Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Abstract: China’s early modernization process began within, and ran throughout, the colonial system. Yet in the course of this process, differing perceptions of the domestic and international situation led to a split in positions among people within China, and this was especially evident in the “new vs. old dispute” at the Hunan Current Affairs School (Shiwuxuetang). The Current Affairs School emerged in the context of China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895: it was an educational reform achievement born of Hunan gentry of Hunan origin (Wang Xianqian, Tan Sitong, Xiong Xiling, etc.) and Hunan officials (Chen Baozhen, Xu Renzhu, Huang Zunxian, etc.) “all participating in reform,” actively promoting the Hunan Reform Movement; it was also a major accomplishment of Hunan, compelled by external forces yet seeking reform from within, and it conformed to the characteristic circumstances of China’s early modernization. However, with Liang Qichao’s appointment as Chief Instructor of Chinese at the Hunan Current Affairs School, and with his political propositions and Kang Youwei’s reform ideas being introduced, divisions in reformist stances among different figures gradually became apparent, forming a so-called “new” radical camp and a so-called “old” “conservative” camp, and tending toward intensification, ultimately irreconcilable. The Hunan Current Affairs School did not exist for long, yet it entangled an exceptionally complicated set of personnel and relationship disputes in modern Chinese history, and the aftershocks surrounding the school’s “new vs. old dispute” did not end with the conservatives’ temporary sweeping victory. In fact, what is reflected behind the Hunan Current Affairs School’s “new vs. old dispute” is the complexity of China’s modernization process both longitudinally and laterally: it has its basic developmental pattern, yet it is difficult to specify and hard to reach a definitive conclusion. This is the historical reference of the Hunan Current Affairs School’s “new vs. old dispute” for China’s promotion of the modernization development process.
Keywords: modernization perspective; Hunan Current Affairs School; new vs. old dispute; Reform Movement
Modernization refers to a systemic, overall, yet highly complex continuous process in which various social elements undergo transformation into something new; “new” here means a developmental direction containing positive factors. In his famous work Modernization: Protest and Change, Israeli scholar S. N. Eisenstadt points out: the modernization process is often accompanied by phenomena such as the disintegration or even collapse of social structures, resistance or even regression occurring in alternation or simultaneously; there is both diversity of patterns and universality, but the overall direction is to produce an institutional structure that can continuously “accommodate” various social changes inherent in the modernization process[1]—this is precisely the connotation of “bringing forth the new.”
China’s modernization process is a typical Asia-Africa style one: it began within, and ran throughout, the colonial system, and finally continued to advance along the road to sovereign independence, concretely manifested from the Opium War between China and Britain in 1840 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and a series of subsequent explorations and reforms of social institutional structures. This process began with economic issues, then gradually shifted to issues in politics, society, culture, and other domains; from surface to depth, from shallow to deep; from implements to institutions, from theory to practice; from passive to active, from imitation to exploration—China’s modernization process thus became unstoppable and continues to this day.
The process of transformation of China’s early feudal social system—namely early modernization or the modernizing process—is the concentrated embodiment of the complexity of China’s modernization process, and even more a precious historical resource for later modernization development, of great significance. In fact, the modernization issue can only first be a historical issue, and only second a real-world issue. That is to say, to seek a way out of the real bottlenecks of modernization development, one must first find a path from within the historical context of modernization; this likewise accords with the Marxist historical materialist view of history. Yet in practical operations, many historical studies often depart from this layer of context, and study historical events of a certain period solely from a synchronic angle without connecting diachronic trends, or solely from a one-sided standpoint without broadly accepting the views of various schools, causing a disjunction between historical facts and the historical environment, and between figures and social relations—this is undoubtedly one-sided and undesirable. Due to limitations of sources and the scarcity of research, the currently few studies on the Hunan Current Affairs School mostly fall into this category.
The Hunan Current Affairs School formally entered the preparatory stage starting with the memorials Public Petition Requesting the Establishment of a Current Affairs School and Regulations for Opening the Hunan Current Affairs School, drafted by Jiang Dejun in January 1897, headed by Wang Xianqian, and signed by Xiong Xiling, Jiang Dejun, and others and submitted to the then Governor of Hunan Chen Baozhen; it was formally abolished in the first lunar month of 1899 when it was renamed Qiushi Academy, meaning that in name it existed for only a little over two years. In fact, from the school’s official opening on November 29, 1897, until the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform on September 21, 1898, the victory of Hunan’s conservative forces, and the subsequent successive removals from office of Chen Baozhen and others—marking the school’s existence in name only—it existed for only ten months in total. However, it was precisely within these brief ten months or two years that, centered on the Current Affairs School, an exceptionally complicated set of personnel relationships was implicated; in particular, what later generations call the “new vs. old dispute” is the most eye-catching, yet its rights and wrongs are also quite difficult to judge definitively (discussed in detail later).
As for the historical status and significance of the Hunan Current Affairs School after its founding, earlier discussions are already fully detailed[2], and will not be repeated here; but regarding the issue of the “new vs. old dispute” at the Current Affairs School, previous research often focused on linking this dispute with the school’s cancellation or the early decline of Hunan’s reform situation[3]—that is, studying it as a matter of cause and effect—while neglecting to explain theoretically its relationship with China’s early modernization development pattern, namely the deeper relationship between the part and the whole, which is indeed regrettable. More regrettably, as Mao Haijian has pointed out, most scholars, when discussing the history of the Hundred Days’ Reform, are often led by the nose by the discourse system of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao; based on the historical materials they left behind, they “construct the basic viewpoints, narrative structure, and popular understanding of the current history of the Hundred Days’ Reform”[4], which inevitably involves being misled. For example, in the view of radicals such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, the Hundred Days’ Reform represented the correct direction of historical development, and thus meant using “new policies” to replace the “old statutes and old laws,” and those who obstructed it were naturally unforgivable; but in the view of conservatives, the Hundred Days’ Reform was not a matter of new versus old, but a matter of “obedience versus rebellion” (“Policies the court ought to implement cannot be called new; learning that we ought to uphold cannot be called old”; “What they do is rebellion, not new; what we contend for is obedience, not old”), and the so-called “new vs. old dispute” was merely that “their clique, moreover, clings to new vs. old as rhetoric, wishing, under the name of obstructing new policies, to frame those of differing views,” a trick that made “from court to countryside, none dare speak”[5], with sinister intent. One cannot say it is without reason. Another example: the same Liang Qichao, after ending his 1903 trip to America, abandoned the earlier budding tendency of anti-Manchu and racial revolutionary thought and began advocating “protecting the emperor”; yet after ending his 1919 trip to Europe, he again abandoned his earlier ideas of “science omnipotent” and Western learning supremacy, and instead advocated that “China cannot emulate Europe,” and was at one time regarded as the likes of Yan Fu who were reversing the course of history[6]. With such continual battling of “today’s me” against “yesterday’s me,” back and forth, which one should be taken as correct?
Therefore, the “new” and “old” in the “new vs. old dispute” can only be a historical issue, to be viewed with the perspective of historical development; it must neither be equated with a political issue, nor degraded into an issue of evaluating the parties involved. Of course, these issues are all contained within the historical issue. Then, using a historical perspective to examine the relationship between the part and the whole, one may further derive the basic pattern of historical development.
Thus, as proposed at the beginning of this article, what “new vs. old” refers to here should take whether it conforms to the direction of modernization development as the fundamental criterion: if it accords, it is new; if not, it is old. And modernization is a dynamic process; the comparative relationship between change and non-change, the tug-of-war, constitutes the basic elements of this movement. Therefore, the criteria for distinguishing “new vs. old” can be expressed as: to change when one should change is new; not to change when one should change is old. From this one can further infer: to demand change when one should not change is too new, or radical; to remain unchanged when one should not change is not conservatism, but steadiness. Here, “should change” and “should not change” are historical judgments; “changed” and “did not change” are objective facts. In addition, there is the subjective wish of the historical actors, “wanting to change” or “wanting not to change.” The difficulty of judging the “new vs. old dispute” may, on the one hand, to a large extent be due to commentators’ lack of a good theoretical distinction among these three, leading to confusion and misjudgment; on the other hand, it may lie in the fact that the boundaries of “change vs. non-change” and “new vs. old” are themselves mixed and intertwined, interacting with each other, and are relative rather than so clear-cut.
However, historical issues are by no means so simple; one must never treat them as “self-evident.” Although this article strictly distinguishes among the later generations’ historical judgments, the objective reality of the time, and the subjective wishes of the people of the time, and also raises the ambiguity of the boundaries of “change vs. non-change” and “new vs. old,” once one considers the “trap of history”—that is, the limitations of the conditions of the time and of individual understanding—the reliability of historical judgment is hard to guarantee. A 100% correct historical judgment is itself a pseudo-proposition in historiography. Therefore, this article has no intention of drawing a conclusion on the issue of the “new vs. old dispute” at the Hunan Current Affairs School, or of being sensationally original; it only wishes to take this opportunity to use a small case to glimpse the larger picture, presenting the rough outline of China’s early modernization development pattern and showing the hardships of the modernization process. The so-called “new vs. old dispute” at the Hunan Current Affairs School may be a small matter, and more than 120 years have passed, but it can illuminate the larger, providing historical reference for China’s transformation under the “new normal.”
When dealing with past events, people easily bring the cleverness of hindsight and form preconceived notions; this sense of intellectual superiority accords with general human psychology, but when making judgments it easily confuses cause and effect. Those who study modern Chinese history often treat late Qing politics with a critical eye; the reasons are sufficient and not without sense, but that sense of superiority easily makes people too harsh in blaming people and too impatient in blaming events, and one’s view of problems inevitably loses objectivity and becomes somewhat unrealistic. Of course, even those who are aware of this are not necessarily safe from still falling into the hard-to-guard-against trap of history. This may be the essence of what Mr. Chen Yinke called “able to correct the bad habit of forced analogies, and possess sympathetic understanding.”
The first to study modern Chinese history (early modern history) was Mr. Jiang Tingfu. But driven by a strong awareness of national peril, he believed that in the twenty years after the Opium War, the Qing government’s “numb indifference and arrogant self-importance,” its failure to learn lessons from defeat and strive to catch up, was the “fatal wound of the nation.” Thus, “the Chinese nation lost twenty precious years”[7]. If one considers those twenty years within the brief hundred years of modernization history, they were indeed extremely precious. Yet if one considers the “stimulus–response” theory, twenty years is not very long for a country closed to the outside world for several hundred years, with several thousand years of agrarian civilization, vast territory but a backward worldview; the Qing government’s “numb indifference” and weak sense of crisis are not incomprehensible. As Jiang Tingfu went on to point out: “The root of unequal treaties lies partly in our ignorance, partly in the fact that our legal system had not reached the level of modern civilization,” and thus the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, in the Qing government’s eyes, was “regarded as their diplomatic success”[8]. But this kind of “spiritual victory” would ultimately require a price, and that price required time; and that price was the ensuing internal troubles and external threats: the Taiping Rebellion, and the Second Opium War.
What is true for the state is also true for localities; only, localities have their particularities and cannot be lumped together. Hunan, located inland, surrounded by mountains on three sides, with extremely inconvenient transportation, plus the constraints of cultural factors, saw its modernization process come another thirty years later compared with the general national climate of China at that time. “So when the Self-Strengthening Movement was making progress in the coastal regions, the Hunan people were still in deep sleep; more than thirty years of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1860 to 1894) was for the Hunan people almost entirely unfamiliar”[9]. Intriguingly, the only force in China at the time that had a way to suppress the Taiping rebels was precisely the Xiang Army led by Zeng Guofan, or the “Xiang Braves.” Just as the Qing government did not treat the defeat in the Opium War as defeat, the victory of the Xiang Army meant that the Hunan people’s sense of crisis was not stimulated; instead they continued in “numb indifference and arrogant self-importance” for a full thirty-plus years. “Speaking of battle achievements, one says Xiang Army; speaking of loyalty and righteousness, one says Xiang gentry”—this pride of the Hunan people and the psychological mechanism embodied by the Qing government in the first twenty years may perhaps be of the same mold, and likewise required a price; that price was the later Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895.
When the Sino-Japanese War first began, although Li Hongzhang’s Huai Army repeatedly suffered defeats in Liaodong, the Qing government still pinned its hopes on the old “Xiang Braves,” deciding to re-employ them to subdue the “paltry little country” Japan that they inwardly despised. The Hunan side also rose with high spirits; the then governor Wu Dacheng actively responded, determined to win, recruiting Xiang troops with former Xiang Army generals Wei Guangtao, Chen Shi, Li Guangjiu, Yu Huen, and others, and opening a “Hall for Seeking the Worthy” to attract talent. For a time, the province overflowed with the passion of certain victory. But then the Xiang Army’s defeats—at Niuzhuang in the first defeat, Yingkou in the second, and Tianzhuangtai in the third—within six days shocked the entire country; national morale accordingly plunged into a low ebb, and the sense of loss formed by the huge gap naturally hit the Hunan people first. From then on, among the Hunan people, “their empty pride and unapproachable air also suddenly collapsed”[10]. This price finally brought Hunan province, in thought, up to where the Qing government had been more than thirty years earlier, and it seized this opportunity of defeat to be the first to launch a reform movement, for self-strengthening, for self-salvation, and for recovering the lost face.
However, as a provincial locality, Hunan’s reform movement, compared with the national Self-Strengthening Movement, had, besides consistency, its own particularities. The consistency was that both began from the level of implements, “learning the superior techniques of the barbarians,” and their purpose was also to “control the barbarians” with raised eyebrows and pride; at the same time, they also gradually, more or less, imitated Western systems in education or culture by establishing schools to cultivate talent proficient in “Western arts.” For example, since Chen Baozhen assumed office as governor of Hunan in October 1895, the Hunan people gradually broke through their earlier psychological barriers. Beginning with the official-led mining of mineral mountains and the establishment of a Mining Affairs General Bureau, privately run modern industrial enterprises opened by the gentry gradually rose thereafter, including the “Hunan Water Conservancy Company” founded by Liang Zhaorong and others, the “Hunan Chemical Manufacturing Company” founded by Zhang Benkui and others, the Hefeng Match Company founded by Wang Xianqian, Zhang Zutong, and others, the Baoshancheng Machine Manufacturing Company founded by Wang Xianqian, Huang Ziyuan, Jiang Dejun, Zhang Zutong, Xiong Xiling, and others, and so on; later, officials and gentry together opened up water and land transportation, set up steamship companies, and advocated that the Guangdong–Hankou Railway pass directly through Hunan[11]. From manufacturing for daily livelihood needs to infrastructure construction, Hunan province took on an entirely new look. Mr. Fan Wenlan considered Hunan at this time to be “the most full of vitality province in the country”[12], which is not an overstatement. Under such subtle influence, the Hunan populace gradually shifted from conservatism toward openness, laying the material foundation and mass foundation for Hunan’s further reforms in the future, and at the same time becoming the prelude to the Hunan people’s later radical or revolutionary image in modern history.
The particularities of Hunan’s reform movement can mainly be attributed to two points: first, the Hunan people’s unique local-national character of toughness, boldness, and resoluteness; second, the advantage of latercomers overtaking. Although the first point about local-national character may sound rather intangible, it cannot be ignored; it can even be considered a necessary condition for Hunan’s reform movement to overtake later, otherwise it is hard to explain why only Hunan could open a new path and stand out among provinces with similar conditions. Character determines destiny; to some extent, it seems hard to refute.
At that time, the Hunan people’s image nationwide was that they were “long known as conservative.” This was not only a consensus among people within the province, but had almost become a cultural label unique to the Hunan people, widely accepted from ordinary people outside the province to central-level officials. Scholars have also discussed this at length; here a few examples are cited at random. Guo Songtao, who because he went abroad and dealt with foreigners was, while alive, regarded as someone whom “the Hunan people were most ashamed to associate with,” lamented that Hunan officials were stubborn and unenlightened, encouraging the people to be xenophobic (“Those who can speak to reject foreigners are all good citizens”)[13]. The scholar Wang Kaiyun even wrote a couplet mocking him: “Born outside his kind, rising above the rest, not tolerated in the age of Yao and Shun; Unable to serve men, how can he serve ghosts—why must he leave the land of his parents?” Liang Qichao, an outsider to the province, openly said in the Public Notice of the Hunan Current Affairs School that the Hunan people were conservative, and no one objected: “Our Hunan opens by gentry spirit; the empire has traded for decades, and Westerners’ footprints crisscross China, yet they do not dare step more than half a pace beyond Chu land… Thus within seas and beyond seas all take ‘conservative’ as the label for Hunan gentry.”[14] The Hunan people rejected steamship navigation, and were so stubbornly resolute that even with the authority of the eminent minister of “Tongzhi Restoration,” Xiang Army leader Zeng Guofan, after his death in the 11th year of Tongzhi (1872), when his coffin was transported by steamship from Jinling (Nanjing), it still could not enter Changsha. Based on such considerations, the seasoned Zhang Zhidong wrote in late 1896 to remind Chen Baozhen, who had not long taken office and was leading Hunan’s reform movement: “Among the Hunan people, seeing foreigners is like seeing enemies.” Although “in recent years the fashion has gradually shifted. Yet Hunan’s gentry spirit has always been firm, and popular customs always strong. Those who cling to absurd arguments and conservatism, I fear, are still not few. Though there are recommended gentry gentlemen who understand current affairs, I fear they also cannot universally persuade, guide, and prevent. If there is any incident, it will surely pull the overall situation along.”[15] From this it can be seen that the Hunan people’s conservative image was nationwide, and closely related to xenophobia. Yet in recent years some scholars have pointed out “the reality and myth of modern Hunan xenophobia,” such as Luo Zhitian. He believes that according to the statistical data in Lü Shiqiang’s The Reasons for Chinese Officials’ and Gentry’s Anti-Christianity (1860–1874) and other statements, the number of anti-Christian incidents in Hunan province was in fact quite limited, far below the national average, while the myth lies in the Hunan people’s xenophobic reputation being famous both in China and abroad, showing a huge mismatch between name and reality. This may have been because Hunan’s fierce folkways were strongly deterrent externally, or because of geographical closure and inconvenient transportation, or because foreigners found it difficult to evangelize and thus helped form it; but in any case, whether Hunan was open or not seems not necessarily connected with xenophobia[16]. This article holds a negative view of this, for two reasons: first, the number of anti-Christian incidents is not persuasive; what should truly be persuasive is the ratio of Hunan people’s anti-Christian incidents to local foreign missionary events, and this ratio is still lacking. At the same time, according to Zhang Pengyuan’s statistics and description of “Western missionaries’ entry into Hunan and their activities,” the earliest formal opening of missions in Hunan by various foreign church denominations was after 1898, and mainly concentrated in the early twentieth century; and it was not until the early twentieth century that the Hunan people’s xenophobic attitude slowly eased[17]. Second, reputation, no matter what, can reflect a certain reality; so before there is sufficient evidence to falsify it, it is hard to believe that the Hunan people, whose conservative and xenophobic image was so widely accepted, were merely a “mismatch between name and reality”—this possibility is not great.
A “mismatch between name and reality” can also have another explanation, and Tan Sitong had already seen this long ago. Conservatism was one end of the Hunan people’s local-national character, but at the same time, precisely because they were so firmly conservative, they also had a strong tendency toward reform and even radicalism—this is the oppositional transformation of the two sides of things. As the saying goes, “Of the ministers and generals of the Restoration, nine out of ten are from Huguang and Hunan”; since Xianfeng, those who walked at the forefront of history, from thinkers to practitioners, were often precisely Hunan people. Thus Tan said: “Hunan alone is famed on the globe for loathing foreign affairs,” but “As for speaking of the new today, is it not only our Hunan? Is it not only our Hunan?” “How it is that name and reality do not coincide!”[18] Liang Qichao, an outsider, also noted: “Hunan is known for conservatism throughout the world, yet the first in China to speak of Western learning were Mr. Wei Yuan, Mr. Guo Songtao, and Mr. Zeng Jize, all Hunan people; therefore Hunan is in fact a region of reform.”[19] Chen Baozhen also had a similar view: “Hunan lies in the upper reaches, and its culture is extremely flourishing. As for mutual trade on the maritime frontiers, among the interior those who studied Western learning, Hunan people truly led the way.”[20] These similar views made them all determined to elevate Hunan’s reform movement into a national model, which in fact was also an important reason why Liang’s being appointed to lead instruction at the Current Affairs School could receive Tan’s strong support and be tolerated by Chen. Later it was as they wished: Hunan’s reform movement was carried out in full swing, beyond other provinces, and the so-called “new vs. old dispute” became a nationally famous event. Therefore, Hunan’s reform movement can be seen as the prelude to the Hundred Days’ Reform, including the later rise of the reform and its subsequent bankruptcy. Zhang Zhidong, who deeply understood late Qing political ways and also cherished talent and was willing to reform, wrote again to warn Chen Baozhen in a letter of May 10, 1898: “Hunan abounds in talent; advancing in learning is extremely fierce; in recent years the ethos has greatly opened, truly beyond other provinces. Only, talent loves novelty, and it seems there are also occasional abuses.”[21] This was quite prescient regarding the later reversal of the Hundred Days’ Reform.
Because discussion of the Hunan people’s local-national character is of important significance for understanding the “new vs. old dispute” at the Current Affairs School, it is worth citing recent scholarly results for further argument. Zhang Pengyuan devoted a section of space to analyze, from aspects such as historical migration, economic struggle, mixed bloodlines, geographic isolation, traditional orientation (tradition-directed), and various evaluations and investigations, the Hunan people’s strong personality traits: namely, “Once they set a goal, they press forward bravely, regardless of success or failure, disdaining to change—a kind of mule-like temper that ‘doesn’t believe in evil.’” And this regionally characteristic fierce temperament “can tend toward gradual progress, or can tend toward radicalism,” “can produce a constructive function, and at the same time can also cause destructive consequences”[22]. Deng Dahua, from the three angles of Xiang learning, geography, and history, also arrived at a similar conclusion: “This character (of the Hunan people) can both cultivate a constructive force that sweeps away the decayed, and can also cause destructive consequences for social development.”[23] Of course, these statements also seem overly ideal, because under a local-national character, each individual’s character has its own particularity and is by no means uniformly one; one must never assume so. For example, Tan Sitong and Pi Xirui, both pained into deep self-reflection by the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, but Tan Sitong—who even at the guillotine remained unflinching and shouted “To die in the right place—how joyous! How joyous!”—was obviously far more radical than the obscure Pi Xirui[24]. Liang Qichao, when writing after the reform’s failure, also admitted: “In other provinces there are no truly conservative people, and also no truly reformist people. In Hunan, truly conservative people are indeed many, and truly reformist people are also not few.”[25] This is the most observant remark. This shows that between the two extremes of Hunan people—extreme conservatism and extreme radical urgency—there are also various degrees of character distributed: some leaning conservative, some tending radical, with a high degree of differentiation; it is not simple. But overall, compared with other provinces, Hunan’s folkways may more easily cultivate radical revolutionary fighters and heroic figures that other provinces do not easily produce. A modern Chinese history confirms this.
With this general conception of the Hunan people’s local-national character, the second point—the advantage of latercomers overtaking—is actually not hard to understand. First, the experiences and lessons of more than thirty years of the Self-Strengthening Movement in the mainly coastal provinces provided rich references for the later-rising Hunan reform movement; and reform-minded officials from other provinces—such as Governor Chen Baozhen, Chen Sanli assisting his father’s administration, Education Commissioner Jiang Biao and Xu Renzhu, Provincial Judicial Commissioner Huang Zunxian, and especially Chen Baozhen, who held real power, was experienced in worldly affairs, and was sharply determined to reform—provided power guarantees and effective leadership for the rapid and smooth progress of Hunan’s reform movement. As Liu Yangyang pointed out: “Hunan was, among the provinces nationwide at that time, the only province whose main provincial officials supported reform and institutional change.”[26] Second, during his three-year tenure from 1895 to 1897, Hunan Education Commissioner Jiang Biao used new learning to select scholars from top to bottom, guiding examination candidates’ attention to practical affairs through the path of profit and emolument; “therefore (in Hunan) changes different from other provinces appeared”[27]. Jiang Biao’s early work achieved the effect of opening the ethos and enlightening the people, and truly cannot be ignored. Third, close cooperation between officials and gentry was another major important reason why Hunan could smoothly carry out the reform movement from top to bottom. People at the time noted: “The opening of Hunan’s ethos, compared with other provinces, is both divine and swift, a major turning point for China. Is it not that officials led first, and the gentry each expressed loyalty and righteousness to serve their superiors—officials and gentry as one body, above and below of one breath—that brought this about?”[28] The gentry were generally well educated, with information resources far more accessible than ordinary people, and had more contact with all aspects of the national situation. Although they perhaps could not personally participate in the flourishing of the thirty-plus years of the Self-Strengthening Movement in other provinces, their thinking could hardly avoid being influenced by it, and they even longed for it. In particular, the stimulus of defeat in the Sino-Japanese War forced them to become more flexible and open. Therefore, under the overall situation of provincial reform, they could take the lead in support and practice, founding various kinds of industrial companies. Young gentry who were young in age and long outside the province—such as Tan Sitong—wrote as early as July 1895 to his teacher Ouyang Zhonghu, expansively putting forward systematic proposals for reform in Hunan province, and proposing to start first with changing the imperial examination system, with a pilot in one county[29]. This proposal was approved by Jiang Biao in September, and under the arrangements of Tang Caichang and Ouyang Zhonghu it was ultimately implemented; the result was the Liuyang Mathematics School, and at this time Chen Baozhen and others had not yet entered Hunan—counting as Hunan’s earliest reform measure[30]. Even so, the substantive start of Hunan’s educational modernization was still more than 30 years later than provinces where the ethos had opened earlier[31].
Like Hunan’s other practical undertakings, Hunan’s modern educational reform had both the broader background of national modern educational reform and its characteristic of latercomers overtaking. In the 22nd year of Guangxu (1896), Shaanxi Governor Hu Pingshi, Vice Minister of Punishments Li Duanfen, Anhui Governor Deng Huaxi, Hanlin Academy Reader-in-Waiting Qin Shouzhang, and others all submitted memorials requesting changes to academies and the promotion of schools, explicitly stating generous treatment and strict selection, and to admit in the provincial examinations talents proficient in mathematics and current affairs. The Zongli Yamen and the Ministry of Rites approved these proposals and replied: “For the state’s cultivation of talent, it only seeks benefit for practical use, and need not adhere to a single pattern. Upon review, educating talent and emphasizing practical learning of essence and application truly are today’s urgent affairs.”[32] It can be seen that modern educational reform centered on restructuring academies and founding schools became the mainstream thought nationwide at the time; even the so-called old faction in the later “new vs. old dispute” had no objection to this, at least no blatant opposition. This was the subtle shift in the world’s hearts and minds brought by more than thirty years of the Self-Strengthening Movement, as well as the nationwide awakening after defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. The Hunan Current Affairs School was produced precisely under this trend of thought.
Just as in the few short years after Hunan province began managing industry it could touch broad fields from manufacturing daily necessities to infrastructure construction, leading the nation in the reform climate, so too did Hunan province achieve further successes in innovation in the educational and cultural fields, again walking at the forefront of the times. As Tan Sitong summarized: “Yet in Hunan’s provincial capital, there is already great expansion of new learning: there is the School Classics Society, there is the Current Affairs School, there is the Military Preparatory School, there is the Dialects School, there is the Officials’ Training Hall, there is the Defense Bureau, there is the Machine Manufacturing Company, there is the Ten-Day Gazette Office, there is the Daily Gazette Office, there are the revised curricula of various academies—culturally, it is steadily opening day by day.”[33] According to Xie Feng’s statistics, in just three years from the 22nd year of Guangxu (1896) to the 24th year (1898), Hunan province had at least 39 academies that carried out reforms of various forms, including reforming regulations, converting into schools, establishing societies, or newly establishing practical-learning academies; some academies even carried out more than one reform. Moreover, in the 24th year of Guangxu, Changsha alone had 16 various schools and 23 societies[34], among which the most renowned were of course the Hunan Current Affairs School and the Southern Study Society. Comparing with Lu Xun’s later recollections: although Zhejiang and Jiangsu were coastal, gaining the earliest access to new trends, and the Self-Strengthening Movement had been carried out for years, the people then presiding over schools were stubborn and unyielding, with a bureaucratic style (“crab-like illustrious officials”), while the populace remained very conservative; the gentry rose up to ridicule foreign affairs and Western arts, so that Lu Xun had nothing good to say about the three new-style schools or academies he attended in succession[35]. By comparison, Hunan’s modern educational reform in two or three years seems already to have overtaken the coastal provinces. Another point especially worth noting is that before the founding of the Current Affairs School—on April 22, 1897, before Jiang Biao left office—he also founded the Xiangxue Bao in Changsha (once renamed the Xiangxue Xinbao). After the founding of the Current Affairs School, in February and March 1898, the Southern Study Society and the Xiang Bao successively began lectures and publication. Tan Sitong believed there were three main “tools for making new”: first, founding schools and reforming academies; second, opening societies; third, running newspapers[36]. From this it can be seen that Hunan’s reform-minded figures understood from the outset how to use the “trinity” layout of newspapers, schools, and societies, mutually supporting each other, to carry out the reform movement (mainly “enlightening the people” and “opening the ethos”); this is rare and valuable, and also something other provinces failed to achieve.
With this foundation, although later Hunan’s educational reform enterprise suffered setbacks for a time, its step toward the new and even radicalism was already hard to reverse. Liang Qichao said: “After the Current Affairs School and the Southern Study Society opened, Hunan’s popular intelligence suddenly opened, gentry spirit greatly flourished, and private schools in various prefectures and counties sprang up one after another, societies especially flourishing… From then on, although conservatives daily worked to suppress it, the wildfires could not be burned out—spring winds blew and they sprang up again; the resolve of Hunan’s men of understanding could not be taken away.”[37] To a certain extent, this is not wrong. For example, later the mild-tempered Hunan Governor Lu Yuanding said in a 1904 memorial (30th year of Guangxu) that among the various problems of Hunan education, one was “taking intensity as the guiding aim.” And his successor, the strong-tempered Governor Duanfang, also memorialized in 1905 (31st year of Guangxu) that under the influence of new education, the Hunan people were “superficial and boastfully arrogant.” But he was relatively enlightened, believing that in Hunan, “official and private schools, with encouragement and excitement, have all talents racing forward; the spirit of their content is not weaker than the various provinces,” including the coastal Jiangsu.[38]
From “long known as conservative” to “most full of vitality” is indeed the basic characteristic of Hunan’s early modernization. But this characteristic was local to Hunan, not nationwide. This inconsistency between the local and the national seems also to foreshadow China’s internal differentiation, as well as Hunan’s leading position in the future in the internal disputes…
The Hunan Current Affairs School was one of the most important achievements of Hunan’s reform movement, with an extremely far-reaching influence on later generations. If one considers the contributions made by the teachers and students of the Current Affairs School to revolution in modern Chinese history and to China’s modernization in various respects, and considers the agitation of the late Qing political landscape by the radical faction in the school’s “new vs. old dispute,” one might even say, in a certain sense, that the establishment and abolition of the Current Affairs School initiated and promoted the process by which the Qing government was violently overthrown. This, of course, was far from something the parties could have foreseen at the outset.
The original purpose of establishing the Current Affairs School was also not as grand as its later significance. The school was originally attached to the Baoshancheng Machine Manufacturing Company founded by Wang Xianqian, Huang Ziyuan, Jiang Dejun, Zhang Zutong, Xiong Xiling, and others; the earliest proposal was put forward by Jiang Dejun to Governor Chen Baozhen in late 1896. “It was originally under the name of the Machine Manufacturing Company Current Affairs School, wishing to have apprentices taught so that they might understand manufacturing.”[39] It can be seen that its purpose was to prepare “apprentices,” cultivating talent for the company to promote craftsmanship. This proposal was deeply appreciated by Chen, and he supported it substantially. Besides approving it and naming the school the “Current Affairs School,” he also actively raised founding funds for the school: first allocating 3,000 taels of public funds from the provincial yamen, and later memorializing the Qing court several times about the school’s operating funds. But once Chen intervened, the nature of the Current Affairs School changed: in name it was still attached to the Baoshancheng Machine Manufacturing Company, but in fact it was supervised and jointly run by the officials, and thus was no longer a training institution specifically preparing apprentices for the machine manufacturing company. In addition, Xiong Xiling, Jiang Dejun, and Tan Sitong also contributed significantly to the preparatory work before the school’s founding, such as raising funds, purchasing equipment, hiring instructors, and so on.
