Xu Jilin, "Modern Politics"

Xu Jilin, “Modern Politics is Live and Let Live”[1]

Interview with Xu Jilin by journalist Zhou Zhixing 周志兴, published online on October 16, 2013.

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

In this 2013 interview for the now extinct website Gongshiwang 共识网, the well-known Shanghai liberal Xu Jilin, professor of history at East China Normal University, speaks frankly about a number of topics, including the politics of intellectual life, the impact of the internet on the rise of extremist tribalism, and the necessity for China to achieve a basic consensus on political values and incorporate these into constitutional government.  The interview begins with a discussion of the Oxford Consensus 牛津公式, a document signed by 28 Chinese scholars from a variety of intellectual camps after discussions in England in August of 2013 (full text available here).  The goal of the discussions, and of the document, was to attempt to move beyond the bitter acrimony that has divided the Chinese intellectual world since the 1990s, in the hopes of establishing an agreement on core values that would enable them to work together for the good of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.  Xu attended the discussions as a representative Chinese Liberal, and signed his name to the agreement.

In the interview, surely part of a media campaign to publicize the Oxford Consensus, Xu Jilin addresses the ins and outs of his life as a public intellectual in China in a way that he cannot in his more formal academic writings, and we understand that his “politics,” above and beyond the liberal values defended in his books and articles, includes an attempt to restore civility to Chinese intellectual life.  He pleads for other intellectuals to set aside their preconceived notions and acknowledge that even their enemies are speaking honestly and on the basis of cogent intellectual principles—even if there are always conflicts over principles.  He insists that consensus can start from relatively weak agreements on broadly shared values and an acknowledgement of differences.  China is now a pluralistic society, and cannot afford the luxury of pretending that a fundamental cultural or intellectual unity will be restored.

If Xu was cheered by the achievement of the Oxford Consensus, he was somewhat less optimistic about its impact on China.  He notes that, in part because of the rise of the internet, the influence of scholars on public opinion has diminished, to be replaced by “Big Vs” (famous bloggers; the “V” means that they were “verified” to write under their own name, and it appears on their blog posts).  Big Vs were shut down by authorities in late 2013 because the Party feared their influence.  Prior to that point, some Big Vs had had hundreds of thousands of followers, in a dynamic that followed the rules of celebrity rather than rationality.  Similar celebrities continue to excite similar enthusiams on WeChat today.  For Xu, this is all the more reason that intellectuals should unite to the extent possible.  China needs voices of reason.

The larger political vision put forward by Xu is that “modern politics is live and let live,” a sentiment that differs considerably from the more narrow visions of New Leftists like Wang Shaoguang or Mainland New Confucians like Chen Ming, for whom moderation or compromise are seen as signs of weakness.
 
Translation

On the Oxford Consensus
 
Zhou:  Recently, the Nanfang renwu zhoukan 南方人物周刊[2] published a story on the Oxford consensus.  Have you seen it?
 
Xu:  I’m aware of it.  The journalist who wrote it also interviewed me.
 
Zhou:  Is the story accurate?
 
Xu:  Of course.  She wrote it after interviewing several scholars who participated in it.
 
Zhou:  Were all the interviews by telephone?
 
Xu:  Yes, all by telephone.  And with the exception of a couple of things that are not quite right, overall it’s an accurate depiction.
 
Zhou:  It’s not easy to write an essay like this on the basis of telephone interviews.
 
Xu:  They were originally going to write something even bigger, a front-page story or even a special issue, but later the journalist felt it was too sensitive, and decided there were a lot of good stories to follow up, so she published a story-driven piece.
 
Zhou:  But it seems like no one else followed up.
 
Xu:  From what I know there were three or four media outlets, including a weekly and some websites, that intended to follow up from different angles.  But they took their time about it, and their goal was not to talk about the Oxford consensus, but to use the Oxford consensus to talk about the overall situation of the Chinese intellectual world.
 
Zhou:  I wonder if that wouldn’t run the risk of censorship.
 
Xu:  What do you think?
 
Zhou:  It would depend on how they approached it.  If it was story-based then there might be no problem, but if it was based on viewpoints there might be problems.
 
Xu:  It would depend on the viewpoint.
 
Zhou:  At present there is consensus between the left and right on many points, but no consensus on other points.  If one focused on the points where there is a lack of consensus it might be difficult, such as attitudes toward Mao Zedong or toward the Cultural Revolution.
 
Xu:  As I understand it, the idea of consensus is precisely not to talk about these divergences, but rather to look for common points and agree to disagree about the rest.  Over the past few years, the differences between the Liberals, the New Left, the Authoritarians, the New Confucians, and the Christians have gone through any number of debates and conflicts, and are crystal clear.  China’s future will not be decided by these divergences—indeed the divergences will only divide China further in the future.  But the point is to see whether there is consensus behind the divergences, even if the consensus is thin to the point that most people would see no particular content to it.  To my mind, it is exactly this kind of weak, common sense-based, unremarkable consensus that is the most important.
 
In fact, politics is very commonplace.  Politics is not revolution; revolution stirs up people’s minds.  Politics, particularly the sort of political norms that everyone can accept, have to be ordinary.  But for a people, for a country, even for all of mankind, these commonplace, ordinary politics have to be built on the basis of a commonplace, ordinary consensus.
           
The Oxford consensus is the product of the Oxford meeting.  The conference itself was extremely interesting.  The main theme was Christianity and contemporary Chinese thought, which inspired a good many English people to come and listen, illustrating how important the topic of China has become.  The conference had four panels, and Liberals, the New Left, New Confucians, and Christians were invited to exchange opinions.  In each panel, four representatives of each group spoke, after which representatives from the other groups critiqued them.  Some of the debates were very fiery and direct.
 
Zhou:  It looks to me like the definitions of the four groups are not quite accurate.
 
Xu:  Of course there is overlap, such as between the Christians and the Liberals, and between the Liberals and the New Confucians.  In addition, Huang Jisu 黄纪苏 [3] and I are both “bat-like figures 蝙蝠型人物”[4] being seen by the New Left as Liberals and by the Liberals as New Left.
 
Zhou:  Like Qiu Feng 秋风[5]…even if he appears as a representative of the New Confucians, in fact he could be seen as part of the Liberals as well. 
 
Xu:  Qiu Feng should be seen as a liberal New Confucian, but he sees himself as thoroughly New Confucian, even if his liberal leanings are very clear.  There is a lot of overlap.
           
