HIS 251 Spring 2002

Reading Guide on Modern China 2

Leung, 3/26/2002

Late-19th-Century and Early-20th-Century China:

Empirical Information and Interpretive Issues

Reading From R. Vohra, Ch. 4

Please refer to the first reading guide on China in this course for comments on the importance of reading your material for empirical information as well as for points of view and scholarly interpretations.

The information - and the historical interpretations in chapter 4 of Vohra's book, together with the data that we have already garnered in the latter part of chapter 3, forms the foundation for our understanding of the interpretive framework of the next two lecture-discussions making up two-thirds of the next segment of our course. The title that I have given to the first of these two lecture-discussions, "From Reform to Revolution"(see Joshi website for outline) implies that in the last decade of the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th, China, or "the Chinese," finally turned from a reform mentality/mode/strategy to a revolutionary one. In this sense, the title of the lecture-discussion is just another way of expressing the meaning of the title of Vohra's chapter 4: "1895-1911, China Turns to Revolution." For those of you who are a bit more venturesome and who would want to build a deeper foundation for the study of modern China - should you go on to other courses in this subject area - I would also recommend strongly that you read the documents and explanations from W. Theodore de Bary et al, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition (Cline Library), vol. II, pp. 59-71; 79-86; 87-97; 100-121. In any case, Vohra provides answers to the questions/topics/issue that I pose in the sections below, and if you dig out these answers and organize them, understand them, and remember them (for the most part, anyway) you will have done well in learning from this reading what you should be able to learn.
 

In the earlier segment of this course that dealt with the history of China, I introduced in one of the lectures the notion that there were three modalities in which China (i.e, the Chinese government and to some extent, the people generally in Chinese society) responded to and attempted to deal with the repeated crises that they faced in the latter two thirds of the 19th century, namely, "rebellion," "restoration," and "reform". I said at the time that this implied that there was another, a fourth, "R" to come, and that it would be "Revolution." So, here we now come to this, the "Fourth R," the final modality of dealing with the by-now chronic and chronically unresolved crises. At the end of the day, our job would be to evaluate historically how effective this fourth mode was in dealing with China's crises, and what it achieved.

It is interpretively meaningful to ask, at this point, the question: "If `China' turned toward `Revolution' as the fourth modality of response to crises in the 1890s to the 1900s, why?" Is it not reasonable to posit that such a turn had to result from the failure, or at least the short-falling, of other previous modalities? In that case, it becomes sensible, as we seek to understand what this change toward Revolution as the fourth mode of response is all about and what it means historically, to take as a point of departure the examination of how and why the previous modalities - and especially "reform," - had failed. This means that we have to go back for a bit to chapter 3 to find Vohra's answer to and explanation of these questions.

Another rudimentary question that we have to ask and answer, I think, is: "What's the difference between `reform' and `revolution'?" If we are saying that the mode of China's response to the crises and problems it faced was changing "from reform to revolution," what really do we mean by this, not only in empirical terms - that is, in terms of what happened - but in conceptual terms as well? What, then, are "revolutionary" characteristics? What make the mode of response that we discern in the latter part of this period - that is, as developments move toward 1911 - "revolutionary" rather than "reformist"?

On p. 67, Vohra observes that one of the most significant effects of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, or, more precisely, China's defeat in that war, was that it demonstrated that "thirty-five years of modernization programs carried out half-heartedly in the context of the traditional political-social context had proved [to be] a total failure." If Vohra is correct, then we have at least half of our answer to the previous question here, and we can then argue that the turning point in this process is the Sino-Japanese War and its aftermath. However, let us remember, still, that what Vohra is saying is that the War and China's defeat demonstrated, or "obviated" the failure of the reform and modernization programs - he does not say, and we are not arguing, that the War caused these failures. Are we similarly arguing that, though the War may have stood as a road-marker, a "turning point," it did not, in and of itself, cause "China" to turn from reform to revolution? Think about that.

In any case, this should prompt us to work out answers to the following questions by revisiting the empirical information in chapters 3 and 4:

What are the reforms or "modernization programs" that Vohra is referring to?

How might we categorize them or organize them into areas and significance?

Were they total failures? What did they achieve, if anything? Were there more significant achievements in some areas of reform than in others? How may these discrepancies, if there were any, be explained?

Why, in general, was China's modernization program at this point a failure? What are Vohra's explanations? Are there other factors that contributed to these results that you think Vohra may have overlooked?

