By Kun Qian
Reviewed by Magnus Fiskesjö
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2025)
Kun Qian, Imperial-Time-Order: Literature, Intellectual History, and China’s Road to Empire Leiden: Brill, 2016. xii + 368 pp. ISBN: 9789004309296 (hardback) / ISBN 9789004309302 (e-book).
It used to be, in China, that empire and imperialism were words associated with evil foreign powers—especially Western powers encroaching on Asia—and, to a lesser extent, with China’s own past empires, also characterized as unjust and oppressive.
Today, we see an increasingly explicit embrace of the idea of empire in China. In a complete reversal of Communist Party policy, there is even a renewed identification of today’s China with its own past empires, in discourse as well as in state actions both inside and outside of the modern Chinese nation-state that replaced the Qing empire after 1911.
Kun Qian’s Imperial-Time-Order: Literature, Intellectual History, and China’s Road to Empire provides a very useful analysis of how this shift occurred, with particular focus on the cultural realm. Because of current developments, her remarkable and extremely rich book is gaining in timeliness every day. Grounded in a deep engagement with both Chinese and Western philosophy and literature, Imperial-Time-Order will continue to help explain the roots of the Chinese imperial imagination to readers and students for a long time to come.
The book begins, appropriately, with an introduction to the ambivalent figure of Mao, who regarded himself as a revolutionary overthrowing the old and creating something new—not just another imperial dynasty. And yet, at the same time, as many have observed, Mao took on imperial manners. Kun Qian emphasizes how deeply influenced Mao was by the history of the imperial eras that came before. She argues that Mao saw himself as part of a Chinese continuity, unfolding on a Chinese time, a “universal time” in which there always is a China.
This sets the stage for the book’s investigations of the significance of the imperial imagination as “a genealogy of the representation of time and traditional Chinese empire in different modern periods” (p. 5). The “time” here is both “concrete lived time,” but also, and even more importantly, the “transcendent, imagined time that subsumes past, present and future” (it is thus not a universal time but a culturally embedded “Chinese” time that transcends all time periods since the beginning of empire). Similarly, “history,” as Qian uses it, refers to neither “official history,” nor to “realistic social history” but to “conceptual, recognized history” (p. 5), meaning history not as “actually lived” but as conceived and understood—and thus with a deep hold on Chinese people’s minds.
The book engages with a broad literature on concepts of time (including Gilles Deleuze, Alfred Gell, Walter Benjamin, and others), and considers how the conception of time varies from place to place. Readers such as myself might consider Qian’s discussion alongside the anthropological version of world-systems history proposed by Jonathan Friedman (1985, and other works). Distinct from the self-limiting West-and-the-Rest perspectives of Johannes Fabian (cited by Qian on p. 58-59) and others, Friedman’s more general theory suggests that specific conceptions of time are tied to their historical circumstances, especially in terms of the rise, fall, and disintegration of imperial projects. For example, in a successful imperial expansionist mode, denizens of the imperial metropolis will imagine themselves as living in a vanguard time, and see themselves as naturally superior, advancing above and beyond all “backward” others, who in turn come to be seen as left behind in the wake of “civilization.”
But Qian’s study highlights a caveat to my caveat: Unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia, Inca, or Rome, where history interrupted the continuous transmission of otherwise similar imperial imaginaries, in China’s case an enduring literary heritage, powered by linguistic continuity, continues to render such imaginaries available and potent—even in imperial down-times.
Therefore, it is very much plausible, as Kun Qian argues, that in China there is a distinctive and powerful Chinese longue durée logic at play. This is a “continuity created and maintained through constant reconstruction and reinvention of a moral/utopian vision of China” (p. 12). This vision is repeatedly rekindled, by subjects who “themselves are products of this imperial-time-order,” which accordingly “both facilitates and debilitates” their own scope of action (p. 15). The continuous transmission and rekindling of these literary and other imaginaries of naturalized empire—the lasting, Chinese-styled “imperial-time-order”—is the overall focus of the rest of the book, which examines the influence of this master concept on those living, thinking, and writing in late Qing, Republican, and recent times.
The stage is set in Part 1, comprising a single chapter (chapter 1), “The Imperial-Time-Order: The Eternal Return of the Chinese Empire,” which outlines the transmitted features of the Classical “transcendent” imperial-time-order, into which even the Chinese Marxist ideology of the twentieth century was subsumed.
