History, tradition and the China Dream: Socialist modernization in the World of Great Harmony

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

4-2015

Abstract

How will China influence world politics in the twenty-first century? Many people answer this question by looking to Chinese history, and particularly to traditional models of Chinese world order. This essay seeks to complicate this question by asking which history, and which tradition? While it is common to look at China's pre-modern history as ‘tradition’, this essay argues that we also need to appreciate how ‘socialism’ is treated as a tradition alongside Chinese civilization. It does this by examining how China's public intellectuals appeal to two seemingly odd sources: Mao Zedong's 1956 speech ‘Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions’, and the ‘Great Harmony’ passage from the two millennia-old Book of Rites. It will argue that these two passages are employed as a way of salvaging socialism; the ideological transition thus is not from communism to nationalism, but to a curious combination of socialism and Chinese civilization. This new socialist/civilization dynamic integrates equality and hierarchy into a new form of statism, which is involved in a global competition of social models. Or to put it another way, what these two passages have in common is not necessarily a positive ideal, but a common enemy: liberalism, the West and the United States.

Discipline

Asian Studies | International Relations | Political History

Publication

Journal of Contemporary China

Volume

24

Issue

96

First Page

983

Last Page

1001

ISSN

1067-0564

Identifier

10.1080/10670564.2015.1030915

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge): SSH Titles

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2015.1030915

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS