Chinese Intellectuals Research Articles

Surveying, mapping, and translating: how property rights were created in Shanghai, 1860–1900?

Abstract From 1860 to 1900, a modern system of property rights emerged in the International Settlement in Shanghai. This paper examines the largely overlooked process by which the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) brought about a system of well-functioning property rights through land surveys, mapping, and assessments. These methods worked hand-in-hand with road planning and construction in facilitating the expansion of the International Settlement to the Chinese-controlled area. Colonial officials, merchants, and Chinese intellectuals worked collectively and sometimes separately to generate knowledge about land and property by translating terms in the Chinese tradition. It argues that the efforts in institution-building and translation helped normalize the definition of property rights as things exclusively owned, strengthening the SMC's control over the land in Shanghai. These processes illuminate the relationship between empire-making and property rights by showing how property rights emerged and functioned in a semi-colonial context where multiple foreign authorities coexisted with the local government. The relatively secure system of property rights, which both foreign and Chinese merchants exploited, formed the foundation of a prosperous Shanghai in the twentieth century.

Problematizing the onto-epistemic return in ‘building Chinese education’ as a decolonial involution

ABSTRACT Decolonial studies, initiated by Southern scholars, scrutinize the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being as a constitutive condition of Western modernity, and explicate otherwise suppressed non-Western onto-epistemes. This paper examines Chinese academia's ‘building Chinese education’ as a decolonial, ‘self-awakening’, effort against the Euro-centric global structure of knowledge (re)production. Reading into 334 journal articles published between 2004 and 2023 and housed in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, we first pinpoint a state-academia governing matrix that imbricates Chinese intellectuals as establishment and participative scholars. We next untangle three interpellations that scaffold the Chinese education construction discourses: (a) East-indigenization and West-globalization, (b) tradition-past and modernity-present, and (c) theory and practice. In so doing, we explicate eugenic disordering, representational signification, and theorycide as onto-epistemic flashpoints confronting Chinese academia's self-awakening efforts against Western modernity-coloniality. Zooming in on China, this case study complicates the knotty negotiation between cultural relativistic indigenization and globalization as a decolonial involution.

A reflection on making ‘Religion’ in China: The Genealogy of Zongjiao through cultural exchange

The term Zongjiao [宗教] originally referring to the teachings of Buddhism and Chinese ancestral worship was not considered the equivalent for the English term ‘religion’ until the late 19th century when Japanese translated religion as shūkyō [宗教]. The later introduction of the concept of Zongjiao into China via Japan triggered a deep exploration of the differences between religion and Jiao among Chinese intellectuals like Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei and Peng Guangyu, representing Chinese scholars’ conceptualisation and reflections of Chinese traditional religious belief, practices and phenomena within the context of Western religious culture. Rather than a simple lexical selection, the translation of ‘religion’ essentially was a process of making the notion of ‘religion’ in China, which had provided valuable insight into the nature of Chinese Confucianism culture and was closely related to the understanding of the state–church relationship in China. With continuous cultural exchanges and integration, reflecting on this translation process will provide a more inclusive perspective on the complexity and diversity of religions and facilitate mutual learning.Contribution: This article briefly reviews the process of accepting Zongjiao [宗教] as the equivalent for the Western term ‘religion’ in China, in order to shed light on how such translation has influenced people’s understanding of religion and the inclusiveness contained in the study of religion.

The Allocation of Talent and Financial Development, 1897 to 1936

We examine how the supply of talent affected financial development based on an experiment that abruptly changed the allocation of talent in historical China. Under the meritocratic civil examination system, government service was the main employment for the Chinese intellectuals. The abolition of this system in 1905 reduced the status and wealth attached to government service, which led the intellectuals to turn to modern banking as a high-status sector of employment. We find that regions where there were more candidates for the civil examination produced more financial professionals after 1905, which translated to a greater development of modern banking. This paper was accepted by Lin William Cong, finance. Funding: C. Lin and C. Ma acknowledge the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Grant AoE/B-704/22-R], Y. Sun acknowledges the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72203037] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in UIBE [Grant 20QD14; CXTD12-01], and Y. Xu acknowledges the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72203013] for financial support. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00456 .

L’« autre » dans les œuvres des artistes contemporains chinois en France : Chen Zhen et Huang Yongping

temp: Sinologist Gregory B. Lee stated in his 2018 book China imagined that, "For several centuries now, European and American sinologists and novelists have imagined their own China, and have narrated and imposed China according to this imaginary. Until now, this Western imaginary of China has been globally dominant.[1] By mimicry, Chinese intellectuals also imagined the West through books translated in the 80s of the 20th century. When they left China, they were confronted not only with the West they imagined, but also with the China imagined by Westerners. We will now examine whether contemporary Chinese artists considered as "others" express themselves, create, through the same prism that we might describe as a mirror effect.

Towards Enlightenment: Taixu’s Interpretation of Buddhist Psychology

Chinese intellectuals started to engage in Buddhist psychology in the early 20th century, a time when Western culture was greatly influencing the country. Taixu criticized Western psychology and proposed his Buddhist psychology. He proposed a tripartite psychology based on Buddhist doctrine: psychology on affection (qing 情); psychology on reflection (xiang 想); and psychology on wisdom (zhi 智). Perceiving Western psychology as lacking in both theoretical depth and breadth, he specifically criticized behaviorism. He integrated the interpretation of “sense faculties” (indriya) from the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, thereby reconstructing an Ideal Behavioral Science, a philosophical system that centers on behavior and encompasses all aspects of life. This paper argues that Taixu’s critique of Western psychology and his construction of Buddhist psychology responded to the ideological trends of his era. In Taixu’s conceptual system, Buddhist psychology was part of his theory on “Buddhism for human life” (rensheng fojiao 人生佛教), serving not only to explain the psychological state of human but also to guide cultivation and lead people to enlightenment, bearing practical significance. Taixu’s study of worldly knowledge, including psychology, attempts to comprehensively construct a modern Buddhist system that integrates Buddhist Dharma and secular learning.

Self-identity construction via self-reference in pre-modern Chinese intellectuals’ letters home: A case study

This study explores pre-modern Chinese intellectuals’ identity construction through the choice of self-referring forms in their letters home. Based on a case study of Hu Shih's letters home, it categorizes the self-referring forms he used and self-identities he constructed, and further investigates the underlying sociocultural factors. It shows that Hu Shih employed four categories of self-referring forms, namely first-person pronouns, kinship terms, names, nicknames, and pen names, and appositive expressions. With these forms of self-reference, he constructed himself as a kin member, an independent person, and a scholar. Hu's construction of the first self-identity might have been influenced by the traditional family ethics and ideology prevalent within Chinese social structure, whereas that of the other two could be ascribed to the emerging social changes at the historical turning point, and scholarly principles. The study provides a new perspective for understanding traditional Chinese intellectuals’ letters home in the pre-modern society of China.

Ценностные основания стратагемного мышления (на примере минских «Книг мудрости» 1614–1634 гг.)

In the history of human thought, the question of the human wisdom nature, or the possibility to gain it, has never assumed a simple solution. Chinese thinkers and philosophers answered this question in different ways. The secular and practical character of understanding the concept of wisdom in the Chinese intellectual tradition was largely due to the influence of the ethical and political doctrine of Confucianism. From the point of view of Confucian ethics, the idea of using tricks and gimmicks was considered rather dubious. In the history of Chinese thought, there were periods when the intellectual elite had time to realize the beginning of a crisis in society and tried not only to theorize stratagem thinking, but also to find sufficient ethical grounds for applying stratagems in routine practices. The last third of the Ming dynasty reigning, when A Complete Book of Wisdom was written, was just such a period. At the same time, there was a serious value guidelines transformation of the educated class in China, which could also act as one of the factors in developing interest in stratagems and stratagem thinking. The aim of the article is to analyze the transformation of the value system of Chinese intellectuals, who lived in the last third of the Ming dynasty, and identify the value grounds of stratagem thinking described in A Complete Book of Wisdom. The article presents a classification of relevant factors that influenced the transformation of the value system of educated people under the late Ming. It describes and systematizes the data on the attitude of Ming emperors to educated people and Confucian ethical-political doctrine. The struggle not only for real power but also for symbolic power in the area of values and ideals was one of the drivers for the transformation of the value system. In addition, the commercialization of life and mass culture was the main factor in the significant change of Confucian philosophy. The article presents the analysis of educated people feelings and attitudes, which entailed changes in approaches to the process of knowledge and social practices. Thus, under the late Ming dynasty, there was the development of new models of social conflict resolution and value grounds of stratagem thinking.

