Janku,Preparing the Ground for Reolutionary Discourse

preparing the ground for revolutionary discourse 65

PREPARING THE GROUND FOR REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSE

FROM THE STATECRAFT ANTHOLOGIES TO THE PERIODICAL PRESS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY

CHINA

by

ANDREA JANKU*

University of Heidelberg

In 1877 Cai Erkang 蔡爾康 (1852-1920?), one of the Chinese edi-tors of the Shanghai daily Shenbao 申報 (founded in 1872), published a selection of writings from the newspaper that he considered would be of enduring interest to the public. The book was entitled Jiwen leibian 記聞類編 (“A record of news arranged in categories”). In his preface Cai directly addresses the problem of the legitimacy of the common people raising their voices in the political realm by beginning with a well-known passage from the Confucian Analects: “When good gov-ernment prevails in the empire there will be no [private] discussions [about public affairs] among the common people” (天下有道則庶人不

議).1 While this could be read as a blunt statement on the desperate state of governance throughout the country (“If good government prevailed in the empire …”), Cai moderates his criticism by asking in a slightly ironic manner why then, in a time of flawless govern-ment and with all the country’s talents employed, there should be “petty people of my kind” (wochai xiaomin 我儕小民) daring to engage in matters which should be of no concern to them. He then proceeds

* I am extremely grateful to Mary B. Rankin for her comments on an earlier version of this paper and to Rudolf G. Wagner for his continuous encouragement. I would also like to thank Mark Elvin and two anonymous referees for their critical comments and suggestions, which have, I hope, greatly helped to improve the paper, although I felt unable to take up all of their advice. I owe a special debt to Pierre-Étienne Will for his thorough reading and for generously sharing his knowledge of Qing administrative texts.

1 Lunyu 16.2, translation adapted from James Legge, The Chinese Classics, v. 1, 310.

© Brill, Leiden, 2004 T’oung Pao XCAlso available online – www.brill.nl

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andrea janku66 preparing the ground for revolutionary discourse 67

to justify his publication by referring to the eagerness of the sage rul-ers of antiquity to learn about the opinions of the common people, symbolized most aptly by the well-known image of the wooden bell used to collect the songs and sayings of the people on the streets.2 The doings of those sages certainly could not be considered to be in conflict with the words of Confucius!3

But these were merely rhetorical commonplaces modestly play-ing down the social prestige of the newspapers’ voice, while at the same time attributing to it considerable political significance. What Cai Erkang actually presents to his readers are not songs and sayings of the street, but serious policy proposals and social analyses as well as—so as to cope with the whole range of material represented in the newspaper—prose and poetry on miscellaneous topics by men of letters from the Jiangnan area. He even claims that the newspapers are a legitimate forum for the foremost topic of literati discourse, to wit, the discussion of governance. When he says that the Qing court, having “widely opened the avenues of opinion” (yanlu hong kai 言路宏

開), would consult censorial critique on the governmental level as well as literati opinion on the local level (jianguan zheng yu shang, wenren lun yu xia 諫官諍於上，文人論於下) in order to attain the highest achieve-ments in governing the country, he obviously subsumes the political discussions appearing in newspapers under the latter category and suggests that they are not to be neglected. Consequently, the preface ends with the decided statement that this collection is not just meant to be an instructive manual on social customs, as would seem to be its first purpose, but that it also takes its part in documenting the restoration of the country’s prosperity and well-being (fei te wei caifeng zhi jindai, qie jiang wei zhongxing lu zhi zhiliu ye 非特爲采風之津逮，且將為

中興錄之支流也).4 Even though the compiler acknowledges the “tri-butary” (zhiliu 支流)—that is, auxiliary, if not marginal—character of the newspaper, he nevertheless places journalistic writings within a well-established tradition of political writings by a para-official elite

2 Cf. Hanshu, j. 24a, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964, v. 4, 1123.3 Cai Erkang, “Jiwen leibian xu” 記聞類編序. The collection in 14 juan comprised

items published in the Shenbao during the years 1872 and 1873. It was published in 1877 by the Shenbaoguan. The text I use is the reprint included in the series Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan, 3rd series, 172-173 (Taibei: Wenhai, 1972), based on a 1877 Shanghai Yinshuju inprint.

4 The locus classicus for the term zhongxing 中興 is in the Maoshi, pt. III, book 3, ode VI, “Zheng min” 烝民, referring to the Zhou ruler who managed to reinvigorate his country by using wise and able men.

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operating both from within and from outside the formal bureaucratic structures. Therefore, journalistic writings are equally worth preserving in a specialized compilation.

Another article introducing the collection, which appeared in the Shenbao itself, was more outspoken regarding the innovative function of newspapers as a medium of political discourse. The author, a certain Wanwei Shuqiao 宛委書樵, portrays the Shenbao as having been success-ful in breaking through the policy of secrecy prevailing in the official as well as private spheres within the Qing state, by giving leeway to the expression of opinion, political or otherwise, while being cautious not to be offensive and not to violate any taboos. He states very clearly that in contrast to the official Jingbao 京報 (the Peking Gazette), which only informed on decisions already long taken, the newspapers are now designed to be an instrument for political discussion at a time when decisions are still in the making. Here is how the article starts:

Until now China has had no such thing as a newspaper. No matter whether it concerned official or private affairs, everything was handled with utmost secrecy. It was feared that, should the policies of the government be publicized, the hearts of the people would become suspicious and trouble would arise. For this reason there were only proclamations in the Jingbao after matters had been settled; any matter that was not yet discussed and settled was carefully guarded, always in fear that people should learn about it.中國向無新聞紙，無論官場民間，事事均以秘密為先。政府機宜傳聞外，

恐民間疑惑，因而生事。故止有事定後之京報告示，而一切未經議安

之事嚴密關防，惟恐人知。5

With the modern newspapers and their unmediated publicizing of current political discussions, this exclusionist policy got into serious trouble. In fact, statements such as these show that rather early there was a consensus, among the treaty-port literati at least, that newspa-pers could make a contribution to the affairs of the government, and thus help to return to the ideal state of government under the sage rulers of antiquity.6 Comparing Cai Erkang’s and Wanwei Shuqiao’s two statements on the political status of the press also shows that the

5 “Xuan xinwenzhi cheng shu shuo” 選新聞紙成書說 (On the publication of selected newspaper articles in the form of a book), Shenbao 28.3.1877.

6 Many similar statements can be found in the press: “… Thus, to talk about political affairs will let flowers spring up under the pen of the common man, and the Son of Heaven will be able to refer to it in order to establish his government” (夫談政事於平居筆底生花，天子可取以立政). See “Ribaowen fang zhiyi ti” 日報文仿制義體 (Newspaper articles emulate the form of the examination essay), by a certain Hu Xi 胡熙, Shenbao 17.3.1875.

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more ephemeral character of the newspaper allowed more courageous statements to appear in print than would have been the case with the carefully edited book medium. The ultimate and ubiquitous concern remained striving for wealth and power, but, with the new medium, people hitherto excluded from the project of “ordering the world” should now get a stronger voice.

By the time the Shenbao was published in Shanghai this project of ordering the world (jingshi 經世, subsequently translated for reasons of convenience as “statecraft”) had long been on its way. The first major editorial effort to provide an anthology of contemporary writ-ings on the art of government had been the Huangchao jingshi wenbian 皇朝經世文編 (Collected writings on statecraft from our august [Qing] dynasty), compiled by Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794-1857) under the aegis of He Changling 賀長齡 (1785-1848).7 The work brought together writ-ings relevant to the affairs of government—including the ideological foundations of the state as well as matters appertaining to routine administration—mostly in the form of memorials, letters or political treatises by authors of the reigning dynasty.8 Its appearance marked the beginning of a new era of literati engagement in public affairs. It went a step ahead of the kind of “pure critique” (qingyi 清議), or moral censure, that had dominated the political sphere since the last decade of the eighteenth century,9 towards a more pragmatic approach to

7 He Changling took the initiative in his capacity as administration commissioner of Jiangsu province. Wei Yuan, a juren of 1820 and a member of He’s staff, was in charge of the project.

8 For introductory articles on the statecraft literature, see Frederic Wakeman, “The Huang-ch’ao ching-shih wen-pien,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 1.10 (1969), 8-22, and Benjamin A. Elman, “The Relevance of Sung Learning in the Late Ch’ing: Wei Yuan and the Huang-ch’ao ching-shih wen-pien,” Late Imperial China 9.2 (Dec. 1988), 56-85. See also Feng Tianyu 馮天瑜, “Daoguang Xianfeng nianjian de jingshi shixue” 道光咸豐年間的經世實學, Lishi yanjiu 1987.4, 138-151. For a detailed account of the world view of an outstanding, yet typical, “statecraft official” from the eighteenth century, see William T. Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

9 For a description of the origins of this revival of qingyi and an identification of the locus classicus of the term, see James Polachek, The Inner Opium War, Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1992, 95-99. The standard references to qingyi in the late nineteenth century are Lloyd E. Eastman, “Ch’ing-i and Chinese Policy Formation during the Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Asian Studies 24.4 (1965), 595-611, and Mary B. Rankin, “‘Public Opinion’ and Political Power: Qingyi in Late Nineteenth Century China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 51.3 (May 1982), 453-484. For more background on the intellectual atmosphere in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries see David S. Nivison, “Ho-shen and his Accusers: Ideology and

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affairs of government; and through its broad distribution it began to transcend the narrow circles of the para-bureaucratic elite. The new current of articulating critical opinion on the more practical aspects of government—whether through established bureaucratic channels or, on a private level, in the form of essays or letters or even by forming poetry associations—continued to grow during the nineteenth century, and it was paralleled by an ever more vigorous desire for political influ-ence and participation on the part of the intellectual elite at large.10 The appearance of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian can surely be regarded as a milestone in this project.

Statecraft writings gained prominence during the reconstruction efforts following the Taiping war, and dealing with “Western affairs” (yangwu 洋務) became one of the main concerns of engaged literati. It was at this juncture that the periodical press came in from the treaty ports—the cultural margins of the empire—and it was precisely this background that made it well qualified to contribute to the discussion of the most pressing issues. This convergence of politically engaged writing with the periodical press prepared the ground for the new social and political movements that arrived after the turn of the century. Whereas the role of the press in the rise of elite activism during this period has been treated in some detail,11 to my knowledge the relationship between the new medium and the statecraft legacy of the early nineteenth century has never been properly assessed. This study therefore focuses on the link between the efforts of elite authors to take their part in the

Political Behavior in the Eighteenth Century,” in D.S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright, eds., Confucianism in Action, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959, 209-243; Susan Mann Jones, “Scholasticism and Politics in Late Eighteenth Century China,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 3.4 (Dec. 1975), 28-49, and her “Hung Liang-chi (1746-1809): The Perception and Articulation of Political Problems in Late Eighteenth Century China,” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1972; Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship. The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990; and more recently Philip A. Kuhn, “Ideas behind China’s Modern State,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55.2 (Dec. 1995), 295-337. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal who alerted me to this article addressing issues of great importance to my piece.

10 The “constitutional dilemmas” of those years have been described by Philip A. Kuhn as the problem of how to animate a politically intimidated governing elite to confront abuses of power, how to control the political energies of the mass of educated men outside official careers, and how to govern a huge complex society with a small field administration. See his Origins of the Modern Chinese State, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, 8.

11 Cf. Mary B. Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province 1865-1911, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

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political decision-making process through statecraft writings, and the rise of the newspaper press of Hong Kong and treaty-port Shanghai which, for the first time under Qing rule, offered a forum for the public articulation of informed opinion—a forum that quickly gained influ-ence on a national scale, was relatively secure from the control of the court,12 and was open to the traditional literati as well as the newly forming urban elite. The fast transmission and reproduction of news made possible by the new printing technologies and the telegraph, the nationwide distribution of the press, and the opportunity offered to new and officially unrecognized forces to articulate themselves, all led to a quick and broad acceptance of the new medium. Discussions that until then had remained largely internal to the bureaucratic elite were now transformed into a broadly-based challenge to court politics and to the process of policy formation.

However, the cultural success of the foreign medium on a variety of discursive levels—stemming from official, para-official or private literati milieus—would not have been possible without the concep-tual integration of the writings appearing in the newspapers into the established structures of discourse, whether this was acknowledged or not.13 The “statecraft” character of the press grew stronger and stronger towards the end of the century. Many of the reform editorials published in the last decade of the century indeed read like memorials in the guise of newspaper articles. The state, as a matter of fact, tried itself to appropriate the press in an attempt to frame and influence the discourse on reform (weixin 維新) through official newspapers, as is shown by the case of the Shiwubao 時務報 (“The Chinese Progress,” 1896-1898), the most prominent of the reform magazines, which was ordered to become the Shiwu Guanbao 時務官報 by an imperial edict immediately before the collapse of the officially sponsored reform

12 There have been attempts to close the paper down, but none was successful. Cf. Rudolf G. Wagner, “The Shenbao in Crisis: The International Environment and the Conflict Between Guo Songtao and the Shenbao,” Late Imperial China 20.1 (June 1999), 107-138.

13 For the sociocultural background of early Chinese journalism see Natascha Vit-tinghoff, Die Anfänge des Journalismus in China (1860-1911), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002; and Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai’s News Media (1872-1912), Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies (forth-coming). For some reflections on the introduction and cultural status of journalistic writings, see my Nur leere Reden. Politischer Diskurs und die Shanghaier Presse im China des späten 19. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003.

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movement.14 The new press in Shanghai was even compared to the censorate, the genuine location of bureaucratic control.15

The price for this successful insertion into the official discursive framework by the ascription of quasi-censorial functions was that the cultural legitimacy of the press largely hinged on its para-official character. Since it was located outside the bureaucracy, this implied a structural contradiction. Indeed, the product of this merger of state-craft discourse and journalistic writing was a rather ambivalent kind of public discourse. While the journalistic input brought many innovative elements—elements that proved especially explosive after the defeat by Japan in 1895, when Social Darwinist thought was first introduced to a broader public by Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854-1921)—the initial purveyors of these innovations, whose conceptual framework was what might still be called the statecraft system maintenance scheme,16 came to fear the eventual outcome of what they themselves had helped to set in motion. System maintenance seemed only possible through a posi-tive interaction with the outside world: global forces had to be taken into account, and this is what Wei Yuan had begun to see and what people like Feng Guifen and later the journalists were promoting and practicing.

In what follows I will provide evidence of this merger of statecraft and journalistic writings—of which the compilation of Cai Erkang referred to above is a first illustration—and show where it reached its limits. I will start with some technical remarks on the convergence of the two genres in terms of publication dates, suggesting that the proliferation of publications after the Taiping war and especially towards the end of the century reflected the social need for a broader basis for discussing affairs of public interest. Then I will show how the two genres became closer to each other in terms of content towards the close of the century. There were, admittedly, marked differences between them, especially in the scope of materials included. Still, what one observes is a kind of mutual advancement, or enrichment, in the matter of discussing reformist policies. While the press from its inception explicitly assumed statecraft functions, beginning in the late 1880s successive collections

14 This scheme did not materialize, as Kang Youwei, who should go to Shanghai to take charge of the new official reform magazine never took up the position, having to escape to Hong Kong instead.

15 North China Herald (hereafter NCH) 11.9.1880, “The Censorate at Shanghai.”16 The phrase “statecraft system maintenance” is borrowed from Elman, Classi-

cism, Politics, and Kinship, 299-300.

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of statecraft writings broadened their scope to include essays by yangwu officials and treaty-port literati which until then had been broadly publicized only through the press. Finally, I will proceed with the analysis of one particular textual example in which the mix of genres and discourses is striking and which illustrates the role of the press in promoting and transforming the literati “constitutional agenda” (Kuhn) of the 1790s. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the yangwu discourse as it appeared in the press had absorbed new ideas from the weixin protagonists. This becomes visible through the conceptual shift from the scholarly elite to the people as the force considered the most reliable in the project of national reinvigoration.

