The cambridge history of china volume 12 republican china 1912 1949, part 1

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF CHINA
General Editors
D E N I S T W I T C H E T T and

J O H N K. FAIRBANK

Volume 12
Republican China 1912—1949, Part 1

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Tai Lieu Chat Luong


Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


THE CAMBRIDGE
HISTORY OF
CHINA
Volume 12
Republican China 1912-1949, Part 1
edited by
JOHN K, FAIRBANK

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
NEW YORK

PORT CHESTER

MELBOURNE

SYDNEY

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1983
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place withour
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1983
6th printing 2005
Printed in the United States of America.
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GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

As the modern world grows more interconnected, historical understanding of it becomes ever more necessary and the historian's task ever
more complex. Fact and theory affect each other even as sources proliferate and knowledge increases. Merely to summarize what is known
becomes an awesome task, yet a factual basis of knowledge is increasingly
essential for historical thinking.
Since the beginning of the century, the Cambridge histories have set
a pattern in the English-reading world for multi-volume series containing
chapters written by specialists under the guidance of volume editors. The
Cambridge Modern History, planned by Lord Acton, appeared in sixteen
volumes between 1902 and 1912. It was followed by The Cambridge Ancient
History, The Cambridge Medieval History, The Cambridge History of English

Literature, and Cambridge Histories of India, of Poland, and of the British
Empire. The original Modern History has now been replaced by The New
Cambridge Modern History in twelve volumes, and The Cambridge Economic

History of Europe is now being completed. Other Cambridge Histories
recently undertaken include a history of Islam, of Arabic literature, of the
Bible treated as a central document of and influence on Western civilization, and of Iran and China.
In the case of China, Western historians face a special problem. The
history of Chinese civilization is more extensive and complex than that
of any single Western nation, and only slightly less ramified than the
history of European civilization as a whole. The Chinese historical record

is immensely detailed and extensive, and Chinese historical scholarship has
been highly developed and sophisticated for many centuries. Yet until
recent decades the study of China in the West, despite the important
pioneer work of European sinologists, had hardly progressed beyond the
translation of some few classical historical texts, and the outline history
of the major dynasties and their institutions.
Recently Western scholars have drawn more fully upon the rich traditions of historical scholarship in China and also in Japan, and greatly
advanced both our detailed knowledge of past events and institutions,

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VI

GENERAL EDITORS

PREFACE

and also our critical understanding of traditional historiography. In
addition, the present generation of Western historians of China can also
draw upon the new outlooks and techniques of modern Western historical scholarship, and upon recent developments in the social sciences,
while continuing to build upon the solid foundations of rapidly progressing European, Japanese and Chinese sinological studies. Recent
historical events, too, have given prominence to new problems, while
throwing into question many older conceptions. Under these multiple
impacts the Western revolution in Chinese studies is steadily gathering
momentum.
When The Cambridge History of China was first planned in 1966, the aim
was to provide a substantial account of the history of China as a bench
mark for the Western history-reading public: an account of the current
state of knowledge in six volumes. Since then the out-pouring of current

research, the application of new methods, and the extension of scholarship
into new fields, have further stimulated Chinese historical studies. This
growth is indicated by the fact that the History has now become a planned
sixteen volumes, but will still leave out such topics as the history of art
and of literature, many aspects of economics and technology, and all the
riches of local history.
The striking advances in our knowledge of China's past over the last
decade will continue and accelerate. Western historians of this great and
complex subject are justified in their efforts by the needs of their own
peoples for greater and deeper understanding of China. Chinese history
belongs to the world, not only as a right and necessity, but also as a
subject of compelling interest.
JOHN K. FAIRBANK
DENIS TWITCHETT

March 1982

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CONTENTS

General editors' preface
List of maps
List of tables
Preface to volume 12

P*ge v

1 Introduction: Maritime and continental in China's history

by J O H N K. FAIRBANK, Professor of History, Hmeritus, Harvard University

The problem of foreign influence
Maritime China as a minor tradition
The treaty-port mixture

1
9
20

2 Economic trends, 1912-49
by ALBERT FEUERWERKER, Professor of History, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor

Introduction: an overview
Population
National income
Industry
Agriculture
Transport
Government and the economy
Foreign trade and investment

28
34
37
41
63
91
99

116

3 The foreign presence in China
by ALBERT FEUERWERKER

The foreign network
Diplomats
Missionaries
Chinese government agencies
Economic interests

128
154
165
177
192

Vll

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Vlll

CONTENTS

4 Politics in the aftermath of revolution: the era of Yuan Shih-k'ai,
1912-16

by E R N E S T P.

