ORR ROM HOS

How Hong Kong got to this point

Richard ushThursday, September 12, 2019
Ispent my high-school years in Hong Kong, and so it has been sad to watch the last
three months of demonstrations, violent actions by protesters, violent responses by
the police, and the floundering of the Hong Kong government. A fight to the finish
between a politically mobilized public and a recalcitrant Hong Kong and Chinese
government is not a totally unlikely outcome. An armed intervention by China to
crush the protests would be even worse, and it’s not impossible.
What makes today’s situation especially sad is that it didn’t have to happen this
way. Five years ago, there was a path being laid towards a government picked
completely through competitive election, which in turn would open the way to
develop policies to address many of Hong Kong’s numerous social and economic
problems. It was a narrow path to be sure, but rather than try to navigate it, factions
in China and Hong Kong preferred to fight rather than win, and they appear to
have the whip hand again.

An imperfect, but workable, hybrid

To understand the current situation, it’s necessary to understand the political
system that China designed for Hong Kong as it prepared to regain sovereignty
over the territory 1997. This political system is embodied in the Hong Kong Basic
Law. It’s worth keeping in mind a distinction between the protection of civil and
political rights and the institutions that pick a society’s leaders. In liberal, electoral
democracies, rights and elections work together and reinforce each other. But
some, “hybrid” systems have one and not the other. Hong Kong is one of those
systems.
In the China-U.K. Joint Declaration of 1984, which laid out the reversion plan for
Hong Kong, and in the Basic Law that elaborated the plan, Beijing pledged that
Hong Kong people would enjoy the rights contained in the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights. The text of the International Covenant became a
Hong Kong ordinance. Furthermore, Beijing pledged that the rule of law would
apply in Hong Kong, in part to protect those rights, and that there would be an
independent judiciary. The legal system was the common law system, not a
Chinese-style, rule-by-the-Communist-Party system.
In short, when it came to civil and political rights, Hong Kong basically had a
liberal order. This was a precious asset that cannot be over-emphasized. Even
today, it should be valued by all citizens of Hong Kong, because they all benefit
from its protection.
This Hong Kong liberal order was not perfect, but it worked well for some time.
When it came to exercising the right of assembly, organizers of a demonstration
would present a plan to the police and if the police had no objection, the
demonstration would proceed. These demonstrations were a daily feature of
political life. The most impressive exercise of the right of assembly came in July
2003, when hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people came out to protest a
controversial national security law. Ultimately, that peaceful protest succeeded and
the proposed law was dropped.
On the issue of how Hong Kong leaders are elected, the set-up was more
complicated and less satisfying for those who desired popular, democratic rule.
After reversion, only some of the members of the Legislative Council were
selected in popular elections; ultimately that share rose to half. The rest were
selected in functional constituencies that reflected various economic and
professional sectors (bankers, lawyers, real estate companies, manufacturers,
educators, etc.). The majority of these constituencies were pro-Beijing and most of
them were picked by a small number of voters. Moreover, the chief executive was
picked by an election committee comprised mainly of pro-Beijing people. The
upshot: Beijing had engineered how senior elective positions were filled to ensure
that it maintained significant control and to block political forces it did not like
from gaining power.
In part because of the design of this system, there has been a high concentration of
economic and political power in Hong Kong. It has one of the highest Gini
coefficients — measuring inequality — in the world (53.9). A relatively small
number of families and companies control a lot of the wealth and a lot of the
political power. Not surprisingly, the public had a high level of alienation against
the establishment because of the unequal distribution of wealth and power. One
way to rectify the situation was to get more democracy.
In fact, in the Basic Law, Beijing had signaled that it would in the future move to
universal-suffrage elections. The promise was vague regarding timing and just how
much democracy would exist. The hope was that the chief executive would be
selected in a competitive election and that all seats in Legislative Council would be
directly elected, and not from small, functional constituencies.

Protests on the rise

In the second decade after Hong Kong’s reversion to China, two important changes
occurred. The first went relatively unnoticed at the time but proved to be
consequential. That was that some people in the pan-Democratic, anti-government
camp became unhappy with the rules concerning public assembly and began
engaging in political action that was unpredictable, relatively disruptive,
technically illegal, and sometimes violent. The number of such incidents grew
steadily from the middle of the 2000s. It was mainly young people who conducted
these new-style protests.
The second change was a decision by Beijing reforming the electoral procedures
for the Chief Executive and Legislative Council. It was willing to allow all
registered voters to vote for the chief executive, rather than the 800 members of the
Election Committee, but there was a catch: It insisted that a clone of the election
committee be the body that would nominate the candidates (not, for example,
political parties). The nominating committee’s members were predominantly allies
of Beijing and not representative of Hong Kong society as a whole. The conclusion
that Hong Kong democrats drew was that control was still China’s priority and that
any election result would still not reflect the will of the majority.
In response, some older Hong Kong democrats proposed the Occupy Central
movement, which was based on Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of civil
disobedience and included a willingness to be arrested on the spot and tried
according to the rule of law. But this effort was hijacked by the Umbrella
Movement, which was led by young activists and resulted in the occupation of
three major thoroughfares in the fall of 2014. Gandhi Rules were not in effect.
There were some episodes of violence, but a stable coexistence between the
authorities and the occupiers soon prevailed. The end of the occupations was
basically peaceful and lawful.
The Hong Kong government made one more try on electoral reform, drafting
detailed rules for how the nominating committee would work. The proposal was
wonky and intricate, but in my view, it created a “good enough” possibility that the
right kind of democrat could actually be nominated to run for chief executive,
creating a competitive election against an establishment candidate (I detail this in
my book). But the radical wing of the opposition opposed such a system and
pressured more moderate elements to reject it.
China responded badly to the collapse of the electoral reform project. It no doubt
believed that its “generosity” in allowing electoral reform had been met with
ungrateful resistance. Moreover, some of the more radical members of the
Umbrella Movement began advocating “localism,” “self-determination,” and
“Hong Kong independence.” Not surprisingly, China regarded this as a challenge
to its sovereign authority. It took measures to bar pro-independence candidates
from running for re-election and to expel opposition legislators who were
insufficiently respectful of China’s authority. Chinese agents came across the
border to snatch other people it didn’t like, denying them their right to appear in
Hong Kong courts. China’s initial pledge to allow Hong Kong people to exercise
civil and political rights and respect the rule of law was positive and important;
starting in late 2015, however, it began to renege on that pledge.