As for the Oxford consensus, at the outset He Guanglu 何光沪[6], Huang Jisu 黄纪苏, Qin Hui 秦晖[7] and Chen Ming 陈明[8] represented respectively the Christians, the New Left, the Liberals and the New Confucians in the writing of the draft agreement.  And in the evenings, after the formal panels were over, everyone met to continue the discussions.  The basic points of the draft agreement were very general.  The four points were:  people first, fairness and justice, plural and free culture, and international relations based on coexistence and mutual interests.  At first glance it looks very ordinary, but if the four groups could really agree, and if, in addition, it was not solely a matter of a consensus between left and right, but a consensus that extended to elite and mass, the authorities and the governed, then in that case China’s society would have achieved a basic, if weak, values consensus shared by all.  Values consensus is the base on which a state is built.  The United States, England, in fact all democratic countries have fierce debates on domestic and international questions like abortion, homosexuality, immigration, and the right to bear arms, and what they can finally agree on in political terms is supported by a few very general shared values, even if there remain differences as to how these values should be applied in practice.
           
Does there exist a consensus between and among the various groups in China?  I believe that there does.  If we sit down together and exchange sincerely, then we can find it.  The Oxford consensus was only a preliminary experiment.  During the formal daytime session everyone argued his case, no holds barred, but in the evening, when it was time to find consensus, the scholars displayed an astonishing amount of magnanimity and didn’t insist that their individual points of view absolutely had to be included.  Instead, they sought solutions that all could accept.
 
Zhou:  All of these people were relatively moderate.
 
Xu:  Right.  I study intellectual history, as well as contemporary thought.  I started in the 1980s, from the thought liberation 思想解放 and the enlightenment movement 启蒙运动 of the 1980s, in which I participated.[9] Most of those in Oxford were also from the enlightenment camp.  In the 1980s, most people shared common goals:  reform, democracy, the market; and we had common enemies as well, the orthodox conservatives.  But we shouldn’t see people in the 1980s as having been united.  In fact, there were debates at every conference.  I remember going to a conference in Beijing where the debates were ferocious, with people yelling until they were red in the face.  At the time there were different enlightenment groups, one was Jin Guantao’s 金观涛 “Towards the World 走向未来,”and another was Gan Yang’s 甘阳 ”Culture:  China and the World 文化：中国与世界.”[10] The direction of these two groups’ interests was completely different, to the point that they didn’t really respect one another, but despite differences in viewpoint they shared a basic orientation.  Why?  Because the structure of their knowledge was the same and they read one another’s books for the most part.  In addition, at the time basic viewpoints had not solidified, so that people could sit at the same table and argue.
           
Twenty or so years later, and especially after the great debate in the 1990s between the Liberals and the New Left, the biggest problem is that people cannot sit down together, cannot be on the same round table.  Hanna Arendt once said that what we call public territory is a table in the middle where people can sit down and engage in equal discussion and dialogue.  But after the great debate between the liberals and the New Left, and especially after the “Changjiang Dushu 长江读书 book prize affair,”[11] everyone seemed to fall in line with his own group, and what was once an enlightenment camp split into different factions.  In the 1980s everyone was together, and despite the arguments people remained friends.  But by the end of the 1990s even personal ties were broken, and other sorts of interests entered in as well.
           
The most important thing is that the structure of knowledge is no longer the same.  This is not to be made light of; it is very important.  If you read your books and I read mine, making judgements on the basis of theories from different sources, then when we argue it’s just a question of partisanship.  Over the years, I have discovered that the antagonistic factions think that the academic theories on which their adversaries base their arguments are nonsense, and they make not the slightest effort to understand them.  Objectively speaking, each group bases its arguments on fairly mature theories, because scholars have to make sense, and even if my “sense” is different from yours, there is still room for discussion.  Even if I don’t agree with you, at least I have to understand you, and I don’t engage in willful misreadings or attempts to expose your hidden motives.  But now, not only is there no discussion between the different kinds of “sense,” even basic understanding is difficult.  The New Left feels that the Liberals’ views of human rights theory is too superficial, while the Liberals feel that the postmodern theories of the New Left are too divorced from reality.  But no one wants to take the time, before criticizing his adversary, to understand what he is saying from his own point of view, to see whether it has its own legitimacy.  Criticism is necessary, but the most powerful criticism is not the one that destroys one’s adversary from the critic’s viewpoint, but is rather the one that uses the adversary’s own logic to ground his criticism, pointing out problems from within the other’s logic.  At the same time, whether you approve or not of what the other is saying, you should not willfully misread him.  For example, the debates between Habermas and post-modernists like Derrida and Foucault are well known and well entrenched, but there is little misreading of one another’s positions.  But in today’s China, willful misreadings and misunderstandings, even hostility, are not something that occurs now and again, it’s something that happens all the time.  In my view, you can have discursive enemies, but you should respect the person of your discursive enemy.  You should also have a basic respect for the theories behind their arguments, because only with respect can you understand.  No matter how you put it, all parties to intellectual debate in China today are speaking “sense,” even if you may feel that your antagonist’s ”sense” is distorted, it’s still sense.  When people who are talking sense are together, there is the possibility of dialogue.  But look, the most popular people on the web these days are not people who talk sense.  The most popular people on the web embrace a posture of “truth”[12] and the posture is stronger than the “sense.”  When you run into people like this, it’s like the scholar who runs into the soldier:  sense is not enough.
 
Zhou:  But these people who don’t talk sense still have a lot of fans.
 
Xu:  I’m a liberal, and although I don’t agree with people like Wang Hui 汪晖 (b. 1959)[13], Wang Shaoguang 王绍光 (b. 1954) [14] and Gan Yang, and have even written essays offering positive criticism of them[15], the reason I do this to engage in discussion with them, because I believe that they have their own “sense” which is worthy of serious engagement.  So we can debate the value of our respective “sense.”  But with those people who do not talk sense, all I can do is laugh and move on.  There’s nothing to say.
 
Zhou:  I feel like Shanghai scholars are fairly moderate.
 
Xu:  This is a characteristic of the city of Shanghai.  Of the three New Left representatives who participated in the Oxford conference, two are from Shanghai, which was not an accident.  Liberal and New Left scholars from Shanghai can sit together at a conference, can talk to one another without ripping one another to shreds; even if there is a huge difference in their views, they can sit down together calmly and discuss.  This has something to do with the personality of our city.  People who are too brash or too extreme have a hard time here; there is no “market” for them.  This has been helped along by the growth of an important middle class in Shanghai, which diminishes the influence of the elite and the mass.  Bourgeois cities dislike radicalism.  This affects the intellectual world as well.
           
We all know of course that Chinese like face, and if you can sit together you wind up according your antagonist a certain respect, even if you disagree, then you have given him or her face.  At the Oxford conference, Qin Hui 秦晖 (b. 1953) [16] and Lü Xinyu 吕新雨 (b. 1965) [17] had sharp debates.  Lü Xinyu is a very serious scholar, and takes ideas seriously.  If she feels she has been misunderstood, she will make sure to set the record straight.
 
Zhou:  It seems to me that Qin Hui doesn’t like to fight with people too much.
 
