Evolution of Chinese intellectuals' thought over two decades

• Source: The Global Times
• [23:54 May 31 2009]
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By Xie Ying and Lin Jiasi

Photo: Abdul Saeed Ala Atik

Working at a top political think tank of the government, the author of the patriotic Chinese tome Paradoxes of American Hegemony today delights in contrasting Western economic failures with the successes of China’s chosen economic path.

Back in the 1980s Ding Yifan had idealistically believed in Western models as offering solutions to all kinds of problems. But today as a full-time employee at the Institute of World Development in the Development Research Center of the State Council, Ding laughs off as naïve The Development of Sociology, a Chinese book of translated Western thoughts that he edited two decades ago.

As a teacher in the late 1980s, Ding like many had experienced the sudden jolt of embarrassment at China’s global backwardness and ascribed those feelings to a failure of “national ideology”.

“We were feeling insecure about China’s future, and we were expecting the West to help China in economic reform,” said Liu Jiangyong, a professor at the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University.