Abstract
Whether the history of Modern China since the 1890's is a history of the radicalization process is difficult to say. The obvious question is radicalization of what? Does this so-called radicalization have to be understood in terms of ideological values, involvement of the state in the society, mass mobilization or something else? Can't China be judged as having been treading a brand new path since the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee (or, at least, since 1992?s Deng Xiaoping's visit to the South, symbolizing the end of the retrenchment era Tienanmen's crackdown had brought about) ? As I guess the question was inspired by Ying-shih Yu's famous Radicalization of China, I will try to address it according to what he meant by radicalization, the one that affected the Chinese mind in relation with tradition. The two main driving forces of this radicalization process were the position of China at the periphery of the world and the disconnection of the intellectuals with the state.
