Editorial

Abstract

Editorial Margherita Zanasi The second issue of 2022 presents six research articles and one review essay. Yue Meng's article explores the development of the concept of "ecology" in China throughout the twentieth century. Meng highlights the tension between, on the one hand, ecological awareness and, on the other, economic objectives as well as postcolonial, socialist, and nationalist discourses. These centralized agendas, she argues, ultimately denied ecology and made it an "unspeakable reality." Vivienne Xiangwei Guo explores the collaboration between Wu Peifu and the Endeavor Society—a group of Beijing intellectuals led by Hu Shi—that resulted in the short-lived 1922 Beiyang "Good People Cabinet." Focusing on this cooperation, Guo explores the discourse on constitutional government and the complex personal network that linked May Fourth intellectuals with public and political personalities such as Wu. Guo's article also challenges the stereotypical representation of warlords as detached from the contemporary intellectual discourse. Jianda Yuan closely examines the records of secret conversations held between the emperor of Manchukuo, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, and important Japanese political and military figures during the period 1932–1938. These records, he argues, shed light on Puyi's political ideas, revealing that he closely identified with Japanese interests in Manchuria and China Proper. Challenging the image of Puyi as a mere Japanese "puppet," Yuan argues that he had more political autonomy than is generally believed. In his article, Yu Wang explores the widespread practice in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the 1950s and 1960s of listening to "enemy radio" such as Taiwan's Voice of Free China. Placing this practice in the contemporary Cold War context, Wang argues that it contributed to the politicization of foreign broadcasts targeting PRC listeners. It also generated tensions between central PRC organizations concerned with national security, on the one hand, and the listeners and local radio administrations, on the other. Wang also explores how the radio, as a communication technology, offered a space for listeners to imagine alternative identities. Kelly A. Hammond and Evan N. Dawley shift the focus to Taiwan. In her article, Hammond examines the outreach of the Guomindang (GMD) toward Muslim communities—both in China and globally—in the 1950s and 1960s. Its main objective, Hammond argues, was to win their support in establishing the Republic of China on Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese state while discrediting the PRC on the mainland. Building on relationships and networks established before 1949, the Nationalists attempted to mobilize postcolonial Muslim nation-states in their pursuit of international recognition. Dawley, by focusing on local gazetteers for major Taiwanese cities, reveals the limits of the Nationalists' attempt to reterritorialize Taiwan as part of China during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dawley argues that this effort was intended to foster a Chinese national identity [End Page 89] as well as to incorporate Taiwan into China's historical narrative and its "physical and imagined geography." Although the development objectives for these cities proved successful, that of Sinification ultimately failed as urbanization unfolded within a distinctively Taiwanese context. In his review essay, Yan Bo explores different approaches to the study of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by focusing on two recently published books: Dong Guoqiang and Andrew G. Walder's A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China and Alessandro Russo's Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture. Four book reviews published with this issue are available at Project MUSE (muse.jhu.edu/journal/390). Finally, Yue Meng is the author featured for this issue in our interview series, available at http://hstcconline.org/interviews-with-authors/. The interview includes a link for free access to her article. [End Page 90] Copyright © 2022 Twentieth Century China Journal, Inc.