Introduction

The history of twentieth-century China is punctuated with outbreaks of resistance against wholesale adoption of Western models of modernity. Some reached the form of organized political campaigns, culminating in certain phases of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). But most remained on the level of conceptual alternatives formulated by individual thinkers and debated by public intellectuals. These repeated debates reflect the problematic compatibility of two goals simultaneously pursued by Chinese nationalism. One is to increase China’s wealth and power to the level of the most advanced nations, which implies copying their institutions, practices and values. The other is to preserve China’s independence and historically formed identity, without which nationalism loses any meaning.