The Confucian Ethic and East Asian Modernity

For a long time, socialist mainland China was separated and ‘delinked’ from the capitalist West. China’s insular planned economy became stagnant toward the end of the Mao years. In stark contrast, the smaller countries surrounding the former Middle Kingdom in the East Asian region achieved economic miracles. Some scholars have endeavored to account for the rise of industrial East Asia in the post-Second World War period. Japan and the so-called ‘Four Mini-Dragons’ (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) registered a spectacular economic growth rate and transformed into industrialized societies. This region lies at the periphery of the capitalist world-system according to classical world-systems theory. The Four Mini-Dragons were also described as the industrializing first tier of the Third World. Scholars such as Yü Ying-shih and Tu Wei-ming searched for the cultural and spiritual counterpart in the East to Max Weber’s ‘Protestant ethic’ that prompted the rise of capitalism in the West.Reference Weber³ The cultural foundation in East Asia is the ‘Confucian ethic’.Reference Brook and Blue⁴

Karl Marx once attempted to grasp the nature of Oriental society by way of the ‘economic base’ and briefly advanced the idea of ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’. But his remarks on the AMP are sketchy and undeveloped. Marxist theorists from around the world hold different interpretations of the AMP and disagree on what it is. Some think that this idea is not a major thread in Marx’s economic and social theory. Chinese historians rarely use this idea in the analysis of Chinese society and the periodization of Chinese history.Reference Brook⁵

Max Weber conducts a global comparative study of modernity by way of the ‘superstructure’ (religion, culture) when he explains the rise of capitalism in Europe. He writes about the religions of China and India.Reference Weber⁶ For him, Confucianism is incompatible with the spirit of capitalism. But given the rise of industrial East Asia that lacks such a Protestant spirit, there must be other explanations for the rapidly modernizing societies in the region. It should be pointed out that the Four Mini-Dragons were historically authoritarian regimes and not democracies during much of the Cold War years. Hong Kong was a British colony, whose Governor was directly appointed by the British government. South Korea was ruled by strongman Park Chung-hee for 18 years from 1961 to his death in 1979. The Republic of China in Taiwan was controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and then his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Singapore had been in the firm hands of Lee Kuan-yew since the island nation’s independence from Malaysia. In the cases of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, there was a combination of a capitalist market economy and an authoritative central government.

In the post-Mao era (1976–), or what has been called the era of Reform and Opening, China’s leaders and economic planners were looking for a successful model for China’s own economic development. The Four Mini-Dragons appeared to be particularly appealing and attractive. They were shining examples of Neo-authoritarianism: a unique combination of a liberal market economy, occasional yet strong state intervention, and a tightly controlled political system. China itself has shown gradual and steady economic liberalization as well as continual conservative politics since the beginning of Reform and Opening in the late 1970s to the present day.

In the ‘Introduction’ to the volume Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons, Tu Wei-ming writes:

An underlying Confucian ethic is the basis of an alternative modernity, an East Asian modernity that is different from Western modernity rooted in the Protestant ethic.Government leadership, the Confucian scholar-official mentality, the centrality of the family, network capitalism, voluntary associations rather than a Western-style civil society, the communal spirit rather than rugged individualism, the fear of losing face in public: all these factors contribute to the modernization of societies that were historically under the influence of Confucianism.

In an extremely influential essay, ‘Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center’, Tu Wei-ming offers a theory of deterritorialized Chinese culture.Reference Wei-ming⁸ The People’s Republic of China (1949–present) may not be the carrier of authentic traditional Chinese culture anymore. It has lost and abandoned much of the essence of the Chinese civilization. In the radical intellectual ferment of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Confucianism as the embodiment of traditional Chinese culture was attacked as an obstacle to the progress of democracy and science. In the last years of his life and rule (mid-1970s), Chairman Mao Zedong organized a nationwide campaign to criticize Confucius in order to preserve his own revolutionary legacy. Confucius was vilified as a reactionary, feudalistic figure in Chinese history.

