Introduction

After four years' interlude, we return to a special issue of Comparative Literature Studies (CLS), with a larger claim on East Asian comparative literature than the first one, “Modern China and the World: Literary Constructions” (CLS vol. 49, no. 4, 2012), to which I penned an introduction. The present volume, however, is not the second special issue on China-related topics. The second special issue, “Global Maoism and Cultural Revolution in the Global Context” (CLS vol. 52, no. 1, 2015), to which I also contributed, underscores the broader political and ideological reverberations than literary and aesthetic ones in the cultural formations of the era of the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, that issue broaches much wider geopolitical configurations than China or Asia, traversing continents and worlds from the “first and second worlds” of the United States, France, and Japan, to the “third world” of India, Nepal, the Andes, and so on. As I write the introduction again for the present volume now, I want to acknowledge and applaud the wisdom and generosity of the CLS editors to grant a series of special issues with a China focus, and, meanwhile, to alert our readers of not the obvious, that is, the growing worldwide attention to China as it rises to a leading world power, but rather, to the elasticity of the ideas and concepts associated with the subject of China, such as Asia, East Asia, global, international, Orientalist, the West, and so on, which the essays of this volume invoke, and the attendant indeterminacy and ambiguity of the meaning of these critical concepts. Moreover, the kinds of subjective, emotive, and affective reactions, such as exuberance, anxiety, and ambivalence when China is mentioned, ought to be examined as literary expressions or, vice versa, literary works as expressions of these emotion and feelings.In the introduction to the first China special issue (CLS vol. 49, no. 4, 2012, pp. 497–504), I begin with a discussion of rituals of 2008 Beijing Olympics and raise the question of Chinese exceptionalism, compared to American exceptionalism, as the context for the essays dealing mostly with literary criticism and fictional works. Rituals are replete with imageries, symbols, and metaphors, eliciting largely emotional, affective responses, therefore quite appropriate for close readings of literary and cultural studies. I would like to begin with a brief account of political rituals this time again.In September 2016, China hosted the G20 Summit (the government forum of the Group of 20 major economies in the world) in Hangzhou, a southeast tourist city. As usual, Western media are skeptical about its artificial spectacle and extravaganza (“Ghost Town: How China Emptied Hangzhou to Guarantee ‘Perfect’ G20,” titled the report of the British newspaper, The Guardian).1 It was credited, however, by Chinese state news agency Xinhua, as setting up “the world's center stage” where Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader and China's president, takes the lead: “the image of Chinese President Xi Jinping standing among leaders from emerging markets and developed countries sends a strong signal: that we are in the same boat, with China charting the course ahead this time. Hours earlier, Xi, the helmsman of the world's second largest economy, had referred to boats metaphorically to stress the need of joint efforts when addressing leaders of the world's leading economies who have gathered for their annual meeting.”2 While the metaphor of “the helmsman” of the world boat had long been reserved for the “Great Helmsman Chairman Mao” half a century earlier (as specifically explored in the CLS 2015 Special Issue on Maoism), what the image of Xi the new helmsman shows to the world is China's (or rather CCP's) self-imposed mission of global leadership.A month later, in October 2016, Chongqing, a major city in China's hinterland, hosted the “CPC [Chinese official English translation of the Communist Party of China] in Dialogue with the World” Conference, to which I was invited as an academic guest from the United States and a Chinese American. I took note of the ceremonial rituals of the Plenary Session, especially the unreported yet fascinating part (at least in terms of its literary merits). Right before the keynote speech by Liu Yunshan, CCP's propaganda chief, the ex-French prime minister Dominique de Villepin offered his supposedly congratulatory remarks, delivered surprisingly in impeccable English (everyone expected a French ex-leader to speak only in his mother tongue). It is even more amazing to hear him begin by saying “Ladies and Gentlemen, we now enter into an era of fear and anger all over the world” and then citing a list of causes for these bad feelings, however unseemly and discordant for the occasion: Brexit, Syria, ISIS, anti-immigration protests, worldwide xenophobia, violence, economic and financial woes, and so on and so forth. In sharp contrast, Chinese keynote speaker began with an upbeat, almost euphoric, celebratory tone: “Ladies and Gentlemen, at