Liu Jiming, Kong Qingdong and the "Young Maoist Left" 

(Overseas Perspective)

By Taizuo. Published in the "New Observations" column of Bohuozhe (The Firebringer), November 5, 2026. Translated by Vero Publishing.

In the eyes of overseas observers, the "Young Maoist Left" is often described as a trend of thought in the making, not merely a mood or a fashion. In its coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of Mao Zedong's death in 2026, the BBC attributed Generation Z's renewed embrace of Mao to the fact that, "facing employment pressure and the gap between rich and poor, some young people are once again looking to Mao Zedong's class analysis for answers," and noted that this is "not just nostalgia." This has led overseas commentators to ask: how does a class discourse that grows out of people's own circumstances move from scattered online leftist remarks to acquire texts, organization and a recognizable public form? Their attention has fallen on the well-known left-wing writer Liu Jiming and the scholar Kong Qingdong, who are seen as having exercised a decisive influence on this rising tide of young Maoists.

To understand the "Young Maoist Left" as a trend of thought, one must see that its driving force comes not from the study but from the workplace and the conditions of daily life. One left-wing commentator has described the core of the "online left youth" as "students from ordinary working families, young white-collar workers just entering the workforce, and young workers on the front lines of production." Growing up, they have "personally experienced the high cost of education, the enormous pressure of finding work, the brutal exploitation of '996,'[1] and the anxiety of survival under sky-high housing prices." Their anger "is not dogma read out of books, but springs from their own real experience of oppression." A study of the "online left" trend among young people likewise sums up its essence as "a concentrated reflection of the predicament of young people's lives in a period of transition and of deep-seated social contradictions," with "fairness first" as its core value.

This means that the so-called Young Maoist Left is, first of all, a form of thought grounded in experience. Words like class, exploitation and oppression resonate with young people because they correspond to what they actually feel. But feelings do not automatically add up to a trend of thought. Getting from "feeling that things are unfair" to "forming a critical discourse that can be shared and handed on" requires a stage of translation and shaping. Overseas observers pay special attention to Liu Jiming and Kong Qingdong precisely because the two have played something like the role of suppliers at this stage.

Take Liu Jiming first. What sets him apart is that he is not only a "left-wing writer" whose work stays on the page, but a left-wing cultural practitioner who keeps producing ideas. From founding the magazine Tianxia (All Under Heaven) at his own expense, to editing the Zhongliu (Mainstream) series, to creating the Renjing website and its writing workshops,[2] he has worked in a kind of "guerrilla" fashion to open up a space where marginalized left-wing voices can survive. His 1.2-million-character novel Black and White gives this practice a narrative vehicle onto which readers can project themselves. The novel follows the spiritual trajectory of its protagonist, Wang Sheng, from "bidding farewell to revolution"[3] to "rediscovering class" through his experience at the bottom of society, turning "personal failure" into a visible story of "class position." The book's fate has amplified this effect further. Its mainland edition was pulled from the shelves and the related social media accounts were shut down, yet in digital space it followed a reverse logic of growth in which "every act of 'suppression' by those in power set off a new wave of circulation." One communications study sums up this process as "reverse canonization": "a book that is 'invisible' through physical channels has grown in the opposite direction in digital space." For young left-wing readers, reading this novel is therefore no longer mere literary consumption but carries a sense of countering concealment with knowledge: what you read is not just a story but a class explanation of why your own situation is what it is. What Liu Jiming does, in essence, is give spontaneous discontent a position that can be written down and a history that can be told.

Kong Qingdong's mode of expression differs from Liu Jiming's, but it serves the same end: giving the trend a shape. On Youth Day, May 4, 2021, he called on young people to "be Chairman Mao's bodyguards in spirit" and to "protect Chairman Mao, carry on Chairman Mao's legacy, and defend Mao Zedong Thought."[4] The power of this slogan lies not in its theoretical rigor but in the identity label it offers to some young Maoists whose feelings are still searching for expression. You don't need to become a theorist first; you can first take up a fighting position that has been named, and can be imitated and reposted. Here the slogan acts as a binding agent for the trend, compressing diffuse feelings about class into a symbol that can be shouted, set as a signature and used to recognize oneself.

But Kong Qingdong's more substantial contribution to the trend lies in conferring canonical status on Black and White and connecting it to a lineage. He has called the novel "a demon-revealing mirror of a century of history,"[5] and, borrowing the framework of Qu Qiubai's description of Lu Xun as one who "came from the old fortress,"[6] he has linked Liu Jiming's turn from a non-left camp to a proletarian standpoint to the revolutionary literary tradition of Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai. For a text that is nearly voiceless in the mainstream system of evaluation, this verdict from a Peking University professor provides an alternative certificate of canonical status. More important still, Kong explicitly described Studies on Black and White, the collection of essays published by Vero Publishing in the United States, as "a bugle call to assemble." The phrase reveals a conscious intention: not to evaluate a work, but to turn the reading, discussion and circulation around it into a cultural practice with a sense of direction. If Liu Jiming supplies the narrative core of the trend, Kong Qingdong supplies the public authority and the rallying form it needs.

Some overseas media have claimed that Liu Jiming is the "leader of the activist wing" put forward by Kong Qingdong and other "Maoists." The claim is somewhat exaggerated, but there is indeed a structural affinity between the two men's discourse. One provides left-wing audiences, through Black and White, with a core of meaning that can be read and discussed again and again; the other provides canonizing authority through slogans and theoretical interpretation. Together, they give what were scattered "online left" remarks a practical script that is recognizable, open to participation and easy to imitate.

Black and White has spread among young leftists first of all because it gave voice to a class feeling that already existed. Kong Qingdong's "bugle call" has drawn a response first of all because there were already people waiting at the assembly point. To put it in terms of supply and demand: the experiential material and the energy of participation come from the young, while Liu and Kong supply the interpretive tools and the forms of circulation. Without the latter, the former might remain scattered "online left" feeling; without the former, the latter would be a set of symbols with no one to receive them.

The driving force of the Young Maoist Left lies not in any individual's text or slogan, but in the social structure in which young people find themselves: jobs, housing prices, the intensity of labor, the pattern of distribution. What Liu Jiming and Kong Qingdong have done is to offer, on ground that was already heating up, a clearer vocabulary, more accessible texts and more recognizable forms.

Overseas commentators magnify Liu Jiming and Kong Qingdong as "suppliers of ideas" partly because the visible supply side is easier to identify. It is this structural position that determines both the possibilities and the limits of "supply." The point is not that they "shaped" the Young Maoist Left, but that they pushed a spontaneous intellectual energy toward a state in which it rests on texts and can be passed from one generation to the next. What overseas observers watch most closely, and are most inclined to magnify, is precisely this movement from the "in-itself" to the "for-itself."[7] Whether the language of this "supply" will in the end be internalized, reshaped or surpassed by the young is not something any "supplier" can decide alone.

Translator's Notes