For Tu Wei-ming, the region and countries at the periphery of the Chinese state, the Chinese diaspora, and the world at large may be the true inheritor of Chinese culture. However, in the intervening years, socialist China seems to have regained part of the distinction for being the homeland of Confucianism. The rapid growth of the Chinese economy lends credibility and legitimacy to the motherland. Taking a cue from non-profit organizations such as the Goethe Institute, the Chinese government has set up hundreds of Confucius Institutes all over the world. The function of a Confucius Institute is to teach the Chinese language and promote Chinese culture. This is also a way for the Chinese state to project soft power onto the world.

For instance, a special Confucius Institute was inaugurated at the University of California in Davis in September 2013. It is credited as the world’s first Confucius Institute devoted to Chinese food and beverage culture. It is hosted by the Department of Food Science and Technology, and Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis. The Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at UC Davis will provide a facility for a future ‘Confucius Kitchen’. At the opening ceremony, a letter of congratulations from Chinese President Xi Jinping was read to the audience. Martin Yan, author of Yan Can Cook, a UC Davis alum, came to support the event.⁹

Tu Wei-ming himself was educated outside mainland China, in Taiwan and the US. He was perhaps the most outspoken champion of the relevance of Confucianism for the modern world when he taught as Professor of History and Philosophy at Harvard University. It is interesting to note that after his retirement from Harvard University he became the founding Dean of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University, the People’s Republic of China. The Confucian philosopher returns home from abroad.

China, Origins of Early Capitalism, and the World System

In the comparative studies of global modernity, one central issue is to date the origin of the modern world-system and more importantly the origin of capitalism. The commonly accepted narrative is that capitalism originated from the West and gradually spread to the rest. China’s confrontation with the West, namely the Opium War in the mid-19th century, triggered China’s awakening to the modern world. The early modern period (jindai ) in China is roughly 1840–1919. The May Fourth New Culture Movement of 1919 signals the beginning of a properly modern period (xiandai ).

Another narrative of Chinese modernity from an indigenous Asian perspective can be traced to a line of thought and scholarship that was advanced by Japanese Sinologists and historians of the Kyoto School in the first half of the 20th century. In this view, Chinese or Asian modernity was a matter of internal development. Asian modernity originated in the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). The foundational figure in the Kyoto School of Sinology is Naitō Konan (1866–1934). He put forth his periodization of Chinese history, or what is called the ‘Naitō hypothesis’. According to him, the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and the Yuan (Mongols) Dynasty (1271–1368) belong to the first modern age, and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (1644–1911) are the second stage of the modern period. In other words, the ‘early modern period’ (kinsei ) is the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the modern period is the Ming and Qing Dynasty. Naitō provides numerous evidence for his arguments from various areas such as politics, economy, scholarship, literature, art, music, medicine, and so forth. Signs of Song capitalism include the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of monarchical autocracy, the standardization of the civil service examination system, the importance of commerce in the national economy, urbanization, population migration, flourish of popular culture, improved transportation by the Great Canal, maritime trade with foreign countries, and the widening of a money economy as opposed to a goods economy.¹⁰ People of the Song Dynasty also have a stronger sense of their national identity or proto-nationhood in comparison to the previous multi-ethnic Tang empire (618–907 AD).

Hisayuki Miyakawa summarizes Naitō’s theory in this fashion:

Miyazaki Ichisada (1901–1995), another major figure in the Kyoto School of Sinology, followed the lead of Naitō and further developed the hypothesis about the emergence of capitalism in China. For him, capitalism in China rose in the Northern Song period. He frames the origins of modernity in a world perspective. In his view, there are fruitful comparisons between the Northern Song Dynasty and Renaissance Europe.

According to these Japanese Sinologists, there are two Renaissances, two beginnings of the modern era, in the East and the West. East Asian early modernity () is not derived from the West. It is an indigenous, separate, parallel development in world history. The early modern period in East Asia first appears in the tenth century in the Song dynasty in China; it emerges in the 14th century in the Joseon Dynasty in Korea; and it occurs in the 17th century in Edo Japan.

The Mongol Empire (the Chinese Yuan Dynasty) established cross-continental, international, Eurasian communications. Chinese painting, printing, and other inventions spread to Europe. It might be said that the European Industrial Revolution was in part facilitated by the markets and raw materials of Asia. The thinkers and philosophers of the French Enlightenment were influenced by Confucian humanism that stood apart from the rivalry and conflict among Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The history of modern Europe and that of modern Asia are parallel, comparable, and occasionally interlocking. In regard to Miyazaki’s view of Asian modernity, Chinese scholar Wang Hui has noted:

Wang Hui recognizes the validity of this particular theory of Asian and global modernity despite its distorted original political ideology. The case of East Asia is then an illustration of the multiple origins of modernity in world history. More broadly, the question of global modernity revises the conventional linear Eurocentric account of the beginning of the modern world.

