The article examines Chinese leftist intellectuals’ visions of China’s future as they were published in a special issue of Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) in 1933. It places their texts in the international tradition of socialism and in particular the tensions between Marxism and “utopian socialism.” Two variants of socialism can be identified in the Chinese texts: “Datong socialism,” the moral vision of a society of freedom and equality, and Soviet socialism, the vision of an industrialized society with features and institutions as in the Soviet Union. Supporters of both variants identified with the “masses,” but remained elitist in that they spoke on behalf of these masses and claimed an intellectual niche in the proletarian society of the future.
BernalMartin (1976) Chinese Socialism to 1907. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
6.
BrownJeremyPickowiczPaul G. [eds.] (2007) Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
7.
CallahanWilliam A. (2003) “Confucian harmonizing: utopia, dystopia and heterotopia in Chinese thought.” J. of Comparative Asian Development 2, 2: 233–57.
8.
ChangSydney H.GordonLenard H. D. (1991) All Under Heaven: Sun Yat-sen and His Revolutionary Thought. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
9.
CheekTimothy (2014) “Chinese socialism as vernacular cosmopolitanism.” Frontiers of History in China 9, 1 (Mar.): 102–24.
10.
CheekTimothy (2015) The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
11.
ChenBoda (1936) “Lun xin qimeng yundong—di er ci de xin wenhua yundong—wenhua shang de jiuwang yundong” (On the new enlightenment movement—the second new culture movement—the cultural salvation movement). Xin shiji 1, 2: 12–17.
12.
ChenHuan (2014) “‘Bainian yijiao’ yu wan Qing zhengzhi xiaoshuo de jianli” (“Asleep for a hundred years” and the establishment of political novels in the late Qing). Chongqing chengshi guanli zhiye xueyuan xuebao6: 81–83.
13.
ChenXiaolan (2009) “‘Liangge Sulian’—20 shiji 30 niandai lü Su youji zhong de Sulian” (Two Soviet Unions: the Soviet Union in reports on travels to the Soviet Union in the 1930s). Wenxue pinglun3: 21–26.
14.
ChinSei Jeong (2014) “Print capitalism, war, and the remaking of the mass media in 1930s China.” Modern China 40, 4 (July): 393–425.
CobleParks M. (1991) Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
17.
DikötterFrank (2010) Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62. London: Bloomsbury.
18.
DikötterFrank (2013) The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–1957. New York: Bloomsbury.
19.
DikötterFrank (2016) The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976. New York: Bloomsbury.
20.
DirlikArif (1978) Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
21.
DirlikArif (1989) The Origins of Chinese Communism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
22.
DirlikArif (1991) Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
23.
DongSidai (2010) “Zhongguo shehuizhuyi fazhan zhong de wutuobang zai pingjia” (Reassessment of utopia in the development of Chinese socialism). Wuyi xueyuan xuebao2: 18–22.
24.
EastmanLloydCh’EnJeromePepperSuzanneVan SlykeLyman P. [eds.] (1991) The Nationalist Era in China, 1927–1937. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
25.
EngelsFriedrich (1997) “The origins of the family, private property, and the state.” Pp. 11–29 in O’TooleLaura L.SchiffmanJessica R. (eds.), Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York: New York Univ. Press.
26.
EsherickJoseph W. [ed.] (2000) Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press.
27.
FengFeng (2010) “Cong ‘Lü E youji’ kan 1930 niandai zhishifenzi dui Sulian de taidu” (Intellectuals’ stance on the Soviet Union in the 1930s, seen from their “reports on travel in Russia”). Qingdao daxue shifan xueyuan xuebao4: 87–93.
28.
FengMiao (2013) “The politics of education: popular education, quotidian experience, and contention over the masses in China, 1927–1937.” PhD diss., New York Univ.
29.
FrazierMark W. (2002) The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
30.
FungEdmund S. K. (2000) In Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
31.
