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Li Yujie (1900–1994) was a walking contradiction: a student leader of the Shanghai May Fourth movement and a Guomindang member and technocrat in the Nanjing government, but also a cadre in Xiao Changming's redemptive society—the Heavenly Virtues Teachings—and eventually the founder of two redemptive societies in his own right (the Heaven and Man Teachings and the Heavenly Emperor Teachings). Through a biographical study of Li Yujie, this article examines the complex appeal of redemptive societies to parts of the educated elite during China's Republican period. The author focuses particularly on the period between 1937 and 1945, when Li retired to the sacred mountain of Huashan. There, with the help of Huang Zhenxia, a self-taught intellectual also employed by the Guomindang, Li sought to modernize the "White Lotus" teachings that he had received from his master by incorporating scientific insights received via spirit writing. Li believed that he was creating a new religion more adapted to the twentieth century. Both the texts produced on Huashan and the military and political elite that were attracted to these texts allow us to raise new questions about secularism and religion, traditional beliefs and science in the context of Republican-period China, thereby suggesting that the conflict between the modernizing state and traditional religious culture was not always as stark as we have believed it to be.

Depuis 1999, le conflit, très médiatisé, entre l’État chinois et le Falun Gong a été souvent interprété selon les termes d’un débat bien connu en Occident, et en particulier sur le continent nord-américain : un débat qui oppose ceux qui, d’un côté, veulent défendre l’ordre social contre le danger de « cultes » ou « sectes », à ceux qui, de l’autre, veulent défendre la liberté de croyance et les « nouveaux mouvements religieux ». Le but du présent texte est de replacer ce débat dans un contexte spécifiquement chinois pour comprendre la signification donnée, au cours du vingtième siècle, aux concepts de religion, de superstition ou d’héterodoxie. Notre argumentation repose sur l’idée que la définition de religion adoptée par l’État chinois à partir du début du vingtième siècle, une définition calquée sur celle alors usitée en Occident, cadre très mal avec le fait religieux tel qu’il s’exprime dans l’espace chinois. Sans tenir compte de cette inadéquation, il devient difficile de comprendre à la fois la montée extraordinaire du qigong et du Falun Gong et la campagne de supression de ce dernier.

Un article de la revue Cahiers d'histoire, diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Abstract. Making Saints in Modern China offers a new perspective on the history of religion in modern and contemporary China by focusing on the profiles of reli

The renewed embrace of Marxism has been a key element in "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," added to China's constitution last year. But the Marxism that Xi and his propagandists are pushing is not what one would expect from a serious reading of the Manifesto. Nor is it the lumbering apparatus of the Stalinist state. The lessons of Marx, Xi declares, are that Marxism changes with the times, that it must be integrated with local culture in order to be effective, and that it needs a strong party and a great leader in order to succeed. This state Marxism is an attempt to unify the population behind a national ideology and shore up state authority, not to inspire class struggle.

This memoir examines Ai Weiwei’s life. Often portrayed as one of the most popular Chinese dissidents in the world, Ai Weiwei is depicted in Western media and governments as a brave opponent of the Chinese Communist Party who dares to defend the values of democratic systems. For its part, the Chinese regime prefers to present him as a disruptive element that has lost its Chinese identity. Through these different representations, we wonder who Ai Weiwei really is? More exactly, is he really a dissident? What values does he defend and why? What other aspects of his personality deserve our attention to better understand the person he is?In order to answer these questions, this memoir aimed to guide the analysis around the aspects of art, Internet and dissent in China. These three elements are closely linked to Ai Weiwei’s life and they offer the necessary tools to understanding our subject of study. Ultimately, we hypothesize that Ai Weiwei is not the character that governments and media around the world describe to us. The analysis reveals that he does not defend exclusively Western values and that he has not lost his Chinese identity. He shows activism attitude while art and Internet play a leading role in conveying his opinions. He officially became a Chinese dissident in 2011 when he was arrested, but he has since regained much of his freedom. In recent years, Ai Weiwei has redirected his activism towards issues that do not directly target the Chinese government to address human causes at the international level.

Research on the development of Pan-asianism outside Japan has long been neglected by historians. This thesis is an attempt of decompartmentalization of Pan-asianism to better understand its emergence in Asia and its role in the construction of an Asian identity between 1900 and 1924. This will be done by examining the speech of five actors of this "ideology." Using a Global History perspective, it demonstrates how Pan-asianism in Asia is part of a network of contacts and circulation of ideas in the early 20th century which was mainly influenced by two concepts in its definition of Asia: the yellow race and the Asian civilisation. Other than trying to better understand the relationships between Pan-asianism in Asia and Japan, this master’s thesis also explores the similarities and differences between them, especially the creation of an identity and a perception of Japan as a model of modernization and leader of the continent that spreads in Asia through Pan-asianism’s rhetoric.

The importance of the identity concept is now recognized by the scholarship in History. The feeling of belonging, being at the same time a personal and a collective process, is at the cornerstone of a group identity. In this dissertation, we intend to study the growth of Manchu identity’s awareness, and what part it plaid in the Chinese identity construction process, up to the 1911 Revolution. An Historiographic analysis will allow us to follow the evolution of western scholarship outlook on the Qing dynasty, and to substitute the thesis of their sinicization by the idea of their acculturation. Our first hypothesis is that a parallel comparison between both identity constructions will lead to the conclusion that they are inseparable from one another. Secondly, we will suggest that as long as the dynasty could pretend to a universal representation, China benefited from Manchu rule. Finally, our last assumption will demonstrate that the ethnic component was, and still is, a key factor in the rulership of a multicultural and multiethnic empire.

The Introduction to this edited volume explores the concept of sainthood in the context of modern and contemporary Chinese history, illustrating that the idea and the practice of sainthood remain vital in spite of the Chinese state’s consistent commitment to secularism as part of its strategy of state-building. In addition to providing necessary historical and historiographical contextualization, the Introduction also discusses the three main dimensions of sainthood—charisma, hagiography, and religious leadership—and provides examples of how the particular figures profiled in our volume both drew on tradition and innovated, and stood up to and compromised with political authorities. Chapter summaries are followed by a brief comparison with similar cases outside of the Chinese world. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the creativity and vitality of religious leadership, which seems generally undaunted by the frequent indifference and hostility of state actors.

The papers in this research dialogue section are the product of a project that examines intellectual life in China since the 1990s – chiefly the efforts by academic public intellectuals to rethink China’s past, present, and future in light of the excesses of Mao’s revolution, the challenges emerging from reform, and the rise of China to the status of world economic power. Chinese scholars, having benefited from China’s openness to the world and the relative relaxation of political pressure in China (until recently), have much to say about China and the world that merits our attention. Through creative collaboration between Chinese and international scholars, the articles collected here explore that intellectual public sphere since the late 1990s. The articles were written in Chinese by young PRC scholars and rendered into English through ‘collaborative translation’ teams that pair these Chinese with non-Chinese scholars based in Canadian universities. The net result, grounded on repeated conversations and revisions, is not a simple translation but a co-production of knowledge about China that aims to capture the discourse of Chinese scholarship in a way to make it meaningful to anglophone readers. The articles themselves are not traditional surveys of academic scholarship. Rather they map significant areas of an intellectual world and the arguments within it. Three widely accepted intellectual streams of thought (sichao 思潮) organize these soundings: liberals, New Left, and New Confucian. These reports explore connections between and diversity within and beyond each.