Abstract
The research explores the historiography of
Chinese leftism in the 1910s and 1930s, known as the Republican China, the
studies of which was conducted by the Euro-American scholars from the 1980s to
the 2000s. Framed under the modernist theory, historians of China in the 1980s
investigated the rise and the fall of leftism in Republican China by focusing
on state formation, party politics, militarization, as well as the capitalist
development of industrialization and urbanization when imperialism, colonialism
and global wars had fundamentally changed China’s politics and the
state-society relationship. In the 1990s, especially after the PRC’s reform of
market economy in the post-Mao era, historical studies of leftism sought for
the roots of liberal democracy in the past that led to the political liberalism
in the post-socialist China. It was until 2000, that historical research on
Chinese leftism eventually departed from the nation-state/party politics and
modernization paradigms. Instead, critical research of China’s political and
intellectual history has positioned Chinese leftism and leftists into the
global history of anti-colonialism, internationalism, and national independent
movements in the 20th century.