The later “new vs. old dispute” at the Current Affairs School had its roots in selecting instructors for the school. At first, the Current Affairs School had no plan to hire a Chief Instructor of Chinese; it only wanted to seek another instructor of Western language, for the school’s use and to show the difference between the school and traditional academies. First, Jiang Dejun and Xiong Xiling planned to invite Li Weige, the chief editor of Western-language content at Shanghai’s Shiwu Bao, to enter Hunan to teach; thus Jiang went to Shanghai in June 1897 to request him, but was refused by Wang Kangnian. He then accepted Liang Qichao’s suggestion to go north to inspect Chen Jintao whom Liang recommended. But the result of the inspection was that Chen’s “accent may fear that those in Hunan cannot learn it,” so after Jiang Dejun returned to Shanghai in July, he proposed that Wang Kangnian replace Li Weige, the Western-language chief editor of Shiwu Bao, with Chen Jintao, having Chen take over Shiwu Bao’s work, while Li Weige would serve as the Western-language Chief Instructor at the Current Affairs School. Just at this time, within Shiwu Bao there arose a personnel dispute between Wang Kangnian and Huang Zunxian and Liang Qichao; Liang felt depressed and, according to Liang Qichao Nianpu Changbian, had the thought of “hiding at West Lake” to read Western books. Thus Jiang Dejun then conceived the idea of also hiring Liang as Chief Instructor of Chinese; later this idea won the agreement of Xiong Xiling, Huang Zunxian, Chen Baozhen and his son, and Wang Xianqian, Zhang Zutong, and others “also praised it.” After Liang Qichao learned of this matter, and received earnest letters from Chen Sanli, Xiong Xiling, and others, he abandoned the thought of reading at West Lake, and instead planned to enter Hunan to open up a new situation and realize his personal reform ambitions. After a series of public relations efforts, the Wang Kangnian side, unwilling though they were, still let him go. This is how Liang Qichao came to assume the post at the Current Affairs School[40].The hiring of Liang Qichao as the head Chinese instructor of the School of Current Affairs was an accidental event, yet it exerted a profound influence on the school thereafter and even on the entire Hunan Reform Movement. By contrast, Li Weige, the accompanying head instructor of Western languages, remained relatively obscure, caused no great stir, and after the Wuxu Coup was not within the scope of punishment either—an honest man who taught diligently and was not so adept at “empty talk”[41]. Thus it can be said that the various subsequent disturbances at the School of Current Affairs were directly stirred up by Liang Qichao, or at least that he was the “source of the trouble.” Later, Bin Fengyang, a student of the Yuelu Academy, filed a complaint to the academy head Wang Xianqian against Liang and others, saying: “I humbly submit that the imperial order for the provinces to establish schools is in itself a fine initiative. The people of our province, hearing the trend, were roused to rejuvenation. Now, because the selection of teachers was made with one moment of carelessness, instead of establishing learning, it has turned to ruining learning; in name it is to cultivate talent, in fact it is to destroy talent. The realm benefits, our province is harmed.”[42] Although there is some suspicion of exaggeration, setting aside value judgments and speaking only of the incident of the “new–old conflict,” the facts indeed were so. In view of the more than two years of wholehearted cooperation from top to bottom among Hunan officials and gentry, if Liang Qichao had not entered the School of Current Affairs, the “new–old conflict” very likely would not have broken out, or the dispute between the two sides would have been significantly delayed; at the very least, the history of the Hunan School of Current Affairs might thereby have been rewritten. Of course, history cannot be hypothesized in this way.
Yet when Liang Qichao arrived on November 14, the School of Current Affairs received him with great thoroughness; both “new” and “old” sides were all friendliness, showing nothing like the later drawn swords. Xiong Xiling said: “When Zhuoru first arrived, guests filled the gate, the hospitality was generous, and there was a public banquet at the school. Master Wang Yiwu (Wang Xianqian) and Zhang Yushan (Zhang Zutong) both said it must be made especially lively; they proposed hosting a banquet and staging opera at the shrine of Zeng Zhongxiang, inviting all the gentry to accompany him—the proprieties could be said to have been fully observed.”[43] This is an excerpt from a letter Xiong Xiling wrote to Chen Baozhen after the “new–old conflict” had erupted. As one of the parties involved, Chen Baozhen may have prompted Xiong to exaggerate somewhat in order to protect Liang Qichao, but it would not have been easy to fabricate so large a lie. Chen himself also said: “Last year, when the School of Current Affairs was founded, it taught both Chinese and Western learning; the regulations set by the head instructor were straightforward and upright, printed and circulated, with no one pointing to them as wrong, nor any slander of heterodoxy.”[44] Wang Xianqian later also said in The Gentry of Hunan’s Joint Memorial: “Previously, in the gentry’s public deliberation, it was proposed to wait until Liang Qichao came to Hunan this time, and then request instructions and a decision,” showing that it was a public consensus among officials and gentry.
Before Liang Qichao came, in early September he had already published in Xiangxue Xinbao the “Notice on Recruiting and Examining Students for the Newly Established School of Current Affairs,” drafted by him. The lines inside—“If our Hunan changes, then China changes; if our Hunan stands, then China survives… Now affairs grow ever more urgent; the Son of Heaven worries day and night, and only by broadly establishing schools and cultivating talent can there be a plan for self-strengthening”[45]—spoke exactly to Chen Baozhen’s desire to make Hunan Province a national model for reform, and so it was signed and published in Chen’s name. What Wang Xianqian said about “requesting instructions and a decision” on school affairs was later; thus the hospitality Liang Qichao initially received may also have been because the gentry esteemed him and regarded him as of the same way, not merely empty ceremony. It can be seen that, in the early stage of the Hunan Reform Movement, the spirit of wholehearted cooperation and unity from top to bottom among officials and gentry was still extending at this time. Peng Guoxing noticed early on that “in it, officials and gentry cooperated and all participated in reform; there was no so-called division between new and old.”[46] This is indeed so. It can also be seen from the first entrance examination of the School of Current Affairs on September 24. If officials and gentry had not responded actively and publicized it in earnest (and of course one must also count the enlightening effect of the prior reform movement on popular understanding), it likely would not have attracted more than 4,000 candidates merely by generous待遇 and prospects of advancement, because such a thing as “selling one’s soul to foreigners” was at that time still generally disfavored throughout China. The exam initially selected 53 people, and later screened out some; 41 were actually admitted[47]. After admission, on December 4 Xiangxuebao also issued “General Regulations for Opening the Hunan School of Current Affairs,” with strict rules, preferring a shortfall to indiscriminate recruitment[48]. This was in fact consistent with the urgent yet pragmatic atmosphere of reform at the time; it could not be carried through by bureaucratism. From this it can be seen that the “new–old conflict” of the School of Current Affairs, for both “new” and “old” sides, truly was not something anticipated or set up from the start.