Compilation of Dictionaries and Scientific and Technological Translations by Western Protestant Missionaries in China in the Nineteenth Century

The 19th century saw the important transformation of modern Western concepts into Chinese lexical resources. The missionaries were the initiators and important driving force for the translation of Western books into Chinese in modern China. They promoted ‘translating terms’ and ‘coining terms’ in their translations of Western books and the compilation of dictionaries with the cooperation of Chinese intellectuals. Their work provided a tangible ‘word’ carrier of ‘concepts’ for disseminating modern knowledge from the West to the East. Compiled by missionaries, the English–Chinese bilingual dictionaries introduced a brand-new concept of dictionary compilation and changed China’s history of having zidian (字典, character dictionaries) but no cidian (辞典, specialized dictionaries). In particular, John Fryer applied the translation method of creating new words or characters in the translation of chemical terminology. Members of the School and Textbook Series Committee, including John Fryer and Calvin Wilson Mateer, made great contributions to theories and strategies for translation, which keep inspiring Chinese–English translation of terminology and its theoretical construction.

ON THE TRAINING OF CADRES FOR THE CHINESE REVOLUTION IN THE USSR (ON THE HISTORY OF THE YUANLI SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES)

The victory of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 awakened the enthusiasm of advanced Chinese intellectuals to master the Russian revolutionary experience, and many young Chinese revolutionaries sought to study directly in the birthplace of October. In order to study Russian revolutionary theory and experience and achieve the goal of transforming the country, it was necessary to train a group of Russian-speaking cadres for the future revolution. The article deals with the history of the first cadre school of the Communist Party of China, the School of Foreign Languages in Yuyangli, a neighborhood of Shanghai. The research shows that, although it existed for only about a year, this school made an important contribution to the education of the first cadres of the CPC and to the development of the Chinese revolution. Its teachers and students vigorously propagated Marxism, actively participated in party construction, led the Chinese workers, peasants, youth, women’s movements and armed struggle. They played a special role in connecting Marxist theory with the practice of the Chinese revolution, developing and strengthening the Party’s organizational strength and expanding its political influence. Old Yuyangli and New Yuyangli are two neighboring streets. In 1920, it was here that a group of Chinese communists in Shanghai established the School of Foreign Languages, which actually became a school for training Chinese revolutionary cadres. The first group of young communists who studied here were sent to the USSR after only a few months of Russian language and political training. Upon returning home, most of the graduates of the School of Foreign Languages became prominent figures of the Chinese revolution. The spread of Marxism in China is closely connected with this group of young people who studied in the USSR. Yuyangli is not just a toponym and a place where the School of Foreign Languages was located, but it is a historical “witness” of the CPC’s more than century-long struggle for its ideals.

Inculturation at Home: The Belgian Catholic Project for Chinese Students (1920–1930s)

Initiated by Vincent Lebbe in 1920, the Belgian Catholic project for Chinese students was a harbinger of inculturation. Contrary to the impression that the Catholic Church reacted slowly to the demand of indigenisation in the early twentieth century, this article demonstrates that a project specifically designed for Chinese students had already been prepared for this purpose back in Belgium. In other words, through the fostering of intercultural understanding and personal contacts between students abroad and home communities, the Belgian Catholic project became part of the Leuven school’s missiological initiative, which was meant to realise Church implantation in mission countries. In order to maximise the contacts between young Chinese intellectuals and the Belgian Catholic milieu, Lebbe and his associates strategically anchored their cause into the allocation of the Sino-Belgian Indemnity Scholarship, despite stiff competition. The Catholic efforts to encourage a sense of unity evoked sympathy in Belgian society towards China, and in time contributed to charitable support for war victims at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Though originally driven by evangelical purposes and ideological challenges, the spirit of inculturation gave rise to an awareness of human solidarity, a legacy worthy of a true apostolate.

Landscapes of boom and ruination: politics of seeing in China’s “tin capital” Gejiu, 1912-1949

This article argues that landscapes of ruination and wasted labour are not an unfortunate finale in the history of mineral-rich cities under the “resource curse” but an always ongoing reality from the start of their involvement in the capitalist world market and pursuit of industrial modernity. Focusing on narratives about the “tin capital” Gejiu in southwestern China during the first half of the 20th century, I conduct a historical analysis and examine how geological and sociological experts introduced new politics of seeing and exploiting land and labour. Boasting the landscape of the industrial boom, Chinese intellectuals and technobureaucrats alike considered geological discoveries and resource extraction as a sign of a nation’s civilizational status and modernization achievements. Their fascination with this outlying small town also exemplified a nationalist claim to the new Republican State’s southwestern borderlands in an era of imperialist territorial divisions. Nonetheless, they had to constantly explain (away) appalling sights of environmental ruination and social polarization, often through promises of mechanization or labour welfare. Offering a close reading of travelogues, social surveys and scientific reports, I challenge the conventional narrative from prosperity to decline and reveal landscapes of ruination at the heart of modernization and nationalist discourse of conquering and utilizing natural resources.

