I. Background

Nowadays postcolonial criticism in the Chinese context has become too sensitive, yes almost irrational and sometimes even dangerous, particularly after the publication of China That Can Say No and Behind the Demonization of China, two provocative books that sophisticatedly blended political undertones and commercial features. Unrelated to the publication of these two books, in the last couple of years I was personally involved in the debate on so-called Orientalism vs. Occidentalism in Mainland China. The task of this paper is to sketch the background of this debate, to try to explain why all of a sudden postcolonial criticism became such a heated topic on the Mainland. Then the paper will go on to discuss the challenges and problems which practitioners of postcolonial criticism are facing in Western academia today. The last part of this paper is a reconsidering of my previous work on this topic and a reply to various criticisms my colleagues and I have received regarding the promotion of postcolonial criticism in Mainland China.
It is generally agreed that since the last quarter of 1993,postcolonial criticism has become a new trend in Mainland China, to quote a passage from Shanghai Wenhui Daily, dated May 21, 1994:

"About half a year ago, most of the reading public in Mainland China had no idea about who Edward Said is. But ever since Dushu (Reading Books) magazine published Zhang Kuan's 'The Otherness in the Eyes of the Europeans and Americans' (Oumeiren yanzhong de feiwozulei) and two other articles about Edward Said last September, a heated debate was ignited, which virtually lead to an intellectual shock. All of a sudden everyone is talking about Edward Said and postcolonialism."

Or to quote another passage from the Sidney based New Asia Pacific Review:

"With over a decade of deployment as an academic trope, Orientalism has enjoyed an extraordinary career and has achieved the dubious status of an international intellectual cliché. In the case of Mainland China, however, Orientalism along with the deconstructive strategies of which it is a part, has a far more recent history, one that dates in particular from the early 1990s and the era of renewed nationalist debate. [...] One of the most energetic participants in this debate is Zhang Kuan, a specialist in comparative literature focusing on German studies. A graduate scholar in the United States, in recent years Zhang has been a key promoter of Edward Said's writings on Orientalism in the Mainland. Zhang's concerns, however, have not merely been those of an independent deconstructionist. His promotion of Western theory has been part of an evolving political agenda."

Contrary to the claims in the foregoing passages, I was not the first one to introduce Edward Said to the Chinese public.  As a matter of fact, there were introductions and essays on this very sensitive topic before September 1993 written in Chinese by considerably well-known Mainland critics, to name a few, Chen Xiaoming of the Institute of Literature, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Wang Yichuan of Beijing Normal University, Zhang Yiwu and Wang Ni of Beijing University. Some of their works were written even as early as the late 1980s and also published in influential periodicals and magazines such as Wenxue Pinglun (Literary Review) in Beijing. But as far as I know, no responses or feedback are traceable. Aside from the works done by people in the Mainland, there was abundant literature on or related to this topic written by overseas Chinese scholars, both in English and Chinese, for example, the debate on modern Chinese literature between Liu Kang and Zhang Longxi (English in Modern China and Chinese in Ershiyi shiji), Chen Xiaomei's work on Chinese Occidentalism (which was written at Stanford Humanities Center, a place where Edward Said completed his book on Orientalism) and Lydia Liu's study on the debate on Chinese National Character (guomin xing) during the May Fourth Period. In addition, non-Chinese China scholars in the West such as Arif Dirlik, Maurice Meissner and Asao Miyoshi had already contributed a lot to this field.

My first article in Dushu (originally written as a semester learning diary for a core-seminar related to the new intellectual trend in America I had taken in the Western Special Humanities Program at Stanford University  in California) is a short one; with less than 6000 Chinese characters. It contains the following parts :

1. A brief introduction to the French poststructuralist speculation on the relationship between representation and reality, discourse and power.
2. An explanation of Edward Said's application of the theory above in his attesting to the distortion of the Arabic world by Western Orientalists.
3. Following Said's model, the essay reviewed the historical change of Chinaís image over different time periods in Western countries, arguing that no matter how positive or negative, up until today China is still misrepresented in the West, in order to satisfy the needs of the Western “social energy.”
4. The essay views the formation of the Chinese modernity discourse as a parallel transplantation of the Western Enlightenment discourse, which contains colonial discourse, and holds that the main stream of the Chinese modernity discourse has always been enchanted by the magical spell of the Western colonial discourse. The process of the formation of the Chinese modernity discourse, the essay argues, with its radical denial of the Chinese cultural heritage by native intellectuals since the May Fourth Movement through the late Eighties, is by and large nothing but a joining in the chorus of Western Orientalism. The essay further argues that, just like Western Orientalism has produced a distorted image of China in the West, the Chinese Occidentalism also has always misrepresented the West, giving at times a too negative and distorted image of the latter. Much more frequently, however, Chinese Occidentalism has romanticized and idealized the West. The "West" exists only in the imagination of the pro-Western Chinese liberal intellectuals.  The Western colonial discourse has been deeply internalized in the Chinese modernity discourse.