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The 2019 extradition law

But the most serious challenge to the rule of law was the extradition law, which, if
passed, would have allowed China to request, with little or no justification, the
transfer of individuals in Hong Kong to the mainland in order to subject them to
the Chinese legal system. It remains unclear whether Hong Kong’s Chief
Executive Carrie Lam was the author of this proposal, as she says, or whether
Beijing put her up to it.
Whatever the case, it turned into a political disaster for the government, because
Hong Kong people quickly mounted strong resistance to the draft law. On the one
hand, there have been a number of demonstrations by middle-class citizens that
followed the established rules. On the other, there were also elements in the protest
movement who were ready to be drawn into violent encounters with the Hong
Kong police. Instead of occupying major public spaces, as in the Umbrella
Movement, the leaders of movement undertook a kind of urban guerrilla warfare,
creating confrontations in various parts of the city and keeping the Hong Kong
police on the defensive.
One can imagine several ways the crisis could be brought to an end. The most
optimistic is that Hong Kong government leaders, authorized by Beijing, join
representatives of the various key sectors of Hong Kong society to undertake a
dialogue that addresses immediate issues, like how police interact with protesters,
but also more fundamental problems like the sources of social and economic
inequality that have bred such serious alienation and the failure to restart electoral
reform. This would be a Hong Kong project, the motto of which would be the
wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most
assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” Chief Executive Lam made a start in
addressing some of the protesters’ demands, which could be a way of jump-starting
dialogue, but the response from protesters thus far has been that she must capitulate
and agree to all of them.
Second, the movement could just peter out. The school year has begun, so the pool
of protesters has shrunk. The leaders of the movement could simply accept that
they have achieved as much as they realistically can and retire to struggle another
day. In effect, declare victory and go home. But problems would persist.
Third, and unfavorable, Beijing could intensify its restrictions on civil and political
rights and further constrain Hong Kong’s judiciary and rule of law, to be enforced
by the Hong Kong government. If that is the result of the scale and character of the
latest protests, it is hard to see how Hong Kong comes out better.
Fourth, Beijing could decide that the only way to bring Hong Kong under control
is to send in the People’s Armed Police and other security services and impose
tighter controls on Hong Kong society. Again, Hong Kong would lose assets that
are very precious.
Finally, and very hypothetically, the anti-Beijing movement in Hong Kong could
actually succeed in securing a different arrangement with China, even
independence. Yet that seems implausible. Ensuring China’s sovereignty and
territorial integrity is one of Beijing’s core interests. My guess is that it would use
whatever means necessary to avoid losing Hong Kong. For local activists to base
their actions on the assumption that such a victory is possible is the height of
recklessness and hubris.
One can hypothesize that hardline officials in China and hardline protestors in
Hong Kong are playing off each other. Each justifies each other’s existence. Each
reacts to the actions of the other. Each group would rather fight than win (in the
sense of searching for a mutually acceptable compromise). At this point, with
Carrie Lam’s concessions, it is time for Hong Kong radicals, in the interests of
Hong Kong society as a whole, to demonstrate conciliation. The problems facing
Hong Kong are legion but they can only be resolved if violence ends and dialogue
begins.
The need for a “cooling-off period” in the protests and demonstrations — and for
self-restraint — is urgent. China will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding
of the People’s Republic on October 1. For that celebration to take place while
protests continue would create great embarrassment for the Chinese leadership.
That may be exactly what some in Hong Kong want, but the risks for Hong Kong
of causing that loss of face are profound. China is not going away. It is Hong
Kong’s sovereign. To live successfully with that sovereign and to restore a high
degree of autonomy under current circumstances requires Hong Kong to pick its
fights carefully.
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Liberalism in contemporary China: Questions, strategies, directions
Show all authors

Tang Xiaobing, Mark Mconaghy

First Published January 2, 2018 Research Article

httpsdoiorgX8

Abstract
This article will examine the strategies by which a number of intellectuals in China
have staked out a liberal position in their work over the last decade, doing so in
the face of opposition not only from rival intellectual groups but also the state’s
ideological machinery. The writings of these intellectuals take up themes inherent
to the liberal political tradition, including democracy, individual rights, and the rule
of law. Collectively, they seek to revive liberal ideas as the basis for future political
reforms, working at a time when New Left and New Confucian discourses have
risen to positions of prominence in intellectual circles, each of which reinforce the
cultural nationalism of the Chinese government in their own ways. In responding
to this intellectual landscape, liberal thinkers have reckoned with four major areas
of concern in their work: the meaning of China’s 20th-century history, particularly
the Cultural Revolution; the social inequality created by market reforms; statism
as a discourse of power that openly rejects Euro-American political models; and
cultural pluralism as a grounding idea for 21st-century China.

Keywords liberalism, statism, authoritarianism, Maoist spectres, moral vision,

New onfucianism
This article will examine the strategies by which a number of intellectuals in China
have staked out a liberal position in their work over the last decade, doing so in
the face of opposition not only from rival intellectual groups but also the state’s
ideological machinery. The writings of these intellectuals take up themes inherent
to the liberal political tradition, including democracy, individual rights,
constitutionalism, the rule of law, and freedoms of association and speech. Most
of these thinkers currently serve at major universities and research institutes
across China. Their commitment to basic liberal ideas links them in a loose
intellectual network, though their positions on China’s past and future are by no
means uniform. Indeed, there is notable heterogeneity in their disciplinary
approaches as well as points of political and economic emphasis. This report will
unpack their shared concerns and different methodological approaches, giving
readers a detailed sense of some of the intellectual voices that are shaping liberal
discourse in China.
Chinese liberals contrast themselves with the so-called ‘New Left’, a set of
intellectuals who have strenuously critiqued the class antagonisms created by
marketization in Chinese society. Liberal thinkers also contrast their work with the
so-called ‘New Confucians’, a group of intellectuals seeking to reinvigorate long
abandoned Confucian political practices as a means of consolidating national
strength and cultural identity. In the past decade, both of these discourses have
risen to positions of prominence in intellectual circles, as each in their own way
has reinforced the cultural nationalism and statist discourse of the Chinese
government.
Liberalism, on the other hand, has in recent years seen a steady decline in
influence over intellectual and public life. If in 1998 liberal advocate Zhu Xueqin
could, in the prominent journal Southern Weekly (南方周末), talk of ‘liberalism
emerging from its submersion below water’, today it seems that it may be at risk of
falling once again below the cultural and political depths. No doubt, the
constraints placed on liberal discourse by the current political regime are a major
factor in its decline. But problems internal to the discourse have also contributed
to its current position. Liberalism has struggled to adequately analyse the new
class antagonisms that have emerged in Chinese society, as marketization has
come to dominate all aspects of social life.
Furthermore, in the wake of the multiple global crises of the first decade of the
2000s, including the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2008 financial
crisis, Euro-American political forms have come under renewed criticism in China
as elsewhere. With the Chinese economy providing the country with
unprecedented global standing, Chinese thinkers have increasingly turned to
‘Chinese-made’ solutions to their country’s social questions, rejecting the notion
that Euro-American political models are deserving of praise or emulation. There
has thus been a tendency in recent intellectual discourse to forego discussions of
democratization along liberal lines. Instead, prominent thinkers have focused on
questions such as the state’s role in managing the market economy, the
importance of socialism as a historical project, and the potential cultural
contributions China can make to global society in the 21st century.
Liberal thinkers have recognized these internal and external challenges to their
positions. In responding to them, they have produced an intellectual practice that
is becoming more historically informed and theoretically nuanced in the way it
takes up economic and political questions. Thinkers who are pushing liberal
discourse in productive new directions include Xu Jilin, Liu Qing, Chow Po-chung,
Qin Hui, Sun Liping, Yu Jianrong, Mao Yushi, Wu Jinglian, and Xu Youyu. This
article will touch on some aspects of the works of these intellectuals, though each
is deserving of individualized study. What follows is not an exhaustive overview of
liberal discourse in China – an impossible task, given the fluidity of intellectual
debates in the country – but a representative selection of key contributors and
their works.
In outlining a liberal vision for China, these thinkers have reckoned with four major
areas of concern: the meaning of China’s 20th-century history, particularly the
Cultural Revolution; the social problems created by market reforms, most notably
 bureaucratic capitalist corruption; statism as a discourse of power and identity that
openly rejects Euro-American political models; and cultural pluralism as a
grounding idea for 21st-century China. This essay will reckon with all four of these
areas, revealing the rhetorical strategies by which liberal discourse makes claims
on the Chinese past, present, and future.