Arbor

YOUNG,

Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann

The ambiguous legacy of the revolution
The structure of the new order
Political parties and constitutional government
Yuan Shih-k'ai on the issues
The Second Revolution
The Dictatorship
Yuan's monarchical movement

209
213
217
225
228
237
246

5 A constitutional republic: the Peking government, 1916-28
by

ANDREW

J.

NATHAN,

Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

Social and intellectual roots of constitutionalism
The Peking government
The political role of the modern banks
Factionalism and personal connections
Election of the Anfu parliament, 1918
Decline of the constitutionalist ideal, 1922-28

259
263
268
271
274
278

6 The warlord era: politics and militarism under the Peking government,
1916-28
by

JAMES

E.

SHERIDAN,

Professor of History, Northwestern University

The view from the provinces: warlords and warlordism

The view from Peking: militarism and instability
Warlordism and Chinese society

284
307
317

7 Intellectual change: from the Reform movement to the May Fourth
movement, 1895-19 20
by CHARLOTTE
Long Beach

FURTH,

Professor of History, California State University at

Evolutionism in reform thought
322
National Essence and the future of Confucianism: the emergence of
Neo-traditional alternatives
350
Social Utopia and the background of the May Fourth movement
374

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CONTENTS

IX

8 Themes in intellectual history: May Fourth and after
by BENJAMIN I. SCHWARTZ, Professor of History and Government, Harvard
University
The May Fourth incident
406
Progress and nationalism
409
Revolution
415
The 1911 Revolution and the 'New Culture'
419
May Fourth and its consequences
427
Introduction of Marxism-Leninism
430
Problems and '-isms'
433
The theme of popular culture
435
'Neo-traditionalism' - finding truth in the heritage
437
The debate on science and human life
439
The ascendancy of Marxism
444
9 Literary trends I: the quest for modernity, 1895-1927
by LEO O U - F A N L E E , Professor of Chinese Literature, the University of
Chicago
Late Ch'ing literature, 1895-1911

452
Butterfly fiction and the transition to May Fourth (1911-17)
461
The May Fourth era, 1917-27
464
10 The Chinese Communist Movement to 1927
by JEROME C H ' E N , Professor of History, York University, Toronto
Conversion to the doctrine
Foundation of the party
Tension in the first united front

505
514
518

11 The Nationalist Revolution: from Canton to Nanking, 1923-28
by C. MARTIN WILBUR, Professor of History, Emeritus, Columbia University
Creating a revolutionary movement
527
Competition and dissension within
553
The drive to unify China - first phase
575
Conflict over revolutionary goals
603
Mounting problems for the Wuhan regime
639
The communists turn to rebellion
673
The final drive - Peking captured and Nanking the new capital

697

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12 The Chinese bourgeoisie, 1911-37
by M A R I E - C L A I R E BERGERE, Professeur a I'lnstitut National des Langues
et Civilisations Orientates, Universite de Paris III

The birth of a Chinese bourgeoisie
722
1911: the invisible bourgeois revolution
729
The golden age of Chinese capitalism, 1917-23
745
The political failure of the bourgeoisie
762
From economic crisis to political abdication, 1923-27
787
The return of bureaucracy and decline of the bourgeoisie, 1927-37
809
Bibliographical essays
Bibliography
Glossary-Index

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827
859
927

MAPS

1 Republican China - physical features

xii

2 Provinces of China under the Republic

30

3 Major crop areas

65

4 Railways as of 1949

92

5 Foreign 'territory' in China about 1920

130

6 Treaty ports - Shanghai ca. 1915

134

7 Treaty ports - Tientsin ca. 1915

138

8 Wuhan cities ca. 1915

140

9 Distribution of warlord cliques in 1920

298

10 Distribution of warlord cliques in 1922

299

11 Distribution of warlord cliques in 1924

300

12 Distribution of warlord cliques in 1926

301

13 Kwangtung and Kwangsi in the early 1920s

5 54

14 The Northern Expedition 1926-28

580

15 Hunan and Kiangsi during the Northern Expedition

582

16 Hupei

584

17 The Lower Yangtze region

615

18 North China about 1928

703

XI

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TABLES

1 Occupational distribution, 1933

36

2 Domestic product, 1933

37

3 Gross domestic product, 1914-18, 1933, 1952

39

4 Output and employment in modern industry, 1933

44

5 Relative quantities of output of selected industrial products, electric
power, and coal in Kuomintang-controlled areas, 1933, 1938-46 46
6 Index of industrial production of Mainland China, 1912-49

50

7 Handicraft production as percentage of gross value-added in 14 product groups, 1933
52
8 Sources of cotton cloth supply, 1875-1931

54

9 Output and number of workers in Chinese- and foreign-owned
factories, 1933
58

10 Percentage of total output by Chinese and foreign firms in selected
industries
60
11 Output of the several sectors of agriculture, 1933

64

12 Gross value of farm output, 1914-57

64

13 Physical output of plant products, 1914-57

66

14 Index numbers of agricultural prices, terms of trade, land values,
farm wages, land tax, 1913-37
68
15 Distribution of rural land ownership, 1934-35

78

16 Tenancy, rented land, farm size, rent systems, and rental rates in the
1930s
81
17 Percentage of farm families in various ownership categories

84

18 Sources of farm credit, 1934

88

19 Index numbers of passenger miles and freight ton miles carried on
the Chinese government railways, 1912-47
97
20 Reported receipts and expenditures of the Nanking government,
1928-37
106
xiv
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LIST OF TABLES

XV

21 Note issue and price index, 1937-48

114

22 Foreign investments in China, 1902-36

117

23 Foreign investment in China, 1902-36, by creditor country

118

24 Foreign direct investments in China by industry

119

25 Geographical distribution of foreign investments in China, 1902,
1914,

1931

120

26 Values and index numbers of foreign trade, 1912-36

122

27 Balance of international payments, 1903, 1930, 1935

123

28 Composition of foreign trade

124

29 Distribution of foreign trade among trading partners

126

30 Estimated number of foreign 'firms' and residents in China

148

31 Growth of the Protestant church in China

168

32 Relative strengths of Protestant denominations, 1919

169

33 The largest Protestant missionary societies, 1919

171

34 Protestant missionary schools and enrolments, 1919

174

35 Indoor Staff of the Customs Revenue Department, 1915

184

36 Foreign shares in coal mining and cotton textile industries

200

37 National-level legislative organs of the early Republic

265

38 Increase in population of some Chinese cities over the war years 751
39 Principal secular foreign periodicals in China

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PREFACE TO VOLUME 12

On romanization

One achievement of the revolution has been to set up an official system for
transcription of Chinese sounds into alphabetic writing. This system,
known as pinyin, one hopes may bring uniformity into a formerly chaotic
situation, in which the sinologists of each foreign power had devised
their own national systems of romanization - English, French, German,
Russian, etc.
In the English-reading world the Wade-Giles romanization after the
turn of the century gradually became accepted for scholarly work, despite
its idiosyncrasies - for instance, its use of an apostrophe as an aspiration
mark to distinguish, for example, T (written in Wade-Giles T') from D
(Wade-Giles T), P (P') from B (P), K from G, etc. Despite this clumsy
feature, Wade-Giles became by 1949 the most widely used system,
enshrined in countless reference works, official documents, and the general
literature of the field. For example, the four major biographical dictionaries in English of Chinese personages from 1368 to 1965 (totalling eleven
volumes) all use Wade-Giles. Moreover, because of the foreign presence
in China, the historical record is partly non-Chinese. It is for this reason that Wade-Giles is still the dominant system in some of the sources and in
the research tools of the period covered in this volume - that we continue

to use it here. The use of the new pinyin system in this volume would
greatly complicate the work of researchers.
Acknowledgements

The editor is most indebted to the authors for their unremitting patience
and cooperation, so necessary for this sort of enterprise; to Katherine
Frost Bruner for indexing and to Joan Hill for administrative and editorial assistance; to Chiang Yung-chen of the Harvard Graduate School
for essential bibliographical assistance and to Winston Hsieh, the University of Missouri, and Guy Alitto, the University of Chicago, for bibliographic consultation. We are indebted for support of editorial costs to the
Ford Foundation and to the National Endowment for the Humanities
xvii
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XV111

through the American Council of Learned Societies. A working conference of contributors was held in Cambridge, Mass, in August 1976 with
the assistance of the Social Science Research Council. During the gestation period earlier versions of chapters 2, 3 and 12 were published as
separate booklets. Now they are born again.
JKF

