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Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism

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Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism

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Published: 8 August 2015
Author Michael Roberts
Intro by: TSN Editor The stock market in China has had a mighty fall in the last few weeks. Does this imply a coming economic crisis or is it just another bump in the road for China?s economic miracle?
In recent weeks, the Chinese stock market has taken a massive plunge and in July shares suffered their worse month in six years, falling by 29% from the peak in June. This followed a humungous boom in stock prices since the beginning of 2015. Indeed, since August of last year, the market index in Shanghai has risen 160%. And even after the collapse in the last month the index is still nearly 80% higher than this time in 2014.

This stock market bubble is of the proportion of the US in the 1920s that led to the crash of 1929 and the subsequent great depression. Is this what is in store for the Chinese economy as well?
Read moreChina: Is It All Over?

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Published: 8 August 2015 Author Michael Roberts Intro by: TSN Editor The stock market in China has had a mighty fall in the last few weeks. Does this imply a coming economic crisis or is it just another bump in the road for China?s economic miracle?

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8 questions about democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders’s vision for the United States

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8 questions about democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders’s vision for the United States

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One of the most riveting moments of Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate came when CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who identifies as a "democratic socialist," to confirm that he is not a capitalist.

"Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process, by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street's greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don't," he said, with force. "I believe in a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires."

"Just let me just be clear," Cooper asked. "Is there anybody else on the stage who is not a capitalist?"

No one answered him directly. It was perhaps an indication that skepticism of or opposition to capitalism - long associated in the minds of U.S. voters with this country's communist archrival in the Soviet Union - is again becoming viable on the political left.

Socialism, democratic socialism and other alternatives to the predominantly capitalist model in the United States used to be an important part of the American political landscape. The legacy of that era is still with us today in a number of widely popular federal programs that are socialist in design even if most Americans don't recognize them as such.

Today's elderly citizens would have been children the last time someone calling himself a socialist of any stripe was taken seriously as a national political figure. Here are answers to a few questions you might have about socialism if it's a new idea for you, as it likely is for many voters.

What is socialism?
What about Sanders's philosophy, democratic socialism?
Why aren't there more socialists in the United States?
What are some socialist things that I interact with in my daily life?
What do Americans think about socialism?
What's the difference between a democratic socialist and a Democrat such as Hillary Rodham Clinton?
What are some of the arguments against democratic socialism?
Could democratic socialism work here?

1. What is socialism?

It's probably impossible to answer this question with a one-size-fits-all definition. That said, here's a rough attempt to sketch what it means to be a socialist.

Socialists believe that the government should provide a wide range of basic services to its citizens free of charge or at a discount, typically including university education and health care, as well as child care, housing, telecommunications, energy and more in some countries. They believe that these services should be available to everyone, not just the neediest. In some forms of socialism, these sectors of the economy are owned and controlled by workers, as opposed to the government.

Socialists think that public or worker ownership can provide these services more cheaply and more equitably than the free market. They also hope to use these sectors of the economy to establish genuine equality of opportunity - in other words, they think that everyone should have a truly equal chance at success in life, regardless of the advantages of birth. At the same time, socialists believe in redistributing national income and wealth on the theory that being successful doesn't really mean you deserve far, far more than anyone else.

Socialism isn't just a list of economic prescriptions for government, though. Perhaps above all, socialism is a moral view. It is the idea that people share something, that we're all in this together, that we've got to help each other out.

2. Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist." What does that mean?

This difference between socialism and democratic socialism is actually kind of important. First of all, Sanders isn't talking about using government to take over large sections of the economy. He doesn't want to make Comcast part of the government, for example. He's also not talking about putting an end to the stock market and giving workers control over their companies. Some socialist countries, such as China and the Soviet Union, have sought to nationalize services under regimes that haven't given their citizens much say in those decisions.

Sanders wants the government to pay for health care and college tuition, but those services would still be provided by a combination of public agencies and private organizations if Sanders got his way.

While Sanders thinks that changes should be made to the U.S. economy, he doesn't envision doing away with the U.S. system of representative government - Congress, the Supreme Court, elections, all that sort of stuff. He believes in democracy. That's why he calls himself a "democratic socialist." In particular, as he repeated in Tuesday night's debate, he wants to reform the U.S. democratic system to limit the influence that wealthy donors who give money to political campaigns have over the process.

In much of the world - in particular in a number of Western and northern European countries - Sanders would be regarded as a moderate. To get a sense of the way socialism works differently around the world, consider the availability of universal health insurance, conventionally a basic tenet of a "socialist" country.

There is essentially universal coverage in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, where socialist philosophy is embraced by many parts of government. In the United States, where socialism is often a dirty word, health insurance has become quasi-universal since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act. About 10.4 percent of Americans are without coverage. And in China, which is nominally communist, many go without access to affordable care.

3. Why aren't there more socialists in the United States?

Socialism used to be much more common in this country than it is today. A utopian science-fiction novel written in 1887 called " Looking Backward" was among the bestselling books of the 19th century. The author, Edward Bellamy, imagined a socialist future for the United States.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, though, authorities began to see socialism as a threat. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917, which gave judges the power to imprison socialists who opposed the First World War. In the following years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would arrest thousands of socialists and suspected socialists. The well known anarchist and Russian immigrant Emma Goldman, among a few hundred others, was deported to her native country.

After the Second World War, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) argued that communist infiltrators had secretly achieved positions of prominence in Washington, and he initiated a series of hearings to root them out. If not entirely baseless, his claims were mostly unfounded. Still, he had widespread support, and his work made it treacherous for socialists to espouse their views publicly for generations.

4. What are some socialist things that I interact with in my daily life?

Back then, though, these socialists and their ideas were widely influential. A number of basically socialist and widely popular programs created before and after the Second World War survive to the present day, including Social Security and Medicare.

Much of the U.S. agricultural sector is run on principles that could be described as socialist, too. Until a recent Supreme Court decision, for example, the federal government controlled prices for raisins. State and regional boards across most of the country regulate the price of milk. Similar controls are common for other crops as well.

Another example is the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency that controls and operates electrical power generation. President Obama tried to privatize it in 2013, but Republican officials prevented him from carrying through his plan.

5. What do Americans think about socialism?

Although Americans still view theirs as a capitalist society, the opposition to socialism that characterized McCarthy's time may be waning.

Almost half of Americans say they would consider voting for a socialist as president, according to a recent Gallup survey. The organization has also found that about a third of Americans overall - but more than half of Democrats - have a favorable view of socialism.

And there appears to be a generational component. Younger people are also more likely to favor socialism. Among those 29 years of age and younger, more have a positive view of socialism than of capitalism, according to the Pew Research Center.

6. What's the difference between a democratic socialist, such as Sanders, and a Democrat, such as Clinton?

Sanders and Clinton agree on the big questions about the economy, but there are differences in their views, some of which they discussed in the debate Tuesday night. In particular, Sanders favors universal government services that are available to everyone regardless of how much they make. Clinton wants to limit those benefits to the people who really need them.

So, for example, Sanders has proposed offering most Social Security recipients more generous benefits. At the debate, Clinton also said she thought that Social Security checks should be more generous, but only for retirees who are the most in need.

Likewise, Clinton opposes Sanders's proposal to pay for college tuition through the government. She has noted that many people who go to college come from affluent families. She cited the children of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in particular. In her view, the government has no business paying for rich kids like them to go to school.

7. What are some of the arguments against democratic socialism?

The big one - and the one that Clinton alluded to - is that reforms such as those proposed by Sanders would be costly. Limiting college tuition and other benefits to the people who need them most would be less expensive. In order to fund government services, many northern European countries impose higher taxes on their citizens. Clinton discussed making sure that wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes at the debate, but she also said she wanted to reduce taxes for the middle class. It probably isn't possible to pay for the kinds of reforms that Sanders is advocating while reducing taxes for ordinary Americans.

As this chart shows, average workers in places like France and Finland pay more than 40 percent of their income as taxes, compared to closer to 30 percent in the United States.

Sanders and his supporters could respond that Americans already pay monthly bills for college tuition and health insurance, and it might not make much difference to them whether they paid for those things on Tax Day instead. For example, some economists have argued that a national, single-payer health care system such as the one Sanders is advocating would actually save money on balance.

On the other hand, many economists believe that higher tax rates can be detrimental to economic growth. They think that taxes discourage people from working and from putting their utmost into the economy, because they don't benefit as much from their hard work as they would if they didn't pay tax.

8. Could democratic socialism work in the United States?

Maybe.

As Matt Bruenig of Demos notes, socialist countries such as those in the Nordic region are far outpacing the United States in terms of productivity. In other words, the amount that each worker in those countries produces in a given amount of time has improved more in those countries than it has here, as this chart shows.

These figures suggest that contrary to economists' predictions, people aren't putting any less effort into the economy there than they are here, despite those socialist policies. There's only one way to find out, of course - but Sanders has a difficult primary campaign ahead of him if he hopes to defeat Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

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8 questions about democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders's vision for the United States

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One of the most riveting moments of Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate came when CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who identifies as a "democratic socialist," to confirm that he is not a capitalist.

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Contesting Memory for Intellectual Self-Positioning: The 1990s' New Cultural Conservatism in China

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Contesting Memory for Intellectual Self-Positioning: The 1990s' New Cultural Conservatism in China

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Contesting Memory for Intellectual Self-Positioning: The 1990s' New Cultural Conservatism in China on JSTOR

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Ben Xu, Contesting Memory for Intellectual Self-Positioning: The 1990s' New Cultural Conservatism in China, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 1 (SPRING, 1999), pp. 157-192

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Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China

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Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China

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Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China on JSTOR

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This article explores the political dynamics of modern Chinese cultural conservatism. It proceeds from the premise that modern Chinese conservatism, as distinct...

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Online Cultural Conservatism and Han Ethnicism in China

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Online Cultural Conservatism and Han Ethnicism in China

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Online Cultural Conservatism and Han Ethnicism in China | M. Chew | Asian Social Science

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Online Cultural Conservatism and Han Ethnicism in China

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Chinese Nationalism And Its Foreign Policy Implications

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Chinese Nationalism And Its Foreign Policy Implications

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By Jing Li

Coming of age in China during the intellectually impoverished period of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, Suisheng Zhao is now a leading scholar of Chinese studies, particularly the China-US relationship. Suisheng Zhao currently serves as Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. He is founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a member of National Committee on US-China Relations, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research in Harvard University.

At the invitation of the USC U.S. - China Institute, Suisheng Zhao gave a talk on Feb. 1 to more than fifty enthusiastic scholars, students, and administrators on Chinese nationalism and its foreign policy implications.

Contrary to the traditional view that the ideology of communism is the foundation of the People's Republic of China, Suisheng Zhao proposed that nationalism is the foundation of the country. In 1949 when Mao Zedong announced the establishment of the People's Republic of China, he used a nationalist phrase -- "Chinese people have stood up ever since" -- to restore China's identity, pride, and its rightful place in the world.
Chinese Nationalism: affirmative, assertive, or aggressive?
With the economic, political, and military development of China in the late twentieth century, Chinese nationalism has been on the rise as communist ideology has been on the decline. Zhao sees no cause for concern in this trend. National interest and national pride are healthy in any state. However, the concern arises when political leaders use nationalism to demoralize other nations in order to promote national interest or to mobilize the people to act aggressively. This becomes savagism rather than nationalism. There are some alarmists who believe that Chinese nationalism is indeed a threat and will lead China to become an international aggressor.