The morality of history: Grappling with the Maoist past

No intellectual position in the mainland, of whatever political persuasion, can do
without a rigorous analysis of the modern history of the People’s Republic of
China (PRC). Debates about the future direction of Chinese society must,
perforce, begin with an evaluation of the socialist project upon which the PRC was
founded and directed, and liberal discourse is no exception.
Liberal thinkers who have crafted compelling interpretations of China’s socialist
experience include Mao Yushi, Wu Jinglian, and Xu Youyu. Their works have
sought to chart the differences between the Maoist (1949–76) and reform eras
(from 1976 onwards), insisting on a sharp break between them. For them, the
reform era’s market economy, intellectual pluralism, and rule of law stand as
sharp rebukes to Maoist economic planning, politics by command, and state
control of cultural life. Indeed, liberals contend that the ongoing reform of
contemporary China’s political order must be grounded on a historically informed
critique of the excesses of the Maoist period. The major political events of the era,
including the Anti-Rightist Campaigns, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural
Revolution, exist as violent spectres within liberal discourse, whose revolutionary
energies call out for explanation.
For Mao Yushi, an economist, the Chinese revolution was defined by a
fundamental division between speech and action. While officials publicly
proclaimed their commitment to equality and social justice, they used coercive
violence to subdue political opponents and consolidate their own power over
material resources. The division between lofty socialist rhetoric and instrumental
state power created an environment in which speech and action became
disconnected from one another, with moral consequences that have lasted until
today:
The deep crisis in Chinese society is the result of a loss of morals. What is most
frightening is that the society is full of lies, [while people] feel that lying is not shameful.
This condition is intimately related to the concealment of past mistakes: starting from
the lies told about the war against Japan, to the Cultural Revolution and after, to have
made so many mistakes, to have hurt so many people, and to never perform the
painful work of recognizing fault, but rather to simply lie with ease about it all. Because
there is no limit to the lies, action is not subject to scruples, and to lie is an effective
way of covering up the mistakes in one’s actions. Society thus has no sense for what
is true or false.8

For Mao, this distorted historical condition has made speaking truthfully about the
past a nearly impossible act in contemporary China:
 Those with knowledge advocate speaking the truth, but there is no environment in
which to speak the truth, and those who advocate speaking the truth do not have the
courage to do so themselves. For to speak the truth is to face tremendous political
danger. If you don’t do it skilfully you will be arrested and put in prison. This is the
basic reason why China’s rulers have been able to maintain a society of moral loss.

Xu Youyu has also grappled with the question of the moral consequences of the
Chinese revolution, and how one can speak accurately about them in the present
day. A relatively important figure in the world of contemporary Chinese liberalism,
he has produced one of the most searing evaluations of the Maoist period to
emerge in recent years. Entitled Rebels of All Stripes: A Study of Red Guard
Mentalities (形形色色的造反: 红卫兵精神素质的形成及演变), the book was
published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press in 1999. Based on over
100 interviews Xu conducted with former Red Guards, the book grappled with
how they understood their own actions during this period. Though the book was
officially banned on the mainland, it continues to play an important role in
discussions regarding the meaning of the revolution among mainland intellectuals.
In more recent years, Xu has analysed how Maoism continues to inform
contemporary political movements on the mainland. Amidst the political
shockwaves set off by Bo Xilai’s arrest and prosecution in 2012, Xu wrote a
searing critique of Bo’s ‘Chongqing Model’, particularly its selective interpretation
of Maoist history. As Xu put it, ‘The Bo Xilai incident and the rise and fall of the
Chongqing Model show that, like a ghostly spectre, the Cultural Revolution
continues to haunt Mainland China.’ And yet this haunting is a source of particular
vexation for Xu, who bluntly asks his readers: ‘The Cultural Revolution inflicted
tremendous harm on China, so why are there still so many people who yearn for
and cherish it?’
To answer this paradox, Xu has analysed the nature of Chinese politics since
1949. Xu has argued that, from the founding of the PRC onward, the Chinese
people did not have the opportunity to participate in politics. Their only experience
with direct political mobilization was during the Cultural Revolution, in which
grass-roots action against the party-state became possible for a brief period. Xu
contrasts this with the situation in contemporary China, where official corruption is
so rampant and the party’s monopolization of power so complete as to leave
people little hope for systemic transformation. Consequently, in the memories of
many despairing citizens, the Cultural Revolution stands as an era where people
could openly mobilize against a corrupt official class, championing ideals of social
justice in doing so. Yet Xu has consistently cast a critical eye toward such
idealized forms of historical memory. As he put it as far back as 1995:
In researching the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolutionary period, I have sought to
work hard with the people of my generation, using our memory and our critical
introspection, to piece together and recover that segment of history, a history that
changed the fates of millions of people, that changed the course of development of the
Republic … I must admit that other people in this society – the generation that came
before us and the generation that has come after – have reason to feel impatience or
 to take exception with us. I understand the anger that so many people have: the age
stole the things that should have been ours to enjoy. The younger generation not only
does not understand us, they cruelly ridicule us. The question is, down to today, if you
still do not understand how that age traumatized you, if you can’t tell stories that make
sense, then should you not expect to be misunderstood and pitied?

