中国知识分子的现代性话语与亚洲构想

Abstract

This paper is to show Chinese knowledge society’s’ concerns about Chinese socialism being proceeded with in the stream of westernization and globalization since Economic Reform and Open Door Policy, with specific reference to a Chinese critical intellectual Wang Hu’s subjectivation of scholarship strategy in a critical approach. Wang Hui, accepting the history of Chinese socialism to a degree, tries to reset the status of China to cope with American supremacy in the international society, particularly in the Asian region. At present Chinese knowledge society is dominated by neo-liberalists supporting westernization and globalization, insisting on the weak state and the strengthened market and civil society. On the contrary, Wang Hui is one of the representative scholars in the “New Left” camp, optimizing the role of the state and criticizing the problems of capitalist modernization from the egalitarian perspective. He defines the experience of Mao’s Chinese socialism as “anti-modern modernity” succeeded from the late Qing scholars. In other words, it’s the result from criticizing Western supremacy and seeking for a different modernization from that in the West, while approving of the good side of modernity which Western civilization has led and disseminated. Wang Hui also points that in modern China where the market and civil society have developed under state planning, the neo-liberal argument in which weakening the state and strengthening the market and civil society on the premise of state/market, state/civil society dichotomies is unrealistic. And regarding how to create solidarity and cooperation in the Asian region, he points to a need to positively reinterpret the Tributary System around China in the center, the pre-nation state world order. This paper, while highly acclaiming Wang Hui’s depth of multi-dimensional though and relevance, criticizes his relative disinterest in political democracy, state centrism and China centrism.