Editorial

Abstract

Editorial Margherita Zanasi As I begin my tenure as the editor of Twentieth-Century China (TCC), I have come to reflect on the important role that this journal has played in the development of the fields of Republican and People’s Republic of China (PRC) history. When the first incarnation of TCC, the Chinese Republican Studies Newsletter, appeared in October 1975, it was the first journal to specialize in what was at the time a small, emerging field. The Newsletter represented the efforts of a few pioneers in Republican studies to bring together the small community of scholars who shared their research interests (Herman Mast III served as the first editor, followed by Barry Keenan and David Strand). Reflecting the fast growth of this field, in 1983, the fourth editor, Keith Schoppa, turned the newsletter into a full-fledged journal and changed its title to Republican China. In this new format, the journal continued to grow not just in readership but also in the scope of its academic interests. In 1991, Steven Averill, who had taken over the editorship, changed the journal’s name to Twentieth-Century China, signaling its expansion into the history of the PRC, previously the almost exclusive realm of political scientists. Today, TCC remains committed to exploring the history of the entire span of the long twentieth century, across the 1911, the 1949, and the Mao/post-Mao divides. TCC has come a long way since its pioneering beginnings. Today, the journal I am honored to join is firmly established as a leading publication for Chinese history, thanks to the intelligent management of the editors who preceded me—including Christopher Reed (who took over from Averill), James Carter, and Kristin Stapleton—and the support of both its active and engaged editorial board and its affiliated association, the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China. As the new editor, I look forward to continuing TCC’s tradition of providing high-quality articles to a lively international community of scholars. The five articles included in this issue share a similar interest in placing Chinese history within an international or transnational context. Peter Gibson and Simon Ville explore the role played in the development of Chinese industrialization by Australian exports of wool to China. They emphasize how, for China, cooperation with a late-developing economy was more beneficial than that with industrialized powers such as Britain and Japan, which aimed to turn China into a major market for their finished goods, in direct competition with domestic products. Australian imports of [End Page 263] high-quality raw wool, instead, were essential to the Chinese effort to mechanize its textile industry and thus complemented its import-substitution program. In her contribution to this issue, Soonyi Lee discusses Liang Qichao’s, Zhang Junmai’s, and Zhang Dongsun’s cultural conservatism. These intellectuals presented their conservative visions as a response to the moral decay generated by scientific positivism, which, they argued, was responsible for the horrors of the First World War. In this context, they revisited Confucianism, associating it with themes of Kantian morality. They thus assigned universal value to a Chinese philosophical tradition—contesting European philosophy’s exclusive claims to “universality”—and proposed it as a source of inspiration for reestablishing morality worldwide. Also exploring international connections, Marilyn Levine emphasizes the wide impact of Lenin’s political ideas and practices in the development of early Chinese Communist Party ideology. Levine follows the lives of two prominent Communist leaders, Cai Hesen and Zhao Shiyan, to understand how their upbringings and study-abroad experiences influenced their perceptions of Leninism. Despite marked differences in their personalities and leadership styles, Levine argues, they both came to support Leninism as the best solution for the betterment of the Chinese people. In the fourth article, Ying-kit Chan illustrates the complex relations among ideas of ethnicity, nationalism, and modern nation building during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As the Nationalist government established its wartime base in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the ethnic diversity of this frontier region—and the fact that it was subject to centrifugal trends inspired by Pan-Thai nationalism—challenged the Nationalist message of national unity. These circumstances engendered an intense debate among intellectuals and...