For Xu, grappling with China’s contemporary moral crisis entails telling a different
kind of story about the Maoist past, one that reckons fully with ‘how that age
traumatized you’. As with much liberal discourse, the Maoist period here remains
a potent historical problem, whose social energies cry out for explanation, lest
they rise up again to destabilize the gradualist reforms of the present moment.
Wu Jinglian, an economist, has also taken up the question of the moral
consequences of China’s revolutionary history. Often dubbed ‘Market Wu’, he has
argued that the development of moral sensibility in contemporary China can only
come about via the completion of market reforms. Wu positions this idealized
market order against what he sees as the irrational excesses of the Cultural
Revolution, the market becoming the very antithesis of the public violence of the
late 1960s and early 1970s. As Wu puts it:
After the end of the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’, educated leaders in China’s political,
academic, and industrial sectors all recognized the pain they had endured. On the
foundation of a basic consensus that they wanted to build a wealthy, democratic, and
civilized country, they began market-oriented reforms. Through twenty years of difficult
work, the Chinese economy has reached a relatively strong level of development, as
the number of people in poverty has fallen dramatically, and the quality of people’s
lives has reached a certain level of improvement.

Wu has sought to respond to criticisms from New Left thinkers that market
reforms have only served to heighten social inequality. For Wu, the massive
disparities in wealth that define contemporary China cannot be adequately
addressed by a return to the policies of the Maoist period. Indeed, Wu has argued
that the ‘socialist equality’ of the Maoist era was nothing but an illusion, and that
the period was in fact defined by long-standing material divides between the party
elite and other social classes. As for contemporary China, Wu is adamant that the
current source of social inequality is the monopolistic practices of China’s
bureaucratic-capitalist elite. Wu is just one of many liberal intellectuals who have
taken aim at the close relations which exist between government power brokers
and commercial concerns, which create a highly distorted form of capitalism that
is deeply interwoven with state power. As Wu puts it:
The reason that the disparities between rich and poor in China have become so
extreme is because of inequality of opportunity. That is to say, because every organ of
the party-state has great power to allocate resources, those who can get close to this
power can use it to immediately enrich themselves through rent-seeking activities …
reducing the gap between rich and poor will be accomplished by eliminating any basis
for rent-seeking activities, smashing the industrial monopolies that currently exist in
what should be competitive fields, and firmly dismantling the corrupt activities through
which ‘power can be bought and sold’.
 Wu Jinglian’s vision for the future of China is thus an archetypically liberal one,
defined by a new and growing middle class who benefit from a clear separation
between the private economy and state power. Wu’s middle class is composed of
researchers in the sciences, teachers in educational institutions, computer
programmers, lawyers, bankers, doctors, and workers in various levels of the
government bureaucracy. While Wu admits that this new middle class still has to
increase its sense of civic consciousness, he finds hope in the fact that what they
are now seeking is the gradual improvement of their economic lives as well as the
opening of their political environment.

The distortions of bureaucratic capitalism: The social

dimensions of the present
Chinese intellectuals from across the political spectrum have recognized that the
development of a capitalist economy in the country has produced, alongside great
material wealth, entrenched social problems, including increased class
antagonisms, labour exploitation, skyrocketing housing prices, the expropriation of
rural land, and environmental degradation. Liberal thinkers do not hesitate to point
out that a sense of opposition has already emerged between common people and
the official class; the latter are seen as increasingly corrupt and disconnected from
the real struggles of ordinary citizens.
Questions remain, however, regarding how to ease social tensions and find a
genuinely sustainable model of economic development. Sun Liping, a sociologist,
has argued that sustainable development can only emerge when political power,
the market, and society achieve roughly equitable levels of development. This
entails vigorously building a civil society that can act as a restraint on political
power and its close ties to industrial and commercial concerns. Yet such a civil
society cannot emerge if the current regime continues to pursue the authoritarian
‘stability’ politics that it has embraced in recent years. Within Sun’s discourse, the
concept of a ‘framework of interests’ plays a central role:
A loss of balance in the framework of interests is based on a loss of balance in social
power. Behind the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is the imbalance that
exists between various social groups in their ability to express and pursue their
interests. We can say that in today’s society, in which the interests of the individual
subject have already become pluralized, the question of how one expresses one’s
interests, and in particular how marginalized groups express their interests, is one that
can no longer be avoided. If we continue to refuse to establish a corresponding
mechanism for the expression of interests, on the surface it seems as if we have
avoided problems, but the result will be that the framework of interests will be further
thrown into imbalance, and we will be left with the lurking danger of even graver social
contradictions.8

For Sun, China’s ‘ruling class’ – that is, the web of officials and merchants who
monopolize state power in pursuit of their individual interests – represents the
major force restricting the development of such a framework of interests. New
reforms must be unstinting in their resolve to destroy the monopolistic practices
that define ruling-class power:
If in the process of opposing corruption one can make a breach in the vested interests,
one can transition towards a full cleansing of the ruling class, including overturning
many cases of wrongful conviction that have amassed during these years of
maintaining stability.

As for how such a ‘cleansing’ of the political class would come about, Sun has
argued for a powerful package of liberal reforms, including ‘systematic methods to
implement supervision and control over government power’, as well as the
establishment of ‘mechanisms for the expression of varied interests, social
competition, and the expression of public pressure [toward the government]’. Sun
is less clear, however, on just how exactly a government whose officials benefit so
greatly from their close relations with commercial concerns would, on their own
devices, eliminate the monopolistic practices that remain so deeply lucrative for
them. It is left unstated in Sun’s essay, but it would seem that only a social
movement generated from outside the government would have the incentives, if
not the social power, to force genuine reform.
Yet from where will such an outside political force emerge? Yu Jianrong has
researched the long-term development of grass-roots protest movements across
China. He has argued that while such protests in their current forms are
individualized events designed to protect specific interests, they have at least the
potential to become widespread movements for systemic reform. As Yu puts it:
The actions undertaken by peasants and workers to protect their rights are ‘issues-
based’. That is, specific events and specific demands determine their tendency toward
regular eruption as well as regular dispersion. They [peasants and workers] generally
do not attack core social ideas, but rather find a basis for protecting their rights within
traditional political language and legal frameworks. Generally speaking, the goal of
these popular protests is not to attempt to wrest control of national politics away from
social elites, nor is it to attempt to lead a civil society whose subjects are professionals
and intellectuals. Rather, the political protests that are conducted by grass-roots forces
utilize the power of civil society to obtain specific interests, under the auspices of the
state regime. Concern over the actual livelihood of the people is the true meaning of
grass-roots politics.