In what substantive and specific (not speculative, or vague, or assumptive) way did the Sino-Japanese War and China's defeat in it demonstrate or prove that China's modernization programs in the 1860s to the 1890s had failed? (In other words, don't just assume that Vohra is correct in making that connection, but explain specifically what Vohra means and what illustrates that Vohra's statement is historically correct - which specific modernization programs

were shown by the War itself to be bankrupt, and how specifically is this demonstrated?)
 

Again on p. 67, Vohra also pointed out that the end of the Sino-Japanese War also marked a point at which there was a rapid erosion of whatever little respect foreign nations, and especially the "Western powers" may have had for China.

Work out data from your reading that would help you understand and make the case for how changes and developments in China's relations with other nations in the 1895-1910 period may have affected the "turn toward revolution" as a modality of dealing with China's problems.

What were the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki? How did it illustrate the point in the paragraph above? How did the Treaty of Shimonoseki open the floodgates for nations (especially governments) other than Japan (or Japan's) to extract as much concession of privileges and "rights" (isn't the term "rights" rather ironic here?) as they could as quickly as they could?

What were the "Western" powers' attitudes and approaches toward China before the War? What were they after the War?

What specific concessions did the Western powers (and which were they?) gain from China (a) in the three years immediately after the War? (b) after 1898? © after 1900 - after the Boxer Uprising?

What "instruments" and ways and means (e.g., economic means, technological means) did the Western powers use to extract these privileges?

In what ways was the eruption of the Boxer Uprising related to the growth of the Western powers' encroachment in China?

How did the Manchu government deal with the "foreign issue" in the Boxer Uprising?

What were the terms of the Boxer Protocol?

In what ways did the Boxer interlude affect relations between China's government and the Western powers? How did that affect subsequent domestic political developments?

What effect did the "Open Door Policy" actually have?

Why was China not partitioned in 1900?

What does the situation in China reflect about the global environment of international relations at the end of the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th century - i.e., the prelude to the First World War?
 

In the very same paragraph on p. 67, Vohra made a third point - that an impact of the Sino-Japanese War was that it made clear such a significant erosion of legitimacy on the part of the Manchu government that, domestically, people became open to thinking about overthrowing it - in other words, "revolution." However, after the Sino-Japanese War and before the 1911 Revolution, there was a rather extended and agonizing experiment with radical reform - that is, reform that is no longer sharing the premises of the "Self-Strengthening Reforms" of the 1860s, but also had not moved into the orbit of revolutionary thought.

What did "radical reform" mean? How, and in what specific ways, was radical reform different from previous modes of reform? (Compare and contrast.)

Who were the radical reformers? What formed the core of their shared reform thinking? How were they - and their ideas - different from one another?

What instruments and means were used to disseminate these radical reform ideas and values?

What happened in 1898? How did the reformers avail themselves of the opportunity to bring about the reforms they desired? What were the results?

Who were the enemies of the reforms? What exactly was the mentality of these adversaries of reform?

Who led and managed the "Conservative reforms" after 1898 - indeed, after 1900? How did this oxymoronic entity work out? What were Zhang Zhidong's ideas? Who else beside him took part in and even "guided" the last-ditch reform programs of the Manchu government?

What were these reform programs? In what areas? (Enumerate the changes in the military, in education - structure and idea; in intellectual construction, and in institutional and constitutional ways.)
 

Who were the Boxers? What's their "beef"? With whom? How were they organized?

What was the Chinese (Manchu) government's way of dealing with the Boxers?

What happened in 1899-1901 in so far as the rebellion is concerned?

Conceptually, what do you think is the significance of the Boxers in the history of modern rebellions in China? (For instance, how might you think of this episode in relation to the Taipings or the revolutionaries of 1911?)
 

What were the organizational beginnings of the revolutionary movement?

Who were the leaders? Who were Sun Yat-sen? Huang Xing? Cai Yuanpei? Chen Tianhua? Zhang Taiyan? Qiu Jin? Yuan Shikai?

What was the ideology of the revolutionaries made up of? How did it differ from the ideas of the radical reformers?

How did the "Constitutionalist reformers" relate to the revolutionary movement before 1911?

In what ways did foreign impact and encroachment affect and relate to the revolutionary movement? What were the foreign powers' attitude and stance toward China's revolutionaries and their movement?

What were the milestones in the development of the revolutionary movement and the process of actually bringing down the Manchu government?