Wang Ruoshui

Wang Ruoshui
王若水
Wang Ruoshui in 1998
Born	(1926-10-25)25 October 1926 Shanghai, Republic of China
Died	9 January 2002(2002-01-09) (aged 75) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality	Chinese
Occupation	Journalist, philosopher
Political party	Communist Party of China

Wang Ruoshui (Chinese: 王若水; pinyin: Wáng Ruòshuǐ; Wade–Giles: Wang Jo-shui, 1926–2002), was a Chinese journalist, political theorists and philosopher. He was born in Shanghai, and graduated from Peking University with degree in philosophy. After working at the People'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 of Marxist humanism that led to the Anti-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 of Marxist humanism and of Chinese liberalism in the second half on his life.

Early life and education[]

Wang Ruoshui was born in Shanghai in 1926. At the age of four, his family moved to Hunan province, where he received education from Yali High School. After the Second Sino-Japanese war started, Wang and his family moved to Sichuan to avoid the ravage of the warfare. In the year of 1946, Wang went to Peking University to study philosophy. Two years later he graduated and joined the Chinese Communist Party.

In the 1950s, Wang was a devotee of Maoism and took part in ideological campaigns targeting the previously popular ideas of Hu Shih, Liang Shuming and Hu Feng. Later Wang became an advocate of "One Divides Into Two" and attacked Yang Xianzhen. Wang engaged in the argument with proponents of Yang on the issue of "unity of thoughts and existence" over a long period, and it came back to haunt him as Yang was restored to power in the 1970s.

At People's Daily[]

After working at Beijing Policy Research Office for a year after graduation from Peking University, Wang was assigned to People's daily in the year of 1950. In November 1954, the Chief editor of People's Daily then ordered Wang to write articles for the purpose of criticizing Hu Shih. Wang took only one day to write "Eliminating Hu Shih's Reactionary Philosophy", which, along with several other ones wrote in the same period, were praised by Mao. Later in April 1957, Wang's "Boldly Let Go--Implementing the Policy of 'A hundred of flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thoughts' " gained Mao's appreciation again.

In the year of 1963, Wang published an article entitled “The Philosophy of the Table”, which defended Mao's version of dialectical materialism, winning praise from Mao himself. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, at the height of the Sino-Soviet split Wang was recruited by Maoist literary henchman Zhou Yang to a group he was organizing to research and criticize the Marxist humanism which was then influential in the Eastern bloc, exemplified by (among others) György Lukács in Hungary. For these reasons, before the Culture Revolution, Wang, with the support from Mao Zedong, was a leader in People's Daily.

After the "September 13th incident" in 1971, Mao entrusted Zhou Enlai to manage People's Daily. As a respond to Zhou's command of criticizing extreme left thoughts and Lin Biao, Wang published three articles on People's Daily at October 14 of 1972. This action was criticized by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan. Wang wrote a letter to Mao with his complaints. As a result, Wang was suspended and sent to Red Star People's Commune at Daxing County for labour reform.

Wang returned to the People's Daily as the culture revolution ended in 1976. In the second year, Wang was promoted to the position of deputy editor, in charge of commentary, theory and literary. The president then of People's Daily was Hu Jiwei, one of the earliest critics of culture revolution. Soon after the downfall of the Maoists in the later 1970s, 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 the cult 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" to advocate Marxist humanism.

During 1978 to 1982, Wang served as a representative at National People's Congress and a commissioner at CCP's Central Discipline Inspection Committee.

In the year of 1983, Wang was removed from the position of deputy editor of People's Daily as demanded by the director of CCP's propaganda department, Deng Liqun. Wang's divorce lawsuit with his first wife Zhong Dan went to the closure. In the fall of the same year, Wang met Feng Yuan, a twenty-year-old journalism graduate student who just graduated from the Fudan University. Wang married Feng in January 1987. His second marriage lasted until he died in 2002.

For his support for the 1986 student movement and various opinions against the Chinese Communist Party, Wang was expelled from the Communist party in 1987 as a part of a campaign against "bourgeois liberalization". He continued to write trenchant criticisms of the regime, and conduct polemics against Mao's former secretary Hu Qiaomu (1912-1993), a doctrinaire Marxist who had been behind his expulsion from the Party.

Later life and research[]

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 the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. In the year 1994, he went to UC-Berkeley as a visiting professor.

In June 1996, Wang was diagnosed with lung cancer. He immediately received surgery in the next month. When asked for will before the operation, Wang dictated the outline for three essays he was planning to write. Later in 1998, Wang went to Lund University at Sweden, and served as visiting professor for a semester. In the second year, it turned out that Wang's condition was worsen. Wang admitted in his diary that his life may soon come to an end, and expressed the frustration of unable to finish his writing plans.

In the year of 2000, Wang went back to Harvard University as the family associate of his wife Feng Yuan, who received the Nieman Fellowship. In September 2001, Wang gave the last speech in his life to the graduate students at Harvard about Mao and Cultural revolution.

At January the ninth of 2002, Wang Ruoshui passed away in his sleep.

Writing[]

In his early ages, he was a firm believer of Marxism. Though he was later known as an exponent of Marxist humanism, initially he did not share the same appreciation for humanist ideologies. In the year of 1963, the same year he became known by Mao Zedong for his "The Philosophy of Table", he was assigned to a writing group with the task of creating brochures for the purpose of criticizing humanism. According to Wang himself, his attitude toward humanism was no different from that of the other members in the group who opposed the acceptance of humanism, which was generally regarded as a bourgeois ideology.

However, as a philosopher, Wang constantly developed his views and revised his early opinions, especially when he witnessed the political changes that led him to question his previous beliefs, such as when Mao selected Lin Biao, who endorsed the deification of Mao, as his successor. When the Great Cultural Revolution ended in the late 1970s, Wang published several articles to criticize the very movement just ended and the cult of Mao, since the environment was relatively more liberal comparing to former eras. Some of his most famous works about Marxist humanism and alienation were published in that time. However, because of his controversial ideologies, the Chinese Communist Party has always regarded him as a potential antagonist.

In the year of 1987, CCP demanded him to quit the party with the charge of “bourgeois liberalization”. Wang refused and was later expelled. Afterwards, Wang managed to publish the works that he was unable to publish under the supervision of CCP government, through publishers based in Hong Kong. Those works, while elaborating on Wang's latest research on humanism and Mao, also revealed precious details of the political struggles he previously involved in and his own growth as a thinker. Even near the end of Wang's life in Boston when his health was in extremely poor condition due to the lung cancer, he still managed to record some of his thoughts with the help of his wife Feng Yuan.

Major works[]

See also[]

• Chinese philosophy
• Marxist Humanism
• Alienation
• Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign

References[]

• David Kelly, ‘The Emergence of Socialist Humanism in China: Wang Ruoshui and the Critique of Socialist Alienation,’ in Merle Goldman, Timothy Cheek and Carol Lee Hamrin, eds, China’s Intellectuals and the State, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 159–182.
• David Kelly, translator and editor, ‘Writings of Wang Ruoshui on Philosophy, Humanism and Alienation,’ Chinese Studies in Philosophy: 16 (3), Spring 1985, pp. 1–120;
• de Bary, Wm. Theodore, ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume II (Second Edition) New York: Columbia, 2000.
• Wang, Ruoshui. With the Background of Resigning of Hu Yaobang—the Fate of Humanism in China, Hong Kong Der Spiegel Press, 1997
• Wang, Ruoshui. Newly Discovered Mao Zedong: the Great Man in the Eyes of the Servant, Hong Kong Der Spiegel Press, 2002