Early 20th Century China Research Articles

A dialog between Sino-Western legal traditions: Yan Fu’s translation of “natural law” in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws

As an integral component of legal culture, legal concepts possess distinct cultural characteristics. Translating legal concepts between different cultures to facilitate effective cultural exchange and mutual understanding poses a significant challenge for legal translators. This paper examines Yan Fu’s Chinese translation of “natural law”, a key concept in Montesquieu’s classic The Spirit of Laws, as a case study to analyze the connection between legal translation and cultural traditions in the socio-historical contexts of the early 20th century China. By analyzing Yan’s choice of words, the paper unveils how Yan Fu reinterpreted Western natural law from both religious and ethical perspectives, thereby creating a dynamic dialog between Sino-Western legal cultural traditions.

The Impact of Urbanization on Industrial Transformation and Upgrading: Evidence from Early 20th Century China

Urbanization is key to advancing national modernization and regional socioeconomic sustainable development. This paper empirically investigates the impact of urbanization on industrial transformation and upgrading in early 20th-century China, based on historical data from the initial stages of China’s economic development. We utilized industrial and commercial data from China spanning 1910 to 1927 to construct a fixed-effect model, incorporating instrumental variables to ascertain the causal relationship between urbanization and industrial transformation and upgrading. Additionally, this study tested the hypotheses concerning the effects of human capital and transportation scale, which are identified as the primary channels influencing this relationship. Our findings reveal that (1) the development of urbanization in modern China has significantly promoted industrial transformation and upgrading, and this conclusion remains valid under various robustness tests and the examination of instrumental variables. (2) The improvement in urbanization levels has a more obvious promoting effect on secondary industry, commercial enterprises, and small and medium-sized enterprises, and the positive effect of urbanization on industrial transformation and upgrading is most prominent in the eastern region. (3) Modern Chinese urbanization promoted industrial transformation and upgrading by improving the level of human capital and expanding the scale of transportation. This paper provides historical empirical evidence to study the current social urbanization and industrial policy formulation.

The Indigenization Strategies of Catholic Painting in Early 20th Century China

The spread of Christianity to China initiated a process of indigenization, particularly evident in Christian art. This study explores the indigenization of early 20th-century Chinese Christian paintings through literature reviews, case studies, and comparative research. The analysis covers four forms of primary research. First, it explores the indigenization of Christian concepts, tracing their development from the introduction of Nestorian Christianity in the Tang dynasty through the establishment of Fu Jen Catholic University in the Republican era. Matteo Ricci’s implementation of the “Ricci Rule” during the late Ming dynasty, subsequently expanded by Celso Costantini, played a crucial role in the indigenous adaptation of Christian painting in China. The second facet focuses on the Beijing Catholic School of Painting, led by Chen Yuandu, a group that innovated Chinese Christian art by integrating local artistic expressions with traditional depictions of saints, assimilating symbols from Chinese literati painting, and preserving time-honored Chinese painting techniques. The third facet examines the strategy behind Christian painting methods. Fourth, this study discusses how the Fu Jen School faced varied reception and evaluations from domestic and international audiences under the complex social currents of the Republic of China and how the artists reflected the national spirit and artistic responsibility in their narrative paintings. Fundamentally, the practice of Christian painting at the early 20th-century Catholic School is not only an innovative artistic endeavor but also a significant case of cultural exchange between East and West and religious localization.

Volumising territorial sovereignty: Atmospheric sciences, climate, and the vertical dimension in 20th century China

Works in Political Geography have focused on the exercise of territorial sovereignty beyond land, emphasising the voluminousness and dynamism of material forces that condition how territory is governed. In comparison, works on modern territorial statehood in IR have generally overlooked the question of materiality. By combining the attentiveness to more-than-human materiality in Political Geography with IR's focus on the role of epistemic transformations in the history of the modern international system, this article proposes a more comprehensive understanding of territorial sovereignty and modern statehood as constituted by the technoscientific management of the territory's materiality. Using the development of atmospheric sciences in the 19th century as an example of science-state entanglement in the emergence of the modern international system, this article shows that the integration of atmospheric knowledge production with state and international governance produced the vertical dimension as a realm of governmental concern. Through a detailed case study of the development of atmospheric sciences in early 20th-century China and scientific ideas about China's climate, this article demonstrates how the scientific discovery of the vertical dimension reconfigures territorial sovereignty as sovereignty over volume.