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CHAPTER 1

MARITIME AND CONTINENTAL IN
CHINA'S HISTORY

The 37 years from 1912 to 1949 are known as the period of the Chinese
Republic in order to distinguish them from the periods of more stable

central government which came before and after. These years were
marked by civil war, revolution and invasion at the military-political
level, and by change and growth in the economic, social, intellectual and
cultural spheres. If we could neatly set forth in this first chapter the
major historical issues, events and Chinese achievements in these various
realms, the following chapters might be almost unnecessary. In that
case, however, the cart would be in front of the horses.
Our new view of the republic must come from several angles of approach. Only one is pursued in this introductory chapter, yet it appears
to serve as a central and necessary starting point.
THE PROBLEM OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE

China's modern problem of adjustment has been that of a dominant,
majority civilization that rather suddenly found itself in a minority
position in the world. Acceptance of outside 'modern' ways was made
difficult by the massive persistence of deeply-rooted Chinese ways. The
issue of outer versus inner absorbed major attention at the time and still
confronts historians as a thorny problem of definition and analysis.
Anyone comparing the Chinese Republic of 1912-49 with the late
Ch'ing period that preceded it or with the People's Republic that followed
will be struck by the degree of foreign influence upon and even participation in Chinese life during these years. The Boxer peace settlement of 1901
had marked the end of blind resistance to foreign privilege under the
unequal treaties; students flocked to Tokyo, Peking proclaimed foreignstyle reforms, and both weakened the old order. After the Revolution of
1911 the outside world's influence on the early republic is almost too
obvious to catalogue: the revolutionaries avoided prolonged civil war
lest it invite foreign intervention; they tried in 1912 to inaugurate a
constitutional, parliamentary republic based on foreign models; President

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2

INTRODUCTION: MARITIME AND CONTINENTAL

Yuan Shih-k'ai's foreign loans raised controversy; the New Culture movement after 1917 was led by scholars returned from abroad; the May
Fourth movement of 1919 was triggered by power politics at Versailles;
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 under Comintern prompting; Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang (KMT) after
1923 with Soviet help; the Nationalist Revolution 1925-27 was inspired
by patriotic anti-imperialism. Truly, the early republic was moved by
foreign influences that were almost as pervasive as the Japanese invasion
was to become after 1931.
Yet the term 'foreign' is highly ambiguous and may trap us in needless
argument. It requires careful definition. For example, among the 'foreign
influences' just listed, some were events abroad, some were models seen
abroad and imitated in China, some were ideas of foreign origin which
animated Chinese returned from overseas, some were events in China in
which foreign people or ideas played a part. The situation was not simple.
Since the 'foreign' elements in Chinese life during this period were so
widespread, clarity demands that we make a series of distinctions or
propositions. First of all, most readers of these pages probably still
perceive China as a distinct culture, persistent in its own ways, different
from 'the West'. This assumption, reinforced by common observation,
stems from the holistic image of 'China' conveyed by Jesuit writers during
the Enlightenment and further developed by European Sinology. It
represents an acceptance in the West of an image of China as an integrated
society and culture, an image that formed the central myth of the state
and was sedulously propagated by its learned ruling class.1 Still dominant
in Chinese thinking at the turn of the century, this idea of 'China' as a
distinct cultural entity made 'foreign' into something more than the mere
political distinction that it sometimes was among Western nations.

Second, we must distinguish the actual foreign presence. There were
many foreigners within the country - scores of thousands residing in the
major cities, most of which were treaty ports partially foreign-run;
hundreds were employed by successive Chinese governments; and several
thousand missionaries were at stations in the interior. Add to these the
garrisons of foreign troops and foreign naval vessels on China's inland
waterways, and we can better imagine the 'semi-colonial' aspect of China
under the unequal treaties that continued to give the foreigners their
1 On Sinology and the 'self-image of Chinese civilization', see Arthur F. Wright, 'The study
of Chinese civilization', Journal of the History of Ideas, 21.2 (April-June i960) 233-55. In
developing this essay I have greatly benefited from comments of Marie Claire Bergere,
Mark Elvin, Albert Feuerwerker, Kwang-Ching Liu, Philip A. Kuhn, Denis Twitchett and
Wang Gungwu.
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THE PROBLEM OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE

5

special status and privileges. This volume devotes a chapter simply to
describing 'the foreign presence'. By any definition it had many of the
features -of a self-contained sub-culture transplanted and flourishing
symbiotically in Chinese surroundings.
From this picture of the foreign establishment with its own way of
life we can understand why the Nationalist Revolution of the 1920s
erupted in anti-imperialism. The imperialist presence served as a target
for a more unified revolutionary effort.
Yet this revolutionary effort itself represented other foreign influences.
The revolution had always had foreign helpers. The Revolutionary

Alliance led by Sun Yat-sen was organized among Chinese youths in
Tokyo in 1905 under Japanese prompting. It was financed by Chinese
merchant communities overseas and used the protection of the foreign
administrations in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Later the emissaries of the
Soviet revolution inspired both the founding of the CCP and the reorganization of the KMT. Thus, the revolution used foreigners, their aid,
ideas and methods to attack the foreign establishment as its target within
the country.
A third distinction or proposition, however, is that China's history
had to be made by Chinese themselves, not by foreigners. Indeed, when
the history of this period was recorded in Chinese, a funny thing happened - the foreigners were almost lost to sight. The inspector-general
of customs, Sir Francis Aglen, might collect and even impound the Maritime Customs revenue. Sun's adviser, Michael Borodin, might draft the
KMT constitution. The Soviet General Blyukher ('Galen') might work
out Chiang Kai-shek's battle plans. But none of them, though in positions
of considerable authority, was Chinese. All were played down if not
pretty generally left out of the Chinese record. This historical facelessness
of the foreigners in China not only reflected modern patriotic pride,
denying outsiders a basic role in Chinese life. It also conformed with a
long tradition that the Marco Polos and Ibn Batutas who turned up from
Western Eurasia had no place in the Chinese record because they were
outside the culture. China's society retained its integrity. It was bounded
by the Chinese language and writing system. Foreign individuals figured
in its history only when, like Matteo Ricci or Robert Hart, they spoke
and wrote Chinese sufficiently well to be documented.
There was a colourful history of the foreigners-in-China, but it was
their history, not China's. When the Anglo-American ADC (Amateur
Dramatic Club) in the International Settlement governed by the Shanghai
Municipal Council put on the Pirates of Penzance with stentorian eclat,
it was an event in China, but not in Chinese history. The foreigners'
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4

I N T R O D U C T I O N : MARITIME AND CONTINENTAL

experience was separate from the Chinese experience. Ibsen's A doll's
house had influence because Hu Shih brought it within the cultural gates.
This amounts to saying that Chinese history is not one's idea of what
happened in China but, rather, one's idea of what happened to the Chinese
people. According to this view, the vital entities of modern times are the
peoples with their national states and cultures. It is natural for most
national chroniclers of events to follow the thread of their own ethniccultural development. Foreigners are extraneous and temporary. Witness
the fact that the missionaries, the foreign employees, and the treaty-port
residents all subsequently disappeared from the Chinese scene just as
thoroughly as the European colonial administrations of the late nineteenth
century disappeared from their colonies in the mid twentieth century.
A fourth proposition is thus in order: that foreign influences if they
were to affect the Chinese people must be conveyed in the Chinese language and writing system. Here China's long experience of 'barbarian'
contact had developed time-tested ways of thought and response. For example, nei (inside) and wai (outside) were very ancient Chinese categories,
widely applied both geographically and figuratively. Thus wai-kuo (foreign
states) lay outside China (Chung-kuo, the central state), but foreign rulers
who kotowed could become wai-fan (outer feudatories).2 In his person
the Son of Heaven must be a sage within (in character) and a hero without
(in action), just as the superior man must first study to cultivate himself
Qisiu-sheri) in the inner realm and then strive by his example to bring peace
to the world (p'ing t'ien-hsia) in the outer realm. The cognate categories
of nei and wai allowed Chinese thinking to respond to domestic or to
foreign stimuli, all the while remaining purely Chinese.' A similar pair
of terms proved useful in handling Westernization in the formula popularized by Chang Chih-tung; 'Chinese learning for the fundamentals (/'/'),
Western learning for practical use (jung).' Since t'i zndyung, substance and

