Liu Qing on Intellectual Factualism

Liu Qing, “Factionalism in the Intellectual World is a Fact of Life”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction

This is one of the texts translated for the collaborative project with GreatFire on Reading and Writing under Chinese Censorship, as an example of something that was published online in China and subsequently taken down.

Liu Qing (b. 1963) is professor of political science at East China Normal University in Shanghai and is a well-known Liberal public intellectual, with a particular expertise in the history of Western political thought. He also became a celebrity in China in recent years after appearing on "I Can I BB 奇葩说," an extremely popular kind of debate/reality show available on many different media platforms where the best talker wins and stays on to debate again. Liu Qing is an excellent talker.

It is strangely appropriate that this text is among the first I am translating for my collaborative project with GreatFire, because it illustrates the strangeness of the Chinese Internet, as well as the need to pay very close attention to what you are reading.

Liu’s text was published on a platform called the New Minority/新少数派 or Minority Literature/少数派文苑, which as far as I can tell is a WeChat platform for disseminating the writings of Chinese Liberals; to find it, you have to type the characters into the search box in WeChat – a google search does not take you to a website. I can’t tell how long the platform has been active, but Liu’s text was published on March 19, 2022.

However, once I started working through Liu’s text, it was obvious that it was written more than ten years ago, probably in 2011 or 2012. This is clear because Liu refers to events that occurred in 2011 as if they were contemporary. The content of Liu’s interview is also consistent with other texts written during this period. A more formal version of the same set of ideas is “Liberalism in Contemporary China: Potential and Predicaments,” published in 2013 and available in English-language translation on my site. In this formal text, as in the interview translated here, Liu makes a heartfelt plea for China to arrive at a consensus to respect difference, because China is already a plural society. Both the text and the interview reflect Liu’s beliefs, shared by many at the time, that the popularization of knowledge made possible by the Internet and digitization would change China from within, creating greater openness and freedom, and eventually genuine democracy.

It is both heart-warming and heart-rending to read texts like Liu’s. The period right before Xi Jinping came to power was one of great openness and hope, which extended into the early years of Xi’s first mandate. Ten years later hope seems hard to find for many Liberal intellectuals, and an atmosphere of openness has been replaced by one where “no one can say anything.”

When they published Liu’s interview in 2022, Minority Literature did not mention that it was recycling a ten-year old text, although we do notice a mention of the Dongfang Zaobao/Oriental Morning Post, where Liu’s interview was presumably originally published. I imagine the editors of Minority Literature were attempting to recreate the atmosphere of the early 2010s by publishing Liu’s interview, and that the censors disagreed, demanding that the piece be taken down.

Translation

The State of China’s Contemporary Intellectual World

Reporter: In your view, what is new about the Chinese social and intellectual scene, compared with the past?

Liu Qing: There have been many important changes in in China's intellectual world since the 1980s. I feel like another of these changes is underway now, for any number of reasons, the most important of which is a shift in the general nature of public culture. We are entering an era in which knowledge is rapidly disseminated and broadly shared, so that the monopolization of information is becoming increasingly difficult.

The recent “Guo Meimei case”[2] is in no way unique. Similar examples abound: someone walking on the street finds someone else’s study abroad plan in a trashcan, a “mole” uncovers an invoice for a banquet or a bill for the purchase of a bottle of Maotai…If the smallest thing winds up going viral online, it can relaunch the anti-corruption machine.[3]

In the past, public policy and its implementation were basically the internal affairs of a few experts and officials, and the decision-making process and information on how much everything cost was hidden, or even considered “secret.” But now we have entered the age of the “leak,” and the “black box” of public affairs doesn’t really work anymore.

At the same time, access to academic expertise is more readily available. It is entirely possible to get your hands on expertise from sources outside the academy, including videos and online course materials provided by the world's leading universities, other materials from academic lectures and seminars, as well as any number of Chinese and foreign scholarly books and articles.