Impact and response: Debate on the necessity of female education in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic period

The late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China were the periods of rapid changes in Chinese society. People’s thoughts were wandering between persistence and innovation. Influenced by the introduction of Western ideas, missionaries and advanced Chinese intellectuals advocated women’s education and the establishment of girls’ schools. Influenced by the traditional social division of labor, feudal ethical thoughts and heavy historical accumulation, it has not received unanimous support, and this resistance mainly comes from conservatives. Under the pressure of public opinion from all walks of life, women’s right to education was initially established. The debate on the necessity of women’s education presents the characteristics of impact and response, reflecting the rise of feminism and the awakening of women’s self-consciousness.

Missionary’s Envision of Children in Late Qing China: Children’s Education and the Construction of Christian Discourse in Child’s Paper

In the late Qing Dynasty, religious periodicals by Western missionaries were made legal in China, and subsequently became an important manner of their missionary cause. Among them, Child’s Paper 小孩月报 (1875–1881) by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, a Protestant missionary from the United States, endeavoured to convert child readers by carrying children’s stories of moral and emotional education. By concentrating on the educational elements of Child’s Paper, this article inspects how conversion was achieved via the intertextual interpretation of Christian doctrines within these educational elements. Specifically, how the image of little Christians and urchins, respectively, represents salvation and redemption in Christian morals. This article holds that the missionaries’ stress on the authority of Christian discourse in the education of Chinese children makes evident an increasing emphasis on the reformative effects of Christianity on Chinese children. Moreover, the conversion-education efforts by missionaries also construed helping Chinese children gain a cross-cultural perspective on Western religion, and arguably inspired later Chinese intellectuals’ to create newspapers for the purpose of the pre-primary education of Chinese children.

Incriminated writers and their wives: Gendered memory of a national campaign in Mao’s China

The primary source of this study is 76 video interviews concerning a political campaign by the Chinese Communist Party: the Anti-Hu Feng Counter-revolutionary Clique Movement (1955–1956). This campaign and the long incrimination of its central figures—Hu Feng (1902–1985), his wife Mei Zhi (1914–2004), and other associates—have had an impact on Chinese intellectuals for nearly seven decades and generated hundreds of (auto)biographies, memoirs, critical writings, and scholarly studies since the 1980s. Victimized writers managed to publish again, but the stories of their wives remained obscured and marginalized for years. This article presents three research findings: first, the wives provide different but equally essential testimonies as do the writers; second, methods used by feminist historians can benefit oral history collection from all, but from women and the marginalized in particular; and third, gendered memory helps to bridge the gap between those who have and have not personally experienced specific historical events.

My impressions after reading the book Less Words but Earnestly Practice--My Father Chuangan Zhang

Earlier in 2019, a non-fiction biography titled Less Words but Earnestly Practice-My Father Chuangan Zhang was published in Beijing, China. The subject of the biography is Professor Chuangan Zhang, an old-generation petroleum geologist in China. The author is Professor Zhang's youngest daughter, Mrs. Erping Zhang, a scholar who studies the history of Chinese geological sciences but has now retired. The book uses refined language to tell the story of Professor Zhang's life, especially his experience of studying and looking for oil in the northwest during the turbulent World War II. It also tells the fate of intellectuals before and after the change of power in China, as well as the patriotism and ambitions, personal ups and downs, and various opportunities and hardships of Chinese intellectuals in the great era.

자유와 自治

What does it mean to read Ham Seok-heon in the 21st century? Furthermore, what does it mean to read the ‘East-Asian Classics’ through him? In this article, I would like to raise a few issues that existing discussions on the relationship between Ham Seok-heon and the East-Asian Classics have not paid attention to, in order to point out the points that we should give more weight to in the hermeneutics of Ham Seok-heon’s ‘Chewing on Old Classics’. First, Ham’s should be read as an independent text in its own right, not as a commentary on the ‘Oriental Classics’. Second, his SSi-al’ Readings of Old Classics should be read in the context of life and place in contemporary Korea, rather than the Laozi and the Zhuangzi relationships it addresses. Third, the meanings and values in SSi-al’ Readings of Old Classics do not lie in its original interpretation of traditional commentaries, but rather in the “common sense” that guided the perceptions and practices of Ssi-al in the democratization process of twentieth-century Korea. To emphasize this aspect, I contrast it with the interpretation of the Zhuangzi in China during the same period. I want to argue that if Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century anticipated their own destiny through the interpretation and discussion of the Zhuangzi, Ham Seok-heon’s reading of the Zhuangzi was expressed as the voice of Ssi-al, which changed the subject of interpretation and at the same time called for the values of modern freedom and equality and preached the ideology of democracy and self-government to realize them. In reading Ham Seok-heon in this way, I believe that we can properly evaluate the historical and philosophical meaning and value of SSi-al’ Readings of Old Classics.