function, were really meant to be aspects of a single entity, Chang misapplied these terms. Never mind, it helped Westernize China.
Foreign influences invading China thus had to pass through the eye of
the linguistic needle. Translation of a foreign idea often verged upon
its Sinification. Just as the Indo-European languages modernized to meet
modern needs, so Chinese created new terms, many incorporated from
2 Lien-sheng Yang, 'Historical notes on the Chinese world order', in John King Fairbank,
ed. The Chinese world order: traditional China's foreign relations, 21.
3 On 'the inner and outer realms' in philosophy see Benjamin Schwartz, 'Some polarities in
Confucian thought', in David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright, eds. Confucianism in action,
54-8. On nei and wai separating traditional and foreign-induced matters of government, see
for example Chang Shou-yung it al. comps. Huang-ch'ao chang-ku hui-pien (Collected historical
records of the imperial dynasty), 3 vols.
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THE PROBLEM OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE

5

Japanese, to carry new meanings. Yet the ancient characters, when used
for a new phrase, could not shed all of their accumulated connotations.
For example, foreign faiths entering China have had remarkable difficulties over their key terms. Christian missionaries struggled long and
hard to find the best term for God, who was certainly central to their
enterprise. Catholics used 'Lord of Heaven' (T'ien-chu), Protestants
split between 'Lord on High' (Shang-ti) and 'Deity' (Shen). Again, the
sacred terms of Western liberalism, 'freedom' {tzu-yu) and 'individualism'
(ko-jen chu-i), when translated, as in Japan, retained a connotation of
wilful irresponsibility in the service of a doctrine of everyone for himself.
Proper Confucians were appalled. The Western virtue of individualism
came through as selfish licence without a sense of duty.

The idea of rights was newly developed even in the modern West, but
in China it had so little background that a new term had to be invented for
it. The American missionary W. A. P. Martin in translating Wheaton's
Elements of International Law in 1864 used ch'iian-li and soon after it was

used in Japan (kenri). But of course these characters already had established
meanings and their combination seemed to say 'power-profit' or at least
'privilege-benefit'. This made the assertion of one's rights (cWuan-lt)
seem like a selfish power play.4
Witness finally the central Marxist term 'proletariat', which originally
meant the poor of ancient Rome and retains in English an urban connotation. Translated into Chinese as 'propertyless class' (wu-ch'an chiehchi), the proletariat in Mao's China properly embraced the poor peasantry,
no doubt a useful adaptation. We have hardly begun to study the Sinicizing role of translation as a filter of foreign influences on China.
A fifth proposition is that foreign influences operated in China primarily
by affecting the conduct of Chinese individuals. Groups of persons playing new social roles were the harbingers of change, but they emerged only
gradually in the late Ch'ing. To the classic quadrumvirate of scholar,
farmer, artisan and merchant were now added all manner of hybrid roles.
A trained officer-corps produced scholar-soldiers. Foreign universities
sent back a scholar-intelligentsia, many of whom were alienated from the
official establishment. Scientific training produced technicians who were
scholar-artisans. Meanwhile merchants not only continued to buy official
status, some officials became merchant-entrepreneurs. Revolutionists
also arose as a distinct professional group, as well as journalists and
modern-style politicians.'
4 Wang Gungwu, Power, rights and duties in Chinese history, the 40th George Ernest Morrison
Lecture in Ethnology 1979 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1979), 3-4.
j Cp. M. Bastid, CHOC, vol. n , ch. 10.
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6

