The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History

摘要

Perhaps Chinese intellectuals have received what seems in some ways an inordinate amount of attention because of their importance in shaping the "real" history of China; or perhaps because of their ability to articulate questions of profound significance: not only whither China but which justice and what modernity. In a magnificent, virtually flawless single volume, Cheek traces intellectual life in China across the "long twentieth century" from 1895 to 2015. He offers a tentative narrative of what he himself says is anything but a single story, and provides useful signposts to make sense out of a plethora of persons, ideas, ideologies and debates, all while providing pictures of the larger historical context. Cheek highlights the transitions from the literati of the high Qing to the more entrepreneurial activists of the late Qing, to the "cadre intellectuals" of the Kuomintang and Communist regimes, and finally to the many establishment and non-establishment voices contending in the somewhat more pluralistic environment of today.