Thirty years ago, if you had a little inside information it gave you a certain “discursive power,” and it you had a Ph.D. from abroad and a couple of new ideas or theories you might even establish some kind of “intellectual hegemony.” These days, there are hidden dragons and crouching tigers everywhere on the Internet, and if you are not careful, you will run into all sorts of “experts” who also speak foreign languages. They may not be recognized experts, but they are auto-didacts with considerable resources in terms of perspective and insights, and they may have a leg up on the experts.

From a broader perspective, this is part of long-range trend in world history, having to do with the shaping of public culture by the popularization of knowledge and information and the impact of this on knowledge and power structures. After all, hundreds of years ago in Europe, the rise of the printing press and popular education overturned the hegemony of the monastic class on scriptural interpretation.

In the same way, the development of modern mass media has eaten away at the former monopoly of information. The Watergate scandal of 40 years ago as well as the more recent WikiLeaks affair are both part of this major trend: in any country claiming to be based on popular sovereignty, once public culture achieves a certain level of openness it creates a positive feedback loop that demands even greater openness and transparency.

I believe that China today is witnessing a similar development in public culture. This is no one’s design or plan and is fundamentally driven forward by our rapidly changing society, by the many significant public issues created by the changes, and by strong public concerns and demands for intervention.

The changes of recent years have been particularly striking, as the popularization of new communication technologies and the cumulative effect of widespread education have created a public space that can be shaped. In this space, public issues are no longer hidden or elusive, but are becoming increasingly visible; and the voices of public concern and intervention are no longer sporadic and isolated but are beginning to converge into a “public opinion” that is difficult to ignore.

Of course, all these developments still lack sufficient institutional safeguards and proper regulations, and there are always forces trying to dismember this space, trying to transform the Internet into a “network of the unconnected.” There are a few scholars who are very concerned about the complexity of this trend and the dangers and pitfalls involved.

I am not a total fan of this “age of leaks,” nor do I simplistically praise openness and transparency. But in any case, the new public culture possesses a strong vitality and will pose an increasingly serious challenge to existing intellectual and political power. This constitutes a salient background condition for our analysis of the state of thought in China today.

In this context, the very notion of a “world of ideas” may have changed. In the past, we could define “academia” and “thought” fairly clearly. In general, academics basically referred to research carried out in purely professional fields “for the sake of research,” while thought meant theory and discursive practice in the context of public issues. When Li Zehou[4] said “when thought is weak, academics are strong,” everyone knew what he meant.

Nowadays, however, the boundary between academics and thought is becoming increasingly blurred. Certain very specialized academic work may have unexpected significance in the realm of thought. For example, a scholar who studies Confucius, Zhuangzi, or Plato may have a great current public impact, because these classic ideas respond in some way to people's concerns about the world of the mind and the political order.

This is especially true of research in the social sciences. For example, a 2010 study by Tsinghua University's Social Development Research Group revealed that China's domestic security expenditures in 2009 amounted to 514 billion RMB, close to the national defense budget of 532 billion RMB and were projected to grow at an even higher rate. This study, which is closely related to the issue of stability maintenance,[5] a matter of public concern, has been frequently quoted and reprinted on the Internet, stirring up considerable repercussions both at home and abroad.

From this we see that even purely academic research, as long as it has public relevance, can spread rapidly and have great public impact. In the past, the slogan was that “there is no forbidden zone for research, but in propaganda matters you have to toe the line,” but now this principle is becoming harder and harder to implement. Academic research will probably always continue to be published, perhaps in obscure, specialized journals, but as long as someone downloads and circulates it, it will be widely disseminated.

At the same time, the makeup of the intellectual community has also changed. In the past, the “intellectual elite” (made up of well-known scholars and writers) was the core of the intellectual community.

