Abstract: This essay is the first of a series of inquiries. It takes Jameson as a point of departure for the reflection on the reception, revision and transformation of western literary theories in China over the last four decades. It examines the path of "translating and borrowing", "addressing Chinese issues with western discourses" as the intellectual background, and then explores "Chinese Jamesonism" as a neo-Marxist academic discourse befitting current Chinese circumstances, invented on a selective themes of postmodernism and Third World "national allegory". Chinese Jamesonism has little to do with what Jameson thinks and writes, and this kind of selective misreading and theoretical displacement is an impediment to meaningful conversations.

Key words: western theory, Jamesonism, misreading, displacement