Chinese Socialism as Vernacular Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This paper follows the life of an idea, a fundamental concept in modern Chinese intellectual life: socialism. It explores this idea as an alternative form of Chinese cosmopolitanism, drawing from Pheng Cheah’s identification of two kinds of Chinese cosmopolitanism: mercantile and revolutionary. If part of what we mean by cosmopolitanism is the local use of an external, or international, or otherwise “independent” (relative to local power and practice) ideology or discourse to promote an agent’s sense of social good at home and connection to the world, then the ways that socialist thought, ideology and praxis have been employed in China in the twentieth century constitute one such strain of cosmopolitanism. Shehuizhuyi (socialism) meant related but significantly different things to Chinese in the twentieth century. This essay argues that Chinese socialism can be viewed as a version of vernacular cosmopolitanism through two examples: Wang Shiwei in the 1940s and Deng Tuo in the 1960s, as well as the discourse of Pan-Asianism before and after the Mao era. Chinese socialism was as much a terrain of debate and contestation about what it means to be “Chinese and modern” as it was a shared vocabulary and set of aspirations. All along it has been able to play the role of cosmopolitan thought for some influential Chinese thinkers and doers—connecting China to the world in order to pursue universal values.

Keywords

Socialism / vernacular cosmopolitanism / intellectuals / Wang Shiwei / Deng Tuo / Begriffsgeschichte / Pan-Asianism

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill