Abstract

Li Zehou , a former professor of philosophy at Beijing University and a member of the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences in Beijing, is widely recognized as one of the most important thinkers in post-Mao China and "the leader of the Chinese Enlightenment" of the 1980s.1 One of the signatories of a petition to the government during the 1989 democracy movement, he was castigated in the official press after the crackdown and accused of being a proponent of "bourgeois liberalism." Li left China in 1992 and has lived abroad ever since, returning only for occasional visits. He has been a guest professor at various Western universities and continues to publish academic writings, adding to his already voluminous Collected Works published in Taiwan a few years ago.2 At present he teaches at Boulder University in Colorado