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The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity
By Wang Hui
399 pages
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Description
A compelling examination of the future of Chinese modernity by the leading member of China’s “New Left.”
The End of the Revolution shatters the myth that China’s recent history has been a miracle of progress. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the intellectual roots of his nation’s social and political problems, arguing that China’s revolutionary history and its current liberalization are part of the same discourse of modernity. He calls for alternatives to both the present capitalist model of development and to the politics of China’s authoritarian past.
From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, The End of the Revolution details a broad sweep of social and intellectual history in an effort to forge a new path for China’s future.
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PUBLISHER:
Verso
RELEASED:
Aug 1, 2011
ISBN:
9781781683767
FORMAT:
Book
About the author
Wang HuiDr. HUI WANG was born in Luoyang City of China in 1976. He received his Bachelor degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Lanzhou University, China in 1999. Subsequently he joined the College of Science as an assistant lecturer at Zhongyuan University of Technology (ZYUT) and spent two years teaching at ZYUT. He earned his Master degree from Dalian University of Technology in 2004 and Doctoral degree from Tianjin University in 2007, both of which are in Solid Mechanics. Since 2007, he has worked at College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Henan University of Technology as a lecturer. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2015. From August 2014 to August 2015, he worked at Australian National University (ANU) as a visiting scholar, and then from February 2016 to February 2017, he joined the ANU as a Research Fellow. His research interests include computational mechanics, meshless methods, hybrid finite element method and mechanics of composites. So far, he has authored three academic books by CRC Press and Tsinghua University Press respectively, 7 book chapters and 62 academic journal papers (47 indexed by SCI and 8 indexed by EI). In 2010, He was awarded the Australia Endeavour Award.
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The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity Paperback – August 1, 2011
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Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China’s leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China’s social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depoliticization.
Arguing that China’s revolutionary history and its current liberalization are part of the same discourse of modernity, Wang Hui calls for alternatives to both its capitalist trajectory and its authoritarian past.
From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, The End of the Revolution offers a broad discussion of Chinese intellectual history and society, in the hope of forging a new path for China’s future.
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272 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left.”—The New York Times Magazine
“One of China’s leading historians and most interesting and influential public intellectuals.”—Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Los Angeles Times
“Wang Hui brings a distinctive Chinese voice to the discussion of globalization and neoliberalism.”—Chinese Development Brief
“Our focus on the country’s future has led to a de facto collusion with the Chinese government in ignoring its past ... In The End of the Revolution, the leading Chinese critic Wang Hui offers an alternative: an undivided narrative of modern Chinese history which makes better sense.”—John Gittings, The Guardian
“Immensely valuable.”—Choice
“Wang Hui [is] one of the strongest critics of contemporary inequality and the marketization of society and politics in China. [This] nuanced and highly theorized investigation into the relationship between revolutionary traditions and the rise of neoliberal capitalism ... has implications beyond the field of China studies.”—Alexander Day, Criticism
“The best book regarding Western misconceptions of contemporary China.”—Artforum
About the Author
Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he currently lives. He studied at Yangzhou University, Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has also been a visiting professor at NYU and other universities in the U.S. In 1989, he participated in the Tiananmen Square Protests and was subsequently sent to a poor inland province for compulsory “re-education” as punishment for his participation. He developed a leftist critique of government policy and came to be one of the leading proponents of the Chinese New Left in the 1990s, though Wang Hui did not choose this term. Wang was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2008 by Foreign Policy.
Product details
ASIN : 1844673790
Publisher : Verso; 49603rd edition (August 1, 2011)
Language : English
Paperback : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 9781844673797
ISBN-13 : 978-1844673797
Item Weight : 12 ounces
Dimensions : 5.49 x 0.77 x 8.24 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #2,529,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#4,542 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
#5,243 in Chinese History (Books)
#5,319 in Asian Politics
Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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Poli Sci Undergrad
5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Stand-Alone' Review of Modernity
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2012
Verified Purchase
Wang Hui recognizes political frameworks that distinguish China from America, and have consequently affected their economic fortunes. After comparing East and West, their philosophies are combined for a well-reason - and well-sourced - solution to the 'modernity' problem. The author seems to find an end to political revolution, noted historically by China's 21st-century turn toward social capitalism. Wang Hui's discussion is more technical than this summary suggests; thus, familiarity with Chinese/American political history would be helpful. Nevertheless, the book is a gold mind and a singular resource for understanding what achievements are left for society to realize post-modernity.
