How to become an academic all-powerful in the post-Tiananmen China: the example of the route of Wang Hui and the five keys to success ... The Chinese model
A faultless within the Chinese university system, extended stays in the flagship institutions of the United States, a bushy mass of publications in English and in Chinese, one active role in Chinese intellectual life and a pen that leaves no one indifferent except the Communist Party censors are the key to success for Chinese university today. Notice to interested parties.
Wang Hui (汪晖), professor of Chinese literature at Tsinghua University, focuses on different narratives of modernity proposed by Chinese scholars since the Song Dynasty. You follow me? Its target audience consists of young students keen on philosophy and Western theorists fuel for new manifestations of postmodernity. For most Chinese Wang Hui is thus only one of these illustrious strangers, an intellectual with strong ego but not much use.
Ironically, the university enjoys an enviable reputation within the international academic community. According to the journal Foreign Policy
, Wang is one of 100 public intellectuals
the world's most influential in 2008. To give a glimpse of a list, Wang Hui rubs shoulders with the Montreal philosopher Charles Taylor, the successful writer Malcolm Gladwell who has just published The Outliers
and the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff. The Chinese side, Some will recognize the economist Fan Gang
and publisher of highly relevant business magazine Caijing public
Hu Shuli .
Certainly, Wang Hui does not talk show Oprah and the fact very little extension. It binds her voice with any victim of the harsh regime (Hu Jia, Liu Xiaobo ...). In short, Wang does not in the popular or in the division. It is above all a first class university publishing shortly on a variety of topics ranging from scientism to the issue of Tibetan independence, philosophy Kang Youwei conditions of ordinary workers, while the referring to theoretical models borrowed from the most progressive currents of comparative literature.
The thesis here is that I support the construction of the university influence in China is increasingly based on a system of meritocracy in the West. In any case, Wang Hui is a good example of a new type of intellectual who has emerged in China after 1978. Professionally devoted to his post by Tsinghua and numerous national and international recognition, Wang Hui typed the course of the academic coveted by Chinese academic institutions: 1) partial training in the West, preferably the United States, 2) expansion overseas, while maintaining and 3) an active role on the intellectual scene in mainland China and 4) a line of thought while remaining critical the present situation does not really messes up the party and did not attack head-on, 5) ability to create controversy within the Chinese intellectual community.
Wang Hui was born in 1959 in Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. He began his university education in his province and joined the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing in 1985. Editor Tang Tao, renowned specialist in Chinese literature, he completes a doctorate on the works of Lu Xun. During his years in Beijing, Wang explores different disciplinary approaches (history, philosophy, literature) and familiarize themselves with certain Western theories (postmodernism, postructuralisme). The Chinese intellectual community is now in full swing and Wang Hui, like his classmates, enjoy the benefits of new translations available on the Chinese market. In 1988, he completed his doctorate and became a permanent researcher of the CASS, renowned center of research in social sciences and literature. During spring 1989, he took part demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, like most of his colleagues at CASS.
After the massacre of June 4, follows a period of repression in the Chinese intelligentsia. Many young scientists are now openly criticized as overly liberal. An article published by Wang Hui few months earlier resurfaces. It accuses the researcher of bourgeois excess. Rehabilitation is imminent.
Despite an enforced stay of one year in Shaanxi, Wang easily reinstate academic circles in 1991 and obtained the following year, the prestigious award of the Harvard-Yenching Institute in Chinese studies. He then went to Harvard and UCLA, where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship.
This will be the beginning of a series of trips abroad that Wang Hui will take to become more familiar with Western academia. So the second important ingredient in the rise of influence of a Chinese intellectual: his ability to transcend the borders of China and participate in discussions that go beyond Chinese territorial and linguistic borders. During the 90's and early 2000, Wang Hui attends conferences in the U.S., Germany, England, France, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
Quickly, the intellectual interest it arouses abroad (outside networks Sinology) allows it to publish in leading journals such as Comparative Literature and Social Text Boundary2, two University publications Duke. In 2003, Harvard University Press published two of his essays under the title China's New Order. Other publications followed suit more mainstream weight. Le Monde Diplomatique
reproduced shortened versions of his essays
headlights. In fall 2006, the New York Review
of Books published a long article on Wang Hui
presenting it as the China's New Leftist . Academic journals to the press greater public relevance of the work of Wang Hui was hailed by reviewers non-Chinese.
Hyperactive China Wang Hui does not, however, said farewell to the Chinese intellectual scene. Despite his long stay abroad, Wang Hui floods the journals and publishing houses of its new Chinese studies. On the one hand, Wang Hui remain to this day, researchers in academic institutions in Beijing. It will turn researcher at the CASS, then from 2002, professor of Chinese literature at Tsinghua University.
other hand, Wang Hui holds a leadership role within the public space. Parallel to his research, he founded with two friends specialists in Chinese literature, a new independent academic journal.
Xueren (The scholar) was born in 1991 as referred to rediscover the world of Chinese knowledge. The commitment of its editors is obvious: they finance themselves in part its publication until its closure in 2001. Little read outside networks university, the magazine still gets some success in the intellectual community. It offers long articles on thick pointed questions, far from any sensitive political issue. Since its founding, Xueren becomes a vector of dissemination of national studies (Guoxue) in China. It offers a haven of reflection for many researchers still disturbed by the brutality of 1989.
In 1996, Wang Hui was appointed editor of a leading journal of the Chinese intellectual life,
Dushu (Read 读书). Founded in 1979, the magazine has seen a series of illustrious intellectuals his head. Wang Hui has an ambition: to make this magazine, a leading center of academic research (which it is not at the time) while preserving the elements that made him famous: a stylish pen and neat. How to describe Dushu? Not an academic journal, nor a news magazine, it looks like a cross between
New York Review of Books Harper's and
. It allows the publication of articles about famous people from academic circles but also includes more advanced articles on philosophy, sociology, literature and economics. Under the hand of Wang Hui Ping Huang and his co-editor, Dushu become, during the second half of the 90s, a new avenue labeled intellectual left. At the same time, she became a magazine read more. Wang Hui himself believes the movement to more then 100 000 copy. In the late 90s, the publisher and the magazine did not become one.
In 2000, when prices Li Kai-shing Foundation in collaboration with the journal Dushu is attributed to Wang Hui, tongues wag. (For a full version of the saga, read the excellent article by Xu Youyu
here. The appearance of conflict of interest causes reactions less than complimentary in various electronic media who accuse Wang Hui enjoy its status as self-publisher for granting an award.
"How can we be part of the jury award and self-nominate and ultimately win the same prize? "Some ask. "What arrogance for a critique of institutionalized corruption to show so little of ethics! ", Others decry. The influence of Wang Hui's work in the United States is quickly taken to task. "Why put a price expected to recognize academic excellence of a Chinese intellectual who did password that half the time ", enraged young bloggers. The scandal quickly slips into a baseless accusation. The scandal is fading slowly, but highlighted the difficult reality Chinese intellectual.
In summer 2007, when he presses Sanlian withdraw his post as editor of Dushu, many welcome the reign of the man who had apparently led the magazine in a direction too academic and factional. Supporters Wang bind this decision to a desire to reduce the influence (public power) of the university and the New Left in China. Despite
this setback bitterly conceded by Wang Hui's career it is not struck by the apparently political decision. Wang does not lose his job at Tsinghua and continues to circulate as they see fit between China, Europe and the United States.
Some readers of this entry will surely ask what is so outstanding in the path of Wang Hui. Is not this the same thing in North America? Do not we also praise the graduates of Ivy League academics and hyperactive multiply publications, magazines and other direction? What is different in China is that such academic requirements Not only are new, they are also combined with an intellectual culture still poorly adapted to rapid changes in its ranks. Thus, the greater autonomy of academia against the ruling class is not specifically marked. The limits are not exceeded always ambiguous. And merit is not enough to survive and succeed in the Chinese academic community. It must also be resourceful and able to adapt to ever changing social norms in public space in China. How far criticize? How to reveal weaknesses in the system without the full attack whip? Here is the card any mystery to public intellectual in China.
