Shakhar Rahav. The Rise of Political Intellectuals in Modern China

How did Chinese intellectuals move from small short-lived associations to mass political parties? How did the focus of their concerns change from individual morality to social revolution? Shakhar Rahav analyzes the social networks established by young Chinese radicals in the wake of the 1911 Revolution. Focusing on the relatively unknown Wuhan activist Yun Daiying (1895–1931), Rahav recreates the short-lived but emotionally intense organizations he founded, and, in particular, examines how those organizations functioned as nodal points in informal networks “down” to other regional groups and “up” to the Beijing-Shanghai axis. As Rahav points out, most studies of the May Fourth movement (ca. 1917–1924) focus on Beijing and Shanghai, on leading intellectuals and their ideas, on the themes of nationalism and enlightenment, and, in some narratives, on the origins of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But the movement was national in scope, and various groups in other cities contributed to the political, social, and cultural changes it engendered. Moving the story to Wuhan not only reminds us of the importance of the “hinterland” but allows Rahav to highlight the continuities between pre- and post-1911 organizational trends, as well as to root the CCP more firmly in Chinese soil, thereby deemphasizing recent scholarship’s emphasis on the role of Comintern agents in its creation.

Beijing · China · Communism · Enlightenment · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies