Chinese Modern Thinkers Library
Chief Editor: Dai Yi
Publisher: China Renmin University Press
 

 

After five years of preparation, the publication this year of the Chinese Modern Thinkers’ Library was a big event.
 

The work consists of 100 volumes of authoritative summaries of the ideas of important Chinese intellectual figures from 1840 to 1949, including generations of thinkers such as Gong Zizhen (1792-1841) and Wei Yuan (1794-1857) around the time of the Opium War (1839-42), together with outstanding reformers Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929) of the Reform Movement of 1898, as well as Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) and Li Dazhao (1889-1927), the leaders of the New Culture Movement of the mid 1910s and 1920s.
 

The thinkers in this book come from a range of historical backgrounds as well as different schools of thought. Their research fields were also taken into account, ranging from politics, economics and military studies to culture and religion. Their insights into different genres represent rich historical heritage worth preserving.
 

The Library made a systematic conclusion about the ideas of modern Chinese thinkers, showing its grand vision. All the intellectual figures included have played a vital role in China’s progress. Their ideas still inspire new theoretical works, offering guidance for China’s modernization process. Cultural conservationism, liberalism and socialism formulated during that period still have persistent and profound influence on academic circles today.
 

Each volume consists of an introduction, main body and a brief chronicle. The editors attentively wrote the introduction, where the thinkers’ life, achievements and status in history are examined, while their representative works were compiled in the main body.

The Library demonstrates recent progress in China’s modern philosophical research from the following three aspects.
 

More intellectual figures, such as Fang Dongshu (1772-1851), Feng Guifen (1809-74), Bao Shichen (1775-1855) and Shen Jiaben (1840-1913), were selected, and their ideas were collected as a volume for the first time. Some of their works, though mentioned by scholars before, were not collected in a separate volume, or some important works had not been explored, emerging as new literary works.
 

More newly discovered works were added to previous collections. For example, the original Hong Xiuquan Volume and Hong Rengan Volume, published in the 1970s, had a lot of mistakes in the words, notes and punctuation due to careless proofreading. The two works were edited and combined. This combined version could be regarded as the highest quality version among the volumes that introduced the two Hongs’ lives.
 

More gaps were filled in for some historical figures whose works were prohibited in mainland China due to political taboos, but The Library organized their thoughts as a separate volume this time. For example, the Hu Hanmin Volume was published in the mainland for the first time since 1949. It collected his masterpieces through different stages of his life, and explored a variety of new documents as well as articles he wrote for journals.