Journal of Contemporary China

Xin, Gu

doi: 10.1080/10670569508724212pmid: N/A

This article is a study of Li Zehou, a significant Marxist cultural theorist in contemporary China, focusing on his critical interpretations of Kant's epistemology, ethics and philosophy of history. It argues that Li is actually a Hegelian, not a Kantian Marxist as he is generally considered. The Kantian principle of subjectivity, cognitive and moral, is reconstructed by Li within a Hegelian discourse of historicism and based upon a Marxist concept of practice. In holding an intellectual presupposition of the teleological view of history, Kant's notion of “the history of reason,” as a subjective faith for regulating an agent's moral actions, is misunderstood as an objective. Hegelian idea of historical necessity. The end of the inevitable process of history, according to Li's practical philosophy of subjectivity, is in the aesthetic realm, that is, an ideal state characterized by the unity of nature and freedom.

Feng, Yuan

doi: 10.1080/10670569508724213pmid: N/A

This paper examines the relationships between political centralism and the Imperial Examination in imperial China and the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in the People's Republic of China. A brief history of the two systems is given. The purposes, characteristics, strengths and limits of the two systems are discussed. The relationships between the two systems and Chinese education, the relationships between the two systems and Chinese political systems, and the relationships between the two systems and the common people in different historical periods are also discussed. These discussions lead to the understanding that the two systems have served the political needs of both the ruling classes and the commoners (although it has been limited for the latter), and contributed to the continuity of political centralism. The NCEE is still indispensable but it needs reform.

Chan, Alfred L.

doi: 10.1080/10670569508724214pmid: N/A

This article is a detailed critique of the thesis contained in David Bachman's book on the origins of the Great Leap Forward (GLF). By adopting the so‐called “neo‐institutional” approach, Bachman argues that Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo, leaders of a “Planning and Heavy Industry Coalition” “which had defeated a rival “Finance Coalition “ in 1957, were responsible for initiating and determining the development strategy of the GLF. It follows that Mao's role in the “leap” was very limited; the GLF was made possible when he gave official blessing to the programs of the victorious coalition. The author examines the historical and documentary sources on the GLF to demonstrate the contradictions contained in Bachman's theoretical framework, and the many faulty ways he interprets the data. He argues that Bachman's attempt to debunk the Mao‐dominant model in policy‐making during the GLF is a failure.

Zhong, Wenhui

doi: 10.1080/10670569508724215pmid: N/A

The literature on human rights in China is dominated by incriminating documentation of abuses and a lack of theoretical consensus. But China's continuing economic reform has meant the need for Western industrialized countries to adjust their human rights policies on China. Emerging is the shift from the “sanction/isolation” approach to what some would call “positive engagement,” which is aimed at improving China's human rights situation through more international contact. In China, human rights development in the early 1990s can be characterized by the increasing use of Chinese law, and within that legal limit, a more open exercise of dissent and free speech as a basic human right, together with its adverse consequences.

Fewsmith, Joseph; Yang, Dali L.

doi: 10.1080/10670569508724218pmid: N/A

Tsou Tang, Ershi shiji Zhongguo Zhengzhi: Cong hongguan lishi yu weiguan xingdong jiaodu kan [Twentieth Century Chinese Politics: Viewed from the Perspective of Macro History and Micro Actions] (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994). Eric Harwit, China's Automobile Industry: Policies, Problems, and Prospects (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).