Is Chinese nationalism aggressive? Suisheng Zhao gave a resounding "no" in response to this question. He further explained that Chinese leaders have followed Deng Xiaoping's instruction to keep a low profile in terms of international politics. China does not try to be a leader for fear of becoming a target of international aggression or interference. Therefore, Chinese nationalism is not a tool for assertiveness and aggression.
The origin of Chinese Nationalism
Nationalism did not exist until the Opium War in 1840-1842 between Chinese and British troops. China's defeat opened China's doors, which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Chinese empire and the loss of national sovereignty to Western imperialists. Chinese people had suffered humiliation from imperialism for hundreds of years ever since. From the beginning of the twentieth century through today, most Chinese political leaders have not only shared a deep bitterness over this humiliation, but also shared a dream of a strong China.

According to Zhao, ethnic nationalism was one of the earliest forms of nationalism in the twentieth century. It advocates the creation of a single ethnic nation. For example, the Han majority rose against the minority Manchu in the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The Han sought to create a state dominated by the Han majority. Since then, this type of nationalism has given way to other forms of nationalism. It remains dominant only among the frontiers ethnic minorities in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, groups that were never able to create their own ethnic states.

Liberal nationalism, also introduced in the early twentieth century, eventually surpassed ethnic nationalism in its popularity. It defines the nation as a group of citizens who have a duty both to support the rights of the state and to pursue individual freedom. The post-Mao reforms in the 1980s, accompanied by Deng Xiaoping's call for intellectual liberation created spaces for liberal nationalism to spread out and have a greater impact in contemporary China. After the Cold War, liberal nationalists have explicitly advocated the adoption of liberal democratic ideals to promote China's renewal.
The Resurgence of Chinese Nationalism and Pragmatic Nationalism
In the 1990s, Chinese intellectuals shared a deep suspicion of the West and feared a Western conspiracy to contain China. There was a resurgence of "Mao Fever" where his writings and other "say no" books became widely read and distributed. The authors of The China That Can Say No - an instant best seller with 2 million copies in 1996 - claimed that after nearly two centuries of humiliation at the hands of western imperialism, "the twenty-first century will be the century for the Chinese to restore its glory." Mao Zedong was posthumously restored to his former status as protector of Chinese nationalism, and once again heralded as a "great patriot and national hero" for his firm stance against foreign imperialism.

Zhao asserts that contemporary Chinese leaders have been able to rein in this new sense of popular nationalism. They have replaced ethnic and liberal nationalism with a new pragmatic nationalism in order to gain legitimacy and control of the Communist party. Deng XiaoPing and his successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao have suppressed ethnic nationalism in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia and have taken affirmative action to assimilate minority groups across the country. The patriotic education campaign of the early 1990s focused on national unity against ethnic separatist movements. Chinese leaders have cautiously encouraged liberal nationalism so long as Chinese citizens to not question the Party's authority. The patriotic campaign held that China was not ready for liberal democracy, and the one-party rule would maintain political stability, a prerequisite for rapid economic development.

This pragmatic nationalism has been dominant in China since the market-oriented economic reforms in the early 1980s. Pragmatism was exemplified best by Deng's "cat theory": "A cat, whether it is white or black, is a good one as long as it is able to catch mice." In other words, the Communist Party would allow certain economic reforms and a loosening of communist ideology in order to preserve the stability of the state.
Pragmatic Nationalism's implications to foreign policies
Professor Zhao believes China's pragmatic nationalism is fundamentally interest-driven, reactive and flexible. China will adopt any foreign policy strategy that ensures peaceful development and peaceful coexistence. The failure of the Soviet Union caused pragmatists to shift from a policy of uni-polarity to multi-polarity. Chinese leaders recognize that China's economic advancement depends heavily on integration with the Western Countries. China has entered the World Trade Organization to accelerate China's business development, maintained territorial integrity by preventing Taiwan from independence announcement, and won the bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing to advertise its stability and success to the international community. Chinese leaders talk tough in foreign relationship affairs, but in reality, they act in a careful and highly calculated manner to avoid confrontation. However, China is often uncompromising and even arrogant when states demand that it adhere to Western views and positions.
US-China foreign relationship
There are many suspicions, misunderstandings, and misassumptions in the area of U.S. - China relations. Relations between these two countries have never been easy. With China's rise in the 21st century, many fear another extended period of tension between the U.S. and China. Some Americans talk about China's threat to U.S. security and interests and believe U.S. policy should try to restrain China. Chinese leaders are also concerned the U.S. will do everything to prevent China from gaining equal status with the U.S. However, Professor Zhao believes the conflict is navigable, because the world now is much more pluralized than in the past. It is necessary to build institutions to facilitate the U.S. - China relationship by creating and encouraging dialogue and conversation. Leaders in both China and the U.S. have made efforts to foster a candid, cooperative and constructive relationship.
The mission of Chinese international students
When asked what role Chinese international students played in U.S. - China relations, Suisheng Zhao discussed some of the concerns many in the international community have with regard to China. Chinese leaders, in their pragmatic pursuit of economic growth and development, have dismissed the standards that the international community treasures such as moral issues, human rights and transparency. This dismissal may lead to China's isolation within the international community. As China becomes more powerful, China needs to integrate the moral standards internationally recognized into their pragmatic foreign policies.

Chinese international students can help, on the one hand, by taking what they've learned in the U.S. in terms of technology, social sciences, and research and bringing that knowledge back to China. This infusion of western ideas and education can help China make some changes and reforms, and help China fit more into the international community.

On the other hand, Suisheng Zhao further suggested that Chinese international students in U.S. have a mission to help American understand China. There is a huge interest in China among the American people. Chinese international students in the U.S. are a bridge between Americans and Chinese and must promote mutual understanding. Ultimately, Chinese students should make American friends.

"The peace of the world could be promoted if people become friendlier to each other." Suisheng Zhao commented with a smile.

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Prof. Zhao is the author or editor of nine books or monographs. His most recent books are Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization (M. E. Sharpe, 2006), A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford University Press, 2004), C hinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (M. E. Sharpe, 2003), China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China (Routledge, 2000), Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Crisis of 1995-96 (Routledge, 1999). In addition, his forthcoming book, The Rise of China and Transformation of US-China Relations, will be published by Routledge in 2007. His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, The Wilson Quarterly, Washington Quarterly, International Politik, The China Quarterly, World Affairs, Asian Survey, Asian Affairs, Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere.

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Jing Li is an Ed.D. candidate at the USC Rossier School of Education and a Holmes Scholar. She is also a research assistant at the Rossier School's Research Institute. A native of China, prior to studying at USC, she worked in investment banking in Beijing.

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Chinese Nationalism and its Foreign Policy Implications

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By Jing Li Coming of age in China during the intellectually impoverished period of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, Suisheng Zhao is now a leading scholar of Chinese studies, particularly the China-US relationship. Suisheng Zhao currently serves as Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies.

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China's Rising Nationalism Troubles West

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China's Rising Nationalism Troubles West

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While US President Barack Obama has been sitting down with China's leaders seeking ever closer co-operation, some observers are concerned as to how China will behave as it gets stronger.
Beijing is building up its military forces, while some fear that popular nationalism is a growing and worrying force.

In the dark, cavernous space of a rock club in Beijing's university district, Liu Lixin is warming up. Crashing chords resonate from his electric guitar.

It is the sound of China's stirring underground. Mr Liu and his group Ordinance are at the radical edge of Chinese music. Their latest album, Rock City, has been banned from the airwaves.

The lyrics criticise the government, they tell of democracy, corruption. They say: "Taiwan is ours, Tibet is ours. Compromising with the United States and Japan is a disgrace".

"Our lyrics are aimed at our government," says Mr Liu.

"It takes a very tough line towards its own people. But outside China it is very soft. When your people are being bullied by others, you should stand up for them. Right now they are being very soft."

Liu Lixin articulates a new nationalism that is a growing and increasingly powerful force in China.

It is almost always hostile to the US and Japan, apt to believe that other nations are bent on thwarting China's rise.
Government 'afraid'
China's nationalists are often critical of their own government too, saying it is weak, not doing enough to stand up for China's interests.

"Right now the government brainwashes people into thinking that the country is strong," Mr Liu says.

"The authorities have banned our songs but we are not afraid at all. I think it is the government who are afraid, and that is why they banned us."

Beijing's biggest bookshop is a vast place with thousands of titles on sale. For part of this year one book was riding high in the best-seller lists.

It's called Unhappy China and is a collection of pieces by a group of nationalist writers about the vision they have for China.

They say it has sold 800,000 copies since it was published earlier this year. The day we went to the bookshop, there was just one copy left.

One of the men who contributed, Wang Xiaodong, lives in a grey, nondescript apartment block in a Beijing suburb. He is one of the men giving a voice to the growing current of nationalism in China.

I ask him what he means when he writes in Unhappy China: "If you don't respect us we will beat you up."

"If there is a powerful country, and if you don't try to please that country, you will be in trouble," says Wang Xiaodong. "That's exactly the way the United States behaves."

When I ask if he believes China should have a powerful military and be prepared to go to war he replies: "Definitely. A powerful country like China of course needs a powerful army, an army that can conquer anybody in any part of the world. This should be our grand vision."

In recent years China has embarked on a rapid military build-up, acquiring the ability to project its power far beyond its borders.

One day it may even be in a position to challenge the US as the dominant power in Asia.

China's leaders says their nation's rise will be a peaceful one. But US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg recently called on China to reassure other nations about its intentions.

"Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China's arrival as a prosperous and successful power, China must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of the security and well-being of others," Mr Steinberg said.
'Dangerous scenario'
One of his predecessors, Susan Shirk, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs under President Bill Clinton, goes further.

She says the combination of China's growing military and growing popular nationalism presents dangers.

"It creates the risk, not a high probability, but a risk, that one day China's leaders could feel that to look strong in the eyes of their public they have to make a threat to Japan or to Taiwan and that they will feel that they cannot back down from that threat without jeopardising their own domestic support or even their own survival in power. So I think that is a very dangerous scenario," she says.

Perhaps aware of the dangers of unchecked nationalism, China is trying to control some on the more radical fringe.

Three years ago there was a confrontation on some disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Chinese nationalists had sailed there to try to evict Japanese soldiers from the islands.

In the Chinese boat was Li Nan. He says his anti-Japan alliance has had more than 70,000 supporters registered on its website. But when he tried to stage another protest this year the Chinese authorities stopped him.

"I am not just targeting Japan but all those who threaten the interests of the Chinese people," says Li Nan. "Maybe even the United States and some others, I would see them all as enemies."

And Li Nan offers a view of how a future crisis, such as one over energy supplies, might spur on nationalist sentiment in China.

"In the future, energy supplies will become more and more scarce. Today each American consumes 10 times as much energy as each Chinese person. So every nation will have to think about their own survival. At that time, nationalism will be the mainstream."

It is a vision that will give some in America pause for thought.

The US National Intelligence Strategy this year described China as presenting a complex global challenge.

A China with a strong nationalist current and a powerful military could be seen as an even more troubling prospect for Washington.