For Yu, if populist politics develop in a systemic trajectory – that is, attach local
interests to a critique of systemic injustice – the Chinese government will move
quickly to suppress them. As such, if rights-based movements are to have any
chance of developing on a wide scale, the distrust government authorities have
towards them must somehow be dispelled. Like his counterpart Sun Liping, Yu
has argued that authoritarian stability can only produce a highly distorted form of
order, which he calls ‘rigid stability’. For it is based on the explicit threat of state
violence rather than the genuine mediation of public interests. As such, Yu has
argued that if a mechanism for the expression of grievances is not created, then
the disaster that the government seeks to avoid (widespread civil protest) could
potentially emerge on an even greater scale than anticipated.
Qin Hui, a historian, has echoed Yu’s call for democratic reform as a mechanism
to mediate social conflicts, avoiding the general breakdown in social order that the
party so manifestly fears. The core of Qin’s reformist vision is captured in what is
by now a well-known formulation among Chinese thinkers: ‘limit power for liberty,
demand responsibility for welfare’. Like other liberals, he has roundly critiqued
bureaucratic capitalism, not only for the distortions in wealth it has produced, but
the way it has enabled the state to shirk its social responsibilities under the aegis
of market reforms. As he puts it:
In the old system before reform, those with higher salaries enjoyed a higher level of
social services, those with lower salaries enjoyed far fewer social services…. In our
era of unidirectional market reform, this problem has not only not been resolved, in
fact it has been severely worsened…. A particular defect emerged in the system, in
which ‘amassing power became easy, while demanding its responsible use remained
difficult’…. The government’s department of public services abandoned its
responsibilities, using public resources to unabashedly ‘innovate’ [i.e. enrichen
themselves through graft around the development of once public resources], while
relying upon their monopoly in power to eliminate any competition that emerged from
the common people.

For Qin, in order to combat the bureaucratic-capitalist nexus, one must limit the
power of government through forces that are not directly under its control. This
entails a commitment to an independent judiciary, democratic elections, and a
respect for grass-roots social activism. At the same time, one must press
government to embrace its responsibilities in the areas where it should
legitimately exercise power, such as provisions for education, health care, and
public housing. As Qin has put it in an interview with Taiwanese scholar Chen
Yizhong:
On the one hand, you remain unrelenting in your demand to limit government power in
the name of freedom, rejecting the power of the authoritarian state. On the other hand,
you remain unrelenting in your insistence that [government] accept responsibility in the
name of social welfare…. In this way, you will slowly ameliorate a situation in which
the government’s power is too great and its responsibility is too small. In the end,
when its power and responsibility are in relative balance, we will not be too far from
constitutional government.

Qin has been clear that intellectuals themselves should do more to advocate for
this dual-pronged approach to political reform. In the same interview, Qin
acerbically critiqued the close relationship that exists between China’s
intellectuals and the party-state:
Our Chinese government very much likes that the leftist camp does the job of
increasing state power for it. It also very much likes thinkers on the right who allow it to
shirk its [social] responsibilities. As such, I believe that in China whether or not you
can gain power is not a question of whether you are right or left, but whether you are
clever or not. If you are a leftist, you will have to increase the government’s power for
it, but you cannot demand it take responsibility [for social welfare]. If you are on the
right, you must allow the government to shirk its [social] responsibilities, but you
cannot limit its power. Of course, the best, most clever position is to simultaneously
 oppose neoliberalism and the welfare state. If you oppose neoliberalism then you can
limit freedom to its smallest possible degree; if you oppose the welfare state then you
can limit welfare to its smallest possible degree. If you do this, the people will have no
freedom nor will they have welfare, and the government will have the most power and
the least responsibility.

Qin’s dark humour points to a genuine dilemma facing liberalism as a political

project in China. For to advocate that the party-state take on greater responsibility
for social welfare means recognizing its legitimate power to regulate certain
aspects of social life. The question remains how activists can force the
government to take on a more interventionist role in providing necessary social
services, while also forcing it to relinquish power in those areas of social life
where government power should be limited, such as grass-roots political
organization, media discourse, university pedagogy, and so on.

Nationalism and state power in liberal discourse

Chinese liberal thinkers in recent years have struggled with how they should
position themselves in relation to the increasingly strident nationalist discourses
emanating from the party-state. The distance liberal thinkers have sought to
maintain from statist and nationalist ideology has only served to exacerbate the
tensions that already exist between them and government authorities.
Furthermore, the reluctance of some liberal thinkers to openly embrace nationalist
discourse, and to champion a vision of a powerful Chinese state, has made it
difficult for their work to find widespread support among the general Chinese
public.
Xu Jilin, a widely followed historian, has done more than any thinker in
contemporary China to analyse why statist discourse has become so influential in
recent years.8 For Xu, the statist trend has been fuelled by the general turn to the
right that New Left thinkers have made in recent years, in which they have
promoted the state’s plans for regional hegemony in East Asia; critiqued forms of
mass political protest in Hong Kong and Taiwan; and expressed open suspicion of
electoral democracy as unsuited to China’s socialist project. Worse yet, statist
discourse has naturalized a hierarchical relationship between the party-state and
the people, in which the former is deemed to always represent and act in the best
interests of the latter:
[Statism] prostrates itself in front of the highest sovereign authority and the will of the
state, believing that the state represents the comprehensive interests of the people. It
believes that for China to carry out its rise to supremacy, what is needed is only the
strengthening of the ability of the party and the government to rule … nationalist
intellectuals occupy positions at universities both at home and abroad, including at
Beijing University, Qinghua University, and in Hong Kong. They pose as independent,
organic intellectuals, and yet they each maintain a distinct but often concealed
relationship with the system, whether that be one of relative proximity or distance. In
supporting their positions, they do not use a dogmatic Marxist-Leninism, but rather any
number of popular theoretical discourses from the West, ranging from the right to the
left.
 For Xu, it is the very cosmopolitanism of statist thought, its ability to wrap itself in
the progressive language of Euro-American theory, that gives it its sheen of
respectability. Yet at its core it remains a deeply authoritarian discourse:
In reality in China, the moment when ‘the state is relatively large and full of dynamism’
is the moment that society will be defeated. There will be urbanites but not urban
society, there will be citizens but not civic organizations. A collectivity that lacks the
capacity for organic social organization is nothing but a loose sheet of sand, a
disparate grouping … When a self-determining society retreats, when various social
organizations are robbed of their external ability to restrict state power, when nothing
of them remains but their internal capacities for amusement and leisure, the nation
becomes a society of domination, an unrestricted despotism.

For Xu, statism’s dominance in contemporary Chinese thought cannot be

explained merely as the realization of the long-standing ideal for a wealthy and
powerful China. Nor can it be explained as simply the extension of the
authoritarian system that was established during the Maoist period. Xu has
argued that statism has an even more profound historical source: the loss of
enlightenment values that were once prominent in pre-1949 China and that made
a powerful if restricted resurgence in the 1980s:
The New Enlightenment movement of the 1980s offered the values of universal
enlightenment, but by the 1990s this universalism was subject to criticism and
suspicion. The traditional Confucian values were already long gone, while the values
of modern Enlightenment began to weaken once again. As such, various forms of
nihilism began to spread in China’s intellectual circles.

It was in this post-Tiananmen context that statism grew, promising the solution to
all that ailed China, if only the state could become ever more powerful and
unquestioned. It is against this nihilistic culture that Xu’s liberal project is directed:
Statism used this condition of emptiness to enter into the scene, becoming an illusory
object for the formation of identity. Statism is a de-politicized politics, a valueless set of
values, an ideology without ideological consciousness. The values and goals of the
state are deemed in no need of critical examination, as the only question of any
importance becomes the strength of the state itself. Yet this strong and powerful
country is not constructed on a civilizational basis of freedom, democracy, and the rule
of law. It is, rather, simply a material strength and a rationalization of the system along
Weberian lines.

