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Revisiting the journey of a centrist intellectual from a de-Cold War perspective: Hu Qiuyuan’s retrospect and evaluation of the Debate on Chinese Social History

ABSTRACT This paper points out, as the conditions of knowledge in the post-Cold War era evolve, the “de-Cold Warization” of the understanding of China has become an intellectual topic of regional significance, so as the concern, brought by such historical juncture, of the Debate on Chinese Social History and within which the reflection and commentary of (the work of) Hu Qiuyuan, who is viewed as an intellectual in the middle of the political spectrum. Hu Qiuyuan’s intellectual reflection was different from the official historical narrative of the Chinese Communist Party that succeeded it, as the 1930s was actually a time of great intellectual altercation. Back then, the Kuomintang, the Communist Party, the Trotskyist, and the others co-existed and interacted with each other, even pushing the CCP to alter its course of the revolutions. Specifically, because the centrists were not contained by the logic of exclusivity of other political positions, they were able to criticize the theoretical practice of other forms of dogmatism and represented the whole-of-society and the subjectivity of national interests. Moreover, Hu Qiuyuan, following the tradition of the centrists in the Debate of Social History, unfolded a theory of anti-imperialist, Third Worldist and “transcendent advancedism” (chaoyue qianjinlun). As such, Hu Qiuyuan’s intellectual history might implicate the direction for the “de-Cold War” of the understanding of China and have a positive meaning in the inter-referential system of knowledge in East Asia.