Qin Hui (historian)

Qin Hui (Chinese: 秦晖; pinyin: Qín Huī; born 1953) is a Chinese historian and
public intellectual. He holds the position of Professor of History, Institute of
Humanities and Social Sciences,Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Contents
Biography
Banned Book incident
History lectures on the web
See also
References
External links

Biography
His primary field is economic history, but since 1992 he has emerged as a prominent Qin Hui (2011)

public intellectual, taking a stand on a range of issues, often in conflict with the
official doctrines of the Chinese government.

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,
including some aspects of the welfare state. 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, particularly its more populist and nationalist
forms. He has for example signed petitions protesting chauvinistic responses to the
September 11 attacks in New York City.

His major contribution as a public intellectual has been to initiate wide debates on social justice. Having himself been sent down to
work as a peasant in a poor mountainous region of Southwest China in the Cultural Revolution, he has identified China's peasantry as
suffering from grave lack of social justice up to the present day. At the same time, his historical research has shown strong tendencies
of the peasantry 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 theMaoist planned economy).

A skilled writer able to provide incisive arguments and encapsulations of complex issues, Qin Hui has introduced a host of influential
themes to the Chinese-speaking world, and in the so-called "Sinosphere" (or Chinese language Internet), collections of his works can
be found on literally scores of websites. An important case in point is his doctrine of "issues versus isms" (wenti yu zhuyi).

Qin has drawn on the work of Alexander Chayanov, Eric Wolf and other writers on agrarian society to attack cultural essentialism 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.

Qin's formal research has largely been concerned with China's agrarian history in the broad. Contrary to the received Maoist view
which emphasized peasant wars as expressions of class struggle, 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.
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 W
en (苏文).

Banned Book incident

In December 2015, Qin hui's new book 《走出帝制》（Zouchu Dizhi） (Moving Away from the Imperial Regime), a collection of
his articles which examines how the "dream" of constitutional democracy fall apart in China in the early 20th century after this
country broke free from the Qing imperial order, had been "banned", as he told to Financial Times. The book had been pretty a best
seller before banned from selling.[1] "It's like they want to kill someone and won't even let him complain about it," he added, "I can’t
talk about this matter." An anonymous employee at the book's publisher said that the book had "quality problems". It happened just
days before China celebrates its second annualConstitution Day.[2]

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)
Beware of problem immigration (Chinese:秦晖：警惕“问题殖民”.mp3)
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

References
1. ZHAO, KIKI (4 December 2015)."On China's Constitution Day, Book on Constitutionalism Largely Disappears"(http
s://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/asia/china-constitution-qin-hui-book.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepag
e&clickmodule=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT .nav=top-stories-below&_r=1). New York Times. Retrieved
9 December 2015.
2. Mitchell, Tom (December 3, 2015)."Book by prominent Chinese academic 'banned ' " (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/
30cb1942-996e-11e5-9228-87e603d47bdc.html#axzz3tpuKx1Dx) . Financial Times. Retrieved 9 December 2015.

Kelly, David (August 2005). "Guest editor's Introduction". The Chinese Economy. 38 (4): 3–11.
doi:10.1080/10971475.2005.11033531.
Hui, Qin (August 2005). "The common baseline of modern thought".The Chinese Economy. 38 (4): 12–22.
doi:10.1080/10971475.2005.11033529.
Hui, Qin (March–April 2003)."Dividing the big family assets". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (20).
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

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