The several chapters in Part 2 of the book, headlined “Time, Unity and Morality from the Late Qing to Mao’s China,” examine how Chinese intellectuals, starting with Liang Qichao 梁啟超, struggled to find their role in the “Suspended Time” of the extended clash with foreign powers in that era of Chinese imperial decline.
The discussion in Part 2 foregrounds the challenges faced by Chinese thinkers, challenges often assessed in terms of shi 勢—a pregnant term Qian describes as a “morally neutral term . . . equivalent with [historical] force, or [historical] trend, signif[ying] both historical determinism and the virtual possibilities intrinsic within the determinism…. [S]hi is based on the knowledge of a time-conscious history and a continuous narrative of that history” (p. 27-28). I wonder if this key term (which is sometimes also translated as “momentum,” “force,” or “circumstance”) could be usefully rendered as “moment,” located and constrained within the imaginary imperial-time-order. In light of the author’s later observation that the notion of shi “at once both inspires and paralyses human agency” (p. 334), translating shi as “moment” might help readers better understand the desperation of Liang Qichao when he asks, “Is it heroes that mold the moment, or the moment that molds the heroes?” (cited on p. 55; my rewrite).
The chapters in Part 2 include extended, nuanced discussions of literary works from the period surveyed, including the late Qing allegorical novel Painful History (痛史) by Wu Jianren 吳趼人, published in 1902-06; as well as those of later leftist literati, like the late culture czar Guo Moruo 郭沫若 and his historical plays. Qian demonstrates that these works generally struggle with the same themes, but in Guo’s 1959 Cai Wenji (蔡文姬), written a decade after the Communists seized power, the peoples on China’s peripheries once cast as “barbarians” have already shifted from posing a menace to serving as dutiful supporters that help prop up the resurgent Chinese state (p. 163).
Qian also touches on playwright Tian Han’s 田漢 1960 drama Princess Wencheng (文成公主] (p. 162), which similarly serves the purposes of incorporating ethnic minorities into the narrative of the emergent imperial-time-order. This play, just recently restaged in grand fashion—in Tibet itself—thematizes ethno-subservience.
Later in the book, the author discusses the closely related latter-day “Minority historical fiction,” which presents a modern-day extension of earlier conceptions of the empire as a metropolis with peripheral peoples that serve as a foil or a mirror in the Chinese imagination. The more recent fiction is first introduced in the latter part of chapter 6 (p. 200-208), and is the main topic of chapter 10, “Becoming-Minority: Chinese Characteristics in Minority Historical Fiction” (p. 294-328). The first half of the chapter is devoted to works by Su Tong 苏童 and Wang Anyi 王安忆, which Qian persuasively argues evoke a certain Chinese orientalism, mixing patronizing condescension with exoticizing admiration for the rustic purity of such Others (on this sort of “orientalism” generally, see also Baumann/Gingrich 2004; and Friedman 1994). The second half of the chapter surveys similar works by Gao Jianqun 高建群, Zhang Chengzhi 张承志, and Jiang Rong 姜戎.
In Part 2, among the other works analyzed from the Mao era, is Yao Xueyin’s 姚雪垠 grand historical novel Li Zicheng (李自成) “the first historical novel since the May Fourth period” (p. 172), a “Transitional Time” novel using class analysis to trace the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasties, and to chronicle the peasant rebellions of that time (p. 171-177). The work took 40 years to complete; the most well-known first two volumes came together not least because Chairman Mao issued orders ensuring the writer’s safety (p. 171 n. 52). Qian is careful to demonstrate that this and similar works for the most part neither directly compared Mao to past emperors, nor did they portray one-dimensional heroes. Rather, the emphasis is on re-interpreting past loyalty struggles such as the Ming-Qing imperial transition, in ways that would compel readers of the day to make “correct” decisions in the present moment (cf. p. 170).
Part 3, “The Return of ‘Empire’ in the Post-Mao Period,” contains five intriguing chapters that delve into the more recent (re-)construction of empire, in what the author calls “Resurgent Times”—in which, for the first time since the Qing dynasty was overthrown, “an ‘empire complex’ fully unleashed its nostalgic splendor” expressed in new works of “empire representation” (p. 183).