Modern banking development during natural disasters: Evidence from the early 20th century China

How do commercial banks react to natural disasters? Using data for 375 droughts in 262 prefectures in China during 1906–1927, we find that drought-affected prefectures have more private bank inceptions than unaffected ones. The results remain robust to socioeconomic characteristics, foreign market exposure, and conditions of neighboring prefectures. This effect is driven by the prefectures with more agriculture-dependent enterprises, suggesting that banks meet local financial demand. On the other hand, new banks would enter less when the prefecture has more incumbent banks connected to drought-free areas. We argue that capital size and the network of capital reallocation are two advantages of banks coping with natural disasters over alternative financing vehicles such as pawn shops and foreign banks. In addition, the effect is greater among the prefectures practicing common law and with greater social capital, consistent with existing studies that bank credit supply depends on creditor rights protection. Finally, we show that drought-affected regions with more private bank inceptions have better development in agricultural businesses and social stability.

A Study on the Interaction between Gender Morality and Free Love in Early 20th Century China : Centered on Du Cheng Shu&Qu Jiang's Love Letter

This article attempts to answer the question of "love" and why it has been prohibited from entering the public sphere in Chinese history. This article takes the "Love Letter Incident" as a case study and uses the process tracking method to analyze the love letter incident between Du Chengshu (杜成淑) and Qu Jiang (屈疆). In this event, various social groups interacted on this matter, so this article horizontally compared the thinking and self-expression of young men and women in the face of love issues and vertically explored the premature and delayed disclosure of love issues under the trend of gender equality in China since the early 20th century. Examining and evaluating love issues by various parties in the public sphere is necessary for private love writing to move toward the public sphere. Through various evaluations of love letters, the issue of love has entered the public sphere. However, in China at the beginning of the 20th century, the issue of love still faced scrutiny from traditional Chinese gender morality and morality, making it difficult for love issues to be made public. This article finds that in early 20th-century China. The concept of "gender equality" accompanied by China's modernization movement (May Fourth Movement) was valued by society, and the morality of "gender equality" has never been established. However, Chinese society still maintains an unfriendly attitude towards women, and the perception of gender inequality is still considered normal.

Translation as intervention: Wu Mi’s translation of William Thackeray’s novels

ABSTRACT Wu Mi, a notable scholar and translator in early 20th-century China, possessed a profound knowledge of Western literature and culture. While there has been extensive research on his conservative views and cultural propositions, his translation agenda has received limited attention. The paper employs Theo Hermans’ theoretical framework of translation as intervention to analyse Wu Mi’s translation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novels. Through a tactical reading of his translation, the paper argues that Wu Mi utilised translation to modernise Chinese literature, and it further identifies three levels of intervention within the terrain of the New Culture Movement, especially focusing on the themes of modern Chinese fiction, its proper form, and the most effective approach to localising Western literature and modernising Chinese literature. The case study sheds light on the contributions of cultural conservatives to the Chinese modernisation program and invites reflection on the interplay between tradition and modernity, as well as dynamics between local legacy and global influences.

Seaweed modernity: Empire, state, and the Sino-Japanese relations

Seaweed, which had long been adopted by traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of inflammation and tumorous swelling, became a marine crop with increased political and economic importance in early 20th century China. Chinese consumers and manufacturers embraced a global discourse spread from Japan and the West that highlighted the dietary and industrial values of seaweed and its extracts. Chinese elites also identified the social value of seaweed in reducing nutrition disparities between coastal and inland China. The global circulatory processes of seaweed knowledge co-existed with the continued Japanese imperialism and growth of Chinese nationalism in the first half of the 20th century, which led to periodic boycotts of Japan-imported seaweed or increases in the tariffs levied on them. From the 1930s, the Kwantung Marine Productions Experimental Station based in Dalian began cultivating Laminaria Japonica, a type of brown seaweed, along the Yellow Sea in southern Manchuria. At the heart of this colonial scientific program was an attempt to mitigate Chinese nationalist sentiment with the “homegrown” marine products, overcome Japan’s wartime shortage of raw materials, and enhance the self-sufficiency of Manchuria following the outbreak of the Asia Pacific War.

Buddha's grace illuminates all: Temple destruction, school construction and modernization in 20th century China

AbstractThis paper studies how modern human capital emerged in early 20th century China. We document a novel historical episode known as the ‘Temple Destruction Movement’ (TDM), in which Chinese local governments appropriated huge amounts of Buddhist and Taoist temple assets to support the modernization of local schooling. We find that before the TDM, the initial stock of temple assets was uncorrelated with the levels and trends of human capital development; after the TDM was intensified, regions with higher initial stocks of temple assets suddenly constructed more modern schools, enrolled more students in modern educational programmes, and produced more modern elites. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the TDM could account for nearly 70% of China's modern school construction in the early 20th century, which is consistent with historical records collected from numerous county gazetteers. Further analysis shows that the TDM was most effective in the presence of both a strong government and a powerful civil society, as the former made it easier to appropriate assets from the religious sector, while the latter helped to prevent the confiscated religious assets from being captured by local officials.

