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.It was even more shocking because Chinese officials had long perceived Japan as an insignificant island on the periphery of Chinese civilization.In this chapter I outline the basis of the 1895 protest movement and the political typhoon it provoked, and I try to show why this period marks the origins of modern politics and culture in China.What “modern” suggests here is the first of a series of calls to enlarge political participation, a process that involved rethinking how the Chinese state should be structured.InThe rise of Confucian radicalism13addition, as Kang Youwei (1858–1927) was aware, the older generation of political leaders had little sense of the enormous economic, technological, and cultural dynamism of Western civilization, the cut-throat rivalries of the nation-state system, the relentless nature of progress, or the need to reform China’s most fundamental institutions to employ national energies more efficiently.The movement Kang spearheaded looked backward to Chinese tradition for sources of inspiration, sideways to Europe and Japan for models that could be utilized, and forward, against its own original intentions, to the overthrow of a dynasty that proved unable to reform quickly enough.1 Kang and his generation of Confucian radicals wished to combine loyalty to the Confucian values and worldview that they had been raised on with loyalty to the emperor; loyalty to the emperor with loyalty to a reformed Qing system; and loyalty to the Qing with loyalty to the nation, the Chinese people as a whole.They began to ask new questions: Who was the nation? How were the Chinese people to be defined? Did loyalty to the nation mean support for strong government? What kind of government?“Confucian radicalism” – though it may sound like an oxymoron –signifies strident calls for thorough-going reform based on readings of the Confucian classics and made by men (women had not yet found a political voice) educated in the Confucian tradition.If these men called for a measure of Westernization, it was a program none the less rooted in a Confucian view of the world.They wanted China to become strong, standing unchallenged among the sovereign powers.They wanted, in other words, to be able to pick and choose what foreign ideas they would adopt.However, in the rapid expansion of imperialist threats against China after 1895 the fear was that these foreign powers would “carve up China like a melon” and even that the Chinese people might perish.Hopes and fears thus meshed to produce an atmosphere of unimaginable tension.In 1895, though, even the younger generation of educated Chinese gentlemen still had few doubts about the fundamental legitimacy of their culture.Their immediate political challenge was that mere examination candidates, even experienced, mature men like themselves, did not have the right to petition the emperor.Neither the emperor nor the Empress Dowager, Cixi, who actually controlled the court, saw Kang’s petition, since Beijing officials confiscated it.It was lengthy (nicknamed the “ten-thousand-word memorial”), and its real point went beyond the demand for continued resistance against Japan, significant as that was.Kang and his cohorts were demanding a fundamental reordering of the entire political system.A few of the most insightful of the younger gentry understood something of the power of national unity.Tang Caichang, soon to become one of Kang’s followers, wrote his brother in 1895: “You cannot stand alone as a scholar and despise them [the peasants] as the ignorant masses.If you first gain their hearts, in the future when war comes, you will have help in the midst of confusion.”2 Kang’s petition called upon the government to promote industry; modernize the army; build railroads, a postal system, and a14The road to revolution, 1895–1919merchant marine; employ “good men,” even using the talents of the Overseas Chinese (mostly lower-class merchants but technically and commercially skilled); and improve agriculture through training schools.Today, such reforms may not sound particularly radical, but they envisioned a much more active government than any China had seen before.The petition did not shrink from calling on the government to raise taxes.More tellingly, the reformers envisioned an active citizenry: people not just dedicated to their families and local community good but to fueling China’s growth and progress [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]