Against cultural essentialism: The promise of liberal pluralism

Statist discourse will often employ terms which emphasize China’s cultural and
historical uniqueness from the rest of the world, which include notions of ‘Chinese
characteristics’, ‘The China Model’, and so on. These terms are employed as a
means of defending China against a ‘West’ that is understood to be neoliberal and
neocolonial, whose ongoing acts of military intervention around the world, as well
as continued domestic inequalities, disqualify it to act as a universal political or
cultural model. China must carve out its own developmental path, this discourse
argues, one that responds to China’s unique social and cultural characteristics,
without any standards of political reform imposed on it from the outside.
Such particularism emerges forcefully in the discourse of the New Confucians,
who see imperial China as a civilizational system that was historically
disconnected from Euro-American culture. In Confucianism they hope to craft a
new universalism that is superior to Western liberalism because it is not tainted by
the latter’s historical associations with slavery, colonialism, and racial exclusion.
For New Confucians, China is no longer a weakened disciple of the West but a
civilizational force that can surpass it, becoming a dominant cultural model for the
21st-century world. Xu Jilin has used the term ‘historicism’ to describe such
discourse:
China’s historicism cares only about the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and how
to represent ‘Chinese values’ as ‘good values’. From the perspective of moral value, it
thinks that as long as something belongs to ‘China’ it must certainly be good. This
closed-off thinking, which strives to ‘distinguish the enemy from the self’, can in no way
gain legitimacy for itself in terms of values. Because ‘our’ values … cannot be
reasonably analysed other than to say that they must be ‘good’ and ‘desirable’.

Precisely because such discourse insists on an essential Chinese culture, Xu has

argued that it produces an ahistorical and deeply distorted vision of the Chinese
past, one that ignores the country’s long history of linguistic, economic, and
demographic heterogeneity. As such, it betrays the world-historical potential that a
rising multicultural China possesses for the 21st century:
If China’s goal is not to simply stop at the construction of a nation-state, but rather to
reconstruct a civilizational nation that has a large influence on the world’s affairs, then
its every word and action, its deeds and symbols, must take world civilization as its
starting point. In global discourse China must have its own distinct understanding of
what constitutes a universal civilization. Yet this understanding cannot be culturalist. It
cannot use the language by which officials defend themselves, resorting to statements
like ‘this is China’s particular national situation’, ‘this regards China’s sovereignty, and
no one else has the right to discuss it’, and so on…. If China wants to be a great
power with worldly influence, what it reconstructs cannot be a particular culture that is
only suited to one country and one people, but rather a civilization that has universal
value for all of humanity.

Liu Qing, a political scientist, has also written powerfully against the rising
culturalism that has defined Chinese intellectual circles in recent years. His work
can be seen as a two-pronged defence of liberalism, on the one hand responding
to culturalist demands for ‘China-specific’ solutions, while on the other forestalling
critiques that liberalism is incompatible with the egalitarianism of the Chinese
revolution. Regarding the relationship between liberalism and equality, Liu has
been adamant that the former does not sanction unregulated market expansion or
labor exploitation. As he puts it: ‘Liberalism opposes an attitude of vulgar
developmentalism; it opposes an unregulated system of private ownership over
the means of production; and it opposes an unfettered capitalism that possesses
no concern for social justice and fairness’.8
For Liu, unregulated capitalist reform in China is not the realization of liberalism’s
promise, but in fact its denial: ‘Regarding a number of absolutely crucial principles
– including political democracy, constitutional rule of law, freedom of speech, the
regulation of state power, social welfare and redistribution – the current reforms
actually betray the basic principles of modern liberalism.’
If Liu has championed a ‘left-liberalism’ that seeks to marry social justice with
democratic governance, he has also sought to anchor liberal discourse more
closely in the spiritual and moral dimensions of contemporary Chinese life. This is
not say that he accepts a homogenized notion of Chinese culture. In fact, Liu has
been a strenuous critic of culturalist thought:
If one hundred years ago we could still, relatively easily, distinguish the ‘differences
between inner and outer’ – that is, what is Chinese tradition and local practices and
what are foreign concepts and imported practices, then today … [China has] become
a cultural field in which ‘the inner and outer intermingle and fuse’. If looked at from the
perspective of political ideology, cultural values, the organization of social systems,
forms of economic production, public communications, media, food, housing, and the
habits of everyday life, and so on, contemporary China already has innumerable
interconnections and imbrications with the so-called ‘West’ … On the level of cultural
practice, the West is already a part of China.

While Liu insists on the heterogeneous nature of contemporary Chinese society,

his cosmopolitanism does not render him blind to the particularities of life-
practices to be found in China. Echoing recent postcolonial scholarship on the
insufficiency of a secular epistemology for understanding life-practices in the non-
Western world, Liu has called for liberal thinkers to take the spiritual dimensions of
Chinese life seriously. He offers the phenomenon of the Spring Festival as an
example:
At every Spring Festival, during a time of approximately forty days, a massive short-
term movement of people occurs out of a population of more than two billion, creating
tremendous burdens in the realm of transportation…. One could avoid the mad rush of
the Spring Festival when deciding when one should meet up with one’s family, and
one certainly does not need to go home to find good food, drink, and leisure activities.
You could find a cheaper way to meet all of these needs. From a non-secular
perspective, the phenomenon of the Spring Festival is incomprehensible, and could
even be called ‘an irrational custom’.

Yet a wholly secular perspective on time and community is inadequate for

understanding this particular collective practice:
‘Returning Home for the New Year’ is not a project that can be understood via a cost
and benefit analysis. It is the realization of a cultural symbology. In the particular
period of the Spring Festival, assembling with family, seeing in the New Year, paying
visits, and so on, all have imbedded within them an ethical meaning that cannot be
calculated: this is the expression of filial respect and gratitude, the renewal of
intergenerational sentiment, the strengthening of family bonds … within these customs
and rituals, these humane relations, people experience a sense of identity, love, and
affection, which can even rise to an appreciation of the harmonious order of all the
 things on earth and in heaven. This is not the satisfaction of a narrow interest. Rather,
it is the means by which the Chinese people have pursued the meaning of ‘the human
condition’.

Liu’s work rejects the reductive essentialism of statist discourse, while also giving
full weight to the transcendent ideals that collective life-practices in China
embody. At the same time, his insistence on social justice as a core component of
liberal practice anchors his thinking fully within China’s 20th-century revolutionary
history. In this way, he works towards a liberalism that is not only socially just but
culturally plural, attuned to both material suffering and spiritual belonging.

Liberalism as an unfinished (Chinese) project?