Xu:  Even if the arguments during the daytime were ferocious, to the point that it frightened some of the onlookers, when, in the evening, it came time to look for consensus, everybody, including Lü and Qing, calmed down.  Lü scrutinized every word and sentence of the document, looking for the best way to express the ideas, a seriousness of purpose that impressed me very much.  This is why everyone suggested that she be among the group to write the final draft.  In addition, there were other scholars who are very serious and devoted to their beliefs, and usually ready to debate to the end, but who maintained their silence as we sought to write the final text.  Xu Youyu 徐友渔 (b. 1947) [18] was like this, for instance.
 
Zhou:  He’s a representative liberal figure.
 
Xu:  On this occasion Xu was magnanimous to the point of being detached.  He said, “You guys keep working, I’m going to bed early.  I will sign whatever you produce.”  Later on Wang Wenfeng 王文锋, one of the organizers of the conference said that those who kept their silence contributed to achievement of consensus as much as those who actively participated.
 
To Have Opinions but No Viewpoints is the Special Characteristic of Certain Opinion Leaders
 
Zhou:  I agree with you that vehemence goes along with radicalism to a certain degree, suggesting a willingness to rip others to shreds.  The moderate voice doesn’t make itself heard.
 
Xu:  In China’s thought world today, there are extremists in all groups, and the extreme voice is the one that’s most easily remarked, especially on the web.
           
Since the arrival of the internet, and especially since the emergence of blogs and the web, the shape of the intellectual world has changed.  In the 1980s and 1990s, it was basically scholar-intellectuals who had influence, but they’re now in second place on the web.  The most active on the web, those who have the most influence are the Big Vs, the opinion leaders.
           
“Opinion leader” 意见领袖 is a great term, because is suggests that they don’t have to talk sense, they just have to have opinions, which they don’t have to defend.  Opinions don’t require defending, either you accept them or you oppose them.  It’s a question of choice.
           
Taiwan is like this too.  After the lifting of martial law in the 1980s, Xu Zuoyun 许倬云 (b. 1930) [19], Lin Yusheng 林毓生 (b. 1934) [20], Hu Fo 胡佛 (b. 1932) [21] and other important intellectuals often expressed their viewpoints in page after page of newspapers like Zhongguo shibao 中国时报 or Lianhebao 联合报, and their viewpoints were supported by academic theories.  And they spoke to jam-packed college auditoriums.  But now Taiwan is a talker’s paradise, it’s pretty much the same as with our opinion leaders.  And when big name intellectuals give a speech at Taiwan University 台大 there are at most a few dozen in the audience, it’s not like it used to be.  In the past, I thought that the mainland would only follow Taiwan’s route after democratization, but today, after the arrival of the web, the marginalization of the intellectuals in the media has come early.  On a medium like the web, it’s the person whose standpoint is the clearest and whose language is the most extreme, who has a sense of rhetoric and theater—this is the one who draws attention and fans, and has the greater possibility to become a big V.  The web made it possible for the extreme voice to become the mainstream.
           
At present, people from the art world, from the social world, media people and entrepreneurs have left intellectuals behind on the internet.  It’s hard to imagine the extent to which post-90s kids have fallen for and worship the media people who appear all the time on the screen.  Because media types are gifted at expressing themselves, and have rhetorical and performative charisma.
           
By contrast, moderate voices from all groups have today been completely marginalized.  At the Oxford conference I said:  “We shouldn’t feel too good about ourselves, as if one word from us could build up or bring down the country.  The age of the scholar-official is long gone and it’s not coming back.  Everyone here has already been marginalized.”  The influence of scholars is largely confined to the academy, to a few students and white-collar folk who care about public affairs.  Still, scholars have the influence that scholars have; opinion leaders impact the present, and scholars impact the future.   Scholars transmit values in their schools, and when their students take up their places in society, these values will be deployed, influencing the behavior of a new generation of people.
 
Zhou:  In fact I tell many scholars not to go on the web, because once they do they can be kidnapped by fans unless they really know how to control themselves. 
 
Xu:  Your site is very good, and there still are some readers who like to read long-form essays.  I’m a small V with 260,000 fans, but I tell myself that I need to limit my daily internet time to less than two hours, leaving most of my time to reading books.  If you spend too much time on the web, you wind up getting good at volleying; it’s all about the speed of the retort and after the exchange there’s not much left to savor.  But real thought, deep thought, is the product of repeated reflection, not immediate reaction.  Opinion leaders are all reactive, which satisfies the readers, but in fact they are just blowing off steam.  Does anyone read them a second time?  No.  Once a fresher, more stimulating voice comes along then it’s gone.
 
Zhou:  It’s a channel of exchange, but if it’s not handled well it can become irrational.
 
Xu:  These days, the media loves for everybody to fight, because it increases viewers.  The best thing is to have Han Han 韩寒 (b. 1982) [22] fighting with Fang Zhouzi 方舟子 (b. 1967) [23] or Granny Shao fighting with Auntie Aqing 沙老太婆和阿庆嫂打起来 [24] every day, because it’s fun to watch.  More moderate, rational voices have a hard time making it in the media, and especially on the web.  On the web, nobody has the patience to read more than 140 characters, and this is not just young people, I’m the same way.  Sure, there’s a link to a longer post, but most people don’t have the patience.  So all you do is read the 140-character introduction, make up your mind and fall in line.  When we talk about clickbait, it’s not just the blogger, it’s the readers, too.
               
In the present age, the structure of the media means that extreme voices are magnified, while moderate, rational voices have no place in the market.  Why is the Oxford consensus important?  Because it pushed forward relatively moderate voices within the Liberal, New Left, New Confucian and Christian groups, allowing society to understand that there are still people who seek dialogue and reconciliation.  The future of China cannot be manipulated by the radical voices of each group, which would lead to all of China ripping itself to pieces, left and right, elite and mass, government and governed.  If we want to carry out peaceful institutional transformation, we surely cannot do it through the opposition of radical groups—the moderates of each group must occupy the mainstream in order to carry out principled, consensual compromises and reconciliation.
           
One point is extremely clear:  today’s Chinese society is already pluralistic, in intellectual terms, in terms of interests, in social terms, even in political terms.  There is no way to return to a situation where all groups are unified.  Pluralism does not mean division, it does not mean antagonism; it means that we have to create spaces in which pluralistic interests and values can achieve basic consensus, and live together.  I believe that your site is creating such a space, which allows all voices to express themselves.
 
Modern Politics is Live and Let Live
 
Zhou:  In fact, sometimes all of these voices can cancel one another out.  These days, if somebody hopes to restore a homogeneous world, well, it’s impossible economically, because we’ve got private ownership, collective ownership, and state ownership existing side by side.  Nor would it work from the point of view of public opinion.  We should face up to this reality.
 
Xu:  We can’t unify it, we will never again be homogenous, which is the sober truth.
           