FurthCharlotte (1970) Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China’s New Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
32.
FurthCharlotte [ed.] (1976) The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
33.
GeogheganVincent (1987) Utopianism and Marxism. London: Methuen.
34.
GoldmanMerle (1967) Literary Dissent in Communist China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
GriederJerome B. (1970) Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
37.
GriederJerome B. (1981) Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative History. London: Collier Macmillan.
38.
GuanPeifeng (2008) “Zhongguo jianli shijie fan faxisi lianmeng sixiang tanyuan” (Exploration of the ideas of China building a worldwide anti-fascist alliance). Minguo dang’an3: 99–105.
HuYuzhi (1931) Mosike yinxiang ji (Report on my impressions of Moscow). Shanghai: Xin shengming shuju.
41.
HuYuzhi (1932) “Xiandai de weiji” (The modern crisis). Dongfang zazhi 29, 1: 1–3.
42.
HuYuzhi (1933) “Guoren dui Sulian ying you de renshi” (What the Chinese should know about the Soviet Union). Dongfang zazhi 30, 2: 6–10.
43.
IpHung-Yok (2005) Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949: Leaders, Heroes and Sophisticates. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
44.
JamesonFredric (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso.
45.
JeansRoger B. (1997) Democracy and Socialism in Republican China: The Politics of Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang), 1906–1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
46.
KangYouwei (1958) Ta T’ung Shu: The One-world Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei. Translated by Laurence G. Thompson. London: Allen & Unwin.
47.
KangYouwei (2005) Datong shu (Book of great unity). Ed. by ZhiyunYang. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.
48.
KnightNick (2007) Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong’s Thought. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
49.
LevitasRuth (1990) The Concept of Utopia. New York: Philip Allan.
50.
LiGuangyi (2013) “‘New Year’s dream’: a Chinese anarcho-cosmopolitan utopia.” Utopian Studies 24, 1: 89–104.
51.
LiGuannan (2012) “Reviving China: urban reconstruction in Nanchang and the Guomindang national revival movement, 1932–1937.” Frontiers of History in China 7, 1: 106–35.
52.
LiMaogao (2014) “Comparison of the political paths of Liu Yazi and Chen Qubing.” Chinese Studies in History 48, 1: 66–81.
53.
LiYongdong (2014) “Shanghai moshi de Zhongguo wutuobang xushi” (The Shanghai model of the Chinese utopian narrative). Wenxue pinglun2: 47–54.
54.
LiuFeng (2013) “20 shiji 30 niandai minguo zhengfu nongcun fuxing yundong tanlun” (Examination of the rural reconstruction movement of the Republican government in the 1930s). Tansuo2: 55–57.
55.
LiuTao Tao (2002) “Perceptions of city and country in modern Chinese fiction in the early Republican era.” Pp. 203–32 in FaureDavidLiuTao Tao (eds.), Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave.
56.
LiuYangdong [ed.] (1998) Mengxiang de Zhongguo (The China of your dreams). Beijing: Xiyuan chubanshe.
57.
LuXun (2002) “Tingshuo ‘meng’” (I have heard about “dreams”). Pp. 29–31 in ChubansheZhongguo Wenshi (ed.), Lu Xun wenji (Collected works of Lu Xun), vol. 5. Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe.
58.
LubotEugene (1982) Liberalism in an Illiberal Age: New Culture Liberals in Republican China, 1919–1937. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
59.
LuoRongqu [ed.] (1990a) Cong “xihua” dao “xiandaihua”—Wusi yilai youguan Zhongguo de wenhua quxiang he fazhan daolu lunzheng wenxuan (From “Westernization” to “modernization”: selection of texts on the debates on cultural trends and the development path of China). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
60.
LuoRongqu (1990b) “Zhongguo jin bainian lai xiandaihua sichao yanbian de fansi” (Reflections of the evolution of Chinese ideas of modernization over the last hundred years). Pp. 1–35 in Luo, 1990a.