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China's rising nationalism troubles West

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While US President Barack Obama has been sitting down with China's leaders seeking ever closer co-operation, some observers are concerned as to how China will behave as it gets stronger. Beijing is building up its military forces, while some fear that popular nationalism is a growing and worrying force.

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1Chinese nationalism is a more ambiguous reality than it might seem. Its existence cannot be denied. It has great power and intensity, as shown over the last few years by the demonstrations against the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, the EP3 incident in April 2001, the denunciation of the Japanese Prime Minister's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the virulent criticisms of Taiwanese leaders, from Lee Teng-hui to Chen Shui-bian, and, more recently, the ambition to make China not only a great economic and military power but to surpass the United States as the greatest power in the world. Nationalism seems today to be the most widely-shared value both in Chinese society and in the government, which is perfectly aware of this, and has repeatedly instrumentalised it with the aim of strengthening its hand in the face of its foreign partners and also of preventing any "peaceful evolution" of the regime towards democracy.

3Moreover 9/11 and the worldwide war against terrorism have contributed to creating solidarities between Chinese and Western governments, solidarities which have attenuated, at least up to the spring of 2005, the most spectacular and extreme manifestations of Chinese nationalism. Finally, the last ten years have brought to light a spectrum, wider than one might previously have expected, of international behaviour on the part of both Chinese government and society, putting into perspective the nature and extent of Chinese nationalism and making it possible to distinguish more clearly between ordinary times and the brief-but intense and emotional-moments of more or less spontaneous manifestations of nationalism.

4While, for historical reasons, Chinese nationalism is in many ways specific, because it is based on what is perceived as past humiliation (xiuru), it has shown since the beginning of the modern era, which is to say since the Opium War of 1840, a profound feeling of insecurity. However, beyond this feeling of insecurity, several forms of nationalism co-exist in this country, as they do in any other.

5It is first of all an official nationalism, inspired by communist ideology and the preoccupation of the Communist Party (CP) with maintaining its monopoly of politics: this is synonymous in China with "patriotism".

6It is also a "revanchist nationalism" with racist tendencies, which is disseminated in society by the most xenophobic elements among the Chinese elite-in particular the "New Left"-which rely on popular ignorance of foreign countries and the traditional mistrust towards them, to spread their ideas. Based more on the need to wash away past humiliations than on a rational analysis of reality, influenced by communist patriotism but going beyond it, this form of nationalism was particularly influential in the second half of the 1990s. Its manifestations more frequently took the form of anti-foreign emotions and violence than of structured discourse or coherent action. Stimulated by the elites close to government circles, it was once again instrumentalised by the latter in the spring of 2005.

7One may well wonder if there is not another form of Chinese nationalism, a nationalism which derives its legitimacy both from cultural specificity and from current Chinese economic and social realities, without however rejecting foreign influence out of hand. While seeking to modernise China and to make it regain the place and influence which are its due in the international community, while preserving its culture, this nationalism seeks to be less aggressive and more peaceable, showing a desire to favour convergence, in particular political convergence, with the rest of the world. Symbolised by the concept, favoured by Hu Jintao, of China's "peaceful rise", can this nationalism eventually give birth to a democratic nationalism, at once measured, open, and concerned with defending not only the interests of the Chinese nation but also those of the men and women who belong to it? Is not this nationalism the only one capable of expressing a real ideological consensus in society, far from the manipulations of political and intellectual elites driven above all by ambition and the struggle for power?

9However the main specificity of imperial China may lie elsewhere: many non-Western societies did not have the characteristics of the old European nations (in particular France and England), while being brought together by clear and specific racial origins, in short an ethnic or "objective" nationalism, which, in contact with the West, could only be exacerbated. On this last point, Japan and Korea come to mind-in the languages of these countries, as in Chinese, the idea of nationalism (minzuzhuyi), introduced in the nineteenth century includes the idea of race (minzoshugi in Japanese and minjokchuyi in Korean) 4. These nations therefore also constituted, in their own ways, "imagined communities", to use Benedict Anderson's classic formulation 5. Moreover, also in the West, "subjective" nationalism, as a feeling and a movement, is a phenomenon scarcely older than modern Chinese nationalism, brought about directly by the consolidation of states, the drawing of frontiers and the ideological changes of the eighteenth century 6.

10The specificity of Chinese nationalism stems from the almost permanently dominant position occupied by the Chinese Empire within the world with which it maintained relations prior to 1840. After its fall from the pedestal, the impact of the West was all the more strongly felt, the humiliation provoked all the more profound, China's resistance to outside ideas all the stronger, causing the failure of numerous reforms at the end of the Manchu era, at the very moment when Meiji Japan, having become Europe's pupil after having been China's, was modernising on an economic level as well as in political and institutional matters. We know that Chinese nationalists, and the Communist Party in particular, continue to accuse Western imperialism of being the main instigator of these failures, in particular by imposing inequitable treaties on their country, whereas historiography as a whole has shown that the weakening of the Empire predated 1840, and was due to a number of internal causes (in particular the doubling of the population between 1700 and 1800). What is interesting to focus on here is the foundational dimension of the trauma of 1840 in the debate on Chinese nationalism. Since then the debate has been between those who favoured resistance to the West and the partisans of modernisation by the introduction, not only of Western sciences and techniques, but also of Western ideas, modes of organisation (political institutions and law) and of management.

12The apparent binarism of the choices put forward by the Chinese elites after 1840-either resisting the West or learning from it-did not lead to an inevitable monopolisation of nationalism by the detractors of the West. On the contrary, what is shown by a century and a half of contemporary Chinese history is the great diversity of discourses and political and economic projects that the country produced. It is enough to briefly recall the debates among the elites at the end of the Manchu era (1644-1911) and the way in which these structured the political forces in the republican period (1912-1949) to be convinced of this.

13Constrained against its will to open up, subjected to the regime of "inequitable treaties", of zones of influence and of foreign concessions, China after 1840-and once again its elites above all―could not be other than unanimously nationalist and anti-Western. But at the same time, this nationalism was not turned against the European powers only: it was also aimed at the "foreign", which is to say non-Han, power of the Manchu dynasty, and militated for the restoration of the Ming; as was shown by the Taiping rebellion (1851-1864), it could both draw inspiration from Western religions, in this case Christianity, and display profound xenophobia. After the humiliating military defeat against Japan in 1895, it was fuelled by both enduring jealousy towards that country and a strong determination to learn from it. Above all, nationalist reaction to Western domination was plural from the beginning.

19Nevertheless, while it sought to build on those aspects of Chinese tradition that could favour the modernisation of the country, this form of nationalism was largely inspired by the West. Sun Yat-sen established, at the beginning of the republican period, the "three principles of the people": nationalism (minzuzhuyi), democracy (minquan) and the well-being of the people (minsheng). He also proposed the establishment of democratically elected political institutions-the five Yuan or Councils-which combined the separation of the three powers of the Enlightenment (the legislative, the executive and the judiciary) with the Chinese administrative tradition (the powers of examination, stemming from the imperial competitive examinations, and of control, inspired by the censorship). While his successors, particularly Chang Kai-shek, were for a while attracted by the Soviet Union's anticolonialism or Germany's militarism, they turned to the West above all in order to modernise their institutions, their laws, their economy and their education system. As an active participant in the nationalist movement of the Fourth of May 1919, which is to say the protests of the elites and of the students against the decision contained in the Treaty of Versailles to transfer to Japan the former German possessions in China, the Kuomintang largely contributed to the dismantling of the concessions, which became definitive in 1943, and more generally to the reintegration of the Chinese nation among the world's great powers. It was partly thanks to these efforts that in 1945, at the end of the Second World War and the Sino-Japanese conflict, China, with the support of the United States, became a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

20It is clear that, giving priority to the strengthening of the central government in Nanking, which was the capital of the Republic of China from 1928, and to the subjugation of local potentates and of the communist rebellion, Tchang Kai-shek dithered over launching a hopeless counterattack against Japan's territorial violations, which allowed Mao and his partisans to appear in the eyes of many Chinese, and above all of important sections of the Chinese elite, as the only upholders of the nationalist cause. Having taken refuge in Chungking from 1938 to 1945, the Kuomintang government largely abandoned the political territory of the occupied zones to the Communist Party, which reinforced the identification of the Party with resistance to the Japanese (and allowed Mao to extend his hold over that part of the country). The Kuomintang remained nevertheless highly nationalist, having sacrificed its best officers to the defence of Nanking in 1938 and later negotiating inch by inch with the Allies, and particularly with the Americans, the return of the Chinese possessions which had been snatched by Japan, among them Taiwan (at the Cairo Conference of 1943). The Sino-Japanese war did nevertheless favour the political victory in China in 1949 of the conservative nationalism, totalitarian and with xenophobic tendencies, of the Communist Party over the liberal, constitutional and pro-Western, if not yet democratic nationalism of the post-war Kuomintang.

21This historical framework is important because these four main nationalist movements are still represented in the People's Republic. Thanks to the reforms of 1979, and then the clamp-down which followed the Tian'anmen massacre in 1989, the respective influence of these various facets of Chinese nationalism has evolved. But as we shall see, this evolution is far from over. Because of the slow death of communist ideology under the successive batterings of the reforms, of the opening-up and of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Communist Party has been increasingly tempted since 1989 to instrumentalise the anti-Western and especially anti-Japanese dimensions of Chinese nationalism. Certain segments of the Chinese elites have used this ideological movement to strengthen either their influence over the government or their opposition to the current system. The partial withdrawal of control over intellectual debate has favoured the reappearance of several competing forms of nationalism, bringing to light once again the fundamentally plural character of this phenomenon, particularly among the elites.

24While this state nationalism was, for a period in the 1990s, attracted by "Asian values", today it is seeking above all to find in the Chinese Confucian and Imperial tradition the foundations of a legitimate national territory, of an authoritarian national identity and of government by virtue or by benevolence (renzheng). On the foreign level, this form of nationalism favours diplomacy and a security policy entirely based on national interests (guojia liyi), an idea which had been absent from the discourse of the Chinese Communist Party before, and the reconquest of the Manchu Imperial area (in particular Taiwan). It is above all more often used by the authorities in Peking, who always seek to place their partners in a position of inferiority, for example by constantly alluding to their five millenia of history and culture, or to strengthen their hand in negotiation, by throwing into the balance the supposed nationalist feelings and even anger of their compatriots.

26During the same period, the Chinese Communist Party intensified its criticisms of Japan, stigmatising it for a whole range of reasons: on the one hand for its desire to strengthen its security links with the United States (shown in particular by the adoption in 1997 of new Guidelines for US-Japan Defence Co-operation and in February 2005 of a declaration which identified Taiwan as a common strategic objective) and to enhance its relations with Taiwan, and, on the other hand, for its persistent refusal to present a "sincere apology" for the crimes it committed during the Second World War, to put an end to the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine where are preserved the funerary stones of the 2.5 million soldiers killed during the Second World War, among them 14 war criminals, to exercise more control over the publishing of history textbooks with revisionist tendencies, and finally, to yield on the question of the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) archipelago. The presentation by Tokyo of a written apology to Seoul in 1998 was the occasion for an official offensive by Peking, aimed at obtaining the same commitment (when a verbal apology had already been made in 1995). However, because Jiang Zemin did not wish to promise to put an end to Chinese criticisms of the Japanese government's attitude to the events connected with the war, the latter refused to accede to his demand, provoking, after the failure of Jiang's visit to Japan in 1998, a further salvo of nationalist attacks from the Chinese Communist Party.

