Table of Content

15 March 2021, Volume 38 Issue 2

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What is Wenke (Liberal Arts)? —Formation of Modern Knowledge System

LIU Kang

2021, 38(2):  1-19. 

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Modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have gone through a great deal of tension, ruptures, metamorphoses and transformations. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’ as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to raise the China question of western theory, in order to open up new space for rethinking modern Chinese intellectual history.



Practice Focus, Theory Integration and Tradition Inheritance: Revisiting Community Aesthetics in Three Dimensions

2021, 38(2):  20-28. 

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Community aesthetics, a new direction of film aesthetics, has three significant features. The first feature is the “focus on practice”, which means synchronously tracking the new development trends and new possibilities in the film industry, including the impact of the advancements and changes of social environments and cultural contexts on films, as well as how film technologies strongly influence, rewrite or even disrupt films, especially high technologies such as digital technology, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data. The second feature is “theory integration”, which means critically, creatively, constructively and integrally inheriting the valuable achievements in film theoretical researches and aesthetic theoretical researches. The third feature is “tradition inheritance”, which is not only the inheritance and transformation of Chinese traditional cultural thinking, but also the product of spiritual inter-connectivity with the global film industry. Therefore, community aesthetics has the potential to provide a theoretical method, a framework, and a model, capable of exploring inclusive, interactive and practice-oriented theoretical space, theoretical tension and theoretical height. 



What is Meant by “Community”? —Theoretical Support and Question Awareness of Chinese Film Community Aesthetics

2021, 38(2):  29-38. 

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“Community”, a means of satisfying individual needs, aims to enhance harmony  and peace among its members and organizational stability and acquires the traits of romantic ideals. The proposal of such an inclusive concept enables people to constantly reconstruct “community” by embedding it into new contexts, which has laid basis for our attempt to build connections between “community” and film aesthetics. Meanwhile, aesthetics of traditional Chinese art, including aesthetic thoughts on Chinese film theory, has always put emphasis on the importance of image text and its relationship with art types. In addition, Chinese film aesthetics emphasizes sensual pleasure, which can hardly be detached from ethical social emotions. In fact, we have failed to apply the community nature of Chinese film aesthetics to actual film shooting. However, this is the question awareness we should hold in exploring Chinese film community aesthetics. Still more importantly, we should seek solutions to current Chinese film predicaments from Chinese film community aesthetics.



ultidimensional Visions of Community Aesthetics—Analysis of and Reflection on the Trend of Chinese Film Development in Recent Years

2021, 38(2):  39-49. 

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Community aesthetics, a reflection of aesthetic emphasis on community vision, is not monolithic, but multi-dimensional in social, national and humanity respects. These dimensions are not only reflected in the development trend of domestic films in recent years, but also present complicated hierarchy and relationships inside community aesthetics. Although the films primarily featuring the vision of national community are dedicated to individual-state connections through community aesthetics, the triggering effect of social empathy plays a decisive role. On the other hand, although the films emphasizing the vision of social community can arouse the audience’s empathy by presenting images of social problems, they are often in tensions with the vision of national community. For those films with global community of shared future as the central theme which are a new trend of community aesthetics, despite their success in employing Chinese experience to tell the grand narrative of the shared future of mankind in good coordination with the vision of the national community, weak links with the vision of social community have been inadvertently exposed. Therefore, how to coordinate multidimensional visions within the community aesthetics so as to achieve the greatest cohesion is still a direction deserving great consideration nowadays in advancing community aesthetics.



Labor as Way Out—A Historical Study on the Issue of Mobilizing Primary andSecondary School Graduates for Agricultural Production in the Early Period of PRC

2021, 38(2):  50-71. 

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The People’s Daily published an editorial entitled “On the Issue of the Participation of Primary and Secondary School Graduates in Agricultural Production” on April 8, 1957. It pointed out that in 1957, only a small portion of high level primary school students (grade 5 and grade 6 students) and junior high school graduates could be admitted to a school of higher level while the vast majority were rejected. The main way out for the rejected was to participate in agricultural production in the countryside, which aroused widespread concern and discussion from all works of life. Taking the editorial as the departure of discussion, the paper attempts to present the historical and practical course of the CPC’s dedication in general education in primary and secondary schools and their adaptation to the needs of national governance in the early period of People’s Republic of China (PRC) by discussing the issue of mobilizing primary and secondary school graduates to participate in agricultural production in 1957. A prevalent view at the time held that the participation of primary and secondary school graduates in agricultural labor was an important issue on the agenda of “fostering the first generation of educated farmers in New China”. In view of this, how to make an epochal response to labor, especially manual labor, becomes the key to understanding this historical issue.



