ABSTRACT
In the last three decades, Chinese intellectuality has developed new outlooks. It is very easy for one to tell that there is a radical break between the intellectuality of the Maoist time (1949-78) and that of the post-Maoist era (1978-the present). Indeed, one salient difference between the two periods is that the latter saw the rise of intellectuals as a leading group in Chinese society. Whereas it was the Party leadership that had previously set the tone of cultural and intellectual life, academics and independent scholars now guide the production of Chinese social and political thought. The post-Maoist intellectuality as it has developed since the 1980s is the object of critical examination in this chapter.1
