The mirage of the alleged Chinese new left

ABSTRACT

This paper clarifies the mysteries surrounding the alleged Chinese New Left as an intellectual movement since the 1990s and explains why the term Chinese New Left mismatches with what it seemingly refers to. In fact, as an intellectual movement, the alleged Chinese New Left is an artificial construction of distorted and incoherent referentiality, which has no commonality with the New Left in its original sense. Notwithstanding, as possible and marginal space in the political spectrum and public sphere, a New Left could exist in China, though illegally by far.

Introduction

The so-called ‘Chinese New Left (zhongguo xinzuopai)’ has attracted such a great amount of attention amongst China watchers¹ that it seems to be unquestionable that the Chinese New Left stands as a substantial entity with its own ideational and institutional carrier. Meanwhile, it is striking that the literature on the Chinese New Left presents so many multifaceted self-contradictions that it becomes impossible to explicitly tell what the Chinese New Left is.

Almost every alleged characteristic of the Chinese New Left can also find its opposite alleged. According to the existing literature, we can only draw the outline of such a ridiculous monster: the Chinese New Left is inspired by the Cultural Revolution,² which it rejects to be associated with;³ it is critical of China’s party-state capitalism,⁴ which it considered to be a desirable alternative to the Washington consensus;⁵ it argues that the Communist Party of China has rotten,⁶ which it portraits as the leadership that China must uphold;⁷ it supports China’s electoral democratization,⁸ which it accuses of being fetishism⁹ and superstition¹⁰ of the West; it is in favor of left-wing liberalism or social democracy,¹¹ but was denounced by Chinese left-wing liberals and social democrats as right-wing;¹² it draws intellectual sources from Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt,¹³ who criticized the 1960s New Left ideas, such as Western Marxism, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory, which allegedly pioneered the 1990s Chinese New Left …¹⁴

The Chinese New Left has been identified with ‘rough theoretical forms’ and ‘lack of theoretical integrations’,¹⁵ and ‘fully twisted and collaged conditions’.¹⁶ Here, the unexamined assumption is that, though problematic, Chinese New Left is tenable. Perhaps, the first and foremost issue that needs to be addressed is on whether it really exists, and if so, in what sense. The figures labeled as its members are of course existing, living people, but we need to interrogate the appropriateness of the label itself.¹⁷ For the label or term to be intellectually legitimate, we need to investigate the following questions: is it related to the prototype New Left in the West, and if so, how? What is new of it, if any? And most fundamentally, is it left-wing?

In the following sections, I first demonstrate the problematic nature of the term ‘Chinese New Left’, which has been rejected by most, if not all, intellectuals allegedly associated with it. Then, I introduce the context in which the term was coined, especially the coiner Yang Ping’s own understanding of the term as ‘an expression of cultural conservatism’.¹⁸ Next, I divide the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals into three subgroups (conservatism approach, China Model approach, and ‘critical intellectual’ approach) and analyze the ideological connotations in their writings, showcasing their overlaps with Chinese neoconservatism. To explain why the mislabeling of the alleged Chinese New Left went popularized, I then review the broader context, namely, the post-1978 China’s ideological landscape, attempting to find out the long-standing ideological confusions in (post-)communist societies. Finally, I discuss a possible Chinese New Left worthy of the name.

The term “Chinese new left”

The term Chinese New Left was coined by journalist Yang Ping in 1994.¹⁹ He later acknowledged that the term per se was not a result of prudent scrutinization: ‘the word [Chinese New Left] itself that I pointed ou+t is unimportant; it was just a matter of paperwork at the time. The newspaper page was empty, and I needed to write an article, in order to publish the article, so the word just came out’.²⁰

Given the improvisation of term, all confusions arouse thereupon come without surprise. Amongst the confusions, the three main ones are as follows. First, as the term New Left was borrowed from the West, how similar and/or different is the Chinese movement vis-à-vis the New Left in the West? Second, what is ‘new’ of the Chinese New Left that emerged in the early 1990s vis-à-vis previous leftist thinkings? What is it distinguished from – what does the ‘Old Left’ refer to in China? Third, could the ideology of the Chinese New Left really be even characterized as left-wing?

Wang Hui, an intellectual who has been frequently referred to as a member of the Chinese New Left, has never accepted the term. He pointed out how problematic the term has been used. First, the term originated from the West has ‘a very distinct set of connotations – generational and political – in Europe and America’.²¹ He therefore considers the appropriation of the term into the Chinese context to be ‘doubtful’.²² Second, the terminological twin, i.e. the Old Left, is never clarified in the Chinese context. Even Wang himself was not sure about it. Here, he presented two possible references: (1) the supporters of the Cultural Revolution, such as the Gang of Four and (2) the conservatives within the Communist Party during the 1980s ‘reform-era’.²³ But these two references are not the same but, in fact, contradictory to each other. Neither was called Old Left before the term New Left was coined. Third, Wang indicated no explicit interest in even accepting the label of left-wing.

Wang is not the only one, who questioned the term per se, when they were asked about their alleged associations with the Chinese New Left. The showcases the responses of the alleged Chinese New Left representatives.

Table

Figure	Comment
Gan Yang	‘The real intellectual opponents in my mind are liberals and New Left in contemporary West. I respect some of their representatives, e.g. Rawls and Foucault, but I have reserved views on their ideas … In fact, if I were to position myself, I probably feel that I am more leaning to conservatism.’^24
Wang Shaoguang	(1) ‘In the eyes of some, the views expressed in my writings are out of date, so they just assigned me the “[Chinese] New Left” label.’^25 (2) ‘Wang Shaoguang does not agree with the ill-defined category of “[Chinese] New Left”’.^26
Wang Hui	(1) ‘Actually, people like me have always been reluctant to accept this label, pinned on us by our adversaries.’^27 (2) ‘I do not believe in this term, nor do I identify myself with it……Especially since ‘left’ meant something completely different in 20^th century China than it does here [in Germany].’^28
Cui Zhiyuan	‘We ourselves initially did not use this word to describe ourselves, but after many people calling it this way, we now feel that we can accept it for discussion.’^29
Hu Angang	‘I do not see myself as one of this or that school or faction. I belong to the “seeking truth from fact” faction, the pragmatic faction. I especially admire Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic style’.^30
Zhao Tingyang	‘I am not sure that I can accurately understand the meaning of these popular labels. These “isms” are imported from the West, but [in China] they seem to be quite different from their original usages in the West.’^31
Dai Jinhua	‘Frankly speaking, I have always considered the label itself to be rather absurd.’^32
Gao Mobo	‘I do not accept the black and white [left or right] way of thinking. I am sorry I do not think this kind of engagement is of any use at all.’^33

In summary, most of intellectuals allegedly associated with the Chinese New Left not only refuse to accept the term, but also question the legitimacy of the term per se. Then, a question comes into being: despite of all these rejections, why and in what context was the term coined and how did it become popularized in the first place?

Context in which the term was coined

According to the coiner, Yang Ping, the ‘Old Left’ corresponding to what he referred to as the New Left in China, was the 1980s conservative faction within the Communist Party,³⁴ instead of the ‘rebel faction (zaofan pai)’³⁵ during the Cultural Revolution. The 1980s conservative leaders, such as Chen Yun and Li Xiannian, together with Deng Xiaoping, resolved to crack down the 1989 protests, which almost extirpated the 1980s reformists; but three years later, they were hit by Deng’s reassertion of marketization during his Southern Tour.³⁶ China’s trajectory afterward has been a combination of authoritarian politics and market economy, in the name of Dengism or neoconservatism that succeeded the 1980s neoauthoritarianism.³⁷

Yang noted that following the end of the liberal ‘New Enlightenment (xin qimeng)’ during the 1980s, conservatism developed into China’s mainstream.³⁸ This conservative turn in Chinese intelligentsia has been acknowledged by numerous scholars.³⁹ Yang further pointed out that, within this context, the New Left, as an opponent of Chinese liberalism at that time, was, in fact, ‘an expression of cultural conservatism’.⁴⁰ This early 1990s neoconservative wave was a reaction to China’s 1980s radical reform agenda and with reference to Russia’s 1990s chaos. In the sense of opposing radical liberalism, Yang considered the New Left to be ‘one of the conservative ideological trends that held the banner of socialism’.⁴¹

Kang Xiaoguang, a coauthor of Wang Shaoguang and Hu Angang,⁴² also pointed out that the New Left and neoauthoritarianism were two sides of one coin: ‘the core idea’ of the 1990s Chinese New Left ‘is not new, but actually the 1980s neoauthoritarianism’.⁴³ He concluded that the predominance of the alleged New Left and the undeclared neoauthoritarianism in the 1990s shows that China’s ‘ruling clique had established hegemony in the civil society’.⁴⁴ According to this view, the alleged Chinese New Left is not only nothing new, but also nothing left.