1. Publications and Reprints

The Huangchao jingshi wenbian in 120 juan was first published in 1827. Wei Yuan states in his “Five rules of compilation” that the collection was modeled after a work dating back to the late eighteenth century, the Qiewenzhai wenchao 切問齋文鈔, which had been re-printed in 1825.17 The title, however, suggests there was another precursor in spirit, namely, the Huang Ming jingshi wenbian 皇明經世文編 compiled by Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1608-1647) during the late Ming dynasty,18 a work that had been banned under Manchu rule; but to say so would have implied an unmistakable hint to a declining dynasty.

Wei Yuan’s seminal work saw many reprints, and towards the end of the nineteenth century it was followed by a large number of sequels. Thus, from the first decades of the nineteenth century politi-cally committed writings—including writings on the practical aspects of government—by outstanding Chinese authors, officials as well as non-officials, from the 17th and 18th centuries were brought to the fore by members of the Chinese scholarly elite who by Wei Yuan’s times felt largely marginalized by the Qing imperial government.19

17 “Huangchao jingshi wenbian wu li” 五例, in Qing jingshi wenbian, Beijing: Zhong-hua shuju, 1992, 2 (reprint of the 1886 Shanghai Sibulou ed.). The Qiewenzhai wenchao in 30 juan, compiled by Lu Yao 陸燿 (1723-1785), was first published in 1775 and reprinted in 1792, 1825, 1869, 1892, and 1893.

18 Huang Ming jingshi wenbian, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987.19 It is certainly true that most of the authors represented in the collection were

officials and a majority belonged to the upper echelons of the imperial bureaucracy. Chen Hongmou 陳宏謀 (1696-1771) is perhaps the most prominent example, but he was rather conventional in his approaches and not an intellectually outstandingfigure. But the author whose pieces included in the Huangchao jingshi wenbian by far outrank in number any single other author (Chen Hongmou being the second best:

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Wei Yuan himself can be (and has been) described as a marginal fig-ure in his time:20 in fact he only gained prominence—together with the statecraft compilations—during the second half of the century. When the Qiewenzhai wenchao was reprinted in 1869, it was under the title Huangchao jingshi wenchao, indicating that by that time Wei Yuan’s compilation had become the model. But, as the dates of the original publications and the reprints indicate, they were truly popularized only after institutional reconstruction in the wake of the Taiping war and the need for skilled administrators had given a tremendous impulse to the discussion of statecraft issues.

Table 1: Reprints of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian21

Year Place Publisher

Daoguang era (1836?) n.p. (刊本)

1872 Jiangxi Shuangfeng shuwu 雙峰書屋

1873 Fuzhou 撫州 ( Jiangxi) Rao Yucheng 饒玉成 (刻本)22

1883 Jiangxi Cuiyun shanfang 翠筠山房 (刻本)

1886 Wujin 武進 ( Jiangsu) Sheng Family Sibulou 盛氏思補樓 (重校石印本)23

1887 Shanghai Dianshizhai 點石齋 (石印本)

1887, 1888, 1889, 1891 Shanghai Guangbaisongzhai 廣百宋齋 (刊本)

1896 Shanghai Shaoye shanfang 掃葉山房 (鉛印本)

1898 Shanghai Hongwenge shuju 宏文閣書局

see Rowe, Saving the World, 3) was Gu Yanwu, the famous late Ming scholar who had refused to serve under Manchu rule. Although he rose to great scholarly fame, most of his political writings remained shunned. By the time Wei Yuan compiled the Jingshi wenbian Gu had become an icon for the emerging elite of literati political activists. (On the Gu Yanwu shrine association that organized “politically marginal Southern City literati,” see Polachek, The Inner Opium War, 205-235, esp. 206.)

20 Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State, 30.21 The table is based on the catalog of ancient books of the Shanghai Library,

the Chinese Catalogue of the Harvard-Yenching Library (New York, 1986), online catalogs such as that of the library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the RLG Union Catalog. Unfortunately it is impossible to reconstruct the number of volumes printed.

22 The Wenhai 1966 reprint is based on this edition.23 The Guofeng reprint (1963) and the reprint entitled Qing jingshi wenbian (Zhon-

ghua shuju, 1992) are based on this edition.

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Table 1: Continued.

1901 Jiangxi Shilin 石林（重校本）

1901 Shanghai Guangbaisongzhai 廣百宋齋 (校印本)

However sketchy it admittedly is, this table shows, first, that the number of reprints was steadily increasing in the second half of the century, particularly during the 1880s. Then it suggests that the inter-est in reprinting the collection was centered in two regions, namely Jiangnan and Jiangxi, which had been affected most severely by the Taiping war. Finally, it shows that Shanghai was on its way to becom-ing the new center of the publishing industry. A look at the publication dates of the sequels and of their reprints will show that virtually all of them were published in Shanghai, and that interest in the statecraft collections again increased enormously in the years around the turn of the century, after the Sino-Japanese war:

Table 2: Sequels to the Huangchao jingshi wenbian24

Year of publication

Title Compiler Publisher

1851 Huangchao jingshi wenbian bu 補, 58 j.25

Zhang Pengfei 張鵬飛

1882 Huangchao jingshi wen xubian 續編, 120 j.

Rao Yucheng 饒玉成

Shuangfeng shuwu 雙峰書屋 ( Jiangxi)

1888

1891

1896

1897

1898

1901

Huangchao jingshi wen xubian 續編, 120 j.

Ge Shijun 葛士濬26

Tushu jicheng ju 圖書集成局 (Shanghai)（鉛印本）Guangbaisongzhai 廣百宋齋 (Shanghai)Baoshan shuju寶善書局 (Shanghai)（石印本）Saoye shanfang 掃葉山房 (Shanghai)Shanghai shuju 上海書局（石印本）Jiujingzhai 久敬齋 (Shanghai)

24 In chronological order. Sources: same as indicated in note 20.25 This supplement is said to cover authors from the northwestern parts of the

empire neglected in Wei Yuan’s original compilation.26 It is noteworthy that the compilations by Zhang Pengfei, Rao Yucheng and

Sheng Kang, which do not seem to have been reprinted, are mentioned in the preface to the Zhonghua shuju reprint (1992, 4) as valuable publications, whereas Ge Shijun’s sequel, which was reprinted five times, is not mentioned at all!

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Table 2: Continued.

1897 Huangchao jingshi wen xubian 續編, 120 j.

Sheng Kang 盛康27

Sheng Family Sibulou 盛氏思補樓 (Wujin) （刊本）

1897 Huangchao jingshi wen sanbian 三編, xinzeng shishi yangwu xubian 新增時事洋務續編, 40+8 j.

Gan Han 甘韓 Saoye shanfang 埽葉山房 (Shanghai)

1898

1898

1898

1901, 19021902

Huangchao jingshi wen sanbian 三編, 80 j.

Chen Zhongyi 陳忠倚

Saoye shanfang (Shanghai)

Baowen shuju 寶文書局 (Shanghai)Zhesheng shuju 浙省書局（石印）Shanghai shuju 上海書局Longwen shuju 龍文書局

1898

18981901

19011902

Huangchao jingshi wenxinbian 新編, 21 j.

Huangchao jingshi wenxinbian, 32 j.

Mai Zhonghua麥仲華

Datong yishuju 大同譯書局(Shanghai)Shanghai shujuShanghai shuju

Shanghai rixinshe 上海日新社Yaolin shuguan 瑤林書館 (Shanghai)28

1901

1901

Huangchao jingshi wen tongbian 統編, 107 j.

Shao Zhitang 邵之棠

Baoshan shuju (Shanghai)

Shenji shuzhuang 慎記書莊 (Shanghai)

1901 Huangchao jingji 經濟 wenbian, 128 j.

Qiuziqiang zhuren 求自強主人

Shenji shuzhuang (Shanghai)（石印本）

1901 Huangchao jingjiwen xinbian 新編, 62 j.

Yijinshi 宜今室

Yijinshi 宜今室 (Shanghai)

1902

1902

Huangchao jingshi wen sibian 四編, 52 j.

He Liangdong 何良棟

Hongbao shuju 鴻寶書局

Shanghai shuju

1902 Huangchao jingshi wen xinbian xuji 新編續集, 21 j.

Gan Han 甘韓 Shangjiang xuecan shuju 商絳雪參書局

27 Sheng Kang was the father of Sheng Xuanhuai 盛宣懷 (1844-1916), one of the most prominent yangwu entrepreneurs.

28 This is a nice example of how different editions of what seems to be the same work can actually be. In the 1902 edition (also in 21 j.) the names of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong have disappeared. See the table of contents in Kindai Chûgoku kenkyû iinkai 近代中國研究委員會, comp., KÙchÙ keisei bunpen sÙmokuroku 皇朝經世文編總目錄, Taibei: Wenhai, 1972. The 1901 Shanghai shuju edition, on which the Guofeng reprint is based, is in 32 juan.

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Table 2: Continued.

1902 Huangchao jingshi wenbian wuji 五集, 32 j.

Qiushizhai zhu 求是齋主

Yijinshi (Shanghai)

1902 Huangchao xinzheng 新政 wenbian, 26 j.29

Jinkuique zhubuzhai 金匱闕鑄補齋

Zhongxi yishuhui 中西譯書會

1902 Huangchao Dao Xian Tong Guang zouyi 道咸同光奏議, 64 j.

Wang Yanxi 王延熙

Jiujingzhai (Shanghai)

1903 Huangchao Xu’ai 蓄艾 wenbian, 80 j.

Yu Baoxuan 于寶軒

Shanghai guanshuju 上海官書局

1914 Mingguo民國 jingshi wenbian, 26 j.

Jingshiwen she 經世文社

Table 2 shows a marked increase in the publication of jingshiwen collections from the 1890s, culminating in the years around the 1898 reforms and fading out by 1903. As a matter of fact, Mai Zhonghua’s xinbian, published at the apex of the reform movement, was very much a compendium of reform memorials and essays. Interestingly, however, the flow of jingshiwen compilations did not break off after the fatal end of the reform movement. It seems to have taken a new start in 1901-1902, with old compilations being reprinted and new ones being compiled. The later publications carry signs of being reappropriated by the state, as suggested by the term xinzheng 新政 in one of the titles, referring of course to the “new policies” set on their way by Cixi in a desperate attempt to save the dynasty; as suggested, too, by the fact that only official memorials were collected, representing the perspective of the caring “father and mother” official, as the xu’ai 蓄艾 (lit. “to rear and protect [the people]”) in one of the titles indicates; and finally, in one case, as suggested by the place of publication, viz. the Guanshuju, the Official Printing Office in Shanghai. This strand, bringing an end to statecraft publications in the original sense, was taken up again after the 1911 revolution, but then the works aimed to be manuals for the building of the Republican (or Party) state.

When we look at the rise of the press, we find similar features of matching interaction, characterized by striking similarities as well as marked differences. Table 3 summarizes the story:

29 The cover has the alternative title Huangchao jingshiwen wubian.

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Table 3: Major Chinese-language periodicals

Title Time and place

Publisher/ editor

Title Time and place

Publisher/ editor

Shanghai xinbao 上海新報

1861-1872, every other day (Shang-hai)

NCH Co. Nongxuebao 農學報

1897-1906, bi-monthly, then every ten days (Shanghai)

Nongxuehui 農學會

Jinshi bianlu 近事編錄

1864-ca. 1900, daily (Hong Kong)

Noronha Mengxuebao蒙學報

1897-1898, every ten days (Shanghai)

Wang Kangnian汪康年et al.

Shenbao 申報

1872-1949, daily (Shanghai)

E. Major Youxibao 游戲報


李伯元 Li Boyuan

Xunhuan ribao 循環日報

1874-1947, daily (Hong Kong)

Wang Tao 王韜

Xiangbao 湘報

1898.3-10, daily (Changsha)30

熊希齡 Xiong Xiling

Wanguo gongbao 萬國公報

1874-1883, weekly; 1889-1907, monthly (Shanghai)

Y. J. Allen Changyan-bao 昌言報

1898, every ten days (Shanghai)

Wang Kangnian

Gezhi huibian 格致匯編

1876-1892?, monthly (Shanghai)

John Fryer Nüxuebao 女學報

1898.7-9, every ten days, then every five days (Shanghai)31

Kang Tongwei 康同薇, Li Huixian 李蕙仙

Zilin Hubao 字林滬報


NCH Co. Qingyibao 清議報

1898.12-1901, every ten days (Yokohama)

Liang Qichao

Xinwenbao 新聞報


Sino.-Brit. joint venture

Guominbao 國民報

1901.5-8, monthly (Tôkyô)

Qin Lishan 秦力山 et al.

30 One might note that He Changling and Wei Yuan were natives of Hunan.31 According to Liu Jucai 劉巨才, twelve issues of the Nüxuebao (“Chinese Girl’s

Progress”) have been preserved: see his “Zhongguo jindai funü baokan xiaoshi” 中國近代婦女報刊小史 (Short history of the women’s press in modern China), Xinwenyanjiu ziliao 35 (1986), 129-132 (I am grateful to Barbara Mittler for this reference). For his part Tang Zhijun wonders whether the journal was published at all (see Wuxu shiqi de xuehui he baokan 戊戌時期的學會和報刊, Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1993, 499), but since the title page of the first issue has been reprinted in Luo Suwen’s 羅蘇文 Nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo shehui 女性與近代中國社會 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996), Tang’s doubts seem to be groundless.

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Table 3: Continued.

Shiwubao 時務報

1896-1898, every ten days (Shanghai)

Liang Qichao 梁啟超

Xinmin congbao 新民叢報

1902-1907, bi-monthly (Yokohama)

Liang Qichao

Jingshibao 經世報

1897.8-12, every ten days (Hangzhou)

Zhang Taiyan 章太炎

Shibao 時報 1904-1939, daily (Shanghai)

Di Chuqing 狄楚青

The 1872 and 1873 reprint editions of the Huangchao jingshi wen-bian paralleled the establishment of the Shanghai daily Shenbao in 1872, soon followed by the highly influential Wanguo gongbao (“The Globe Magazine”), a secularized sequel to the Jiaohui xinbao 教會新報 (“Church News”). It is interesting to note in this context that both a purely merchant venture, the Shanghai xinbao—a Chinese-language daily published by the North-China Herald Company—and a purely missionary journal, the Jiaohui xinbao, were superseded by publications respectively less merchant-oriented and more secular in their outlook, and so implicitly catering to the Jiangnan literati clientèle. The Hong Kong newspapers, which were looked at as a model to learn from by the most influential Shanghai daily—the Shenbao, were crucial in the beginnings of a Chinese-language press. In other words, in contrast to the statecraft literature discussed above the press literally came from the very margins of the empire. The return of Wang Tao 王韜 (1828-1897)—the icon of early Hong Kong journalism—to Shanghai in 1884 was another instance of a cultural capability to “absorb talents on the margins.”32

Journals such as Allen’s Wanguo gongbao and Fryer’s Gezhi huibian 格致匯編 also indicate a strong interest in the natural sciences, which were regarded as the foundation of the apparent success of the West-ern powers, as well as in the latter’s economic and political systems. Their publication coincided with the implementation of yangwu poli-tics in the decade preceding the Sino-French war. In contrast, only one reprint of Wei Yuan’s collection and only the first sequel to his project (the one compiled by Rao Yucheng) appeared immediately before that war, in 1882. The printing and reprinting of statecraft collections became more vigorous only after the Sino-French war was

32 Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State, 30.

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over, suggesting that the newspapers had taken the lead in the public discussion of yangwu politics.

