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Abstract
This dialogue develops a series of reflections on contemporary Chinese politics starting from Wang Hui's analysis of the role that the repression of the spring 1989 movement played in the acceleration of China's neoliberalist economic policies, and more in general about the peculiar forms of intervention of the party-state in the implementation of capitalist forms of economy. Four major issues are discussed: some probings of the political value of the Tiananmen movement; the suppression of the agricultural people's communes; the parallel transformation of the industrial danwei system; and the rise of Deng Xiaoping's strategy as a form of reactive subjectivity toward the political experiments of the late sixties and early seventies. The authors argue that the major consistency in the Chinese state today is the process of harsh depoliticization of subjectivities deployed during the Cultural Revolution, and retrospectively throughout the entire twentieth century in China. On the other hand, this process of depoliticization shows a weakness in consistency, since it basically depends on a “radical negation” and, in the end, lacks autonomous subjective strength.
Notes
1. Wang Citation2004, 7–69; Wang Citation2003. The present dialogue was stimulated by a series of discussions with Wang Hui during his Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Bologna University, in autumn–winter 2004–05.
2. Badiou Citation1993.
3. Balazs Citation1968.
4. Han Citation1974.
5. Nathan and Link Citation2001.
6. Li Citation1989.
7. Hinton Citation1990.
8. Brecht, in Willett and Manheim Citation1987.
9. Henderson and Cohen Citation1984.
10. Lazarus Citation1994.
11. Giraud Citation1998.
12. The data are reported in Feng and Jin Citation2003, 1753. Here the statistical source is not directly quoted, but the volume is a very official biography of Mao edited by the publishing house of the documents of the CCP.