The Chinese New Left being ‘new’ is sometimes attributed to its alleged representatives’ educational background, which the 1980s intellectuals including the conservative party theoreticians such as Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun lacked, that they obtained doctorates from prestigious universities in the West, especially the United States.⁴⁵ Wang Shaoguang graduated from Cornell (1990), Cui Zhiyuan from Chicago (1995), and Gan Yang was a doctoral student at the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, Chicago (1989–1999). However, their educational background only reflects an institutional change in Chinese academia that after 1978, internationalization, especially with the United States, became highly regarded again. Therefore, the educational background is no legitimate argument for the entitlement of ‘new’; the returned 1990s liberal intellectuals were never called ‘new liberals’.

The New Left in the West being ‘new’ also has nothing to do with educational background, but a cultural turn in the left-wing intellectual tradition,⁴⁶ which is hardly observable in the writings of alleged Chinese New Left. In fact, the sociocultural conservatism embodied in these writings severely contradicts the sociocultural radicalism in the 1960s West and political left at large.

Figures and approaches of the alleged Chinese new left

The strong affinity between the alleged Chinese New Left and neoconservatism has been observed by many scholars,⁴⁷ yet, the most explicit expressions of conservatism actually come from the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals themselves. I would like to divide the alleged New Left intellectuals into three subgroups: (1) conservatism, (2) China Model, and (3) ‘critical intellectual’, and examine them respectively.

Conservatism approach

The alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals Gan Yang,⁴⁸ Liu Xiaofeng,⁴⁹ and Jiang Shigong⁵⁰ belong to a subgroup, which is the least likely to be understood as New Left. They are the explicit opposite of the New Left for their appreciations of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.⁵¹

As an iconic figure of Chinese Straussianism, philosopher Gan Yang’s 2002 book The Political Philosopher Strauss: The Revival of Classical Conservative Political Philosophy⁵² marked as the prelude of the vigorous Chinese Straussian movement. Gan stated that he is ‘concerned with how to re-cultivate a healthy conservatism in a post-revolutionary society’.⁵³ For that purpose, he is ‘sympathetic towards American conservatives, or the so-called sociocultural conservatives.’⁵⁴ He is fully aware of that the American neoconservatism was a direct reaction to the 1960s New Left and is not hesitant to express his clear-cut position in America’s cultural war:

I am very glad that most of the teachers when I studied at Chicago were Western conservative thinkers…They would never be as naïve as Western liberals and leftists, believing that the civilizational origin is no longer relevant to mankind, as if mankind would integrate in the future for a global ‘universal civilization’.⁵⁵

Gan sure does not defend what American Straussians exactly defend, i.e. the superiority of American and Western civilization. What he defends is the logic of conservative thinking that individuals cannot sever their communitarian, historical, and traditional origins. In this sense, American conservatives have ‘the heart of awe towards ancient civilizations’⁵⁶ such as the Sinic one. While the American liberals and leftists, though they

appear to be critical of Occidentalism, they could never jump out of it; from Rawls’ The Law of Peoples, Fukuyama’s The End of History, to the so-called leftist Habermas’ The Postnational Constellation, and the so-called radical leftist magnum opus Empire [by Hardt and Negri], all are the most authentic Occidentalism – non-Western civilizations have never been in their eyesight.⁵⁷

Gan retains some respects for liberal and leftist doyens, such as Rawls and Foucault, while for ‘those who subscribe these popular things’ and ‘most liberals and New Left scholars in the West’, he claimed that ‘I do not consider them to be intellectual opponents … I do not have much respect and I am even impatient with them…a lot of bullshit and rubbish.’⁵⁸

In contrast, Gan describes Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order⁵⁹ as ‘a rare work with a real sense of history and forward-looking force after the Cold War.’⁶⁰ Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis was a strong refutation of Fukuyama’s liberal optimism. The Huntingtonian ideology that Gan defends is particularism. For Gan, universalism per se, being liberal cosmopolitanism or Marxist internationalism, is a form of Occidentalism, as it adheres to a singular scale of value, while the conservative acknowledgment of all kinds of particularisms makes a decentralized coexistence of self-assertive civilizations possible. The Chinese Huntingtonians especially appreciate Huntington’s foreign policy suggestion that the Western hegemon, with its self-awareness of the inapplicability of its own system in other civilizations, should not interfere in the domestic affairs, such as the way of organizing political activities, of non-Western countries. Such an international prospect, in turn, justifies the national status quo in these countries. Gan articulated:

I think China urgently needs conservatism. There are always unideal, unjust, unreasonable things in a society, but revolution cannot necessarily resolve them. Sometimes you have to tolerate … The prerequisite for rule of law, is not how established the laws are, but exactly that unreasonable or even evil laws, as long as they are not abolished through legal procedures, are also laws, thus need to be obeyed … I hold conservative instead of eager-for-success views, not just about culture, but also about politics, economy, and society.⁶¹

Gan’s advocacy for conservatism as an ‘urgent need’ in post-1989 China derives from a revisionist historiography of the 20^th century China, according to which, China fell on the wrong path of republicanism in 1911 and went even more radical in 1949. Not only had communism failed after Mao, but the premise of republicanism had also failed in 1989. The political implication of this historiography is that China must now bid ‘farewell to revolution’ and return to the pre-1911 royalist position and gradualist approach in its post-1989 strive toward democracy. In view of this, Gan reassessed late imperial Chinese royalists, such as Kang Youwei in his efforts toward ‘a healthy conservatism’⁶² in contemporary China, that the Chinese should now tolerate and endure the ‘unideal, unjust, unreasonable things … unreasonable or even evil laws’, wait and hope for democracy to come; revolution is heinous, even for reform, Gan ‘would rather have it slower’.⁶³

Gan profoundly influenced contemporary Chinese thought, including the ideology of the Communist Party, in the post-Cultural Revolution course of ‘cultural reconstruction’. Without exaggeration, Gan has a prophetic temperament. He wrote in 2008 that his proposal that the People’s Republic’s six decades should be narrated as a whole instead of opposite two ‘will become common sense in five years.’⁶⁴ Marvellously, Xi stated in 2013 that the first three decades and the second three decades cannot be used to negate each other,⁶⁵ which has been known in the Party’s historical conservative political discourses as ‘Both Cannot Be Negated (liangge buneng fouding)’. He wrote as early as 2004 that China needs to avoid the ‘self-ripping’ and ‘self-castrated’ modernization in Turkey and Russia and choose ‘modernization without Westernization’.⁶⁶ Before Xi concluded recently that the ‘Chinese-style modernization breaks the myth that modernization equals Westernization,’⁶⁷ Tukey under Erdoğan and Russia under Putin had effectively abandoned ‘self-ripping’ and ‘self-castrated’ modernization and embraced their illiberal conservative paths of modernization.

As a long-standing coauthor with Gan, philosopher Liu Xiaofeng is known for his rediscovery of Carl Schmitt in China. At the turn of the century, when Gan introduced Strauss to China, Liu reintroduced Schmitt to China with an article titled ‘Schmitt and the Dilemma of Liberal Constitutional Theory’⁶⁸ and translated Schmitt’s major works into Chinese from 2003 to 2012.⁶⁹

Liu delicately defended Chinese neoconservatism. Deng Xiaoping defended his decision of cracking down in 1989 by referring to the possible scenario of another Cultural Revolution, Liu paraphrased that as ‘if we are to investigate the ideological faults of the Cultural Revolution, we will ultimately blame them on the Western Enlightenment.’⁷⁰ According to the conservative logic that liberalism leads to far-left, which the anti-communist dictatorships during the Cold War cannot be more familiar with, Liu warned that liberalism would turn China to la Terreur. Echoing Jiang Zemin’s words ‘if a country cannot guarantee its own sovereignty, there is no human right at all,’⁷¹ Liu wrote that ‘if a country does not have complete sovereignty, it is impossible for the basic human rights of its citizens to be guaranteed,’⁷² defending the Schmittian ‘sovereignty over human rights’ thesis. In an article published in the pro-Trump, neo-Hamiltonian journal American Affairs, Liu depicted a Hobbesian world order in which the only way for China to obtain equal status in international law is through military power and argued for a Schmittian Großräumen, a space for concert of powers, in the age of China-U.S. competition.⁷³

Jurist Jiang Shigong, who is known for his explicit advocacy for Schmitt, is inspired by a Chinese intellectual tradition – New Legalism (xin fajia) as well. As a modern revival of the 2,000-year-old Legalism, which was in defense of state brutality and rule of fear, the New Legalism in the 20^th century was associated with the national conservative Young China Party (YCP). In China’s Hong Kong, Jiang systematically deployed Schmittian concepts, such as ‘state of exception’ and ‘the political’, to defend Chinese sovereignty over the rule of law and parliamentarism in Hong Kong.⁷⁴

In summary, the conservatism approach intellectuals explicitly articulate their appreciations to conservative ideologues, such as Strauss, Schmitt, and Huntington. In the West, Straussianism and Schmittianism are associated with right-wing politics and traditional, religious, and nationalist authority, mistakenly believing that the Chinese New Left and the Western New Left are on the same boat is literally, as philosopher Zhao Dunhua put it, ‘kidding with the whole world’.⁷⁵ Their defenses of post-1989 Chinese politics only confirm their prominences in the Chinese neoconservative movement. The label of Chinese New Left is of extreme absurdity for them, and they may be properly categorized as the Chinese New Right.