The two genres got closer to each other during the second half of the 1890s, after the Sino-Japanese War. A flurry of reprints of existing jingshiwen collections as well as new collections were published then; they were just preceded by the appearance of the reform magazines. The latter were published first in Beijing, like the reformers’ monthly Wanguo gongbao, subsequently renamed Zhongwai jiwen 中外紀聞, but very soon they moved to Shanghai. Most prominent among them was Liang Qichao’s (1873-1929) Shiwubao, but perhaps the most significant in the present context was the Jingshibao, in which Zhang Taiyan (1868-1936) published his early essays. Publications in both genres culminated around 1898, being then concentrated in Shanghai. At least three reprints of Ge Shijun’s sequel to Wei Yuan’s original compilation were published in the years between the Sino-Japanese war and 1898, and in the year 1898 alone the third sequel, that by Chen Zhongyi, underwent at least three different printings. Sheng Kang’s sequel, which was printed in his own estate in Wujin (Jiangsu), appeared in 1897, and the same year a separate sequel was compiled containing only materials on “current” and “Western affairs.”33 With the “New collection” (Huangchao jingshiwen xinbian) compiled by Mai Zhonghua, a student of Liang Qichao, the close relationship between the reform press and statecraft literature became even more visible.

After the sudden end of the officially sanctioned reform movement in the fall of 1898, the reprints and new compilations of statecraft collections reappeared faster in mainland China than the political press—more precisely, in the protected environment of foreign-admin-istered Shanghai and as a product of the flourishing printing trade in that city. Even Mai Zhonghua’s “New Collection” was reprinted in Shanghai as early as 1901—still with Liang’s preface, but unsigned, and with Kang Youwei’s memorials opening the first chapter of the original edition replaced with memorials postdating Cixi’s reassertion of power.34 These collections were, or pretended to be, in line with the official attempt at reform dubbed the “New Policies” (xinzheng 新政).35 One of the new publications was even entitled Huangchao xinzheng

33 This sometimes appears as Huangchao jingshiwen san bian, zengfu shishi yangwu 增附時事洋務, but it was actually published before Chen Zhongyi’s third sequel.

34 See KÙchÙ keisei bunpen sÙmokuroku, parts I and J.35 Cf. Douglas R. Reynolds, China 1898-1912. The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan,

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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wenbian, or “Collected writings on the new policies of our August Dynasty.”

As far as the periodical press is concerned, the reformer-journalists who had fallen out of favor with the Qing government now had to reestablish themselves in their Japanese exile. There the political press developed in two directions. Liang Qichao, who published reform magazines in Yokohama—the first of these taking up old “pure critique” claims with its title Qingyibao—soon returned to a rather moderate attitude towards reform. At the same time, more radical Chinese students in Tokyo moved in the direction of a revolutionary anti-Manchu stance. For their part, the newspapers that could sur-vive in Shanghai were either long-established dailies and magazines owned by foreigners, or magazines that could prove their usefulness for issues of interest to the government and had strong official protec-tion: examples are the Nongxuebao and the Mengxuebao, which covered the eminently important policy sectors of agriculture and education. With these publications a domesticated reform discourse continued to exist among the general public. But it was only after 1903 that a new reformist and revolutionary press could take hold on the Chi-nese mainland, again under the protection of the foreign concessions in Shanghai, at the same time putting an end to the publication of statecraft collections.36

Thus, the officially sponsored reform discourse reached its peak in 1898, when the two strands of the advocacy press and statecraft writ-ings converged. The break caused by the purge of the reformers and the ensuing harsh control exerted over domestic publications marked the beginning of the popularization of the radically reformist and revolutionary discourses disseminated across the mainland by Chi-nese students and exiles based in Japan. Rather than being something genuinely new, however, I would argue that their writings were the logical outcome of ideas that had been popularized through the press and, with some qualifications, could even be traced to the “constitu-

36 Periodicals published in Yokohama included Liang Qichao’s Qingyibao (1898.12), Xinmin congbao (1902.2), and Xin xiaoshuo 新小説 (1902.11). Periodicals published in Tokyo included the fiercely anti-Manchu Guominbao (1901.5), Zhejiang chao 浙江潮 (1903.2), and Jiangsu 江蘇 (1903.3). Interestingly, the revolutionary periodicals, though short-lived, were the first to be published in Shanghai again, e.g. the Guomin riribao 國民日日報 (1903.8, edited by Chen Duxiu and others), the Eshi jingwen 俄事驚聞 (1903.12), the Jingzhong ribao 警鐘日報 (1904.2, edited by Cai Yuanpei and others), the Zhongguo baihuabao 中國白話報 (1903.12), the Anhui suhuabao 安徽俗話報 (1904.1), and the Nüzi shijie 女子世界 (1904.1), followed by the reformist Shibao in 1904.

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tional agenda” of the late eighteenth century. But it seems clear that statecraft writings and the press diverged again at this juncture, while the state tried hard to bring political discourse back into the confines imposed by itself.37

2. Statecraft Writings and the New Press: Contents andStyle

What were all these writings about? If we compare the editorial statements of the Shenbao with the preface to the Huangchao jingshi wenbian we find that, while they could hardly be more different in style, their agendas largely coincided. In his preface He Changling points to the importance of actual, concrete things, things that can be objectified and are independent of individuals, things that are not tied to a distant past or an internal self but that one can grasp; in other words, things that are of practical value: “Those good at talking about the mind (xin 心)” should look for their evidence in actual affairs (shi 事); “those good at talking about human beings (ren 人)” should avail themselves of the concrete laws and institutions ( fa 法); “those good at talking about antiquity (gu 古)” should look for their evidence in the present ( jin 今); and “those good at talking about the self (wo 我)” should avail themselves of the myriad things (wan wu 萬物).38 He further points to the necessity of keeping up with the development of affairs and of coping with the exigencies of the time; and he talks about learning and the investigation of things as the basis for good government. More importantly, he perceives these issues—which he calls “substantial learning” (shixue 實學)—as the basis for the more elevated ethical values informing an orthodox mind, not the other way round, and thus as crucial to the art of good government. He refers to the most famous passage from the “Great Learning” to confer authority upon this view: “If one investigates one’s mind, self, family and country, and the [myriad] things of the world, if one [then] knows how to rectify [the mind], how to cultivate [the self], and how to order [the family and the country], then [the world] will be in order and peace” (格其心

身家國天下之物，知奚以正，奚以修，奚以齊，且治平者也).The organizational scheme of the collection outlined by Wei Yuan

37 I am referring here to the first modern publication and press laws, passed respectively in 1906 and 1908.

38 See “Huangchao jingshi wenbian xu 敘.” This text, and especially this opening passage, is rather hard to translate in its details. I hope to have grasped its gist.

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in the editorial guidelines also underscored the pragmatic interest in administration underlying the project. It was organized in eight parts. Whereas the first two, entitled “Learning” (xueshu 學術) and “Gover-nance” (zhiti 治體), were designed as an ideological frame of reference that had to accommodate all aspects of government, the main body of the work was arranged in six parts corresponding to the Six Boards of the imperial government, thus stressing the practical aspects of administering the world. Since the emphasis was on contemporary affairs, texts drawing on ancient models or “taking the medicines of superseded dynasties as instruments for today” were explicitly excluded. The compiler also had a keen interest in an intelligible style, stating that writings hard to understand had been rejected.39 The Huangchao jingshi wenbian was thus intended to reach a broader audience and attract attention beyond those interested in exalted literary style. This principle of “easy access” becomes even more evident in the preface to a reprint edition whose author states that the physical size of the book has been reduced to that of a “pocket edition” (xiuzhenben 袖珍

本), so that one will be able to carry it along on travel, and promises it a popularity that is sure to surpass that of the previous editions.40

In a similar vein, the Shenbao’s editorial announcement stressed the importance of a pragmatic style and the centrality of contemporary affairs. It stated that the newspaper is the medium most suitable to record “current events” (dangjin shishi 當今時事) in a “simple though not vulgar style” (zhi er bu li 質而不俚), so that scholars and officials as well as “farmers, artisans, traders and merchants” will understand it. While the editor made sufficiently clear that the paper was inter-ested in printing “any sensational, startling and pleasant things apt to refresh the public ear” (一切可驚可愕可喜之事，足以新人聽聞者), he did not neglect the importance of covering “the political situation of the empire, changing customs, important developments in foreign relations, prosperity and depression in business” (國家之政治，風俗之

變遷，中外交涉之要務，商賈貿易之利弊)—in other words, subjects that had become central to practical statesmanship since the middle

39 “Huangchao jingshi wenbian wu li.” The most urgent topics at the time were the suppression of rebellions and combating banditry, fighting official corruption, reforming the grain tribute and the tax system, salt administration, water conservancy, flood control, and relief policies.

40 Rao Gutang 饒辜漟 (Yucheng 玉成), “Huangchao jingshi wenbian chong-jiaoben xu,” in his 1873 Fuzhou edition of Huangchao jingshi wenbian (Taibei reprint: Wenhai, 1972).

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of the century. He addressed not only those engaged in business, but explicitly catered to those “interested in current affairs” (liuxin shiwu-zhe 留心時務者) as readers of—and contributors to—the journal.41 This way of addressing the intended readership of the newspaper also shows that the relationship between commerce and politics had become increasingly intricate and that it had become quite difficult to separate them.

One might remark that the interest in governance, which was crucial to He Changling and Wei Yuan, was not the only focus in the Shenbao announcement. At first sight this seems to be also true of the “editorial guidelines” published repeatedly in the first issues. Readers were asked to contribute to the newspaper by sending poetry and essays. But even in the case of poetry the editor suggested that the stress should be on social customs and current affairs: what he solicited was zhuzhici 竹枝詞 (a pop-ular poetic genre used to describe changing local customs) from famous areas and ballads recording current events (changge jishi zhi lei 長歌紀事之

類). As for the essays, they were to be related to “the national economy, people’s livelihood, the profits drawn from the land, irrigation and conservancy (國計民生地利水源), and the like.” Everything regarding the needs of the imperial government (上關皇朝經濟之需) or informing us about the sufferings of the small folk toiling in their fields (下知小民

稼穡之苦) was fit for print.42

This clearly was a call for essays on “statecraft” topics aimed at the lower ranks of the examination elite, a group especially numerous in the Jiangnan area. The stress on the great potential of the new press in matters of government was most likely based on the British experi-ence: in Britain, papers like the London Times performed a kind of extended parliamentary function. But in the present case the appeal is geared to Chinese literati eager to live up to their foremost ideal, namely, contributing to the noble task of governance. This conjunction of a quick and short-lived, but up-to-date, medium aimed at a broad audience with a more ponderous elite statecraft discourse would later turn the discursive spheres of the late Qing empire upside down.

Obviously there was a great difference between the statecraft collec-

41 “Benguan gaobai” 本官告白 (Publication announcement), Shenbao TZ11.03.23 (30.4.1872). The summary given here draws on the translation in Roswell Britton’s The Chinese Periodical Press 1800-1912, Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1933 (reprint Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1966), 65.

42 “Benguan tiaoli” 本官條例 (Editorial regulations), Shenbao TZ11.03.23. Trsl. adapted from Britton, Chinese Periodical Press, 66.

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tions and the Shenbao as far as what was understood to be an intelligible style was concerned, and the extent of popularization of knowledge about “modern events” and “current affairs” was definitely not the same, not to speak of a rather different notion of “actuality.” But these seem to be only questions of degree. The basic tenets were laid out by He Changling and Wei Yuan. As jingshiwen compilations succeeded one another, the distance between the two genres gradually decreased. With the development of the modern press and with technical innovations such as lithography or the telegraph becoming available in the 1880s, the original agenda was put on a new basis; and this had an impact on stylistic innovation, on the speed with which political debates were introduced to the general public, and on the popularization of political issues to a degree previously unimaginable.

Let us now turn to the actual contents of a newspaper like the Shenbao and of the succeeding jingshiwen compilations, and examine to what degree the two genres can be compared beyond the similarity in general orientation suggested by the kind of rather rhetorical editorial statements just cited. In order to do this we may return to the Jiwen leibian, the collection of representative articles from the Shenbao intro-duced at the beginning of this essay. The categories used there offer a much more varied picture of the literary production of the treaty-port scholars and a broader range of topics than one would expect with the Six-Board classification scheme of Wei Yuan’s original compilation in mind. Cai Erkang arranged his material in twelve categories (some of them topically, others formally), the contents of which deserve a closer look as they provide a cross-section of the writings that appeared in the newspaper, and at the same time reveal which of them were considered most important. The contents of the twelve sections of the Jiwen leibian can be summarized as follows:

1. Zoushu 奏疏 (“Memorials”), 18 items Memorials revealing cases of moral excellence or official corruption and

dealing with such topics as copper mining in Yunnan, the Yangzi fleet, irregularities in the salt administration and civil examinations, state finances, the metropolitan bureaucracy, imperial clan schools, the general need of reform, and more. One text by Li Hongzhang and three by Peng Yulin, then an admiral and later the President of the Board of War, are included.

2. Shizheng 時政 (“Current politics”), 26 items Includes a variety of topics and formats, e.g. an imperial edict on the Yangzi

fleet, a proposal (yi 議) on copper mining in Yunnan reprinted from the Hong Kong newspaper Jinshi bianlu, several official proclamations (gaoshi 告示) on local problems of public order and social customs, reports (ji 記), opinion pieces (lun 論) and comments (shuhou 書後) on the imperial mar-riage as reported in the Western press, on the audience of Western envoys

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with the emperor, on a Shanghai home for virtuous women (Qingjietang 清節堂), news items on the coolie trade, a summary of the Yang Yuelou case,43 etc.

3. Lunyi 論議 (“Policy proposals”), 2 j., 22 and 23 items Leading articles on such topics as the prohibition of poppy cultivation and

opium consumption, the need for consular protection of Chinese people abroad, state finances and foreign loans, military and border issues, steam engines, governance, frugality, famine relief, flood prevention, rebuilding community granaries (the text is a petition to the governor of Zhejiang), educational institutions, yangwu enterprises (the China Merchants Steamship Navigation Co.), secret societies, social order, manufacturing, banditry (dis-cussing Peking Gazette items), literary inquisition in Japan, “practical learning” and the translation of Western books, civil examinations and the recruitment of “talents,” military affairs, international trade, and more.

4. Fengtu minqing 風土民情 (“Local customs and the sentiments of the people”), 29 items

Articles, proposals, news items, anecdotes, “strange talk” (qitan 奇談) or “humorous talk” (xiaotan 笑談) on cases of fraud, beggary, murder and other crimes, on gambling (like bets on the names of successful candidates in the examinations, weixing 圍姓), and on the state of public morals.

5. Bangjiao hushi 邦交互市 (“International relations and trade”), 30 items News items and proposals concerning compradors, Chinese students sent

to America, the Sino-Prussian treaty, the coolie trade (termed “slavery” [fan ren wei nu 販人為奴] in one of the titles), the Shanghai Mixed Court, diplomacy, international law, British imperialism, Western religion, etc.

6. Waibang shishi 外邦時事 (“Current affairs of foreign countries”), 48 items

Articles on such topics as the virtuous rule of Queen Victoria, Prussian knowledge of French geography, an audience of British envoys with the Japanese emperor following British etiquette, Prussian military strategy, the strange marriage of a German merchant in Zanzibar, the Korean de-claration of war on Japan, the American presidential system, Egypt and ancient Greece, the Russian capitals, political marriages, British railways in India, famine in Korea, the prohibition of “official prostitutes” in Japan, the founding of a Museum in Austria, trade between Britain and Burma, the Franco-Prussian war, conflicts about colonial claims between Britain and Portugal, Chinese students in the West, the visit of the Russian Crown Prince to Nanjing, the Shah of Persia, American silver currency, the origins of Russian wealth and power, French imperialism in Annam, volcanoes in the Philippines, workers’ demands for higher wages in England (discussed in the context of the rise and fall of nations),44 an order for the destruction of Buddha images in Japan, Japanese academies, etc.

43 On which see Natascha Vittinghoff, “Readers, Publishers and Officials in the Contest for a Public Voice and the Rise of a Modern Press in Late Qing China (1860-1880),” T’oung Pao 87.4-5 (2001), 393-455.

