The Mao and Post-Mao Eras (1949-2009): Another Way of Writing History (Part 2)

Qian Liqun, a retired professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, is recognized as a representative figure in East Asian thought. He is one of the most influential humanities scholars in China since the 1980s and an important contemporary Chinese intellectual. With his unique perspective, he provides the most comprehensive review, criticism, and reflection on the sixty years of history of the People's Republic of China based on his personal historical memories. The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Way of Writing History "(Volumes 1 and 2), totaling 800,000 words and 25 years in the making, reflects the important crystallization of Qian Liqun's recent research and thought. Through this book, he attempts to construct a three-dimensional narrative space of interaction between the grassroots (me—Qian Liqun, a grassroots thinker), the upper level (Mao Zedong), and the middle level (intellectuals), structuring the interaction, resistance, cooperation, and deviation between these three levels into a complex and intertwined historical process, and forming a blueprint for China's current ideological landscape. "The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Kind of History Writing" (Volumes 1 and 2) comprehensively presents the thoughts and mental journeys of contemporary Chinese intellectuals, and can be regarded as the most important intellectual retrospective and autobiography in the Chinese world in recent years.
"The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Way of Writing History" (Volumes 1 and 2) provides readers with a rare intellectual resource for considering contemporary Chinese issues. It offers a timely and powerful response and critique of the current intellectual craze surrounding the "Rise of China" and the "China Model" theory, as well as the emergence of the "ghost of Mao Zedong" in the "post-Mao Zedong era."
From the perspective of an independent intellectual, Qian Liqun, through this book, reflects on his own journey through sixty years of the Republic under Mao Zedong's influence. The Republic's sixty years of regime change saw the nation experience a period of division and turmoil. Qian Liqun's calm and composed narrative conveys both the passion and the chill of history.
"On the one hand, I was shaped by the Mao Zedong era. Mao Zedong culture has permeated my flesh, blood, and soul. This mark of the Mao Zedong era can never be changed. No matter how I struggle, reflect on myself, and criticize, I am an incurable idealist, romanticist, and utopianist. On the other hand, I am even more a self-conscious rebel against the Mao Zedong era. My historical mission is to strike back and carry out the most thorough cleansing and criticism of Mao Zedong that my contemporaries can achieve. Influenced by him, At the same time, he was also his rebel, striving to become a complete rebel himself. -- Qian Liqun, "The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Kind of Historical Writing" (Volumes 1 and 2). As an independent intellectual who has personally witnessed the sixty years of the Republic, Qian Liqun, with his rich historical experience and critical insight, opens a window for readers to gain an in-depth understanding of the history of China's socialist development from 1949 to the present, the state of popular thought and knowledge, and the practice of Mao Zedong Thought. Qian Liqun uses the "Mao Zedong Era" and the "Post-Mao Zedong Era" as the narrative framework for this book, arguing that the political, economic, and social systems established in 1957 during the Mao Zedong era are inherently interconnected with those of the post-Mao Zedong era, a key to a critical understanding of the current political system. At the same time, Qian Liqun is dedicated to exploring contemporary Chinese folk thought, striving to recover the tenacious existence of folk thought within the history of suppressed and obliterated "folk heresy," charting its intellectual genealogy and proposing a path for a Chinese folk version of socialist thought. Qian Liqun, with his rich historical texts and personal experience as a historical witness and participant, brilliantly outlines the landscape of China's postwar ideological landscape. Standing on the standpoint of the people and from the perspective of an independent intellectual, he gradually opens up for readers to enter the postwar history of mainland China and the inner world of intellectuals, achieving a heart-to-heart exchange.
