CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The Qing dynasty that ruled China from the middle of the seventeenth century was established by the Manchurian conquest. In order to suppress any attempt by Chinese intellectuals to criticize the system of government, it strictly controlled public opinion, and prohibited many publications. However, it also patronized the study of old documents, and mobilized many researchers for the compilation of the encyclopaedia of the Kangxi Dictionary or the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries. For this reason, most of the intellectuals were absorbed in the bibliographical study of the sacred books on Confucianism and historical books known as Evidential Research, which removed them from the real problems of the world.

However, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the political regime began to be shaken and destabilized by peasant revolts, such as the White Lotus Society (Bai-lian jiao), in various parts of China. Moreover, the advancement by invasion of European countries, especially Britain, was perceived by the Chinese as disturbing the traditional East Asian order, where China was situated at the centre, and every other country was subsumed to Chinese civilization. China grew weaker as a result of imperial penetration. Especially, the rise in the price of silver due to the secret opium trade that resulted in the outflow of silver from China brought about social anxiety, as it was used as a means of payment of taxes. Opium addiction among the civil servants and army officers also weakened the bureaucratic system and the army, leading to fears of a crisis in the Qing dynasty itself. This led to a neo-Confucian reaction, and the formation of a group called ‘the school of statecraft’, which became increasingly influential.

At this time, some intellectuals such as Wei Yuan (1794–1857), who belonged to the school of statecraft, came together around Lin Tsehsu (1785–1850). Lin took up his new post as an Imperial Commissioner in Canton in 1839 and confiscated and discarded opium, which resulted in the Opium War as a result of his firm stand against the British government. At the same time, he ordered his men to collect large quantities of foreign literature, and encouraged them to learn foreign languages, in order to understand the outside world. Following China’s defeat by Britain, the Nanking Treaty in 1842 ceded Hong Kong to Britain, opened five ports to foreign trade, paid compensation and abolished trade restrictions. In the same year, fifty volumes of the Illustrated Gazetteer of Maritime Countries (Hai-kuo tuchih) written by Wei Yuan were published. They were based on materials regarding foreign countries that his friend Lin had ordered collected. His aim was to learn the superior technology, skill and techniques of the barbarians (Westerners) in order to control them. This indicates his wedding of traditional Chinese thought with the recognition of the superiority of the West in military technology. The main characteristics of the books were that they reconstructed ‘the West that the Westerners themselves talked about’ through literature written by Westerners themselves. But Wei also developed a strategic theory of Chinese defence and diplomacy based on his recognition of the power of the ‘maritime world’ outside of China. The revised and enlarged editions of the books turned into 100 volumes and were published in 1852. These books, however, had little influence on Chinese intellectuals in those days, though

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when they were introduced in Japan, they had a strong impact on intellectuals like Shoin Yoshida and Shozan Sakuma, who were conscious of Japan’s need to modernize as well.

The opening of five ports in conformity with the Nanking Treaty changed the society in the southern part of China’s coastal areas profoundly. It hastened the decline of the Qing dynasty’s prestige, the depression of handicrafts caused by the influx of cheaper goods made in other countries, the greater outflow of silver and heavier taxes, caused by the payment of compensation, which made the people’s lives poor and miserable. Poverty led to riots, and then, in 1851, the Taiping Rebellion started in the mountain areas of Guangxi province, which destabilized Qing rule. The leader, Hung Hsiuchuan (1813–64) was a third son born in a Hakka peasant family in Guangtung province. Since the time of the Opium War, Guangzhou (Canton) was the only port city open to the world. It was also a place where there were great opportunities to have contact with foreigners as well as Western civilization, and where their threat to China was accordingly more obvious. It was a big city situated farthest from the capital city of Beijing. Thus it was not by chance that the three main reformers—Hung Hsiuchuan, Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-Sen, whose aim was to change the old regime of 60 years since the opening of the ports, were all from Guangtung province.

Hung failed the imperial examination four times, although he received great help from his relatives, who had high hopes that he would become a bureaucrat. When he failed the third time, he became ill with severe fever and lost consciousness. Then, he had a dream that later came to be popularly known as Hung’s visions. In that dream, an old man ordered him to save mankind from the devil, and another middle-aged man helped him, and killed the devil with a sword. The content of the dream was said to have coincided with the Protestant leaflet handed out in the streets of Guangzhou (in Canton) in 1834: ‘Good words to admonish the age’ (Chuangshih liangyen), a selected comment from the Bible. The old man was the heavenly father—Jehovah; the middle aged-man was the heavenly elder brother—Jesus Christ; and he himself was the younger brother; the devil was idols of Buddhism and Taoism that cheated on people. After his failure in the examination on the fourth try, he started a religious society called: ‘God-worshipping Society’ (Bai Shang-di hui) in 1844. Though the peasantry disliked such challenges to their beliefs, Hung and a friend travelled to the mountain areas of Guangxi province to seek their support. The local bureaucrats there were also against them because they destroyed Buddhist idols and shrines, and did not allow any kind of idols. In the year 1850, a severe starvation broke out in the Guangxi province that drove large numbers of people towards Bai Shang-di hui. In the next year, in January 1851, at the time of the celebration of Hung’s 37th birthday, the people decided to rebel in public against the Qing dynasty, and declared the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (Taiping Tianguo), with Hung ascending the throne as the ‘Heavenly King’. The Taiping troops gradually gained adherents everywhere, especially from amongst the poor, and advancing towards the north, and occupying Nanking, which they renamed the ‘Heavenly Capital’. By this time, the Bai Shang-di hui had about 2 million members. Its ideals were as follows: worship of ‘God’ as the only one god, the principles of equality of all people and compliance with ascetic rule of Decalogue (the ten commandments of Moses). This rebellion was different from traditional Chinese peasant revolts in that it challenged the existing political regime publicly. We can clearly understand why Hung, having failed the imperial examination, condemned Confucian textbooks as ‘incoherent’, and how he

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utilized Christian texts as a theoretical weapon against Qing rule. However, while establishing their substantial state power in central-south China, their ideals were gradually transformed: ascetic rule was loosened, an aristocracy of leaders arose and there were bloody internal conflicts. This led to weakening of their armed forces, and their defeat in 1864 by a local voluntary army and mercenaries—the former organized by local bureaucrats and the latter directed by Westerners in Shanghai.

The fact that the Taiping army defeated Qing’s army revealed the weakness of the latter. Qing’s leaders did not deal with the rebellion by themselves and depended on the local voluntary peasant power organized by bureaucrats. Two of the most famous examples are the Hunan Army organized by Zeng Guofan (1811–72) and the Anhwei Army organized by Li Hongzhang (1823–1901). Zeng appealed to the intellectuals in Hunan province as his ally, arguing that the Taiping rebellion would destroy the Confucian order entirely. The Hunan Army was a kind of personal armed network with Zeng at the centre, whose power had to be acknowledged by the Qing government to maintain local order. Thus central-south China became gradually more independent, and the local authorities gained substantial power over army finance and personnel.

In the autumn of 1860, the allied forces of Britain and France occupied Beijing at the end of the second Opium War and concluded the Beijing treaty with the Qing government. As a result of a coup d’état in Beijing in the following year, 1861, the Manchuria aristocrats who insisted on an exclusionist policy were executed. After that, a group comprising Prince Gong (1832–98) and the Empress Dowager (1835–1908) held political power. Their external policy was compromise with the West, while internally they sought to suppress the revolts in co-operation with bureaucrats like Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and to promote the Self-Strengthening Movement. According to Prince Gong, the purpose of this movement was stated in terms of two diseases that were hurting China. First, internal revolts such as the Taiping Rebellion were like a heart disease, an internal and fatal disease. Second, the conflicts with Britain and Russia were like diseases of the arms and legs. Hence British influence—a mild disease—could be utilized to suppress internal revolts—a more serious threat; while importing Western weapons and developing an armaments industry would strengthen China’s power both to suppress revolts and oppose Britain and Russia in future. Thus while the superiority of Western military technology was recognized after two defeats, adopting Western technology in unity with Chinese principles in practice implied ‘Chinese learning for the substance and Western learning for function’. That is, traditional Chinese thought should remain fundamental to the political regime, while Western knowledge and technology should be absorbed as long as it does not contradict against the former. Thus Feng Guifen (1809–74), an adviser of Li Hongzhang, said that ‘making the Chinese Confucianism as the foundation which if reinforced according to the scientific technique that made the west rich and powerful, would achieve the best effect’. He insisted on the acquisition of Western knowledge and technology, especially calendar studies, mathematics and physics, fostering translators and so on. Besides, the promoters of the Self-Strengthening Movement explained that, after all, the introduction of Western learning, especially natural science, was the only way to recover China’s own learning and tried to persuade even those who opposed this idea. In this manner, the Qing government pushed forwards to industrialize itself by concentrating on military industry in order to suppress the rebellions. However, it became clear later that when the Qing dynasty suffered a crushing

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defeat in a war with Japan, which was also going through a period of Meiji restoration around the same time, that the efforts they made were insufficient.

At this time, the theory of social evolution introduced in China by Yen Fu (1854– 1921) had a strong influence on intellectuals. Yen Fu was the son of a doctor in Fujian province. After graduating from a naval school, he went to England in 1877 for a period of 2 years as the first Chinese to be dispatched as a foreign student abroad, especially to West Europe. There he became anxious to ascertain the real causes of China’s decline, and equally of the wealth and power of Western same time. After returning to his country, in 1898 he published the translated version of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics while working as a teacher in a navy school. This became the first work on modern European thought to be introcountries, while learning naval technology at the duced to China, apart from the works relating to Christianity. The idea that all things are in the process of evolution, involving a severe struggle for existence and failure for those incapable of adapting, seemed to match the crisis of a ruined country after the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. Later on, Yen Fu also translated the works of J.S.MILL, Adam Smith, Montesquieu and others.

