Thomas Fröhlich is Professor of Sinology at Hamburg University. He has published monographs, edited volumes, and many articles on modern Chinese philosophy and intellectual history, including Staatsdenken im China der Republikzeit (Campus, 2000) and Tang Junyi. Modern Confucianism and the Challenge of Modernity (Brill, 2017).Axel Schneider is Professor of Modern Sinology at the University of Göttingen. He has published monographs in German and Chinese, several edited volumes and many articles on modern Chinese intellectual history, especially academic history and the philosophy and politics of Chinese conservatism.

"The essays in this volume edited by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich deal with a crucial topic, namely discourses around the concept of progress in China. Although numerous authors, including Prasenjit Duara, Luke Kwong and others,have dealt with this issue, this volume goes further by examining the details of the interpretation of ideas of progress and showing that the incorporation of linear time in China was far from linear... All of the essays in the volume are well-researched and provide a helpful angle onto how Chinese thinkers dealt with the problem of progress."- Viren Murthy, Philosophy East & West, Volume 72, Number 3 (July 2022)"Written by prominent experts in the history of late imperial and republican China, the chapters of this volume use a variety of different approaches to tackle the topic, ranging from conceptual history to political thought and literary studies, and from bird’s-eye overviews to specific case studies. This variation across the common theme produces a largely coherent, but kaleidoscopically diverse and highly instructive ensemble. The chapters represent the state of the art in sinological research and in many places considerably advance our knowledge of Chinese intellectual history. Fröhlich and Schneider’s volume is an excellent complement to the substantial existing body of literature on how Chinese intellectuals coped with feelings of decay and weakness, reaching even to the fear of an imminent “national demise” (wangguo)."- Egas Bender De Moniz Bandeira, Contributions to the History of Concepts (Spring 2023)

• AcknowledgmentsList of ContributorsIntroduction: Progress, History, and Time in Chinese Discourses after the 1890sThomas FröhlichPart 1: Initial Conceptual Encounters1 The Chinese Concept of “Progress”Kai Vogelsang2 The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East Asia: Fukuzawa Yukichi and Different Forms of EnlightenmentTakahiro NakajimaPart 2: Tides of Optimism3 The Idea of Progress in Modern China: the Case of Yan FuLi Qiang4 Prospect Optimism in Modern China: the Formation of a Political ParadigmThomas Fröhlich5 An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890–1940Peter Zarrow6 The Optimism of Cultural Construction in the 1930s: Wholesale Westernization, Cultural Unit Theory, and Cultural Construction on a Chinese BaseLeigh Jenco7 Fantasizing Science: the Idea of Progress in Early Chinese Science Fiction (1905–1920)Rui KunzePart 2: Margins of Skepticism8 Critiques of Progress: Reflections on Chinese ConservatismAxel Schneider9 Playing the Same Old Tricks: Lu Xun’s Reflections on Modernity in His Essay “Modern History”Susanne Weigelin-SchwiedrzikIndex