Conditional Democracy: The Contemporary Debate on Political Reform in Chinese Universities by Emilie Frenkiel

Author:Emilie Frenkiel [Frenkiel, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Democracy, Political Ideologies, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781907301698
Google: IR1mCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28544320
Publisher: ECPR Press
Published: 2015-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

In and out of the system

In that context, intellectuals who had been excluded from official circles when they began their careers gradually integrated with the system, because they contributed to defining the problems, conditions and strategic options for developing China. They simultaneously relied on the knowledge, experience and skills they had accumulated to grasp the Chinese trajectory of development as accurately as possible. Wang Juntao develops the idea that these independent figures monopolised the system, ‘to institutionalize their independence by developing independent institutions as the reforms deepened in the late 1980s. Finally, they achieved political and social bases for their independence in the 1990s when they took positions in the official system.’19 There was a fine line between intellectuals who belonged to the system and those who didn’t. Indeed, who could be truly outside, apart from those who had been completely excluded, like Wei Jingsheng and Fang Lizhi (after 1989)? In an interview given to Cheng Yingxiang and published in Dégel de l’Intelligence (Thawing of Intelligence),20 economist, political scientist and Marxist theoretician Su Shaozhi – who had first coined the concept of China’s ‘first stage of socialism’ (shehui zhuyi de diji jieduan), argues that people’s professional situation is not a valid criterion for making that distinction. He reminds us that publications which exclusively emanated from civil society had been banned after the Democracy Wall episode in spring 1979, with only a few exceptions:21

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