28The central place occupied by nationalism in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party since 1989 has favoured the expression, particularly among the intellectual elites, of an autonomous popular nationalism with populist tendencies, beginning in the second part of the 1990s, a period marked by the crisis in the Taiwan Strait (1995-1996), the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (1999) and more recently the demonstrations of April 2005 against Japan. The adjectives "popular", "autonomous" and "populist" deserve explanation. To what extent does this form of nationalism reflect the feelings of significant sections of Chinese society? Is it really autonomous from the state nationalism propagated by the Chinese Communist Party? In a country where the state tightly controls the media and organised demonstrations, is not this autonomy inevitably limited and subject to manipulation by the government, or certain sections of the government? Are the supporters of this form of nationalism tempted to seek the support of society by criticising what they perceive to be a series of weaknesses and compromises on the part of the government, and of the official elites, in the face of the outside world?

29The 1980s were not without autonomous nationalist movements. For example, the student demonstrations against the revision of Japanese school textbooks in 1985 were already aimed at influencing government policy towards Japan (and in fact contributed to the fall of Hu Yaobang, a convinced supporter of reconciliation with Tokyo). But generally speaking, Chinese society, fascinated by the discovery of the outside world, was much more bent on learning from the West, envying its prosperity and seeking its freedom, than on rejecting it, distrusting it or criticising its dominant position. Moreover debates on foreign policy were still highly regulated, restricting any autonomous and public participation by society, and above all by the intellectuals, in them.

31At the time these opinions were still in a minority among the intellectual elites and were carried by few publications, apart from a new journal, Strategy and Management (Zhanlüe yu guanli), which, launched at the end of 1993 with the support of major leaders in the Communist Party and in the army (among them Generals Xiao Ke and Zhang Aiping), had begun to develop, in the writings of authors such as Yan Ping and Wang Xiaodong, a prickly, aggressive and populist nationalism.

32It was the crisis in the Taiwan Strait which probably contributed the most to the rise of populist nationalism in Chinese society. By 1994-1995, several opinion polls showed obvious popular support for a pro-active and aggressive policy of reunification with Taiwan and a clear increase in anti-American feelings among young Chinese. Carried out in a closed society where outside viewpoints are systematically distorted or censored, these polls produced results that are clearly questionable. They nevertheless directly inspired a number of nationalist books published after 1996, of which the best-known was China Can Say No (Zhongguo keyi shuo bu). Written by young intellectuals (Qiao Bian, Zhang Zangzang and Song Qiang) based on the model of Japan Can Say No by the far-right member of parliament Shinaro Ishihara, this book was followed by many others which, often for primarily commercial reasons, sought to exploit this new "seam".

34The outrageous statements, the idea of a Western, and particularly an American plot aimed at preventing China from developing itself and thus becoming stronger, as well as the determination-and the certainty-displayed to raise China to the rank of most powerful nation in the world and thus to put an end to American hegemony, all these themes expressed, within the Chinese elites, both a growing awareness and a deep feeling of insecurity. An awareness, related to the 1980s, that the West could not provide all the answers to China's problems, and a feeling of insecurity in the face of foreign criticism of their country, and especially the dangers of economic failure or of social instability which they criticisms alluded to.

35Fascinated by Western success during the first decade after opening up, these intellectuals were now tempted to perceive in the West, if not always the cause of their ills, at least the main obstacle to the realisation of their country's destiny as a great power. This is why, worried by the implications of the globalisation of the Chinese economy, they were often hostile to China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and critical of the supposed weakness of their government during the negotiations. Lastly, they developed the idea that because of the antiquity of their civilisation, the greatness of their culture, and the intrinsic qualities of the "Chinese race" (hanzu), their country could legitimately claim the first rank in the world which the Americans, whose culture was constantly presented as young and superficial, had usurped by taking advantage of China's temporary weakness. It was thus a question for China, by rising above the United States, of washing away the humiliation inflicted by the West (and Japan) from 1840 onwards.

37Much has been said and written about these demonstrations. With hindsight, one can first of all state that there was then a very clear convergence between the position of the government and the feelings expressed in the streets. The reasons for this encounter were, however, far from being identical. On one side the Chinese Communist Party reacted all the more strongly to the bombing because it had taken sides with the Yugoslav regime of Milosevic which it supported militarily, and had opposed the NATO airstrikes against Serbia. Consequently, it deliberately kept its citizens ignorant of the human tragedy in Kosovo. Moreover, certain sections of society that were already "wound up" against the United States, saw in the bombing a deliberate desire to "humiliate" China. The outcome of this convergence was the inability of most Chinese to believe in the hypothesis of an accident, a hypothesis that their government also strongly denounced (and subsequently never accepted). Moreover the government was late publishing the official apologies given by the Clinton administration and by NATO, which, as soon as they were received, were called into question and considered by many demonstrators to be "lacking in sincerity".

38In any case, this protest movement also constituted a turning point in nationalist expression in China, and in relations between the state and society. Firstly, this movement developed independently, giving rise to violence, which having been tolerated, was partly controlled in Peking, and much less so in Chengdu, where the American Consulate was burned to the ground. For about two weeks, the many foreigners resident in China were advised to reduce as much as possible their contacts with a local population which was galvanised against the Americans, and Westerners more generally. Hu Jintao, then the regime's second-in-command, was given the task of asking the demonstrators to put an end to their movement, apparently convincing them that the best way to avoid other "humiliations" was to work hard and contribute to the development and thus to the strengthening of their country. This was not a risk-free strategy, but it was successful in calming things down.

39Secondly, the leaders of this movement mostly came from the universities, showing once more to what extent Chinese nationalism had become (once again) a weapon that allowed the elites and the future elites (the students) to express themselves and to influence the government. Moreover this movement shed light on the deeply emotional character of Chinese nationalism. Rather than expressing itself through constant pressure on the authorities or on foreigners, it manifests itself through moments of intense mobilisation, which can lead to surges of anti-Western violence. In 1999, there were no foreign casualties. But one cannot exclude such a possibility in the future, so punctuated is the history of Chinese nationalism, in its populist and primitive dimension, with aggression against foreigners. The anti-Japanese violence perpetrated over the last few years, and particularly during the demonstrations in the spring of 2005, have shown that such an evolution remains possible.

41Finally the nationalist mobilisation in May 1999 was a lesson for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, or at least for some of them. Having for ten years nourished and fed the nationalist feelings of society, the government in Peking realised that these were getting out of control and could not only reduce its margin for manœuvre in international matters, but eventually destabilise it. This is the reason why, after 1999, while not overtly suppressing "populist nationalism", the Chinese authorities sought for several years to direct it, gradually toning down, particularly from 2000-2001 onwards, a foreign policy strategy which had done more to build the perception of a Chinese menace, particularly in the United States and in Japan, than to satisfy the demands of the populist nationalists. In this respect 9/11 made the Chinese government's task easier. But the latter's attitude towards nationalism has remained deeply ambivalent, so central is this ideology to the survival of the present regime. Thus the relative prudence advocated by Jiang Zemin after the demonstrations in 1999 was clearly called into question by Hu Jintao in the spring of 2005.

42The anti-Japanese mobilisation in the spring of 2005 was of a kind that set certain limits, probably temporary but nonetheless real, to the emergence of any autonomous nationalist movement in the People's Republic. The question here is not to pass judgement on the moral grounds for the Chinese movement of protest against the visits paid by the Japanese Prime Minister to Yasukuni, or against the approval by the Minister of Education of school textbooks with revisionist tendencies: both of these problems, which give rise to equally negative reactions in South Korea for example, show beyond a doubt the massive ambiguity of the Japanese Right towards the period of the war. Neither is it to disregard the general context of the rise in anti-Japanese feeling within Chinese society, nourished from a tender age by the education system and by government propaganda but also connected with China's emergence onto the world scene and marked by numerous incidents over the last few years. The physical and verbal violence that surrounded the football matches between China and Japan, held in Chengdu and in Peking in the course of the Asian Cup during the summer of 2004, were a striking illustration of this.

43Nevertheless, the dialectic between, on the one hand the mobilisation observed in China from March 2005, and on the other, the Peking government's offensive against a number of Japanese initiatives is too close to believe that the latter did not instrumentalise the former, and was very likely at its origin.

44Indeed, what unleashed the Chinese Communist Party's campaign against Tokyo was the joint American and Japanese declaration on February 19th 2005 on security in the Far East, in which, among the many shared strategic objectives on display, there appeared the peaceful settlement of the question of Taiwan. Although insignificant because it added hardly any substance to previous commitments, this declaration nonetheless appeared at a difficult time, marked in particular by clearer military rivalry between China and Japan (sharpened by the intrusion of a Chinese submarine in Japanese territorial waters in November 2004), the lack of summit meetings between the two countries, because of Prime Minister Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni, and dissension over the underwater gas deposits at Chunxiao, which lie in an area which is claimed by both countries.

45In this context, the petition against Japan's candidacy for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which was launched at the end of February by the "Alliance to preserve the truth about the Sino-Japanese war", based in the United States, and then taken up by several Chinese websites which are tightly controlled by the Chinese government, could seem somewhat suspicious 24. Although there is no tangible evidence that the authorities in Peking played any part in this initiative, the role they play in manipulating the debates taking place on the Internet unavoidably casts doubts on the spontaneity of this campaign 25. This petition was enormously successful, with 22 million electronically-collected signatures within a month, and 40 million by the end of April 26. Shortly after, in early March, two books by the liberal author Yu Jie, including The Iron and the Plough, which exhorted his compatriots to find out more about Japan before "hating" it, were withdrawn from the bookshops 27.

48One might well consider however, that the temptation for Hu Jintao and the present authorities in China to brandish the nationalist weapon and to manipulate society for reasons of foreign policy, in this case with the aim of preventing Japan from rising to the status of Asian Great Power, has not been without its dangers. It has revealed an unappealing and rather undemocratic facet of Chinese society, and especially of its rising elites, who did not hesitate to resort to racist slogans (comparing the Japanese to pigs, for example) and physical violence in order to advance their cause. This temptation also allowed other, more anti-authoritarian forces, to interfere in the movement, particularly in Shanghai, revealing the potential for anti-government protest that exists in China.

51However, this episode showed how useful nationalism is to the government, both in order to legitimise its domination over society and to further its interests on the international scene, and particularly in its regional environment, even if it means fuelling the syndrome of a Chinese menace in Japan and a negative image abroad. It also showed the limitations of the emergence of an autonomous populist nationalism whose existence no longer needs to be demonstrated but whose propensity for being manipulated by the government has also been proved.

55Having said that, the Chinese government remains strongly tempted to instrumentalise nationalism, and particularly its populist component, above all where its relations with the United States and Japan are concerned.

56Where the former is concerned, Taiwan continues to occupy an important place. More generally, the strategic role played by the United States in Eastern Asia and in the world, as well as its determination, perceived as imperial, to export its political system, its values and its mass culture, are the targets of denunciation by the Communist Party and by the nationalist sections of the intellectual elites which continue to irrigate Chinese society. It is a similar case with perception of Japan, which remains largely in thrall to trends from a past that is long gone. Thus the Chinese government persists in placing at the centre of bilateral relations the problems connected with the war, with the apologies and with the Yasukuni Shrine, even going so far as to mobilise the man in the street against the Japanese government.