Since this article caused quite an up-roar in Mainland China,  I was asked to write a response article. This second article in Dushu (10/1994), entitled "Reconsidering Edward Said" ("Zai tan Said"), replied to the criticism the first article had harvested and defended the above arguments.
I wrote several more essays on postcolonial criticism, among which one was even published, quite out of my own control, in the state sponsored Liaowang banyuekan (Watch-over Bimonthly) affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency. The article in Liaowang, based on a talk I gave at the CASS, embedded strong political undertones; it was quoted with a considerably high frequency and, accordingly, was attacked most furiously.  Below is the closing message of that essay:

"If we admit that modern Western humanities and social sciences have been replete with colonialist discourse, we also have to admit that this has a deep influence within China itself. This is evident in the way in which we constantly accept what the West touts as moral standards. We follow the requirements and signals of Westerners in expounding on various aspects of specific Chinese problems. For some time, we have lacked the courage to challenge and check Western hegemonic and colonial discourse. One of the reasons we seem so passive when carrying out concrete negotiations with Western countries over issues like human rights, or intellectual property rights in the market economy, is that we have not come up with a mode of exposition which completely casts off Western hegemonic discourse. The resistant literature, such as the works of Franz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, or Aimé Césaire remains so remote to us Chinese. Compared to the resistant discourse in other developing countries, be it in South America or India, the Chinese resistant discourse seems so weak. During the present age of reform and the Open Door, a period in which the formation of a Chinese Socialist market economy is enmeshing us with the international practice, the questions of how to preserve and uphold our own culturally constructed subjectivity, and how to reinforce identification with our own culture so as to enable victory in future international conflicts, rightly deserves serious consideration by all responsible Chinese intellectuals."

Any Western thought, I believe, in order to get accepted in China and become really influential, requires both an optimal local and international climate. Edward Said published his book Orientalism in 1978 and his Culture and Imperialism in spring 1993. My review in Chinese was written in summer that year and published in fall ñ in a year China felt humiliated by Western powers and especially by the United States in the international sphere: the Cargo-Carrier Milk-Way incident and the Western blockade of China's campaign for hosting the Olympic Games in 2000. The boycott policy headed by the United States towards China in the last couple of years already had created great backlash among the once whole-heartedly pro-Western Chinese intellectuals. A new perspective to view the world was strongly desired and eagerly looked for. The search for the own lost cultural identity and subjectivity became so high on the agenda for the Chinese intelligentsia in the early 1990s, and an undercurrent of a renewed Chinese nationalism was springing up: The time of transplanting postcolonial criticism was opportune. The right topic, the right magazine, the right chief-editor,the right reviewer and, most importantly, the right timing together made the landing of postcolonial criticism in China a tremendous success.

II. The Problems of Postcolonial Criticism in Western Academia

As is commonly known, most practitioners of postcolonial criticism in American academia are "masters" of poststructuralism. Since poststructuralists usually believe in anti-essentialism, it is understandable that the major ideas of certain postcolonial works cannot be easily summarized. Said did not give a specific definition of his much overloaded term Orientalism, he gave several definitions instead. But for me, the message below is the most enlightening one:

"Yet the Orientalist makes it his work to be always converting the Orient from something into something else: he does it for himself, for the sake of his culture, in some cases he believes in the sake of the Oriental. This process of conversion is a disciplined one: it is taught, it has its own societies, periodicals, traditions, vocabulary, rhetoric, all in basic ways connected to and supplied by the prevailing cultural norms of the West."

It will be hard to completely deny what Said points out here if we think of the various scholarly oriental associations and periodicals such as Münchener Ostasiatische Studien or Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in the West, as well as the organizations and events around them. As I argued elsewhere, Western oriental scholarship always distances itself from the Chinese academic tradition which is supposed to be the very target of its intellectual pursuit. The relationship between Chinese intellectual scholarship and the China scholarship in the West seems to be a parallel, rather than an integrating one; and quite often perspectives in the Western China scholarship with regard to its target seem to be down-looking rather than inward-looking. By making these statements, however, I am not pretending to be the spokesman of Edward Said for the Chinese audience. In my second Dushu essay I also have made it clear that I did acknowledge the limits and the methodological dilemma involved in Said's works. Whereas Said's Orientalist theory truly could provide some new perspectives for us in viewing Western scholarship about Chinese culture, it certainly will become absurd if pushed even just one step further. For instance, Said blames the West for having misrepresented the East, but his philosophical groundwork preaches that language neither goes along with nor represents reality, henceforth any representation eventually leads to distortion, or, put in German, "Darstellen ist immer Entstellen." If the semantic or linguistic fallacy is something that no one is able to escape from when thinking and elaborating, where is Said's legitimacy to condemn any Western Orientalist wrong-doing? Based on his own logic, his criticism on Orientalism will end up as nothing but a new kind of misrepresentation of other already existing old misrepresentations, not even one step closer to reality.

