Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
In the years following Tiananmen, new currents of thought began to emerge and play a significant role in social, intellectual, and political circles. Most of these currents had roots in the 1980s, but either they were more peripheral ideas that moved toward the center of intellectual concern or they underwent a significant evolution in the context of post-Tiananmen China, or both. In all cases, they reflect an effort to come to grips intellectually with the political failure of reform in the 1980s, the economic and social problems that emerged (or became more acute) in the 1990s, and the type of political system that might be effective in coping with the problems facing China, both domestically and internationally. As we will see in this and the next two chapters, deep divisions opened up within the intellectual community, even as the place of that community in Chinese society changed significantly. In broad terms, even as the government maintained its own ideological line, a new arena of public discourse developed. Over time, the government took increasing account of this public opinion, sometimes absorbing ideas from it, sometimes engaging it, and sometimes suppressing it. The purpose of Part II is to focus on intellectual developments in the 1990s; in Part III, we will look more closely at the government–intellectual interaction.
One trend that emerged in the 1980s was that of “new authoritarianism,” which re-emerged in the 1990s as “neoconservatism.”
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.