In the face of rapid and radical social changes since the late 1970s, contemporary China faces tremendous challenges. What is China transforming toward? What are the ideological positions and, more generally, cultural values that inform, question, and demand critical assessment of the social transformations in the reform era? This collection of essays aims at addressing these questions. Written by some of the leading intellectuals and thinkers, in and outside of contemporary China, the essays, in different ways, examine the extent to which three major cultural resources, namely traditional, May Fourth, and socialist, have been (re)interpreted, (re)appropriated and mobilized to address the challenges brought about by the changed and changing social and economic conditions of the reform era.

CONTENTS Introduction Cao Tianyu PART I "Consider the Other More Important than the Self ": Liang Shuming's View of Confucian Ethics Chen Lai The Basic Form, Actual Form, and Potential Form of Neo-Confucianism: Considering the Historical Function and Practical Signifi cance of Neo-Confucianism Liao Kebin Individual Identifi cation and the Realm of Moral Character Liu Dong Classical and Modern Readings of Laozi's Ziran Liu Xiaogan The Isomorphism of Family and State and the Integration of Church and State: On the Differences between the Confucian Political Tradition and Democratic Politics Shi Yuankang Confucian Experience and Philosophical Discourse- Refl ections on Some Aporiae in Contemporary Neo-Confucianism Joel Thoraval PART II "Westernization" vs. "Sinicization": An Ineffaceable Paradox within China's Modernization Process Yu Keping Contradictions within Enlightenment Ideas Xu Jilin Rural Reconstruction, the Nation-State and China's Modernity Problem: Refl ections on Liang Shuming's Rural Reconstruction Theory and Its Practice Lu Xinyu Who is Afraid of Lu Xun? The Politics of "Debates about Lu Xun" and the Question of His Legacy in Post-Revolution China Zhong Xueping Progress Theory: The Constraint on China's Cultural Renaissance He Qing PART III "One and Three, Three and One": The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese Modernity Tang Shaojie Why Did the Cultural Revolution End? Han Shaogong A Unique Transcendence: Deng Xiaoping's China and Mao Zedong's China Gong Yuzhi The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Reform Era Political Culture Roderick MacFarquhar The Influence of China's Cultural Tradition of Revolution on Reform-Period Conceptions of Modernity Cao Tianyu The Chinese Revolution and the Self Identity of the Chinese Nation Lin Chun Comments on Gong Yuzhi's "A Unique Transcendence" and Roderick MacFarquhar's "The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Reform-era Political Culture" Lin Chun China's Social Transformation and Two Types of Modernity Gao Like Confucian Marxism and its Implications in the Current Age of Globalization Chen Weigang The Cold War, Imperial Aesthetics, and Area Studies Wang Ban Themes for China: Modern Arts, Modern Conflict Marshall Berman