Timothy Cheek

Xu Jilin and the Thought Work of China's Public Intellectuals

This article takes recent theoretical essays by Shanghai scholar and public intellectual, Xu Jilin, and other scholars of the history of thought and culture ( sixiang wenhua shi ) as a case study of efforts by intellectuals in the Peoples Republic of China to define and promote a role as public intellectuals separate from the party-state. This analysis suggests that political liberalism is used in such intellectual discourse to explain the social experience of intellectuals in China today and to promote a renewed public role for them. This public intellectual discourse is characterized by the continued privileging of sixiang (thought), by the naturalizing of foreign theories about liberalism, and by the use of such thought work to argue for a renewed public role for intellectuals as interpreters of public issues rather than as legislators of public values.

China's intellectuals and the state : in search of a new relationship

Todays intellectuals in China inherit a mixed tradition in terms of their relationship to the state. Some follow the Confucian literati watchdog role of criticizing abuses of political power. Marxist intellectuals judge the states practices on the basis of Communist ideals. Others prefer the May Fourth spirit, dedicated to the principles of free scholarly and artistic expression. The Chinese government, for its part, has undulated in its treatment of intellectuals, applying restraints when free expression threatened to get out of control, relaxing controls when state policies required the cooperation, good will, and expertise of intellectuals. In this stimulating work, twelve China scholars examine that troubled and changing relationship. They focus primarily on the post-Mao years when bitter memories of the Cultural Revolution and Chinas renewed quest for modernization have at times allowed intellectuals increased leeway in expression and more influence in policy-making. Specialists examine the situation with respect to economists, lawyers, scientists and technocrats, writers, and humanist scholars in the climate of Deng Xiaopings policies, and speculate about future developments. This book will be a valuable source of information for anyone interested in the changing scene in contemporary China and in its relations with the outside world.

Market Economics and Political Change: Comparing China and Mexico

Part 1 Part I: Theoretical Context Chapter 2 Market Liberalization and Democratization: The Case for Comparative Contextual Analysis Chapter 3 Market Economics and Political Change: A Historical and Theoretical Examination Part 4 Part II: Regional Context Chapter 5 Market-Oriented Reforms and National Development in Latin America Chapter 6 Socialist Marketization and East Asian Industrial Structure: Locating Civilized Society in China Part 7 Part III: Judicial System, Civil Society, and Political Culture Chapter 8 Mexico: Economic Liberalism in an Authoritarian Polity Chapter 9 Economic and Legal Reform in China: Whither Civil Society and Democratization? Chapter 10 Civil Society and Democratization in Mexico Chapter 11 From Market to Democracy in China: Gaps in the Civil Society Model Part 12 Part IV. Extending the Analysis Chapter 13 Constructive Engagement and Economic Sanctions: The Debate Over Intervention for Democracy Chapter 14 Market Liberalization and Democratic Politics: Perspectives from the Russian Experience

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People June 1957

This is arguably Mao Zedong’s most important single contribution to the development of state socialism and Marxist-Leninist theory after 1949. Here Mao confronts directly the ultimately fatal flaw of the Leninist state: the lack of political feedback (such as that provided by secret-ballot elections in liberal democracies). Since the CCP claims access to truth as the scientific voice of the working class, to oppose the CCP is to oppose all that is good and right. Yet everyone, including the CCP leadership, knew that the CCP was not infallible despite its formal claims. In our terms, if a government does not find a way to get accurate feedback on how its policies work in practice, it will soon crash—like a pilot flying blind. Mao set out in February 1957 to solve this problem for China.

Introduction:Comrade, Chairman, Helmsman — The Continuous Revolutions of Mao Zedong

When Mao Zedong was thirteen, he had a huge fight with his strict father during a large party at their home. Mao recalled later, “My father denounced me before the whole group, calling me lazy and useless. This infuriated me. I cursed him and left the house. My mother ran after me and tried to persuade me to return. My father also pursued me, cursing at the same time that he commanded me to come back.” But Mao was sick of his father’s harsh treatment and refused to obey. In fact, Mao threatened to jump in the nearby pond and kill himself. Faced with this fierce resistance, Mao’s father gave in. They agreed: Mao would obey his father if his father would promise to stop beating him. “Thus the war ended,” Mao said, “and from it I learned that when I defended my rights by open rebellion my father relented, but when I remained meek and submissive he only cursed and beat me the more.”1 Mao carried this lesson into political life. He always sought revolutionary answers to the social and political problems he encountered. He was the continuous revolutionary — from his early days as a radical student in rural China in the 1910s to his last days as supreme leader in Beijing in the 1970s.

Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Methods of Leadership June 1, 1943

This resolution of the CCP’s politburo of the Central Committee was passed in Yan’an on June 1, 1943. It is attributed to Mao Zedong and is included in volume 3 of his Selected Works as “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership.” We have every reason to believe that he did write it or that it captures what he was telling his comrades. The resolution sums up the organizational lessons of the 1942–44 Rectification Movement in Yan’an and outlines in some detail how the party should organize mass mobilization. It is a blueprint of how to run the revolution at the local level, thus answering the challenge Mao set forth in his 1927 “Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (see Document 1). It was extremely effective in the 1940s as the CCP extended its sway into new regions of China.

Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan February 1927

This is one of Mao’s most famous essays. It sets out to describe the uprising among poor farmers in the counties outside Changsha, in the central province of Hunan, in the winter of 1926–27. The full text of this report was first published in a local CCP journal in March and April 1927. Mao’s intended audience was his fellow revolutionaries in the CCP and in the revolutionary wing of the GMD, or Nationalist Party.

Cultural Revolution Readings 1960s

The Cultural Revolution saw the apotheosis of Chairman Mao. Although party leaders were aware of the tensions between the Chairman and his closest colleagues over the best ways to achieve socialism, and especially over how to recover from the Great Leap Forward, the public saw only their revered, godlike leader — the “Great Helmsman,” the “Savior of the Chinese People.” For reasons that still defy simple explanations, many Chinese acted irrationally in the Cultural Revolution (1966–69).1 Senior leaders found it impossible to bring themselves to stop Mao in the beginning and were helpless to save themselves soon thereafter. “Bombard the Headquarters” is the title of Mao’s August 5, 1966, “big-character poster” denouncing “some leading comrades” for arrogance and opposing the proletariat. Big-character posters are essays written on big sheets of paper and hung on the walls of factories, schools, or other places where people lived and worked. Anyone could write and post these essays. Mao’s big-character poster galvanized the emerging Red Guard movement of college and high school students. Leaders, from politburo members to local schoolteachers, were paraded through the streets in the dunce caps that Hunan rebels had used on evil landlords in Mao’s 1927 “Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (see Document 1). The Cultural Revolution was under way.

Talks at the Beidaihe Conference August 1958

Mao’s talks at the Beidaihe conference of the CCP politburo have never been officially published in China. But scholars have long known that this meeting in August 1958 produced the big push for Mao’s utopian scheme, the “people’s communes,” and ushered in the high tide of the Great Leap Forward. This text contains extracts from a “draft transcript” of Mao’s five long, rambling talks given between August 17 and 30 at the beachside party retreat. The transcript appears in a Cultural Revolution period “genius” Mao edition that came to light in the 1980s (see “A Note about the Texts”). The extracts here are taken in chronological order from the forty-five-page text, with an emphasis on Mao’s comments on the people’s communes.

On New Democracy January 15, 1940

In this essay, Mao begins his effort to organize and categorize the experience of China over the past generation by casting it in a broader narrative of imperialist aggression and “feudal” collaboration with invaders going back a century to the Opium War of 1839–42. “On New Democracy” seeks nothing less than to create a meaningful “history” out of “experience,” to tell the national story of the new China for a broader public in 1940. The telling, naturally, puts the CCP at the center of the story as the savior that can bring the nation back together and lead it to a prosperous and just future. Mao convinced both inner-party audiences of cadres and the broader public of students, urban professionals, independent political activists, and enough of China’s rural population to gain popular support for the CCP in the 1940s as it fought against the GMD (Nationalist party) for the right to rule China.