44 The article is entitled “Gongren zengzhi lun” 工人增值論; although zengzhi here is a verb-object structure meaning “to increase the workers’ wages” and thus should not be confused with the modern term zengzhi, “surplus value,” the discussion does imply the problem of the surplus value of labor.

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7. Jixing lei 畸行類 (“Examples of extraordinary behavior”), 39 items Biographies of virtuous women and filial sons, and accounts of virtuous

deeds (a large number of these are signed articles).8. Yiwen lei 異聞類 (“News about extraordinary phenomena”), 50 items Accounts of spirits and ghosts, strange encounters and unbelievable phe-

nomena (ranging from peach blossoms opening in autumn to righteous dogs and horses).

9. Yanji lei 艷蹟類 (“Traces of splendor”), 36 items Courtesan poetry, anecdotes of the “talented scholar meets beauty” kind,

literary notes on women knights-errant and love affairs, and other anecdotal writings.

10. Bowu lei 博物類 (“Natural studies”), 23 items News items on subjects such as a British mathematician, Greek archeology,

Western scientific expeditions, the foundation of the British Museum, an investigation into the history of Chinese relations with the Liuqiu islands, hot-air balloons, diamonds, Marco Polo’s travels to the East, a piano made of ivory, etc., as well as articles on coal mining, on railways (by W.A.P. Martin), geology, astrology, etc.

11. Wenci lei 文辭類 (“Literary composition”), 2 j. (one of prose and one of poetry), 29 and 82 items

Model pieces for different genres of poetry and prose, e.g. a preface (xu 序) introducing thirteen new titles on Western learning published by the Jiangnan Arsenal, an announcement (qi 啟) for the publication of Wang Tao’s account on the Franco-Prussian war, prose pieces (wen 文), biogra-phies (zhuan 傳), essays (lun 論 or shuo 説), anecdotal accounts (biji 筆記), rhapsodies (fu 賦) on topics of current interest, reading notes (du 讀... hou 後), disputations (bian 辨) on the phrasing and phonology of the classics, and various genres of poetry, with topics revolving around the social and moral environment of Shanghai.

12. Zazhu lei 雜著類 (“Miscellaneous writings”), 35 items Includes an essay on scholarly ambition, playful writings, paici 牌詞 (play-

fully stringing together ci-patterns to tell a story), letters, poems, zhuzhici on Shanghai, and more.

This selection represents the whole range of writings included in the Shenbao (with, perhaps, the single exception of advertisements), and it reflects aptly the living experience of the treaty-port scholar-intellectual. Needless to say, I do not mean to suggest here that the newspaper, with all its diversity, resembled the tightly organized jingshiwen compilations, especially Wei Yuan’s original opus; and this would be even less true if we took into account the newspaper itself, rather than the collection of articles just described. Nonetheless, the stress on the discussion of current affairs, dealing with everything from local social customs and public morals to international relations, and including literati policy proposals and social critique as well as official documents, shows that the newspaper had become an accepted place

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for the treatment of “statecraft issues”—among other things. While in terms of formal arrangement “Memorials” and essays on “Current politics” took the lead, in terms of space the dominant topics—both of them filling two juan—were “Policy proposals” and “Literary com-position,” reflecting the literati’s input as well as their interests, which were multifaceted. The strong response of readers sending their own essays also demonstrates that a considerable part of the treaty-port literati tended to view the press as a chance to escape their political marginalization; consequently they used it to voice their opinions and contribute to the self-strengthening yangwu discourse that prevailed among the more open-minded members of the bureaucracy during the last third of the century. Indeed, their claim to do so found explicit expression in a considerable number of the newspaper articles, where those in positions of responsibility were addressed in general terms in closing remarks such as: “But what do those who are shepherding the people think about this?” (然為民牧者以爲如何).45

An analysis of the readers’ essays contributed to the Shenbao in the years 1872 to 1876—in most cases they were printed as leading articles—makes this tendency clear. The articles can be roughly divided into the three following categories:46

1. The “classical” statecraft topics, including essays on administrative issues (such as taxation, tribute-grain transportation, salt adminis-tration, etc.), natural disasters and famine relief, the suppression of banditry and secret societies, civil examinations, military issues

45 Jiwen leibian, 185. Further examples from the “Lunyi” chapters of the Jiwen leibian illustrate the same thing: “Yes, a student may talk about this but he cannot carry it out, therefore I write this down in order to present it to those among famous high officials who are concerned about prosperous rule” (諾生言之而不能行之，故錄之以質諸名公卿之有心郅治者) (p. 144); “How do those who are determined to preserve peace and order think about this?” (有志治安者以爲如何耶) (p. 146); “I fear that those in charge of public affairs might not find these superficial and rash judgments worth a smile” (芻蕘妄論恐不值當事者一哂也) (p. 153); there are more examples (cf. pp. 160, 173, 185, 234, 240).

46 In the five years from 1872 to 1876 signed articles on issues belonging to the three categories outlined here can be found in a quarter of the Shenbao issues on average. There is a decline in the proportion of essays contributed by readers from more than a third in 1872 to approximately a sixth in 1876; regarding the topics discussed, while there is a decline in the number of essays on moral issues there is an increase of explicit political discussion. These observations are based on the Electronic Index to the Early Shenbao (1872-1895), Heidelberg: Institute of Chinese Studies, 2002, 24.3.2003, http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/database/shenbao/manual.htm.

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http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/database/shenbao/manual.htm

http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/database/shenbao/manual.htm


(e.g. national defense and military strategy), questions of public morals, etc.

2. The new body of yangwu topics and problems evolving from con-tact with Western countries, including essays on the new means of transportation (steamships and railways), mining, the natural sciences, modern education (i.e. in “Western learning”), interna-tional trade, opium consumption and trade, diplomacy and knowl-edge about foreign countries, the encounter with Christianity and missionaries, etc.

3. A body of local topics that perhaps would not have made their way into the statecraft collections, but which are usually treated under such statecraft categories as public morals or social order. These articles are often based on legal cases reported in the newspaper, on gambling, prostitution, popular theater, white-slave traffic, coolie traffic, fraud, kidnapping, or even petty theft—in short, any kind of deviant behavior.

As we saw, with the successive sequels to the Huangchao jingshi wen-bian the two kinds of writings moved closer to each other. In 1888 Ge Shijun was the first to include a new category on “Western affairs” ( yangwu) that discussed diplomatic, military, commercial, and educa-tional issues. Translations by W.A.P. Martin (Ding Weiliang 丁韙良, 1827-1916) dominated entire chapters, and an essay by Wang Tao came to stand side by side with the essays and memorials of such eminent yangwu protagonists as Zhang Zhidong or Li Hongzhang—just as memorials by Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were published alongside newspaper articles in the press. Ge Shijun included essays by the first official envoys to Western countries, Guo Songdao 郭嵩燾 and Xue Fucheng 薛福成, as well as essays by reformist writers, most prominently Feng Guifen 馮桂芬 (1809-1874) with his “Proposal on the adoption of Western learning” (“Cai xixue yi” 采西學議), among many others. Yu Yue’s 俞樾 (1821-1907) preface states the merits of Ge’s compilation by stressing the shortcomings of its predecessors: while He Changling’s (i.e., Wei Yuan’s) collection had been very popular with scholars concerned with matters of public administration,47 and while Rao Yucheng had carried on with the endeavor by collecting memorials by famous officials and private writings of the Daoguang, Xianfeng and Tongzhi periods concerning the “morals of the age”

47 Yu uses the term jingji 經濟, short for jingshi jimin 經世濟民, “ordering the world and relieving the people.”

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(shidao 世道), none had been able really to do justice to the new inter-national situation and to societal changes. Said otherwise, the “Western affairs” now introduced by Ge Shijun did not fit into Wei Yuan’s original categorization, and a number of important issues were not covered in Rao Yucheng’s compilation, e.g. the administration of border regions, mining as a source of national income, the levy of likin taxes to cover military expenses, steamship navigation and rail-ways as modern means of transportation, and mathematics.48 Later, in his sequel published in 1897, Sheng Kang, the father of the famous yangwu entrepreneur Sheng Xuanhuai, did integrate into Wei Yuan’s organizational framework such new topics as “likin tax,” “mining,” “border issues,” “the navy,” and “militias,” which had not received special attention in the original compilation. Yet all had been typical topics of discussion in the Shenbao since its foundation in 1872.49

After the debacle of 1895, both the statecraft collections and the periodical press moved their focus from yangwu topics to offering them-selves as platforms for the discussion of reformist ideas, including by publishing texts composed by reformers or by politicians inclined to reform. The additional chapters on “Current and Western affairs” published in 1897 are the most obvious manifestation of this trend. In his preface the scholar and mathematician designating himself by the studio name Henghuaguan Yishi 蘅華館逸史 touched on the literati’s increasing anger and resentment following the defeat at the hands of Japan. He felt that the “atmosphere” (fengqi 風氣) had changed as more and more scholars would now engage in the study of contemporary affairs and Western learning in order to help in the self-strengthening effort of the country. He saw his own endeavor as a continuation of He Changling’s and Ge Shijun’s compilations, and explicitly expanded their scope to encompass journalistic writings: besides the “memorials by famous officials and the great essays of erudite scholars” which were collected in the Jingshi wenbian—and had always been an important, if not the dominant, feature in the newspapers—he included “important news from the Chinese and Western press and anecdotes from all over the world.”50 Subsequently, numerous translations and articles

48 Yu Yue, “Huangchao jingshiwen xubian xu,” in Ge Shijun, comp., Huangchao jingshiwen xubian, Shanghai: Tushu jichengju, 1888 (here quoted from the Wenhai reprint of the Jiujingzhai 1901 edition).

49 See the tables with the chapter headings of the different compilations in KÙchÙ keisei bunpen sÙmokuroku. It goes without saying that Wei Yuan could not have discussed likin in his collection of 1827 since the tax was introduced in 1851.

50 Preface to the Huangchao jingshiwen san bian zengfu shishi yangwu, Shanghai: Saoye Shanfang, 1897 (cited after the Wenhai reprint edition).

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that had first been published in the periodical press were reprinted in collections of statecraft writings.

The trend culminated in the publication of Mai Zhonghua’s Huang-chao jingshiwen xinbian in 1898. Liang Qichao’s preface was a hymn of praise to the term xin 新, “renovation.” It is remarkable that, as already mentioned, whereas in the reprint editions Kang Youwei’s memorials and essays and Liang Qichao’s reform writings first published in the Shiwubao were eliminated, Liang’s preface was preserved, though it was unsigned. An essay by Kang Tongwei, Kang Youwei’s daughter, which had first appeared in the reform magazine Zhixinbao 知新報 in Macao, also remained. The missionary reformer Timothy Richard (Li Timotai 李提摩太) figured most prominently, as were the writings of foreign authors in general, mostly from America, England, and Japan. Mai’s new compilation shows that by that time a new canon of Chinese writers on reform had been established. They included Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695), whose father had participated in the Donglin opposition against Wei Zhongxian, Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792-1841), Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1838-1894), Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848-1905), and others. Wei Yuan’s Six-Board organizational scheme was abandoned, the materials being arranged by topical chap-ters instead.51

I would suggest that at that stage both types of publications—the press and the statecraft collections—reinforced each other, the press being the main source of information and of new ideas, while the collections published in book form gave them a more enduring and authoritative character. Whereas the statecraft collections tended to represent the official side of the modernization discourse, the articles published in the Shenbao and other journals reflected the much more lively and up-to-date reform discourse of the people actually engaged in or in close touch with “Western affairs.”52 They included many items translated from the Western press itself, a resource on which, naturally, the official side drew heavily.

51 Following Mai Zhonghua’s model were the Huangchao jingjiwen xinbian (Yijinshi, 1901), the Huangchao jingshiwen xinbian xuji (comp. Gan Han, 1902, for which Duanfang wrote a preface), and the Huangchao jingshi wenbian wu ji (Qiushizhai, 1902); in con-trast, Chen Zhongyi’s Huangchao jingshiwen san bian (1897), Shao Zhitang’s Huangchao jingshiwen tongbian (1901), and He Liangdong’s Huangchao jingshiwen si bian (1902) used an adapted He Changling categorization which made use of Ge Shijun’s model. Cf. the charts “Keisei bunpen kÙmoku bekkansu ichiranhyÙ” 經世文編項目別卷數一覽表 in KÙchÙ keisei bunpen sÙmokuroku.

52 Discussions about the different political systems, such as democracies, monarchies, or constitutional monarchies, e.g. in Shenbao 4.5.1876, 12.1.1878, 15.2.1879, 13.4.1882, 18.1.1887, 9.1.1895, and 23.9.1895, might be mentioned as an example.

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Likewise, one finds close relationships between the people involved in the newspaper business, the compilers of statecraft writings, and official advocates of yangwu projects. The postscript to the Huangchao jingshiwen san bian zengfu shishi yangwu, for example, was written by Yu Chang 于鬯 (1854-1910), a scholar from Nanhui (a county neighboring Shanghai) who was a compatriot and close friend of Huang Xiexun 黃協塤 (1852-1924), then the Shenbao editor-in-chief. Yu Chang had also written the preface to Ge Shijun’s sequel statecraft collection, the first to include the category “Yangwu” as we saw. Both Yu and Ge were former students of Zhang Wenhu 張文虎 (1808-1885), a famous scholar from Nanhui who once served as a private secretary of Zeng Guofan.53

3. The State, the People, and the Birth of a Nation

The question still remains of how this statecraft, or statecraft-based, reform discourse could make the shift to a radically reformist or even revolutionary discourse. How could these seemingly managerial nine-teenth-century writings provide the basis of early twentieth-century revolutionary discourse? The following analysis, which I hope will demonstrate the connection between the two, focuses on two terms whose shifting significance is an indication of what I call “the turn to the people.” They are shiqi 士氣 and minqi 民氣 (see below for trans-lations), and the gist of the story is the way the former was gradu-ally replaced by the latter, and how in the process the latter became imbued with new meaning. Our enquiry will lead us back to the literati discourse of the first half of the nineteenth century to show how the so-called “constitutional agenda” of the Chinese scholarly elite unfolded. The point of departure of our discussion is an in-depth analysis of a Shenbao article entitled “China’s weakness is due to the ignorance of its people” (“Lun Zhongguo zhi ruo youyu minzhi bu kai” 論中國之弱由於民智不開, henceforth referred to as “China’s weakness”), where it is possible to show in evidence the convergence of different reform discourses—roughly distinguished as “jingshi-system maintenance,” “yangwu-system adaptation,” and “weixin-fundamental renovation”—together with a qualitative change in the notion of “the people” that became widely visible after 1895.

“China’s weakness” appeared on September 28, 1898, three days

53 See chap. 1 of my Nur leere Reden. For more details on the social networks of the journalists see Vittinghoff, Die Anfänge des Journalismus in China.

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after the first accounts of the crackdown in Peking had been published in the Shanghai Chinese-language press, based on reports in the West-ern newspapers. That same day, the edict officially announcing Cixi’s take-over of power was also published in the Shenbao, while in Peking the so-called “six martyrs” were executed. With the heroic words attributed to Tan Sitong and spread nationwide, not least through the press of the treaty ports, the events of that day came later to symbolize the beginning of the Chinese revolution. This was a time of extreme political uncertainty, and it was not to be expected that a newspaper as close to the establishment as the Shenbao should come out with an openly critical piece, let alone a revolutionary one. While the new significance given to “the people” was suggested in the title already,54 the article as such could be read as not much more than a reissue of the familiar call for increased efforts to educate the populace by pushing forward the building of a nationwide system of public schools, such as had been made in the statecraft literature and by statesmen like Ding Richang 丁日昌 (1823-1882) since the late 1860s.55 On the surface of it, there was nothing for any central government to be afraid of and the contents were very much in line with the official agenda of moderate reform. But digging more deeply into the text, we will find that different argumentative layers are woven together in the pattern of classical prose, resulting in a smooth surface beneath which a revolutionary agenda is hidden.

