The book for the first time systematically recalls Chinese intellectuals’ modern Chinese history records of each period from the early 20th century. It includes the parallel development and conflict of the modernization history and the revolutionary history before 1949, the disciplinization of Marxist history in the 1950s and “radical history” from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s, the introduction of New Enlightenment and modernization theory in the 1980s, historical subjective narrative crisis and “post-modern diversion” from the end of the 1990s to the 2000s, and it analyzes the complex reasons behind the major narrative construction. The book draws a conclusion that though historians try to reveal the true history, they inevitably come up with the history that both meets the real agenda and serves the political legitimacy. After deconstructing the historical narration of the past century, the book proposes a current and open conception of history. It expects to clarify the situation in which China is placed to the ultimate and long journey, find out the clues of the past which has many uncertainties, and grasp the orbit of future social transformation of China.
