All the Way to the Left: 

Tracing Liu Jiming's Ideological Shift Through Jianghehu, Renjing, and Black & White

Author: Zhou Ziheng

Source: Renjing Network | May 13, 2026, 20:00 | 2 Comments

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[Abstract]

Liu Jiming is a landmark writer of "New Left-wing literature" and underclass narratives in the contemporary Chinese literary scene. His creative journey demonstrates a clear ideological trajectory of moving "all the way to the left." Using the novels Jianghehu (Rivers and Lakes), Renjing (Human Realm), and Black & White as key nodes, Liu has completed a triple leap: from elite intellectual spiritual reflection, to a concern for the survival realities of the underclass, and finally to the establishment of a people-centered historical view and class stance. Centered on these three works and combining the author's creative context with the evolution of his thought, this paper analyzes the logical shift, spiritual core, and literary expression of his transition from liberal humanism to a New Left-wing critical stance. It reveals a typical path of value reconstruction for contemporary Chinese intellectuals amidst social transition, while also explaining the significant meaning of his work in how contemporary realist literature intervenes in reality and reshapes the standpoint of the people.

[Keywords]

Liu Jiming; Ideological shift; New Left-wing; Jianghehu; Renjing; Black & White; Underclass narrative; People's historical view


I. Introduction: Writers' Ideological Evolution and Literary Representation in an Era of Transition

Since the 1990s, Chinese society has undergone profound transformations through marketization and globalization. Class differentiation, interest reconstruction, and value fragmentation have become core propositions of the era, putting the spiritual stances and value choices of contemporary intellectuals to a severe test. Liu Jiming’s literary career serves as a vivid sample of intellectual ideological evolution within this context. From his early avant-garde writings and liberal humanistic reflections in "cultural concern novels," to the rise of his underclass narratives in the new century, and finally to the firm establishment of his New Left-wing stance, Liu has used literature as a blade to continuously question core issues such as social equity, class justice, and the nature of history. His ideological trajectory reveals a "leftward" shift from individual spiritual salvation to collective social critique, from an elite perspective to an underclass stance, and from humanistic reflection to political awakening.

As the core medium for Liu Jiming’s ideological expression, the novels Jianghehu (2010), Renjing (2016), and Black & White (2022) form a "trilogy" of his ideological shift. Jianghehu uses the fluctuating fates of water conservancy intellectuals as an entry point to reflect on the spiritual polarization of the elite, serving as the starting point of this shift; Renjing focuses on the survival plight of the lower classes across the dual spaces of rural and urban areas, establishing the core stance of underclass narrative, marking the deepening of his shift; Black & White delves into a century of Chinese history, reconstructing historical narrative through class analysis and cementing his people's historical view and New Left-wing critical stance, marking the completion of the shift. Progressing layer by layer, these three works not only record the writer's personal ideological metamorphosis but also reflect the developmental trajectory of contemporary Chinese left-wing literature and the value return of intellectuals "writing for the people" amidst a changing era.

II. Jianghehu: Reflection on the Spiritual Alienation of Intellectuals — The Starting Point of the Leftward Shift

Set against the backdrop of decades of development in New China’s water conservancy projects, Jianghehu follows the fates of three generations of water engineering intellectuals, including Zhen Yinnian, Shen Futian, and Shen Ruyue. By intertwining individual destiny with national history, engineering construction with human struggles, and the adherence to ideals with realistic compromises, it forms a "spiritual history of generations of intellectuals since modern times." This foundational work marks Liu Jiming's departure from early pure-literary explorations of the individual spirit, moving toward a critical reflection on social structures, historical processes, and the intellectual class, laying the groundwork for his subsequent "leftward" turn.

(A) Narrative Core: Intellectuals' Disillusionment and Spiritual Alienation

The core proposition of Jianghehu is the spiritual metamorphosis of intellectuals in the torrents of history. The novel serves as a landmark text signaling the transition of his literary thought from a liberal enlightenment stance to a left-wing value system. Set against China's 20th-century modernization, the novel clearly shows the author's changing cognition regarding core propositions like individual freedom, national development, and the subjectivity of the people. Initially continuing the core logic of 1980s liberal literature, characters like U.S.-educated experts Zhen Yinnian and Shen Futian embody liberal and technocratic intellectuals: they believe in professional rationality and equate modernization with Western technological rationality. However, as history unfolds, the characters undergo a structural shift in their stances, and Liu Jiming gradually breaks away from the liberal framework.

This shift is rooted in his reflection on the dilemmas of 1990s marketization. Stepping outside the single dimension of "individual freedom," the author confronts grand propositions of social equity and national construction, acknowledging the historical necessity of socialist modernization. The core conflict for intellectuals is no longer "freedom vs. the system," but a value struggle between technological rationality and national interests. Ultimately, Jianghehu establishes a distinct left-wing inclination, shifting the value coordinate from "independent elites" to "organic intellectuals," and emphasizing the shared destiny of individuals, the nation, and the people. By exposing how ideals yield to interests and conscience bows to power, Liu tears open the spiritual scars of the elite class during social transition.

(B) Literary Shift: From Avant-Garde Experiment to the Return of Realism

Artistically, Jianghehu marks Liu's return from avant-garde writing to traditional realism. Early in his career, Liu was known for avant-garde fiction focused on irrationality and spiritual anxiety (e.g., Undersea Village, Heading to Huang Village). In Jianghehu, however, he abandons flashy narrative tricks for an epic, panoramic realism. Using history as the warp and characters as the weft, he tackles grand societal issues like state engineering, social movements, and class stratification, restoring literature's essential function of "intervening in reality." This aesthetic shift mirrors his ideological one: moving from "writing for the self" to "writing for the era."