61.
LynchCatherine (2010) “The country, the city, and visions of modernity in 1930s China.” Rural History 21, 2: 151–63.
62.
ManelaErez (2006) “Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: dreams of East-West harmony and the revolt against empire in 1919.” Amer. Historical Rev. 111, 5 (Dec.): 1327–51.
63.
MarxKarlEngelsFriedrich (1981) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Communist manifesto). Stuttgart: Reclam.
64.
PanchasiRoxanne (2009) Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
65.
PepperSuzanne (1978) Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
66.
PerryElizabeth J. (2008) “Reclaiming the Chinese revolution.” J. of Asian Studies 67, 4 (Nov.): 1147–64.
67.
QiXiaohong (2012) “Dang wenxue yudao dazhong: 1930 niandai wenyi dazhong-hua yundong guankui” (When literature meets the masses: the movement for the massification of literature and arts in the 1930s). Wenxue pinglun1: 129–39.
68.
SaageRichard (2000) Politische Utopien der Neuzeit (Political utopias in modern times). Bochum: Winkler.
69.
SchivelbuschWolfgang (2005) Entfernte Verwandtschaft: Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, New Deal; 1933–1939 (Distant relationship: fascism, national socialism, New Deal; 1933–1939). Munich: Hanser.
70.
SheehanBrett (2015) Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
71.
ShihShu-Mei (2001) The Lure of the Modern: Writing in Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
72.
SpakowskiNicola (2017) "Semi/colonial futures – Visions of Shanghai’s future in pre-war China." Twentieth-Century China 42, 3 (Oct.): 234-54.
73.
SunShao-Yi (1999) “Urban landscape and cultural imagination: literature, film and visuality in semi-colonial Shanghai.” PhD diss., Univ. of Southern California.
74.
SunZhongshan (2000) Sanminzhuyi (The Three People’s Principles). Changsha: Yuelu shushe.
75.
TaoHaiyang (2014) “Dongfang zazhi” yanjiu, 1904–1948 (Research on the Eastern Miscellany, 1904–1948). Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe.
76.
TianWeiguo (2008) “Zhongguo guoge zhi bianqian” (The changes of China’s national anthem). Chuancheng3: 46–49.
77.
TingLee-Hsia Hsu (1974) Government Control of the Press in Modern China, 1900–1949. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
78.
TothCsaba (2012) “Resisting Bellamy: How Kautsky and Bebel read ‘Looking Backward.’” Utopian Studies 23, 1: 57–78.
79.
TsuiBrian (2013) “Clock time, national space, and the limits of Guomindang anti-imperialism.” Positions 21, 4: 921–45.
80.
TsuiBrian (2015) “Decolonization and revolution: debating Gandhism in Republican China.” Modern China 41, 1 (Jan.): 59–89.
81.
EddyU (2013a) “Intellectuals and alternative socialist paths in the early Mao years.” China J. 70: 1–23.
82.
EddyU (2013b) “Reifications of the intellectual: representations, organization and agency in revolutionary China.” British J. of Sociology 64, 4: 617–42.
83.
Van LaakDirk (2008) “Planung. Geschichte und Gegenwart des Vorgriffs auf die Zukunft” (Planning: anticipation of the future past and present). Geschichte und Gesellschaft34: 305–26.
84.
WAKEMANFREDERICJR (1995) Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
85.
WangHongfa (1933) “Yijiusaner nian Sulian jingji de fazhan” (The development of the Soviet economy in 1932). Dushu zazhi3: 1–19.
86.
WangXiuguo (2005) “Shixi Kang Youwei ‘Datongshu’ dui ‘Huigu’ de xina ji gaizao” (A preliminary analysis of how Kang Youwei’s “Datongshu” absorbed and revised “Looking Backward”). Foshan kexue jishu xueyuan xuebao 2, 23 (Mar.): 22–45.