INTRODUCTION: MARITIME AND CONTINENTAL

In short, the specialization of modern life broke up the old social
structure. Specialization discredited the Confucian ideal of an elite united
by classical learning just as roughly as in the United States it had denied
the Jacksonian ideal of an egalitarian education for all.6
All the new roles involved dealing with foreign matters or learning
from abroad. Compradors and Chinese Christians (sometimes identical)
emerged in the treaty ports, followed by journalists and returned students
who had been abroad, all of them under foreign influence. Technology
became the key to new developments whether military, industrial, administrative or educational, and nearly all of it came from the West, even
when mediated through Japan. By the twentieth century, leaders of Young
China like T'ang Shao-i and Wu T'ing-fang, who negotiated the revolutionary settlement in 1912, were speaking English, which they had practised respectively at Hartford, Connecticut and the Inns of Court,
London.7
To the modern fragmentation of specialized social roles was added
the diversity of foreign models and stimuli now made available by the
expansion of international contact. Modernity, so various in itself, now
came at China in widely different national forms. Nineteenth-century
China had been subjected to the Anglo-American-French-Russian examples of patriotic naval and diplomatic officers, aggressively self-righteous missionaries, and merchants piously devoted to, material profit,
but all had been within the confines of one civilization from the West.
Now the scene was immensely broadened: ex-samurai ideals of bushido
were picked up by young patriots like Chiang Kai-shek at the Japanese
officers' training academy. Populist concerns of Russian narodniki animated
early Marxists like Li Ta-chao. Rabindranath Tagore brought his Hindu
message of mystic unity, though with few takers. A Buddhist revival was
promoted under the monk T'ai Hsu. A women's higher education movement fostered contact with Smith College and others of the Seven Sisters.
Echoes of the New Poetry movement in the United States, the European
vogue of Esperanto as a vehicle for global communication, all sorts of
fashions and groundswells from abroad rippled among China's new

urban intellectuals and men of affairs. The resulting flux of values and
6 John Higham, 'The matrix of specialization', in Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds.
The organization of knowledge in modem America, 1860—1920.
7 Paul A. Cohen analyses the careers of early reformers of the 'littoral' and 'hinterland' in
ch. 9 of his Between tradition and modernity: Wang T'ao and reform in late Ch'ing China. See also
Louis T. Sigel, 'T'ang Shao-yi (1860-1938): the diplomacy of Chinese nationalism' (Harvard
University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1972), 92 't seq.; Linda Shin, 'China in transition: the role
of Wu Ting-fang (1842-1922)' (University of California Los Angeles, Ph.D. dissertation,
1970).
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THE PROBLEM OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE

7

morals, the blurring of self-images, made Chinese actors often ambivalent,
facing two ways, and confused foreign observers accordingly.
In the midst of all of this confusion, however, we may discern a sixth
proposition, that the Chinese when responding to foreign stimuli, whether
in the Chinese language or by their conduct, had to fashion their modern
ways out of Chinese elements, old or new, available within themselves
if not actually in the local scene.
To begin with, not even the most foreignized Chinese could lose his
sense of Chinese identity. Living abroad only increased it. Cultural
friction generated patriotic fire. The most sincere patriot was Sun Yatsen, who had had the least experience of Chinese tradition and the most of
modern nationalism abroad.
Something more is involved here than patriotic motives, however.
The mystery of human thought in general seems to be performed with a
generous use of analogy, as when location in time is expressed in the

terms of before and after (behind) originally used to denote location in
space. On time's ladder we 'see' historical events 'preceding' and 'following' one another. Analogical and metaphorical thinking leads us to
imagine the lesser known in terms of the better known - in short, to
cross the cultural gap between native and foreign, we have to think
mainly with whatever is already in our heads.8 Thus, we find one Chinese
patriot after another not only motivated by cultural pride but also required
by his own thought processes to find in China the analogues, equivalents
or Chinese counterpart of things perceived abroad.9
Mid-nineteenth century xenophobes took refuge in the old rationale
that essentials of Western science must have been derived from ancient
China. In arguing for Western scientific training some accordingly declared that Western sciences had borrowed their roots from ancient
Chinese mathematics. To outflank the xenophobes, the modernizer's
trick was to smuggle things Western into China as having been originally
Chinese. K'ang Yu-wei perfected it when he found the modern Western
ideal of Progress in the ancient Chinese theory of the three ages (see
volume I I , page 288). Thus in their own minds Chinese modernizers
had to confront the foreign culture with whatever equivalents they could
muster from China. John Dewey's student Hu Shih, the most fearless
8 The psychology and thought processes of cultural contact seem extraordinarily understudied in the case of China. For a popular discussion of metaphoric thinking, see Julian
Jaynes, The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Cp. p. 50: 'The concepts
of science are a l l . . . abstract concepts generated by concrete metaphors'; p. 5): 'understanding a thing is arriving at a familiarizing metaphor for it'.
9 The Chinese search for equivalence with the West especially interested the late Joseph R.
Levenson, Confucian China and its modern fate.
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