Synthesizing citizenship in modern China

Abstract

This chapter offers a synthetic analysis of the recent Euro-American scholarship on citizenship in early twentieth-century China and presents a conceptual framework for analyzing citizenship, there and elsewhere, as a complex formation of ideas and practices. It distinguishes between four distinct dimensions of citizenship in late Qing and Republican China: national identity, political participation and civil rights, cultural citizenship, and social membership. In characterizing the dynamics of each dimension, the author reflects on possible vectors of comparison between Chinese and Euro-American approaches to citizenship. Ultimately, the chapter argues that these four aspects can be synthesized and viewed as part of a complex whole that identified Chinese citizenship with active participation in concrete tasks which contribute to national welfare. This form of citizenship, which stressed morally engaged action for the community over assertion of personal rights and freedoms, closely parallels the Euro-American tradition of civic republicanism and resonates with the Neo-Confucian tradition of scholarly activism.