Utopia and utopianism in the contemporary Chinese context : texts, ideas, spaces / edited by David Der-wei Wang, Angela Ki Che Leung, and Zhang Yinde.

Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Preface / David Der-wei Wang -- Prologue. The formation and evolution of the concept of state in Chinese culture / Cho-yun Hsu -- Imagining "all under heaven" : the political, intellectual, and academic background of a new utopia / Ge Zhaoguang (translated by Michael Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke) -- Liberalism and utopianism in the New Culture movement : case studies of Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi / Peter Zarrow -- The Panglossian dream and dark consciouscness : modern Chinese literature and utopia / David Der-wei Wang -- Nihilism beneath revolutionary utopianism : on Wang Jingwei's "Self-willed sacrifice" / Xu Jilin (translated by Hang Tu) -- The world in common : utopian or cosmopolitan? A remark on the political thought of Xiong Shili / Huang Kuan-Min -- Anticipatory utopia and redemptive utopia in postrevolutionary China / Hang Tu -- Utopianism is a humanism : about Ge Fei's Jiangnan trilogy / Yinde Zhang -- The spirit of Zhuangzi and the Chinese utopian imagination / Jianmei Liu -- Traveling through time and searching for utopia : utopian imaginaries in Internet time-travel fiction / Shuang Xu (translated by Carlos Rojas) -- From silent China to sonorous Hong Kong : a literary sketch / Chien-Hsin Tsai -- Before and after The midnight after : Occupy Central's specters of utopia and dystopia / Carlos Rojas -- Legalistic and utopian : Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement / Sebastian Veg -- Coda. Utopia, Dystopia, heterotopia : theoretical cross-examinations on ideal, reality, and social innovation / Chan Koonchung.

Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social engagement after it was introduced into the Chinese context in the nineteenth century. In fact, pursuit of utopia has often led to action--such as the Chinese Revolution and the Umbrella Movement--and contested consequences. Covering a time span that goes from the late Qing to our days, the authors show that few ideas have been as influencing as utopia, which has compellingly shaped the imaginaries that underpin China's historical change. Utopianism contributed to the formation of the Chinese state itself--shaping the thought of key figures of the late Qing and early Republican eras such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen--and outlived the labyrinthine debates of the second halve of the twentieth century, both under Mao's rule and during the post-socialist era. Even in the current times of dystopian narratives, a period in which utopia seems to be less influential than in the past, its manifestations persistently provide lifelines against fatalism or cynicism. This collection shows how profoundly utopian ideas have nurtured both the thought of crucial figures during these historical times, the new generation of mainland Chinese and Sinophone intellectuals, and the hopes of twenty-first-century Hong Kong activists.

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