Chinese people’s understanding of politics is very superficial; we understand politics from a military perspective.  In the military, if you die, I live, it’s a matter of life or death, victory or defeat.  The winner is the king and the loser is the bandit.  In Chinese history, many changes of dynasty were decided by violent struggle or by peasant uprisings which were matters or life or death decided by fierce and ambitious people who became “heroes” according to whether they won or lost.  The current regime came to power after destroying 8,000,000 of Chiang Kai-shek’s “bandits.”  Thus many people think that politics is a matter of life or death, a matter of cruel class struggle.
           
But modern politics is not like that.  Modern politics is live and let live.  Because the biggest difference between modern and traditional societies is that modern society is pluralistic.  You cannot deny the legitimacy of pluralism; nobody is big enough to deny the prerogatives of others.  The highest art of modern politics is compromise, live and let live, which means that what we need is freedom, democracy, and constitutional rule.
           
So we need to change our understanding of politics, and I greatly approve of the way Professor Cai Xia 蔡霞 of the Central Party School 中央党校 puts it.  She says that at present there are two forces that must be warded off:  one is the limitless expansion of state power, and the other is an unorganized populism that crushes everything.  These two forces support one another; as state power becomes more unbridled, populism radicalizes.  For a year now I’ve been promoting an idea, which not everyone will accept.  The idea is “put the tiger and the monkey in the cage together 要将老虎与猴子都关在笼子里.”  At present the idea of “putting the tiger in the cage” is popular and is absolutely correct.  The “tiger” is state power, and state power without the constraints of a cage is very frightening.  We first have to tame it with a cage.  This cage is constitutional government, but this institutionalized cage should not be used solely on state power, but should also provide norms for other social forces.  In other words, “we should also put the monkey [i.e., the people, or the forces of populism] in the cage.”
           
These days there are some people who refuse to listen to ideas of “constitutional rule,” fearing that once we have a constitution, state power will be limited.  But what they should understand is that constitutional rule is not aimed at one specific power, but instead takes aim at all forms of power, including of course state power, but also including various social powers.  It’s like establishing the rules of a game, after which everyone who engages in politics will follow the rules.  They will play within the institutional structure, share interests, achieve compromises.
           
Chinese history always suffered from two calamities.  One was that the emperor had too much power, and when the emperor was unenlightened or violent then the empire was in trouble.  The other was that the system had no means to solve the problem of the bad emperor, which meant that all that could be done was to go outside the system and work through revolution, where the people hoisted the flag of revolt and charged the barricades.  Everyone felt that he was representing the mandate of heaven, and it all ended in chaos.  The Canadian professor Jerome Chen 陈志让 (b. 1919) [25] wrote a book called The Military-Gentry Coalition—The Warlord Period in Modern Chinese History in which he analyzed the chaotic military situation in the early Republican period.  He argues that Chinese don’t talk about “legitimacy” but only about “having the Way,” and everyone winds up thinking that he represents “the Way of heaven.” So law and legitimacy fall by the wayside until there is some use for them, in which case they are dusted off and put into temporary use, but they are not the ultimate principle.
           
Why do we need norms?  Why do we need constitutional government?  Because the idea is not just to put the tiger in the cage, but to put the monkey in there too.  Constitutional rule is a comprehensive set of institutional constraints.  In the absence of institutional constraints, Chinese will forever be caught between authoritarianism and revolution.  When the forces of revolution are first unleashed they respect no rules, and when they set up a government, the bad habit of not respecting the rules is already in place, which leads to the establishment of a new authoritarian rule.  This is why I often say that the most fearsome thing about authoritarianism is that it creates its own enemies.  The only way to break this cycle is through constitutional rule. 
 
Zhou:  You say this because some of us fear that the monkey is going to cause problems, so we first need to put him in a cage.
 
Xu:  Right now, the cage restraining the monkey is not constitutional rule, but authoritarianism.  Constitutional rule is not the same as authoritarianism.  Authoritarianism is one group of people against another group of people, while constitutional rule aims at everyone.
           
Only if we understand constitutional rule in this manner can China achieve basic, institutional political stability.  In the last half year I’ve been mulling over a question, which I call “the day after the revolution.”  Some people have lost faith in the current situation, and say that any change would be for the better.  But look—how many revolutions have we had in modern China?  There was the Republican Revolution, the Nationalist Revolution, the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution.  Did things get better or worse?  Lu Xun raised the question of “After Nora Left Home 娜拉出走之后,” [26] noting that leaving was easy, but where did she go?  Revolution is easy, but what happens after the revolution?  So we need to think about the day after the revolution.  Revolution involves destruction, but it’s not the same as chaos; chaos is blind destruction, while revolution is purposeful destruction, constructive destruction.  And the goal of construction is to build modern politics, and since modern politics is a matter of live and let live, then everybody needs to respect the rules, and not allow any person or any group to be above the rules.  This is what constitutional rule means.
           
Recently Guangxi Normal University Press published a book called Comprehensive Annals of the Republican Period 民国纪事本末 and everyone who read it called it an amazing book by an amazing author.  The author is a young scholar, a Ph.D. from Wuhan University’s world history program named Liu Zhongjing 刘仲敬.  He translated Hume’s History of England, and works on medieval European history.  But in fact Liu is well versed in Chinese and foreign history, modern and ancient, and has the gift of great insight.  He looked at Republican period history from 1911 to 1949 from the perspective of constitutional rule, and found that nobody respected the rules, not Yuan Shikai 袁世凯 (1859-1916) [27] or Sun Yat-sen 孙中山 [28], not the revolutionary parties or the constitutional parties.  And Mao Zedong was the worst, the monk holding an umbrella, free of “law” and heaven.[29]
           
In the past when we wrote about the history of the early Republican period, we always blamed Yuan Shikai as the great criminal who brought down the country.  But who gave Yuan his dictatorship and his chance to make himself emperor?  It was the revolutionary parties and the constitutional parties, who had been fighting one another since late Qing times in Tokyo, and continued fighting as the Republic was established, and in the parliament in Beijing.  They mistrusted one another and their goal was to suppress the other, and they finally give Yuan the opportunity to take advantage of the conflict.  Party struggles in a context without constitutional rule wind up damaging both parties, and allow the old power-holders to retake lost territory.  That’s what’s happening in Egypt today, where the secular liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood joined hands to push Mubarak out.  But after the revolution, the secularists and the Muslim Brotherhood couldn’t get along and were unable to arrive at reconciliation or consensus, and the subsequent violence in the streets allowed the former military authority to take power in the name of restoring order. 
           
A few years ago, maybe it was 2006, Wu Jinglian 吴敬琏 (b. 1930) [30] suggested that I read Lin Da’s 林达 [31] Notes from a Visit to Spain 西班牙旅行笔记, but I never got around to it until I went to Spain last year.  I took the book with me and read it while I was there, and it inspired a lot of reflections.  After the death of the strongman, Franco, Spain faced the danger of renewed division, as the conservative military and the communist party were extremely antagonistic, to say nothing of the blood debts left by history and the divisions within the people.   At the time, other countries had a low opinion of Spain, and thought that there would be violence again.  But in a relatively short period of time, Spain transformed itself from an authoritarian system to a democratic system.  How did they succeed?
           