At present the idea of “public intellectuals” is expanding to include columnists, journalists, freelance writers, independent book reviewers, primary and secondary school teachers, university students, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, among others, who are also capable of engaging in scholarly public discourse. In addition, the concept of public media is also expanding. The Internet has become a major media, and its horizontal style of mass communication has broken the top-down vertical style of traditional media.

All these factors have produced a significant change in the contours of the “community of ideas.” A broader, more participatory community is taking form, expanding into and encompassing the narrower, elite-dominated community of ideas, at least in terms of influence.

Reporter: Given that, what are the implications of these changes in public culture for the current thought world and the intellectuals that inhabit this world? Do these changes limit the discussion of public issues, or do they instead open up more space?

Liu Qing: First, the noise generated by these changes will of course create chaos and disorder but will also lead to a greater demand for the “public use of reason.” Top-down “monologic” discourse can hardly maintain its own authority, while horizontal “dialogic” discourse will become a necessary condition for what we now call “discursive power.”

In other words, whatever assertion you make will have to be backed up by reason, which will be challenged and refuted, and in order to insist on the validity of your claim, you will have to respond to these questions and challenges, and this question-and-answer response structure will become part of a direct (or at least indirect) relationship of dialogue.

For example, when the Tsinghua University report was released, many people saw it as evidence that the cost of stability maintenance had exceeded that of defense spending. But then someone intervened to point out that “domestic public security” has a broad meaning and is not just about stability maintenance. This clarification was interesting, but the conversation did not end there.

Then someone asked, “What exactly does ‘domestic public security’ entail? We need a price breakdown in order to judge the actual expenditure on stability maintenance.” Caijing magazine later published a more detailed report and analysis (see “Public Security Ledger 公共安全账单”, published in Caijing Magazine, Issue 11, 2011), setting off a new round of discussion.

What does such a landscape mean for the world of ideas? It means that any opinion or claim, no matter how “elite,” is subject to challenge and refutation from across the board. Anyone can ask: “Is the argument logically sound? Is it consistent with the factual evidence? Has the evidence been cherry-picked? What are exceptions? Does the author offer a serious counterargument?”

This forces discursive authority to be based more on reason and evidence and less on the status of the person making the claims, which fundamentally results in a more rational dialogue. I realize that saying that intellectual discussion in the Internet age requires more rational debate is definitely contrary to the observations of many people. There are vast numbers of criticisms of the so-called mass media and Internet “public space.” I'm familiar with the theory, and I of course understand the fights over who’s right, the heated exchanges, the spread of rumors, as well as concerns about “tyranny of the majority,” the invasion of privacy, and so on, all of which are certainly problematic on the Internet. I'm not ignoring these problems, but (and I insist on saying “but”) there is just as much criticism of and resistance to all of these online problems.

Most importantly, silly fights often cancel one other out, and have little real impact in terms of intellectual debate; it’s mostly a tempest in a teapot. Once the storm has passed, rationality still wins out in the end. Moreover, the liveliness of public discussion and the expansion of the field of debate have also had the effect of making intellectuals’ agendas more complex, so that it is hard to tag them as either “left” or “right.” This kind of labeling was always only for convenience, but its limitations are all the more obvious now. This is because left and right exist on a linear axis, while what we think of an intellectual position comprises at least the separate aspects of culture, politics, and economy, meaning we need a three-dimensional space in which to locate them.

For example, the independent scholar Qiu Feng 秋风 (penname of Yao Zhongqiu 姚中秋, b. 1966) started out by studying Hayek, but recently he has been reading a lot of Confucianism and exploring the relationship between Confucian tradition and constitutionalism. Hence he may be a liberal in economic terms, but conservative in culture, and liberal-conservative in politics, which makes it difficult to position him in terms of a simple distinction between “left” and “right.”

As another example, certain intellectuals who were once called China's “New Left” were very critical of China's development model in the mid-to-late 1990s and were willing to be called “critical intellectuals.” More recently, however, some of the New Left has been caught up in praising “China’s rise,” and part of their “leftist” acuity (e.g., questions like “whose rise is it, the common people's or the powerful?”) has disappeared in the context of the China model. It looks as if these critical intellectuals have become courtiers or partisans.

