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Endurance and the Limits of Critique

This essay was published in Critical Asian Studies (Commentary Board, 2026)

[…] This dynamic is not unique to China, but is sharpened by a historical narrative that casts suffering as necessary, even redemptive. The past functions as a moral benchmark: against famine and upheaval, the present appears as relief. This comparative logic stabilizes existing conditions, narrowing the horizon of critique, as hardship is justified in relation to something worse. The language of “garlic chives” and “human mine” captures this ambivalence, naming exploitation while accommodating it, producing recognition without transformation. Pain is not eliminated but reorganized, absorbed into systems of value, expectation, and identity. If suffering becomes a measure of worth, its absence invites suspicion: ease appears as complacency, rest as weakness, refusal as failure. Alternatives recede not through prohibition but through moral reconfiguration. What remains is a condition in which pain no longer interrupts life, but defines it.

It becomes what life is — no longer interruption, but condition.

Liu Chengrui, Sad, 2016. Performance and Photograph, 120cm*80cm. Image courtesy of the artist.