China model approach

Political scientist Wang Shaoguang⁷⁶ and his long-standing coauthor Hu Angang⁷⁷ belong to another subgroup, which is unequivocally supportive for the China Model, i.e. the ongoing course of Chinese development. All the major figures of the alleged Chinese New Left maintain intimacies with the party-state regime in one way or another, and what makes the China Model approach distinct is that its representatives do not mind singing their praises in public and loudly. Such praise is so evident and recurring in their writings that attempts to find any critical element – which is of essential importance for political left – seem to be futile. Not without cynicism, liberal intellectual Xu Youyu mocked the conservatism approach intellectuals, e.g. Gan Yang and Liu Xiaofeng

try to come up with a set of very complicated and ‘smart’ theories to defend and serve the totalitarian dictatorship … but in fact … Chinese officials, so to speak, are a group of very vulgar people. If you curry favour with them with delicate and profound things, they would not even be able to understand.⁷⁸

In contrast, the China Model approach intellectuals contribute to the regime’s ideological discourses in a less ‘delicate’ and more ‘understandable’ manner and on a regular basis. In 2018, Hu even offered an online course on Xi Jinping Thought at edX.⁷⁹ When the Communist Party recently coined the term ‘whole-process democracy’, Wang immediately followed up, claiming that whole-process democracy has broken liberal democracy’s monopoly of democracy, and whether liberal democracy is democracy is ‘disputable’.⁸⁰

The cooperation between Wang and Hu started with their coauthored 1993 report on China’s ‘state capacity’,⁸¹ – the anti-statist New Leftists in the West, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Guy Debord, Paul Goodman, Murray Bookchin, et al. may start to protest against ‘fascism’ as soon as they encounter this term. The report’s central argument was that a country’s modernization is also a process of continuously strengthening its state capacity, i.e. the state’s ability of mobilizing and absorbing social resources, which requires a more authoritative and stronger central government. Wang and Hu argued that the role of China’s central government in the transition to a market economy should be strengthened instead of weakened, for the central government’s role in creating market mechanism and legal framework, instilling the concept of market economy in the public, etc. Wang argued that postwar Japan (right-wing dominant part system) and Four Asian Tigers (right-wing dictatorships) were exemplars of authoritarianism with strong state capacity instead of authoritarianism with weak state capacity⁸² and state interventionism in promoting economic growth.⁸³ No wonder Kang Xiaoguang described the core idea of the alleged Chinese New Left as ‘not new, but actually the 1980s neoauthoritarianism,’⁸⁴ which advocates a strong state to enforce free market. This description cannot be more accurate, at least for the China Model approach.

Antiliberal-democratic theorist Wang has been keen on the ‘indigenization’ or Sinicization of political science, in order to ‘meet the needs of China’s government’.⁸⁵ Wang argued that the discipline, though suffixed with ‘science’, is not really a science like physics, therefore could be ‘nationalized’: ‘Chinese physics’ is impossible, while ‘Chinese political science’ is not only possible, but also necessary, because what is now commonly referred to as political science is actually ‘American political science’.⁸⁶ Not without sarcasm, he wrote:

We need to learn from American political scientists, because they are brave to and good at theorizing America’s specifics into general and even universalistic rules … [but China] as a country with history of 5,000 years and population of one-fifth mankind, our experiences of governance are actually more universalistic than America’s.⁸⁷

Wang offered two arguments for ‘Chinese political science’: Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilization’⁸⁸ and Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’.⁸⁹ Regarding the particular way Wang et al. referred to Said, Wang Hui inadvertently provided a sharp note:

Postcolonialism could be regarded as a self-criticism within Western, primarily American cultural system … while in China, it is often equal to a nationalistic discourse, thus reinforcing the discursive structure of China/West binary opposition … Ironically, they use postcolonial theory to criticize Occicentrism, while their argument is the prospect of China returning back to the world centre … which is fully consistent with [Chinese] traditionalists’ predictions and expectations for China in the 21st century.⁹⁰

Wang Shaoguang belongs to the traditionalists; otherwise, it is impossible to explain his simultaneous appreciation of Huntington, which contradicts with Said’s cultural critique. Famously, Said delivered a lengthy speech,⁹¹ debunking Huntington’s essentialist concept of culture and civilization. Wang benefited a lot from Huntington’s rejection of liberal democracy as an universal value by asserting that the West is ‘unique, not universal’⁹²:

Given the frankness of Huntington’s words, it would be too pretentious and self-deprecating for us to still insist on breaking away from our yellow land and embracing the blue ocean culture. Furthermore, if the West is the West, the non-West is the non-West, there is of course no universally applicable law in politics.⁹³

Wang is an admirer of not only Singapore’s right-wing authoritarianism,⁹⁴ but also the culturalist defense of which, i.e. ‘Asian values’. The outright expression of this defense is that democracy is not suitable for Asians. Wang’s logic coincides with that of Gan Yang: democracy, alongside individualism, rule of law, civil society, etc., is not universally applicable, but exclusively ‘Western’; even if non-Western civilizations, such as China and Russia intend to integrate themselves to the Western civilization by adopting these exclusively Western values and institutions, twisting their unique civilizations into seemingly universal but actually Western ones, they would not only fail, but also in a self-humiliating way, adding a subjective disgrace to the objective failure. Wang and Gan suggest China to confidently assert its civilizational uniqueness, i.e. ‘yellow land’, rejecting the universal values, i.e. ‘blue ocean’. The metaphoric binary opposition between ‘yellow land’ and ‘blue ocean’ became popularized in the 1988 documentary River Elegy, which, for its liberal advocacies, inspired the 1989 Democracy Movement. Wang et al.’s positive reference to ‘yellow land’ indicates their conservative stance in the reformism–conservatism dichotomy during the 1980s. By abandoning the 1980s conservatives’ autarkic rejection of market economy, while remaining conservative on sociopolitical issues, the 1990s neoconservatism became economically-liberalized.

The publications of Hu Angang, representative of the 18^th National Congress of the Communist Party, are less worthy of examination for their complete alignment with the official ideology and propagandist style identical to the part-state propaganda. I would only mention an episode, which shows the awkwardness of his political opportunism. Hu once argued that China’s collective leadership in the politburo standing committee demonstrates its democratic superiority over the United States’ presidential dictatorship – China is rule by a few, while the United States is ruled by one.⁹⁵ This argument may be in a way relevant at the time when it was proposed – the politburo standing committee was unprecedently large, consisting of nine members, and the general secretary Hu Jintao was unprecedently unpowerful, being constrained by senior statesmen and his colleagues. However, since Xi Jinping came to power, collective leadership has been quietly replaced by the personalistic principle of ‘Two Establishments (liangge queli)’: establish the status of comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party’s central committee and of the whole Party and establish the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era. Nowadays, any reference to collective leadership would be seen as with ulterior motives and ill intentions. As the Chinese saying goes, water that is spilled out cannot be recovered. Hu’s 2013 apology has now become his negative equity.

It is the civil liberty for intellectuals to express their (dis)approval of a government, but the (dis)approval does not make them leftist, not to mention the New Left in particular. The China Model approach is not only unrelated to the New Left’s radical sociocultural politics, but also in accordance with Huntington’s defense of developmental dictatorships in the Third World that ‘the most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government,’⁹⁶ which inspired the 1990s Chinese neoconservatism.⁹⁷ As the China Model since the late 2000s is nothing but reaffirmation of the technoeconomic achievements of Chinese developmental dictatorship since the 1990s, the China Model approach should be placed in the general genealogy of Chinese neoconservatism.

“Critical intellectual” approach

In a 2006 interview, literary critic Wang Hui identified himself as a so-called ‘critical intellectual’, rejecting both labels of ‘New Left’ and ‘dissident’.⁹⁸ He explained: ‘we support some policies of the government. Others, we oppose’.⁹⁹ In this way, critical intellectuals could – and actually have cooperated with the government. The liberal critics such as Lung Yingtai and Liu Junning have thus criticized the critical intellectuals’ close connections with the regime and their anti-Western sentiments.¹⁰⁰

Wang Hui and his colleague at Tsinghua, Cui Zhiyuan, could be classified into another subgroup of the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals. Unlike the China Model approach intellectuals, they less explicitly express their approval of the official policies; and unlike the conservatism approach intellectuals, they do occasionally refer to left-wing, although not necessarily New Left, intellectuals in the West. Wang claimed: ‘I don’t want to run just any left-wing garbage.’¹⁰¹ Indeed, the self-identified critical intellectuals refer to left-wing intellectuals on a selective basis and for their own purposes in shaping Chinese politics, which makes the analogy between them and the New Left in the West meaningless.

Wang’s educational background and early career focused on literature, especially the prominent 20^th century Chinese writer, Lu Xun. Paradoxically, instead of promoting ‘cultural Marxism’ in the field of literary critic as a New Left literary critic may be expected to do, his focus since the 1990s has been on contemporary Chinese economy, society, and public policy. These fields are exactly where the culturalist New Left absented.

The best-known work by Wang during the 1990s was an article titled ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity.’ Even Wang’s intellectual opponents acknowledged the article’s critical assessment of the 1990s Chinese reality.¹⁰² For example, Wang pointed out that ‘in the Chinese context, “Confucian capitalism” and contemporary China’s reformist socialism are just two expressions of the same thing’.¹⁰³ That is to say, under the official banner of socialism with reformist rhetoric, e.g. socialist market economy, the course that China began since 1992 is nothing different from that of the ‘Confucian capitalism’ in postwar Japan and Four Asian Tigers. Then, under such a system, where even liberal intellectuals face political pressures, can true left-wing intellectuals be even cooperative with the government? In another word, can those cooperative intellectuals be really left-wing? According to the intellectual experience under those right-wing regimes of Confucian capitalism, the answer is no. Liberal dissident Chen Ziming (pseudonym: Wang Sirui) wrote:

The reality of Chinese intelligentsia is three-legged: the right-wing represented by neoauthoritarianism, the centre with the common bottom line of liberalism and social democracy, and the left-wing with the New Left as its theoretical leader; the former is advantaged, and the latter two are disadvantaged. It should have been an easy choice for the disadvantaged two to join hands to fight against the advantaged; but Wang Hui disagreed, tying authoritarianism and liberalism together, falsely claiming that liberalism is advantaged, and then poured his critical fire on liberalism, while quietly avoiding any substantive criticism of neoauthoritarianism.¹⁰⁴

Hypothetically speaking, New Left could have a possible space in contemporary China, though in a dissenting position that is even more marginalized than liberalism and social democracy as the mainstream oppositional voices. The question here is whether Wang as a self-identified ‘critical intellectual’ is more ‘critical’ than liberals and social democrats toward the Chinese status quo. The answer is no, even at the point of ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity.’ After the approximate pinnacle of Wang’s critical consciousness, he has become less and less critical. Xu Jilin observed Wang’s conservative turn in the late 2000s and joining of the chorale for China Model;¹⁰⁵ Chen Chun noted that most of his texts thereafter can be used to defend the leadership of the Communist Party.¹⁰⁶ Wang’s affinity with the regime was ultimately manifested in his membership of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from 2013 to 2018, an honor resembles the membership of the British House of Lords. Nevertheless, I would like to reiterate that Wang is not obliged to meet the harsh standard of true New Left intellectual risking political persecutions against him, since he has never accepted the position and/or label of New Left.

Another alleged Chinese New Left intellectual Cui¹⁰⁷ specializes public policy and management, again, a field far away from the New Left. According to Cui, he was initially influenced by analytical Marxists Adam Przeworski, Jon Elseter, and John Roemer, but later developed his original theory of ‘petty-bourgeois/liberal/xiaokang socialism’, which allegedly has an intellectual tradition from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, John Stuart Mill, Silvio Gesell, Fernand Braudel, James Edward Meade, James Joyce, Fei Xiaotong, Roberto Unger to, ‘subconsciously’, Mao.¹⁰⁸

The 1960s New Left movement was a cradle of diverse Marxist schools, but analytical Marxism, which was born in 1978,¹⁰⁹ was not amongst them. Also, none of the figures listed above as part of the so-called petty-bourgeois socialism intellectual tradition, regardless of all kinds of weird contradictions amongst them, was much associated with the New Left. Having said that, purely according to his intellectual sources, it seems evident that Cui is a moderate left-wing, although not New Left in particular, social scientist. However, what does his concept of petty-bourgeois socialism actually refer to in reality and practice?

Cui alleged that Chinese economic reform since 1978, especially the socialist market economy system established in 1992, has presumedly ‘drawn heavily’ on his idea of petty-bourgeois socialism,¹¹⁰ and that his theorization of petty-bourgeois socialism provides a clearer articulation of Chinese economic reform than the official propaganda and slogan of building up a ‘xiaokang (moderately prosperous) society’.¹¹¹ I could only acknowledge that it is an truly astonishing revelation that what China presents today is the undeclared realization of John Stuart Mill’s blueprint of liberal socialism. When populist, careerist, and charismatic leader Bo Xilai was in power in Chongqing, Cui seemed to have found an even better exemplar for his ideals.¹¹² What Chongqing under Bo represented was exactly a 21^st century case of outdated 1980s Chinese conservatism, which was confronted by the then reformist Premier Wen Jiabao.¹¹³

In conclusion, the critical intellectuals are by no means enthusiastic promoters of the New Left radicalism, counterculture, and student activism in China. Wang distained the Western New Left’s lack of ‘practical politics’ and ‘fantasy projects’ like democracy in Iraq.¹¹⁴ They should be simply described as what they prefer, ‘critical intellectuals’, instead of the ambiguous New Left that is not commensurate with them. In their primary concerns about Chinese realities, the foreign authors they refer to distort in contextual transformation. Their cooperative attitude toward the party-state further distances them from anything left-wing, not to mention New Left, and brings them ever more congenial to 1980s conservatism (Bo Xilai) and 1990s neoconservatism (China Model).

Broader context of china’s ideological landscape

A Question legitimately emerges: why on earth had these abovementioned authors been wrongly labeled as Chinese New Left? We need to briefly revisit the political left in China from 1978 to the present, in order to illustrate the broader context that contributed to the smaller context in which the misleading and farcical term Chinese New Left was coined. Needless to say, the post-1978 China was built upon the legacy of Mao, which was deeply intractable and conflictive. As Wang Shaoguang pointed out:

During the Cultural Revolution, some Chinese regarded Mao as the symbol of the regime, while some others regarded Mao as the commander-in-chief of the rebels against the regime … they thought they were following Mao, but in fact they were following their own imagines of Mao … the participants of the Cultural Revolution were true believers of not Mao, but the imagines of Mao in their own minds.¹¹⁵

In fact, not only had some ‘Chinese’ regarded Mao as an antiestablishment Robin Hood, but also had some prominent New Left figures in 1960s West received Mao as a symbol of revolutionary spontaneism.¹¹⁶ Only in this reception, could Maoism and Maoists be leftist. An equally, if not more, important reception of Mao as the ‘symbol of the regime’ was properly called ‘royalism (baohuangpai)’ or ‘conservatism (baoshoupai)’ during the Cultural Revolution.¹¹⁷

China after Mao was marked by political reckonings against the ‘rebels’, or those including Mao’s widow and his close allies who ‘rebelled’ in the name of Maoism during the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, those returned to power took a politically delicate approach to the official evaluation of Mao in the post-Mao era. The Communist Party issued a historic ‘historical resolution’ (1981), which redefined Maoism as not the ism of Mao (1893–1976) but the ‘correct’ ism of Mao (1893-c. 1956), so that Maoism could nominally remain as a guiding ideology of the party-state even after Mao. Consequently, the conservative reception of Mao as the ‘symbol of the regime’ overwhelmed the rebellious reception of Mao. As Wang Hui described, during the 1980s:

Perceiving traditional socialism as the historical tradition of feudalism was not only a struggle strategy of China’s New Enlightenment movement, but also what allowed the movement to gain a sort of self-identity similar to the social movement led by European bourgeoisie against religious autocracy and feudal aristocracy.¹¹⁸

In this reception, Mao was not different from a traditional Chinese emperor and, in this way, associated with the ancien régime. Only within this context, can the factionalism between reformists and conservatives concerning the 1980s Chinese reforms or ‘bourgeois liberalization (zichanjieji ziyouhua)’ be accurately understood. It was exactly within this political discourse, a distorted political spectrum (re)emerged in China: sometimes, the conservatives in defense of the status quo were mislabeled as ‘left’ for their seemingly revolutionary rhetoric, while the tiers état in favor of reforms was mislabeled as ‘right’ for their bourgeois demands. We should not forget the common knowledge that the bourgeoisie was on the left side of the 1789 Assemblée nationale.

