ABSTRACT
China's rise is not only challenging the geopolitical “new world order,” it is also challenging the assumptions concerning the order of things. Such a bold opening claim is made knowing that China's rise is both a physical and intellectual challenge, the latter especially so for the Western academy. Simply put, Chinese modernity is unlike anything seen before, a mixture of consumer capitalism, Leninist-Marxist authoritarianism, and rich legacy of Chinese culture, consolidating the mix on an unprecedented scale compressed within a very short span of time. Attempting to describe how China is using the methods and discourse of the Western social sciences, which are now also firmly part of Chinese modernity, is a perpetual state of reflection within Chinese Studies itself. If global capitalism has a logic, then how will it play out in China's cities? If Enlightenment ideals have spread to the four corners, what impact has this had on Chinese thinking? What scope is there for Chinese forms of reasoning and social/cultural life to adapt, respond and be applied in new contexts? If urban neo-liberalism, both as an ideology and as a form of governmental reasoning and subjectivity, is on the ascendency, then should we expect to find the neoliberal subject wandering the shopping malls of Beijing?
