The international press dubbed early 1998 as the “Beijing spring,” noting that Chinese intellectuals, “emboldened by signs of tolerance,” argued for political reform “more loudly than at any time since 1989.” Two different but closely associated voices were raised during those months: One called for political reform in China, while the other advocated classical liberalism as an alternative to established Marxist ideology. Although the latter voice received less attention from the outside world, it survived the former, which has been effectively silenced. This new school of thinkers, which calls itself ziyou pai (“the liberals”), made a formal appearance during the “Beijing spring” and declared that liberalism was making a comeback in China after an absence of almost 40 years. The formal reappearance of liberalism indicates that a new stage has been reached in the intellectual odyssey of Chinese intellectuals. A leading figure in the liberal revival asserted in the preface to Peking University and Liberalism in Modern China, “After the largest-scale totalitarian experiment ever undertaken in human history . . . liberalism has convincingly been proved to be the most desirable and universal system of values.” The resurgence of liberalism in China has not escaped the attention of the Western press. According to the New York Times, liberal political ideas and discussions are quietly making a comeback among Chinese Liu Junning, a former fellow at the Institute of Political Science of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is an independent scholar and the editor of the journal Res Publica and of a series of books on democratization. An earlier version of this essay was presented at a September 1999 conference, “Whither China? The PRC at 50,” sponsored by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. It will appear along with the other conference essays in Ted Galen Carpenter and James A. Dorn, eds., China’s Future: Constructive Partner or Emerging Threat (Cato Institute, forthcoming 2000). Ý Cato Institute, 2000.