When meeting with United States Secretary of State George Shultz, Deng described himself as both reformist and conservative – technoeconomic reformist and sociopolitical conservative.¹¹⁹ The 1989 crackdown of Tiananmen protests crashed the reformists seeking for democratization, while Deng’s 1992 Southern Tour reaffirmed marketization in the face of post-1989 conservative reaction. Nonetheless, fundamentalists of both 1980s factions found their marginalized ways of coexisting with Dengism thereafter.

In this context, the contemporary Chinese thought is but the aftermath of the upsurge of liberalism that ended abruptly in the summer of 1989 and the neoconservative turn since 1992. Thereafter, Chinese liberalism retreated from activism to intellectualism and Chinese conservatism adopted economic liberalism. Mark Lilla accurately observed:

Chinese intellectuals who came of age in the decade and a half after Mao’s death were involved in intense debates over competing paths of modernization and took human rights seriously, and the period culminated in the Tiananmen movements of 1989. But, a few years later … intellectuals turned against the liberal political tradition.¹²⁰

This was the 1994 context in which Yang Ping coined the term Chinese New Left. As what he suggested as Chinese Old Left was actually ‘left-wing in form but right-wing in essence’,¹²¹ i.e. 1980s conservative faction within the Communist Party of China,¹²² a Sinicized variant of Soviet conservatism,¹²³ or ‘feudalism in the guise of anticapitalism,’¹²⁴ it becomes only logical that the alleged Chinese New Left as an intellectual movement or school was strongly tainted with a conservative flavor from the very beginning.

This conservative flavor has been captured by many observers. Gu Su outlined five ideological labels in post-1992 China: ‘authoritarianism, cultural conservatism, narrow-minded nationalism, new left, old left, and liberalism’, and pointed out that the first four are mixed and their confrontation with liberalism is categorical.¹²⁵ Chen Ziming noted that in 1990s China, a Holy Alliance of nationalism, statism, militarism, and the alleged ‘leftism’ was formed against liberalism.¹²⁶ Guo Zhonghua concluded that the overall ideological landscape was dichotomic instead of trichotomic: economic liberalism, constitutional democracy, universal values vs. alleged New Left, neoauthoritarianism, mainland new Confucianism.¹²⁷ Xu Jilin noted an alliance between the alleged New Left and conservatism nationalism and statism.¹²⁸ An empirical study on China’s ideological spectrum during the 2010s also shows a dichotomy between liberalism and conservatism.¹²⁹

In the 2000s, the dichotomy became even clearer. The alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals, ‘contrary to their previous critical stance, flocked to praise the China Model’.¹³⁰ Around 2010, the battle between liberals and conservatives intensified, partly because of Bo Xilai’s political agenda in Chongqing, including a nationalist and populist wave of royalistic commemoration for Mao. A number of the alleged New Left intellectuals, such as Cui Zhiyuan¹³¹ and Wang Shaoguang,¹³² openly defended Bo.

In search of the Chinese version of new left

As the alleged Chinese New Left emerged in the 1990s dichotomy between liberalism and conservatism, it should have been obvious that the debate between liberalism and the alleged New Left¹³³ was essentially one between liberalism and conservatism, as the continuation of the reformism–conservatism dichotomy during China’s 1980s reform era.

Liberal intellectual Xu Youyu, who was in intensive polemic with the alleged New Left intellectuals, recalled: ‘to a large extent, I was against the authoritarian and nationalist elements in their thinking,’¹³⁴ instead of the New Left to which they do not actually affiliate. He reflected the Chinese appropriation of the term:

The New Left opposes all forms of oppression. Whichever form of oppression predominates in a country, it opposes that form of oppression. However, after the term was taken up by some people in China, it got tainted. When we refer to the Chinese New Left, we can only think of those who are now obviously praising the totalitarian system and advocating the supremacy of state power. They not only praise autocracy, but also oppose universal values. The term ‘New Left’ has been tainted by them.¹³⁵

Indeed, the alleged Chinese New Left is completely detached from the original sense of political left as an uncompromising stance of criticizing and resisting power and capital.¹³⁶ Having said that, one point still needs to be clarified: as illustrated above, the term New Left was appropriated not by the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals themselves, but coined by a journalist, who later acknowledged that the term was intended to describe a variant of conservatism. The overwhelming rejections of the label by the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals shall be taken seriously, as it is evident that the alleged Chinese New Left as an antiliberal, statist, nationalist movement was conservative, which has been welcomed by the Chinese authority.¹³⁷ As sociologist Ding Xueliang sharply commented:

China does not have New Left at all. The primary demand of the New Left is human rights over sovereignty. Does China have this kind of New Left … The New Left in the West opposes both their governments and corporations. Although their vision is not necessarily realistic, they at least dare to oppose.¹³⁸

Although the alleged Chinese New Left is an intellectual farce, Ding’s question still worth exploring: does China have its own, real New Left? Within Chinese liberalism, on the left-wing side, Rawlsians and Habermasians do exist. The Chinese left-wing liberals, e.g. Qin Hui, Lin Yao, Chow Po Chung, and Chan Koonchung, are all critical of the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals, questioning their authenticity as political left. In Chan’s view, while adopting a new left posture that could be (mis)understood by Westerners, the alleged Chinese New Left incorporates nationalist thinking to meet the tasks of right-wing nationalism;¹³⁹ Lin described that the alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals are ‘capable of blatantly defending Party-State authoritarianism (along with Chinese ultra-nationalism) to domestic audiences while skilfully disguising such apologia with profound and leftist-sounding academic jargons that mesmerize their Western peers’.¹⁴⁰

However, left-wing liberalism is not equal to the New Left, which contains not only the connotation of political left, but also radicalism. Both Rawls’ epochal contribution to liberalism and Habermas’ ‘modernity as an incomplete project’ thesis – let alone his personal frictions with West German New Left student leader Rudi Dutschke, distinguish them from the antiliberal and antimodern stance of the New Left in the West.

The left-wing student activism since 2015, in a way, broke through the distorted China’s left-right political spectrum. The activism started with the 2015 ‘Research Report on Logistics Workers of Peking University’, written by an authentic left-wing student club, Peking University Marxist Society.¹⁴¹ In 2018, the left-wing student activists, such as Yue Xin (b. 1996) and Qiu Zhanxuan (b. 1998), were deeply involved in a labor rights movement. Consequently, many of them have been detained or lost contact since then. Coincidently, Peking University held a ‘World Congress on Marxism’ in 2018, which led more than 30 intellectuals to boycott the event. Noam Chomsky called ‘leftist scholars around the world’ to join the boycott, and John Roemer wrote that the repression exposes China’s sham Marxism.¹⁴²

In contrast, the alleged Chinese New Left intellectual Cui Zhiyuan – self-declaredly influenced by Roemer,¹⁴³ alongside with other alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals, stayed deadly silent. Wang Hui clarified that he has to do with the left-wing student activism neither in theory nor in practice.¹⁴⁴ Intellectuals who are full of praise for the China Model, as might be expected, disapprove of such subversive activities. Conservative intellectuals proved to be prescient prophets; they make no mistake about, as Slavoj Žižek put it: ‘the most dangerous thing to do today in China is to believe in and take seriously the official ideology [Marxism] itself’.¹⁴⁵ The Chinese Schmittians could even defend the crackdown as the Souverän [Xi]’s Dezisionismus, saving China from repeating its radical experiments and subsequent disasters during its turbulent 20^th century.

The 2010s left-wing student activism marked a true revival – instead of the fake ones including the alleged Chinese New Left, of radical leftism in China¹⁴⁶ and it perhaps stands as the Chinese movement that resembles the New Left in the West the most, for their shared student activism, youth vibe, belief in human rights over sovereignty, and opposition to both state and capital.

Having said that, it remains dubious whether the left-wing student activism could match the New Left in the West for a contextual divergence: the 1960s New Left emerged in the West under political constitutionalism protecting the rights of dissents, which is still absent in China. The problem is not whether Chinese radical leftists themselves intentionally, to use Ding’s word, ‘dare’ to oppose what they are supposed to oppose, but whether the constitutionalism that allows leftist radicalism to exist objectively exists.

Conclusions

It is necessary to keep in mind that the alleged Chinese New Left, prior to different normative judgments of it, is subject to contradictory factual descriptions, and most of the intellectuals allegedly associated with it reject the label. The label was coined in 1994 by journalist Yang Ping offhand, whose own perception of it was ‘an expression of cultural conservatism’.¹⁴⁷

The in-depth readings of the writings by alleged Chinese New Left intellectuals confirm Yang’s perception. Amongst them, the conservatism approach intellectuals intertwine with Straussian sociocultural conservatism, Huntingtonian civilizationism, and Schmittian antiliberal constitutional theory; the China Model approach intellectuals unequivocally defend the party-state capitalism of contemporary China; and the ‘critical intellectuals’ are intimate with the conservative and royalist reception of Mao’s political legacies.

