In the post-Mao era, China's intellectuals have had a degree of intellectual freedom in the last twenty year not experienced since the 1949 revolution. Although China remains a Lenninist party state whose intellectuals still cannot criticize the political leadership or party without impunity, its economy has moved to the market and its society is in contact with the international community. Whereas in the Mao Zedong era intellectuals, with few exceptions, obediently carried out Mao's orders and expounded Maoist doctrine, in the post-Mao era intellectual life has become pluralistic and complex. This edited volume highlights how Chinese intellectual activity has become more wide-ranging, more independent, more professionalized and more commercially oriented than ever before. The future impact of this activity on Chinese civil society is discussed as is the continually changing relationship between intellectuals and the party-state. With Contributions form China scholars living both within and outside China, this volume provides the first comprehensive description of China's intellectuals in the post-Mao era. It is a topic, which will appeal to scholars of China as well as those whose research interests lie in Asian cultural studies and intellectual history.

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: The transformations of the relationship between Chinese Intellectuals and the State Part 1 The Transformation of the Intellectual Public Sphere 1. Social Capital, Institutional Change and the Development of Non-Governmental Intellectual Organizations in China 2. Underdogs, Lapdogs and Watchdogs: Journalists and the Public Sphere Problematic in China 3. Have We Been Noticed Yet? Intellectual Contestation and the Chinese Web Part 2 The Changing Relationship Between Intellectuals and the Party-state 4. From Patronage to Profits: the changing relationship of Chinese intellectuals with the Party-state 5. China's Technical Community: Market Reforms and the Changing Policy Cultures of Science 6. Intellectuals and the Politics of Protest: the Case of the China Democracy Party Part 3 Ideological Alternatives in the Intellectual Public Sphere 7. The Fate of an Enlightenment: Twenty Years in the Chinese Intellectual Sphere (1978-1998) 8. Historians as Public Intellectuals in Contemporary China 9. The Party-state, Liberalism and Social Democracy: the Debate on China's Future Part 4 New Era, New Roles 10. Chinese Intellectuals Facing the Challenges of the New Century Index