Indeed, Wang Hui’s four-volume work The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi) begins with the Song Dynasty.Reference Hui¹⁴ This approach is unusual among historians in the People’s Republic of China. The work revises the orthodox historiography of modern China. Wang Hui’s immediate source of inspiration comes from the writings of Naitō Konan and Miyazaki Ichisada, which are translated into Chinese in the early 1990s.He further elaborates on Naitō Konan’s thesis about the Tang-Song transition in Chinese history, namely, the transition from the medieval age (up to the Tang Dynasty) to the early modern period (beginning in the Song Dynasty). In addition to fundamental changes in economy, politics, literature, and art, there are also significant transformations in Chinese philosophy and religion.

The Song Dynasty is known for the rise of Neo-Confucianism (lixue) in Chinese intellectual history. Neo-Confucianism is a response to the rising popularity of Buddhism and Taoism at the time. It revamps and systemizes the old ideas of Confucianism that was losing its appeal among the people. The salient features of this philosophical orientation include an ‘inward turn’, ‘rationalization’, and ‘secularization’. In fact, these characteristics fall within the domain of modernity in the thought of Max Weber. These are also central ideas of the French Enlightenment. In the desire to promote their own agenda, the Enlightenment philosophers project an orientalist fantasy of China as a land ruled by rational-minded philosopher-kings.

The important changes in the Tang-Song transition as described by these scholars are plausible to a certain extent and may be accepted as contributing factors to the emergence of a modern world. But whether there is a basic epistemological break at the time is debatable. It is hard to speak of a ‘totalistic anti-traditionalism’, an awareness of newness as opposed to the old, and the awakening of modern consciousness.Reference Yü-Sheng¹⁵ A radical departure from traditional Chinese institutions and a revolutionary rejection of traditional Chinese thought did not occur until the early 20th century in such historic moments as the overthrow of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty in 1911 and the May Fourth New Culture Movement of 1919.

The Capitalist World System and the Chinese Tributary System

In the world-systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein, the capitalist world-system begins in Europe in the ‘long 16th century’ (1450–1640). ‘The three structural positions in a world-economy – core, periphery, and semiperiphery – had become stabilized by about 1640’. ‘Northwest Europe emerged as the core area of this world-economy’.Reference Wallerstein¹⁶ The so-called ‘world economy’ was a European world-economy at the time. Asia was external to this world economy. As this European-centered world economy evolved, much of Asia was incorporated into the periphery or semiperiphery by the 19th century. In the post-Second World War period, modernization theory boils down to a discourse of developed countries and developing countries. There exists a divide between the affluent North and the impoverished South. There was also the theory of Three Worlds during the Cold War Era. At some point, a new critical mode – postcolonialism – became popular in the humanities. It is a theory based on the history and reality of colonization, decolonization, and the lingering effects of colonialism in the postcolonial period. Because of China’s unique position, none of these theories can adequately demarcate China’s experience. The rise of China, or more appropriately the re-emergence of China in the late 20th century and the 21st century, has far-reaching implications in the description of the modern world-system.

Perhaps the most forceful and systematic rebuttal of European-centered world-systems theory in the fashion of Immanuel Wallerstein comes from another world-systems theorist, Andre Gunder Frank. Frank’s book ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age ostensibly puts Asia and especially China at the center of the world economic system in the early modern period – 1400–1800. In Frank’s words, there was a ‘Sinocentric world economy’. His conclusion at the end of Chapter 2 of this book, ‘The Global Trade Carousal 1400–1800’, needs to be quoted at length:

Frank further points out that the modern world system can be traced back to an initial period of political, economic expansion in Afro-Eurasia. ‘It was apparently centered at its far “eastern” end in Song China, but it also accelerated an accentuated reinsertion of its “western” end in Europe, which responded by going on several Crusades to plug its marginal economy more effectively into the new Afro-Eurasian dynamic’.Reference Frank¹⁸ China’s main exports to the world were large quantities of porcelain, silk, and tea. It demanded payment in silver. China persistently registered a huge surplus in the world trade market. It was the destination of the flow of silver.