The popularization of the mislabeling of the alleged Chinese New Left reflects a broader context of China’s ideological landscape, in which liberalism is more left-wing and critical of the status quo than the alleged Chinese New Left. Given the radical nature of the New Left and its distinction from left-wing liberalism in the West, it is also inappropriate to assign the term to the Chinese left-wing liberals. The 2010s left-wing student activism and the persecutions it suffered demonstrate, on the one hand, the possibility of an authentic Chinese New Left, and one the other hand, its frangibility under the party-state dictatorship.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Xu Jilin (ECNU), Samuli Seppänen (CUHK), Lin Yao (NYU Shanghai), Chen I-Chung (Academia Sinica), Robin Bellers (CEU Vienna), and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Dominik Mierzejewski, ‘“Not to Oppose but to Rethink”: The New Left Discourse on the Chinese Reforms’, Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 8 (1) (2009), pp. 15–29; Charles W. Freeman III and Wen Jin Yuan, ‘The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left,’ The Washington Quarterly, 35 (1) (2012), pp. 65–82; Li He, ‘China’s New Left,’ in Political Thought and China’s Transformation: Ideas Shaping Reform in Post-Mao China (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 46–59.

2. Bian Wu [卞悟] (Qin Hui [秦晖]), ‘One Thing Cannot Be Removed from Its Environment of Origin, Otherwise It Would not Be Able to Enjoy Life as Fully as Before [淮橘為枳 出局者迷],’ 21st Century, 33 (1996), p. 5; Kalpana Misra, ‘Neo-Left and Neo-Right in Post-Tiananmen China,’ Asian Survey, 43 (5) (2003), p. 728; Xiao Gongqin [萧功秦], ‘The History and Future of the Six Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China [当代中国六大社会思潮的历史与未来],’ in Ma Licheng [马立诚], Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China [当代中国八种社会思潮] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2011), p. 303.

3. Wang Chaohua, One China, Many Paths (Verso, 2003), p. 62; Pankaj Mishra, ‘China’s New Leftist,’ The New York Times, October 15, 2006.

4. Wang Hui [汪晖], ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity [当代中国的思想状况与现代性问题],’ Tianya, (5) (1997), pp. 133–150.

5. Joseph Fewsmith, ‘Debating “the China Model”,’ China Leadership Monitor, 35 (21) (2011), pp. 1–7.

6. Lin Chun, Revolution and Counterrevolution in China: The Paradoxes of Chinese Struggle (Verso, 2021), pp. 108–109.

7. Hu Lianhe [胡联合] and Hu Angang [胡鞍钢], ‘China Must Never Practice “Separation of Powers” [中国绝不能搞“三权分立”],’ People’s Daily, May 10, 2010; Han Yuhai et al., The Right Way in the World [人间正道] (Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 2011).

8. Wang Shaoguang [王绍光], ‘Build a Strong Democracy [建立一个强有力的民主国家],’ in Left-Brain Thinking [左脑的思考] (Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House, 2002), pp. 21–65; Ma Licheng, Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China, p. 73.

9. Wang Shaoguang, ‘Beyond Electocracy: Reflections on Contemporary Democracy [超越选主: 对当代民主的反思],’ Peking University Law Review, 13 (2) (2012), pp. 557–559.

10. Cui Zhiyuan [崔之元], ‘New Evolutionism, Analytical Marxist Critical Jurisprudence, and Chinese Reality [新进化论·分析的马克思主义批判法学·中国现实],’ Comparative Socioeconomic Systems, (5) (1994), pp. 2–9.

11. Gan Yang [甘陽], ‘The Origin of China’s Liberal Left [中國自由左派的由來],’ Ming Pao, 1st and 2nd October 2000; Zhang Xudong, ‘The Making of the Post-Tiananmen Intellectual Field: A Critical Overview,’ in Zhang Xudong (Ed) Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 16.

12. Zhou Lian [周濂] and Chan Koonchung [陈冠中], ‘Dialogue on the New Left [对谈新左翼思潮],’ Oriental Morning Post, April 6, 2014; Chow Po Chung [周保松], ‘The Ideal of Left-Wing Liberalism [自由主義左翼的理念],’ 21st Century, 149 (2015), pp. 36–54.

13. Ma Licheng, Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China, pp. 79–91; Xu Jilin [許紀霖], ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade [近十年來中國國家主義思潮之批判],’ Reflexion, 18 (2011), pp. 83–120.

14. Zhang Longxi [張隆溪], ‘Cultural Criticism in Pluralist Society [多元社會中的文化批評],’ 21st Century, 33 (1996), pp. 18–19; Xiao Gongqin, ‘The New Left and the Ideological Divergence of Contemporary Chinese Intellectuals [新左派与当代中国知识分子的思想分化],’ Modern China Studies, (1) (2002), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/cn/issues/past-issues/76-mcs-2002-issue-1/1219–2012-01-06-08-38-50.html; Kalpana Misra, ‘Neo-Left and Neo-Right in Post-Tiananmen China,’ p. 727; Ma Licheng, Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China, pp. 66–71; Merle Goldman, ‘Reviewed Work: China and New Left Visions: Political and Cultural Interventions by Ban Wang, Jie Lu,’ The China Journal, (73) (2015), p. 266.

15. Kang Xiaoguang [康晓光], ‘China: Political Development and Stability in the Reform Era [中国: 改革时代的政治发展与政治稳定],’ Modern China Studies, (3) (2002), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/cn/issues/past-issues/78-mcs-2002-issue-3/1244–2012-01-06-08-38-50.html.

16. Zhou Lian and Chan Koonchung, ‘Dialogue on the New Left’.

17. Wang Chaohua, One China, Many Paths, p. 62.

18. Lu Nanfeng [卢南峰] and Yang Ping [杨平], ‘Interview with Beijing Culture Review’s Yang Ping [专访《文化纵横》杨平],’ The Paper, December 5, 2018, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2705955.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Wang Chaohua, One China, Many Paths, p. 62.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Gan Yang, ‘I Would Rather the Speed of Reform Is Slower: Dialogue with Gan Yang [我宁可改革速度慢一点——对话甘阳],’ Southern People Weekly, (20) (2008), pp. 72–73.

25. Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, p. 2.

26. Wang Shaoguang, ‘Standing in the Desert, Watching the Flying Sand and Rocks, Light and Shadow, Walking the Path of Life [立于荒漠笑看飞沙走石光影之间儒行人生之路],’ in Clouds from Hometown [故乡的云] (Peking University Press, 2008), https://news.pku.edu.cn/ztrd/gxdyxycfl/3076–238748.html.

27. Wang Chaohua, One China, Many Paths, p. 62.

28. Sabine Peschel and Wang Hui, “Wang: ‘China und Deutschland brauchen Raum für Dialog’,” Deutsche Welle, 25th February 2015, https://www.dw.com/de/wang-hui-mehr-raum-f%C3%BCr-kulturellen-austausch/a-18281919.

29. Wang Luxiang [王鲁湘] and Cui Zhiyuan, “‘New Left’ Scholar Cui Zhiyuan Explains Institutional Innovation and Economic Democracy [‘新左派’学者崔之元解读制度创新与经济民主],” ifeng.com, December 29, 2008, http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/sjdjt/detail_2008_12/29/1057865_0.shtml.

30. Liu Wenjia [刘文嘉] and Hu Angang, ‘Hu Angang: Mountains and Rivers in Dreams [胡鞍钢: 山河频入梦],’ Guangming Daily, April 18, 2013.

31. Correspondent and Zhao Tingyang [赵汀阳], ‘Interview with Researcher Zhao Tingyang [访赵汀阳研究员],’ Philosophical Trends, (1) (2015), pp. 10–11.

32. Lin Pin [林品] and Dai Jinhua [戴锦华], ‘Interview with Dai Jinhua [戴锦华专访],’ Wenyi Bao, January 13, 2016.

33. Author’s correspondence with Gao, December 20, 2022.

34. Lu Nanfeng and Yang Ping, ‘Interview with Yang Ping’.

35. I acknowledge that the term, like many others, has been subject to contradictory usages; my usage is associated with those who rebelled against the pre-1966 system, under which they were systematically disadvantaged, in opposition to the royalists during the Cultural Revolution and conservatives during the 1980s.

36. Yang Jisheng [杨继绳], The Political Struggles in China’s Reform Era [中国改革年代的政治斗争] (Hong Kong: Excellent Culture Press, 2004), p. 11.

37. Feng Chen, ‘Order and Stability in Social Transition: Neoconservative Political Thought in Post-1989 China,’ The China Quarterly, 151 (1997), p. 593; Peter Moody, Conservative Thought in Contemporary China (Lexington Books, 2007), p. 151; Ma Licheng, Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China, pp. 20–23, 297–301.