Kang Youwei (1858–1927) boldly criticized the Self-Strengthening Movement and became the leader of a younger generation of intellectuals. Kang advised the emperor to carry out fundamental reforms to change the political system and not merely rely on minor reforms and modernizing the military, if China was to compete with other countries. According to him, Confucius was not a defender of tradition, but a reformer. The continuation of reforms would realize Confucius’s dream of the future ideal society (Ta-t’ung), and the responsibility of a faithful follower of Confucius’s teachings was thus to pursue those very reforms, not to imitate the West. His pupil, Liang Qichao (1873– 1929), popularized Kang’s thoughts through the new medium of the press, and won the sympathy of many young men such as Lu Xun, Mao Tsetung and so on. Liang, who also came from an intellectual family in Guangtung, was of the opinion that Freedom, Democracy and Evolution were the three main principles for the cause of wealth and power in Western countries. Therefore, he energetically introduced the Western political and philosophical theories of Rousseau, Hobbes, Spinoza and others into China. Tan Sitong (1865–98) in Hunan province also attempted to implement a curriculum based upon Western studies. In his An Exposition of Benevolence he insisted on breaking down the discrimination on the basis of status and sex that supported the ruling system of the Qing dynasty. This book is a complex philosophical mixture of natural science and Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity. It was radical in its insistence on breaking down all political and social restrictions. Although Tan came from a high bureaucratic family, he widened his horizons by travelling alone in various parts of China in his youth, and had also learned martial arts. In 1898, Kang Youwei and others who obtained the Emperor’s trust began many reforms aimed at transforming the despotic system of government into a constitutional monarchy. But, due to the coup d’état by conservatives led by the Empress Dowager, it broke down after 100 days.

At this time, in the rural agricultural region of Huabei, violent anti-foreign movements involving the destruction of Christian Churches and killing of Christians were being promoted by participants in the Boxer Rebellion. Since the Empress Dowager and others had intended to curtail foreign influence in China, they officially recognized the Boxer Rebellion and went to war with various countries. However, they were defeated by the

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allied forces of many countries, which led to the occupation of Beijing. Kang and Liang then escaped to Japan and Tan was executed. After being defeated in that battle, from 1901 onwards they tried to solve the problem of reform by following the plans of Kang Youwei and others, but again met with no success.

Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925), the planner of the first armed uprising aimed at overthrowing the Qing dynasty in 1895, also came from Guangtung province like Kang Youwei. Unlike Kang, however, he belonged to a peasant family, and also spoke English, having been educated at a mission school in Hawaii. According to the first declaration (establishing a united government) made when Sun first established the revolutionists’ society in Hawaii in 1894, aiming to overthrow the Qing dynasty, his first political aim was to establish a democratic state like that of the USA. Sun’s revolution, based on the military strength of the Heaven and Earth Society and the economic support of Chinese merchants abroad, began with armed revolts in the remote southern area near his native place. In 1905, when the Chinese Revolutionary League was formed by gathering revolutionaries from various parts of China, Sun’s Three People’s Principles, which became the platform, were: overthrowing the Manchuria dynasty (nationalism); the establishment of republican government (people’s rights); restrictions on concentration of land and capital (people’s livelihood). Sun had actually seen the widening of gap between rich and the poor in Western countries and the unrest it entailed, and wanted to removed this evil in advance of China’s social revolution. A dispute however developed between the Revolutionary League and factions of the constitutional reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, in political asylum in Japan, which was the base for the League’s activities, over whether China should go for a ‘revolution’ or for a ‘reform’. Liang insisted that violent revolution merely invited foreign intervention, and was not a condition for achieving a republican system in China, and promoted instead an enlightened monarchy. As a result, the young people from the progressive group who earnestly desired a radical revolution gave up on him. In regard to this, E.Balazs has stated: ‘Their tragedy consisted in the rapidity with which the efforts of the Chinese progressives became outdated. It took more courage to declare oneself a constitutional Monarchist in 1890 than to become a Republican in 1910, or confess to being a Communist in 1930’ (1964:163).

Inside of the Revolutionary League, Sun’s internationalism, which expected the sympathy and support of Western countries and Japan towards the Chinese Revolution, was subjected to severe criticisms from Zhang Binglin (1869–1936) and Sung Chiaojen (1882–1913), and others, who anticipated foreign interference in any revolution. The revolution sought by Zhang Binglin, a learned academician of Chinese traditional studies, was the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, while fending off imperialism in a nationalistic and spiritualistic manner, and also avoiding Western-style democracy. Zhang Binglin’s ideal was a world where there was no rule of the people by the powerful, of weaker nations by the stronger, or of poor people by the rich. In 1911, when the revolution planned by Sung Chiaojen and others in central China through the revolt of the army spread all over the country much earlier than expected, the fact that Sun Yat-Sen only learned of the beginning of the revolution through a newspaper during his stay in the USA, very well exemplifies his kind of position in the Revolutionary League at this time.

As a consequence of the alienation of the local forces from the Qing dynasty, the Chinese Empire that had continued for 2,000 years collapsed. Although the Chinese

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Republic was established the following year, Sung was assassinated by Yuan Shikai, which left the development of the Republic and still more the revolution unfinished. As a result, in 1915, a movement by the young generation, with Beijing University in the centre, was started under the slogan of ‘Democracy and Science’, with the aim of completing the tasks of the revolution.