Facing the challenge with respect to whether he is able to present a real, a true East, or whether a real and true East exists at all, Said's answer is that this is not his task in the book and that it also goes beyond his interest and ability. Furthermore, as an anti-essentialist he is strongly against the dichotomy of East vs. West , believing that to define the nature of either East or West is equally meaningless. His postscript to the 1995 edition of Orientalism is entitled "East isn't East" which, beside his repeated and enhanced reproach that Orientalism has provided a distorted image of the East, also implies that there is no such thing as pure East or pure West. His favorite words and concepts are hybridity and ambiguity.  For him, all cultures are mixed up. He cautiously keeps a critical distance from the Islamic nationalism of the Arabic world, probably as a strategy for his own survival. He claims that he counts on his critical consciousness and insists on always taking an "oppositional" position. But the irony is that while advocating that a real intellectual should become the speaker of oppressed and weaker social groups by deconstructing the norms and values of the main stream, he refuses to identify himself with any social group.

The ambiguity within the very term "postcolonial" needs also to be addressed. The suffix "post" indicates "after" if referred to time, but it also implies "opposing" if referred to approaches. Having the first meaning in mind we will assume that both the colonial era and the time of colonial discourse have been long since over. But according to Arif Dirlik and Asao Miyoshi, the two most energetic critics of postcolonial theory from the field of Asian studies, it is better to define the contemporary era as the era of new colonialism rather than of postcolonialism if one takes into consideration the international capital flows which keep undermining the once considered holy integrity of a nation-state.  Furthermore, the ambiguity of postcolonial theory, with its anti-dichotomy gesture and its nagging at the hybridity of any culture, produces a potential necessity conducive to current international capital flow. It is true that since World War II many once colonized nations have won political independence and have established their own independent states, but the legacy colonialism has left behind is too strong to be completely eliminated. The whole infrastructure of the ex-master country has been most often inherited or transplanted into the new institutional design because there is hardly any epistemological alternative under the domination of the grand narrative of Western Enlightenment discourse, especially in the post-cold war era of the 1990s when some over-confident scholars in the West are triumphantly announcing the very end of history. The politic-cultural identity which was lost during the colonial period has not necessarily been re-established with the creation of independent nation-states after World War II for many Third World countries.

Most of the postcolonial scholars in the United States came from Third World countries and prefer to label themselves with the term "Third World critics", among them Gayatri Spivak and homi bhabha as representatives.  The use of the term "Third World critics" or "Third World critique" -instead of "postcolonial critics" or "postcolonial critique" is even more, or at least as plausible as the term "postcolonial criticism." While it is true that many postcolonial scholars fall into the category of an ethnic minority in the United States, their ties with the minority community frequently are revealed as very loose, not to mention their plausible connections to the real Third World. Being mostly trained at Western colleges, the so-called Third World critics lack the authentic knowledge of the Third World and remain remote from the cultural tradition their ancestors once lived in. Due to their educational background, the intellectual source of the Third World is scarcely accessible to them.

Biological factors, however, do not guarantee the status of a Third World scholar in the area of cultural studies. Neither does one need to be a white-European-male in order to be an Orientalist in the sense of Edward Said's work. The Third World is not an entirety and can not be easily represented in the Western world by certain ethnic minority scholars whose writings are mainly in the major European languages: languages which have exerted discursive power over other non-European languages in terms of the building up of specific ideas. Given that minority ethnic scholars are accepted as the representatives of the Third World in the West, the authentic voice of the Third World is falling to the wayside. The most favorable position the postcolonial critics might obtain from domestic Third World scholars cannot be more than the interlocutor between the two worlds.

Said’s own lack of knowledge about Third World is rather evident. Paradoxically, whereas Said's methodological approach heavily relies on poststructuralism, his moral justification for rejecting colonial discourse grounded mainly in Western Humanism. He may have ignored the fact that the belief in the universal principle of humanity, of common human nature, was also the justification for many colonialists. Social Darwinism and Humanism have been integrated and have set up the moral ground for the Western expansion in its colonial history. This becomes evident in the confession monologue by a colonialist in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which Said himself keeps quoting:

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea ñ something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..."