This new agenda, which ascribes to the broader populace an entirely new role in the polity, is announced in the opening passage of “China’s weakness” clad in the familiar guise of classical rhetoric:

From where does a state’s power derive? It derives from nothing else than the intelligence of its people!56 The state is the assemblage of the people, thus

54 The term minzhi 民智, “the intelligence of the people,” only occurs a single time in the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, there referring to the general populace (ren 人) who all “know how to exhaust the earth, but not how to nourish it.” See j. 41, “Beihuang guanjian” 備荒管見 (Modest views on preparedness for famine), by Lu Shiji 魯仕驥. Interestingly, however, the basic idea—that the people need to be educated in order to assure the future of the country—later promoted most forcefully by Liang Qichao, as we shall see, is already articulated in this essay.

55 Cf. Jonathan K. Ocko, Bureaucratic Reform in Provincial China. Ting Jih-ch’ang in Restoration Kiangsu, 1867-1870, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983, esp. 51-61, and note 76 below. For examples in the jingshiwen compilations, see “Zheng xue lun” 正學論 (On orthodox learning) by Cheng Jinfang 程晉芳, in Huangchao jingshi wenbian, j. 2 , or “Lun kaoshi” 論考試 (On examinations) by Li Dongyuan 李東沅, in Ge Shijun’s sequel, j. 120.

56 The term here simply translated as “people” is minxin 民心, referring both to the hearts and to the minds of the people. It suggests a rather integrated concept of edu-cation, implying the intellectual as well as moral “transformation” of the people.

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the empowering spirit of the people (minqi) is the life-giving force of the state (yuanqi). This force is such that one has to cultivate it decades in advance in order to perfect it decades later. This is different from laws and regulations or the state budget, which one can immediately adjust with success, if one only takes up the task.國家之強弱奚自乎？自乎其民心之智愚而已。國者民之積，民氣者國家之元氣也。

是氣也，教之於數十年之前而成之於數十年之後，非若法令財用，舉而修之，可以

旋至而立效者也。

The most conspicuous feature of this statement, which seems even to have breathed some democratic air, is the constitutive role of “the people.” The formulation “the state is the assemblage of the people” had already been used by Liang Qichao a little earlier,57 but his famous notion of “renovating the people” (xin min 新民)58 is still absent in “China’s weakness,” where the new view of the constitutive role of the people is inserted into and anchored in a discourse that reaches further back into the nineteenth century.

A perceptive reader could immediately link the passage just quoted to a highly critical debate on governance that dated to the early nine-teenth century and was continuously reproduced in the statecraft col-lections of the last decades of the century. There the constitutive role was reserved for the scholarly elite, as the first paragraph of an “Essay on governance” by the Hanlin scholar Sun Dingchen 孫鼎臣 (1819-1859) shows. Sun began his essay with a metaphorical phrase stating the importance of grain and of its adequate supply for the maintenance of human life. After pondering over the merits and demerits of past dynasties, he turned to the question of what was essential for the main-tenance of the state. Remarking that those in charge of government were all grieving about the understaffed bureaucracy, the budgetary deficit and the low quality of military supplies, he retorted that none of this was worth worrying about, but that the only thing that should really make one anxious was that shiqi 士氣—the empowering spirit of the scholarly elite—was not aroused (bu zhen 不振). The reason he gave was this:

The empowering spirit of the scholars (shiqi) is the life-giving force of the state (yuanqi). This force is such that one has to nourish it decades, even a hundred years in advance in order to have it perfected decades, or even only a hundred years later. This is different from the civil service, the state budget and the

57 In his “Lun youxue” 論幼學 (On elementary education), Shiwubao 19 (1897), 1249.

58 Legitimated through a quotation from the Shangshu.

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military supplies, which one can immediately adjust with success, if one only takes up the task.59

士氣者，國家之元氣也。是氣也，養之於數十百年之前而成之於數十百年

之後，非若吏職財用軍實，舉而修之，可以旋至而立效者也。

This essay, third in a series of six, was written in the 1850’s and first published posthumously in a private collection in 1859. Thereafter it was reprinted in successive jingshiwen collections, first in 1882 (Rao Yucheng), then in 1888 (Ge Shijun, reprinted in 1891 and 1896), again in 1897 (Sheng Kang), and finally in 1901 (Shao Zhitang).60 It is therefore perfectly reasonable to assume that it was sufficiently well known for an educated reader to recognize it as the “source text” on which the journalist drew, and therefore to understand his underlying agenda.

“Shiqi” and “Minqi”

Before proceeding with the textual analysis it is necessary to come back to the question of terminology alluded to above, since it is of crucial importance to the overall argument. A survey of the occur-rences of the terms shiqi and minqi in the dynastic histories61 shows that in early imperial times both generally referred to military resolve

59 “Lun zhi pian san” 論治篇三, in Sun Dingchen, Bentang chulun 畚塘芻論, 2 juan, 1859, j. 1, 9a-11b, with prefaces by Hu Linyi and Zeng Guofan. I am grateful to Benjamin A. Elman for his comments on my translation of this text.

60 Rao Yucheng included three of the six essays in his collection, Ge Shijun two of them (with the important third essay appearing as the first), Sheng Kang four, and Shao Zhitang only one, the same “Third essay on governance” discussed here. For a German translation of the entire text see my Nur leere Reden, 210-218.

61 A search for the terms shiqi and minqi in the Twenty-five Histories full-text database (Taipei: Academia Sinica Computing Center, 1983-) yielded the following results:

shiqi minqi

Qingshigao 40 19

Mingshi 25 2

Yuanshi 3 1

Jinshi 9 -

Songshi 79 -

Xin Tangshu 16 -

Hanshu 3 4

All others 5 -

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and bravery; in late imperial times, by contrast, there is much more diversity of meaning, shiqi increasingly referring to the scholars’ cour-age in articulating critique (especially in the Ming), and minqi to the crucial role of the people in the economic and social consolidation of the state (especially in the Qing). The survey further shows the importance of the term shiqi during the Song and the relative insignifi-cance of minqi in official historiography during imperial times. Whereas the high currency of shiqi in the official history of the Song suggests a conscious effort to counter the increasing importance of trade and commerce and the neglect of military and, to a lesser extent, schol-arly values, the increasing importance of minqi in the draft history of the Qing—as the force needed to trigger the production of material wealth—seems to be an indication of the growing economic crisis of the Manchu state.62 In general shiqi is something to be “aroused” (zhen 振) in order to ensure the moral and therefore the political order of the state, whereas minqi needs to be “revived” (su 蘇 or 甦)—usually after a major disaster, a famine or a war—in order to reestablish its economic foundation, and therefore social order: minqi is something one “can use” (ke yong 可用).

A preliminary look at the usage of shiqi and minqi in the jingshiwen compilations yields a more blurred picture.63 The increasing occur-rence of both terms approaching the year 1898 indicates a growing sense of crisis. But whereas minqi appears more often than shiqi in the pre-1898 collections (with only one exception), the relative increase

62 Note also that about one half of the occurrences of shiqi in the Qingshigao are in a military context—much more than in the Mingshi.

63 The following statements are based on a search in the Qingdai jingshi wen-bian (including seven compilations) provided by the Academia Sinica Comput-ing Center in its Hanji dianzi wenxian 漢籍電子文獻 (Scripta Serica), 11.5.2003, http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~tdbproj/handy1/. Nothing more than an indication of a gen-eral trend is intended here. A separate study is definitely needed to interpret these data adequately.

shiqi minqi

He Changling, 1827 17 23

Rao Yucheng, 1882 14 14

Ge Shijun, 1888 27 33

Sheng Kang, 1897 53 61

Chen Zhongyi, 1898 21 9

He Liangdong, 1902 15 11

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http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~tdbproj/handy1/

http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~tdbproj/handy1/


in importance of shiqi after 1898 suggests that for many it still was the scholarly elite that was held ultimately responsible for the country’s fortunes. In Wei Yuan’s collection the term minqi often refers to some kind of “popular energy” needed to fill the state coffers (or staff the local militias). The people were the steam engine of China’s eighteenth-century economy. At the same time it appears as a force that needs to be kept quiet and confined in order to prevent it from becoming a menace to social order when popular discontent arises—a circum-stance occurring mostly in cases of life-threatening food scarcities. It was the responsibility of local officials not to “harm” (shang 傷 or hai 害) minqi—e.g. through excessive tax claims—in order to maintain productive forces, and to “appease” (jing 靖) and “consolidate” (gu 固) it in order to provide the human basis for building militias.

Minqi therefore had to be “abundant” (sheng 盛) to make the state strong, but at the same time it had to be “tranquil” (jing 靜) and “docile” (xun 馴). The correct balance was crucial. Too little of it was harmful for the economic basis of the polity, too much of it could be a threat to social order. Control always was supposed to rest in the hands of superiors: they were to “nourish” (yang 養) and “instruct” (jiao 教) the people, which seems to be the reason why we read about mincai 民財 (the wealth of the people), minli 民力 (the strength of the people) and minqi, but seldom about minzhi 民智 (the knowledge or intelligence of the people).64 “Good-tempered” (hele 和樂) minqi was to be achieved by, on the one hand, the equalization of corvée and taxation and the settlement of litigation, and, on the other, the establishment of public schools and the promotion of jiaohua 教化—transforming the people through superior guidance. The ultimate responsibility for the creation of the moral and economic environment necessary for a prospering polity ideally lay in the hands of the state.

In contrast, shiqi almost never implied a material force. It referred to the morale of the scholarly elite, which was to work both as a politi-cal and as a social corrective: it was conceived of as the force which enabled its members to speak up to the emperor and provide political advice and moral criticism, and at the same time as the force through which the moral power of kingly rule was disseminated throughout the world so as to ensure the social order of the polity. Like minqi it had to be nourished through the promotion of the moral philosophy

64 See e.g. Wang Jin 汪縉, “Sheng Xun xia” 繩荀下, Huangchao jingshi wenbian, j. 1.

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of the Song school, and here also there was a danger of having too little or too much of it. Shiqi could be “downcast” (ju 沮), or “volatile and unreliable” (fu 浮), and thus not “fully extended” (shen 伸). But the responsibility to cultivate their qi lay with the scholars themselves. The moving force to arouse it had to come from within their own ranks—they had to “encourage their own [qi]” (zili 自勵). Minqi and shiqi were in a way complementary in building the material and spiri-tual foundation of the state, in providing it with its life-giving force, or constitutive power (yuanqi).

Shiqi drained

The increasing invocation of shiqi during the nineteenth century was a sign of crisis. Writing in the 1850s, Sun Dingchen still believed that shiqi—in his reading the scholarly spirit of fearless critique—could be reinvigorated. His actually was one of the later voices calling for a revival of scholarly engagement in the affairs of government. Sun could build on a reformist agenda of institutional reform within the existing system, one that had been voiced with increasing frequency since the early nineteenth century.65 The preface to the Huangchao jingshi wenbian is witness to this current, the origins of which have been probed by Benjamin Elman. Thus, a series of essays included in the same work and called “The successive changes of the Three Dynasties” (“San dai yinge lun” 三代因革論), written between 1800 and 1809 by Yun Jing 惲敬 (1757-1817), a famous New Text scholar from Changzhou,66 is evidence for the early foundations of modern reformist thought. According to Elman’s analysis, in these essays the Three Dynasties were treated not as hallowed icons, but as a model for a Confucian statecraft that would be able to change according to the needs of the time. Whereas in the earlier essays Yun Jing focused on the economic and social crisis of his time, later he showed a perception of the political and even cultural dimensions of that crisis.67

More evidence for this new perception and for a new literati effort to engage in politics can be found in an essay of 1821 by Guan Tong 管

65 Cf. the delineation of a literati “constitutional agenda” beginning with Wei Yuan in Kuhn, “Ideas behind China’s Modern State.”

66 Yun Jing had a juren degree and his highest appointment was that of a county magistrate.

67 See Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, 306-317.

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同 (1780-1831), urging the rectification of social customs.68 Guan Tong linked the rise of popular rebelliousness to the dampening influence of the Qing system on the temper of the scholarly elite.69 According to him the only measure that would remedy the shallowness and timid-ity of censorial criticism under the Qing government, which he held responsible for the political weakness of the dynasty, was opening the “avenues of remonstrance” (jianzheng zhi lu 諫爭之路) to a wider range of people.70 Early in 1850 Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811-1872) articulated the same demand for immediate access to the throne by non-bureaucratic networks in a memorial directly addressed to the Xianfeng emperor.71

It was this atmosphere increasingly critical of the Qing government and of the accommodation of the Han-Chinese men of letters that could eventually produce an essay like Sun Dingchen’s.72 In contrast to earlier calls upon the ethos of the outstanding “scholar of high moral ambition” to dare to engage in qingyi criticism, leading in turn to calls to the government for greater openness of the avenues of opinion, Sun, in a way unheard of before, straightforwardly blamed Qing rule for having systematically suppressed and drained the critical spirit of the scholarly elite, with the result that at present the country was facing a life-threatening crisis.

Sun portrays the Qing policy towards Han-Chinese literati as a strategy lenient but carefully considered, and in the end cruel and repressive, which followed from the lessons learned from the late Ming experience. Then, factional strife caused by the men of letters’ excessively heroic and self-righteously moralistic criticism of the court had allegedly poisoned the political atmosphere and finally led to the demise of the dynasty. In fact, according to Sun, it was because of the rulers’ incompetence and indecisiveness that no benefit could be drawn from the critical views offered. Was it not disastrous to

68 Guan Tong also was a juren, but he did not receive any official appointment.69 See Polachek, The Inner Opium War, 232-235.70 “Ni yan fengsu shu” 擬言風俗書, Huangchao jingshi wenbian, j. 7. 71 “Ying zhao chen yan shu” 應詔陳言疏, in Zeng Guofan quanji: Zouyi 曾國藩全集

奏議, Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1987, vol.1, 6. Cf. Polachek, The Inner Opium War, loc. cit. Other early examples treated by Benjamin Elman of scholars raising their voices against the Qing government are Fang Dongshu 方東樹 (1772-1851) and Yao Ying 姚瑩 (1785-1853).

72 It is interesting in this context to note that Sun was a member of the Gu Yanwu Shrine Association. See Polachek, The Inner Opium War, 350 note 31, and note 18 above.

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say that the upright critique of the Donglin partisans had led to the demise of the Ming — that “censure had brought chaos” (yi yan zhi luan 以言致亂)! Lamenting such rash judgments, Sun compares the character of scholarly critique during the Ming and the Qing. In his narrative, a spirit of moral integrity had prevailed during the Ming dynasty, which had made Ming scholars outspoken and fearless even when they faced degrading punishment and risked losing their lives. The heroic spirit that had penetrated society as a consequence made the state strong “from the roots.” In contrast, during the Qing social customs had been in decline and even the scholarly elite had long ceased to cherish the value of moral integrity. In other words, the “life-giving force of All-under-Heaven” (tianxia zhi qi 天下之氣) had been extinguished, and this was due to the Qing rulers’ conscious shunning of straightforward talk.