Whether found in Xu Jilin’s and Liu Qing’s emphasis on cultural pluralism, Qin
Hui’s and Yu Jianrong’s emphasis on grass-roots protest, or Mao Yushi’s and Xu
Youyu’s dedication to an historically informed critique of the present, the thinkers
highlighted in this report have responded to the social impasses of the third and
fourth decades of reform through a variety of analytic strategies. They are by no
means a uniform group. Liu Qing, for example, would hardly share Wu Jinglian’s
unbridled faith in the moral benevolence of free markets, while the question of
how far popular protests should be allowed to disrupt social order remains a latent
point of tension in much of the work examined here.
Rather than advocating for the simple instilling of multiparty elections in China,
Chinese liberals see their work as addressing the very core of what it means to
live a just and engaged life. Indeed, a conviction that contemporary China is in the
throes of a moral crisis courses through the works examined here, regardless of
whether its cause is located in the mass movements of the Maoist period, the
failures of the enlightenment project of the 1980s, or the rampant consumerism of
the present. For each of these thinkers, liberalism is more than a set of policy
prescriptions. It is a method for answering the existential challenges facing
contemporary China.
Chow Po-chung has provided a most eloquent formulation of the moral vision that
underlays contemporary Chinese liberal thought. Like many of his liberal
counterparts, he has challenged the notion that liberals support an unregulated
market. He thus emphasizes the tremendously important role the state can play in
helping society’s most vulnerable members. This is crucial in providing each and
every citizen with the capacity to determine, according to their own will, what a
meaningful life is for them. It is this notion of self-determination, free from
discrimination or exploitation of any kind, that animates Chow’s thinking. As Chow
puts it:
Liberalism as a theory does not, nor does it have to, restrict itself to a narrow political
field. The reason is simple. If liberalism’s goal is to ensure that every person is able to
live a free and self-determining life, then it must work to reduce and eliminate
oppression in all fields, including the political, economic, religious, cultural, familial,
and gendered realms. The free person is a complete person.
 It is this vision of a self-determining being that continues to galvanize liberal
discourse in China. While liberalism may be at a low ebb in terms of institutional
support, its often-repressed position can in fact be read as evidence that its ideas
are genuinely destabilizing. Testaments to that power can be found across the
sinophone world in recent years. As Chow has pointed out, liberal ideals have
informed a wide variety of contemporary social struggles, including ‘the rights and
democracy movements, the equity in education movements, feminist movements,
movements for cultural pluralism, struggles over the distribution of social wealth,
the struggle to gain reasonable rights for workers and farmers, and so on’.
In so much as such movements show no sign of abating, they will continue to
galvanize debate around foundational questions of individual rights, social justice,
and state power. The search for the complete person, in China as in Euro-
America, continues.