this beautiful autumn season, we gather together to discuss the issue of global economic governance and the role of political parties.... A while ago China successfully convened the G20 Summit, where President Xi put forward the Chinese proposition for global economic governance ... thus charting the new course of the world economy.” And: “China has been always open to the world since antiquity ... the stronger China is, the more open and welcoming she is, with a great deal of guests and friends, merchants, and travelers coming afar, from all four corners and eight directions of the world.”3 Such a poetic diction invoking past imperial glory immediately rang a bell in the ears of a veteran British sinologist sitting next to me, who whispered to me that “this awesome proclamation brings us back to the golden age of Chinese Imperial Tributary System.” He was referring to the past two thousand years' practice of the Middle Kingdom when foreigners, barbaric or primitive, congregated to the center of humankind, that is, China, to pay tribute to the Son of Heaven, or the Chinese Emperor, and, in return, they were showered with plentiful, generous gifts from the monarch for their edification and delight.My anecdotes, which can otherwise be seen as political antics, would be viewed not so much as digressions as literary manifestations with rich symbolic connotations and cultural, historical references, if we further interrogate what underlies these speeches and on-site comments in terms of subtexts or contexts of the contemporary Chinese and East Asian culture and literature, to which this volume is dedicated. Chinese exceptionalism is a concept that recently began to circulate in primarily academic circles of international relations and foreign policy studies. As is widely acknowledged, this Chinese exceptionalism has deep cultural roots and claims: “Most Chinese people ... think of historical China as a shining civilization in the center of All-under-Heaven, radiating a splendid and peace-loving culture. Because Confucianism cherishes harmony and abhors war, this version portrays a China that has not behaved aggressively nor been an expansionist power throughout its 5,000 years of glorious history. Instead, a benevolent, humane Chinese world order is juxtaposed against the malevolent, ruthless power politics in the West.”4 It is arguable that literary, cultural, and ideological traditions, from antiquity to modernity, lay the foundation for Chinese exceptionalism. As China has inevitably risen to a leading world power, the claims on its uniqueness and particularity from the universal values (or universalism) have been heatedly debated, now focusing on not so much how China can integrate itself into the existing world order, in the historical passage to modernity since the mid-nineteenth century to the present, but rather on what Chinese values can add to, modify, expand, and eventually reshape the values, worldviews, and ideologies that we have taken for granted for centuries. Understanding the genealogy of cultural and literary legacies underlying Chinese exceptionalism and its East Asian ramifications is a major theme in the papers of this volume.Prior to introducing the papers, a brief summary of what I understand as cultural genealogy of Chinese exceptionalism is intended here. Historically, it can be delineated in several historical phases, and my narrative follows a Bakhtinian conceptual framework of the language as the verbal and semantic center of ideological world, somewhat analogous to a Foucauldian épistème. First of all, the genealogy begins with the origin, or the myth of the Chinese civilization. As American sinologist Lucian Pye famously writes, “China is a civilizational state, pretending to be a [nation-]state”5; the cultural or civilizational foundation has been seen as the ultimate raison d'être of the Middle Kingdom's longevity and unity. However, it should be noted from the outset that in its formative years Chinese culture was diverse and multidimensional. The Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770–480 BC) is generally understood as the formative time of Chinese culture. It was the time when the Chinese Sages such as Confucius, Lao Tsu, Sun Tsu, and Mencius lived, and “Hundred Schools” of Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Moism, and a garden-variety of indigenous shamanism contended for political, intellectual, and ethical powers in an era of feudalist, diversified, and independent warring kingdoms.6 It is known as the Axial Age (eighth to third century BC), coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when ideas of religion and philosophy emerged in China, India, Persia, and the Greco-Roman world, paralleling each other without actual contact.7 Whereas from the northern kingdoms of China ancestor worship evolved into Confucian ideas of ren (love of kinship, love of parents and ancestors) and li (rites, rituals as externalization of ren or love of ancestors), in southern China shamanism or wu, the worship of natural and supernatural deities, emerged