This book proposes itself as an answer to a potentially interesting question: why did Chinese historians begin to use narrative as a form of history writing in the 20th century, and in what paradigmatic ways? Unfortunately, the author contents himself with a narrow deconstruction of pre-ordained narratives/paradigms (“modernizationist,” “revolutionary,” etc.) in relation to corresponding predetermined political-ideological predispositions (“liberal,” “Marxist,” etc.). Eschewing a more dialectical – thus historical – version of this emergence, this book offers only a symptomatic interpretive reading of the historiography of modern Chinese history in the 20th century from a particular perspective; it does little to push the narrative deconstructive method in any new directions and little to explain the relation historically. Are we surprised that history is written to serve the ideological present? Are Chinese historians uniquely imprisoned by this practice? Under what historical conditions and from what omniscient perspective can “objective” history be written? Little discussion of this problem ensues. There is, however, an abundance of cited material; thus even if the theoretical contribution is slim, the book is perhaps useful for a critical audience in its marshalling of a number of works into one neatly wrapped package.

The introduction situates 20th-century Chinese historiography in a “‘modern history’ … [as an ongoing] process full of uncertainties and yet to be finished” (p. 2). Is any modern history ‘finished’ and certain? What would that mean? No matter. This first chapter promotes the idea that one can “distinguish between professional historians who eschew overt engagement in politics and those who prioritize an explicit political purpose in history writing” (p. 3), and validates professional detachments over political attachments. Yet, since no professional or other historian can eschew engagement in politics – do we float above? – the question really should be about who is more honest at confessing to her premises. In any case, it appears that in Huaiyin Li's perspective, it has taken over a century for fully professional – so-called politically detached – historians to emerge in China. Although, it turns out, they are all dressed up and still have not figured out where to go, in Li's estimation.

The second chapter takes up the origins of the “modernization” narrative of Chinese history in the 1930s. This narrative (or discourse or paradigm: Li easily slips among these conceptions) is said to be tied to “the renunciation of liberalism and embrace of nationalism as the fundamental approach to the solution of China's problems” (p. 37). A peculiar formulation: liberalism and nationalism are hardly opposites; they are intimate historical bedfellows. Documenting how “liberal historians” such as Jiang Tingfu and Cheng Gonglu ultimately produce “pragmatic” (“nationalist”) historiography, the author gets entangled in his categories. If “liberal” historians produce nationalist history, are they still liberal? It matters not. What matters to Huaiyin Li is that the modernizationist narrative/paradigm in its nationalist form fails to establish the bases for a democratic polity or autonomous scholarship in China, ceding the space of the state to a dictatorship and academia to foreign dependence. Curiously, Li accuses his illiberal liberals of not “realiz[ing] that their education … might also prevent them from … fully understanding other choices in dealing with China's crisis” (p. 69). I'd have thought the whole point of ideological scholarship is precisely to discount, via ideology, other choices. This muddle is never unmuddied.

Chapter three discusses pre-1949 Chinese history-writing in a Marxist paradigm/ revolutionary narrative form. The author concentrates on Fan Wenlan, an interesting artefact: trained as a classical philologist, Fan joined the Communist Party by the 1940s and his narratives were idiosyncratically Marxist-informed. They were embraced by Mao over those of the more orthodox historians Zhang Wentian and Li Dingsheng [Li Pingxin]. This leads Huaiyin Li to proclaim that, because Mao admired Fan and Fan was not a good Marxist, therefore Mao and Fan were “essentially nationalists and pragmatic revolutionaries rather than the true Marxists they claimed to be” (p. 104). So, if liberals become nationalists and Marxists become nationalists, what is the difference? Another muddle. Rather than acknowledge that Marxism (as liberalism) is a living theory whose contours change with analyses of different pasts, Li prefers a priori categorizations that yield a priori conclusions.

The fourth chapter takes up the post-1949 orthodoxies of PRC historiography. Li approaches the problem through a discussion of the “disciplinization of the writing and teaching of history” with a particular focus on the 1954–56 debates on periodization (p. 111). That debate centred on Hu Sheng's emphasis on class struggle as the modal force of modern Chinese history vs. Sun Shouren's analysis of the “principal contradictions” vs. Jin Congji's emphasis on the problem of modes of production. Hu Sheng's class struggle thesis won the day. Curiously, in the course of this discussion, the author never once broaches the underlying problem of socialism as a non-capitalist form of social development, possibly the central animating factor of the debates, to which the method for narrating that endeavour historically was a symptomatic product.

Chapter five looks at the radicalization of history after 1958 and during the Cultural Revolution. The historiographical revolution of these years was promoted by newly trained historians; this generation, more clearly than their seniors, wrote history to serve the needs of the Party by downplaying the past and emphasizing the present. Increasingly doctrinaire, this turn soon centred on the problem of how to evaluate Li Xiucheng, one of the commanders of the Taipings. With the eventual intervention of Jiang Qing and Mao Zedong, Qi Benyu's negative evaluation of Li prevailed. This, in Huaiyin Li's estimation, led directly to the Cultural Revolutionary denunciation of Wu Han and the subsequent radicalizations of history-writing of that period. Neglecting any larger issues that might have informed and shaped this radicalization, Li's narrative indeed leaves one baffled about Chinese historians: how could they possibly have been so stupid? Some surrounding discussion materially placing these historiographical matters into larger (socialist? global?) perspective would have helped dispel that impression.

The last three chapters bring us from Cultural Revolutionary radicalism to more sober contemporary times. Never departing from his rigid categorizations, for which selected historians stand as representative, Li in the end finds the historiographical field “involuted” (p. 260): ever more empirically rich, ever less conceptually innovative. This trap, Li admonishes, requires Chinese historians to “free themselves from dependence on imported theories and methodologies, and to establish their autonomy in rebuilding the interpretive scheme for modern Chinese history” (p. 260). So doing apparently will help establish Chinese history as “reality” rather than merely imported constructed narrative. Thus, it turns out, Huaiyin Li's ideology is one of pure cultural nationalism; we glean this throughout, but by the end, the ideological stakes of the book are finally revealed. It is a disappointing if unsurprising discovery.