The End of the Revolution China and the Limits of Modernity

Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China's leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China's social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depoliticization. From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, The End of the Revolution offers a broad discussion of Chinese intellectual history and society, in the hope of forging a new path for China's future.

Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he currently lives. He studied at Yangzhou University, Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has also been a visiting professor at NYU and other universities in the U.S. In 1989, he participated in the Tiananmen Square Protests and was subsequently sent to a poor inland province for compulsory “re-education” as punishment for his participation. He developed a leftist critique of government policy and came to be one of the leading proponents of the Chinese New Left in the 1990s, though Wang Hui did not choose this term. Wang was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in 2008 by Foreign Policy.