Illiberal China

This book analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison to and in conflict with liberalism inside and outside the P.R.C. How do mainland politics and discourses challenge 'our' own, chiefly liberal and anti-'statist' political frameworks? To what extent is China paradoxically intertwined with a liberal economism? How can one understand its general refusal of liberalism, as well as its frequent, direct responses to electoral democracy, universalism, Western media, and other normative forces? Vukovich argues that the Party-state poses a challenge to our understandings of politics, globalization, and even progress. To be illiberal is not necessarily to be reactionary and vulgar but, more interestingly, to be anti-liberal and to seek alternatives to a degraded liberalism. In this way Chinese politics illuminate the global conjuncture, and may have lessons in otherwise bleak times.

Uncovers new insights on the ongoing Chinese polity and its distinctiveness Reconciles "theory" and material analyses and brings an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to a complex subject Controversially reassesses the Chinese polity even as the Chinese model becomes more and more relevant around the world

Autorentext

Daniel F. Vukovich is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Hong Kong University. Author of the acclaimed China and Orientalism (2012), his research masterfully integrates a variety of disciplines and insights from Western and Chinese academia.

Inhalt

1. On Illiberalism & Seeing Like An Other State.- 2. The New Left & the Old Politics of Knowledge: Battling for Chinese Political Discourse.- 3. From Making Revolution to Making Charters: Liberalism and Economism in the Late Cold War.- 4. No Country, No System: Liberalism, Autonomy, and Depoliticization in Hong Kong.- 5. Wukan!: Democracy, Illiberalism, and their Vicissitudes.- 6. The Ills of Liberalism: Thinking Through the P.R.C & the Political.