We are launching a new subseries “Insights from Mainland Chinese Scholars,”
as a part of our longstanding Social Sciences of Practice book series. We are
developing this new subseries to help bring to our readers the best and most
important new insights from Chinese scholars. The first two volumes to be published in the subseries are English translations of He Xuefeng 贺雪峰’s book
《治村》(English title: Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China)
and Wu Zhongmin 吴忠民’s book《治道之要：社会矛盾十二讲》(English title: Essentials of Governance: Twelve Lectures on Social Contradictions in
China).
To take full advantage of these translations of Chinese scholars’ works, readers should be aware of important differences in the discursive environments
of Western and Chinese scholarship. While Western scholars are accustomed
to a critical attitude toward the official positions taken by their governments,
Chinese scholars must operate in a much more constrained environment when
it comes to criticisms of government policies and positions. Sophisticated discussions and criticisms by Chinese scholars can easily be misunderstood by the
Western reader as merely apologistic or “pro-government,” or even as simply
“propaganda,” which can become an obstacle to appreciating critical insights
that come from creative use of officially condoned concepts, such as that of
“social contradictions” in Wu Zhongmin’s Essentials of Governance: Twelve
Lectures on Social Contradictions in China. His work represents in fact the
sophisticated kinds of constructive criticism that are coming from some of
the most creative minds in China, including those who have been granted official recognition and distinction, as in the case of Wu.