In search of the ‘China model’ : historic continuity vs. imagined history in Yan Xuetong’s thought

The 'China Model' literature in English was until recently quite peripheral and rather ahistoric in nature. It was mainly penned by economists and other social scientist who aimed at generalising how China's reforms worked since 1978. Historians, to the extent they tried at all to find linkages between Deng Xiaoping's reforms and China's pre-1978 heritage, were rather minimalistic in their approach. And since many economists reduced China's achievements to the inflow of foreign investment in pursuit of cheap labour and tax breaks, many historians also tended to view the Special Economic Zones set up by Deng as merely reincarnations of a well-tried formula whereby Westerners were allowed to set up autonomous and bustling treaty ports along the China coast in the later part of the 19th century. In short, it was often suggested that the reforms the PRC had embarked on in 1979 were not so boldly original or ingenious as might be otherwise assumed. Yet, because PRC social scientists in their advisory capacity are more tightly linked with government than in the West, one can freely come across in the Chinese literature very sober and historicised academic accounts of the challenges the country is facing domestically and internationally, so long as the Party's monopoly on power is not challenged directly. The following passages address an important book in that vein by prominent Tsinghua University professor, Yan Xuetong, that was recently translated into English. It is not a monograph in the strict sense of the word, but makes for a compilation of articles from various stages of the author's career. Thus, Yan's book offers stimulating insights on how China's pre-modern past might inform the nature Chinese ambitions for global leadership in the future.