87.
WasserstromJeffrey N. (2009) Global Shanghai, 1850–2010: A History in Fragments. London: Routledge.
88.
WongWang-Chi (1991) Politics and Literature in Shanghai: The Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, 1930–1936. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
89.
WuMinchao (2009) “‘Zhongguo jingji qingbao’ zhoukan yu zuoyi jingjixue” (The weekly “China economic information” and left-wing economists). Jindai shi yanjiu4: 128–45.
90.
WuMinchao (2013) “Zuoyi de lianhe—yi Qian Jiaju yu ‘Zhongguo nongcun pai’ wei zhongxin de kaocha” (The alliance of the left: an investigation centered on Qian Jiaju and the “school of the Chinese village”). Jindai shi xuekan 10. Reproduced in Jindai Zhongguo yanjiu, http://jds.cass.cn/Item/23914.aspx (accessed Aug. 4, 2015).
XuGuifang (2010) “Qianxi Sun Zhongshan de ‘Datong’ lunli sixiang” (An analysis of Sun Yat-sen’s ethical thought of “Datong”). Wenxue jie3: 143.
93.
XuJilin (2014) “The urban ‘cultural nexus of power’: intellectual elites in Shanghai and Beijing, 1900–1937.” Frontiers of History in China 9, 1 (Mar.): 32–55.
94.
XuXuhong (2013) “Xie Bingying yu ‘zuolian’—cong Lu Xun zhi Wang Zhizhi de liangfeng xin tanqi” (Xie Bingying and the League of Left-Wing Writers—seen from two letters of Lu Xun to Wang Zhizhi). Xin wenxue shiliao3: 92–101.
95.
YangZhijun (2005) “‘Datong shu’ daodu” (A guide to the “Book of Great Unity”). Pp. 1–18 in ZhijunYang (ed.), Datong shu (Book of Great Unity). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.
96.
YehWen-Hsin (1995) “Corporate space, communal time: everyday life in Shanghai’s Bank of China.” Amer. Historical Rev. 100, 1: 97–122.
97.
YehWen-Hsin (2007) Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843–1949. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
98.
YIMING (1933) “Yanjiu Sulian” (To study the Soviet Union). Xin shehui 4, 2: 56–57.
99.
ZanasiMargherita (2004) “Far from the treaty ports: Fang Xianting and the idea of rural modernity in 1930s China.” Modern China 30, 1 (Jan.): 113–46.
100.
ZarrowPeter (1990) Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
101.
ZarrowPeter (2005) China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949. London: Routledge.
102.
ZhangHengjun (2011) “Lun Sun Zhongshan de shijie Datong sixiang yu sanminzhuyi lilun de guanxi” (On the relation between Sun Yat-sen’s idea of worldwide Datong and the theory of the Three People’s Principles). Chuancheng21: 72–73.
103.
ZhengDahuaQinghuiTang (2008) “20 shiji 30 niandai chu Zhongguo zhishijie de shehuizhuyi sichao” (The tide of socialism among Chinese intellectuals in the early 1930s). Jindaishi yanjiu3: 44–58.
104.
ZhengDahuaZhangYing (2009) “Lun Sulian ‘yi wu jihua’ dui 20 shiji 30 niandai chu Zhongguo zhishijie de yingxiang” (The influence of the Soviet Union’s “first five-year plan” on Chinese intellectuals in the early 1930s). Shijie lishi2: 117–28.
105.
Zhonghua shuju [Zhonghua publishing house] [ed.] (1934) Shanghai de jianglai (The future of Shanghai). Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju.
106.
ZhouWeijun (2011) “Yige shidai de ‘xinnian de mengxiang’” (The “new year’s dream” of an age). Yuanliu3: 76–80.
107.
ZhuQian (2011) “The politics of everyday life: non-party leftists in Republican China, 1919–1937.” PhD diss., New York Univ.