Collision and Challenge: Influences of Sociocultural Contexts in Early 20th Century China on Storm Society Artists Exploration and Practice of Western Modern Art

This essay engages with the topic of Chinese modern artists introduction and adaptation of Western modern art. This essay conducts its analysis on a modern artist group named the Storm Society (JuelanShe) active in 1920s and 1930s China. Inspired by a social art historical approach, this essay places its focus on the sociocultural contexts specifically present during the active years of Storm Society artists. Three factors are identified to be influential challenges in these artists efforts of exploring and introducing Western modern art to China: Cultural conservatism, inhospitable social environment, and Japanese Invasion in World War II. On the level of academic study about Chinese modern art, this essay highlights the importance to take into account specific cultural and social contexts in analysis of its history.

‘Almost None’: Women Sociologists and the Study of Women’s Crime in Early 20th-Century China and the U.S.

AbstractThe question of how and why women committed crimes was a topic of hot debate in 1930s Republican China. Although men sociologists during this period largely framed the origins of both men’s and women’s crime as a social issue, they nonetheless still seriously considered biological and physiological factors in women’s motivation for crime. At the same time, women sociologists who authored the two most comprehensive 1930s studies on women’s crime – Zhou Shuzhao and research team Liu Qingyu and Xu Huifang – pushed back on the connections between biology and physiology in relation to crime for both women and men. Instead, they argued unconditionally for the social causes of all crime and particular social challenges for Chinese women. Their methodologies and frameworks were especially influenced by work from the Chicago school of sociology, a department which itself produced a number of prominent women social scientists. This article traces the transnational conversation on women’s crime in Republican China through the work of U.S. sociologists who were cited by Zhou, Liu, and Xu; research by Chinese men sociologists, especially prominent sociologist Yan Jingyue; and finally, Zhou, Liu, and Xu’s own rebuttals, conclusions, and contributions in developing a theory of Chinese women’s crime. By also comparing the work of Chinese and U.S. women social scientists, this article argues that both groups pushed back, with varying strategies, on their men colleagues’ inordinate focus on criminalized women’s biology and physiology. In this way, both Chinese and U.S. women social scientists spoke into a largely male-dominated conversation and provided novel theories of women’s crime as women themselves.

Trade shocks, industrial growth, and electrification in early 20th-century China

How does demand from the industrial sector promote the diffusion of electricity? Using newly digitized data on Chinese power plants from 1912 to 1935, we examine the impact of a trade shock, which protected the domestic manufacturing sector from import competition, on the adoption of electricity. To establish a causal relationship, we exploit time variations in imported manufactured goods caused by China's unexpected recovery of tariff autonomy in 1929 and cross-sectional variations in local access to treaty ports. We find that the reduction in manufactured imports resulted from the tariff shock led to the expansion of the local electricity sector. Further analysis suggests that the booming domestic industrial sector rather than population agglomeration was the key channel for the effect.

Modern Financial Development during Natural Disasters: Evidence from the Early 20th Century China

Modern Financial Development during Natural Disasters: Evidence from the Early 20th Century China

Forensic Pluralism and the Dead Body in Early 20th-Century China.

Modern forensic medicine was introduced into China during the first decades of the 20th century. The members of China's first generation of medicolegal experts were soon advocating that medical expertise play a greater role in police and judicial officials' investigations of suspicious death and homicide cases. While forensic reform in China had parallels with developments in other contemporary societies in which physicians were pushing for a greater role in the law, this process unfolded in China in unique ways, against the backdrop of an older tradition of forensic science that had developed under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Central to this tradition was the Records on the Washing Away of Wrongs, a handbook of forensic practice that was written in the 13th century and saw numerous editions and expansions over subsequent centuries. Death investigation in early 20th-century China was defined by "forensic pluralism," a situation in which the different body examination methods and standards of forensic proof associated with the Washing Away of Wrongs and modern forensic medicine were both accepted by officialdom and society. This article untangles the complexities of forensic practice during this period through the rather unexceptional exchange over a case of suspected drowning that occurred between local officials in Hebei province and Lin Ji (1897-1951), director of the Beiping University Medical School Institute of Legal Medicine. This case reveals the different regimes of forensic knowledge and practice that were used in China during this period as well as the sites at which they interacted.