Of course, this transformation may be justified in some ways, but in what sense can they still be called leftists? Because the left is meant to be a critical tradition, first and foremost a critique of the existing status quo, and China’s New Left does indeed maintain its sharply critical stance towards American hegemony and the global capitalist order. Is this kind of exterior focus a deeper kind of critique ? Does it address China’s key problems? These are all issues that can be debated and discussed. But the old New Left label seems to fail to capture the complexity of this position. In short, the spectrum of intellectuals has become so complicated that the past labeling has lost its validity.

To sum up, in the new public culture, which encourages the expansion of the intellectual community, the decline of top-down discourse and the rise of dialogue, and the complexification of the positions of various intellectuals, has helped to reopen China’s intellectual space, which is why the discussion of ideas has been more active in recent years.

Reporter: In your article “Are We Really Divided Over Universal Values and China’s Uniqueness?” you asserted that: “If we believe in a certain value, it is not because it is either a universal value, nor because it is a value unique to the Chinese tradition. Neither universality nor particularity constitutes a sufficient reason for us to believe in a certain value.” In your opinion, does this dichotomy between universal and particular reflect a fundamental value divide? How should we deal with the situation of value divergence?

Liu Qing: Universalism and particularism are important and complex philosophical issues. However, the recent debates on this issues in China are not philosophical discussions, but discussions about China. Universal and particular are of course relevant to this problem, but they are always secondary issues, and as I say this I am influenced and inspired by Chen Jiaying 陈嘉映 (b. 1952).[6]

I think the basic question is, what values do we really believe in? What are the grounds and origins of these beliefs? What is important, meaningful, good and precious for Chinese people constitute our beliefs and attitudes, and come from the feelings of our life practices, and are clarified and refined in the cognitive framework provided by our cultural background, ultimately forming our own values.

It is true that there are value disagreements in current society, some of which are reasonable disagreements and some of which are not, because some values are wrong. But adhering to the right values or criticizing the wrong ones (e.g., advocating equality for all and opposing all kinds of hierarchies and discrimination) and appealing to concepts such as universal and particular will not get you very far.

Are we “aliens” if we don't believe in universal human values? Are we “foreigners” if we do not believe that Chinese values are unique? So what if they are? I don't think this is an effective way to discuss value differences. We have to discuss values from the perspective of our own history and life practices, which may involve questions of universality and particularity, but this is not our starting point.

For example, are concepts such as freedom, democracy, and human rights unique Western values or are they universal values? Or are they unique Western values masquerading as universal? How meaningful are such questions? It would be better to ask ourselves whether we consider these values important or not, and why. In addition, how do we determine what these concepts mean in concrete terms? I think these are much more important and fundamental questions. This task sends us back to our own complex historical traditions and life practices.

Values form the core of self-understanding. The reason why there are so many debates in China today is that our self-understandings have diverged, so that there is no longer any unity on the fundamental question of who we are.

We are the creatures of history, but the historical traditions that have created us are complex and diverse: thousands of years of traditional Chinese culture, the new culture since the May Fourth Movement, the socialist traditions of New China, and the social practice of reform and opening – all of these have shaped us.

However, for particular groups or individuals, the influence of these traditions is not the same, thus creating a diversity of self-understandings, causing differences and divergences. So when we talk about “how to be Chinese?” or discuss questions like “where is China going?” there are always people who ask for clarification: “What kind of Chinese are you talking about? Whose China? How can you speak on behalf of China?” We have lost a homogenized collective identity.

There is no longer a unified notion of “Chinese” that is solidly defined, clear and unambiguous. This is a fundamentally important fact as well as where the basic difficulty lies. In my view, all projections or scenarios for China’s future have to deal with this problem. If we fail to face the challenge of diversity, even our most wonderful visions will probably turn out to be mere fantasies.

