Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

AFTER EMPIRE

Stanford University Press

Contents

Preface..............................................................................viiAcknowledgments......................................................................xiiiIntroduction.........................................................................11 Kang Youwei's philosophy of power and the 1898 reform movement.....................242 Liang Qichao and the Citizen-State.................................................563 "Sovereignty" and the translated State.............................................894 Voices of receding reaction........................................................1195 Identity, History, and Revolution..................................................1476 Restoration and Revolution.........................................................1817 Founding the Republic of China.....................................................2128 The Last Emperors..................................................................242Conclusion...........................................................................272List of Characters...................................................................299Notes................................................................................307Bibliography.........................................................................353index................................................................................377

Chapter One

On September 28, 1898, six men were summarily executed in Beijing. They became known as the "six noble men" (liu junzi) or martyrs, symbols of selfless dedication to reform. They were arrested and held for trial, but their trials were cut short as the court panicked that a supposed plot against the Qing, or at least against the court faction surrounding empress Dowager Cixi, was in the works. At least one of the martyrs, tan Sitong, chose not to flee but deliberately gave up his life to inspire his countrymen. Thus ended the "hundred days of reform" of 1898. Cixi put the Guangxu emperor (r. 1875–1908), her hapless nephew, under house arrest on an island in a lake in the imperial City.

Other reform leaders fled into exile. The most important of these were Kang Youwei (1858–1927), the intellectual godfather of the reform movement, and his disciple Liang Qichao (1873–1929). They immediately wrote accounts of the reform movement that became potent political weapons in the battles for the minds of the Chinese that followed. More important for us here are the questions of how the reform movement came to embody ideas that had been fermenting for a decade or more; why it scared Cixi; and where it might have been leading. The "hundred days of reform" in 1898 was the culmination of a movement dedicated to fundamental institutional change since the early 1890s and fueled by the shock to public consciousness of China's defeat at the hands of Japan in a struggle for influence in Korea. The "hundred days" shook China's political institutions to the core, but less because of the proposed reforms themselves than the new philosophy that lay behind them.

Winning the ear of the Guangxu emperor and his top advisers in the spring of 1898, the reformers, led by Kang Youwei, drafted edicts to establish government bureaus to support agriculture, industry, and commerce; a postal system; a modernized military; a new university; and a more transparent fiscal system. Although proposals to modernize the educational and examination systems raised concerns among men who had spent their lifetimes studying the Confucian classics, concrete reforms remained modest. In late August, the emperor moved to reorganize the central government and abolish certain posts. In terms of the edicts themselves, even here there was nothing to challenge Manchu political supremacy or the position of the court. Yet in a nervous atmosphere—factional plotting, secret policymaking, racial tension between Han Chinese and Manchus, and military defeat and humiliation—antennas were super-sensitive to danger. Guangxu moved to enlarge the right to memorialize the throne. On the one hand, this was hardly a revolutionary step; there was a long tradition of Confucian pieties about keeping open the "road of speech." But on the other hand, it was a blow to the highest of the emperor's ministers, to whom alone Qing dynastic law had traditionally given the right to memorialize. If anything, such a change would broaden the emperor's authority, limiting the ability of his ministers to control his access to knowledge—a very old problem in Chinese statecraft theory. But it also reflected the calls of younger, reformist gentry to be heard, as we will see below. At any rate, in the reforms of 1898 themselves there was nothing about a constitution or establishing local assemblies, much less a national parliament. The reforms represented ideas that many moderates had long supported. However, it is true that Guangxu seemed to be moving in an ever more radical direction by the end of the summer, announcing his intention to carry out future political changes. As well, Kang's personal support of a constitution and parliament and his attacks on "the institutions of the ancestors" were well known. When Guangxu moved to appoint leading reformers to high ministerial positions, the conservatives moved decisively against him.

Cixi's "coup d'état" assured that her men would remain in the top positions at court, in the provinces, and in the military. The reforms, such as they were, were entirely abrogated. Cixi had stepped back from day-to-day control of administration in favor of Guangxu in 1889, but she had remained the ultimate arbiter of policy and appointment. Now she resumed full power. Even moderate voices for reform were cowed. There is no telling whether Cixi and her advisers really believed an anti-Manchu plot was underway, but they were right to be nervous about the future. The reform movement had been built on an explosive growth of open and openly politicized literati clubs and journals and academies—various study societies—after 1895. These groups, sometimes with only the barest of links to officialdom, challenged the court's right to limit social forces and determine policy behind closed doors. But Cixi was also shortsighted to oppose reform. After 1898, it was the Manchu court that had to struggle to prove its legitimacy. After 1898, new forms of political engagement and new standards of state-society relations were considered legitimate by China's townspeople and young literati.

The reformers lost their heads, or at least their domiciles, but won the argument. For since 1898, leaders have had to justify their rule in terms of representing the nation. Throughout the twentieth century even the most dictatorial regime has claimed to rule in the name of the people. By 1898, when reformers asked what made the West strong, they focused on a perhaps paradoxical combination of "popular power" (minquan) and wealthy governments. Popular power did not necessarily imply enfranchising ignorant masses, but it was a loose way of talking about democratic ideas and constitutional government as seen in the West and Japan. As Xiong Yuezhi notes, it was crafted to...