57Thus, Peking's policies towards America, Taiwan and Japan have become largely dependent on a "public opinion" which is manipulated by the most nationalist political and intellectual elites, and sometimes by the leadership of the Communist Party. The government uses it to strengthen its hand in its relations with Washington, Taipei and Tokyo. But it also finds itself constrained to use cunning and to conceal any flexibility under an intransigent and even aggressive discourse when it decides to reach a compromise.

59Chinese nationalists have often proclaimed that: "If Taiwan declares independence and the Communist Party does nothing, we will overthrow it!" This provocative statement sheds light on the link that has always existed in China between the legitimacy of a government and its ability to defend the fundamental national interests of the country. And in the eyes of the majority of mainland Chinese, or at least of the elites who have the right to speak in their name, the question of Taiwan is part of those fundamental interests.

61But one can appreciate the difficulty of such an undertaking, so easily can the debates about nationalism be taken over by the country's most xenophobic and demagogic powers.

62All in all, Chinese nationalism constitutes a more complex ideology than might appear at first glance. In fact, both within the Communist Party and in society, the various forms of nationalism examined here still exist, and will probably continue to cohabit in future. Associated with the Cultural Revolution, which was still very present in people's minds, populist nationalism was little in evidence in the 1980s. In contrast, from the middle of the following decade, its influence grew rapidly, concentrating its attacks on the United States and on Japan. Since it expresses a feeling of insecurity in the face of richer and more powerful countries, could this form of nationalism not decline as China sees its own power grow and its standard of living improve? Possibly. But for all that one cannot rule out the Party leaders and certain intellectuals of the New Left being tempted in the future, for political ends, to hive off into extreme nationalism the reservoir of frustration and discontent contained in Chinese society. Having said that, and despite the anti-Japanese demonstrations in April 2005, this form of nationalism is today less perceptible within Chinese society, and even among the elite as a whole, which is perhaps a sign of a positive development. Is this to say that the globalisation of the economy and society in China have already contributed to marginalising this trend of thought? Or is this decline to be attributed to the increase in "face" (mianzi), capable of washing away past "humiliations", that the country's economic successes have provided to society?

63The game is not yet won, so loaded is the process with jolts and even social crises. Pandering to the nationalism in society while marginalising its populist and aggressive corruptions, "the path of peaceful emergence" advocated by Hu Jintao in 2004, had precisely the aim of reassuring China's partners, and avoiding the trap which pre-war Germany and Japan fell into. But the anti-Japanese violence which the same Hu Jintao tolerated in April 2005 showed that the Communist Party remains in part a prisoner of its old demons. The future of Chinese nationalism will depend heavily on the Chinese elites and their ability to give society an image that is both independent and accurate, of the intentions of their country's main partners. There is no doubt that much will also depend on the way in which these partners manage this nationalism, and, without acceding to its unreasonable demands, find ways to provide it with balanced and persuasive answers. One obviously thinks of Japan, which has not managed to come to terms completely with its past. Lastly, much will also depend on the Chinese authorities, and their ability to embark on real political reform. Only a genuine diversification of the Chinese political system will be capable of guaranteeing the reconciliation of Chinese society with its own history, independent access to information about the outside world, the marginalisation of populist nationalism and thus the irruption of a tolerant and democratic nationalism into Chinese society, which, reviving Yan Fu, Sun Yat-sen and Hu Shi, will find ways to co-exist smoothly with the other nationalisms which the world, and particularly East Asia, have produced. As such an evolution remains unlikely in the foreseeable future, we have no choice but to remain vigilant and attentive to the various manifestations of Chinese nationalism.

64Translated from the French original by Michael Black

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While, for historical reasons, Chinese nationalism is in many ways specific, it has expressed, since the beginning of the modern era, which is to say since the Opium War of 1840, the profound insecurity of the Chinese elite.

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In the last few years, Wang has reflected eloquently and often on what outsiders see as the central paradox of contemporary China: an authoritarian state fostering a free market economy while espousing socialism. On this first afternoon, he described how the Communist Party, though officially dedicated to egalitarianism, had opened its membership to rich businesspeople. Many of its local officials, he said, used their arbitrary power to become successful entrepreneurs at the expense of the rural populations they were meant to serve, and had joined up with real estate speculators to seize collectively owned land from peasants. (According to Chinese officials, 60 percent of land acquisitions are illegal.) The result has been an alliance of elite political and commercial interests, Wang said, that recalls similar alliances in the United States and many East Asian countries.

He is obviously on to something, as many China watchers would agree that systemic corruption - use of political power to gain personal wealth - is exacerbating economic and social inequalities. In searching for solutions he works within a Marxist framework (not too surprising, given the ideological constraints of the PRC). Ironically, it was during a compulsory "re-education" exile to a poor inland province - punishment for his participation in the massive 1989 Tiananmen Square protests - that he came to see more clearly the failings of the PRC's authoritarian capitalism, and to articulate a more pointed leftist critique of government policy.

Wang is also looking for culturally and historically specific answers to China's contemporary problems. He talks of building a "Chinese alternative" to global neo-liberal capitalism. "Chinese" here, I believe, is meant to imply an alternative drawn from the experience of Chinese socialism. But he also seems willing to look beyond socialism:

"It was during that year," [of "re-education"] Wang said, "that I realized how important a welfare system and cooperative network remained for many people in China. This is not a socialist idea. Even the imperial dynasties that ruled China kept a balance between rich and poor areas through taxes and almsgiving.

For me, this implies Mencius. As I have cited before, Mencius is very much concerned about providing a certain minimum material existence for all people - described in terms of the key indicators of a good life in his own times: mulberry trees in the garden and meat for dinner. He advocates a low tax policy and encourages the rich to give to the poor.
It would appear to be a rather easy for Wang Hui to invoke Mencius as a Chinese basis upon which to build a program of social justice.

Wang has written a lot. I have read some of it, but not with an eye for whether he has already invoked Mencius or not. I suspect he would be a bit hesitant: coming from a leftist perspective he would likely be sympathetic of the standard May 4th rejection of Confucian philosophy and practice. But things change. Perhaps we can look toward a Mencian turn by the Chinese New Left - if it has not already happened.

One last thing. I am a bit leery of Wang's politics. While he calls our attention to the growing inequalities that plague contemporary China, he also puts forth a critique of liberal democracy as a means to address those problems (see Merle Goldman's discussion, pp. 121-122). I do not believe that Chinese politics ought to become just like American electoral democracy. But, it is hard to see a way in which systematic abuses of centralized power are going to be solved without empowering individuals to defend their rights. That is how we might get closer to the Mencian ideal.

UPDATE: The Granite Studio is covering this story as well, with some good comments. And the NYT Magazine ran a (longer?) piece on Wang Hui by the same author, Pankaj Mishra. No direct connections to Confucius or Mencius in the expanded piece. But we do get a nice picture of Wang:

By the way, I emailed an acquaintance, who I could say is a leading intellectual historian of Chinese socialism, and he reminded me that Chinese liberals, too, are heirs of May 4th and thus skeptical of revisions of Confucian tradtions.

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A nicely written profile of Chinese "New Left" theorist Wang Hui in the IHT: In the last few years, Wang has reflected eloquently and often on what outsiders see as the central paradox of contemporary China: an authoritarian state fostering...

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Maoists in China Get Three Year Prison Sentences for Leafleting

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Maoists in China Get Three Year Prison Sentences for Leafleting

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A Report on the Case of the Zhengzhou Four

When liberal writers Liu Xiaobo and Yu Jie were recently (and briefly) detained by Chinese police, there was a world wide chorus of denunciation. The liberal writers' endorsement of the U.S. aggression in Iraq made them even more heroic in the eyes of the Murdoch-dominated press. Not surprisingly, there has been no coverage whatsoever of a more egregious case of crackdown on dissent-because it is dissent from the left. On December 21, 2004, four Maoists were tried in Zhengzhou for having handed out leaflets that denounced the restoration of capitalism in China and called for a return to the "socialist road." The leaflets had been distributed in a public park in the City of Zhengzhou on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the death of Chairman Mao Zedong. Two of the defendants, Zhang Zhengyao, 56, and Zhang Ruquan, 69, were both found guilty of libel, and each given a three-year prison sentence on December 24, 2004. The case has since generated a lot of expressions of solidarity in leftist circles within China. Postings to a leading leftist website in China in the last few days have set out an abridged translation of the incriminating leaflet, the commemorative piece titled "Mao Zedong forever our leader," plus a commentary whose author went to Zhengzhou to show solidarity on the day of the trial on December 21. These pieces have been translated by our comrades at the China Study Group, who have asked that we post them here at the MR website. We are glad to do so, believing that a strong case can be made that the story of the left opposition inside China is the most important and least covered in the world.

A Brief Account of the Case

In recent years, on the anniversary of Mao's passing on September 9, many people in Zhengzhou would gather before Mao's statue in the Zijinshan Square, to pay tribute to Mao's memory by laying wreaths or reciting poems. Each year there would be a massive police presence, which inevitably would lead to incidents of confrontation and arrest.

This year a crowd again gathered on September 9; the event was relatively peaceful, as no police was dispatched to forcefully disperse the crowd. A local resident, Mr. Zhang Zhengyao, however, was taken into custody by plainclothes agents around 10:00 am, apparently because he was distributing leaflets whose contents were judged inflammatory or subversive in nature. What Zhang handed out were copies of a commemorative piece, titled Mao Forever Our Leader, specifically written for this occasion. On September 10, 1:00 A.M., Zhengzhou City Police took Zhang Zhengyao in handcuffs back to his apartment to conduct a search; they took away his computer, the remaining copies of the commemorative piece and other documents. Three other persons were implicated in connection with this case: Mr. Wang Zhanqing has been detained for allegedly arranging the printing of the leaflets through an acquaintance in a printer's shop; Zhang Ruquan and Ms. Ge Liying, wife of Zhang Zhengyao, were placed under surveillance; Zhang allegedly had penned the commemorative piece at the request of Zhang Zhengyao, and Ms. Ge was said to have posted it on an internet Maoist website, Mao Zedong Flag.

The incident went pretty much unnoticed, even among China's left circles. Zhengzhou has acquired a reputation as a hotbed of radical Maoism. It has seen some of the most militant labor protests and repeated clashes with police over Mao anniversary in recent years. Many activists there had experienced brief detentions, many more than once. This incident and related arrests were not considered a big deal, especially since Hu Jintao was believed to be more tolerant to dissent coming from the left. The authorities, however, decided to deal with them this time by the 'force of Law'. A trial was originally scheduled for December 14, the date later changed to December 21; initial charges state subversion against them had been dropped; instead, they are being charged with a lesser crime: deliberately spreading falsehoods to damage other's reputation, and undermining social order and national interests.