In "The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Way of Writing History" (Volumes 1 and 2), Qian Liqun divides the 60-year history of the Communist Party of China since the founding of the People's Republic of China into the early years of the People's Republic of China (1949-1955), before and after the Anti-Rightist Movement (1956-early 1958), the Great Leap Forward (1958), the Great Famine (1959-1961), the Road to the Cultural Revolution (1962-1965), the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976), and the post-Mao Zedong era (1977-). While simultaneously considering the domestic and international situations of each historical period, he divides the entire history into the "Mao Zedong era" and the "post-Mao Zedong era," emphasizing how the social, economic, and political systems of the Communist Party of China established by Mao Zedong and the CCP in the early period were inherited into the "post-Mao Zedong era" and became the foundation for the implementation of reform and opening up in the later period. At the same time, he proposed that the "1957 system" established before and after the Anti-Rightist Movement was the cornerstone of the "1989 system," and that there is an inherent historical continuity between the two. Only in this way can we historically understand the core of the current authoritarian regime of the Communist Party of China.
More importantly, Qian Liqun examined the campus "rightists" (campus democracy movements) that emerged in the 1950s, popular thinking during the Cultural Revolution, the 1980 democracy movement, and the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement, and believed that there was a "socialist democratic" intellectual and ideological continuity between them. It also had a complex internal connection with the intellectual debate between the "New Left" and "liberalism" in the 1990s and the current civil society movements in China. These intellectual movements and the ideological factions within the party pulled each other together, forming a relationship of mutual absorption and influence between the top and the bottom.
Mr. Qian Liqun has conducted a historical examination of China's current ideological and intellectual spectrum, and has used this to respond to and analyze the phenomenon of the so-called "ghost of Mao Zedong" emerging in the "post-Mao Zedong era." He has also put forward timely and powerful criticisms and warnings about the current "China's rise" and the corresponding intellectual signs.
This book, "The Mao Zedong Era and the Post-Mao Zedong Era (1949-2009): Another Way of Writing History" (Volume 2), covers the content from Lecture 10, "The Cultural Revolution Era (1966-1976)" (Part 1), to Lecture 14, "The Post-Mao Zedong Era (2000-2009)" (Part 2). It also includes an "Afterword," "References," and "Selected Texts."
Qian Liqun was born in Chongqing in 1939 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He was admitted to the Journalism Department of Renmin University of China in 1956, graduating in 1960. From 1960 to 1978, he taught in Anshun, Guizhou Province. In 1978, he was admitted to the Chinese Language and Literature Department of Peking University as a graduate student, studying under Professors Wang Yao and Yan Jiayan. After graduating in 1981, he remained on the faculty at the university. Currently a retired professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, he is recognized as a representative figure in East Asian thought and one of the most influential humanities scholars in China since the 1980s. He is renowned for his research on Lu Xun and was once ranked first among the "Top Ten Most Popular Teachers" by Peking University students.
Not only did he have an understanding and grasp of Lu Xun's thoughts, but as early as the cultural boom in mainland China in the 1980s, he discovered the mediating role of "culture" between "socio-economic conditions" and "literature", which ultimately determined the development of literature. In further research in the 1990s, he attempted to place 20th-century literature in the context of the central historical theme of this century - "achieving comprehensive modernization", and examined the interactive relationship between "modern literature" and "modern education", "modern publishing" and "modern politics", opening up a new approach to the field of "research on the external relations of literature".
After retiring from Peking University in 2002, he returned to middle schools and Guizhou, focusing on language education, rural education in western China, and local cultural studies, while also engaging in research on the history of modern folk thought.
Qian Liqun's importance lies in the fact that he has experienced major historical events in China, such as the Cultural Revolution, the democratic reforms in 1979, and the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989. He brings with him the historical memory of China's changes over the past five decades and the trends of political and social reform, and has issued sharp criticisms and reflections on China's democratic movement.
He has published nearly fifty books, including "Searching for the Soul," "Encountering Lu Xun," "A Biography of Zhou Zuoren," "A Rich Pain: The Eastward Journey of Don Quixote and Hamlet," and "1948: The Mysterious World of Heaven and Earth." His most recent works include "Refusing to Forget: Research Notes on the 1957 Study," published by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong in 2007; "My Spiritual Autobiography: Set Against the Background of Peking University" and "My Retrospection and Reflection: My Last Course at Peking University," both published in Taiwan in 2008; and "Those Who Know Me Know My Anxiety: Ten Years of Observation and Reflection (1999-2008)," published in Hong Kong in 2009.

2012-01-18

聯經出版公司

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9789570839258