ABSTRACT
‘Modernity’ made its appearance in East Asia in the nineteenth century. The term ‘modern’ (or the Chinese transliteration ‘mo deng’) describes the newness coming from the West, 1 in contrast to prevailing cultural and political traditions. Different East Asian countries responded differently, according to their specific historical situations. As I have indicated elsewhere, ‘Those who are more conscious of the complexity of human issues believe that although modernity may be Western in origin and global in reach, the transformation of a vast collection of people […] could hardly be uniform’ (Lau 2003: 2). Though at times Western ‘newness’ was absorbed without much examination of its philosophical or ideological underpinnings, it also occasioned intense political disputes as to whether the modern was better or worse, sometimes precipitating wide-scale national conflicts, including the Cultural Revolution in China. 2
