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AFTER THE DEATH OF MAO ZEDONG IN 1976, THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC of China, which Mao had ruled for almost three decades (1949-1976), was no longer governed by a totalitarian political system. While during most of the Mao period no intellectual discourse or activity could take place outside the parameters of Mao's ideological doctrine and political controls, as China's moved to a market economy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and opened up to the outside world, its citizens enjoyed increasing freedom in their personal, economic, cultural, and intellectual lives. Although still a one-party state, China's move to a market economy and to the outside world loosened political and ideological controls that unleashed a proliferation of ideas and activities outside the scope of party control.
Nevertheless, China's post-Mao government as well as its intellectuals still remained under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). China's third generation of Communist Party leaders, led by former Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin (1989-2002), which came to power after the violent crackdown on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and the fourth generation of party leaders, headed by Hu Jintao and his associates, which came to power in 2002, sought to re-indoctrinate party cadres in Marxist ideology, recentralize political authority, and re-strengthen the party's capacity to deal with the increasing inequalities and rampant corruption unleashed by China's move to a market economy.
Although a degree of pluralistic discourse and openness to foreign ideas exists in China's universities, academic journals, and think tanks, particularly in the sciences, these institutions are still under the control of party officials. The Hu Jintao leadership has detained, put under surveillance, and thrown out of the academic establishment intellectuals who dissent politically and criticize the party's policies publicly. Unlike in the Mao era, however, when any intellectual who dissented not only from the party's political views, but also from its scientific, historical, or economic views lost his or her job, was unable to make a living, and was banished from the intellectual community, China's economic reforms and opening to the outside world make it possible for intellectuals to publish abroad and in Hong Kong and to support themselves with freelance jobs.
The small number of intellectuals, who at times in the...