The news began to spread on left-leaning websites about the pending trial; many sites, when reporting on the case, also published the entire text of the commemorative piece. It is now becoming a sort of cause celebre on China's radical left. On December 21, the scheduled trial did take place, albeit in a closed session, and not open to public, as originally announced. Many people actually went on that day, some from other parts of China, to attend the trial as an expression of solidarity, but were unable to get in. Only two defendants, Zhang Zhengyao and Zhang Ruquan were tried that day; both were found guilty, and each given three years on Dec. 24. The other two''s trial date is yet to be set.

An abridged translation of the leaflet

Mao Zedong Forever Our Leader!

-A statement in commemoration of the 28th anniversary of the Passing of Mao Zedong

28 years have elapsed, since Chairman Mao left us.

In the past 28 years, the reactionary forces headed by capitalist roaders within our Party have usurped the state and Party powers and divided up state assets among themselves. Meanwhile, they have been spewing deep-seated hatred and venom against Mao Zedong and his socialist legacy. They have done their utmost to attack and slander Mao Zedong, by the use of such tactics as concocting Party resolutions, issuing official documents or reports, and publishing articles and editorials in official news media; moreover, in there attempt to smear Mao Zedong, they have resorted to such low blows as "Democracy Wall" posters, rumors and innuendos, personal memoirs and interviews with foreign journalists.

But the great majority of Chinese people, accounting for more than 95% of the population, and in particular workers and the peasants will always stand by the side of Mao Zedong. Under Mao Zedong's leadership, to serve the people wholeheartedly was set out as the fundamental precept guiding the work of the Party, the government and the army. He had repeatedly urged all Party members and all the cadres always to take the mass line and stand on the side of 95% of the people; he emphatically stated that: "To take the mass line is a fundamental principle of Marxism." Through out his life, he had fought for the liberation of the people, until his last breath.

From their direct experience, the Chinese people realized that Mao Zedong and they themselves were intimately bound together, in good times and bad, in victory and defeat: with Mao Zedong as their leader, Chinese people were the masters of the country, and enjoyed inviolable democratic rights. They lived a happy life, confident, optimistic and reassured of ever better days ahead. But after Mao Zedong passed away, the working class in China was knocked down overnight by the bourgeoisie; they are no longer the masters of their own country. In this society of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," money means power and social status The wealth polarization has driven working people into abject poverty; as a result, they have lost their social status and all the rights they had enjoyed previously. They are no longer dignified socialist laborers; instead, they are forced to sell their labor power as commodities for survival: they have become tools that can be bought freely by the capitalists.

Part of the working people work for so-called state-owned enterprises, but the term 'state-owned' actually means capitalist-owned because the entire state is owned by the capitalist class. The laborers are no longer working for themselves; they are working to create surplus value for the capitalist class. Another part of working people have in effect become slaves for large and small capitalists. They suffer from even more crueler exploitation and oppression. In addition, hundreds of millions of workers and peasants have been constantly subjected to layoffs, and forced migration, living from hand to mouth, always on the march, looking for jobs, and struggling for mere survival. Labor has become the only means for the survival of themselves and their families. Work is no longer a guaranteed right. As a result of the commercialization of education, health care, cultural activities, sports and legal recourse, they have been in effect deprived of the right to send their children to school, access to health care, the right to pension and other rights associated with old age, the right to participate in cultural, recreational and sports activities; and even the right to legal protection. Moreover, as a result of the waste of resources and environmental pollution caused directly by the rapacious development pursued by the capitalist class, the working people have even lost their right to healthy food, clean water and fresh air. Poverty has brought them untold suffering!

A line has thus been clearly drawn. Mao Zedong is the leader of the Chinese working class; he is the leader of over 95% of the Chinese people. The imperialist revisionists and bourgeoisie and all the reactionary forces within and outside of China oppose Mao Zedong and hate him, while the people love him. The longer he has left this world, the more vehemently his enemies oppose him, the more profoundly, unshakably, sincerely and passionately do people love him. It is indeed laughable for those who oppose Mao Zedong and stand against the people to pronounce a verdict on Mao Zedong, which of course is categorically rejected by the people. The "Mao Zedong fever" that has occurred repeatedly in China over these years have eloquently refuted the two official "resolutions" purporting to pronounce a verdict on Mao Zedong. They are unacceptable to the Chinese people and to the people of the world.

Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and the like call themselves the core, or chief architect of China's reforms, or the proud author of the "Theory of the Three Represents" a close look at their performances and deeds will lead to the conclusion that they only represent the interests of imperialism, and the interests of the bourgeoisie. The historical practice and stark social realities of the past 28 years have opened our eyes and raised our class consciousness; the bourgeois elements within our Party is the head and the backbone of the Chinese bourgeois class. These are extremely selfish persons, stubbornly pursuing the capitalist road. They are much more sinister, ruthless, greedy, and devious than an average capitalist outside the Party.

Just take a look at what has transpired in a relatively short period of twenty plus years: the large and small capitalist-roaders in the Party and their family members have all become millionaires and even billionaires; who can deny that all their talks about socialism, and the "Three Represents", are outright lies. What they really want is capitalism, because only capitalism will bring them the greatest benefit. They are the enemies of socialism and the people.

We, however, must not forget that the CCP after all is a Party that had been founded and led by Mao Zedong, and one with a long revolutionary tradition. It is a Party that had carried resolute struggle against Kruschev's revisionism, and had been tempered by the Cultural Revolution. And consequently, just as there are capitalist-roaders in the Party, there are certainly socialist-roaders in the Party as well, particularly at the grassroots level. Among the rank and file Party members and low-level cadres, the overwhelming majority are resentful of revisionist leaders within the party. They wish to see the Party change its current line and to revert to the socialist road. Some of them cannot tolerate it any more. They have stepped out to openly challenge the current leadership, but more people still find it safe for themselves or for their families not to speak their minds. We are convinced, along with the deepening of the revisionist clique's push for privatization, the class contradictions in China are bound to become more acute; and the masses will certainly intensify their struggle on ever wider scales. When development of contradictions and mass struggles nationwide reach a climax, the people within the Party, the government and the army who have understood the true nature of revisionism will wage a resolute struggle against it, and will rejoin the proletarian class ranks to hold high the banner of Mao Zedong and to resume the fight for socialism in China.

As long as classes and the class struggle still exist in our world, Mao Zedong will remain alive, forever the leader of the oppressed and exploited classes. As the entire history of China's revolution has repeatedly shown, as long as the revolutionary people follow steadfastly the guidance of Mao Zedong, their struggle will surely advance from victories to victories.

The struggle of the people is the unexhaustible source of our confidence and power.

What Kind of Signal Is This?

A commentary on the trial of Maoists in Zhengzhou (This report is posted on the website of the book-store/political-salon Utopia. Penned by Shao Jingyan)

Today was an unusually cold day for the City of Zhengzhou, it snowed heavily, contrary to weather forecast. But despite the daunting weather conditions, many people have come to the city of Zhengzhou, from all over the country, in a spontaneous response to the news of the trial of Maoists in Zhengzhou.

They come here, without orchestration or an agreed plan, but rather, out of the deepest sense of loyalty to a socialist republic, and most profound respect and love for their deceased leader and teacher, Chairman Mao Zedong, united by a common concern for justice, and a perception that what is at stake with this case is the fate of the socialist republic and of the people. They know that the outcome of this trial will speak volume about the attitude held by the authorities of the city of Zhengzhou toward the banner and legacy of Mao Zedong. This case is a public litmus test of for the Zhengzhou authorities: Are they sincerely following the instructions of our party center regarding the imperative need to "hold high at all times the great banner of Mao Zedong Thought"? The defendants in this case, Mr. Zhang Zhengyao, and other workers, have been arrested for no crime whatsoever other than an act in honor of the memory of Chairman Mao.

As their trial began today, the informed people all over the world will be watching. Supporters in a position to do so have traveled to Zhengzhou to express solidarity. Many older workers in Zhengzhou braced the heavy snow to go to the court if only just to see these Maoist defendants in person. The trial held today, Dec. 21, only days from the 111th anniversary of Mao's birthday on Dec. 26, was supposed to be a public proceeding, but the intermediate court of Zhengzhou city without advanced notice had decided to hold it in close session. The charge was also changed from 'subverting state power' to 'libel'.

People kept waiting and waiting outside of the court in a state of suspended animation; finally, the lawyer came to give a brief account. In particular, the people learned, Mr. Zhang Ruquan had made a rousing statement, resolutely refuting the charge made against him and declaring, in conclusion, "I feel immensely proud of myself for being arrested for honoring the memory of Mao Zedong." When Zhang Zhengyao was put into a police vehicle, to be whisked away, the crowd chanted aloud: "Justice will be done" "Truth will prevail!" "Solidarity!" The police car was gone. But people still lingered on, voicing their indignation: Who are the real criminals that are daily breaking the laws with impunity? Who is it on earth that are trampling the constitution underfoot? Why are they afraid of people paying tribute to Mao's memory? One person said angrily: these evil, corrupt officials are lording over us and having a ball for now, but sooner or later people will get even with them! On September 9, an old worker was arrested before Mao's statue for an act in commemoration of the 28th anniversary of Mao's passing; On Dec. 21, a few days before Mao's 111th birthday anniversary, he and others were tried in secrecy. What kind of signal is this?

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On December 24, 2004, Maoists in China Get Three Year Prison Sentences for Leafleting by Ryan Jonna | Monthly Review

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A Report on the Case of the Zhengzhou Four When liberal writers Liu Xiaobo and Yu Jie were recently (and briefly) detained by Chinese police, there was a world wide chorus of denunciation. The liberal writers' endorsement of the U.S. aggression in Iraq made them even more heroic in the eyes of the Murdoch-dominated press.

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Despite his invocation of socialist principles, Wang was quick to tell me that he dislikes the New Left label, even though he has used it himself. "Intellectuals reacted against 'leftism' in the 80's, blaming it for all of China's problems," he said, "and right-wing radicals use the words 'New Left' to discredit us, make us look like remnants from the Maoist days." Wang also doesn't care to be identified with the radical intellectuals of the 60's in America and Europe, to whom the term New Left was originally applied. Many of them, he said, had passion and slogans but very little practical politics, and not surprisingly, more than a few ended up with the neoconservatives, supporting "fantasy projects" like democracy in Iraq.

Wang prefers the term "critical intellectual" for himself and like-minded colleagues, some of whom are also part of China's nascent activist movement in the countryside, working to alleviate rural poverty and environmental damage. Though broadly left wing, Dushu publishes writing from across the ideological spectrum. Wang's own work draws on a broad range of Western thinkers, from the French historian Fernand Braudel to the globalization theorist Immanuel Wallerstein. "Intellectual quality is important to me," Wang said. "I don't want to run just any left-wing garbage." The magazine has carried abstract debates on postcolonial theory as well as, he claims, some of the most interesting analyses in China of how the government's urban-oriented reforms have damaged rural society. There are restrictions on what Dushu can publish, of course, and Wang is frank about them. As with all intellectual journals in mainland China, authors and editors at Dushu have to exercise a degree of self-censorship. Articles cannot directly criticize the leadership or deviate much from the official line on subjects that the Chinese government considers most sensitive - Taiwan or restive Muslim and Buddhist minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet.

"I get asked in Western countries, 'How do you define your position?"' Wang said. "'Are you a dissident?' I say no. What is a dissident? It is a cold-war category. And it has no meaning now. Many of the Chinese dissidents in America can return to China. But they don't want to. They are doing well in the U.S. To people who ask me if we are dissidents, I say, we are critical intellectuals. Some government policies we support. Others, we oppose. It really depends on the content of the policy."

