 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Wang Ruoshui" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Wang Ruoshui | |
|---|---|
| 王若水 | |
 Wang Ruoshui in 1998 | |
| Born | (1926-10-25)25 October 1926 |
| Died | 9 January 2002(2002-01-09) (aged 75) |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist,philosopher |
| Political party | Chinese Communist Party |
Wang Ruoshui (Chinese:王若水;pinyin:Wáng Ruòshuǐ;Wade–Giles:Wang Jo-shui, 1926–2002), was a Chinese journalist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was born inShanghai, and graduated fromPeking University with a degree in philosophy. After working at thePeople's Daily for over three decades, Wang was expelled from the party in 1987 during the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign, largely due to his long-standing vocal advocacy ofMarxist humanism that led to theAnti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983. After his exile from the party, he went to United States as a visiting scholar to continue his research. Wang was known as a major exponent ofMarxist humanism and ofChinese liberalism in the second half on his life.
Wang Ruoshui was born in Shanghai in 1926. At the age of four, his family moved toHunan province, where he attendedYali High School. After theSecond Sino-Japanese War started, Wang and his family moved toSichuan, away from the front lines. In 1946, Wang went to Peking University to study philosophy. Two years later he graduated and joined theCommunist Party.
In the 1950s, Wang was a devotee ofMaoism and took part in ideological campaigns targeting the previously popular ideas ofHu Shih,Liang Shuming, andHu Feng. Later Wang became an advocate of "One Divides Into Two" and attackedYang Xianzhen on the issue of "unity of thoughts and existence" over a long period. This came back to haunt him when Yang was rehabilitated in the 1970s.
After working at Beijing Policy Research Office for a year after he graduated, Wang was assigned to the People's Daily in 1950. In November 1954, the Chief Editor ofPeople's Daily ordered Wang to write articles criticizingHu Shih. Wang wrote "Eliminating Hu Shih's Reactionary Philosophy" in a single day; this and several other articles he wrote at the time were praised by Mao. In April 1957, Wang's "Boldly Let Go - Implementing the Policy of'A hundred of flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thoughts' (百家争鸣，百花齐放)" was again praised by Mao.
In the year of 1963, Wang published "The Philosophy of the Table", which defended Mao's version ofdialectical materialism, again winning praise from Mao. Before theCultural Revolution, at the height of theSino-Soviet split, Wang was recruited by Maoist literary henchmanZhou Yang to a group he was organizing to research and criticize theMarxist humanism which was then influential in theEastern bloc.
After the "September 13th incident" in 1971, Mao appointedZhou Enlai to managePeople's Daily. In response to Zhou's directive to criticize extreme leftism andLin Biao, Wang published three articles on October 14, 1972, which were criticized byZhang Chunqiao andYao Wenyuan. Wang wrote a letter to Mao with his complaints, and was suspended and sent to Red Star People's Commune atDaxing County forlabour reform.
Wang returned to thePeople's Daily in 1976; in 1977, he was promoted to the position of deputy editor in charge of commentary, theory and literature, underHu Jiwei, one of the earliest critics of the Cultural Revolution. Soon after the downfall of the Maoists and far-left faction, Wang revealed that these much reviled "revisionist" doctrines had had a great impact on him, and had provided a lens through which he could understand and condemn the Cultural Revolution and thecult of Mao himself.
In the early 1980s, Wang published "About the Concept Alienation", "Discussing the problem of Alienation", to introduce the concept of alienation to the Chinese readers; He also published "Man is the Starting Point of Marxism" and "A Defense of Humanism", advocating Marxist humanism.
From 1978 to 1982, Wang served in theNational People's Congress and as a commissioner at theCentral Discipline Inspection Committee.
In 1983, Wang was removed from the position of deputy editor ofPeople's Daily as demanded by the director of CCP's propaganda department,Deng Liqun, at the same time as his divorce with his first wife Zhong Dan was concluded. In the fall of that year, he met Feng Yuan, a twenty-year-old journalism graduate student who just graduated fromFudan University. Wang married Feng in January 1987.
For his support for the1986 student movement and various opinions against the Chinese Communist Party, Wang was expelled from the Communist party in 1987 as a part of a campaignagainst "bourgeois liberalization". He continued to write trenchant criticisms of the regime, and conduct polemics against Mao's former secretaryHu Qiaomu (1912-1993), a doctrinaire Marxist who had been behind his expulsion from the Party.
After expelled from the party in 1987, Wang chose to continue on his research. In the year of 1989 and 1993, he was invited as a visiting scholar by theFairbank Center for Chinese Studies atHarvard University. In the year 1994, he went toUC Berkeley as a visiting professor.
In June 1996, Wang was diagnosed withlung cancer, which eventually led to his death. When asked for his will before surgery the next month, Wang dictated the outline for three essays he was planning to write. Later in 1998, Wang spent a semester as a visiting professor atLund University inSweden.
In 2000, Wang returned to Harvard University when his wife Feng Yuan received theNieman Fellowship. In September 2001, he gave his last-ever speech to an audience of graduate students there.
Wang died in his sleep on January 9, 2002.
In his early years, he was a firm Marxist. Though he was later known as an exponent of Marxist humanism, initially he was one of its opponents. In 1963, the same year Mao praised his "The Philosophy of Table", he was assigned to a group to create brochures criticizing humanism, which was generally regarded as abourgeois ideology.. According to Wang himself, his attitude toward humanism was the same as that of the others in the group.
However, as a philosopher, Wang constantly developed his views and revised his opinions, especially when he witnessed political changes that led him to question his beliefs, such as when Mao selectedLin Biao, who endorsed thedeification of Mao, as his successor. When the Cultural Revolution ended, Wang published several articles to criticize the movement and the cult of Mao. Some of his most famous works about Marxist humanism and alienation were published at that time.
In the year of 1987, he was asked to leave the Party for "bourgeois liberalization"; he refused and was later expelled. Afterwards, Wang managed to publish previously suppressed works through publishers based inHong Kong. Those works, while elaborating on his latest research on humanism and Mao, also revealed intimate details of the political struggles he previously involved in and his own growth as a thinker. Even near the end of his life inBoston, he still managed to record some of his thoughts with the help of his wife Feng Yuan.
| Title | Publisher | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Philosophical Common Sense: First Draft | Learning Magazine | 1957 |
| Marxist Epistemology is the Theory of Practice | Tianjin People's Publishing House | 1964,1965 |
| On the Frontier of Philosophy | People's Publishing House | 1980 |
| A Defense for Humanism | Sanlian Bookstore (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. | 1986 |
| The Pain of Wisdom | Sanlian Bookstore (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. | 1989 |
| With the Background of Resigning of Hu Yaobang—the Fate of Humanism in China | Hong Kong Der Spiegel Press | 1997 |
| Newly Discovered Mao Zedong: the Great Man in the Eyes of the Servant | Hong Kong Der Spiegel Press | 2002 |
| Title | Year |
|---|---|
| The Philosophy of Table | 1963 |
| Discussing the Issue of Alienation | 1980 |
| A Defense for Humanism | 1983 |
| Some Thoughts on Reflection Theory, Subjectivity and Humanism | 1988 |
| The Philosophy about Marxist Man | 1986 |
| My Marxist Views | 1995 |
| Dialectics and Mao Zedong's Philosophy of Struggle | 1999 |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
