Modern China has been reinvented numerous times and will no doubt go on being reinvented. Huaiyin Li contributes to our knowledge of Chinese historical writing on two levels: first, as a summary of major historical currents across the twentieth century, and second, as a critique of all the things that can go wrong with narrativizing history, even while Li ultimately calls for a new and better “master narrative.” Indeed, Li argues that the failure of master narratives today has left Chinese historians in an empirical morass, unable to clarify the relationships among events.
Li begins with a brief look at the “new history” of the late Qing and early Republic, when narrative history first began to be practiced, replacing chronicles and annals. But his real interest is the development of two master narratives—modernization and revolution—from the 1930s to their final collapse at the end of the century. Here, Li provides something of a master narrative of his own, identifying four successive historiographical waves. First, modernization, focusing on elite reform movements and China's failure to “catch up.” Second, revolution, focusing on popular or class struggle against imperialism and feudalism. (Li also shows that this standard revolutionary narrative was temporarily replaced by an even more radical version in the 1960s.) Third, a revival of modernization theory in the 1980s, no longer a narrative of failure but one that explained and legitimated the economic success of the Dengist era. Fourth, a postmodern-tinged rejection of both the revolutionary and modernization narratives, leading to history-writing that focused instead on the local and everyday life, and moved away from political history. Li suggests that the critique of the revolutionary narrative beginning in the 1980s represented a continuity of liberal values that Marxism or Maoism (Li does not distinguish between the two) had failed to kill off. However, further exploration is needed of this purported “continuity” of liberal thought across the Maoist chasm, as well as of the relationships among Marxism, liberalism, and modernization theory.
Li highlights representative historians and debates in order to give some depth to what would otherwise be an overwhelming amount of material: Jiang Tingfu, Fan Wenlan, Hu Sheng, a few Cultural Revolution radicals, and, moving into the present period, Yang Nianqun and others, and their contending interpretations of the Opium War, Self-Strengthening Movement, and 1898 Reform Movement, as well as of the Taipings, the Boxers, and the Communist Revolution. Li offers a thorough analysis of the generational and ideological shifts in twentieth-century historical writings.
However, other central topics, such as the 1911 Revolution and “shoots of capitalism,” are neglected, as are important historians who perhaps do not represent the modernization or revolutionary narratives so well (e.g., Liu Yizheng, He Bingsong, Fu Sinian, and Chen Yinke). In this regard, it should also be pointed out that these two narratives share a good deal: a faith in linear evolution, a teleology of the nation-state, a sense of modern China as a nation in crisis, belief in elite-directed change (regardless of populist rhetoric), and a black-and-white view of historical actors. If we adopt Hayden White's typology (p. 225), both narratives seem to me to fit nicely into the romantic form of emplotment, even while their ideologies obviously differed. Li could also have said more about the mutual interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese historians, but with the exception of modernization theory in the 1980s, his tendency is to treat Chinese historians as sealed off from the rest of the world.
A more serious problem is Li's implied but clear critique of bad history, which leaves the standards for good history ambiguous. Li says, “Historical representation can be false when historians prioritize their ideological commitments or the needs of the party-state in building narratives; and it can be true when historians detach themselves from politics or personal bias. . .” (p. 264). There is nothing objectionable in that sentence, but the verb “can be” represents confusion more than academic caution, because the sentence still makes sense the other way around. Li points out that all history writing is political and all is teleological, but he suggests that some is more political and more teleological than others, and hence bad. Similarly, in the conclusion, Li notes that the narrative form is inherently teleological, since it culminates in endings, but then he seems to argue that one can avoid teleology as long as the master narrative is properly done, with an appreciation for how events appeared at the time and how different outcomes were possible.
If this is a conundrum, part of the answer for Li lies in professionalization, disciplinary standards, and motives, that is, the historian's responsibility to seek the truth rather than to legitimate a political stance. In my view, this cannot completely solve the conundrum, since historians can never be innocent of ideology or unaware of endings. Nonetheless, Reinventing Modern China presents a nuanced analysis of history writing in China during the Maoist period and since. In Li's reading, there seems to have been very little imagination or authenticity, at least until the last few years, but a great deal of politicization.