The first thing was that the Spanish people learned the lessons of their own history, and realized that only with a reconciliation involving all of the people would the country have a future.  The Civil War in Spain had been extremely bloody in the 1930s, resulting in a dictatorship that lasted nearly half a century.  But Franco, the great authoritarian, did something before he died that greatly influenced the future of the country, which was to invite the king to return and to restore monarchy.  This was really important.  The king transcended all political forces, becoming the symbol of the country, thus reducing the potential for conflict.  In addition, King Juan Carlos was extremely practical, and he knew that Spain’s future would not be decided by one great figure, but by reconciliation among all the factions, so he chose as Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez (1932-2014), a figure from the old system, but at the same time one that maintained good relations which other groups outside the system.  Suarez was an impartial figure, a politician with no clearly defined standpoint, but this is precisely the kind of master pacifier that is needed during a period of transition.  He convinced the conservative military faction to give their tacit consent to moderate reforms, and also persuaded the socialist and communist parties on the left to abandon strikes and violent actions outside the system and to bring their activities inside the system.  Lin Da pointed out that where Suarez excelled was in making “impossible” situations “possible.”  He was unlike stubborn dogmatists, and felt that modern politics requires wisdom and compromise.  After many discussions and negotiations, and with the support of the king, Suarez finally got the originally antagonistic parties to sit down together and sign the Moncloa Pact in 1978, and subsequently to establish constitutional rule, successfully transforming a dictatorship into a constitutional system.
           
How to avoid the tragedy of the opposition of the groups in Egypt, and opt instead for Spain’s road of compromise and reconciliation, is a serious question that we must face in the process of transformation.  In its pursuit of consensus, the Oxford consensus took a small step in the way of experimentation, but its symbolic value is considerable.
 
Authority and Power
 
Zhou:  I think this viewpoint is very important.  But at the same time, we can also see the importance of the role played by people.  You say Spain succeeded because of Franco, King Juan Carlos, and Suarez.  In the case of the United States there were also people involved when the constitution was established, like Washington.
 
Xu:  In a constitutional society, people are not unimportant, but the institutions are more important than the people.  But before the constitution is established, people are the most important thing.  Because there is no way for the old system to automatically produce the new system, so all you have are good, balanced, people with lofty vision, with mature political wisdom, with political ideals and a sense of reality.  Only they can take on the great responsibility of transforming the system.  And such people must rise above all parties and factions, all ideologies, all interest groups.  They have to push aside public opinion and come up with a plan that will include the interests of all, giving everyone a sense of security so that they will agree to play by the rules of the new system.  Nor can they leave any group outside the system where they can engage in coups or violence. 
 
Zhou:  I think there needs to be two kinds of people.  One is the type you mentioned with lofty vision, who comes up with penetrating insights which will establish the new system.  The other type is the one who can get things done, and he may be the impartial character you mentioned.
 
Xu:  Yes, you need both.
 
Zhou:  Otherwise, if you have a guy with lofty vision but who doesn’t know how to get things done, then people won’t listen to him, and he will have wasted his prestige.  So you need all of these.
 
Xu:  King Juan Carlos was a king with lofty vision.  At the time, the military wanted to launch a coup, and Juan Carlos said “over my dead body.”  The king had authority, but no power.  So when you say that we need both kinds of people, my understanding is there are both people with authority, who transcend all parties, factions, and interest groups because of their prestige.  At the same time you need people who can get things done and have the capacity to control the administration, who operate on the basis of mature political wisdom.  Only then can the transformation be accomplished.
 
Zhou:  If somebody wants to have both authority and power, it’s not impossible, but at present it looks like it would be very hard, because they would cancel one another out.
 
Xu:  In modern politics, authority and power are divided.  In terms of the Chinese tradition, the sage had authority, while the king had power.  In Chinese history, the sage and the king were never unified.  Qinshihuang 秦始皇, Han Wudi 汉武帝, Song Taizu 宋太祖, Ming Taizu 明太祖, Kangxi 康熙, Yongzheng 雍正, and Qianlong 乾隆[32] all had tremendous power, but they had no authority.  By authority I mean that which represents the Way of heaven or the principles of heaven, the moral tradition associated with those.  Political orthodoxy was in the hands of the emperor, but moral orthodoxy was in the hands of Confucius and his descendants, the scholar-officials.  Moral orthodoxy and political orthodoxy are separate.  Yet from the Republican period forward, from Sun Yat-sen through Mao Zedong, leaders not only wanted to be the king, they wanted to be the sage, too, to combine the two in their person.  This is frightening.  And why is it frightening?  Because a person who is both king and sage can do great things, but can also do terrible things.  Man isn’t god, and cannot guarantee that he won’t make mistakes.  And these mistakes are the country’s mistakes, and are hard to rectify.
 
Zhou:  Actually, you can understand it this way:  If you’re the king, and you set out to do something, you will of course make mistakes.  But once you make mistakes, you become a sage.
 
Xu:  There are many beautiful ideals that should be designed by the sage, but that should be put into practice by people with power who have a sense of reality.  In the process of putting these ideals into practice they will appropriately adjust the balance between ideals and reality.  The ethical principles followed by the sage and by the king are different.  Max Weber identified two ethical principles, one of which is the ethics of conviction and the other the ethics of responsibility.  These are different.  The sage, the person with authority, follows the ethics of conviction, and is essentially responsible to himself.  But the king, the politician with power, follows the ethics of responsibility, and must fully foresee the results that his behavior will produce, and is thus responsible for his behavior and the results of that behavior.  So sages and kings, idealists and politicians must be two sets of people, with appropriate constraints surrounding them.  But if the sage and the king are combined in one person, who follows only the utopian ideals he conceives in his head  and puts them directly into practice, then the problem is that he has too much power, as he will do anything to see his ideals realized, and won’t care if millions of people die in the process. 
           
Mao Zedong realized the greatest union of sage and king in history.  He created the new China, but also destroyed the new China.  The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution at the outset both had sagely, idealistic aspects.  The Great Leap Forward meant to speed China’s achievement of wealth, and the Cultural Revolution sought to solve the problem of the bureaucracy’s distance from the masses.  But Mao did not have the modern ethic of responsibility, he was a monk with an umbrella, lacking law and the heavens, and in the end he achieved the opposite of what he set out to do, and brought disaster on the country.  This year Mao would have been 120 years old, and has become the most sensitive question that can provoke division within China.  Some people see him as a great sage, while others vilify him as a devil.  Yet great people and demons are sometimes two sides of the same coin, which I call the dual nature of gods and devils.  A sage-king without constraints can of course become a sage but can also become a devil.  Mao had a sagely side and a devilish side.  Today, because Mao cannot be talked about in the public realm, we don’t reflect enough on Mao’s devilish side, and our understanding of his sagely side is too superficial.
 
