New Left

The "New Left" is a more coherent category than "Liberals" in China, but nonetheless contains a fairly broad range of opinion. The "New Left" stands in opposition to the "Old Left," which once referred to those who remained loyal to Maoism and refused Deng Xiaoping's reform initiatives in the early 1980s. This "Old Left" has largely died out, both literally and figuratively; there are still Maoists in China today, but they are usually young radicals, not the dinosaurs that opposed Deng. Click here for a Maoist web site in China (in Chinese).

China's New Left has evolved considerably over time. In the 1990s, most took aim at Neo-Liberals and neoliberalism in China and elsewhere, and sought to renew socialism by rereading the classics and by blending these rereadings with ideas drawn from Western critical theory (most prominent members of China's New Left studied in the West at some point). They were (and are still) enraged by Francis Fukuyama's 1992 volume, The End of History and the Last Man (which even Fukuyama would admit has not aged well) and were determined to prove that liberalism has not won, and socialism still has a future. Many New Left intellectuals condemned "crony capitalism" in China and were encouraged by Bo Xilai's Chongqing model, which seemed for a time to offer a "third path" that avoided the ills of free-market capitalism and socialist central planning.

With Bo Xilai's 2012 fall and Xi Jinping's simultaneous rise, however, the New Left gradually shed its critical posture and embraced the Chinese state. Reasons for this repositioning include: China addressed some of the worst excesses of "crony capitalism" and neo-liberalism, and paid greater attention to the plight of China's poor and forgotten; China's rise to great power status meant that China had done something right and perhaps had a "model" to offer the rest of the world; the "thought world" under Xi Jinping has become less free, and full-throated critics vent at their peril. As a result, the critical edge that marked New Left discourse in an earlier period is generally relegated to footnotes at present, and much New Left intellectual energy goes into explicating the meaning of socialism with Chinese characteristics and Xi Jinping thought.

For reasons having to do with intellectual politics in the West, New Left intellectuals receive more attention than do most other Chinese intellectuals, with the exception of dissidents. For that reason, I tend to translate less of their work, because those who are interested in them can readily find translations available.

Cao Jinqing

"A Centennial Revival: The Historical Narrative and Mission of the Chinese Communist Party"

Chen Duanhong

“2020 National Constitution Day Symposium Keynote Speech: National Security and the Constitution”

Cui Zhiyuan

“Comparing the Ideas of Trump’s Former Advisor Steve Bannon and the Legendary Putin Advisor Aleksandr Dugin”

“The ‘Security Dilemma,’ Constructivism, and the Ukraine Crisis”

Gan Yang

“Liberalism: For the Aristocrats or for the People?” (1999)

Jiang Shigong

“Commerce and Human Rights, Part One: World Empire and the Roots of American Behavior”

“Commerce and Human Rights (Part Two)—Sino-American Competition in the Context of World Empire”

'Filosofía e Historia: Interpretando la "Era Xi Jinping" a través del Informe de Xi Jinping al Decimonoveno Congreso Nacional del PCCh'