a side of the story that can lead to insights that take us beyond what we already know about China. That is a good thing.