38. Lu Nanfeng and Yang Ping, ‘Interview with Yang Ping’.

39. Kang Xiaoguang, ‘China: Political Development and Stability in the Reform Era.’; Xu Jilin, ‘On Chinese Intellectuals: From the 1980s to the 2000s [中国知识分子论: 从1980年代到2000年代],’ ICCS Journal of Modern Chinese Studies, 3 (1) (2011), pp. 2–3; Els van Dongen, Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Guo Zhonghua [郭忠华], ‘Main Intellectual Trends in China since the Reform and Opening Up: Stages and Essence [改革开放以来中国主要社会思潮——阶段与本质],’ CASS Journal of Political Science, (4) (2022), pp. 76–88.

40. Lu Nanfeng and Yang Ping, ‘Interview with Yang Ping.’

41. Ibid.

42. e.g., Hu Angang et al., China Regional Disparity Report [中國地區差距報告] (Taipei: JL Books, 1996).

43. Kang Xiaoguang, ‘China: Political Development and Stability in the Reform Era.’

44. Ibid.

45. Xiao Gongqin, ‘The New Left and the Ideological Divergence of Contemporary Chinese Intellectuals’.

46. Cynthia A. Young, Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a US Third World Left (Duke University Press, 2006).

47. Xu Jilin, Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique, trans., David Ownby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Gu Su [顾肃], ‘The Struggle between Radicalism and Conservatism, Left and Right in Contemporary Social Thought [当代社会思潮中的激进与保守、左与右之争],’ Zhejiang Academic Journal, (1) (2013), p. 98; Xu Youyu and Jiang Baoxin [蒋保信], “‘Oxford Consensus’, New Left, and Contemporary Intellectual Issues [‘牛津共识’、新左翼与当代思想问题],” Consensus Net, March 4, 2014, Reposted on ifeng.com, http://culture.ifeng.com/sixiang/detail_2014_03/04/34416463_3.shtml.

48. Identifications of Gan Yang as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Xu Youyu, ‘On the 1990s Chinese “New Left” [评中国九十年代的“新左派”],’ Modern China Studies, (4) (2000), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/us/issues/past-issues/71-mcs-2000-issue-4/549-2012-01-03-12-11-40.html; Zhou Lian, ‘The Most Fashionable and the Most Relevant: A Review of Contemporary Chinese Political Philosophy,’ Diogenes, (1) (2008), p. 175; Mierzejewski, ‘“Not to Oppose but to Rethink”: The New Left Discourse on the Chinese Reforms,’ p. 17; Charles W. Freeman III and Wen Jin Yuan, ‘The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left,’ p. 67.

49. Identification of Liu Xiaofeng as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Zhou Lian and Chan Koonchung, ‘Dialogue on the New Left’.

50. Identification of Jiang Shigong as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Xu Jilin, Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique, p. 21.

51. Kai Marchal and Carl K. Y. Shaw, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Political (Lexington Books, 2017).

52. Gan Yang, The Political Philosopher Strauss: The Revival of Classical Conservative Political Philosophy [政治哲人施特勞斯——古典保守主義政治哲學的復興] (Oxford University Press, 2002).

53. Gan Yang et al., ‘Kang Youwei and Institutionalized Confucianism [康有为与制度化儒学],’ Open Times, (5) (2014), p. 13.

54. Gan Yang, ‘I Would Rather the Speed of Reform Is Slower: Dialogue with Gan Yang,’ p. 73.

55. Gan Yang, “From ‘Nation-State’ to ‘Civilization-State’ [从‘民族—国家’走向’文明—国家’],” Book Town, (2) (2004), p. 39.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Gan Yang, ‘I Would Rather the Speed of Reform Is Slower: Dialogue with Gan Yang,’ p. 72.

59. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1996).

60. Gan Yang, ‘From “Nation-State” to “Civilization-State”,’ p. 39.

61. Gan Yang, ‘I Would Rather the Speed of Reform Is Slower: Dialogue with Gan Yang,’ p. 73.

62. Gan Yang et al., ‘Kang Youwei and Institutionalized Confucianism’.

63. Gan Yang, ‘I Would Rather the Speed of Reform Is Slower: Dialogue with Gan Yang,’ p. 74.

64. Ibid.

65. Xi Jinping [习近平], ‘Xi Jinping Delivered an Important Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Seminar for New Members and Alternate Members of the Central Committee to Study and Implement the Spirit of the 18th CPC National Congress, Emphasizing that We Must Unswervingly Adhere to and Develop Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Constantly Make Discoveries, Innovations and Progress in Practice [习近平在新进中央委员会的委员、候补委员学习贯彻党的十八大精神研讨班开班式上发表重要讲话强调 毫不动摇坚持和发展中国特色社会主义在实践中不断有所发现有所创造有所前进],’ Xinhua News Agency, January 5, 2013.

66. Gan Yang, ‘From “Nation-State” to “Civilization-State”,’ p. 40.

67. Xi Jinping, ‘Xi Jinping Delivered an Important Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Seminar on Studying and Implementing the Spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, Emphasizing the Correct Understanding and Vigorous Promotion of Chinese-Style Modernization [习近平在学习贯彻党的二十大精神研讨班开班式上发表重要讲话强调 正确理解和大力推进中国式现代化],’ Xinhua News Agency, February 7, 2023.

68. Liu Xiaofeng [劉小楓], ‘Carl Schmitt and the Dilemma of Liberal Constitutional Theory [施密特與自由主義憲政理論的困境],’ 21st Century, (1998), pp. 111–118.

69. Xie Libin and Haig Patapan, ‘Schmitt Fever: The Use and Abuse of Carl Schmitt in Contemporary China,’ International Journal of Constitutional Law, 18 (1) (2020), p. 132.

70. Liu Xiaofeng, ‘How to Understand the Historical Significance of the Centennial Republic [如何认识百年共和的历史含义],’ Open Times, (5) (2013), p. 193.

71. Jiang Zemin [江泽民], Selected Works of Jiang Zemin [江泽民文选], Vol. 3 (Beijing: People’s Publishing Houss, 2006), p. 114.

72. Liu Xiaofeng, ‘How to Understand the Historical Significance of the Centennial Republic,’ p. 190.

73. Liu Xiaofeng, ‘New China and the End of American “International Law”,’ American Affairs, 3 (3) (2019), pp. 155–168.

74. Jiang Shigong, China’s Hong Kong: A Political and Cultural Perspective (Singapore: Springer, 2017).

75. Zhao Dunhua [赵敦华], ‘The Chinese Debates on Western Philosophy over the Past Four Decades [四十年来西方哲学问题争论发凡],’ Academic Exchange, (3) (2019), p. 9.

76. Identifications of Wang Shaoguang as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, p. 2; Wang Shaoguang, ‘Standing in the Desert, Watching the Flying Sand and Rocks, Light and Shadow, Walking the Path of Life’; Samson Yuen, ‘Debating Constitutionalism in China: Dreaming of A Liberal Turn?’ China Perspectives (2013), p. 69.

77. Identifications of Hu Angang as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Dominik Mierzejewski, ‘“Not to Oppose but to Rethink”: The New Left Discourse on the Chinese Reforms,’ p. 18; Liu Wenjia and Hu Angang, ‘Hu Angang: Mountains and Rivers in Dreams.’; Samson Yuen, ‘Debating Constitutionalism in China: Dreaming of A Liberal Turn?’, p. 69.

78. Xu Youyu and Teng Biao[滕彪], ‘The Arduous Exploration of Liberalism in China [自由主义在中国的艰难探索],’ China Journal of Democracy, 1 (1) (2023), p. 28.

79. Kevin Carrico, ‘I Mastered Xi Jinping Thought, and I Have the Certificate to Prove It,’ Foreign Policy, October 18, 2018.

80. Wang Shaoguang and An Yingzhao [安英昭], ‘Wang Shaoguang: How Does China’s Whole-Process People’s Democracy Enrich the Form of Human Political Civilization? [王绍光: 中国全过程人民民主何以丰富人类政治文明形态？],’ China Internet Information Center, December 10, 2021, http://news.china.com.cn/2021–12/10/content_77923742.htm?f=pad&a=true.

81. Wang Shaoguang and Hu Angang, Report on China’s State Capacity [中国国家能力报告] (Liaoning People’s Publishing House, 1993).

82. Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, p. 58.

83. Ibid., p. 75.

84. Kang Xiaoguang, ‘China: Political Development and Stability in the Reform Era’.

85. Stephen Noakes, ‘The Role of Political Science in China: Intellectuals and Authoritarian Resilience,’ Political Science Quarterly, 129 (2) (2014), p. 252.

86. Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, pp. 92–122.