The "idea" emphasized here is nothing but Humanism which means to help uncivilized people become civilized. The political practice taken place in Nazi Germany during the Thirties and Forties, as some scholars have already convincingly argued, is nothing but the logical development of Western Enlightenment thought.

III. The predicament of postcolonial criticism in China

The primary interrogation addressed to Mainland postcolonialists (if any) is their relationship with the Chinese institutional discourse. Zhao Yiheng and Xu Ben in their reviews on the Mainland "post-scholarship" (houxue) in the Hong Kong based magazine Twenty-first Century conclude that, unlike its Western source which is usually considered a radical intellectual wing, Chinese postcolonial criticism proves to be both politically and culturally a rather conservative force, it also appears to be a one-edged sword, aiming merely at an international target, having no internal or national agenda, and therefore it is able to co-exist with the institutional discourse.

The question that lies for me herein could be formulated as such: What is this so-called Chinese institutional discourse? As a matter of fact, the contemporary Chinese institutional discourse consists of various elements which can be divided into mainstream and non-mainstream. My understanding is that the mainstream of the Mainland Chinese institutional discourse is manifested in new key words such as "adaptation to international norms", "market economy", "open door" and "reform" etc., which are completely in accordance with the main stream of the Western world and which I do not feel the inner urge to challenge.  The destiny of postcolonial criticism, whether in the West or in China, remains only to be an oppositional voice.

Furthermore I would like to remind everyone that the relationship between the institutional discourse and various intellectual wings in contemporary Mainland China is much more sophisticated than one could imagine overseas. Not only the Chinese institutional discourse such as represented by Liaowang tries to utilize some of the postcolonial thinking, but also the general reading public shows great interest in this "new perspective". The liberal Dushu, the nationalist Zhanlüe yu guanli (Strategy and Management), the semi-dissident Dongfang (Orient) and the marginal Tianya (End of the World), as is the popular Zhong Shan ñ all these magazines have participated extensively in the Orientalism vs. Occidentalism debate which greatly promoted the new nationalist sentiment in the middle `90s when the nationalist wave once rose so high that the mainstream had to downplay it and keep it within its own control, or at least avoid being hurt by its blind vigor. At the same time, one must admit that post colonial criticism in Mainland China (or elsewhere), unfortunately, can not be completely apolitical, since it is not a form of pure scholarship as defined by the European scholars of the last century.

One interesting remark my liberal friends have made is that postcolonial thinking has certain significance, but only in the Western context. The location where the debate occurs is their primary concern. The argument goes that if Chinese scholars want to participate in the debate, they should write in the major Western languages, and publish only in the Western world. A positive example they gave is the first generation liberal master Hu Shi who, according to them, always defended or even saluted Chinese cultural tradition when writing or lecturing in English overseas, but served as a commander in the battle against his own cultural tradition and domestic institutionalized discourse when in the homeland.  I think this point is difficult to refute, and therefore I have decided to gratefully accept their suggestion. This is also one of the reasons why I am giving this presentation here.

A logical and appropriate question to ask here is why the so-called Chinese "post-masters" do not follow their Western mentors in critically examining the tradition in which they grew up, in pursuing archeological studies on their own built up knowledge.  Here my counter-argument is that since the May Fourth Movement, the modernity discourse has become a dominating tradition in the Chinese context. Fundamental concepts such as reason, development, progress, freedom, science and democracy have become so popular that any analysis of them, in the slightest postmodernist sense, will for sure end up either as impossible or even dangerous. To critically re-evaluate the heritage of the May Fourth Movement means exactly to re-examine our own cultural tradition - a strong, alive and powerful tradition.

Chinese postcolonial criticism has been charged with Anti-Westernism. Depicting the rising identity consciousness in the Mainland, the cover story of Zhongguo shibao zhoukan (China Times Weekly) for its first issue of 1994 was entitled Fanxifangzhuyi huichao (The Backlash of Anti-Westernism). This is extremely misleading because a self-assertive China does not equal an aggressive China or, to quote Barmé, a China that is "becoming increasingly irate about their (perceived) inferior position in the New World Order and the attitude of the United States", and henceforth has a "desire for revenge for all the real and perceived slights of the past century."  To check Western colonial discourse and to rethink modern Chinese genealogy of humanistic knowledge is not to reject Western civilization as an entity. The best thing Chinese postcolonial criticism may contribute is to help provide another perspective for China in its negotiation with the West, intellectually as well as politically.