This part contains Qian’s perceptive interpretations of how post-Mao era television renderings of peasant rebellions (and class struggle) gave way to portraying prosperous past empires, even re-popularizing the old Chinese world empire idea, tianxia 天下 (All under heaven), closely associated with the classical imperial ideology, and now lifted “to a transcendent level” (p. 198). This includes analysis of the heavily-promoted TV series Toward the Republic (走向共和), launched in 2003 (see also the author’s further discussion of tianxia on p. 214-215, and especially 267-293, on the new life of the tianxia concept in recent TV dramas).
Apart from the accounts of how post-1989, state-promoted cultural expression involved the dual strategy of “abandonment of the social class narrative, and positive portrayal of empire” (p. 186), the analysis of the influential 1988 TV series River Elegy (河殇) written by Su Xiaokang 苏小康, also stands out. Qian argues that despite the widespread understanding of the TV series as iconoclastic and dismissive of Chinese tradition as something useless, harmful, or even inferior to the West (which is what prompted it being censored after 1989), River Elegy not only can be read as a re-run of May Fourth iconoclasm, but like both the May Fourth generation and the failed “voluntarism” of the Mao era, the spirit of this 1980s generation of iconoclasts was also deeply shaped by the imperial-time-order.
River Elegy, too, figures in the long line of unexamined embrace of an eternally resurgent China. One of the most revealing points in this regard is the quote from the Marxist humanist writer Li Zehou 李泽厚, also highly influential in the 1980s, in which he reiterated the idea that the role of the will is limited to selecting “the right moment” to promote “an irresistible historical trend” (p. 190). This evokes and reinforces Kun Qian’s opening discussion of how past Chinese thinkers subordinated themselves to the onward march of a “transcendent” history.
Here I’d like to make a personal note on the shadow of the First Emperor, who is alluded to several times in the book, including at some length in the rich chapter 7 (“Love or Hate: The First Emperor on the Cinematic Screen”), on the First Emperor on screen in three major films, and in opera; and in the equally valuable chapter 8, on various emperors as portrayed in contemporary novels.
The sheer weight of the “imperial-time-order” has long compelled almost everyone to accept and naturalize the myth that the First Emperor’s founding orgy of imperialist violence was something inevitable or even necessary, or good—for the sake of bringing “unity” (for a powerful deconstruction of this unity ruse, see Massumi/Dean 1992). But what is absent here, and what has never (so far) become the stuff of movies, is the riveting drama of how China’s history could well have taken another direction altogether, rejecting empire.
After the collapse of the First Emperor’s regime, opponents who had managed to survive his brutal short reign actually tried to reinstate the previous long-lasting multi-national order (Hui 2005; also, Fiskesjö 2015). Unfortunately, they failed to overcome the imperial fantasy that ushered in the second (Han) empire, and the rest is (imperial) history.
The long-standing acceptance of the seeming inevitability of the First Emperor, and the near-taboo on bringing up or portraying the lost opportunity of rejecting his legacy (which has to count as one of history’s great tragedies), is a key example of the force of imperial ideology launched by First Emperor Qin Shihuang’s reign. This lasting power includes the maligning of the pre-imperial era as one of “‘Warring’ States”—which helps cover up the true cost of naturalizing empire.
In the “Conclusion” (p. 329-337), the author makes striking use of an analogy from Walter Benjamin alluding to how historical materialism would not be workable without a theology. This is similar to how Qian reveals that the Chinese empire could not work without the “ghostly existence” … of the guiding imperial-time-order, “ingrained in the cultural bedrock” (p. 330).
Kun Qian’s remarkable and rich Imperial-Time-Order: Literature, Intellectual History, and China’s Road to Empire will serve as a lasting source of inspiration for thinking critically about the resurrection of empire in contemporary China and beyond. It is highly recommended for reading, reflection, teaching, and discussion.
Magnus Fiskesjö
Cornell University
References
Baumann, Gerd and André Gingrich, eds. Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach. Oxford: Berghahn, 2004.
Fiskesjö, Magnus. “Terra-cotta Conquest: The First Emperor’s Clay Army’s Blockbuster Tour of the World.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1, 1 (2015), 162-183.
Friedman, Jonathan. “Our Time, Their Time, World Time: The Transformation of Temporal Modes.” Ethnos 50, 3/4 (1985): 168-183.
Friedman, Jonathan. “Civilizational Cycles and the History of Primitivism.” In Cultural Identity and Global Process. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994, 42-66.
Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Massumi, Brian, and Kenneth Dean. First and Last Emperors: The Body of the Despot and the Absolute State. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1992.