We Must Pay Attention to the Increasing Radicalization of the Intellectual World
 
Zhou:  On the subject of the Cultural Revolution, before and during the Cultural Revolution, China had always insisted on a uniformity of voice, to the point that there was almost no variety.  Now we’ve got all kinds of voices, which is a good thing, but it can also produce other problems.
 
Xu:  For example, the New Confucians are starting to split up now.  In the past we thought that Jiang Qing 蒋庆 (b. 1953) [33] was radical, but now there are a few young New Confucians who are even more radical.  I don’t know if you have heard about a small book, published last year by East China Normal University Press, called What is Universal?  Whose values? Contemporary Confucians on universal values 何谓普世？谁之价值：当代儒家论普世价值.[34]  It’s the transcription of a private conference held by a few younger New Confucians in Shanghai, and what they said behind closed doors is now made public almost word for word.  When I read it, it really frightened me, for instance they said things like “The primary mission of today’s New Confucians is to kick out both the left and the right…Why should we allow outsiders to rule in our home?”  They want to repudiate the heretics, including the “contemporary Mohists 当代的墨家,” the Marxists, and the “contemporary Yang Zhu 当代的杨朱,” the liberals.[35]
 
Zhou:  Usually, you would think that Confucians would be more moderate.
 
Xu:  Things you say among yourselves are often more extreme, so from that angle I can understand.  But when it’s for public consumption, it’s not the same thing.  Hence I say that these days, everyone is becoming more extreme, even the New Confucians.
 
Zhou:  I have also noticed that radicalization of all groups, and in our society, the radicalization of all groups also produces the splintering of society as a whole.  Yet from the small perspective of the web, unradical discourse does not attract fans.
 
Xu:  That’s the key.
 
Zhou:  One day I was eating with some scholars, and one of them said that his fans only numbered in the tens of thousands, and another establishment intellectual who was also there immediately said “that means that you’re a neutral, moderate person.  You don’t say extreme things.”  And this is really the way things are.
 
Xu:  Today, the fight for fans is not really a fight to win them over from the opposing camp, because the fan has long ago made his basic choices, and there’s no chance that someone from the enemy camp can win him over, the fan will just curse him and tell him to back off.  The real fight is within camps, to see who’s the boss.  And here we see the efficacy of the market:  the one whose language is the most radical, whose viewpoint is the most determined, is the one who will get the most support and praise from the people in the camp.  You can curse, you can hit—the point is to be seen by one’s own people, to display how bright one’s flag is, how firm one’s conviction, how much courage one has, how ready one is to fight.  This is how you show you’re the real boss, the real warrior, to those who already accept the basic teachings of the group.
           
Anybody who has spent time on the web knows that when a Big V is talking with his fans online, if a challenger shows up, the Big V doesn’t have to say anything, it’s his fans who will curse the upstart, so that those who rally around the Big V are all die-hard fans.  This is why those who spend time on the web feel good about themselves, feel like they represent the people’s will, the majority of the people, and they won’t stoop to understand the opinion of those who differ from them.  The character of the web prompts many Big Vs to have inflated egos, and to feel that they represent the people’s will.  The ego inflation is quite something.  China’s society today is completely divided, and everybody has a sense of yearning, and feels that this yearning is that of the people, that it represents the majority.  Everywhere people are occupying the moral high ground, yet those who can really rise above it all and engage in self-reflection are very few.
           
I try to be careful about all of this, and make an effort to listen to different voices, so as to have my own relatively independent viewpoint.  Every day I read your site, but also Guanchazhewang 观察者网. [36]  I always believed what John Stuart Mill said in On Liberty, that truth is plural, and cannot be monopolized by any one person.  In the face of different voices, you have to maintain a good balance, and not slip into any extreme, and in addition, if you understand your antagonist’s standpoint and reasoning, this will nourish your own reflection, enabling you to better preserve and defend your own standpoint.
 
Zhou:   I think that there are a lot of people like this, but they are not accorded enough importance.  Sun Liping 孙立平 (b. 1955)[37] has said that if there are three pans, a bigger one in the middle flanked by two smaller ones, it’s the smaller ones that get the attention, and the bigger one is ignored. 
 
Xu:  Moderate groups are often misunderstood, and seen as fence-sitters, or even capitulationists.  When he was alive, Wang Yuanhua 王元化 (1920-2008) [38] characterized himself as a bat.  A bat’s fate is to be misunderstood.  When mammals have a meeting and the bats show up, they’re shown the door because they’re seen as birds.  But when the birds have a meeting and the bats try to attend, they’re kicked out because they’re mammals.  But Wang Yuanhua held firmly to his idea of being a bat.  In his own words, he said that he wanted to be an independent peasant farmer, and not join a work team, a cooperative, or a commune.  This was also how Chen Yinke 陈寅恪 (1890-1969) [39] thought about freedom, the best inheritance of the spirit of freedom.
 
I too am an independent bat, even if I lean toward the liberals, and particularly the left liberals.  At the same time I sympathize with the Christians and the New Confucians.  In our genealogy there is a well-known May Fourth-period moderate named Du Yaquan 杜亚泉 (1873-1933), who, when extremism and iconoclasm were raging, kept to his moderate stance, advocating “continuity:”  the idea of seeking out “continuities” between ancient and modern, China and the West, tradition and modernity, extreme and conservative, and striking the proper balance.  At the time, Chen Duxiu 陈独秀 (1879-1942) [40] criticized him ferociously, and Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896-1950) [41] made fun of him an obsolete person who was neither fish nor fowl.  But a century later, we have discovered that it was Du Yaquan who was right.  If a country is to have a future, it cannot be dominated by one group, but must instead benefit from the compromises and mediation of all values, factions and powers.  If any one extreme group takes control, this will lead to instability, but if moderate forces within each group can join hands and cooperate, then there will be a tomorrow that everyone can accept.
           
The secret reason that democratic, constitutional countries are reasonably stable is that the middle is big, and the two ends are small.  The extremists on the left and the right are both marginalized, and the moderate groups in the middle all approach one another, rely on one another, and become the backbone of the state.  Recently there has been a lot of media attention to how Germany succeeded.  With all of Europe’s economy in depression, Germany is the sole exception, and has become Europe’s engine of growth.  Merkel’s contribution to this has been the most important.  When she first came to power, no one liked her very much, and thought there was nothing special about her and that her views were not clear.  In other words, a transitional figure.  But Merkel has now been in power for eight years, having been reelected twice, and her prestige is such that no one can bring her down.  Her wisdom in governing has been that she is good at completely absorbing the strengths and insights of other people, and making them into her own wisdom, so that finally her opposition disappears.  This is the highest kind of wisdom, what Li Dazhao 李大钊 (1888-1927) [42], in a May Fourth-period essay, called “the beauty of mediation.”  No matter if it’s the natural universe or human politics, the beauty of mediation is the ultimate frontier.
 
