Introduction

Summary

The Chinese have aspired to democracy as they understood it for a hundred years, have claimed to have it for seventy, and for the last thirty-five years have lived in one of the most participatory societies in history.

Andrew J. Nathan, 1986

The search for a way out (chulu) of China's predicament had been a profound concern of Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century. How could China be saved from the twin incubus of foreign imperialism and internal disorder? Where was she headed? Even if it could be mapped out where the destination was, how was she going to get there? Different options were canvassed. Some took what Lin Yu-sheng calls the cultural–intellectualistic approach, assigning primacy to intellectual and cultural reform as a first step toward the creation of a new political order. Others adopted an approach that placed a premium on political engagement, stressing the possibility of simultaneous political reform and cultural change. For the liberal intellectuals of the Nationalist period, democratic and constitutional change offered the best hope for a peaceful and modern China. They advocated democracy (minzhu) and constitutionalism throughout the period, only to find that the road to democracy was blocked. After 1949, “people's democracy” under the People's Republic was a far cry from what they had fought for.

This book is about the thoughts and actions of some particular groups of Chinese intellectuals and political activists who pursued democracy as they understood it by opposing the single-party system under Nationalist rule.