
Qin Hui (; born December 1953) is a Chinese historian and public intellectual. He previously held the position of Professor of History, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...
, Beijing. He is now an adjunct professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration, at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public university, public research university in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong.
Established in 1963 as a federation of three university college, collegesChung Chi College, New Asia Coll ...
.
Career
Born in December 1953, he suffered from congenital
glaucoma
Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that can lead to damage of the optic nerve. The optic nerve transmits visual information from the eye to the brain. Glaucoma may cause vision loss if left untreated. It has been called the "silent thief of ...
and was blind in his right eye right after birth. He sought medical treatment in Guangxi and Hunan, and finally underwent ophthalmic surgery at Fenyang Road Hospital (now
the Eye and ENT Hospital of Fudan University) in Shanghai to save the vision in his left eye. But even after the surgery, Qin Hui's vision in his left eye was still poor due to the sequelae of optic nerve atrophy caused by congenital glaucoma.
Education
At the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
, Qin Hui was a first-year student at Nanning No. 4 Middle School. In 1967, when the province of Guangxi was divided into two major factions, Qin Hui became a member of the "Fourth Middle School Reform Union", the grass-roots organisation of the "Four Twenty-Two" faction of Guangxi in his school. In May 1968, he left Nanning and went with his mother to his grandmother's house in
Ningbo
Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the Eas ...
, Zhejiang Province. From 1969 to 1978, he was embedded in a production team in Tianlin County, Guangxi, where he joined the
Communist Youth League of China
The Communist Youth League of China (CYLC; also known as the Young Communist League of China or simply the Communist Youth League or CYL) is a people's organization of the People's Republic of China for youth between the ages of 14 and 28, r ...
and
Chinese Communist Party
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
.
In 1978, Qin Hui passed the preliminary examination for postgraduate study, and was given 150 yuan by the authorities for travelling expenses to Lanzhou, where he passed the re-examination. Because of his poor eyesight,
Lanzhou University tried to refuse to admit him, but at the insistence of his master's tutor, Zhao Lisheng(), a pioneer in the history of the Chinese Peasant War and the history of the agrarian system, Qin Hui eventually managed to enrol at Lanzhou University.
In 1981, Qin Hui received his master's degree in history from Lanzhou University.
Researching and Teaching
In 1982, he taught at
Shaanxi Normal University and was promoted to professor at Shaanxi Normal University in 1992.
Qin's primary field is
economic history
Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the Applied economics ...
and peasant studies. Since 1992 he has emerged as a prominent public intellectual, taking a stand on a range of issues, often in conflict with the official doctrines of the Chinese government. His general focus is China's
agrarian history. Qin is a writer in the
Sinosphere
The Sinosphere, also known as the Chinese cultural sphere, East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The Sinosph ...
and the Chinese-speaking Internet, where collections of his works are commonly found. An important case in point is his doctrine of "issues versus isms" (''wenti yu zhuyi'').
Banning of ''Moving Away from the Imperial Regime''
In December 2015, Qin Hui's new book ''
Moving Away from the Imperial Regime'' (), a collection of articles examining how the "dream" of
constitutional democracy
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of Legal entity, entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
Wh ...
fell apart in China in the early 20th century after the country broke free from the Qing imperial order, was
banned by the Chinese government. The book was a bestseller before the ban. "It's like they want to kill someone and won't even let him complain about it," Qin commented; "I can't talk about this matter." An anonymous employee at the book's publisher said that the book had "quality problems". The ban was issued days before China celebrated its second annual
Constitution Day
Constitution Day is a holiday to honour the constitution of a country. Constitution Day is often celebrated on the anniversary of the signing, promulgation or adoption of the constitution, or in some cases, to commemorate the change to constitut ...
.
Views
In terms of political ideology, Qin Hui defends a
left-liberal position. He favors privatization under strict conditions of democratic openness. However he opposes
market fundamentalism in its Chinese forms, and seeks to introduce institutions of
social democracy
Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...
, including some aspects of the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
. He strongly defends liberty as a political value, and often allies with other Chinese intellectuals labeled "liberal". He has engaged in polemics with the
Chinese New Left
The Chinese New Left is a term used in the China, People's Republic of China to describe a diverse range of left-wing political philosophies that emerged in the 1990s that are critical of the Chinese economic reform, economic reforms institute ...
, particularly its more populist and nationalist forms. He has for example signed petitions protesting chauvinistic responses to the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
.
As a public intellectual, Qin has worked to initiate debates on
social justice
Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has of ...
. Having himself been sent down to work as a
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...
in a poor mountainous region of Southwest China in the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
, Qin has argued that China's peasantry suffers from a grave lack of social justice to the present day. At the same time, he has stated in his historical research that the peasantry has a strong tendency to enhance their citizen status whenever possible (whereas the urban working class has often tended to demand restitution of the dependent client status it enjoyed under the
Maoist
Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic o ...
planned economy).
Qin has drawn on the work of
Alexander Chayanov,
Eric Wolf and other writers on agrarian society to attack cultural
essentialism
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their Identity (philosophy), identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an Theory of forms, "idea" or "f ...
in studies of the Chinese peasantry, which often takes the form of portraying the peasantry as permanently imbued with Confucianism and the collectivist ethics of the feudal patriarchal lineage. Qin has been concerned to show that history rather than culture provides a solid explanatory framework for the empirical phenomena.
Contrary to the received Maoist view which emphasizes peasant wars as expressions of class struggle, in his research on agrarian history Qin concludes that the most significant fault-line in the countryside was not between peasant and landlord, but between peasant and official. This has obvious consequences for interpreting contemporary rural China.
Personal life
Qin Hui is married with one daughter. His wife, Jin Yan (金雁) is an eminent scholar of Eastern European and Russian affairs in her own right, often collaborating with Qin under the nom-de-plume Su Wen (苏文).
History lectures on the web
Broken up and Reconnection (Chinese:秦晖-断裂与联系:30年、60年、120年的中国历程.mp3)*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110707022845/http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/f/8388347.html?from=like On Chinese peasants (Chinese: 秦晖-10.06.24-农民问题的历史与现实(天人讲堂).mp3) China's Land system (Chinese: 秦晖-十字路口中的中国二元土地制度.mp3)
See also
*
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy (Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 中国哲学; Traditional Chinese characters, traditional Chinese: 中國哲學) refers to the philosophical traditions that originated and developed within the historical ...
*
Huang Zongxi's Law
References
Further reading
*
*
*
* Qin Hui and Su Wen, ''Tianyuanshi yu kuangxiangqu–Guanzhong moshi yu qianjindai shehuide zairenshi'' (Pastorals and rhapsodies: the Central Shaanxi model in rethinking pre-modern society) (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 1996).
* Qin Hui, ''Wenti yu zhuyi'' (Issues and isms) (Changchun chubanshe, 1999).
External links
Dilemmas of Twenty-First Century Globalization: Explanations and Solutions, with a Critique of Thomas Piketty’s Twenty-First Century Capitalismby Qin Hui, Translation and Introduction by David Ownby
{{DEFAULTSORT:Qin, Hui
1953 births
20th-century Chinese philosophers
Living people
20th-century Chinese historians
Academic staff of Shaanxi Normal University
Academic staff of Tsinghua University
Chinese Communist Party politicians
Chinese social democrats
People from Guilin
Educators from Guangxi
Historians from Guangxi
Philosophers from Guangxi
21st-century Chinese philosophers
Liberalism in China