Politics from the Liminal Space: The Market and the Populist Articulation of Chinese Nationalism in the 1990s and 2000s

The ideological shifts within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) created a disconnect between the developmental policies of the Chinese state and the socialist system in the reform era. This issue was further intensified by the CCP’s decision to abandon its populist political strategies in favor of top-down reforms. This article explores how the China Institute of Strategy and Management, and its flagship journal, Strategy and Management , served as a liminal political space in the reform era, facilitating an intermingling of ideas and acting as an incubator of a new discourse on nationalism by a coalition of dissenting left-wing Chinese government officials, editors, journalists, and intellectuals critical of the top-down policies of the Chinese government. Supported by market forces, this and later similar collaborations led to the blockbuster publications China Can Say No (1996) and Unhappy China (2009).