Notes
This article has been prepared with the support of East China Normal University’s
Programme for International Research and Publishing as well as the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
1.It is important to note, however, that the sampling of thinkers presented here
does not exhaust the full range of liberal activists and writers in contemporary
China. There are intellectuals such as the late Liu Xiaobo and Ilham Toti whose
writings have been deemed impermissible by the party-state and have faced
imprisonment. There are also party cadres who are open to liberal models of
governance. Though they do not often speak about their inclinations in public,
research has suggested that liberal ideas have some traction for at least some
members of the ruling party. All told, a comprehensive map of liberalism in
contemporary China would need to include all such groups. For liberal forces
within the CCP, see Chongyi Feng, The current debate on constitutionalism and
the liberal force within the Chinese Communist Party, in Guoguang Wu and Helen
Lansdowne (eds) China’s Transition from Communism: New Perspectives,
London and New York: Routledge, , 93–119.
2.On China’s New Left thinkers, see the contributions in this issue by Shi Anshu,
François Lachapelle, and Matthew D. Galway, The recasting of Chinese
socialism: The Chinese New Left since 2000, China Information 32(1), 8: 139–59,
and in the next issue by Li Zhiyu and Morgan Rocks, The Sinosphere left looks at
rising China: Missed dialogues and the search for an ‘Asian perspective’, China
Information 32(2), 8: forthcoming.
3.On China’s New Confucian thinkers, see the Introduction in this issue by
Timothy Cheek, David Ownby, and Joshua Fogel, Mapping the intellectual public
sphere in China today, China Information 32(1), 8: 107–20, and an article in the
next issue by Deng Jun and Craig A. Smith, The rise of New Confucianism and
the return of spirituality to politics in mainland China, China Information 32(2), 8:
forthcoming.
4.See Zhu Xueqin 朱学勤, 1998: 自由主义学理的言说 (1998: The discourse of the
theory of liberalism), 9 June , httpwwwaisixiangcomdatahtml, accessed 17
October 2017. The article was originally published in two parts, the first of which
appeared in Southern Weekly (南方周末), 25 December 1998, and the second of
which appeared in The China Book Business Report (中国图书商报), 5 January .
The article was republished in a revised form as Zhu Xueqin 朱学勤, 一九九八年
自由主义学理的言说 (1998: The discourse of the theory of liberalism), in Ge
Jianxiong 葛剑雄 et al. (eds) 学说中国 (Theorizing China), Nanchang: 江西敎育出
版社 (Jiangxi education publishing house), , 202–20. The quote is drawn from the
online version of the article.
5.For a sustained critique of American imperialism, particularly as it pertains to
Taiwan, see Wang Hui 汪晖, 当代中国历史巨变中的台湾问题 – 从 2014 年的‘太阳
花运动’谈起 (The Taiwan question within the transformations of contemporary
Chinese history – Starting the discussion from the 2014 ‘Sunflower Movement’),
文化纵横 (Beijing cultural review), no. 1, : 54–71.
6.For a recent argument regarding how China’s political system contains a form of
representative democracy that is different from, but not inferior to, Euro-American
liberal democracy, see Wang Shaoguang 王绍光, 代表型民主与代议型民主
(Representational democracy and representative democracy), 开放时代 (Open
times), no. 2, : 152–74. For a critique of the blind worship of Western democracy
as a solution to all that ails non-Western societies, see Pan Wei 潘维, 民主迷信与
中国政治体制改革的方向 (Democratic superstition and the direction of reform of
the Chinese political system), 中国报道周刊 (China report weekly magazine), 23
July , httpwwwchinaweekcomhtml8htm, accessed 17 October 2017.
7.This is, of course, hardly an exhaustive list of innovative liberal thinkers in
contemporary China. Such a list would also have to include scholars such as Ren
Jiantao, Gao Quanxi, Zi Zhongyun, Zhang Weiying, and Xu Zhangrun, among
others.
8.茅于轼: 中国社会的深刻危机和可怕现状 (Mao Yushi: The deep crisis and
frightening status quo of the Chinese society), 3 February ,
httpswwwweibocomp88, accessed 18 October 2017.
9.Ibid.
10.徐友渔: 文革对当代中国政治的影响 (Xu Youyu: The Cultural Revolution’s
influence on contemporary Chinese politics), 爱思想 (Love thinking), 31 July ,
httpwwwaisixiangcomdatahtml, accessed 17 October 2017.
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.For Xu Youyu, the Chongqing Model’s most representative similarity to the
Cultural Revolution was that both political movements saw leaders use common
people’s concerns over an unjust system to foment political activity that went well
beyond the rule of law. Such movements did little to address those fundamental
social concerns, but much to secure the power of one representative leader (Mao
and Bo) over the bureaucracies they presided over. As Xu put it, both movements
can be seen as examples of ‘how rulers used the slogans of fairness and peace
to lie to the masses, to use the masses, to mobilize the masses’ to consolidate
their own power. Quote found in ibid.
14.徐友渔: 我们敢不敢直面历史 (Xu Youyu: Do we have the courage to face
history?), 爱思想 (Love thinking), 13 January , httpwwwaisixiangcomdatahtml,
accessed 17 October 2017. The article was first published in 青年报刊世界 (Youth
news world), no. 4, 1995. The quote is drawn from the online version of article.
15.吴敬琏: 左右极端都会给社会带来灾难 (Wu Jinglian: Extremism from the left
and right will bring calamity upon society), 10 March ,
httpwwwaisixiangcomdata8html, accessed 17 October 2017.
16.Wu Jinglian 吴敬琏, 中国改革进入深水区: 挑战权贵资本主义 (China’s reforms
have entered deepwater: The struggle against crony capitalism), 绿叶 (Green
leaf), no. 1/2, : 94–5.
17.吴敬琏: 左右极端都会给社会带来灾难.
18.See 孙立平: 重建社会, 还是重建权力? (Sun Liping: Reconstruct society or
reconstruct power?), 29 July , 经济观察网 (The economic observer),
httpwwweeocomcnshtml, accessed 17 October 2017. The article was originally
published in the October 2009 issue of 经济观察报 (The economic observer).
Quote drawn from online article.
19.孙立平: 既得利益集团对改革的挑战还没有真正到来 (Sun Liping: The vested
interests’ challenge against reform has not truly arrived yet), 爱思想 (Love
thinking), 22 April , httpwwwaisixiangcomdata8html, accessed 17 October 2017.
20.Ibid.
21.Yu Jianrong 于建嵘, 底层社会的权力逻辑 (The logic of power in grass-roots
society), 南风窗 (South reviews), no. 5, 8: 22–3.
22.于建嵘: 社会冲突与刚性稳定 – 对近期中国社会穩定形勢的分析 (Yu Jianrong:
Social conflicts and rigid stability – An analysis of social stability in contemporary
China), 15 August , httpwwwaisixiangcomdatahtml, accessed 18 October 2017.
Yu’s article originally appeared in the magazine 战略与管理 (Strategy and
management), no. 3/4, 2009: 38–53. Both the online and in-print versions have
been censored, so that the sentences starting from ‘Generally speaking, the goals
of these popular protests’ until the end of the paragraph have been excised. The
authors of this article have consulted an earlier version of Yu’s article posted
online before authorities removed the problematic sentences.
23.Yu Jianrong 于建嵘, 当前压力维稳的困境与出路 – 再论中国社会的刚性稳定
(Challenges and solutions regarding today’s forced stability – Discussing Chinese
society’s rigid stability once again), 探索与争鸣 (Exploration and free views), no.
9, : 3–6.
24.Qin Hui 秦晖, ‘中国奇迹’的形成与未来 – 改革三十年之我见 (The emergence
and the future of the ‘Chinese miracle’ – My views on 30 years of reform), 南方周
末 (Southern weekly), 21 February 8, httpwwwinfzmcomcontenttrsraw, accessed
17 October 2017.
25.Qin Hui 秦晖 and Chen Yizhong 陈宜中, 为自由而限权, 为福利而问责 (Limit
power for liberty, demand responsibility for welfare), 思想 (Reflexion), no. 14, :
171.
26.Ibid., 171.
27.Xu Jilin has bluntly admitted that ‘Chinese liberalism lacks a comprehensive
discourse regarding the state’. See Xu Jilin 许记霖, 当代中国的启蒙与反启蒙
(Enlightenment and anti-enlightenment of contemporary China), Shanghai: 社会科
学文献出版社 (Social sciences academic press), , 238.
28.Xu Jilin’s Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment in Contemporary China has
provided a trenchant analysis of the various ideological trends that have defined
Chinese society in recent years. The work presents a sustained critique of three
ideological trends that are currently dominant in China: statism, historicism, and
nihilism.
29.For an example of New Left discourse that critiques the student political
mobilization witnessed during the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, see Wang, 当
代中国历史巨变中的台湾问题.
30.Xu Jilin, 当代中国的启蒙与反启蒙, 243.
31.Ibid., 259.
32.Ibid., 271.
33.Ibid., 271–2.
34.For a formulation of such a position, see Pan Wei 潘维, 中国模式: 人民共和国
60 年的成果 (The China Model: 60 years of achievements of the People’s
Republic), 绿叶 (Green leaf), no. 4, : 11–27.
35.For an example of New Confucian thinking, see Jiang Qing, A Confucian
Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future,
trans. Edmund Ryden, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2016.
36.Xu Jilin, 当代中国的启蒙与反启蒙, 209–10.
37.Ibid.
 38.See Liu Qing 刘擎, 中国语境下的自由主义: 潜力与困境 (Liberalism within
Chinese discourse: Potentials and difficulties), 开放时代 (Open times), no. 4, :
114.
39.Ibid., 114.
40.Ibid., 108.
41.For an examination of the insufficiency of Enlightenment categories of thought
for studying non-Western histories, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing
Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 8.
42.See Liu, 中国语境下的自由主义, 115.
43.Ibid., 115–16.
44.Chow Po-chung’s recently published works include 政治的道德: 从自由主义的
观点看 (Political morality: From a liberal point of view), Hong Kong: 中文大学出版
社 (Chinese University Press), , and 自由人的平等政治 (Politics of liberal equality),
Beijing: 生活·读书·新知三联书店出版社 (SDX joint publishing), . Chow works at a
university in Hong Kong and thus operates in a different institutional context than
his mainland colleagues. This is not to say, however, that Chow’s work is in any
way disconnected from liberal discourse on the mainland. For one, Chow’s work
addresses the same problematic as the previous thinkers mentioned in this report:
liberalism’s potential to transform Chinese political thought. Secondly, Chow’s
own scholarly activities have involved the mainland in a multitude of ways. He has
published multiple times in mainland journals such as Open Times (开放时代); he
remains on the editorial committee of the Shanghai-based journal the Fudan
Political Philosophy Review (复旦政治哲学评论); and his 2013 book Politics of
Liberal Equality was published in Beijing by the SDX Joint Publishing.
45.Chow Po-chung 周保松, 自由主义左翼的理念 (The concept of a left liberalism),
二十一世纪 (Twenty-first century), no. 6, : 50.
46.Ibid., 50.

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