Sun then presents the familiar story of how the Qing entrapped “All-under-Heaven” with “beautiful talk and crooked methods.” As they were afraid that not all of the brave men loyal to the Ming had been tied down, they adopted an astute strategy to forestall any opposition. Through a policy of leniency and tolerance they made scholarly qi yield, and by being obliging and willing to compromise they won over the literati’s hearts: only afterwards did they gradually show their real face, making sure that there was no misconception about the true intention of their moves. This was the reason why the scholars never had to endure the humiliation of manifest disgrace or heavy punishment: they themselves restrained their qi and just kept silent, so that there was not even the need for the dynasty to display the awesome and merciless authority that had provoked shiqi during the Ming. Through the adoption of such a method the Qing effec-tively “ruined” (ju 沮) the critical spirit of the scholars—and thus, by definition, the life-giving force of “All-under-Heaven.” As a result the scholars gradually adopted habits of opportunism and self-censure, they were maintained in a condition of political blindness without showing even the slightest trace of being suppressed—and thus, the state was deprived of its life-giving force. Sun concludes that from the point of view of those who hated the Chinese scholars and used such devious expedients to bend them this was much wiser than the application of humiliating punishment, although in reality it was much more cruel—only, people did not realize this (故惡天下之士而用機權以

折之者賢於戮辱，其實酷於戮辱而人不知也).

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At the end of his essay Sun uses the water metaphor to show the logic of decline inherent in the political strategy of the Qing:

Now it is true that qi is like water. If it is accumulated and then sparsely released, it will be contained, and one can draw from the deep and clear water without it being exhausted. If one piles up earth and stones to dam it, it will accu-mulate anger, it will trickle through the weak places [in the dyke], breach it, and become a disaster. Having suffered a dyke break, one knows that dyking the water is of no advantage and that it only increases the harm; if one then changes the technique and chooses to kill [the force of] the water instead, the floods will be subdued but at the same time the water will be drained away. What would be the difference from preventing an illness by cutting short the supply of grain?73

夫氣猶水也。瀦而節宣之則渟，泓瀟淪挹之而不盡。積土石障之則鬱怒，

薄射潰決而為患。患其潰決，知障之無益而益害也。易其術而殺之，水患

平而亦旋竭矣。是何異於防疾而絕榖哉！

In Sun’s view, scholarly qi had been drained by Qing rule to the point of being utterly exhausted. The reason why this was fatal to the state was simple:

The grain is what man depends on as his life-giving force. The scholars are what the state depends on as its life-giving force. We are in great danger of being cut short of grain, therefore I am writing about the consequences in order to dissolve the delusion [created by] those opinion-makers.74

榖者，人所資以爲元氣者也。士者，國所資以爲元氣者也。吾為絕榖者危，是以著

其利害，釋論者之惑焉。

The “opinion-makers” or “opinionated people” (lunzhe 論者) in ques-tion are those who blame the Donglin partisans’ outspoken critique for the demise of the Ming and, in the process, block a policy of fostering the “spirit of the scholarly elite.” Sun does not give any indication of what should be done to remedy this situation, however. His essay is directed to his peers, alerting them to the seriousness of the situation and urging them to participate more in political affairs.

At the same time, the critique of Qing rule articulated here seems to have reached a high point. We are very far from what one finds in “China’s weakness,” the article published in the Shenbao during the reform period of 1898 to which we are presently returning. There, the journalist is absolutely positive towards the dynasty and assumes

73 Sun Dingchen, “Lun zhi pian san.” I wish to thank Mark Elvin and Pierre-Étienne Will for their illuminating comments on my translation of this and other passages.

74 Ibid.

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the role of the loyal advisor who helps to reinvigorate the state. In his conclusion he formulates a clear—though not staggeringly new—demand based on the premise established at the beginning of his article (that the fortunes of the state depend on the intelligence of its people): he says that the establishment of modern schools all over the country is the crucial measure to take if one wants to rescue the country ( ji guomai 濟國脈) and hold the empire together (wei tianxia 維天下). And, taking up key phrases from Sun Dingchen’s conclusion, he ends his article saying:

If one confines [the people] by keeping them away from education, how does this differ from protecting them against illness by cutting short their supply of grain! 若防其智而錮其民，與防其病而絕其榖何以異哉！

And again:

The grain is what man depends on as his life-giving force. The people are what the state depends on as its life-giving force. We are in great danger of being cut short of grain, therefore I am writing about the consequences in order to dissolve the delusion [created by] those opinion-makers.榖者，人所資為元氣者也，民者，國所資為元氣者也。我為絕榖者危，是以著其利

害，以釋論者之惑焉。

In sum, the Shenbao journalist felt comfortable using Sun’s article to frame his own. His opening passage as well as the last sentences are almost verbatim quotations from Sun’s essay. Once again, the crucial point is that “the scholars” have been replaced by “the people.” While the century was about to end, the empowering spirit of the scholarly elite on which the continued existence of the state depended in Sun Dingchen’s political imagery had proven to be an unreliable force. In “China’s weakness” the hope for a bright future rests on the empow-ering spirit emanating from the entire populace. It is the destitute condition of the ignorant people which is responsible for China’s plight, and the remedy can only come from the people themselves. But in order to enable them to take up this task, a broadly conceived educational program has to be launched—and it has to be launched by the state.

The turn to the people was a rather recent development. Reform-ist writers of the late 1890s still clung to the idea that the country’s fortunes should lie in the hands of their own class, as even the article by Kang Tongwei referred to above shows, albeit in an ironic way. She begins with a call to the scholarly ethos: “How important the scholars are for the state! Strength and weakness depend on them, rise

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and fall depend on them, civilization (jiaohua 教化) depends on them, social customs (fengsu 風俗) depend on them.”75 With the continued crisis of the Chinese state, the inability of the examination elite to live up to these hopes and effectively face and handle political reali-ties had become ever more obvious. In such a situation, “the people” had become a kind of solution to the dilemma of repeated failures to reinstitute the scholarly elite in its genuine role. The people were certainly not to be freed from the burden of serving as the country’s steam engine: they would still have to provide the material basis of the polity. But in addition they were now burdened with the task of ensuring the survival of the body politic as such. This implied not only that the moral force hitherto emanating from the classically trained scholars was at present meant to come from the populace at large, but also—and more importantly—that the new task of bringing about the kind of progress that would help China to survive in the face of Western competition had to be passed on to the people.

The educational ideal of the Three Dynasties

In its first year of publication the Shenbao had run an article calling for the establishment of public schools in every town and village. In itself the demand for public schools was certainly nothing spectacu-larly new. The most interesting feature of the article is that, besides the educational system of the Three Dynasties (sandai 三代), which was duly referred to as the ideal to reach, at the end of the article the schools established by Western missionaries were also explicitly men-tioned as models to emulate.76 The ultimate aim was still to cultivate shiqi: publicly sponsored education would create the basis from which the state could draw the “talents” of which it was in such desperate need. The pool of possible candidates would be enlarged by easier

75 See “Lun Zhongguo zhi shuai youyu shiqi bu zhen” 論中國之衰由于士氣不振, first published in the Zhixinbao (Macao) 32 (1897) and reprinted in Mai Zhonghua’s new statecraft collection. For another ironic representation of the scholarly ideal, see Liang Qichao’s political novel Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記 (An account of the future of the new China), published in Xin xiaoshuo 1 (1902).

76 “Ni ge chengxiang yi tianshe yishu lun” 擬各城鄉宜添設義塾論, Shenbao TZ11.10.22 (1872). This article obviously followed in the steps of a memorial by governor Ding Richang asking for the establishment of public schools that should serve the needs of promising children from needy families. Cf. “Yishu laishu” 義塾來書, Shenbao TZ12.02.14 (1873), p. 2, a letter to the editor whose author promises to supply the regulations of existing public schools for emulation. See also “Yishu guitiao” 義塾規條, Shenbao TZ12.02.20 and TZ12.02.26, p. 2, then discontinued.

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access to educational institutions for gifted children from families of modest means.

But twenty-six years later, when “China’s weakness” was written, the outcome of the Sino-Japanese war and the impact of Social-Dar-winism had changed the intellectual atmosphere. Confidence in the possibility of reinvigorating the “old” system had eroded considerably. The reading of the 1898 Shenbao article that I offer below demonstrates how these changes made themselves felt in such a way that it was impossible to go back to the old ways of thinking about reform.

After his introductory statement on the significance of minqi, the journalist offers an historical account of the flourishing of popular education during the Three Dynasties and of its ensuing decay. Again, the Three Dynasties are depicted as an ideal type, endowed with a wisdom that has been lost since the rule of the First Emperor of Qin. This wisdom needs to be recovered now, since, according to this narrative, the result of its loss has been the decay of social mor-als and the spread of an all-pervading selfishness, leading to a loss of public-mindedness and of the people’s concern for the general well-being of the polity, and thus to the stifling of intercommunication and to averting innovation in every walk of life.

Following the account given in the Zhouli, the journalist tells his readers that thanks to the establishment of educational institutions at every level of society the ritual order of the state (bangfa 邦法) pen-etrated deep into the marrow of the polity. Emulating this method is considered crucial to the project of strengthening the state: “If we do not do it this way, the life-giving force of the people will not unfold and the state will have no basis on which it can be firmly established.” The result of the system described in the Zhouli was general prosperity. The ruler’s charisma—the “essence of dao and de” (daode zhi jing 道德之精)—reached down to the village lanes, so much so that every single person was receptive to education: “There was nobody who did not learn, nothing that was not taught.” The reality of the high level of culture thus achieved is underpinned by a series of anecdotes drawn from the Shijing, the Zuozhuan and the Zhuangzi, showing that persons of every class and any gender were enabled to act as competent advi-sors to the ruler: in high antiquity “the rustic rabbit catcher might be shield and wall to his prince, the bathing young women from the Han river might sing the praise [of King Wen].”77

77 These are quotations from two songs in the Shijing praising the virtuous rule of King Wen. Cf. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. IV: “The She King,” 13, 16.

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In the Spring and Autumn period this high level of culture was still preserved: “When Duke Wen of Jin consolidated his rule, the soldier’s [encouraging] songs could be heard. When Zichan was in charge of the government, the discussions in the village schools were not abolished. When the merchant from Zheng delivered tribute to the enemy, the distress of the country could be relieved [by his public-mindedness]. When the artisan from Qi was carving a wheel, [the ruler] could talk with him about the art of governance [and profit from the artisan’s experiences].”78 In brief, the correct method of education was the crucial point.

These prosperous times met their end with the violent rule of Qin Shihuang. The First Emperor is said to have adopted from the Laozi the doctrine of confining the people in ignorance79 in order to elevate his own authority. The consequence was the “shackling of the people’s intelligence” (guse minzhi 錮塞民智). The educational system of the Three Dynasties was destroyed and even its memory barely escaped extinction: only a tiny thread of knowledge about it has survived the two thousand years since the Han dynasty. This condition of general decline can be seen in the pervasive lack of public-mindedness:

[But today] the common situation is that every single person uses its profit for its own advantage, and every family uses its riches for its own advantage, they are apart from each other and not united, dispersed and not joining, immobilized to the point of being unable to move, stultified to the point of being unable to acquire knowledge.... 往往身私其利，家私其肥，離而不合，渙而不萃，靜而不能動，愚而不能智。

Such generalized selfishness (si 私), such monopolizing of resources as a consequence of educational decay show once again that what the author has in mind is a certain type of ethical conduct, the fostering of a community spirit, an education to public-mindedness—in short, qualities needed to build communal prosperity. The material, spiritual, political and economic consequences of proper education are closely intertwined, as the depiction of the consequences of selfishness reveals: scholars are only concerned about their own careers and neglect the “affairs of the world” (外事), in other words they “use their learning only for their private advantage” (shi si qi xue 士私其學); although hard-

78 The first three refer to historical anecdotes in the Zuozhuan giving evidence of how the virtuous conduct of common people could prove useful or even vital to the state. Cf. Yang Bojun, Chunqiu zuozhuan zhu, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, v. 1, 458, 495; v. 3, 1192. The fourth refers to an anecdote from the Zhuangzi, “Tiandao.”

79 Cf. Chen Guying, Laozi zhuyi ji pingjie, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988, 71.

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working, peasants hardly manage to nourish their families, let alone strive for new tools that would increase their productivity, in other words they “use their fields only for their private advantage” (nong si qi chou 農私其疇); artisans stick to their old techniques and rarely obtain new insights, they exhaust their energies but only manage to support their own living, in other words they “use their art only for their private advantage” (gong si qi yi 工私其藝); and finally the merchants, in accordance with the conventional image, are depicted as the ones who are the least likely to cherish the “formation of a cohesive group” (hequn 合群): they are content with every petty profit, and thus “use their trade only for their private advantage” (shang si qi ye 商私其業). Such monopolization of resources, says the author, is harmful to the people themselves, but even more so to the community, and more generally it has proven fatal to societal progress.

Again, there are passages in this account that would sound very familiar to a reader of the reform magazine Shiwubao. A closer look at the writings of Liang Qichao published there from 1896 onwards confirms that they were an important inspiration to “China’s weakness,” just as, the other way round, the Shenbao’s constant reporting and social analysis during the preceding decades had been an important factor in molding modern minds like Liang Qichao. We can find borrowings from a variety of Liang’s articles, most importantly “On schools” and “On China’s future power.”80 Liang’s critique of the old scholarly class was rather penetrating, and he obviously did not believe that China’s future could be entrusted to such people. In accordance with their own self-image as “the head of the four classes of the people” (士為四民之

首), absorbed through such basic educational texts as the Sacred Edict, he set them apart from the other social classes, but at the same time he denied that they had the ability to play a leading role in China’s progress in the modern world. Therefore he turned to the common people. The educational system he was promoting was clearly shaped after the model of the modern West, effectively mediated through Meiji Japan; but his ultimate precedent to establish a cultural ideal of

80 Cf. “Lun xuexiao yi” 論學校一, Shiwubao 5 (GX22.8.11), 271-276 and 6 (GX22. 8.21), 341-345; “Lun Zhongguo zhi jiang qiang” 論中國之將強, Shiwubao 31 (GX23.6.1), 2073-2080. Other borrowings are from “Lun Zhongguo zhi jiruo youyu fangbi” 論中國之積弱由於防弊 (On the weakness of China being due to [the energy put in] fight-ing corrupt practices), Shiwubao 9 (GX22.9.21), 551-556, and “Shuo qun zixu” 說群自序 (Author’s preface to ‘On [the formation of] groups’), Shiwubao 26 (GX23.4.11), 1729-1730. Page numbers refer to the Beijing reprint (Zhonghua shuju, 1991).

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education still was the system of the Three Dynasties. The historical references he uses in his article “On schools” to illustrate the workings of his model show clearly where the inspiration for “China’s weakness” originated. According to Liang, if in a country every single person could receive an education, then

the rustic rabbit catcher could be shield and wall to his prince, the women driving the war chariots could resist the anger of a king. The merchant of Zheng selling oxen could make a hostile army turn back, and the old artisan from Qi carving a wheel could talk about the way of governance. Listening to the songs of his soldiers, [Duke Wen of Jin] could consolidate his hegemony, and considering the opinions from the village schools [Zichan] could listen to [people’s opinions on] politics.81

兔罝之野人，可以備捍城，小戎之女子，可以敵王愾。販牛之鄭商，可以退敵師，

斲輪之齊工，可以語治道。聽輿人之誦，可以定霸，采鄉校之

議，可以聞政。

The result was an integrated polity, the whole people forming one body with the state. Prosperity prevailed throughout the country and “talents” could be found everywhere. It was the spirit of public-mind-edness that had led to the prosperity of the Three Dynasties. But it is clear in Liang’s article that his idea of education also included an approach much more pragmatic and technical than the dominance of the ideal of antiquity would suggest. Not surprisingly, the moving force behind his ideas was the encounter with the modern West, and the insight was that every single sector of society was in need of elites able to conduct the kind of scientific inquiry necessary to survive in the competition with the Western powers. Still—and rather similar to the educational ideal ascribed to the Three Dynasties—it was the overall quality of “human resources,” perceived in a broader sense than before, that was evoked. Liang introduced a new concept of “elite” (shi 士) that did not refer to one distinct class of people, but instead to an elite within every single class of the people, whether the peasants, artisans, merchants, soldiers, or scholars.

The need for “practical,” i.e. scientific, learning is made very clear by Liang Qichao through the statistical evidence that he provides to quantify China’s national failure. He states that, due to the lack of an elite among China’s peasants (nong er bu shi 農而不士), the value of her agricultural output has only reached 0.3 billion taels, as compared to America’s 3.1 billion, Russia’s 2.2 billion or France’s 1.8 billion.

81 “Lun xuexiao,” Shiwubao 5, 272. See notes 77 and 78 above for the anecdotal references.

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Likewise, the lack of an elite among the artisans (gong er bu shi 工而不

士) means that patents are a thing unheard of in China, whereas there are 20,210 registered patents of newly invented technologies in America, 7,300 in France, and 6,900 in England. The lack of an elite among the merchants (shang er bu shi 商而不士) has resulted in China’s modest volume of foreign trade (0.17 billion taels, as compared to England’s 2.74 billion, Germany’s 1.296 billion, and France’s 1.176 billion). And finally, the lack of a military elite (bing er bu shi 兵而不士) is the reason why the modern equipment that was available could not be brought to effective use during the war against Japan. Liang’s conclusion is that there exists an elite in name only, and that this is a state of affairs which is disastrous for the country.

Liang’s embarrassing account culminates in a critique of the schol-arly class, which was supposed to be the national elite but actually was nothing of the sort (shi er bu shi 士而不士): “They only indulge in formalized examination assignments, textual criticism and literary rhetoric. Not one of them have genuine insights into historical events, not one of them has heard anything about the current international situation. And these people are to hold the empire together, they are provided with official posts, they are to implement the new policies and to resist foreign humiliations: how could that possibly work?”82 The failure of the scholarly class—the “old elite”—to meet the demands of the time was thus ruthlessly revealed.

Western contempt

With the growing menace of Western encroachments, the reproaches aimed at an incompetent bureaucracy only became more violent, at least in the rhetoric. In “On China’s future power,” Liang Qichao urges the promotion of “practical studies” to unfold what he perceives as the genuine superiority of the Chinese “race” (zhong 種) and of its “teachings” ( jiao 教).83 His point of departure is the treatment China has had to endure at the hands of the imperialist powers, and his fear is that China will end up on the same level as India and the countries of the African continent. For him the superiority of the Chinese race is proven by the success of Chinese students at Western universities, and he comes up with a pseudo-biological explanation according to which the cerebral evolution of the yellow race is similar to that of

82 “Lun xuexiao,” Shiwubao 5, 273.83 “Lun Zhongguo zhi jiang qiang,” Shiwubao 31.

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the white race, both being superior to the black, red and brown races. Japan is a proof of this.84 Being convinced of the superiority of the yellow race, it is all the more painful to see China’s plight facing the imperialist powers. Liang analyzes the strategy that the latter have applied to legitimize their colonial endeavors. An important feature of imperialist strategy, he explains, is the way of portraying a country in parliamentary speeches and in the press so as to create the image of a government in decay and of a country plagued by official corruption and moral decadence. This is then used to justify imperialist aggres-sion as a mission civilisatrice, so that even peaceful characters among the people of the respective countries will be convinced that such a mis-sion is necessary for the benefit of the country in question. This had been the fate of India and Turkey (the Ottoman Empire), and what Liang could observe of Western attitudes towards China through his readings of Western newspapers made him fear that China would be the next victim.

For his part the Shenbao journalist, after having deplored the loss of the spirit of the Zhou dynasty, continues his article with Western statements on the character of the Chinese, doing no more than repro-ducing Liang Qichao’s most effective rhetoric:

I have read the Western papers in recent years, and [what I have found is] that they talk straightforwardly about the unrestrained savagery of the Chinese race and the stupidity and cunning of the Chinese people. There are even those who claim that the Chinese people is not only already dead, it is stinking and rotten as well. Alas! What kind of talk is this that the men of resolve of our China have to bear hearing!85

余讀近年西報，乃昌言華種之野狂，華民之愚詐，甚至論華民不徒已死並且臭爛

者。憶嘻，此何等語而可令我華有志之士聞之乎！

China is a prey awaiting the insatiable avarice of the imperialists. Considering China as a barbarian country, the Westerners do not feel obliged to follow the rules of international law in their encounter with her. Liang Qichao, again, is also able to report that a year ago British and German ministers to Africa have been transferred to China: in his view, this means that the methods of colonial rule used in African

84 These views may well have been influenced by Kang Youwei, who has a chap-ter on “Abolishing racial boundaries and amalgamating the races” in the Datongshu. Although the Datongshu was published much later, Liang Qichao might well have read an early manuscript version. Cf. Laurence G. Thompson, trsl., Ta T’ung Shu. The One-World-Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei, London: Allen and Unwin, 1958, 140-148.

85 “Lun Zhongguo zhi ruo youyu minzhi bu kai,” borrowing phrases from Liang Qichao’s “Lun Zhongguo zhi jiang qiang,” Shiwubao 31, 2074.

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countries are going to be applied to China. China’s sovereignty is threatened to the utmost, and he ends his article using an extremely emotional rhetoric:

They treat us with disrespect, hold us in contempt, regard us as uncivilized barbarians, as slaves, as savage beasts, and think of us as being as good as dead: such is the extreme to which their cruelty has reached!86

人之輕我，賤我，野蠻我，奴隸我，禽獸我，尸居我，其殘酷至於如此其極也！

Apart from these responses to Western colonialist discourse, there are other unfamiliar elements in “China’s weakness.” Central politi-cal concepts have changed, in a way difficult to reconcile with the framework of a statecraft discourse designed to maintain the old world order. We are now speaking of races, of the people, of social cohesion. We are no longer talking about China in terms of the Qing state or of a culturally defined realm; somehow we cannot help but talk of a country and of the Chinese nation. Chinese “substance,” in terms of strictly hierarchical human relationships translating into a vertically integrated and hierarchically organized political structure, has proven to be incompatible with a modern world of nations operating on a basis of equal though competitive relations.

The Modern World of Progress

Reading further reveals that in fact “China’s weakness” echoes a discussion that had been carried on in the periodical press since 1895. In an article entitled “On the origins of power” and serialized in the Tianjin daily Zhibao 直報 (Chihli Gazette) early in 1895,87 Yan Fu first introduced the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) to a broader Chinese public.88 It must have seemed outrageous to many to insinuate that the theories of some “Xipengse” 錫彭塞 or “Daerwen” 達爾文 should have any

86 “Lun Zhongguo zhi jiang qiang,” Shiwubao 31.87 “Yuan qiang” 原強, in Yan Fu ji 嚴復集, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986, v. 1,

5-15. The text was first published in five installments in the Zhibao, Guangxu 21.2.8 to 13 (4.-9.3.1895).

88 We should note that there is evidence of knowledge about Darwin and Spen-cer in China already around 1890. A school composition from the Gezhi shuyuan 格致書院—the Shanghai Polytechnic Institute—includes short biographical sketches of them. This composition is included in Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之, Xixue dong jian yu wan-Qing shehui 西學東漸與晚清社會, Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1994, 365. But it was only with Yan Fu’s writings and their broad reception through the periodical press that the ideas of Darwin and Spencer became influential among the broader public.

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validity regarding the ideological foundations of the Chinese state. In its very form the title chosen by Yan Fu did suggest such a claim: it was strongly—and ironically—reminiscent of the classical prose of the guwen school, which prided itself on being the vessel to preserve the moral and ideological foundations of the true power of the state, its “cultural essence.” The message itself was clear enough: the weak were bound to be the meat consumed by the strong, the ignorant were bound to be the servants of the intelligent.89 The introduction of the paradigm of the “struggle for existence” in a modern world of progress, combined with racial theories and with the perception of Western contempt, made up a rather explosive mixture in terms of its appeal to China’s national pride. It created a strong sense of urgency among the educated public and exerted enormous pressure on policy-makers.

As we saw, the author of “China’s weakness” identifies two factors opposing “Chinese Progress” (to borrow the English title of the reform magazine Shiwubao), and thus responsible for China’s weakness: the lack of “motion” (dong 動), and the lack of “knowledge” (zhi 智). They are explained by an all-pervading selfishness (si 私) and a lack of social cohesiveness (he 合), leading to social and political disintegration and thus to an inability to cope with the Western challenge. In the process the age-old dichotomy of gong 公 and si 私 acquires a new dimension of meaning: what is needed is not just a public-mindedness based on an ethically cultivated self more or less independent from the other selves, it is a public-mindedness leading to social integration, energiz-ing people to join together and move—if not yet to join together and form an organized political movement.90

The wording chosen by the journalist again shows his indebtedness to Liang Qichao’s rhetoric. In his introduction to a planned series of essays entitled “On grouping,” Liang showed the importance of social cohesiveness by contrasting it with what he called “the art of solitariness” (dushu 獨術):

People are all aware of their own affairs and are not aware of the affairs of All-under-Heaven. The ruler uses his treasuries for his own advantage, officials use their titles for their own advantage, peasants use their fields for their own

89 “Yuan qiang,” in Yan Fu ji, v. 1, 5.90 See the tracing of the concept of “movement” in Rudolf G. Wagner, “The

Canonization of May Fourth,” in Milena Doleìelova-Velingerová and Old Zrich Král, eds., The Appropriation of Cultural Capital. China’s May Fourth Project, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001, 66-120.

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advantage, artisans use their handicraft for their own advantage, merchants use their money for their own advantage; every single person uses its profit for its own advantage, and every family uses its riches for its own advantage... teach-ers use their teachings for their own advantage, and scholars use their learning for their own advantage... 人人皆知有己，不知有天下。君私其府．官私其爵，農私其疇，工私其業，商私其價

，身私其利，家私其肥，...，師私其教，士私其學，...

Opposed to this, in the ideal revealed by the model of the Three Dynasties the multitude is united in harmony under the rule of a wise king:

Those good at governing the country know that the ruler’s [relationship] to the people should be the same as if he were one man out of the multitude... What he should do is to make the multitude unite so that it won’t fall apart, to make it join together so that it won’t disperse. This is what is meant by the “art of grouping.”91

善治國者知君之與民，同為一群之中之一人，... 所當行之事使其群合而不離，萃而

不渙，夫是之謂群術。

While such ideas are strongly reminiscent of the evolutionary and Social Darwinist theories that only recently had caused a stir in Western society,92 there is another current taken up by Liang Qichao here, and this again comes from the statecraft literature. It is already very strong in the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, where the sense of the danger caused by those who use their fortune and competence for their own private ends only is pervasive. One author warned against projects to go back over the Yongzheng emperor’s fiscal reforms and allow each magistrate to appropriate the meltage fee of his district or county (zhouxian si qi haoxian 州縣私其耗羨), which among other problems would make it impossible to balance out the differences of revenue between wealthy and poor areas.93 According to another, river control

91 “Shuo qun zixu” 說群自序, Shiwubao 26, 1729-30. Only the first of the planned essays appeared in the Zhixinbao (The Reformer China) (No.18, 17.5.1897), the series being then discontinued. Qunshu or qunxue 群學—“the art of grouping”—was the first Chinese rendering for the term “sociology.”

92 Statements like the following show the close relationship between the two dis-courses: “Evolution, then, under its primary aspect, is a change from a less coherent form to a more coherent form, consequent on the dissipation of motion and integration of matter. This is the universal progress through which sensible existences, individually and as a whole, pass during the ascending halves of their histories...” (“The law of evolution,” in Herbert Spencer, First Principles, London: Williams & Norgate, 1904, 6th ed., 262); “Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, cited in James R. Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983, 111).

93 Zhao Qingli 趙青藜, “Haoxian qing reng gui gong shu” 耗羨請仍歸公疏 (Memo-

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projects were impeded by the encroachment of public lands along the river by the local wealthy who appropriated their profits (hao si qi li 豪私其利), while local officials for their part appropriated the taxes they generated (guan si qi shui 官私其稅)—hence his demand that the land in question be converted to public property again.94 And there are more examples. In short, we have here another instance of an old topos of social-political critique being reformulated under changed historical circumstances and taking on a new sense of urgency.

With imperialist pressure being perceived as more brutal by the day towards the end of the nineteenth century—witness the oft-repeated picture of the cutting up of the China melon—the vision of China’s future within the new evolutionist scheme can only have been very disturbing to the educated Chinese mind. “China’s weakness” showed how the concept of evolution evoked a notion of positive historical development that was the exact opposite of the perceived image of a backwards-looking China entrapped in increasing social disintegra-tion, divisive selfishness and motionless stagnation. This imagery had become an integral and unquestioned part of the discourse on reform. To see China as being in the descending half of her history was only a logical consequence, and it was indeed corroborated by the familiar topos of historical decline beginning with the rule of Qin Shihuang. Both the paradigm of historical decay since the hallowed days of the Three Dynasties, figuring so prominently in every variant of reform rhetoric, and the new sociopolitical theories from the West seemed to fit well with the contemporary perception of political realities. Here is how Liang Qichao perceived the Chinese “civilization trap”:

From the Qin to the Ming dynasty two thousand years have passed. Legal restrictions have become denser and denser, [yet] official exhortations have become more and more debilitated. The ruler’s authority has become more and more exalted, [yet] national prestige has been increasingly reduced. From the officials at the top to the multitudes below, all were wandering within the web of wen (i.e., the ritual order of the Chinese world), they were accustomed to it and contented in it, tamed by it and domesticated by it. They were quiet to the point of being unable to move, stultified to the point of being unable to acquire knowledge.95

rial asking to continue returning the meltage fees to the public purse), dated 1746, Huangchao jingshi wenbian, j. 27.

94 Zhu Zeyun 朱澤澐, “Zhi he ce xia” 治河策下 (Strategies for river control, 2nd part), Huangchao jingshi wenbian, j. 97. Here again I am indebted to Pierre-Étienne Will for greatly enhancing my understanding of these writings.

95 “Lun Zhongguo jiruo youyu fangbi,” Shiwubao 9, 551.

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自秦迄明垂二千年，法禁則日密，政教則日夷，君權則日尊，國威則日損。上自庶

官，下自億姓，游於文網之中，習焉安焉，馴焉擾焉，靜而不能動，愚而不能智。

What had been a critique of Qing rule in Sun Dingchen’s writing had become an essential critique of Chinese culture as such.

Realpolitik

The question was, what is to be done? It is in the answer to this question that the Shenbao journalist diverged from the more radical positions advocated by the writers whose analysis he followed and whose rhetoric he used.

In the summer of 1895 a long article on the question of how to unfold the intelligence of the people appeared in the Shenbao as a response to Yan Fu’s above-mentioned Zhibao article featuring Darwin and Spencer.96 This response suggests that Yan Fu’s disturbing essay had been widely read immediately after its publication early that same year, and its discussion in the Shenbao familiarized even more read-ers with its content. The generally positive reaction is visible in the introduction: the Darwinian doctrines of “struggle for existence” (zheng zicun 爭自存) and “survival of the fittest” (yi yizhong 遺宜種), as well as Spencer’s “learning of groups” (qunxue 群學, i.e. sociology), are briefly introduced, and Yan Fu’s analysis of the conditions that led to China’s weakness is approved. The journalist even praises Yan—without ever mentioning his name—for articulating what others were not able or did not dare to say.97

But, whereas Yan Fu’s message was unambiguous in so far as he introduced the people as the new agent of progress and proposed radi-cal steps to promote its inauguration as such, the Shenbao repeated the same old refrain of establishing schools to educate the people. True, the intelligence, the energy and the morality of the people (respectively minzhi 民智, minli 民力 and minde 民德) had to be developed; building a democracy ( jian minzhu 建民主), opening a parliament (kai yiyuan 開議

院), associating in public corporations (he gongsi 合公司), and holding general elections (yong gongju 用公舉), all these Western institutions dis-

96 “Lun kai min zhi zhi” 論開民之智 (On the unfolding of the intelligence of the people), serialized in six installments in Shenbao 27.7., 3.8., 14.8., 24.8., 31.8., 7.9.1895. Yan Fu’s name is not mentioned in this article.