There are different ways to deal with diversity. For some, eliminating “heresy” to create a homogenized community remains an attractive option. But how does one come to eliminate heresy? Will persuasion, education, and rehabilitation (brainwashing, counter-brainwashing, counter-counter-brainwashing) be enough? Will ostracism, repression, and prohibition be met with resistance? Should violence be employed? What are the justifications and limits of violence? Can it be done at any cost? Moreover, it is difficult to say who is the “heretic” at the end of the day.

Those who claim to be orthodox and want to eradicate heretics eventually become “heretics” themselves and are eradicated; are there not many such bloody ironies in history? I think most thoughtful people are thinking about another possibility, a more difficult but preferable way of “making peace with difference:” we have to exist as a community, but we also have to coexist with difference. That is why the search for consensus has become so important and urgent.

Looking at it from another perspective, however, current value differences are not so serious as to tear society apart; many conflicts are not about values but about interests; many arguments are not about fundamental principles but about strategies and means.

Rebuilding our collective cultural identity is still possible. After all, our history is a shared history. If we look at the deepest historical contexts that have shaped us can perhaps reach a bottom-line consensus. In my view, the principles of people's sovereignty and equality inherited from the socialist tradition, as well as the concepts of individual freedom and rights introduced since reform and opening, are all important values that contemporary Chinese people deeply recognize. Of course, there is still much room for discussion on the practical aspects of how to realize these values, how to arrange them institutionally, and how to prioritize them.

Reporter: Might we say that, compared to the 1990s, the terrain of intellectual debate has fundamentally changed, and that the various schools of thought have to react to the new situation?

Liu Qing: I think we should be careful about using the term “various schools of thought,” which suggests that the thought world is marked by clearly defined groups. Even if such schools or factions exist, they are porous and underdefined. Intellectual divisions are multifaceted, and contain epistemological issues, values questions, political attitudes, goals and means, etc.

You may be similar to some people in terms of political attitudes, but differ in terms of epistemological positions, in which case, which school of thought do you belong to? The idea of schools might be more important to famous people, but most ordinary scholars and intellectuals like me do not care all that much.

When I was studying in the United States, I always thought I was a leftist, but later on, some of my leftist friends said that I was a liberal. I asked them what it took to be a leftist in China and my friends identified two criteria as most important: first, do you oppose the unlimited private ownership of the means of production? second, do you affirm the legitimacy of the Chinese revolution? I said I was fine on the first point, but that my affirmation of the second point was conditional.

Subsequently I was branded an “ambiguous leftist.” Okay, I can live with that. In fact, I have always told my students not to focus on issues of left and right. Whether a person is caring, intellectually insightful, and makes sense is often more important than the difference between left and right.

It is true that factionalism in the intellectual world is a fact of life. Some of the arguments are meaningful, and some of them are personal to the point of being hypocritical. But lately I have been sensing some positive changes, and a stronger desire to transcend factions and seek consensus has emerged.

Since 2011, the notes from several symposia that I have looked at have gone in this direction. In April, for example, the book launch of Zhang Musheng's 张木生 (b. 1948) Changing Our Views of History and Culture 改造我们的历史文化观was particularly notable in this sense, and people from many different groups attended.

In June, Yang Fan 杨帆organized a seminar on “Domestic and International Situations and China's Future Development Strategies 国内外形势与中国未来发展战略,” which was similar. The theme of these discussions was basically “Where is China going?”, and the prominent orientation was to transcend factions and seek consensus. This is probably because we all share a sense of urgent crisis and responsibility for the current situation, and we all realize the need for constructive solutions.

I believe that consensus is not only desirable but also possible, because most Chinese people want development and stability for China, and strongly advocate that development must be aimed at the well-being of the people and based on the principles of fairness and justice. They also oppose the kind of muscular stability maintenance that intensifies conflicts, and instead seek a stable political order based on the rule of law. At the same time, they are also concerned about the impacts of modernity on the world of the soul and the spirit (which is one of the reasons behind the revival of national studies 国学[7]).