(C) Ideological Undertone: Humanistic Critique and Left-wing Emergence

The ideological core of Jianghehu is the transition from liberal humanistic critique to a New Left stance. His critique of intellectual alienation centers on humanistic ideas like "fairness" and "conscience," but subtly reveals a left-wing critique of capital logic and power alienation. He begins to view intellectual dilemmas not as individual moral failings, but as products of structural imbalances in a transitioning society. This leads him to notice marginalized groups—reservoir migrants and ordinary people swept up by the times—planting the seeds for his future underclass narratives.

III. Renjing: Underclass Survival and Rural Plight — The Deepening of the Leftward Shift

If Jianghehu was a self-reflection on the intellectual elite, Renjing (Human Realm) is the landmark work where Liu thoroughly turns to the underclass and establishes a people's stance. Taking over ten years to write, it panoramas the social changes in China since the 1980s through the life of protagonist Ma La. It focuses on the suffering and struggles of laid-off workers, migrant workers, and rural teachers, becoming a classic of "New Left-wing Literature."

(A) Narrative Shift: From Elite to Underclass, Writing the Obscured Reality

The most significant shift in Renjing is its narrative focus. Abandoning elite self-examination, the lens turns to those oppressed and forgotten by marketization. Ma La's life—orphaned, wandering, imprisoned as a scapegoat for capital, and later returning home to fail at rebuilding his village via a cooperative model—epitomizes the underclass experience. They hold simple ideals but are paralyzed by capital expansion and urban-rural divides. The floods in the novel serve as a metaphor for the collusion of capital and power, completely squeezing the survival space of the underclass.

(B) Ideological Core: Underclass Stance and Left-wing Social Critique

Renjing firmly establishes a New Left stance. With clear class consciousness, Liu critiques the collusion of capital and power, portraying capital upstarts like Gu Chaoyang as symbols of the era's evils. He argues that the root of underclass suffering is systemic, not individual. Ma La's "Tongxin Farmers' Professional Cooperative" represents the author's exploration of a rural way out—merging collectivism, ecological agriculture, and democratic management to resist capital—directly inheriting the spiritual resources of socialist literature. Furthermore, the intellectual character Murong Qiu moves from the ivory tower to grassroots investigation, redefining the intellectual's role as an engaged left-wing advocate.

(C) Aesthetic Practice: Exploration of People's Realism

Aesthetically, Renjing consciously inherits the socialist realism tradition of works like Liu Qing's The Builders. It uses unadorned narrative and a grounded perspective to write about the people's destiny. Liu stated in the postscript that the novel is a "thought summary" of the era, an experiment in letting literature serve the people rather than elite aesthetics.

IV. Black & White: Reconstruction of Century-old History and People's Historical View — The Completion of the Leftward Shift

Black & White is the culmination of Liu Jiming's ideological shift. This 1.2-million-word trilogy spans a century of Chinese history from the 1911 Revolution to the early 21st century. Through the fates of characters like Gu Zheng and Wang Sheng, it interweaves revolutionary, reform, and social history, completely cementing a New Left-wing stance through class analysis and a people's view of history.

(A) Historical Narrative: Subverting Nihilism, Reconstructing People's Subjectivity

The core breakthrough of Black & White is its use of a people's historical view to subvert historical nihilism. Breaking away from elite narratives that erase the masses, Liu places workers, peasants, and revolutionaries at the center of history. Using the "Fenghuang Island Bloodcase" as a thread, he distinguishes between historical "justice and evil." Revolutionaries like Luo Zheng and Wang Shengli represent justice, while corrupt officials and capital elites represent reactionary forces. By doing so, Liu redefines "the people" not as abstract symbols, but as concrete laborers with class attributes, stripping away liberal, cross-class perspectives.

(B) Ideological Pinnacle: Thorough Establishment of Class Consciousness

The novel expands its critical vision from localized reality to the entire social structure and a century of history, pointing directly at the erosion of Chinese society by capitalist logic. It highlights the rising capital class colluding with power to oppress traditional lower-class groups. The character Wang Sheng, an intellectual torn between "revolutionary ideals" and "liberalism," ultimately abandons his elite stance for the people's camp—mirroring Liu's own journey. The title "Black & White" is highly symbolic: black represents capital, power, and oppression; white represents the people, justice, and resistance.

(C) Literary Value: The Pioneering of New Socialist Literature

Black & White opens a new frontier for contemporary new socialist literature. It merges epic realism with left-wing critique, breaking the contemporary literary trend of "de-politicization" and "de-historicization." It redefines intellectuals as spokespersons for the people, deeply rooted in reality and defending justice.

V. The Inherent Logic and Era Significance of Liu Jiming's Ideological Shift

(A) Inherent Logic: From Individual to People, from Humanism to Left-wing

Liu's shift was not sudden but driven by three factors:

(B) Era Significance: A Benchmark for Contemporary Left-wing Literature

In an era of literary "de-politicization," Liu's trilogy builds a complete left-wing narrative system, reviving realism's capacity to intervene in society. For contemporary intellectuals struggling with ideological ambivalence, his trajectory proves that only by abandoning elitism and rooting oneself in the masses can one reclaim the role of "social conscience."

VI. Conclusion

Through Jianghehu, Renjing, and Black & White, Liu Jiming outlines a clear and firm trajectory "all the way to the left." Like three ascending steps, these works document the author's ideological maturation from a liberal humanist to a New Left-wing people's writer, reflecting the historical vicissitudes of China's social transition. In an age where capital logic prevails and underclass voices are obscured, Liu's creation holds irreplaceable significance. "All the way to the left" is not merely Liu's personal choice, but a value direction for contemporary Chinese literature and intellectuals: to write for the people, speak for the era, and stand firm for justice.