The cause of the “new–old conflict” lay on Liang Qichao’s side. From the employment relationship, Liang Qichao first violated the employer’s (the School of Current Affairs’) original intention, changing the school’s established educational purpose—“taking Chinese learning as the foundation and also adopting the strengths of Western learning”—into the preaching and agitation of his personal political views. In a letter replying to Chen Sanli and Xiong Xiling, he originally said, “I wish to combine the strengths of both the school and the academy: those who also study Western learning will be the inner curriculum, taught by the school’s method; those who specialize in Chinese and do not study Western languages will be the outer curriculum, carried out by the academy’s method”[49]. On the surface, this still catered to the employer’s intention, giving priority to Chinese learning. The “Ten Articles of the Hunan School of Current Affairs Study Covenant” that he drafted in Shanghai also imitated the rules of the Yuelu Academy, speaking both of Zhu–Cheng cultivation and aligning quite well with the School of Current Affairs’ intention of saving the nation and preserving existence. Although the covenant’s line—“For the teaching of Confucius was not merely to govern one state, but to govern all under Heaven”—showed that he already had the intention of propagating his teacher Kang Youwei’s reform ideas, this intention was not easily noticed on the surface by outsiders, because Zhao Pu had long had the saying “half the Analects governs all under Heaven,” and the Chinese conception of “all under Heaven” is rather vague. Therefore, after discussing the covenant with the gentry, they accepted it happily; when Liang Qichao entered Hunan, they received him well, not realizing that what Liang would bring to the School of Current Affairs would be the doctrines of “Kang’s heresies.” Even the radicals among the gentry likely had not thought of it; these people merely admired Liang Qichao’s reformist manner and believed he could open up a reform situation for the School of Current Affairs[50]. Wang Xianqian, perhaps out of a desire to avoid suspicion, said later that he “saw Liang Qichao, when annotating students’ printed manuscripts, emphasize fundamentals and call him ‘Master of Nanhai,’ and only then knew he was a disciple of Kang Youwei”[51]—and this was precisely when the “old faction” had made a splash and decided to suppress the “new faction.” In any case, later, whenever the “old faction” said that Liang Qichao and others “styled themselves ‘experts in Western learning,’ but in fact were all misguided spawn of the Kang school,” and that they disturbed Hunan’s original “peaceful world,” they had their reasons and spoke with righteous indignation. That is, they were all very dissatisfied that Liang Qichao, as the hired head instructor, had arbitrarily altered the school’s established educational purpose.
The reason Liang Qichao later was able to deeply propagate his personal political views and Kang Youwei’s reform ideas at the School of Current Affairs—so much so that the “old faction” hated him to the bone—was due to three factors: first, the full authorization granted to him when the School of Current Affairs appointed him head instructor; second, the malleability of the school’s young students and the closed nature of the overall environment; third, the passionately stirring zeal of Liang Qichao’s group of Chinese instructors, like religious devotees. None of the three could be missing; they interacted and jointly brought about the “old faction’s” major counterattack.
As mentioned earlier, Liang Qichao initially got along quite well with the School of Current Affairs, and there was no visible superiority or inferiority between the “new” and “old” factions. Therefore, when Liang Qichao in Shanghai requested that the assistant instructors must be selected by the head instructor himself in order to efficiently execute the teaching plan, the School of Current Affairs, in a spirit of cooperation, also agreed. Thus, when Liang went to teach at the School of Current Affairs, he brought along two Chinese assistant instructors, Han Wenju and Ye Juemai. The School of Current Affairs opened on November 29, and later also brought in Ou Jujia, Tang Caichang, and others as assistant instructors. Among them, Liang, Han, Ye, and Ou were all from Guangdong and were all Kang Youwei’s students; thus, this was equivalent to introducing the “Kang clique” into the School of Current Affairs. Tang Caichang, though a student of Ouyang Zhonghu and a fellow disciple of Tan Sitong, had no intersection with Kang Youwei, but his thought, stimulated by the Sino-Japanese War, had become increasingly radical and was valued by Liang Qichao; otherwise Liang would not have appointed him an assistant instructor.
With full authorization from officials and gentry, plus the closed environment in which students lived on campus and did not interact with the outside, the School of Current Affairs became Liang Qichao’s “base area” where he could propagate his teacher’s reform ideas with relatively few constraints. Liang Qichao also used the school’s制度 and teaching arrangements to “evangelize” to students the set of theories he believed in. For example, the “Ten Articles of the Hunan School of Current Affairs Study Covenant,” “General Regulations for Opening the Hunan School of Current Affairs,” and “Detailed Regulations for the School of Current Affairs Coursework” that he drafted all, openly or covertly, inherited influences from Wanmu Caotang. During his time at the School of Current Affairs, he also reprinted Kang Youwei’s Record of Study at Changxing, wrote Methods of Reading Western Learning Books, Explanations on Reading the Spring and Autumn Annals, and Explanations on Reading the Mencius, laying foundations for his teacher Kang Youwei’s thought, and stipulated the latter two as specialized books for the first month’s general study (see “Detailed Regulations for the School of Current Affairs Coursework”). This meant that Kang Youwei’s basic ideas, under Liang Qichao’s leadership, became compulsory courses of the School of Current Affairs. Under the strict constraints of school rules, whether willing or not, students had to master them. The students were young and malleable; under subtle influence, they were naturally deeply affected.
Of course, more importantly perhaps, Liang Qichao and others were indeed especially dedicated and hardworking, full of energy; their lectures and speeches had distinctive感染力 and stirring power. Students, seeing this, often were won over and enjoyed participating in discussions, and thus imperceptibly accepted the teachers’ set of arguments (referring to its essence). Liang Qichao said that at that time he “spent four hours a day in the lecture hall, and at night annotated and answered students’ notes; each item might be as long as a thousand words, often staying up all night. What I said was all of that time’s faction’s theories of civil rights, and I often spoke of Qing-dynasty precedents, enumerated maladministration, and loudly advocated revolution.”[52] With the head instructor thus, the assistant instructors who were fellow disciples naturally dared not slack off either. For those serious students selected through screening and with firm will, this should have resembled a process of接受传教, so the school atmosphere “changed ever more radically day by day.” And this process had long had its opening move. According to A Long-Form Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao: “When Ren Gong was about to go to Hunan in the winter month of the dingyou year, he discussed with colleagues the guiding aims of what to do. First was the gradual approach; second was the rapid approach; third was to take constitutionalism as the baseline; fourth was to take thorough reform and the full opening of popular understanding, with ethnic revolution as the baseline. At that time Ren Gong strongly advocated the second and fourth aims. When Nanhai heard that Ren Gong would go to Hunan, he also came to Shanghai to discuss educational guidelines. Nanhai pondered for several days and had no different view on the aims, so the accompanying instructors such as Han Shuyuan, Ye Xiangnan, and Ou Jujia all uniformly took these aims as their basis.”[53] “Taking ethnic revolution as the baseline” may have been added later, but “rapid approach” teaching should have been Liang’s plan after reflection in Shanghai, and it is said to have also received his teacher Kang Youwei’s approval. But this at the same time shows the difficulty of the reformists: the urgent intent to reform and the lack of actual power forced them to rapidly expand influence in a radical way, to create an accomplished fact of reform and even institutional change. This was Liang Qichao and others’苦衷, as well as their ambition.
Be that as it may—苦衷 is苦衷 and ambition is ambition—Liang Qichao and others first violated the school’s established teaching purpose, and then propagated political views and reform ideas not tolerated by the mainstream in such a “heretical” way. If this can be endured, what cannot? Paper cannot wrap fire; what they taught students in class and the radical annotations they made would sooner or later be exposed to society. Liang Qichao later recalled: “At the time, all students at the school lived on campus and did not connect with the outside; the atmosphere inside the hall changed more radically day by day, and the outside world knew nothing of it. When the annual vacation came, the students returned home; taking their notes to show relatives and friends, all of Hunan was in an uproar.”[54] “All of Hunan in an uproar” is of course exaggerated, suspecting he sought credit and self-congratulation as a “revolutionary predecessor,” but compared with the “Gentry of Hunan’s Joint Memorial” such as Wang Xianqian’s Public Petition to Rectify the School of Current Affairs, with Chen Baozhen’s Annotation, the negative response was indeed enormous. Wang Xianqian and others complained: “Liang Qichao and the assistant instructors, the Guangdong men Han and Ye and others, style themselves ‘experts in Western learning,’ but in fact are all misguided spawn of the Kang school. And Tan Sitong, Tang Caichang, Fan Zhui, Yi Nai, and the like ride the wind and stir the waves for them, wantonly beating their drums and blowing their reeds. The students have no master in their hearts, do not know they are secretly practicing邪说, and instead think it is rightly current affairs; they lose their original authenticity, vie to attach themselves, their language is perverse and chaotic, like madmen. It began in the provincial capital and gradually reached neighboring prefectures; even one as cautious and sincere as Pi Xirui was also incited and bewitched, giving form to it in his arguments and thus again encountering denunciation… Now Pi Xirui is not tolerated by Keli, and Fan Zhui has again been expelled by Liuyang—this suffices to show that human hearts have not died; all within the realm is the same.” This sentence at least confirms: (1) The teaching content of Liang Qichao and others indeed had a major influence on the school’s students, and even on some gentry (such as Pi Xirui and others), with strong感染力 and stirring power. (2) This influence spread from Changsha to other areas of Hunan Province through the School of Current Affairs students and the influenced gentry. (3) But ordinary Hunan people and the mainstream gentry expressed clear opposition and rejection. (4) Because of Liang Qichao, divisions arose within the gentry: active opposition such as Wang Xianqian’s camp; active support or defense such as Tan Sitong’s camp; and perhaps other camps not strongly taking a stand. In short, the situation in which the gentry “all participated in reform” had begun to fracture.
