In an attempt to facilitate the task of charting a path toward a radically different future, a future without the bourgeois intellectual property regime (IPR), this dissertation searches back in history by examining China's loss of socialism. The guiding question can be formulated thus: Why did the People's Republic of China give up its socialist mode of intellectual production only to embrace the bourgeois intellectual property regime (IPR), which had been subjected to devastating criticism by progressive scholars in the West since mid-1990s? Situating this rupture of China's approach to intellectual production within the ongoing process of postsocialist structuration in the wake of the waning Chinese socialism, this dissertation focuses on Chinese intellectuals as social mediators and locates the traces of the loss of socialism in various cultural productions during the postsocialist era.

This research aims to examine the role of Chinese intellectuals in policymaking through the case of Labor Contract Law. Chinese intellectuals have played an important role in shaping of the post-Mao China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership have always benefited from their expertise in formulation and development of the reform policies. Also, the fact that the CCP still need intellectuals&rsquo / support for ideological justification for its policies contributes to importance of intellectuals. In addition, intellectuals have affected the policy agenda-setting of the CCP leadership through their effects on the Chinese public opinion which has increasingly become influential since the 1990s. Furthermore, intellectual debates could function as a substitute for party politics in China&rsquo / s one-party system. These all jointly enhance the role of intellectuals in Chinese politics and make it a crucial subject to study. The case of this research, namely the Labor Contract Law, is selected not only for it received a high level of public attention, but also for it is closely related with one of the central matters of contemporary Chinese politics, i.e. economic development path and social justice. This inquiry into the making of the Labor Contract Law lead the author to emphasize that tension and animosity between liberal intellectuals and the authoritarian state, on which the existing literature largely focuses, is just one aspect of the intellectual politics in China. In the context of re-configuration of power and wealth due to the marketization, intellectuals&rsquo / position in the society has dramatically changed and patterns of the Party-intellectual relation have diversified. Thus, it is argued in this research that by taking into account the emergent market with its ideological effects and as an institutional force that is linked to intellectuals through ties with the new economic elite inside or outside the Party, parameters of intellectuals politics in China can be more accurately understood.

Dans l’histoire de la République de Chine, Tsiang Tingfu était un historien et un critique politique, en même temps, il était un politicien représentatif dans la grande vague des « experts en politique ». Ce mémoire se concentre sur sa pensée et ses expériences dans la première moitié de sa vie. Pendant cette période, Tsiang a présenté les caractères de la maturité et l’activité dans sa pensée. En particulier, dans les années de 1930, il a déjà préconisé la pensée la plus importante qui a provoqué un gros débat entre les intellectuels chinois. Au travers des expériences de Tsiang de suivre les études, on fait ressortir que la culture traditionnelle chinoise et la nouvelle éducation occidentale ont conjointement influencé sa pensée. Dans ce mémoire, on analyse ses opinions et ses pratiques en politique et trouve que les noyaux de sa pensée consistent au nationalisme et à son intention de la modernisation chinoise. Au fur et à mesure de l’aggravation de l’invasion japonaise en Chine, la sauvegarde de la nation a occupé la position centrale dans ses opinions, et sa pensée a été devenue conservatrice. En 1935, stimulé par son sens de responsabilité comme un intellectuel, Tsiang a participé au gouvernement nationaliste chinois et a servi ce régime jusqu’à sa retraite. / Tsiang Tingfu was a historian and political critic. In the history of the Republic of China, he was also a representative politician in the wave of "scholar-bureaucrat". This thesis focuses on his thoughts and his experiences in the first half of his life when Tsiang exhibited characteristics of maturity and activity in his thinking. In particular, in the 1930s, as one of the leaders of the public opinion in China, he had advocated most of his important thoughts which triggered a heated discussion among the Chinese intellectuals. Through investigating each step in his educational career, we come to the conclusion that both the Chinese traditional culture and the Western education had shaped his later political and social thinking. By examining his principle political thoughts and his social practices, it is also found that the core of his thoughts lies in the nationalism and his intention of Chinese modernization. As the Japanese invasion intensified in China, saving the nation became his superior value and his thought therefore turned to the conservative. In 1935, prompted by the sense of responsibility as an intellectual, Tsiang participated in the Nationalist government and had served it until his retirement.