중국 특색의 권력은 어떻게 구축되는가?

This paper analyzes ‘power or politics with Chinese characteristics’ focusing on the papers and books of Chinese scholar Fan Wei. The perception that ‘China and the West are (or should be) different’ has existed since the late 19th and early 20th centuries – when China was overwhelmed by the power of the West. However, that challenged perception could not be revealed throughout the 20th century due to the Chinese Communist Party's core ideology of Marxism-Leninism. After entering the 21st century, as ‘China’s rise’ began, awareness of the need to create a ‘political system with Chinese characteristics’ began to spread among Chinese intellectuals. It should be said that Pan Wei's writings and papers also reflect this perception. However, there is still a lack of consideration of how a ‘political system with Chinese characteristics’ can be established and whether it is truly possible. Accordingly, this paper first examines the core of ‘modern politics’, which the political system with Chinese characteristics sets as its counterpart. And based on those issues, we look at power or politics with Chinese characteristics raised by Pan Wei. The core of Panwei's perspective can be summarized as illiberal democracy. Panwei pointed out the problems of liberal democracy - social division, lethargy on corruption issues, etc. - and pointed out that in order to overcome the weaknesses of liberal democracy, China, or put it more specifically Chinese intellectuals, needs to create a political culture. Additionally, he is looking for China’s unique political culture in ‘the rule of law.’ However, the ‘rule of law’ he is talking about is different from that of the West. However, the ‘rule of law’ he is talking about is different from that of the West. Pan Wei is creating a political culture with Chinese characteristics, based on the premise that China's society and people are fundamentally different from those of the West.

Disenchantment: Liang Qichao's Post-War European Travel and Ideological Shift

Since the modern era, Western culture has acquired modern attributes due to its early industrialization. The political and economic systems of capitalism, and even its values, have become the aspirations of modern China. As a representative of the intellectual group learning from the West, Liang Qichao once regarded the Western capitalist society as the direction for China's modernization. However, the outbreak of World War I changed Liang Qichao. The various contradictions in post-war Europe and the perverse actions of imperialism led Liang Qichao to deeply reflect on Western civilization. He no longer looked up to the West but instead re-examined the valuable values of Chinese civilization, establishing cultural confidence. In fact, the shift in Liang Qichao's thinking is not an isolated case but a microcosm of the cultural awakening of the entire group of Chinese intellectuals learning from the West.

Reception of Herzen’s “From the Other Shore” in China: problems and prospects

The history of the reception of Herzen's collection of essays and dialogues “From the Other Shore” (“From Another Shore”) in China from the late 19th century to the present is considered. The objectives of this study are: 1) to identify the timing, background, and mode of the early reception of “From the Other Shore” in China; 2) to analyze the different emphases and factors for its reception in China at different times; 3) to explore the problems, reasons and perspectives in the process of its reception in China. The significance of the research topic lies in the necessity to elucidate the peculiarities of perception of Herzen's work in China, which is closely linked to emerging trends in the Sino-Russian intercivilizational dialogue. The process of reception of the book in China, focusing on translation and counting the socio-cultural transformations that have taken place in China from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the present day, is explored. The evolution of Herzenology (Herzen studies) in China has been characterized by rises and falls, and even the periods of oblivion. This was influenced by both historical changes in Chinese society and the international environment. An important range of issues for modern Herzen studies is highlighted: the basics of the interest of Chinese intellectuals to Herzen's book in the early 20th century; the main directions of Chinese scholars' research on this collection of political essays; the reasons for the prolonged neglect of the book by Chinese academics since the late 1960s; the prerequisites for regained attention among Chinese researchers in the 21st century; the new discoveries of Herzen scholars that enriched the culture of China. This research will be valuable in advancing the understanding of the mechanisms underlying Russian-Chinese literary and cultural dialogue, as well as the impact of Russian classical literature on Chinese literature.