In fact, there has always been a basic consensus on such issues of principle. In my opinion, past debates may have highlighted differences at the secondary level, but neglected or obscured the basic consensus that already existed. Now that more people are willing to launch a dialogue or a discussion on the basis of the existing consensus, there is more chance that we will evolve toward a stance of seeking commonalities while respecting difference.

Reporter: The fact that people are looking for consensus is surely a good thing. However, the experience of past debates in the intellectual world suggests that we should not be too optimistic about reaching this consensus. In particular, there is still some antagonism among what we think of as elite intellectuals. The public tends to react to bad or negative news, so many people have lost trust in this intellectual elite. Do you feel that the intellectual community has its own problems? What are the prospects for improvement and development?

Liu Qing: I have heard an earful about today's intellectual community (the “intellectual elite” in the narrow sense). Some comments are very harsh, to the effect that there is no such thing as a real intellectual community in China, that it’s only a bunch of schools and factions who have no real learning and don’t engage in serious discussions, but mostly attack each other and spread rumors and scandals for the sake of their own personal advancement.

I feel such accusations are unfair. From a broader perspective, the discussions in the world of ideas over the past 30 years have stimulated the vibrant development of public culture, opening up of a wealth of public issues and stimulating the expression of a wide range of different viewpoints, and the enhancement of participatory and critical thinking among citizens, providing any number of conceptual tools and theories…These achievements are not to be underestimated.

The intellectual level and vitality of today's public discourse would also have been unthinkable in the past, and this of course is in part the collective contribution of the intellectual community. At the same time, however, we must recognize that the reasons for the current unsatisfactory state of the intellectual world, which has largely lost the public trust and influence it enjoyed in the 1980s, are many and complex.

Within the community of ideas, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the major debates of the past have raised very important and meaningful issues but have not realized their full potential and have not been as productive as they might have been.

Moreover, the debates have been characterized by verbal attacks and a considerable degree of hostility, culminating in a serious split in the elite intellectual community. We live in the shadow of these negative consequences today. Among the intellectual elite, it is rare to find anyone willing to take seriously the ideas and opinions of their “adversaries,” and there is a lack of sufficient respect and good will.

In the face of opposing opinions, our habitual response is to call it “nonsense,” suggesting that the other party is either arguing in bad faith or lacking in intelligence. I don’t know how widespread or serious this situation is, but it surely exists. Of course, intellectuals in other places fight too.

Karl Mannheim once said, “No class of people is more lacking in unity of purpose and solidarity than the intellectual class.” But the split in China's intellectual community has its own special “pathology” which cannot be explained away simply by noting that intellectuals like to argue.

I did a little research on this a few years ago, and in my opinion, the root cause of the pathology is not the defect of this or that important intellectual figure, but rather that we have not yet developed an independent intellectual community, and a set of generally recognized and effective standards and mechanisms for intellectual discourse. Rousseau [text corrupt].

As a result, disputes cannot be dealt with through the internal rules of the community itself, meaning that people readily turn to external forces, giving rise to vicious, non-standardized competition. This problem cannot be solved in the short term, because it is not a simple matter of standards and mechanisms formulating and disseminating a full set of rules – instead, the intellectual community must engage in long-term practice in order to establish such a tradition.

Such a community will have any number of well-trained, competent scholars [as opposed to a tiny “elite”] and each discipline will be fully and independently developed. Once effective standards and mechanisms are in place, we will have less of a tendency to confuse the difference between academic styles and levels of learning, between unique insights and naked assertions, between proper reasoning and ideological bias, between solid arguments and cherry-picking. The establishment of such standards and mechanisms is not meant to inhibit argument, but precisely to encourage productive argument while avoiding pernicious and pointless debates.