From "female bodhisattva with a she-devil face" to "female general of the anarchist party": Biographies of Louise Michel in Early 20th-Century China

From "female bodhisattva with a she-devil face" to "female general of the anarchist party": Biographies of Louise Michel in Early 20th-Century China

The formation of ‘gong-yi’ in modern China: A philological perspective

The Chinese term ‘ gong-yi’ (公益), which is usually translated as ‘philanthropy’ or ‘public interest’ in English, has long been regarded as a new modern concept which originated from Japan in the early 20th century. This study, however, finds that it appeared in China no later than the middle of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, its usage had three major meanings: economic benefits; national interests; and local public affairs. The ‘national interest’ meaning of the term was most likely introduced into Japan and was brought back into China in the late 19th century along with the new thinking of the Meiji Restoration. ‘ Gong-yi’, with its newly coined meaning, was used as an ideological term to express ideas about reformation in early 20th century China. It was in this capacity that the Chinese ‘ gong-yi’ was swiftly popularized and often referred to the reformation as national interest. At the same time, the denotation of ‘ gong-yi’ was sometimes ambiguous, wavering between ‘the nation’ and ‘the local’. It reflected the volatile conflict between the state and the local over legitimate control of ‘public’ resources in a transitional period. In my view, the question of to what extent this interlock between the emergence of modern ‘ gong-yi’ and the nation’s modern transition might have shaped the historical formation of Chinese citizenship yields insights for the investigation of the nature of Chinese philanthropy and its essence in the public spirit.

The role of institutional entrepreneurship in the development of accounting in the early 20th century in China

Relying on the theory of institutional entrepreneurship and Seo and Creed model of human praxis, this article delivers insights on how three institutional entrepreneurs, Xie, Xu, and Pan, mobilised resources (e.g. political position, education, and social connections) to organise an emerging profession and change the way accounting was practised in early 20th century China. Despite tensions among the three institutional entrepreneurs, their collective contribution moved accounting practice to a new level of sophistication to help facilitate economic reform and business development in China. This study illustrates how the accounting entrepreneurs relied on their beliefs to strive for accounting reform and adapt accounting practice to the demands of a changing institutional environment within economic reform. This research enhances knowledge on an important period of accounting history in China, considered to be the beginning of modern accounting development, as well as adding knowledge on accounting development from a human praxis perspective.

Theology of Religions and Intertextuality: A Case Study of Christian–Confucian and Islamic–Confucian Dialogue in the Early 20th-Century China

In this paper, I will propose an intertextual theology of religions from a non-Western cultural perspective through the works in The True Light Review, an official magazine of Chinese Baptist churches, and Yue Hua, a prominent and long-lived Muslim magazine. My aim is to show that the religious discourses in these Chinese religious periodicals inform us of an alternative understanding of literary construction of religious plurality and challenge the current versions of theology of religions. With the concept of intertextuality, the differentiation and integration of religious identities indicates that language-constituted realities are multi-dimensional and multi-directional. In some respects, religious believers would like to differentiate themselves in the search for an authentic and meaningful life, but, they are nonetheless already interconnected and interrelated. In some other respects, they approach and embrace each other for integration to assert a common identity among religions in that area, but that could transform their religions with new meaning. Our case study will also further theological reflection of the nature of Christian life in predominantly non-Christian societies as an intertextual religious reality.

A „Nóra-jelenség” és az ibsenizmus szerepe a 20. századi kínai dráma fejlődésében

The 19th-century Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen had an unparalleled,posthumous impact on the development of modern Chinese drama. How isit possible that he could influence the literature of a country so remote inspace and so different in its literary traditions? History is a key factor in thisstory. Early 20th century China was at the threshold of taking radical measures in reforming its society, and she was badly in need of a supporting ideology. Ibsen was a thinker and dramatist who, by means of presenting acutesocial problems in his plays, deeply influenced the society of his age. Hedid so in a realistic way and with the help of a clear language, both of whichfactors extremely appealed to modern Chinese intellectuals. It can be stated that it was to a great extent through Ibsen’s plays, mostimportantly through Nora, that modern Chinese intellectuals discovered thelong-range possibilities lying in the adoption of Western dramatic form,namely, transforming minds. Nora stirred the pond water of Chinese society,and came to symbolize the rebellion of the ‘Free Individual’: something that had no precedent whatsoever in China but what has long been in theair. Modern Chinese playwrights began to imitate Ibsen with great fervour,resulting in the flourishing of the social problem play, featuring brave andmodern ‘Chinese Noras’. Although advanced thinkers soon had to realize thatthe ideas of Ibsen cannot simply be adopted but must first be modified to beable to credibly represent contemporary Chinese social, cultural and moralreality, the ‘Nora-phenomenon’ and Ibsenism played a vital role in setting offthe literary and cultural reform in early 20th-century China.

Contemporary Chinese Philosophy in the Chinese-Speaking World: An Overview

This article endeavors to provide an overview on contemporary Chinese philosophy. The focus is on contemporary Chinese philosophy in the Chinese-speaking world, particularly after the 1950s, although contemporary Chinese philosophy both in its inception in early 20th century China and in the English-speaking world are also explored. In addition to designating separate genres of contemporary Chinese philosophical interpretation and construction, including some of the major issues under discussion and debate as well as giving attention to several representative scholars, this article also teases out the historical contexts in which those issues emerged and developed, and it highlights the salient feature of contemporary Chinese philosophy in general.