Abstract: There is both confidence in and skepticism about reason during the Enlightenment movement in modern China. The intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty formed Enlightenment discourse with Chinese characteristics by using the terms of "literary renaissance". While changing the notion of the monism of politics and religion into its modern form, they referred to Fukuzawa Yukichi's enlightenment discourse around 1870 and his modernization discourse after 1879. This provided solid legitimacy to the Enlightenment movement at national and academic levels. This tendency radically changed when LIANG Qi-chao issued his Short Academic History of the Qing Dynasty. LIANG's interpretive model of "renaissance" dream provided a theoretical foundation for the cultural identity of "Chineseness" and consequently the establishment of a modern state. Meanwhile, it bestowed Enlightenment reason with power frame and discourse hegemony. However, in the special context of Sino-Western cultural exchange in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, modern Chinese intellectuals had to criticize Enlightenment reason when they had confidence in it. Therefore, reflection has been started as soon as LIANG's model of Chinese cultural identity was established. The intellectual history after 1920 witnessed continuous deconstruction of "renaissance" dream in HU Shi, XU Zhi-mo, MENG Wen-tong and others. Respectively, they criticized the history, power and discourses of reason in a serious way, which little by little constituted the mainstream of the intellectual history in modern China.

Key words: enlightenment reason, renaissance, HU Shi, monism of politics and religion, Fukuzawa Yukichi, cultural identity, XU Zhi-mo, MENG Wen-tong