Voices from China's Century

Voices from China’s Century
 
The essays translated in this volume are from some of the best minds in China today thinking about China—where has it come from? what is it today? what should it be in the future? The collection is edited by Timothy Cheek, David Ownby, and Joshua Fogel and the translations feature the collaborative translations of Chinese and Western teams trained in this project, as well as our own.
 
The Chinese scholars and public intellectuals translated in this volume rest heavily on history, framed by Gan Yang’s well-known challenge to “integrate the three traditions” of China’s modern history: Confucianism, liberalism, and socialism. They give three clearly different narratives of the same China over the past century to justify their competing visions for the China Dream. In the process they offer a powerful critique not only of Maoism but also of liberal democracy in the 21st century. For the New Confucians the failures of socialism and the depredations of Western “hollowing out of Chinese culture” in the 20th century cry out for a traditional Chinese solution—Confucianism. The same world according to Chinese liberals is one of socialist failure and market success now challenged by the lack of political reform. These challenges cry out for the best political solutions human civilizations have produced, and liberalism has the best track record in modern history. For New Left intellectuals only the Chinese state, as a reformed socialist entity, has the wherewithal to withstand the depredations of neo-Liberal globalization.
 
It is the disagreements, as well as underlying shared assumptions, of these thoughtful and fractious intellectuals that provides a richer and more complex understanding of China today and its role in our future. We have selected writings that we, the editors, in conjunction with our Chinese colleagues in the PRC, feel capture the diversity of intelligent opinion about just what is, or should be, the “Chinese Dream.”
 
The volume is under in the process of submission to Columbia University Press.

At present, the following texts are slated to be published:

The Challenge
 
Gan Yang ,“Integrating the Three Traditions” (selections) (2005)
           
Liberal Voices
 
Rong Jian, “A China Bereft of Thought” (2013)

​Liu Qing, “Liberalism in Contemporary China: Potential and Perils” (2004)

Xu Jilin, “’I am a Child of the Nineteenth Century:’ The Last Twenty years of Wang Yuanhua’s Life” (2008)                     
 
Left Voices
 
Qian Liqun ,“Mao Zedong and His Era” (2012)                                                                   

Xiao Gongqin, “From Authoritarian Government to Constitutional Democracy: Perspectives on Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms” (2012)

Gan Yang, “Liberalism:  For the Aristocrats or for the People?"

Wang Shaoguang, “Representative Democracy and Representational Democracy” (2014)                     
 
 Sun Ge, “The Significance of Borders” (2017)                                                                 
 
New Confucian Voices
 
Chen Lai, “A Century of Confucianism: Looking Back and Looking Forward” (2014)

Chen Ming, "From Kang Youwei to Deng Xiaoping" (2015)   
                                                          
Jiang Qing, “Only Confucians Can Make a Place for Modern Women” (2015)