But this fracture did not arise in an instant; there was a transition. Since at first the gentry, under official leadership, “all participated in reform,” before they had firmly seized sufficient evidence, it likely was not easy to tear faces apart all at once. Liang Qichao said that during students’ annual vacation they showed their notes to relatives and friends, and thus all Hunan was in an uproar (this also seems to indicate that he did not anticipate such an effect from the start)—this is doubtful. Because existing materials show that before Liang Qichao left Hunan for Shanghai due to illness in March 1898, the “new” and “old” factions had not begun direct frontal confrontation. Chen Baozhen said: “Only after Head Instructor Liang left did discussions of Chinese learning flourish, and only then did this yamen gradually hear of it.”[55] If all Hunan was in an uproar and “new and old greatly contended,” then even if lying, Chen Baozhen could not have said “only gradually hear of it,” showing that at this time the “new–old conflict” had not yet reached an irreconcilable point. In addition, after the annual vacation, on February 21 the Southern Study Society (Nanxuehui) formally began lecturing in Changsha. Chen Baozhen, Xu Renzhu, Huang Zunxian, Xiong Xiling, Tan Sitong, Pi Xirui, and more than three hundred officials, gentry, and commoners came in succession; Chen Baozhen, Huang Zunxian, Tan Sitong, Pi Xirui, and others all gave speeches that day, yet one does not see the “old faction” coming to make trouble. From this it can be seen that although the “new–old conflict” was triggered by Liang Qichao, he himself did not personally participate in this dispute. Specifically, the two sides of the “new–old conflict” were Liang’s supporters and Liang’s opponents, especially those with relatively firm degrees of support or opposition: the former such as Tan Sitong and Xiong Xiling, the latter such as Ye Dehui and Wang Xianqian. However, to divide “new” and “old” by Liang Qichao as the personal standard—the struggle for discursive power and the strong political coloring therein are self-evident!
Some writings hold that Liang Qichao was forced to feign illness and leave Hunan because of rumors, but Liang Qichao’s illness was very likely real[56], and he himself does not seem to have been that timid. Some writings look from the opposite side, believing that Liang’s departure led to the ensuing “new–old conflict,” which seems again to overly magnify Liang Qichao’s role. For example, the School of Current Affairs supervisor Xiong Xiling later wrote a letter to Chen Baozhen saying: “Had Zhuoru stayed long in Hunan, there surely would not have been this upheaval.” The evidence was that “when Liang Zhuoru was in Hunan, Ye Dehui was extremely close with him, with wine and food exchanged; I personally witnessed it,” and Ye Dehui was precisely the person who later opposed Liang most fiercely and steadfastly. Thus he himself was also puzzled, perhaps because “when Zhuoru returned to Shanghai in the spring of the 24th year due to illness, he did not have time to bid farewell in all places.”[57] But this letter was later published in issue 112 of Xiangbao, clearly with a tone of downplaying the situation and defending Liang Qichao; moreover it struck back, telling the world that the “old faction” was narrow-minded, and therefore the “old faction’s” “slander” was not worth believing. The matter of course was far from so simple, and the “old faction” certainly would not be so petty. For when the “old faction” attacked the “new faction” most fiercely, it was precisely when the Guangxu Emperor issued the edict setting the national policy and ordering nationwide reform. They dared to risk extreme political incorrectness and oppose the trend, clearly not merely due to private grudges.
Then why was it that once Liang left Hunan and returned to Shanghai, rumors arose—“some said the provincial governor (Chen Baozhen) already disliked Zhuoru; some said that within days they would have the Minister of Education (Wang Xianqian) replace Bing San (Xiong Xiling), with Ye Huanbin (Ye Dehui) as head instructor”—so much so that Chen Baozhen also admitted he had “gradually heard of it,” and the three Chinese assistant instructors under Liang—Han, Ye, and Ou—also all “indignantly wished to leave” (later retained by Xiong Xiling)[58]? Liang Qichao had neither power nor势, and should not have had such deterrent force. Synthesizing the above discussion, the author’s conjecture is: voices opposing Liang Qichao and others surely had already appeared before Liang left, but given the lack of truly sufficient leverage, and the strong protection by gentry such as Xiong Xiling and Tan Sitong, as well as the noncommittal stance or even tacit approval of officials such as Chen Baozhen, the conservatives were still watching; conservative as they were, they were unwilling to be the first open opponent in broad daylight. For example, as early as when Liang had just entered Hunan, Ye Dehui had already written privately to a friend, worrying that “if Zhuoru insists on extending his teacher’s doctrine, he will bring calamity upon our Hunan people,” yet it was only in private correspondence, with a rather pedantic tone; in social dealings he still “exchanged wine and food” with Liang Qichao without interruption[59]. But once Liang left, some among the conservatives may have been unable to wait, or thought he had fled out of guilty conscience and lack of justification, and thus took the opportunity to spread rumors, directly fabricate, and specify that the matter was connected to Chen Baozhen’s intent. This also shows that the conservatives were actively trying to draw Chen Baozhen into opposing Liang.
What was Chen Baozhen’s attitude toward this? Jia Xiaoye believes it was “dismissive,” but considering the maintenance of private ties with Tan Sitong and others and the overall situation, he decided to temporarily let the matter die down, and so lied that he had “gradually heard of it.” When Tan Sitong left Changsha for Liuyang on March 18 because of the Liuyang Southern Study Society matter (returning only on April 15), Chen Baozhen, in order to prevent the rise of further rumors later and to “prepare against the unexpected,” took the opportunity to review the School of Current Affairs students’ notes. The School of Current Affairs at once fell into chaos: “the assistant instructors and others were flustered and at a loss, and after exerting a whole night’s effort they uniformly selected and culled,” concealing notes with more radical content, and also “added annotations on the spot” as a slight cover. But it was too hurried, and Kang Youwei’s “extremely erroneous” reform ideas such as托古改制 were still noticed by Chen Baozhen; thus he was very displeased and expressed it through Tan’s teacher Ouyang Zhonghu. When by May the “new–old conflict” situation grew increasingly uncontrollable, Ouyang Zhonghu wrote again to Tan Sitong, which also seems to have been Chen Baozhen’s intent. The aim was: “So long as Tan and Xiong no longer insisted and left the School of Current Affairs, Chen Baozhen could smoothly replace the School of Current Affairs supervisor and instructors, and his goal of checking radicalism would be achieved.”[60] But before this, around early April, at the seventh lecture of the Southern Study Society, Chen Baozhen gave a speech “On Not Needing to Attack Christianity, Also Touching on Zhou and Han Affairs,” which seems to have been a conciliatory move in response to conservative attacks on Liang Qichao’s propagation of Kang’s doctrine. This shows that hinting that Tan and Xiong should leave the School of Current Affairs does not seem to have been Chen’s initial idea, but rather a forced measure. The reason may be that, as the conservatives increasingly attacked Liang to oppose the current School of Current Affairs, the radicals were also unwilling to yield, actively continuing to propagate Kang Youwei’s reform ideas through media such as Xiangbao and the Southern Study Society; both sides refused to compromise. This touched Chen Baozhen’s bottom line, making him unable to endure, and with no other option, he could only hint that Tan and Xiong should leave.
