Synopses & Reviews
China finds itself on the verge of becoming the next great superpower, yet its breakneck industrialization and liberalization has not been without problems. Many of those problems, such as growing urban/rural and income disparities, will be easily recognizable to readers. Although Wang Hui does not advocate a return to authoritarianism, he is one of the few superstar-intellectuals of China that continues to oppose the wholesale adoption of neoliberal economics as the only viable future for the country. Against this background, he seeks to understand the present social and political predicament China finds itself in today, and in particular, he is interested in the significance of the reforms that occurred after 1989 and how these both precipitated and were a continuation of processes of mass depoliticization that had been occurring since the Mao era.
While other scholars and policy advisers attempt to explain and rectify China"s various social and economic problems from within these paradigms, Wang argues for a broader analysis that situates these events within a history of worldwide neo-liberal globalization. This, he claims, is necessary not only in seeking an alternative to the rapid industrialization and liberalization currently occurring in China but also in shedding its authoritarian socialist past.
Synopsis
Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China’s leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China’s social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depoliticization.
Arguing that China’s revolutionary history and its current liberalization are part of the same discourse of modernity, Wang Hui calls for alternatives to both its capitalist trajectory and its authoritarian past.
From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, The End of the Revolution offers a broad discussion of Chinese intellectual history and society, in the hope of forging a new path for China’s future.
Synopsis
A compelling examination of the future of Chinese modernity by the leading member of China's "New Left."
Synopsis
Wang Hui brings a distinctive Chinese voice to the discussion of globalization and neoliberalism.A central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left.
About the Author
Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he currently lives. He studied at Yangzhou University, Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has also been a visiting professor at NYU and other universities in the U.S. In 1989, he participated in the Tiananmen Square Protests and was subsequently sent to a poor inland province for compulsory “re-education” as punishment for his participation. He developed a leftist critique of government policy and came to be one of the leading proponents of the Chinese New Left in the 1990s, though Wang Hui did not choose this term. Wang was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2008 by Foreign Policy.