Xueren

Xueren (English: The Scholar[1]) was an influential Chinese independent intellectual journal that ran from 1991 to 2000.[2] It was founded and edited by Chen Pingyuan, Wang Hui, and Wang Shouchang under the sponsorship of a Japanese foundation.[2] In order to work around censorship conditions in the Chinese publishing industry that make it more difficult for periodicals to get approval than books, Xueren was published as a "series" in the latter format.[2] Other journals that have taken the same approach include Res Publica and Horizons.[2]

Scholar Chaohua Wang locates Xueren's origins in "the self-examination of intellectuals intimately involved in the ferment of the eighties":

The project of its editors [. . .] was to retrieve the history of modern Chinese scholarship (xueshu shi), a tradition they felt was in danger of being obscured or forgotten under the pressure of imported theories. In doing so, they wanted to clarify their own intellectual identity and responsibilities. What was their position in a historical chain of scholarly development? When and how should a scholar speak out on public issues?[2]

Co-founder Wang Hui characterizes his and his colleagues' motivations similarly, but without a critical approach toward "imported theories" in academe as a primary component of their intellectual project, and with more of an eye toward directly socially relevant goals. According to him, Xueren was created to facilitate an effort by young intellectuals to "reconsider" modern Chinese history in the wake of the failure of the 1989 democracy movement, a "process of reflection" that

included serious reconsideration of modern history, conscientious rethinking of attempts to carry out radical reform on the basis of Western models, close investigation of the Chinese historical legacy and its contemporary significance, and necessary critiques of certain of the consequences of radical political action.

However, Wang Hui states that Xueren "did not pursue any particular academic agenda."[3]

Example table of contents

The 648-page seventh issue of Xueren (May 1995) printed the following table of contents in English (though all articles were in Chinese):

PageTitleAuthor
1On Kant's Cultural PhilosophyHong Qian
5Hong Qian: A Rational LifeWang Wei
15Hong Qian and Otto NeurathFan Dainan
31Mority Schlik on Content and FormHan Linhe
43A Commentary on the Eastern Flow of Western Geography During the Late QingGuo Shaunglin
85Translingual Practice: The Discourse of Individualism Between China and the WestLydia H. Liu
121Cai Yuanpei's Philosophy of Gender EqualityXia Xiaohong
163Liu Shipei's Research on Chinese Academic HistoryWu Guangxing
187The Issues Raised During the Debate Between Xiong Shili and Liang ShumingJing Haifeng
211The Vijñānavāda School and the Concept of HetuLuo Zhao
271A New Look at the Origins of Tibetan CultureWang Xiaodun
303A Study of the Dagger-Axe with the "Bi bing" Inscriptions Found at JingmenLuo Zhao
325The Mo Sword and the Military Affairs of the Great Tang EmpireLi Jinxiu
341The Bagu Eight-Part Essay and Classical Chinese Prose of the Ming and QingChen Pingyuan
373On the Adherents of the Ming DynastyZhao Yuan
395On the Relationship Between Changzhou 常州 Woman's Culture and the Yanghu School Writers 阳湖派Cao Hong
419In Search of New Models for Research on ChinaLiu Dong
469Reaching Out From Tradition: The Connection Between Peace and Political OrderHe Huaihong
501The Fate of the Doctrine of Two Categories of Truth: From the Seventeenth Century to the PresentXu Youyu
523Theory and Practice: A Study of the History of Philosophical ThinkingZhang Rulun
561Song See Yeol and the Zhuzi School of the Lee Dynasty in KoreaChen Lai
577Ogyu Sorai and His Innovations to Japanese ConfucianismWang Zonghiangz
Notes on Academic History Research
601Breaking Away Form [sic] the Cycle of the Han and Song SchoolsChen Shaoming
615A Brief Account of the Revival of the Xunzi School During the Mid-QingYang Hu
627A Critique of Xiao Yang's "The Law of Causality, Historicism, and Autonomy"Chen Lian

See also

  • Dushu, a journal of which Wang Hui would become editor in 1996, and which had been in the mid-to-late eighties a key popularizer of the "imported theories" to which Xueren's founding was in part a reaction

Notes

  1. The Scholar was the translation preferred by the editors of Xueren, appearing thus in their journal, but the title is sometimes also translated Scholars.
  2. Wang Chaohua. "Introduction: Minds of the Nineties," p. 17. One China, Many Paths. Ed. Wang Chaohua. New York: Verso, 2003.
  3. Wang Hui. China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition, pp. 84 and 202. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
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