almost simultaneously and later absorbed and adopted by Taoism and other indigenous religions and superstitions. Gradually, ancestor worship (ren/li) and worship of natural deities (wu) became two most important pillars in Chinese cosmology. The Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC–AD 589) established the unified and highly centralized monarchy with absolute power, effectively ending feudalism in China for the next two millenniums. Meanwhile, the Qin and Han empires erected a unified, singular worldview of tianxia (under the heaven) cosmology and world order by canonizing Confucianism, closing off the debates of the contending “hundred schools.”8 To use Bakhtin's term, this historical period in China witnesses the long battle between polyglossia and heteroglossia, a locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces of utterances collided. Bakhtin writes that “polyglossia had always existed, it is more ancient than pure, canonical monoglossia” or the epic world.9 However, Bakhtin continues, “unitary language,” be they Aristotelian poetics, the poetics of Augustine, or “the one language of truth” of the medieval church, “at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia.”10 It would take over two thousand years for the suppression of heteroglossia in China by Confucian orthodoxy to come to an end.The second phase occurred around the turn of the twentieth century, when the Qing Dynasty finally collapsed at the advent of Western-induced modernity, and the foundation of Chinese exceptionalism crumbled to the formidable maelstrom by which all that is solid melts into air. To recap this now familiar story of China's passage to modernity as “a struggle between a proud empire or ancient civilization and the external pressures call the maelstrom of modernity,”11 Bakhtin's description of the European Renaissance, or the birth of modern novel as a metaphor of the Enlightenment, is apt here: begins by a verbal and semantic of the ideological world, a linguistic of literary which a and linguistic for ideological ... the of and from the of a and and the of a for language as that is, as an absolute of of and political and from all over the world, and the modern in all into China, in the Cultural which a new world for the ancient Middle Kingdom to come to terms with a modern world, and its of this for China was The of as a political for the modern China's course in than half a century, primarily by of political In the a indigenous version of Chinese or evolved into a new of a Chinese the era Maoism was not only as the ideological orthodoxy for the Chinese a language of an absolute of but also intended as a new for worldwide is the of the second 2015 special issue of the narrative of the four known as and more like a of as or rather than a of as it when China its to the world at the of the period of a of China's cultural After the was and a of and from to from to Bakhtin it was the of for the were by Chinese and in a and of and It is known as the of or and the from Confucianism to The translation of foreign literature, and and the for the emerged of comparative literature, all to the of a new era of China's up and into the world of a state of heteroglossia, which over a of itself and its to its the language underlying its and literature and it of its of is, however, that the can be by not so and heteroglossia can be as as by an autumn The political of the not the course of economic and and CCP's in the for the economic the global economic China's however, inevitably its in the and became in the formidable of and political and the four or new efforts have been up for the great Chinese or Chinese and of Chinese exceptionalism have the indigenous deities of the the imperial and rituals (as in the in earlier of this Chinese and Taoism, and finally or are now for the ideological The of indigenous rituals and have been by the and xenophobia, by the state to of foreign the of and A Bakhtin would be and by the the of heteroglossia by and, in a the return of the language of myth and absolute as new pillars for Chinese In Bakhtin's is such between heteroglossia and and by the of forces of centripetal and universal and would and and is always the question of and or to to the with contemporary in Chinese exceptionalism of its phase is to the need of or this is a question of an aesthetic as as ideological issue of and of a language into an indigenous and As as in the years of the in the of that the for Chinese was are but can only be a is is only who are part of the great Chinese to this by and to about from China's is the most issue that the understand and is the of that every of with a Chinese that is to it to China's and be by the Chinese and that are to the and ears of the of can be that as a or translation of into Chinese political, ideological as as and literature is the of with a Chinese or the of the of China now, and translation of foreign and universal into Chinese has always been the or of Chinese cultural or the in an and of the years has not but rather this of even ideological has been over the Comparative literature in China this with or of world literature and as by the papers in this brings up the issue of of Western into sharp effectively in China only when it is is, it should be in the Chinese has been by the of especially that of and in present Chinese and cultural in the present era can only be by this it should be somewhat however, a note in his In what the writes, is so as but if to literary and cultural as as its major are and not only in the but more in China since literary and cultural can be with this or from this a question with a on the one Western to their their on universal in almost every of and even in the of literary as their subject of studies. the other are of cultural and historical as in in The or of Western would thus not only a in a that is, from the the United to China, but also a return to the of or literature as literary claim on and would have to turn back on its somewhat of aesthetic works of and literature, while if not larger political and ideological than literary on contemporary Chinese and American the (or of is the of However, these and political as of at with established The of the is most in the “the is is largely of poetic with to Western which would be quite since the are mostly by and and of and so on, in their Western contexts is referring to the years of the Cultural in the of the Cultural contemporary Chinese in the of can be as a against political and politics in with of a poetics that in the or Western of is to on with a Chinese that comparative is expected to and to the of European and narrative and thus the for the of narrative and attention to and The to and the of the in order to to the is all familiar to academic of in the United States, where or in are the order of the however, to be not so much an of Western as a critical account of Chinese efforts in the years to critical to fictional that Western or narrative is a rich of Chinese of the the or as and a into this with a great deal of In his his by that what is and to by a new narrative as as by or the on literature in Chinese is to a and indigenous context into the of however, the attention to the issue of cultural translation and world literature in a thus the discussion of Chinese and Western cultural to an East Asian with close cultural to China, in to its historical of and an for comparative literature comparative literature in has birth of a new Comparative literature as literature, and has over the In the comparative literature in has the literary for our literature as literature in the context of cultural translation and world call for and of or comparative literature is by for the of the and international, or global for the of rather than geopolitical and cultural to heteroglossia or can be seen in on literary works in the as a of a yet of the modern Chinese Lao that from his of in the United States and other especially the era of the Lao works with what as the literature in While and the of literary and from primarily historical to raise a question the and universal and in what the literature as his readings of in modern Chinese literature, in He to take world literature as a and or on Western from to and so on, in his efforts to a new the of and global and He that literature as the of which is the literature and which is the literature, which the as the center and the as the Instead, world literature its in the when it is and that and close world literature as a and open literature is into an where literary and much expected world literature would to a of literature and not only cultural, but also as in the four papers that these the of in the of the century English to that of of the century In of the and other that and a for the and humane world in their cultural of with the of the two contemporary the Chinese and in on their historical of or the of and of can be understood as literary in the context of world literature and the contemporary world at of the literary of in American and the is an to an and, in the the that occurred only years of as and of readings the of literary as as it is as a that and are and and by American as as of of the Chinese us that literary criticism and cultural “the critical be they Western or East are always an between Chinese and comparative and for a to close and a of “the to forces with The by to than an of universal of aesthetic of or all literature, is and efforts to the or the the with that of the are viewed as to aesthetic of and papers in this volume a issues of comparative literature in Chinese and East Asian The diverse and and by and the underlying exceptionalism and to the and debates about the issues that the which from a Bakhtinian can be understood as an call for and a call for heteroglossia or As Bakhtin contexts of are without into the past and most in of the past be finally and for all, for they always be in later present moment of the are great of but these be again at a moment in the later course when it be a new is every meaning have its Cultural exceptionalism thus understood the contexts of

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