Frank does not deviate from the basic tenet of any world-systems theory in maintaining that there existed an interregional and worldwide economy with a single international division of labor and a network of global trade in the early modern period. But Frank differs from conventional world-systems theories by stating that Asia, rather than Europe, was the center of such a global economy. He rejects the European-oriented teleology in the account of the origin and expansion of the early modern capitalist world system.

In the reshaping and revising of the capitalist world system, it is useful to refresh our memory with the traditional Eastern world-system, namely, the tributary system that characterized the Chinese world order in ancient as well early modern times. The Chinese world is a concentric circle of countries that owe symbolic allegiance to China: ‘the Middle Kingdom’. China stands at the core, and a ring of neighboring states near and far stands at the periphery. These smaller states pay ‘tributes’ to the Chinese Empire, and at the same the Chinese Emperor gives lavish gifts in return to these countries and offers protection against possible attack from others. Their kings’ titles are nominally conferred and approved by the Chinese emperor. This is an international political system of mutual legitimation.

More broadly, the Chinese conception of the world at large rests on a particular idea, tianxia, ‘all under heaven’, a universal empire. The Confucian idea of the world order is essentially a civilizational concept regardless race, ethnicity, and class. Whoever embraces humanity and receives an education (youjiao wulei ) is part of this universal order. Citizens live in a civilized world of rituals, rites, and principles. The Chinese word for virtue/humanity, ren , consists of two graphs for ‘person’ and ‘two’: plus . It is human association that defines the essence of humanity. Again, what ought be emphasized here is that the traditional Chinese world order is altogether different from the modern notion of the narrowly defined nation-state. Nationalism was also not part of traditional Chinese thinking. The Chinese concept was a universal empire, and yet a Sinocentric tributary world system.

The Chinese tributary system came to clash with European colonial powers in the mid-19th century. The Opium Wars and a series of subsequent conflicts between China and colonial powers gradually shattered the Chinese world order, or the Qing Dynasty at the time. The 1911 Republic Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established a modern nation-state: the Republic of China.

The style of world-systems theory in regard to the early modern period is to look at the world economy as a single totality with interregional connections. Such a theory can be Eurocentric (Immanuel Wallerstein), or Sinocentric (Andre Gunder Frank). On the other hand, the notion of East Asian modernity (the Kyoto School) is to argue for largely separate, parallel developments in capitalism between Asia and Europe, although there could be trade and mutual influences between the East and West now and then. My own thinking is that there is not one center in the early modern age and there are multiple origins of capitalism. The position and relative importance of a center in the world economy may shift due to developments at a given historical moment.

It might indeed yield significant insights by looking at early modern China (the Ming and the Qing) not as an isolated economic entity but as part of an expanding modern world-system. The Great Geographic Discovery might seem distant to the Middle Kingdom, but it did exert a major impact on China. For instance, some American plants were introduced to China. Chili pepper, corn, tomato, potato, and peanuts came to China, and they became important diets in China for hundreds of years since their arrival. Without chili pepper, there would be no such legendary Chinese culinary traditions as Sichuan cuisine and Hunan cuisine. These American plants were brought to China in the 17th century in the late Ming Dynasty, and were acclimatized and massively consumed from the 18th century in the Qing Dynasty. One of the hallmarks of the Qing was the exponential growth of its population. The introduction of plants from the New World contributed to the diversification of Chinese diets and fed an ever-growing population.

The discovery of silver mines in South America (Potosi, Bolivia) by Spanish colonialists triggered heavy trading of silver in the world market. The phenomenon impacted the world economy as well as the Chinese economy. The Ming adopted silver as its currency and was the biggest user of silver in the world. The arrival of silver from South America through the hands of Spain contributed to China’s commerce and economic prosperity. But toward the end of the Ming period, Spain tightened the flow of silver and stopped the direct shipping of silver from South America (via the Philippines) to China. This adversely affected China’s trade and economy. The shortage of silver limited the ability of various sectors of Chinese society, from the central government to individual farmers, to pay bills. To what extent the unbalance in world silver trade led to the fall of the Ming Dynasty has been a point of heated debate among scholars.

