Revolution Redefined After Tiananmen
For anyone tempted to assume that authoritarian states are uniform in their support for narratives of nationhood and political change, Els van Dongen’s analysis of intellectual discourse in China between 1989 and 1995 offers a valuable corrective. Focusing on the differences between radical and conservative expressions of Chinese thought, she interrogates how the concept of revolution has been reassessed as both a contemporary and historical phenomenon in the years after Tiananmen and while the state has grappled with the reform challenges of economic, political and social modernization.
Uniquely among Western scholars, she engages with the work not only of mainland Chinese thinkers but also émigré intellectuals in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere. Many have rejected the social utopianism of the Mao era in favor of a form of Enlightenment thinking that embraces elements of Western modernity. While engaging with the West reflected China’s status as a rising power, it also included culturally driven efforts to assert Neo-confucian ideas as inspiration for a more nationalistically defined vision of the future. Van Dongen’s “realistic revolution” embraces four elements: a focus on pragmatism; a willingness to reassess the impact of earlier revolutions (including turning points such as the May 4th movement); a comparative, international perspective that sets China’s political evolution against the experience of earlier revolutions from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 onwards; and the debate between moderate, rational change and more idealized, moralistic if not utopian visions of the future.