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vincentilly
5.0 out of 5 stars a singular vision of modern China
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2011
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This is a very particular author. His view on modern China is not loved either by the leftists, neither by the rightists, meaning that he is much beyond labels. It helps to understand world modernity and new global order.
2 people found this helpful
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‘The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity’ by Wang Hui
BY JEFFREY WASSERSTROM
MARCH 21, 2010 12 AM PT
The End of
the Revolution
China and the Limits
of Modernity
Wang Hui
Verso: 272 pp., $26.95
In recent years, China has undergone a series of dramatic transformations. Some are so profound they’ve rendered obsolete the very terms once used to describe the country. Can we still refer to China’s cities as Third World, now that Shanghai has more skyscrapers than all of America’s West Coast cities combined? And can we call the country Communist when the party has capitalist members and a military wing that sometimes seems like a diversified corporation? (The fanciest Beijing hotel I’ve ever stayed in was owned by the Red Army.)
Of course, after reading about a film banned in Beijing or a dissident punished by the government, Americans with only a casual interest in China may conclude that where intellectual life is concerned, little seems to have changed. The reality, though, is much more complex. Yes, there are disturbing echoes of the past in recent events, such as the unjust 11-year sentence handed down against critic Liu Xiaobo, convicted on trumped-up charges of subversion. Still, an updating of assumptions is required.
In “The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity,” Wang Hui, one of China’s leading historians and most interesting and influential public intellectuals, shows us why. The topics he addresses in this collection of essays and interviews illustrate clearly that, although the country’s intellectual landscape has not changed as quickly as Shanghai’s cityscape, it has not remained static by any means.
One useful way to demonstrate the ground shifts in Chinese intellectual life is to note two things that would surprise a modern-day counterpart to Rip Van Winkle if he fell asleep in Mao’s China and woke up in 21st century Beijing. First, our imaginary time traveler would be taken aback, even shocked, to find bookstores selling Chinese translations of George Orwell’s dystopian novels and edgy works of homegrown fiction -- the stories of Zhu Wen, for example -- that cast a jaundiced and satirical eye at contemporary Chinese social trends. Second, he’d discover that Beijing’s institutions of higher learning, including Tsinghua University (the school known as “China’s MIT,” where Wang holds a prestigious post), often employ faculty members who received their graduate training abroad and then returned.
If he heard about Wang, our Rip van Winkle-like figure would likely be further flummoxed, since the author’s career defies easy categorization. Until recently the co-editor of one of China’s liveliest journals, “Dushu” (Reading), he is not a dissident in the classic Cold War sense, for he supports many policies of the current government. Neither, however, does Wang always color within the official lines. Throughout “The End of the Revolution,” he insists that the Reform era has had mixed results, bringing an increase in creature comforts but also triggering a worrying rise in social inequality. This position is out of step with the current celebratory orthodoxy.
Even more confounding, Wang -- although educated exclusively in China -- could easily find a good job at a university in the West, thanks to his distinguished record of publication and command of spoken English. He is a sought-after speaker at leading institutions and major international conferences, and yet he’s shown no interest in leaving China except to take up temporary fellowships. This flies in the face of the notion, so deeply ingrained in many Western minds, that such an intellectually curious and iconoclastic thinker could never feel satisfied with academic life in any communist state.
“The End of the Revolution” covers an enormous amount of ground, intellectually and conceptually, as Wang takes up many of the topics that figured prominently in the pages of “Dushu” during his tenure there. He dissects the differences between Chinese “Liberal,” “New Authoritarian,” and “New Left” stances, explaining his tendency to prefer the last. He ponders the ideas of everyone from Hannah Arendt to Karl Marx and considers their relevance to China’s current dilemmas. And he discusses the need to see the protests of 1989 as rooted in economic as well as political grievances. Characteristically, his treatment of that topic is partly daring, partly cautious: The subject is such a hot potato that many Chinese writers avoid it completely, but in dealing with it, Wang carefully steers clear of its most taboo aspect -- the massacre near Tiananmen Square.
“The End of the Revolution” does not offer any simple take-aways about China, except perhaps that new questions need to be asked. The big issue is no longer, Wang suggests, what it will take for the nation to stop lagging behind but rather what has been lost as the pursuit of equality via revolutionary means is abandoned in favor of a largely successful quest for modernization.
Such an insight alone makes the book worthy of attention -- especially because it also has the salutary effect of forcing us to cast aside our preconceptions about the straitjacketing of Chinese intellectual life.
Wasserstrom is a professor of history at UC Irvine and the author of the forthcoming “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
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