Intellectuals and the State in Post-Mao China (review)

2o8 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. i, Spring 1999 Ka-ho Mok. Intellectuals and the State in Post-Mao China. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. xiii, 238 pp. Hardcover, isbn 0-312-17741-0. China's long history is replete with purges, banishments, and rehabilitations—to which the state's rulers periodically subjected members ofthe educated elite. Rewards were high for those who made the right choices, sought the right patronage, and identified and promoted the right policies. Punishments were dire for those who failed to do so, or, at best, led to exclusion from privilege and relegation to oblivion. Post-Mao China has undergone vast changes since imperial times, yet the tension persists between the educated strata (whether in China or abroad) and the state. Ka-ho Mok's study addresses the problem ofideas advanced by intellectuals in reference to changing social contexts and the strategies that they can muster in order to act. By applying a sociological perspective, Mok has raised a number of provocative questions. Not the least of these is to what extent Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and the increasing participation ofintellectuals in technological managerialism and business are changing their status as well as their ideological orientations. An important component ofMok's analytical framework is "generational location," that is, the generation to which an intellectual belongs, as suggested by Li Zehou and Vera Schwarcz in their Studies in Chinese History (1983-1984). Li and Schwarcz stipulate that, although chronological age may vary, each generation of modern Chinese intellectuals has certain major characteristics. Of the six generations they identify, the last three are of greatest interest to Mok. The fourth generation in their scheme belongs to the Anti-Japanese War period—those who joined the revolution as a result ofthe war. The fifth generation is the Liberation period generation, which sincerely welcomed the revolution, and the sixth is the Cultural Revolution generation, which has attempted to find a new vision of self and the world. Four ofthe book's nine chapters are extended discussions ofmajor dissident personalities: Yan Jiaqi (fifth generation), Fang Lizhi (fourth-fifth generations), Liu Binyan (fourth generation), and Liu Xiaobo (sixth generation). A fifth chapter deals more briefly with several sixth-generation intellectuals. Aside from the impact of generation on intellectuals and the educational opportunities open to them at differing times, their ideological change, Mok argues, is not a simple response to changing social contexts. When intellectuals change© 1999 by University their social location, their ways ofthinking ("ideological production and ofHawai'i Pressformation") also undergo change. This is especially true ofthose who left China after the Tiananmen massacre. Mok further argues that opportunities (or lack thereof) for active political involvement have an important impact on ideology Reviews 209 and play a part in an intellectual's changing views. These and other criteria that he proposes establish a useful framework for understanding an intellectual's changing positions at various stages ofhis life and must be seen, Mok explains, relative to the state's imposition or relaxation ofcontrols. Although Mok occasionally acknowledges the limitations ofhis framework, its determinisi nature is not altogether comfortable. It neglects the fortuitous—the unexpected that intervenes in the lives ofhuman beings and how they formulate decisions. Deciding on a course and acting upon it certainly played a major role in the lives ofintellectuals when they called for democratic reforms and joined pro-democracy movements. But commitment to ideas and ideals could also entail expulsion from the Party (as in Liu Binyan's case in 1987) or long years in jail (as in Wei Jingsheng's case). Intellectuals took risks that could not always be calculated. Mok counts altogether four pro-democracy movements: in 1976, 1978-1983, 1986-1987, and 1989. But he also finds that democracy did not have the same meaning to those who championed it, and that the Tiananmen students, for example, had only half-baked notions of what they considered democracy to be. Mok's special concern is to show how changing social contexts also produce ideological change in the concepts ofdemocracy ofthe four dissident intellectuals discussed here. Thus, Yan Jiaqi believed that if China was to develop a civil society, the democratic practice...