Wang Hui Bücher

Examines the roots of China's social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the state of mass depoliticization. From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, this title offers a discussion of Chinese intellectual history and society, in the hope of forging a path for China's future.

An examination of the shifts in politics and revolution in China over the last century What must China do to become truly democratic and equitable? This question animates most progressive debates about this potential superpower, and in China’s Twentieth Century the country’s leading critic, Wang Hui, turns to the past for an answer. Beginning with the birth of modern politics in the 1911 revolution, Wang tracks the initial flourishing of political life, its blossoming in the radical sixties, and its decline in China’s more recent liberalization, to arrive at the crossroads of the present day. Examining the emergence of new class divisions between ethnic groups in the context of Tibet and Xinjiang, alongside the resurgence of neoliberalism through the lens of the Chongqing Incident, Wang Hui argues for a revival of social democracy as the only just path for China’s future.

A participant in the Tiananmen Square movement, Wang Hui is also editor of the most important intellectual journal in contemporary China. He argues that the features of contemporary China are elements of the new global order as a whole in which considerations of economic growth and development have trumped democracy and social justice.