Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China (China in Transformation)

This book analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison to and in conflict with liberalism inside and outside the P.R.C. How do mainland politics and discourses challenge 'our' own, chiefly liberal and anti-'statist' political frameworks? To what extent is China paradoxically intertwined with a liberal economism? How can one understand its general refusal of liberalism, as well as its frequent, direct responses to electoral democracy, universalism, Western media, and other normative forces? Vukovich argues that the Party-state poses a challenge to our understandings of politics, globalization, and even progress. To be illiberal is not necessarily to be reactionary and vulgar but, more interestingly, to be anti-liberal and to seek alternatives to a degraded liberalism. In this way Chinese politics illuminate the global conjuncture, and may have lessons in otherwise bleak times.-- Provided by publisher Dedication......Page 6 Preface......Page 7 Acknowledgments......Page 11 Contents......Page 14 Chapter 1: On Illiberalism and Seeing Like an Other State......Page 15 Liberalism and Its Vicissitudes......Page 27 Illiberalism: Baleful Enhancement of the Concept......Page 33 Illiberalism and Imperialism: Difference and Revolution......Page 42 Chapter 2: The New Left and the Old Politics of Knowledge: A Battle for Chinese Political Discourse......Page 56 Feeling Global, Feeling China: Outflanking Political Orientalism......Page 64 Maoist Discourse: The Past in the Present......Page 75 Maoist Discourse: Afterlives and Re-articulation in Chongqing, Nanjiecun, and the Famine Debates......Page 80 Chapter 3: From Making Revolution to Making Charters: Liberalism and Economism in the Late Cold War......Page 102 Liberalism and De-politicization: The Presence of the Past......Page 108 From Charting the Revolution to Waiting for Geist......Page 122 Chapter 4: No Country, No System: Liberalism, Autonomy, and De-politicization in Hong Kong......Page 142 Underneath the Umbrella: What’s There?......Page 147 The Basic Law: One Country, Two Systems, No Politics......Page 157 From Liberalism to Post-colonialism to Impasse: Sound and Fury in the Enclave......Page 164 Chapter 5: Wukan!: Democracy, Illiberalism, and Their Vicissitudes......Page 180 Contesting Illiberalism, Liberalism, and Theft......Page 183 Wukan Worked......Page 190 Wukan Failed......Page 196 It’s the Political, Economy......Page 200 Chapter 6: The Ills of Liberalism: Thinking Through the PRC and the Political......Page 212 Taking Stock......Page 215 Illiberalism and Livelihood as a (De-politicized) Politics and Refusal......Page 224 Economism: The Main Enemy......Page 232 Toward a Progressive Illiberalism? A Realist Reprise?......Page 239 Bibliography......Page 254 Index......Page 259