Introduction

China has undergone a unique path of development in its post-Maoist incarnation. The decades since 1978 witnessed China's rapid rise to economic wealth and superpower status. The 2000s have seen China's national prosperity being frequently contrasted with the severe recessions that have troubled the West. Chinese thought or critical inquiry (pipanxing de sixiang) in the last three decades has also developed new outlooks: indeed, there is even a radical break between the intellectuality of the Maoist time (1949–1978) and that of the post-Maoist era (1978–present). One major difference between the two periods is that the latter saw the rise of intellectuals as a leading group in mainland society. Whereas it was the Party leadership that had previously set the tone of cultural and intellectual life, academics and independent scholars now guided the production of Chinese social and political thought. Another key feature of the post-Maoist era is the development of critical independence that enabled intellectual discourse to flourish once more after the strict ideological control of the Maoist era…