The “Emergence and Flow” Mechanismof Rural Cadre Group Development in the Early 1950s—An Investigation of Farmers Associations

2021, 38(2):  72-87. 

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 In the early 1950s, severe shortage of rural cadres was a common problem in the establishment of local governments in newly liberated areas of Southern China, which even posed impediments to their normal operation. Farmer representative conferences and farmers associations, which gradually came into being in the movements of grain requisition, rent and deposit reduction and land reform, created opportunities for new rural cadres to emerge in large number. Organizing farmers to “vent their grievances” at these meetings became an important means of mobilizing farmers to change their mindset of “fatalism”or “restoration of reactionary rule”. It was during this process of grievance venting that active participants were transformed into the backbones of farmers associations. Due to the rash decision at the early stage of farmers associations, some leading positions of the associations were often occupied by those whose class status and moral quality were flawed. With the advancement of such movements as rent and deposit reduction and the land reform, personnel replacement was launched.Seizing the momentum, the newly booming enthusiasts who were usually poor farmers or farmer laborers replaced those flawed,thus presenting a clear picture of rural cadre flow. In this process, a close coupling between governmental means of movements and theories of class struggle eventually prompted the “emergence and flow” mechanism of rural cadre group development in this period, laying an important foundation for the power transfer to the new regime in the rural society.



An Empirical Study of the Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on the Debt Problems in Countries along the Road

2021, 38(2):  88-104. 

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The Belt and Road Initiative has made remarkable progress since 2013 as more and more countries have been joining in the effort to build a mutually beneficial global economic system. However, in order to protect their own status and benefits, some countries deliberately spread rumors that China seizes the opportunity to push a “debt trap”. Such rumors pose obstacles to the development of the Initiative. In view of this, the overall debt situation of the countries along the belt and road is studied with important indexes such as GDP, export of goods and services and stock of foreign debt of some countries along the route.The changes of liability ratio, foreign debt ratio and growth rate before and after the implementation of Belt and Road Initiative have been compared, followed by a econometric model to examine the specific impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on the stock of foreign debt and liability ratio of the countries along the route. It is concluded that although the stock of foreign debt has significantly increased under the Initiative, which means increased debt burden and existing debt problems of some countries, the impact of the initiative on liability ratio and growth rate of the countries along route is significantly negative, which means risk reduction of their debt. To sum up, the accusation of China of setting up “debt trap”is groundless since the results show China is not the main cause of their debt problems, nor has them fallen into a “debt trap”.



Developing China’s Aging Industry and Defining Government Functions

2021, 38(2):  105-117. 

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Throughout the development course of China's aging industry， the Government has held a clear and steady attitude towards the issue of elderly care and continuously adjusted its intervention in the issue from sole government responsibility to the shared responsibility by all sides of the society， from an athlete role to a dual role of both athlete and referee. This is the fundamental requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics， and determined by the particularity and importance of pension activities. However， problems still exist such as an incomplete pension system， inadequate policy measures， and unclear government and market functions. The pension security system should be further improved to clarify the boundary between government and market functions.



Praxis and Limitations of Intersectionality in the US

2021, 38(2):  118-128. 

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 The death of George Floyd has triggered the resurgence of discussion on racism. Yet we should not simply interpret this incident  as a racial issue, but simultaneously examine the resulted Black Lives Matter（BLM）movement in a holistic manner. Different from traditional civil rights movement in the past, the BLM movement is fundamentally a kind of identity politics led by “intersectionality”.In response to people’s challenge to the narrow group consciousness of identity politics, black feminists proposed the theory of intersectionality to integrate multiple identities to strengthen resistance.However, intersectionality has also encountered many problems in praxis. Because it fails to transcend identity politics’ mistake in disregarding economic issues, it remains essentially a reformist plan of capitalism,unable to effectively aggregate forces against capitalism. This enlightens us that new social changes should return to  the perspective of Marxist theory in the pursuit of eliminating the capitalist system.



British Literature and Its Narrative Construction of National Identity

2021, 38(2):  129-140. 

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National identity is the collective identity of a nation, and it is the reproduction and reinterpretation by the members of a nation of its peculiar values, myth patterns, symbol systems and cultural traditions. Literature is the crystallization of national culture, and its production narrates and constructs the development of national identity in history. The literary works of different periods in the UK history narrate, copy and inherit the characteristics of its national identity. The Anglo-Saxon literature, the Renaissance, and the 17th century literature in the early English literature precisely represent the evolving Englishness in the national identity. The diversity of English literature, Scottish literature and Irish literature since the 18th century have constructed the characteristics of Britishness in national identity. The rise of Minority literature in the 20th century has expanded the narrative styles of British literature and parallelly constructed the cosmopolitan characteristics of British national identity.