97 “Lun kai min zhi zhi,” Shenbao 27.7.1895.

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cussed by Yan Fu should be carefully planned; but he had remained silent on the central issue, to wit, how to educate an ignorant, weak and decadent people rapidly.98 So, after an extremely detailed descrip-tion of the decadent condition of each of the four classes of people the Shenbao journalist proposed three methods to promote education and improve the general quality of the people. In the field of elementary education the most important innovation would be the compilation of intelligible, concise and up-to-date textbooks, written in an easy style and supported by illustrations. The journalist was particularly concerned about language reform to facilitate elementary education, where he considered basic mathematics and geography to be the most important subjects. In the field of natural sciences (gezhi 格致), “learning about the body,” i.e. physiology and anatomy, was considered most important, as it was needed to make the Chinese physically fit for an encounter with the healthy and strong West. Public associations or learned societies should be established to promote and popularize new knowledge and ideas through scholarly discussion, public lectures, and publications.99 But in the view of the Shenbao, the establishment of new political institutions proposed by Yan Fu was utterly premature.

This was also the premise from which the Shenbao journalist drew his conclusions three years later, in 1898, when he saw the large-scale establishment of schools, following the Japanese example, as the only remedy against China’s humiliation. Specific schools for every trade and profession should be established to broaden the horizon of the people, help them to overcome their selfishness, and develop their talents for the country’s benefit. Only then could the reputation of the Chinese people be restored and the country’s sovereignty secured in the future. Of course, a considerable financial outlay would be necessary to achieve this. The Shenbao discussion of a financial scheme to establish modern schools is largely based on the chapter on schools in the famous essay Quanxue pian 勸學篇 (“Encouragement of Learning”) by Zhang Zhidong. Since this text was distributed through official channels to the members of the imperial bureaucracy, it is not surprising that the Shenbao should quote from it and largely agree with its argument. But, whereas Zhang Zhidong suggested tapping the financial and material resources of academies, charitable institutions, ancestral shrines, Bud-

98 Actually, Yan Fu took up these issues in a revised version of his essay, where he expounded in great detail the questions of public health, public education, and public morals (cf. “Yuan qiang xiuding gao” 原強修訂稿, in Yan Fu ji, v. 1, 15-32.

99 “Lun kai min zhi zhi—wu xu qian gao” (fifth sequel), Shenbao 7.9.1895.

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dhist and Daoist temples, and eventually of the gentry and officialdom to fund his scheme, the author of “China’s weakness” is much less specific and limits himself to mentioning rather vaguely a “method to raise additional taxes” (daizheng zhi fa 帶徵之法).

The most significant difference between the two proposals, however, is highlighted by a phrase of Zhang Zhidong stating that “the future of our country lies in the hands of the scholars alone” (國家之興亡亦存

乎士而已矣).100 For the journalist this premise obviously is no longer valid, even though he does not seem to have grasped the implications of the new paradigm of “the people” in its full dimension. Somehow he is still entangled in the state-oriented discourse on jingshi, and actu-ally inclined towards a yangwu-type realpolitik of the sort promoted by Zhang Zhidong, rather than the hot-headed proposals of the young reformers of 1898. Yet he clearly dismisses the old scholarly elite as a crucial force for strengthening China:

Now, when there is such urgency in the promotion of education in foreign coun-tries (viz. Japan) and while there were such numbers of educated commoners [in China] under the Three Dynasties, [our] scholarly elite remains dull-witted and arrogant, ignorant and self-satisfied. There is the project of building and nurturing modern schools, but they pretext an absence of resources and put no energy in the task of starting and running them. That the Westerners should treat us with disrespect, hold us in contempt, regard us as uncivilized barbar-ians, as slaves, as wild beasts, as being as good as dead, leaves them tranquil and they do not take offence! How could one not wonder about it! How could one not be grieved by it!101

夫以外域之興學，如此其急，三代之智民，如此其多，而士大夫猶固陋虛憍，茫昧

驕玩。培植學堂之舉，藉口於經費無著，不力興辦一任。西人之輕我，賤我，野蠻

我，奴隸我，禽獸我，尸居我，而安然不以爲怪，豈不異哉！豈不傷哉！

In brief, it is the scholar-official elite which has proven to be the greatest impediment to any reform worth the name; and after he has declared their inability to cope with the situation the journalist repeats one of Liang Qichao’s rhetorically most effective outcries. In other words, the West’s contemptuous attitude towards China and the Chinese is directly linked to the incompetence and helplessness of China’s elite class, the scholar-officials, and all the blame for this state of affairs is assigned to their ignorance. The defeat at the hands

100 “She xue di san” 設學第三 (Chapter Three: On the Establishment of Schools), in Zhang Zhidong, Quanxue pian.

101 “Lun Zhongguo zhi ruo youyu minzhi bu kai.”

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of Japan marked the point of no return. At present the old scholarly elite is to be stripped of its role as the decisive engine of reform; and although in the Shenbao article it is not actually replaced by “the people,” the voices demanding broader participation in the political process are getting stronger and stronger.

The structure of the argument

An analysis of the overall rhetorical composition of “China’s weak-ness” shows that the article is nicely structured in an ABCA pattern. “A” is the conceptual frame, “B” is the precedent of the Three Dynas-ties and the paradigm of ensuing historical decline, “C” is the policy discussion. Given the basically equal length of text devoted to them, parts B and C are apparently of similar importance to the author; both end with a passage on Western contempt for China and the Chinese. This structure is summarized in Table 4.

Table 4: Rhetorical Structure of “China’s weakness”

Contents Source Text

A. grain/people analogy Sun Dingchen characters 1-71

B. the educational model of the Three Dynastiesideal type: integrated society, public-mindednessensuing decline (since Qin Shihuang)present condition of stagnation and decay due to an all-pervading selfishnessconsequence: Western contempt

Liang Qichao characters 72-534

C. policy discussionproposal for modern schoolsproblem of fundingthe Japanese modelofficial opposition leading to Western contempt

Zhang ZhidongLiang Qichao

characters 535-991

A. summarypopular education/national powergrain/people analogy Sun Dingchen

characters 992-1129

As we can see, the adoption of Sun Dingchen’s conceptual frame-work anchors the article firmly in a Chinese statecraft discourse that proclaims the vital importance of the ethical foundations of national power by calling for the reinvigoration of scholarly qi. The paradigm of “Chinese learning as essence, Western learning for practical use,”

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which became exceedingly popular in Zhang Zhidong’s wording after 1898, is still strongly reminiscent of this kind of reformist thought.102 To a certain degree it is also reflected in the structure of the argument: the model of the Three Dynasties, deriving from a genuinely Chinese New Text political discourse, is necessary as a counterweight to the Western model of modern education mediated through Japan.

The journalist’s familiarity with Sun Dingchen’s analyses—and surely with others of the same kind—shows the extent to which statecraft discourse had helped to foster a new political consciousness on the part of people hitherto excluded from the political process. It was through the seemingly endless repetition of the same arguments over decades, of the same analyses and the same critiques, first in statecraft writ-ings, then continued and popularized in the periodical press, that the conviction took shape that something qualitatively new was bound to emerge. But even though icons of a new political imagination—such as the term min imbued with new meaning—had already appeared in the late 1890s, the need to anchor new ideas in the old frame of reference shows the limits of this kind of discourse operating entirely within the existing system. In the end, the journalist’s “people” were not so much different from Sun Dingchen’s scholars. They were not to act on their own behalf, their qualities only became meaningful in the service of the state. There was no public-minded activity outside this frame of reference. The elites were to be changed, but the politi-cal system was to remain the same. Still, replacing the scholars by the people endowed the problem with a rather new dimension.

4. Conclusion

After the German occupation of Jiaozhou Bay in the spring of 1898 the national crisis found a conspicuous expression in the founding of

102 As far as I am aware, the first modern Chinese author to put forward this idea was Feng Guifen 馮桂芬 (1809-1874) in his Jiaobinlu kangyi 校邠廬抗議, a text composed in the 1860s which came to prominence in the 1880s. In the chapter “Cai Xixue yi” 采西學議 (On the adoption of Western learning) he states: “If we take the Chinese moral rules and the teachings of the Chinese sages as the essential root and support it with the arts leading all the countries to wealth and power (i.e. the Western natural sciences), would this not be much better?” In the chapter “She xue di san” in Zhang Zhidong’s Quanxuepian, we read the same argument in a more concise form: “The old [Chinese] learning as essence, Western learning for practical use, we should not do one thing and forget the other” (舊學爲體，西學為用，不使偏廢).

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the Baoguohui 保國會 (Association for the Protection of the Coun-try) in Beijing. Whereas the Qiangxuehui 強學會 (Association for the Strengthening of Learning) created in 1895 in the wake of the defeat against Japan was designed to strengthen the Qing dynasty,103 the Baoguohui envisaged a Chinese nation-state. Its charter only called for the protection of the country (baoguo), of the Chinese race (baozhong 保種) and of the Confucian teachings (baojiao 保教),104 as a result of which it was later reproached by the authorities for not having included the protection of the Manchu dynasty.105 It was this new sense of “Chineseness,” itself calling for the opposed image of a Manchu rul-ing class, which was fostered by the newly integrated jingshi-plus-weixin discourse evolved from the self-strengthening yangwu discourse of the preceding decades. Essays such as Sun Dingchen’s piece on the failure of Manchu politics towards the Chinese literati were especially suit-able to reinforce this new sentiment. Paradoxically, by the end of the century the anti-Qing attitude which seems to have been commonplace among Han-Chinese scholars during the 1850s had been reduced to a rather low importance on the agenda of reform-oriented members of the scholarly elite. In other words, by turning to the people the Manchu government might have kept itself out of trouble: after the scholars had failed it was up to the state to make sure that a new elite was enabled to replace them. But with its inability to accommodate those pushing for reforms within the system the dynasty again antagonized the most astute thinkers of the time and thus fostered an increasingly fierce anti-Qing movement.

The disaster of the failed reforms in 1898 revealed the tensions inherent in a press that had been pushing more or less strongly for a sort of political change—especially for a broader participation in policy-making processes—that could only end up undercutting the legitimacy

103 See “Qiangxuehui xu” 強學會序, in Zhang Jinglu, ed., Zhongguo jindai chuban shiliao chubian 中國近代出版史料初編, Shanghai: Qunlian chubanshe, 1954, 34-36.

104 “Baoguohui zhangcheng” 保國會章程 (Statutes of the Baoguohui), in Tang Zhijun, Wuxu shiqi xuehui he baokan, 1993, 748-751.

105 This reproach was articulated in the edict accusing Kang Youwei of high treason and of being the leader of a plot against the Empress Dowager, issued immediately after the coup d’État in September 1898. There we can read: “We have further heard that the said rebellious faction has privately established the Baoguohui, meaning the protection of China but not the protection of the great Qing dynasty” (又聞該亂黨私立保國會，言保中國不保大清). Edict dated GX24.8.14 (29.9.1898), reprinted in Wuxu bianfa 戊戌變法 (The reforms of 1898), ed. by Jian Bozan et al., Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguang she, 1953, v. 2, 102-3.

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of the Manchu Qing dynasty, while at the same time it continued to shoulder the heavy burden of a para-official statecraft discourse with a strong agenda of system maintenance. With the Japanese exile of the political press and the need of the commercial papers which continued to appear on the mainland to come to terms with a harsher political environment, it became obvious that the common ground of officially sponsored reforms had eroded—literally so: the reformists advocating moderate reforms and the “protection of the emperor” operated from Yokohama, Tokyo was the base of those turning openly against the imperial state and the Manchu regime, and the commercial papers in Shanghai had to find an economically viable modus vivendi under the changed political circumstances.

It was in exile that the press finally managed to emancipate itself from the state. Such was the precondition for the difficult but steady reestablishment in its own right of a political press in the foreign concessions of Shanghai after two years and another political disaster for Cixi’s regime: only after the Boxer uprising were the limitations under which the pre-1898 reform and treaty-port press had operated overcome. The new kind of self-assertive newspaper claiming to be the voice of the people was so successful that even a long-established and cherished paper like the Shenbao had to adjust—not only to the new layout of reformist papers such as the Shibao 時報 (the “Eastern Times,” founded in 1904), but also to the new political discourse per-vading the public sphere, a discourse that was increasingly directed against the central government.106

By the turn of the century the people had, at least symbolically, replaced the scholarly elite as the moving force of the country. Minqi—the energizing spirit of the people—was the new catchword. Through the impact of Social Darwinist theories and the official sanc-tion of a radical reformist discourse during the Hundred-Days reform, new elements had entered the statecraft discourse carried in the press. In time, these elements would come to call into question the exist-ing structures of political responsibility and participation. Although it remained embedded in the style of classical prose, the radical shift in basic concepts must have been clear to any perceptive mind. While,

106 A well-studied example of this new orientation of the press is the rights-recov-ery movement in 1907. Cf. Min Tu-ki, “The Soochow-Hangchow-Ningpo Railway Dispute,” in his National Polity and Local Power. The Transformation of Late Imperial China, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989, 181-218; Mary B. Rankin, Elite Activism, 248-198; and my own Nur leere Reden, 333-345.

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previously, an all-pervading selfishness was to be cured by action arising from public-mindedness, now the progressive fragmentation of the whole country and its resulting weakness had to be overcome by the people uniting to form a new entity, the nation. The old ideal of a passive people in peaceful pursuit of its business was replaced by the new image of a people active and in motion.

Without giving credit to any of the authors, the Shenbao journalist author of “China’s weakness” quoted verbatim from Sun Dingchen’s essay to establish his conceptual frame, made use of Zhang Zhidong’s moderately reformist Quanxue pian to engage in a discussion on prag-matic politics, and relied on Liang Qichao’s writings in the Shiwubao to give his piece the necessary rhetorical drive. In this manner he managed to integrate three discourses into one piece: the jingshi state-craft discourse, the yangwu self-strengthening discourse, and the weixin reformist discourse. This integrated—and therefore, in a way, elu-sive—approach to political writing became more and more exposed to denigration, especially after the reformist and revolutionary discourses had adopted an entirely new language in the Japanese exile. The trend culminated in the condemnation of the Tongcheng school of classical prose during the May Fourth cultural movement; but we should not forget that it was in a classical prose style that reformist ideas were popularized in the first place.

By offering a common ground of public debate the new press helped to usher in a vigorous revival of old patterns of literati engagement, in this case through writing draft memorials in the guise of newspaper articles and hoping, with some justification, that influential officials would take note of them. At the same time—and more importantly—the virtually unrestricted publicity that came with the new medium led to developments unforeseen by the protagonists themselves. The daily exposure to a broad public of political criticism increased the pressure on the government to reform. Issues of national policy were known and discussed faster than before and on a broader scale, not just among the examination elite, but also among the social and commercial elite of the cultural centers and among the urban populace at large. This made a great difference from the secrecy and the fragmentation of political knowledge which had prevailed throughout most of the Qing dynasty. The ever stronger horizontal structures of communica-tion ended up subverting and breaking open the hermetically closed vertical structures of official communication.

The public revelation day after day of actual examples of bureau-

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cratic evils, of the moral decay of the elite, of the inability of the Qing government to carry out in time the vital administrative reforms that were needed and of its weakness vis-à-vis the Western powers—all of them issues that had been broadly discussed in statecraft writ-ings—undermined the public credibility of the government, the trust in the efficiency of the self-strengthening movement, and eventually the cultural prestige of the examination elite itself. The “first among the four classes of people” had failed in its mission to secure the well-being of the polity. Its demise left vacant an important space. The vacuum would be filled with the new educated “people”—to be sure, by men born of the same elite. Still, the people were to replace the examination elite as the constitutive element of the new Han-Chinese nation state. Throughout this dramatic shift one structure remained firm: the scholars had always been defined in terms of their function for the state, and the same should happen to “the people.”

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Documents

Janku,Preparing the Ground for Reolutionary Discourse