Overview
I seek to understand the world we live in by thinking through grand questions in history and politics concerning revolution and progress, Enlightenment and modernity. In particular, my intellectual journey has been driven by a persistent fascination with the ideological debates that have shaped contemporary China, by a deep empathy for the legends and tragedies, hopes and disillusionments that have marked its modern history, and by a continuing reflection on their broader resonance with the human condition.
My doctoral dissertation is tentatively titled “The Chinese Ideology: Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Left, 1978-2021.” By tracing key turning points across this period and examining the self-identification, cross-fertilization, and boundary-contestation among these forces, I investigate both their internal trajectories and their interactions with party-state policy, social change, and the transnational circulation of ideas. I argue that conservatism not only assumes authoritarian rather than libertarian forms under autocratic rule, but also is mislabeled as left-wing rather than right-wing in (post-)communist contexts – a classificatory inversion that stems from the hierarchical postrevolutionary order legitimizing itself through the grammar of the egalitarian revolution. This study not only rewrites the history of Chinese political thought in the post-Mao era, but also challenges conventional understandings of (post-)socialism, revolution, progress, and the Enlightenment project in the modern world.
Born and raised in China, my formative interest in history and politics was ignited by Charter 08, which led me to the birthplace of Charter 77, the inspiration for the Chinese manifesto. At Charles University in Prague, my bachelor’s thesis in the humanities explored Chinese discourses on the Chinese Revolution analogous to François Furet’s reflections on the French Revolution. At Central European University in Vienna, my master’s thesis in history traced unorthodox currents of Marxist humanism, from Leszek Kołakowski and Evald Ilyenkov to Wang Ruoshui.
Some of my research has been published. In “The Mirage of the Alleged Chinese New Left” (Journal of Political Ideologies), I illustrated how the concept of the New Left was appropriated in China, thereby losing its original sense of resisting authority and conformity. In “Identifying China’s Long 1980s” (The China Quarterly, featured on the cover), I provided a historiographical periodization of this era by illuminating the reformism-conservatism divide across key events.
While in Vienna, I contributed to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. My public writings have also appeared in Ming Pao Monthly and Lianhe Zaobao. In my spare time, I translate poetry and enjoy classical music.
Advisor: Peidong Sun