The Sinosphere left looks at rising China: Missed dialogues and the search for an ‘Asian perspective’

Contemporary left-wing debate in the Sinosphere, here limited to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Taiwan, is often fuelled by the political, economic, and social implications of the PRC’s rise as a world power. While agreeing upon basic premises of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, left-wing intellectuals in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan come to loggerheads over critiquing how China’s rise influences its leftist identity. In the past few years we have witnessed a series of fractured and one-sided arguments among Sinosphere left-wing intellectuals. As part of the research dialogues on mapping the intellectual public sphere in China today, this article examines the cacophony of the Sinosphere leftist echo chamber, starting from contentious debates over the leftist nature of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement, and then focusing on voices that are attempting to bring together left-wing traditions from the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Scholars such as He Zhaotian, Chen Kuan-Hsing, and Sun Ge are exploring possibilities of de-imperialization, decolonization, and de-Cold War-ization, in the hopes of creating a shared, emancipatory ‘Asian perspective’. Though few in number, these voices demonstrate a growing utopian urge within the Sinosphere left to participate in mutual dialogues on possible futures