Born in Yangzhou in the southeast province of Jiangsu, Wang was just 7 and entering primary school when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. The decade-long chaos, which traumatized older generations, seems to have left benign memories for Wang. He remembers being taken by his school to work in the villages for a week or two during the school year. "My generation of urban intellectuals," he said, with a hint of pride, "is the last to have firsthand experience of conditions in the countryside."

He counts the 20 months he spent working in factories around Yangzhou after middle school as a valuable experience. In 1977, he took the first university entrance exams to be held after the Cultural Revolution, during which many universities were either shut or would admit only peasants, workers and soldiers. "Thousands of aspiring students," he reminisced, "were competing for a single place."

When he moved from Yangzhou to Beijing to begin his doctoral studies in the mid-80's, Wang found himself part of an even more privileged class. "Intellectuals," he said, "had been targeted during Mao's time; now, post-Mao, they were the elite again." And by then, Wang said, they all agreed on what needed to be done: China had to abandon its "feudal" and socialist traditions and catch up with the capitalist West. Scarred by the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals saw socialism in China as a failure. Consequently, they had, Wang argues, no real debate on whether a Western-style consumerist society could be successfully recreated or was environmentally sustainable in China. The West, especially the United States, was idealized.

Wang first began to develop his own views on contemporary China while working on a dissertation about one of the most admired of modern Chinese writers, Lu Xun (1881 1936). Lu Xun, Wang explained to me, was a writer of the left, but he was very critical of left-wing writers and activists. He criticized Chinese tradition, but was also an excellent classical scholar. He welcomed the Western idea of progress, but was also skeptical of it. The paradoxes in Lu Xun helped Wang to see that Chinese modernity could not be a simple matter of abandoning the old and embracing the new - as it had been for both Maoists and free-market capitalists.

For Wang, the problems associated with China's uneven development were first identified by the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Wang himself was one of the last protesters to leave the square on the morning of June 4, 1989, as the tanks of the People's Liberation Army closed in. Normally rather brisk and matter-of-fact, he grew animated as he described in fluent, if occasionally idiosyncratic, English how a "broad social movement" began to grow out of the distress caused by the shock therapy of market reforms. The students demanding freedom of speech and assembly were certainly the most visible. But there were, he said, many more Chinese in the cities - workers, government officials and small businessmen - demanding that the government control corruption and inflation, which had shot up to 30 percent after price controls on basic commodities were lifted.

In the spring of 1989, Wang was a fellow at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Wang told me that he saw "democratic potential" in the protests and felt obliged to participate even though he had reservations about the students' lack of "theoretical or methodological coherence." For Wang, the student leaders recalled the Chinese intellectuals of the early 20th century, who were never more united than when they radically rejected everything in the past. Nevertheless, after the government sought to crush dissent by declaring martial law on May 20, 1989, Wang was drawn deeper into the movement. On the night of June 3, when the tanks and armored cars charged through Beijing, killing hundreds of unarmed resisters and injuring thousands more, Wang was among those assembled in the center of Tiananmen Square. He could hear the gunfire, but some of the more radical among the students still refused to leave.

Wang decided to stay and to try to persuade the students not to sacrifice their lives. "I knew," he said, "that if the result was violence, it would be disastrous for the whole country." Wang said that his fears were proved right: violence shrank the space for political debate, and the Chinese government used the period of intellectual silence that followed to begin dismantling more aspects of the welfare state, like the state-owned enterprises, that had long offered cradle-to-grave benefits to workers.

Eventually, the students advocating peaceful retreat prevailed and persuaded the People's Liberation Army to give them safe passage in the southeast corner of the square. Just before dawn, hundreds of students left the square through a narrow corridor, jostled and taunted by hostile soldiers. Within minutes, the students dispersed. Some of them were arrested and sentenced to long prison spells; others fled to Hong Kong and eventually to the West; many others, like Wang, disappeared for a few weeks.

When Wang returned to Beijing in late 1989, the authorities were waiting for him. "That was the most difficult time for me," he said. He was asked repeatedly: "What was your organization? Who were your associates?" After interrogations lasting for many months, he was sent to the northwestern province of Shaanxi, where dozens of other young scholars from Beijing were already undergoing - in the uniquely Chinese way - "re-education" by exposure to rural conditions.

In Wang's case, punishment by pedagogy seems to have been more successful than Chinese authorities could have anticipated. He dates his "real education" to the time he spent in Shaanxi, one of the poorest regions of China. He was shocked by the obvious disparity between the coastal cities, then enjoying the first fruits of economic reform, and the provinces. He was shocked, too, by his own ignorance and that of his colleagues in the 1989 social movement. "We had no idea that the old order in much of rural China was in deep crisis," he said.

The commune system in Shaanxi was dismantled as part of Deng Xiaoping's reforms, and land was redistributed. But the area produced nothing of much value, not even enough food. Deepening poverty led to a sharp increase in crime and social problems; violent conflicts broke out over land; men took to gambling, beating up, even selling, their wives and daughters. Wang lived in a low-lying village where his dormitory was frequently flooded while he slept. Much of his daily work consisted of writing didactic pamphlets warning peasants against gambling and crime; he also worked on the reconstruction of a primary school that had been destroyed by floodwaters. "It was during that year," Wang said, "that I realized how important a welfare system and cooperative network remained for many people in China. This is not a socialist idea. Even the imperial dynasties that ruled China kept a balance between rich and poor areas through taxes and almsgiving.

"People confine China's experience to the Communist dictatorship and failures of the planned economy and think that the market will now do everything. They don't see how many things in the past worked and were popular with ordinary people, like cooperative medical insurance in rural areas, where people organized themselves to help each other. That might be useful today, since the state doesn't invest in health care in rural areas anymore."

Many poor people Wang met during his year in Shaanxi saw him as the educated man from Beijing who would tell the mandarins of the central government to send them some help. "I felt burdened by this role," Wang said. "I couldn't tell them that I was in no position to do anything." Wang returned, he told me, from his 10-month exile with a keen sense of the gap between the worlds of intellectuals and ordinary people.

During his time in Shaanxi, the influential Journal of Literary Review denounced his research on Lu Xun as an example of "bourgeois liberalization." Nevertheless, Wang had no trouble returning to academic life.

Wang doesn't like to talk much about 1989. He complains about the "stereotype" of China in the Western media conjured by Tiananmen. Nonetheless, our conversation about Tiananmen was unusual. While traveling through Chinese cities, I had found it hard to get people to talk about it. When Deng Xiaoping sought to bury the ghosts of Tiananmen for good by calling for speedy market reforms in 1992, he may well have calculated that the prospect of personal wealth - and access to Western brand-name goods - would compensate many newly enriched people for the lack of political democracy. If so, he seems to have been proved right. The largest public disturbance in China since Tiananmen occurred in August 1992, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese tried to buy shares in the newly opened stock exchange of Shenzen.

The effort to create wealth in urban areas through export-oriented industries - part of the "let some get rich first" policy announced by Deng Xiaoping and affirmed by his successors - has given the Chinese economy an average growth rate of 10 percent and made it the fourth largest in the world. Yet China remains one of the world's poorest countries. More than 150 million people survive on a dollar a day. About 200 million of the rural population are crowding the cities and towns in search of low-paying jobs. More than four million Chinese participated in the 87,000 protests recorded in 2005, and these statistics may not fully convey the rage and discontent of Chinese living with one of the world's highest income inequalities and deteriorating health and education systems, as well as the arbitrary fees and taxes imposed by local party officials. Much of this, Wang said, could be laid at the feet of the "right-wing radicals" or neoliberal economists who cite Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (advocates of unregulated markets who inspired Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 80's) and who argue for China's integration into the global economy without taking into account the social price of mass privatization. And it is they, Wang added, who have held favor with the ruling elite and have dominated the state-run media.

Only in the last decade, Wang said, have intellectuals of the New Left begun to challenge the notion that a market economy leads inevitably to democracy and prosperity. Wang, who helped found an academic journal called Xueren (The Scholar) after returning from exile in 1991, was well placed to observe those intellectuals. As they came into greater contact with Western academics and scholars, they became more aware of problems not just in European and American societies but also in post-Communist countries that were trying to bring their planned economies closer to neoliberal models. China's intention to join the World Trade Organization (which it did in 2001) provoked unexpectedly sharp debates among scholars. As Wang described it, the terms of the debate had changed: "Many people knew by then that globalization is not a neutral word describing a natural process. It is part of the growth of Western capitalism, from the days of colonialism and imperialism." Which is not to say that the New Left embraced an easy antiglobalist position; it has been critical of recent anti-Japanese and anti-American outbursts among urban, middle-class Chinese - of what Wang dubbed "consumer nationalism." That, Wang said, was the same kind of globalization that America advocates: "It is really a form of hypernationalism, which is why you hear talk of tariffs and penalties on China when American economic interests are hurt."

Wang paused and then added: "Many people also learned that the reason the Chinese economy did not collapse like the Asian tiger economies in 1997 was that the national state was able to protect it. Now, of course, China with its export-dominated economy is more dependent on the Western world order, especially the American economy, than India."

In January of this year, Wang published a long investigative article exposing the plight of workers in a factory in his hometown, Yangzhou, a city of about one million. According to Wang, in 2004 the local government sold the profitable state-owned textile factory to a real estate developer from the southern city of Shenzen. Worker-equity shares were bought for 30 percent of their actual value, and then more than a thousand workers were laid off after mismanagement of the factory led to losses. In July 2004, the workers went on strike. In what Wang calls an agitation without precedent in the history of Yangzhou, the workers obstructed a major highway, halted bus traffic and attacked the gates of local government buildings.

Wang told me that he was helping the workers to sue the local government. He had spent time working in a nearby factory before college and this, he said, made him feel a particular connection to them. He remembered that his pay had been low - less than $2 a month by current exchange rates - but, he said, what was crucial was that the workers he knew then felt secure in their jobs. "People claim," he said, "that the market will automatically force the state to become more democratic. But this is baseless. We only have to think about the alliance of elites formed in the process of privatization. The state will change only when it is under pressure from a large social force, like the workers and peasants."

Wang's story about Yangzhou is not unique. There are many accounts of how local government officials controlling public property have amassed fortunes by privatizing state assets. According to a recent report by the activist Liu Xiaobo, more than 90 percent of the 20,000 richest people in China are related to senior government or Communist Party officials.

For Wang, democracy is not just a simple matter of expanding political freedom for the middle class or creating legal and constitutional rights for a minority already substantially empowered by market reforms. Democracy in China, he said, has to be based upon the active consent and mobilization of the majority of its population, and be able to ensure social and economic justice for them.

Yet for some New Left intellectuals, like Cui Zhiyuan, a close friend and collaborator of Wang's who teaches political science at Tsinghua University, there is opportunity in the collision of capitalism and socialism. "There is more space here for new ideas," Cui told me as he described why he had returned to China after many years in the United States. "The capitalist system is fixed in the West, but things are still in flux in places like China and India. We have a historic opportunity to build a better, more just society than the West." For Cui, it is important to clarify the concepts first. "It is not helpful," he said, "to see socialism and capitalism as opposed and separate. Both have traveled together in the 20th century. Not just European welfare states, even American capitalism has a socialist component, which was arrived at after compromise with the trade unions."