In the absence of such an intellectual community, it is unlikely that we will see changes in many of the problems that afflict the current intellectual world. This is of course not to say that we simply accept things as they are; everyone has a responsibility to try to bring such a community into being. But from a macro point of view, it may take a generation or two to achieve significant results.

Reporter: In your opinion, what are the differences between the older and newer generations of scholars? In what ways will the two generations collude and converge?

Liu Qing: It is always dangerous to talk about generations, because there are always exceptions, whatever commonalities bind them together. But if I dare to look ahead, I think that the real hope of China's academic and intellectual circles lies in the new generations of young people who basically grew up after the Cultural Revolution.

The older generation of scholars, who were mainly born in the 1950s (including some in the late 1940s and some in the early 1960s), have obvious advantages and serious limitations, but they all were affected by the particular environment of the Cultural Revolution. The advantages are that they are “deeply concerned about the affairs of state关心国家大事,” have a great sense of ambition and mission, and eagerly pursue the truth. Because of this, they have a certain charisma.

However, at the same time, the scholars who are now in their fifties and sixties suffered from an extreme lack of knowledge in their teenage years, something most of them have never been able to recover from.

Their more fatal limitation is their tendency toward a dictatorial stance, a way thinking and arguing that still bears the taint of the great debates of the Cultural Revolution. They display a kind of hegemonic self-satisfaction that comes from believing that they know the truth, and they are great at arguing and shouting someone down, but less good at listening. They always want to win, but don’t reflect much on themselves or try to change, it's almost a collective subconscious. (Again, I should emphasize that these generalizations are simplistic and there are many exceptions.)

It was this older generation of scholars you referred to, who came to prominence in the 1980s and in the began to dominate academic and media resources. That position of dominance – in the absence of outside pressure leading toward prudence or introspection – led some of them to become “authorities” (I remember that the sociologist Ying Xing 应星 (b. 1968) wrote a critical article about this, which was blunt if to the point).

These are the people that have dominated past debates in the intellectual world. Few of them take opposing arguments seriously, to say nothing of being persuaded. Being persuaded seems as if it’s something shameful. In saying this, I am not at all denying that there are exceptional, clear-minded, learned and talented figures among them. It is precisely because of their charisma that their one-sided tendencies are so dangerous. And because we don't have a fully developed intellectual community, they can blather on at will, as if no one else is around.

For example, one Shanghai scholar who became famous in the 1980s, wrote the Chinese preface to a famous book on the French Revolution a few years ago, and his impassioned polemical text was actually directed at another Shanghai scholar. But he himself basically misread the original book's point of view, for which he was mocked.

There is also a famous writer and scholar who published an article a few years ago, in the first half of which he criticized the unilinear evolutionary view of history, which has more to say about the present than about the past, and then went on to say that all the old theories have failed and only new theories can understand the new era. It appears that he did not notice the logical contradiction between the two halves of his article. Moreover, the liberal figures he criticized were all leading figures of his generation, and he paid no attention to newer scholarship produced by those born after the 1970s.

Looking at these two examples, it’s as if nothing ever changed, and things are like they were in the old days.[8] The two persons I mentioned are scholars whom I once admired and still respect very much. But somehow their status eventually lent them a sort of blithe arrogance. Reading those two pieces, my thought was that it is time that they pack it in.

Therefore, I was deeply impressed by something Gan Yang 甘阳 (b. 1953) said in Zha Jianying’s 査建英(b. 1959) book, Interviews from the Eighties 八十年代访谈录: “My advice is that for everyone, all of the older generation of intellectuals, to leave the scene and hand things over to the younger people. They are better at discussing things or at least don’t have our history of despising one another. All these old guys hold so many grudges and have been in so many fights that they can’t think about the issues. Their minds are made up, their thought has rigidified and things don’t work anymore.”[9] What he said is perfect – although what he himself has done is another story.