87. Wang Shaoguang, ‘It Is Time to Indigenize Political Science [政治学本土化正当其时],’ Beijing Daily, July 19, 2017.

88. Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, pp. 103–104.

89. Ibid., pp. 120–121.

90. Wang Hui, ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity,’ p. 143.

91. Edward Said, ‘The Clash of Ignorance,’ The Nation, October 4, 2001.

92. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The West: Unique, not Universal,’ Foreign Affairs, (1996), pp. 28–46.

93. Wang Shaoguang, Left-Brain Thinking, p. 104.

94. Ou Shujun [欧树军] and Wang Shaoguang, Small Country with Great Governance: Singapore’s Basic National System Construction [小邦大治: 新加坡的国家基本制度建设] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2017).

95. Hu Angang, China’s Collective Leadership System [中国集体领导体制] (Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 2013).

96. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 3.

97. Peter Moody, Conservative Thought in Contemporary China, p. 152.

98. Pankaj Mishra, ‘China’s New Leftist’

99. Ibid.

100. Ibid.

101. Ibid.

102. Wang Sirui [王思睿] (Chen Ziming [陈子明]), ‘The Historical Roots of Neoauthoritarianism and New Left [新威权主义与新左派的历史根源],’ Modern China Studies, 3 (2002), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/us/issues/past-issues/78-mcs-2002-issue-3/1248–2012-01-06-08-38-50.html; Xu Jilin, ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade.’

103. Wang Hui, ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity,’ p. 140.

104. Wang Sirui, ‘The Historical Roots of Neoauthoritarianism and New Left’.

105. Xu Jilin, ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade’.

106. Chen Chun [陳純], ‘“Depoliticized” Political Theory: Wang Hui’s Left-Wing Stance and “Statism” [「去政治化」的政治理論: 汪暉的左翼立場與「國家主義」],’ Reflexion, 44 (2022), pp. 309–344.

107. Identifications of Cui Zhiyuan as a figure of the alleged Chinese New Left, see Mierzejewski, ‘“Not to Oppose but to Rethink”: The New Left Discourse on the Chinese Reforms,’ p. 17; Charles W. Freeman III and Wen Jin Yuan, ‘The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left,’ p. 67.

108. Cui Zhiyuan, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography [我的思想自传],’ Tianya, (6) (2003), p. 42.

109. Gerald Allan Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

110. Cui Zhiyuan, “How to Understand China Today: Interpretation of ‘Xiaokang Society’ [如何认识今日中国: ‘小康社会’解读],” Dushu, (3) (2004), p. 4.

111. Cui Zhiyuan, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography,’ p. 42; ‘How to Understand China Today: Interpretation of “Xiaokang Society”,’ p. 3.

112. See Cui Zhiyuan, “The Political Economics of Chongqing’s ‘Ten Major Livelihood Projects’ [重庆‘十大民生工程’的政治经济学],” Journal of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, 14, (5) (2010), pp. 5–10; Cui Zhiyuan, ‘Partial Intimations of the Coming Whole: The Chongqing Experiment in Light of the Theories of Henry George, James Meade, and Antonio Gramsci,’ Modern China, 37 (6) (2011), pp. 646–660.

113. Cheng Li, ‘The Bo Xilai Crisis: A Curse or a Blessing for China?’ Brookings Institution, April 18, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-bo-xilai-crisis-a-curse-or-a-blessing-for-china/.

114. Pankaj Mishra, ‘China’s New Leftist’.

115. Wang Shaoguang, Failure of Charisma: The Cultural Revolution in Wuhan [超凡領袖的挫敗——文化大革命在武漢], trans. Wang Hongxu [王紅續] (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2009), p. 252.

116. K. L. Julka, ‘Herbert Marcuse’s Messianic Humanism: Politics of the New Left,’ Social Scientist, (1979), pp. 13–23; Julian Bourg, ‘The Red Guards of Paris: French Student Maoism of the 1960s,’ History of European Ideas, 31 (4) (2005), pp. 472–490.

117. Wang Shaoguang, 2009.

118. Wang Hui, ‘Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity,’ p. 139.

119. Deng Xiaoping [邓小平], Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping [邓小平文选], Vol. 3 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2001), p. 209.

120. Mark Lilla, ‘Reading Strauss in Beijing,’ New Republic, December 17, 2010.

121. Xu Jilin, ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade’.

122. Gan Yang, ‘The Origin of China’s Liberal Left’.

123. Stephen F. Cohen, ‘The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union,’ Slavic Review 38 (2) (1979), pp. 187–202.

124. Li Zehou [李泽厚], On the History of Modern Chinese Thought [中国现代思想史论] (SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2008), p. 102.

125. Gu Su, ‘The Struggle between Radicalism and Conservatism, Left and Right in Contemporary Social Thought,’ p. 98.

126. Wang Sirui, ‘An Analysis of the Leftist Spectrum in Today’s China [试析今日中国的左派光谱],’ Modern China Studies, (2) (2001), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/us/issues/past-issues/73-mcs-2001-issue-2/569-2012-01-03-12-11-52.html.

127. Guo Zhonghua, ‘Main Intellectual Trends in China since the Reform and Opening Up: Stages and Essence,’ p. 84.

128. Xu Jilin, ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade.’; ‘On Chinese Intellectuals: From the 1980s to the 2000s,’ p. 5.

129. Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu, ‘China’s ideological spectrum,’ The Journal of Politics, 80 (1) (2018), pp. 254–273.

130. Ma Licheng, Eight Major Intellectual Trends in Contemporary China, p. 79.

131. Cui Zhiyuan, ‘The Political Economics of Chongqing’s “Ten Major Livelihood Projects”’; ‘Partial Intimations of the Coming Whole: The Chongqing Experiment in Light of the Theories of Henry George, James Meade, and Antonio Gramsci.’

132. Wang Shaoguang, ‘Chinese Socialism 3.0: Chongqing’s Exploration [中国式社会主义3.0: 重庆的探索],’ Journal of Public Administration, (6) (2011), pp. 48–78.

133. Xu Youyu, ‘Liberalism and New Left in the 21st Century [进入21世纪的自由主义和新左派],’ Modern China Studies, (2) (2007), https://www.modernchinastudies.org/us/issues/past-issues/96-mcs-2007-issue-2/1006–21.html.

134. Xu Youyu and Jiang Baoxin, ‘“Oxford Consensus”, New Left, and Contemporary Intellectual Issues’.

135. Ibid.

136. Xu Jilin, ‘Critique of China’s Statist Ideology in the Past Decade’.

137. Xu Youyu and Teng Biao, ‘The Arduous Exploration of Liberalism in China,’ pp. 22–39.

138. Ding Xueliang [丁学良] and Li Zongtao [李宗陶], ‘China Has Only Old Left, no New Left: Dialogue with Ding Xueliang [中国只有老左派，没有新左派——对话丁学良],’ Southern People Weekly, (31) (2010), p. 77.

139. Chan Koonchung and Qi Ke [齐克], ‘The Picture of the New Left: Consensus Net’s Exclusive Interview with Chan Koonchung [新左翼思潮的图景: 共识网独家专访陈冠中],’ Consensus Net, Reposted on Hong Kong Inmedia, https://www.inmediahk.net/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B/%E6%96%B0%E5%B7%A6%E7%BF%BC%E6%80%9D%E6%BD%AE%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%96%E6%99%AF-%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E9%99%B3%E5%86%A0%E4%B8%AD%E5%85%88%E7%94%9F%E8%A8%AA%E8%AB%87%E9%8C%84.

140. Lin Yao, ‘Brokered Dependency, Authoritarian Malepistemization, and Spectacularized Postcoloniality: Reflections on Chinese Academia,’ American Behavioral Scientist 68 (3) (2024), p. 385.

141. Wang Xiaoyun [王晓芸], ‘Peking University Students Investigate the Chaos of School Logistics Employment [北大学生调研学校后勤用工乱象],’ Beijing Youth Daily, December 18, 2015.

142. Yuan Yang, ‘Noam Chomsky Joins Academics Boycotting China Marxism Conferences,’ Financial Times, November 27, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/68dea512-f21f-11e8-ae55-df4bf40f9d0d.

143. Cui Zhiyuan, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography,’ p. 41.

144. Author’s correspondence with Wang, January 31, 2023.

145. Slavoj Žižek, ‘The Mysterious Case of Disappearing Chinese Marxists Shows What Happens When State Ideology Goes Badly Wrong,’ Independent, November 29, 2018.

146. Pun Ngai [潘毅], ‘Jasic Strike: The Revival of China’s Leftist Tradition [佳士工潮: 中国左翼传统的复活],’ The New York Times, September 11, 2018, https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20180911/china-students-workers-unite/.

147. Lu Nanfeng and Yang Ping, ‘Interview with Yang Ping’.