It seems apparent that the geographies of the modern world economy have undergone several rounds of dialectical reversals. Looking at the early modern period synchronically, the relative and absolute size of the economies of the first European capitalist countries such as the Netherlands and Great Britain are small in comparison with the giants of the East: India and China. In the early modern period: 1400–1800, Asia seems more like the ‘center’ of the world economy. But diachronically, the small European states grow exponentially in economic might and transform into empires over time. Since the Industrial Revolution, the size of the economy of the West surpasses that of the East and thus achieves the status of ‘center’ in the capitalist world system. Unsurprisingly, Asia is delegated to the periphery in the 19th century and much of 20th century by world-systems theorists. Yet, at turn of the 21st century, the East has risen again. The economic and political rebound of Asia in contemporary times has prompted historians and clairvoyants to re-reflect on the historic path and future fate of capitalism and the modern world at large.

New Configurations in the Global Economy

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, new developments in the world economy have brought about fundamental changes in the geopolitical configurations of economic power. There has been a gradual shift of the center of global capital and finance. Since the end of the Second World War, the global financial system has been dominated by the industrialized Western countries: the initial Group of 5 (United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan), later expanded into the G7 (plus Italy and Canada), and finally became the G8 (with the inclusion of Russia). The Bretton Woods monetary system has ensured that the US dollar is the standard trading currency in international commerce. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – the two major world financial organizations, have been dominated by the rich countries: the US, Western Europe, and Japan. These organizations set the standards and policies for economic development in the rest of the world. The borrowing countries must meet the terms and conditions of these lenders in order to receive aid. ‘Foreign aid’ has been part and parcel of Western discursive power, a way of changing the developing countries in accordance with the standards of the West (economic privatization, human rights, democracy, and so on).

With the emergence of developing economic powers, the importance of the G8 has diminished. This group can no longer set the agenda for world economy all by itself. A more representative and larger group, the G20, was established in 1999. Interestingly enough, several major economies in the world outside the traditional industrialized powers have banded together and formed a new organization, the so-called BRIC or BRICS. Brazil, Russia, India, and China were the initial four. Later on, South Africa was added and became the ‘S’ in BRICS. These countries cross and represent several continents: Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. At the Fifth Summit of BRICS in South Africa in March 2013, this group decides to establish a Development Bank of its own. There seems to be a genuine desire to create an alternative center of finance, capital, and discursive power in the world economy. These countries attempt to be the new power brokers in the international order. BRICS’s Development Bank, if it truly materializes, would become an alternative to the IMF and the World Bank. It would set its policies and agendas for providing financial aid to other countries.

At the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in September 2013, the leaders of these countries proposed to establish the organization’s own Development Fund and its own Development Bank. As a trans-continental Eurasian organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has maintained an increasingly prominent position in regional and world affairs. Trade flourished along the legendary ‘Silk Road’ in ancient times, and these modern countries in the region now attempt to regain their former glory. Obviously, in this reshuffling of the global economic and financial order, China plays an important role. After a hiatus of two centuries of marginalization in the modern age, China seems to be poised to return to the center stage of global capital in the 21st century.

Another case in point is China’s economic relationship with Africa. Their trade has grown tremendously since the beginning of the 21st century, reaching US$200 billion in 2012. China is Africa’s largest trading partner now, surpassing Africa’s traditional trading partners such as the US and France. China does business with the countries of Africa. There are no conditions attached when China strikes a deal with an African country. In the Chinese government’s own words, China does not interfere in the domestic matters of other countries. China heavily invests in building up Africa’s infrastructure – roads, highways, railroads, bridges, ports, dams, sports stadiums, government offices, and so on. As a result, Africa’s physical landscape is changing drastically due to the Chinese presence. As some contend, the Chinese have built more roads in the last ten years than the previous colonial governments in a hundred years. At the same time, Chinese commodities flood African markets, and Chinese companies obtain the rights to mining Africa’s natural resources (minerals, metal, oil, and so on).