Learn from All Countries, not just from the United States
 
Zhou:  What you just said makes me think that our study of the rest of the world is rather poor.  Moreover, we are more and more self-satisfied, believing that the Chinese model is the best and that we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world.  I few days ago I went to South Korea, and I think we could learn something there.  Not so long ago, South Korea was a military dictatorship, but in a few short decades managed to transform itself into a democratic country.  Last year I was in Vienna, and felt that there were things we could learn from Austria as well. 
 
Xu:  Whenever we talk about the West, whether it be the left wing or the liberals, we usually talk about the United States, and taking America as the standard, we make the West into one thing, one bloc, a whole.  In fact, this unified “West” does not exist.  The differences between the United States and Great Britain and continental Europe, between the German model and the Anglo-American model, are no less important than the differences between East and West.  America truly is a neoliberal country, but the countries of Europe are not.  Germany’s success, in addition to having absorbed the Anglo-American liberal tradition, can also be attributed to the combination of their own Protestant tradition and the modern Western Marxist tradition, or what we might call the socialist tradition.  We can say that Germany succeeded because it “unified its three traditions,”[43] combining liberalism, Luther’s Protestantism and Marxism.
           
Gan Yang’s call, in recent years, to “unify the three traditions” is right in principle.  The three traditions that China faces today, whether you like them or not, really exist, and each comes with its own considerable social and theoretical basis.  One is the modern Enlightenment tradition with liberalism at its core; another is the socialist tradition of the past 60 years, and finally there is the Chinese cultural tradition organized around Confucianism.  The problem is that all three of these traditions are substantial, and internally complex.  When we talk about “unifying the three traditions,” what are the traditions in question?  One possibility would be to combine China’s legalist tradition, the Enlightenment search for wealth and power, and the socialist centralization of power.  In fact, that seems to be what we have arrived at today, but no one is satisfied with it.  Another possibility would be to combine Confucian concern for the people with the liberal-democratic constitution of the Enlightenment and the socialist concern for egalitarianism, which has yet to be carried out.  And of course, there are many other possibilities.
           
From the standpoint of historical tradition and existing systems, the differences between China and the United States are too great.  In Kissinger’s book On China, he said that China and America, as two great countries, both insist on their exceptionalism.  For instance, the United States has no historical experience with a nobility, and also lacks a socialist tradition.  The contrast between the United States and China is huge; each could search the other for the elements it is missing, but as a practical source of inspiration, Europe seems a better fit for China.  Like France, China has a tradition of absolutism, as well as a well-developed bureaucratic system.  China and Germany are also similar, as both were once underdeveloped countries, and rose quickly out of the sense of urgency that came from the pressure of foreign civilizations.  And Europe and China are alike in that both have hallowed socialist traditions, although there are differences between Western Marxism and Eastern Marxism.
 
Zhou:  You mentioned Spain a while ago.
 
Xu:      Spain is an example of a successful transitional country; it succeeded in transforming itself from the Franco authoritarian system to a modern democratic constitutional system.  The point here is the experience of change.  Russia and Eastern Europe offer even more valuable experiences of transition.
 
Zhou:  But did you see the recent essay in the overseas People’s Daily?  It said that we absolutely cannot take the USSR’s road toward disintegration, and that the people of the Soviet Union continue to lead very difficult lives.
 
Xu:  The thing is, the people that write those essays have never been to the countries they are writing about, or if they have visited, they only made a quick tour.  If they stayed in those countries for a year or two, and came to genuinely understand those countries and societies, they would change their tune.  In China, most of the people writing those sorts of essays have their head in the sand, and have not done much research.  It’s stale dogmatism.
           
The problem today is that many scholars who study Marxism don’t have any real experience or knowledge of Marxism.  So they turn living Marxism into stale dogma.  Why?  Because they don’t have any real belief, and make their living out of ideology.  Recently, a number of scholars who work on ideology excitedly said “Our time has come!” “We can get back in the headlines!”  To them, this is a living, a tool for them to achieve their interests, and they have no real belief in or genuine knowledge of Marxism.  Have they read Marx and Engels’ collected works?  Their selected works?  I ask this question because I have a background in this.  My undergraduate degree was in political education, and I read all of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao Zedong page-by-page, line by line.  I even read Lenin in the original Russian, and I know a fair bit about the history of the international Communist movement as well.  How much of all of this have the people now doing ideology read?  Marxism is a great tradition, and especially the thought of the younger Marx, which not only was not in conflict with the liberalism of the Enlightenment, but was in sympathy with a great deal of it.  Marxism was after all a product of the Enlightenment!  Only because of Marx do Germany, France and Northern Europe exist in their present forms; only because of Marx do we have a socialist tradition, a tradition whose contribution to Europe is no less than that of liberalism.  I have great respect for true leftists, true Marxists, whether they are in the West or in China.  I have learned a great deal from them.  But I have no respect for those people who make their living out of ideology.
 
Zhou:  To return to where we started, I feel like you did something important in Oxford.
 
Xu:  What we can do is carve out a future for China that all parties can accept—the left and the right, the top and the bottom, the government and the people.  It was difficult, but we did it despite its impossibility.
 
Zhou:  Although some people say that the Oxford Consensus is too simplistic, they haven’t grasped the essential.
 
Xu:  The important thing is not the nature of the consensus, but to begin to look for consensus.  With this beginning, there is symbolic and demonstrative significance.  The Oxford consensus will not stop here, this is not the end of the process; it is rather the beginning of the search for consensus.  If moderate people from all factions will realize that a divided China benefits no one, if they all are willing to engage in dialogue and to understand their antagonist and look for consensus, then even if the consensus is weak, it is still valuable.  And even if we had not arrived at a consensus, the process of seeking consensus is more important than the consensus itself.  In the process of seeking, as we sit down together, former antagonisms fade away, and the antagonists even develop personal relations and a sense of trust.  Fukuyama’s research has illustrated that trust is the most important and rarest kind of capital.[44]  If in the future China wants to arrive at great compromises, great reconciliation and mediation, this will first be built on the basis of trust.
 
Zhou:  Now the right is also like this, in the sense that the extreme rightists are trending toward greater extremism, while the moderates perhaps are becoming more moderate.  Sometimes things work out this way, because when some people become more extreme, others appear to be more moderate.  I think that the media should play an important role, and not just focus on the loudest voices.  So our next step should be to make moderate voices a bit louder.
 
Xu:  This is what I hope for as well.  Let’s work together.
 
[1] 许纪霖, “现代政治是你活我也活”originally published on the now extinct web site Gongshiwang at, now available online here. 

[2] A general interest magazine published in Guangzhou by the Southern Weekend 南方周末 publishing group.  Southern Weekend is seen as a liberal publication.

