Print and Politics: Shibao and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (review)

Abstract

Reviews 461 Text references are given to books listed in the bibliography. There is an index but there are no Chinese characters. The rubbings from offering shrines are particularly hard to read, often because oftheir small scale. In the interest ofpictorial legibility certain painted tombs were not discussed and some painted and engraved material was given in line drawings. As James indicates, her selection of tombs and shrines is limited to examples diat could best explain die development of a program of Han funerary art. That was her goal, and in this book she has certainly done what she set out to do. Susan Bush John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University Susan Bush is a specialist in Chinese painting theory and early Chinesepainting. Joan Judge. Print and Politics: Shibao and the Culture ofReform in Late Qing China. Studies of the East Asian Institute. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xii, 298 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 0-8047-2741-4. The activities ofa free press have long been recognized as essential to both the promulgation ofideas and the promotion ofdemocracy. Joan Judge examines the way in which the unique socioeconomic and cultural context in late Qing China caused the press of that time to develop a manner different from that ofthe West. Shibao journalists ("Shibao" simply means "The Times" in English) often expressed ideas of the Enlightenment, such as freedom and popular power, but did so in a manner that transformed these ideas. Judge's book shows how diese journalists interwove the Confucian critique ofautocratic regimes, which originated at the end ofthe Ming, with concepts from the Enlightenment and, as a result, produced a new hybrid discourse. The Shibao journalists were gready influenced by the minben tradition, which can be traced to Mencius. "Minben" literally means "the people are the fundament ," and the term was used by Huang Zongxi, a Confucian reformer in the late Ming and early Qing, to criticize the autocratic practices ofthe Qing dynasty. In a typically Confucian manner, Huang argued that in the world ofdie ancient sage-© 1998 by University \¿ngSí pe0plewere actuallythe foundation ofgovernment, while in the Qing dyoj awai ? ressnasrythiswas no longer the case. He invoked this ancient ideal to advocate an increase in local autonomy and participation. The Shibao journalists were influencedby Huang's approach, but they synthesized his ideas with concepts 462 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 from Western philosophy. They innovatively linked Western ideals, such as freedom , with an idyllic representation of China's past. Hence, they criticized the Qing dynasty not for being insufficiendy modern, but for not living up to the minben ideal set forth by the sage-kings. Concepts such as civil rights and the importance of the middle realm were used to reinterpret the cluster ofideas associated with minben. In the process, they imbued traditional Chinese terms with new political meaning. For example, yulun, which had previously been defined as "elite opinion in the bureaucracy," was redefined by them as "public opinion." This became "the key component in the larger agenda of forcing a transition to a more open mode ofpolitics" (p. 68). They were hoping to increase popular participation by telling the masses about the importance ofpublic opinion. Unlike in Europe, where pleas for popular participation were cast in terms of an opposition between state and society, the Shibao journalists presented their proposals for reform by contrasting the dynasty to the nation (guojia). According to them, the nation was the property of all the people who lived in the territory, while the dynasty was the property of one clan: [T]hose who have even the slightest understanding of the concept of nationhood all know that the nation is not the private property of the imperial family but that it belongs to all. Therefore, those who want to strengthen the nation need not rely on the imposing authority of a minority of heroes, militarists, and strongmen—but on the spirit ofthe majority. ... A nation goes into decline when its people do not know the difference between the nation and the dynasty, (p. 59) However, the Shibao journalists were reformers, and they did not want to get rid of the dynasty...