In recent years, Cui has found a receptive and powerful audience on an issue that lies at the very foundation of the Chinese socialist state: the collective ownership of property. Liberal Chinese economists argue that private property is sacred and inviolable in a market economy, a radical idea in the Chinese context. In an article he published in Dushu in 2004, Cui challenged this notion, emphasizing the essentially communal nature of property ownership. He cited Thomas Jefferson's decision to reword John Locke's principles of life, liberty and property with life, liberty and happiness in the Declaration of Independence.

"Jefferson recognized," he said, "that property rights emanate from society, not from nature. That's why there was no specific article on property rights in the U.S. Constitution and it had to be brought in later through the Fifth Amendment." Cui went on to relate with something close to glee that his article had circulated widely among legislators in the National People's Congress, China's Parliament, in 2004. It had helped, he said, to provoke a debate that led the Congress to adopt a compromise amendment to the constitution, similar in wording to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which simply states that no person "be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

This spring it began to become clear that the New Left's advocacy of a welfare state is being echoed within the Communist leadership, which is fearful of social instability and is keen to consolidate its power and legitimacy. In March, a few weeks before I met with Wang, the National People's Congress convened in Beijing and unexpectedly became a forum for the first open ideological debate within the party for years. Legislators accused government officials of selling out China's interests to market forces. Such was the antimarket mood that a bill to defend private property and grant land titles to farmers - one that both foreign investors in China and Chinese businessmen had been lobbying for - was not even discussed. Describing major new investments in rural areas, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, emphasized that "building a socialist countryside" was a "major historic task" before the Communist Party. He also outlined steps to balance economic growth with environmental protection.

A German journalist told me that it was the most left-wing speech he had heard from a senior Chinese leader during his eight years in Beijing: "Even American and European politicians don't talk about achieving a Green G.D.P." Wang agreed. He said that he was also pleased to see President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao focusing on relations with Asian countries. "We were too obsessed with the United States during Jiang Zemin's time," he said. "We really need to improve our relations with Japan and India. We belong to such old and distinguished civilizations, and we cannot just be simple followers and imitators of America.

"It is a huge achievement," he added, a smile on his face, "that the premier should openly admit that health care and education is a failure. It has never happened before." Wang said he thought that the government was sincere about eradicating rural poverty. But he was still cautious. "There has been so much decentralization in China," he said, "that it is not easy to translate central government policy into action." Last month, in the first purge of a high-ranking party member since 1995, the central leadership removed the Shanghai party chief on corruption charges, leading to speculation that there would be a reconfiguring of relations between the central government and provincial leaders and perhaps a shift in policy toward shoring up social-welfare systems and stemming pollution. Wang remained skeptical. "The Shanghai case is encouraging at least," Wang said in a recent e-mail message. "I think there will be some political results from it, but they are results rather than reasons."

The dangers of failing to improve conditions for the majority are clear to Wang: "If we don't improve the situation, there will be more authoritarianism. We have already seen in Russia how people prefer a strong ruler like Putin because they are fed up with corruption, political chaos and economic stagnation. When radical marketization makes people lose their sense of security, the demand for order and intervention from above is inevitable."

In attacking corrupt local governments, the New Left often seems to want to institute big-brotherly government of the kind authoritarian politicians like. Certainly the growing accord between the central government's socialist rhetoric and New Left ideas makes many uneasy. Lung Yingtai, a well-known Taiwanese writer and democracy advocate, told me earlier this year that she was wary of the New Left intellectuals, who, she said, appear too close ideologically to the Communist regime. Taking this view one step further, Liu Junning, a popular liberal political theorist who left China in 1999 after being blacklisted by the Chinese government but has since returned, claimed that the New Left was another name for the nationalistic old guard of the Communist Party, which was inspired by hatred of the West.

While this seems an exaggeration, Wen Tiejun, a former government official who runs rural reconstruction projects and is identified as New Left, had attended what he called "brainstorming sessions" with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Typically, intellectuals in Communist countries (Vaclav Havel or Adam Michnik, for example) have gained moral authority by assuming a critical stance toward the all-powerful state. How do New Left thinkers in China calibrate their relationship with a state that has imprisoned many of their colleagues and generally shown little tolerance for criticism of the party?

When I posed this question to Cui, he momentarily lost his exuberant manner. "It is a very important question," he said. "How to deal with the government, both morally and intellectually. This is a big challenge for us."

Cui does not regard the Communist regime as a "totality." There were, he said, many different aspects of it, at both the local and central levels. "Almost every day," Cui said, "The New York Times carries reports of peasants agitating against the Communist government, but if you listen to what the peasants are saying, they are telling the central government that the local government has violated their rights. So even the peasants can see the different aspects of the state, who supports them and who doesn't."

Wang Xiaoming, professor of cultural studies at Shanghai University, positions himself to the right of Wang Hui but says that he sympathizes with the New Left's pragmatic attitude toward the Communist regime. "Civil society is very weak in China," he said, "and since the government is the most active agent of change, we have to push the government to do what it should do besides pushing the government to give up some of its powers."

When I met with Wang Hui for the last time, he dismissed any claims about increased New Left influence over the regime. "What we have tried to do is create an intellectual situation in which new policies can be explored," he said. "I know that many leaders read Wen Tiejun's article; they also read Cui's article on property rights. There have been other articles in Dushu that have been equally influential, and I am pleased about this. But we have no other connection with the regime."

Wang also seems to have no anxiety that ideological convergence with the regime will turn New Left intellectuals into pro-government policy wonks and hacks, part of an old Chinese tradition of intellectuals advising the state. "We look at things from a Chinese perspective naturally, but we also try to think beyond the framework of the nation-state," he said. "People ask in the West, How could China develop capitalism with an authoritarian state? But that's ignoring how modern capitalism grew in the West, without much democracy and with the help of imperialism and colonialism. You have to ask whether this unique economic model of the West can be globalized without great wars and destruction of the environment. This is not an abstract issue. China has stopped felling its forests, most of which have disappeared, but some country still has to produce wood for Chinese consumption."

At our last meeting, Wang also spoke more about a subject Cui had brought up with me: how the rise of China and India throws up new challenges and possibilities with profound implications for the world at large. "Western societies have been on top for the last two centuries and shaped the world with the decisions they made," he said. "China and India will now play equally crucial roles in the new century. But what will they be? I think it is very important for Chinese and Indian intellectuals not just to imitate the West. They have to explore alternatives to the Western model of modernity. Otherwise, the 'consumer nationalists' are already saying, 'America was on top; now we are on top."'

Wang laughed, and added, "This is not interesting."

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Despite his invocation of socialist principles, Wang was quick to tell me that he dislikes the New Left label, even though he has used it himself. "Intellectuals reacted against 'leftism' in the 80's, blaming it for all of China's problems," he said, "and right-wing radicals use the words 'New Left' to discredit us, make us look like remnants from the Maoist days."

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The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms

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"Tsou, one of the country's senior and most widely respected China scholars, has for more than a generation been producing timely and deeply informed essays on Chinese politics as it develops. Eight of these (from a wide variety of sources) are gathered here with a substantial new introduction.

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China's year of upheaval, 1989, was full of incongruities. For example, students invoked the historic struggle of intellectuals to "revive China," while at the same time erecting statues modelled after the symbol of a foreign power with a long history of objectionable conduct toward their country. One of the most interesting incongruities, however, emerged not in the streets, but in the pages of Chinese journals. Highly-placed intellectuals debated the theory of neo-authoritarianism, a doctrine new to the People's Republic, but one which reflects the policy prescriptions of pre-revolutionary Chinese leaders and contemporary Third World strongmen. Advocates of the doctrine were ideologically and, in some cases, organizationally, close to Zhao Ziyang, then the general secretary of the world's largest Communist Party, but their theory was classically conservative. The debate, moreover, was waged without reference to Marxism by either proponents or opponents.

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Sirens of the Strongman: Neo-Authoritarianism in Recent Chinese Political Theory | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core

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China's year of upheaval, 1989, was full of incongruities. For example, students invoked the historic struggle of intellectuals to "revive China," while at the same time erecting statues modelled after the symbol of a foreign power with a long history of objectionable conduct toward their country.

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Photo: Reuters/Jason Lee

A recent survey finds Chinese citizens have become more conservative regarding democracy, compared with results from a similar study carried out in 1989.

The study, titled "What kind of democracy do Chinese people want," was published by Zhang Mingshu, a researcher for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Political Science.

If the Chinese population is divided into three camps according to political beliefs, 38.1 percent would fall into the "left," a term traditionally referring to citizens with socialist or communist leanings, which in China's case also means those more "patriotic" and "conservative" (opposite the U.S. definition of left), according to the study.

By contrast, only 8 percent lean more to the "right," which in Chinese terms supports a more democratic, "liberal" government. The rest, 51.5 percent, fall into the middle, leaning neither left nor right.

"I was surprised by the results," the author of the study, Zhang, said in an interview with Southern Weekend, a weekly Guangzhou newspaper. "But if you observed outside the intellectual circle, on the streets in your hometown, you would find the ratio to be accurate."

This is a surprising change compared to the first time Zhang carried out a study on China's political attitudes, in 1988-1989, right around the time of the Tiananmen Square incident.

"In 1988, those surveyed were more Westernized. Economic reforms had been recently implemented, and society embraced those Western ideas," Zhang said regarding the difference between the study results.

"What we intellectuals consider outdated, leftist ideologies actually have a big impact in our society," Zhang said. "The study results mean many people follow mainstream media -- which in China is controlled by the state.

Intellectuals are more likely to lean toward the Chinese definition of right, but this does not mean China's intellectuals are more likely to champion democratic causes.

"Our mainstream intellectuals today are more concerned with their own welfare. Whenever an intellectual's behavior crosses the line, his welfare becomes immediately damaged, he can only meekly cooperate," Zhang said.

The study also found the 1960s was a turning point for China. People born after 1960 are more opinionated in terms of political ideology, but unlike their counterparts in the West, this group in China is less inclined to participate in political activities. Zhang considers this a result of China's abstract, slogan-focused educational system.

"Our young people are open to new ideas but are less willing to contribute to put these ideas into practice," Zhang said.

Zhang's survey randomly chose four cities of varying sizes, surveyed 1,750 people and controlled for age, gender, education level and other factors.

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38.1% Of Chinese Are Conservative Compared To Just 8% Liberal

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A recent survey finds Chinese citizens have become more conservative regarding democracy, compared with results from a similar study carried out in 1989. The study, titled "What kind of democracy do Chinese people want," was published by Zhang Mingshu, a researcher for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Political Science.

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Human Rights Watch - Tiananmen Square, 15 Years On

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In the end, the students, who had occupied the Square for close to two months, chose to leave in an orderly and responsible fashion. The authorities would not let that happen. In no time they had to scatter, only to be hunted down by a government determined to prove it had a lock on truth and virtue.

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Tiananmen Square protests, 1989, Letter from America by Alistair Cooke - BBC Radio 4

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The 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the military crackdown on those involved.

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六四天安门事件 《3小时纪录片》 大陸禁片  Tiananmen Square protests

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Radical liberalism in the early days of reform