Comparatively speaking, the new generation born in the 1970s and 1980s have a solid foundation[10]. Their eyes are wide open and they are better trained. They have grown up in a relatively free and open environment, and are used to disagreements and criticisms, which makes it easier for them to develop a taste for exchange and dialogue.

They have their own positions, but keep their distance from ideological prejudices, and have less of the hero complex of the older generation (be it heroes who gain power within the system or tragic heroes who wind up opposing the system). Of course, the previous generation had an influence on them, especially in the context of the big problems discussed since the 1980s, which is an important and positive ideological legacy left to them.

They will receive the problems and revisit them in their own way from their own perspective. Leading figures will surely emerge from among this group, but those who rise to prominence will have been vetted in a more professional way. Thus the new generation of intellectual elites may be less inclined to talk down.

If the new generation of scholars has any limitations, it may be that they are too individualized and specialized, and that they are in a more dispersed and alienated state because we, the older generation, have not left them a solid intellectual community. But perhaps there is no need to worry too much about this, because they are gradually coming to the forefront of history. When they take on important responsibilities, they will feel their own a sense of urgency, prompting them to recognize the need for solidarity and cooperation, and the significance of linking professionalism with public concerns.

Ultimately, among the new generation of scholars, a constructive critical alliance and an intellectual-ethical community may emerge, which will provide intellectual resources for the discussion of public issues on the basis of public rationality and intellectual standards, including an ethic of responsibility. This is the unfinished business of the previous generation of intellectuals, and the hope of the new generation.

Notes

[1]刘擎, “思想界的派别之争是一个事实,” originally published on the New Minority WeChat platform on March 19, 2022.

[2]Translator’s note: Guo Meimei was a Chinese online celebrity who in 2011 flaunted her wealth and her supposed connections with the Chinese Red Cross, which got both Guo and the Red Cross in trouble and Guo wound up in jail. Guo has the same Chinese name as Jocie Guo, a Singaporean singer and songwriter whose career suffered because she was confused with the other Guo Meimei.

[3] Translator’s note: The Chinese for “anti-corruption machine” is 一场廉政风暴, which may well be a reference to a Hong Kong movie from 1975. In any event, Liu is writing at a period when Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaigns were beginning to take effect throughout Chinese society.

[4]Translator’s note: Li Zehou 李泽厚 (1930-2021) was a philosopher of aesthetics, among many other things, and a towering figure in contemporary Chinese intellectual life. See here for a very brief introduction to Li and his thought. He is closely identified with certain intellectual trends in the 1980s, and the quote Liu Qing uses comes from this strand of Li’s commentary.

[5]Translator’s note: “Stability maintenance” 维稳 means, among other things, repressing domestic dissent, something liberals in China very much object to. The study Liu is referring to revealed that China was spending almost protecting herself from internal “enemies” as external ones.

[6]Translator’s note: Chen Jiaying is a professor of philosophy and a specialist in German phenomenology. Like Liu Qing, he is also a public intellectual who comments frequently on public issues.

[7]Translator’s note: “National studies” was founded in the early 20th century in reaction to the widespread Westernization of scholarship and learning and revived during reform and opening for many of the same reasons. The content of national studies is quite varied but is often based on classical studies.

[8]Translator’s note: In this passage, Liu likens the scholarly world to the bandit world of old, as described in classics like the Water Margin; the Chinese is 好像这么多年都白过了，江湖还是旧日的江湖，爷还是过去的爷. I can think of no way to translate what he actually says in a way that would not be a distraction.

[9]Translator’s note: Gan Yang is a major figure in contemporary Chinese intellectual life. see here for more information. Zha Jianying is a Chinese-American writer, see here for more information.

[10]Translator’s note: What Liu actually says is tongzigong hao/“童子功”好, which is an untranslatable pun. Tongzigong hao literally means something like “they achieved well as children,” while in fact tongzigong has to do with martial arts practice.