China’s way of working with other developing countries has been met with both praise and criticism in the international community. Some people regard China’s engagement with Africa as a shining example of South–South cooperation. Chinese ‘business’ is totally different from the Western ‘aid’ model, which is an instrument of co-opting third-world countries into a Western alliance. Neither does China have the postcolonial mentality of ‘guilt and pity’ in dealing with former European colonies. China treats African countries as equal partners.Reference Moyo¹⁹ But critics see it as an impediment to progress in democracy and human rights in the world. In her trip to Africa, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted that China’s involvement in Africa borders on neo-colonialism.

In western academia, there are scholars who envision the peaceful ascent of China as the possible beginning of a new world order in the 21st century. The teleology of a resurgent China animates such a re-description of the past, present, and future of the capitalist world-system. In his book Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, political scientist and world-systems theorist Giovanni Arrighi entertains the possibility of an emergent ‘Beijing Consensus’ as opposed to the dominant ‘Washington Consensus’. He poses such a question:

Arrighi wrote this book in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi War. For him, the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is but another manifestation of the usual manner with which the West deals with the rest – by way of attack, force, coercion, and violence. In contrast, China looks like an appealing alternative benign superpower. As mentioned earlier, the pre-modern Chinese world order was a system of tributary states. China maintained its central position in that part of the ancient world due to primarily its cultural prestige, rather than the use of force. The ‘Middle Kingdom’ did not open up markets in other countries, exploit them economically, or set up colonies abroad. In modern times, China suffered in the hands of encroaching imperialist powers, was partially colonized and invaded, and was not a colonizer. Today, socialist China has the potential of bringing about a non-capitalist market economy. The Chinese economy is a case of ‘accumulation without dispossession’. Unlike the US-dominated world order, the ‘Beijing Consensus’ might create a new international condition where the South and the North, the East and the West, can live in mutual respect and peaceful coexistence.

Neoliberalism versus Socialism

At the early phase of China’s economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s, China’s leaders and economic planners look to the rapidly industrializing nations in Asia as models of emulation. On the one hand, these nations lie at the periphery of the capitalist world system. On the other hand, their economies have been thoroughly integrated in the chain of labor, production, and commodity circulation in global capitalism. However small the size of these Mini-Dragons might be, they are successful export-oriented economies. Initially inspired by the Mini-Dragons, the Dragon itself, the heartland of Confucianism, has awakened and built a large export-oriented economy. By the first decade of the 21st century, China remains the largest exporter in the world; it also holds the largest foreign reserve in the world. The economic luster of the Four Mini-Dragons, and even of Japan, pales in comparison with the scale of China’s explosive economic growth. China has surpassed Japan as the second largest economy in the world. In 2012, the size of the Chinese economy stands at $8 trillion and the size of the US economy is $15 trillion. Given the pace of China’s economic growth in the past decades, it is predicted that the Chinese economy will reach the size of the US economy around the year 2020.

As early as the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, the East Asian model of modernization suffered a serious blow. The so called ‘tiger economies’ of many countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia as well as the Japanese economy underwent a downturn. Asian-style network capitalism received the pejorative nickname of ‘crony capitalism’. But China stood firm, did not devalue its currency amid the frenzy of currency devaluation among other Asian countries, and achieved modest economic growth. It stabilized the region. In retrospect, it seems that a reshuffling of the capitalist world system is at work, and hence there is a need to re-narrate the story of global modernity.

The 1989 Tiananmen Incident set back China’s political and social reforms. However, in the early 1990s, Deng Xiaoping tried to save his legacy of Reform and Opening and initiated another round of economic liberalization. The slogan of ‘socialist market economy’ was officially endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state. At the turn of the 21st century, China was formally admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is an important event for the Chinese economy. It signals the integration of nominally socialist China into the capitalist world economy. China has become a main link in the chain of international division of labor, manufacture, circulation, and distribution. China’s impact on the global economy is felt by consumers from around the world. From low-end products such as shoes and toys to personal computers, each US consumer buys and uses things that are made in China but bear American brand-names.

China’s rampant market economy has exacted a heavy toll on its citizens. Countless inefficient state-own enterprises (SOEs) go bankrupt. Tens of millions of workers become jobless. People need to adapt to a Darwinian world of competition and survival. Income disparity among the people has risen to an alarming level. Numerous citizens have been reduced to poverty and despair. This is not what socialism originally promised the people. What is officially called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ or a ‘socialist market economy,’ is but disguised yet blatant neoliberalism. Neoliberalist economic practices and economic policies have fundamentally changed the nature of Chinese society.