[3] Huang Jisu (b. 1955) is a researcher in sociology at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

[4] Bats are flying mammals and hence don’t really fit in.  We would say “neither fish nor foul.”  See the discussion of Wang Yuanhua below.

[5] Qiu Feng is the penname of Yao Zhongfeng 姚中秋 (b. 1966), a New Confucian scholar who teaches at Beihang University in Beijing.

[6] He Guanglu (b. 1950) is professor of philosophy at Renmin University in Beijing.

[7] Qin Hui (b. 1953) is professor of history at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

[8] Chen Ming (b. 1962) is professor of philosophy at Beijing Normal University.

[9] Both of these terms refer to broad-based reactions, particularly but not exclusively by intellectuals, to the end of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and China’s new policy of reform and opening.  The movements were optimistic, enthusiastic and inclusive, although opposed by more conservative forces.   For an insider account, see Chen Fong-ching and Jin Guantao, From Youthful Manuscripts to River Elegy: The Chinese Popular Cultural Movement and Political Transformation, 1979-1989 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1997).

[10] Jin Guantao (b. 1947) was originally trained as a scientist and hoped to apply a scientific viewpoint—cybernetics and systems theory--to the solution of China’s social and historical problems.  “Toward the world” was an initiative Jin and his colleagues launched to translate the foreign works they would need to realize Jin’s mission.  Gan Yang (b. 1952) trained in the social sciences.  His book series, “Culture:  China and the World” translated important works of Western philosophy and thought.  Both projects were immensely important in the China of the 1980s.

[11] A book prize financed by Hong Kong real estate magnate Li Kai-hsing.  A major controversy arose when Wang Hui, leading member of the New Left and at the time, editor of Dushu, was one of the winners.  To many, this looked like self-dealing.  See Geremie R Barmé and Gloria Davies, “Have We Been Noticed Yet? Intellectual Contestation and the Chinese Web,” in Edward Gu and Merle Goldman, eds., Intellectuals Between State and Market. (New York:  Routledge, 2004): 75-108.

[12] Xu is likely not familiar with Stephan Colbert’s “truthiness,” but this is what he means, minus the comedy, of course.

[13] Wang Hui is a leading member of China’s New Left and a professor at Tsinghua University.  See his “The Economy of Rising China and its Contradictions” on this site.

[14] Wang Shaoguang is another prominent member of China’s New Left, and Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Hong Kong University.  See his “Four Superior Points of the Chinese System,” “Representative and Representational Democracy,” and “Traditional Moral Politics and Contemporary Concepts of Governance” on this site.

[15] For examples of these essays, see Xu’s “The Specter of Leviathan:  A Critique of Chinese Statism since 2000,” and “Universal Civilization or Chinese Values:  A Critique of Historicist Thought since 2000” on this site.

[16] Qin Hui is a prominent liberal historian at Tsinghua University.  See his “Dilemmas of Twenty-First Century Globalization,” “Only China can Destroy Socialism,” and “The ‘Pre-emptive Big Community’ and Chinese Traditional Society” on this site.  

[17]  Lü Xinyu is a media critic and New Left scholar, and teaches at Fudan University.

[18]  Xu Youyu is a prominent liberal now living in exile in New York.

[19]  Xu Zuoyun (Hsu Cho-yun) is a prominent Chinese-American historian, now retired.

[20] Lin Yusheng (Lin Yu-sheng) is another prominent Chinese-American historian, now retired.

[21] Hu Fo is a prominent political scientist in Taiwan, now retired.

[22] Han Han was one of China’s first internet celebrities in the 2000s, and published a blog that was followed by many young people.  He has since branched out into car racing, music, and fiction.

[23] Fang Zhouzi is the penname for Fang Shimin 方是民, a blogger who frequently attacks Chinese academics and celebrities (including Han Han) for fraud.

[24] Reference to a scene from a contemporary Chinese opera.

[25] Jerome Chen is a prominent Chinese-Canadian historian, now retired.

[26] A lecture by Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881-1936), published in 1932.  “Nora” is a reference to Henrik Ibsen’s play, “A Doll House.”

[27] Yuan Shikai was a Chinese general who took charge of the fledgling Chinese Republic as temporary ruler, from 1912 until his death in 1916.

[28] Sun Yat-sen was the “father of the Chinese revolution.”

[29] Mao Zedong once described himself to American journalist Edgar Snow as a “monk holding an umbrella 和尚打伞.”  This is a kind of Chinese riddle called 歇后语, an example of which is:  “when trees are old they have many roots; when people are old they have many words 树老根多，人老话多.”  Generally only the first half of the riddle is spoken and the listener is expected to understand the reference.  So a teen-ager listening to Grandpa’s war stories for the umpteenth time might simply mutter “when trees are old they have many roots.” The conventional “second half” of “monk holding an umbrella” is “lacking hair (because monks shave their heads) and sky (because he’s holding an umbrella).”  The usefulness of this particular riddle escapes me.  In any event, Mao made a pun on the riddle, substituting the character for law 法 for that of hair—the two are homophones.  Thus Mao meant “I respect neither law nor heaven (sky).”  See here for details.

[30] Wu Jinglian is an economist and a well-known Chinese liberal.

[31] Lin Da is the penname of a Chinese couple now resident in the United States:  the man is Ding Hongfu 丁鸿富 and the woman Li Xiaolin 李晓琳.  They write collaboratively under the name Lin Da.

[32] These were powerful emperors in Chinese history.

[33] Jiang Qing is a leading New Confucian.  See his “Only Confucians Can Make a Place for Modern Women” on this site.

[34] Editors Zeng Yi 曾亦 and Guo Xiaodong 郭晓东.

[35] Mozi and his followers, the Mohists, as well as Yang Zhu, were “enemies” of Confucius in the pre-Qin period.

[36] “The Observer,” is a general-interest news site which skews New Left, while Gongshiwang was more Liberal.

[37] Sun Liping is a well-known sociologist and liberal who teaches at Beijing University.

[38] Wang Yuanhua was a well-known establishment intellectual, who became a liberal late in his life.  See Xu Jilin’s essay, “I am a Child of the Nineteenth Century:  That Last Twenty Years of Wang Yuanhua’s Life,” on this site.

[39] Chen Yinke was a well-respected Chinese historian and intellectual.

[40] Chen Duxiu was a leading figure in China’s May Fourth Movement and a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.

[41] Fu Sinian was a leader in China’s May Fourth Movement and a well-known educator. 

[42] Li Dazhao was a leading figure in China’s May Fourth Movement and a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.

[43] “Unifying the three traditions” is a major theme in contemporary Chinese thought.  On this site, see Gan Yang, “Preface to On Unifying the Three Traditions,” and “’Unifying the Three Traditions’ in the New Era:  The Merging of Three Chinese Traditions,” as well as Chen Ming, “Transcend Left and Right, Unite the Three Traditions, Renew the Party-State.”

[44] Francis Fukuyama, Trust:  Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1996).