Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner
This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations.

The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, "the rise of China," in popul
"1113753190"
Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner
This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations.

The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, "the rise of China," in popul
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Overview

This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations.

The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, "the rise of China," in popul

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780739165720
Publisher: Lexington Books
Publication date: 03/31/2011
Series: AsiaWorld
Pages: 260
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Catherine Lynch is Emeritus in the History Department, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Research Fellow in the Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.

Robert B. Marks is the Richard and Billie Deihl Professor of History at Whittier College.

Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor of History and Chinese Studies and holder of the Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at the University of California, San Diego.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Chinese Radicalism in Historical Context Catherine Lynch Robert B. Marks Paul G. Pickowicz 1

1 Individualism and Nationalism in the Thought of Chen Duxiu, 1904-1918 Sooyoung Kim 11

2 Radical Visions of Time in Modern China: The Utopianism of Mao Zedong and Liang Shuming Catherine Lynch 29

3 Peasant and Woman in Maoist Revolutionary Theory, 1920s-1950s Tina Mai Chen 55

4 Mao and Tibet Lee Feigon 79

5 Chinese Communists and the Environment Robert B. Marks 105

6 Post-Socialist Capitalism in Rural China Thomas D. Lutze 133

7 Independent Chinese Film: Seeing the Not-Usually-Visible in Rural China Paul G. Pickowicz 161

8 The "Rise of China"? Brace Cumings 185

Index 209

About the Contributors 221

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