David Harvey considers China’s leader Deng Xiaoping to be a chief practitioner of neoliberalism in the last quarter of the 20th century. Harvey’s book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, opens with these sentences:

Of course, Deng Xiaoping did not call himself a ‘neoliberalist’. Nor would he call himself a ‘neo-authoritarian’. Liberalism and authoritarianism may seem to be opposites at first glance. But in the Chinese case, these two things are two sides of the same coin. Neoliberalism is the economic side, and neo-authoritarianism is the political side of the coin. Deng originally learned lessons about how to balance the two sides from the erstwhile Four Mini-Dragons. Deng was also famous for his pragmatism. His memorable phrases include: ‘It does not matter if it is a black cat or white cat as long as it catches mice’; ‘cross the river by feeling the stones’.

A group of academics, humanists, and social commentators in China have been labeled as neoliberalists (or new liberalists). These people are strong advocates of the importance of a market economy. For them, a functional civil society, a flourishing public sphere, freedom of expression, and private property are the things that ought to be developed more fully in China. Modernity is still an unfinished project in China.

As a backlash against a growing capitalist economy, there is no lack of nostalgia for and defense of the socialist legacy in contemporary China. What is loosely called New Leftism (xin zuopai) among academics and the educated elite has emerged since the 1990s. These New Leftists denounce neoliberalism and foreground the issues of social justice, economic equality, and the fair distribution of wealth. They do not jettison the legacy of Maoism and attempt to hold onto the utopian impulses of socialist China.

Lin Chun, a political scientist who is now based in London, has forcefully expressed a distinct Chinese socialist model of development. She is opposed to cultural explanations of what China was but rather draws on the revolutionary, socialist, Maoist legacy in modern history. The Chinese difference is not due to residual ancient culture or some ‘Confucian ethic’, but is rooted in the concrete historical praxis of socialism in the 20th century. At the very beginning of her book The Transformation of Chinese Socialism, she writes:

Apparently, Lin Chin attempts to chart out a path of social and historical development quite unique in modern world history. Chinese modernity is a case of alternative modernity. It is different from colonial modernity, Soviet socialism, and Western capitalism. Toward the end of her book, Lin Chun summed the Chinese model as follows:

As a passionate defender of Chinese socialism, Lin Chun believes that the Chinese model of development is exceptional. Chinese socialism is different from the Soviet model as well as the Western capitalist, neoliberalist model. China has been searching for a pattern of social and economic development suitable to its own unique condition.

With the appearance of New Leftist intellectual discourse, there is the rise of New Leftist literature. This type of literature depicts ‘social ills and injustices created by procapitalist economic reform’, ‘the miserable fates, deplorable living conditions, and unjust social treatment of the dispossessed and underprivileged people from the social bottom (diceng)’.Reference Lu²⁴ The characters who inhabit the pages of such literature are laid-off employees, factory workers, migrant people, and poor peasants. This literary trend is in part a return to the tradition of realism that was abandoned by a generation of authors in the pursuit of individualism, private space, and literary autonomy. However, this newfound realism is also different from old socialist realism that paints pictures of ‘class struggles’. This New Leftist realism is devoted to the portrayal of everyday life, the trivia and misery of ordinary workers, peasants, and citizens caught in a society transitioning to a capitalist market economy.

As I have outlined in this essay, there have been different descriptions of Chinese modernity from various angles: cultural interpretation of China based on the tradition of Confucianism or the ‘Confucian ethic’ (Tu Wei-ming); historical explanation of the rise of Chinese capitalism (the Kyoto School; Timothy Brook); world-systems analysis of the predominance of China in the world economy in the early modern period and at the present time (Andre Gunder Frank; Giovanni Arrighi); political interpretation of Chinese socialism by Leftist theorists (Lin Chun). However insightful, one-sided, or contradictory these various positions may appear, they are efforts to stake out an alternative path of modernity. These critics attempt to tell stories of capitalism and modernity beyond the confines of a Eurocentric master discourse.Reference Lu²⁵ They try to make sense of the specific local condition of China in the broad context of global modernity.