At this time the “new–old conflict” grew ever larger; the two camps would not yield, and the “new–old” differentiation within Hunan Province also grew ever greater. On the new-faction side, although due to Liang’s departure and the three Chinese assistant instructors Han, Ye, and Ou becoming depressed and resentful amid disputes, the School of Current Affairs was no longer the School of Current Affairs of Liang’s time, the radical thought once present at the School of Current Affairs was inherited by the newly opened Southern Study Society and Xiangbao. For example, the Southern Study Society seemed to disregard the Chen father and son’s dislike of Kang learning, and still openly propagated Kang Youwei’s “Confucius Reform Investigation,” saying “Confucius established teaching with the later ages as its origin,” and that “what is recently called new learning and new principles,” including Western learning, “all without exception sprouted” from Confucius and contemporaneous thinkers. It also said Confucius was “the great sage of antiquity,” the “uncrowned king who reformed institutions,” China’s “religious founder”; Spring and Autumn Annals was a “classic of statecraft,” “its merit and virtue lie in the realm of ten thousand ages.” If one could understand Confucius’s “subtle words and great meanings” of “reforming institutions by托古改制,” one could make China “suddenly transform,” “changing poverty and weakness into wealth and strength.” The great scholar of the classics Pi Xirui also participated in this. And what likely made conservatives stare askance and “beat their breasts in pain” was that such absurd claims actually spread widely along with the Southern Study Society; prefectures, subprefectures, and counties also established study societies one after another, and many even styled themselves “branch study societies of the Southern Study Society”[61]! At this time Xiangbao also coordinated in mutual response: besides publishing the lecture content of each session of the Southern Study Society, on March 29 it also published “China Should Use Weakness to Become Strength,” by Southern Study Society member Yi Nai, advocating that China could adopt toward the West methods such as “changing methods to match methods,” “connecting teachings to soften teachings,” “lowering honor to preserve honor,” and “mixing races to retain the race” in order to turn from weak to strong. This was of course childish beyond measure; conservatives seeing it naturally could not forgive, and it was also far from what the steady Chen Baozhen as governor would wish to see. In addition, from April 5 to 7 it serialized Liang Qichao’s “On What Hunan Should Do,” and on April 6 it published “Song to Awaken the World,” by Pi Xirui’s son Pi Jiayou, criticizing the ignorance and lack of learning of Hunan Province’s people and the difficulty of opening their wisdom[62].
The scale of radical discourse grew larger and larger, with no restraint, violating the political bottom line of the time. Later, when Zhang Zhidong saw this, on May 10 he wrote to Chen saying, “Yi Nai’s discussion piece is truly extremely perverse; all who see it are shocked and enraged,” pressuring Chen. At the end of May, Wang Xianqian, Ye Dehui, and others jointly wrote to the Hunan-native Beijing official Xu Shuming, saying that “Right Marshal Chen has disrupted the old statutes and does not observe the ancestral established laws; I fear that in the future there may be improper affairs, and one cannot but take precautions in advance.” Xu Shuming indeed complied with this letter’s request and brought an impeachment to the Qing court. Under pressure from many sides, Chen Baozhen had no choice but to order the remaking of Xiangbao: he “urgently told Bing San to retract it, and again instructed him to write essays to correct it,” and henceforth it should “only select and record famous sayings from ancient and modern times relevant to the moral order, imitating the intent of Chen-style poetic remonstrance,” immediately becoming conservative again in Zhang Zhidong’s eyes.
At the same time, conservative Hunan gentry of course could not turn a blind eye to radical actions, and so they also wrote in succession to counterattack. Ye Dehui took the lead, targeting Liang Qichao with refutational writings such as “On the Correct Boundary” (upper and lower), “Refuting the Record of Study at Changxing,” “After Reading Methods of Reading Western Learning Books,” and “General Discussion on What Is Not Suitable for Elementary Learning.” On May 19, Ye Dehui also printed “Review of Youxuan Jinyu,” refuting point by point the educational commissioner Xu Renzhu’s Youxuan Jinyu, and also printed and distributed letters denigrating the Southern Study Society and Xiangbao, spreading them widely. Pi Xirui could not bear Ye Dehui’s successive attacks; on June 8, after giving his final speech at the Southern Study Society, he left Changsha for Jiangxi. From mutual attacks among the Hunan gentry to refutational writings against the educational commissioner, the conservatives’强硬 attitude is evident. Although on June 11 the Guangxu Emperor issued the edict setting the national policy, formally promoting the Wuxu Reform, and on August 10 further greatly commended Hunan governor Chen Baozhen for actively promoting new policies in Hunan, rebuking those “who took turns pointing fingers” and “echoed others’ voices” among the “gentry”[63], the conservatives still did not stop. At the end of June, Yuelu Academy students Bin Fengyang, Yang Xuanlin, Peng Zunian, and others jointly petitioned Wang Xianqian. In the name of maintaining “the moral bonds and famous teachings” and “loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness,” they harshly criticized a whole group of “partisans,” from Liang Qichao to Xiong Xiling to Huang Zunxian and others, saying: “I humbly note that our province’s folkways are plain and simple; before last summer it was indeed a peaceful world. Since Inspector Huang Gongdu came, he has advocated the theory of civil rights; since Educational Commissioner Xu Yanfu arrived, he has highly promoted those who honor Kang learning; since Xiong Bing San often invited Liang Qichao to preside over lectures at the School of Current Affairs, using a disciple of Kang Youwei to loudly promote the teacher’s doctrine, the partisans have expanded and contracted, with firm foundations and entrenched roots. The hearts of our province’s people have abruptly changed.”[64] After receiving the letter, Wang Xianqian immediately joined with Zhang Zutong, Ye Dehui, Liu Fengbao, Kong Xianjiao, Wang Su, Cai Meigong, Zheng Zuhuan, Huang Ziyuan, Yan Jiachang, and Su Yu—ten people in all—to submit to Chen Baozhen the “Gentry of Hunan’s Joint Memorial,” requesting that the “School of Current Affairs be strictly rectified, and those who advocate heterodox learning be removed, so that the students will not be lured by邪说.” But here the matter suddenly had a small interlude. The School of Current Affairs filed a complaint to Chen Baozhen accusing Bin Fengyang and Wang Xianqian and others of spreading rumors, saying that they “used scholarship as a pretext, coveting and scheming to seize the posts of school general manager and instructors, and, holding grudges, fabricated words and presented a petition to the governor’s yamen,” and that “unexpectedly, those vile licentiates such as Bin Fengyang, with their power exhausted and their words running out,” on the basis of the previous letter further “added slander, saying ‘the school instructors compete for favors, selecting the comely among the students, staining their bodies with floral dew, and wantonly committing sodomy,’” and also “printed and brushed placards, posting and distributing them everywhere.” Chen Baozhen saw that the placards had been circulating for a long time, yet Bin Fengyang and others did not take a stance to clear themselves; thus it could be seen that it was not unrelated to them. He harshly denounced it as “simply the low vulgar talk of marketplace riffraff, yet they still claim the name of maintaining learning and teaching, in order to avenge private resentment… If it came from the hands of reading scholars, not only would it be insufficient to stain others; it would instead show themselves to be low and degenerate, despised by public opinion.” Wang Xianqian hurriedly wrote again to explain, saying “the origin of the placards is extremely dubious; they are private items obtained by the school and submitted by the school, yet it deceitfully claims to be the work of Yuelu students,” and that “Bin Fengyang and others have long associated together, and both character and learning are upright,” absolutely not rumor-mongers. In the end, Wang Xianqian even pressed with a proposal to resign as head of the Yuelu Academy, saying “Xianqian is weak and often ill; recently it has worsened. The duty of chief lecturer I can no longer bear. I respectfully resign at once; I hope you will select a wise teacher to complete the wrecked situation.” Chen Baozhen finally yielded, saying this matter “cannot be without suspicion, yet also cannot be decided hastily,” but through several letters back and forth with Wang Xianqian, he felt “both sides hold their positions with cause, and speak with reason. That you do not favor the academy students, I know well; why is it that my not favoring the school does not receive your understanding?… If you resign from Yuelu in the morning, I too will leave Huxiang in the evening. You do not cling to the academy, nor do I cling to office… Please lay down arms and disarm; allow me to again bear thorns on my back—how would that be?”[65]. This in fact was a compromise with the conservatives.
Under the conservatives’ strong high pressure, Chen Baozhen had no choice but to put the overall situation first. Moreover, the radicals indeed overstepped excessively and also became internally divided, which for an official concerned with stability was unforgivable. Thus, while retaining Wang Xianqian, he also removed Xiong Xiling from his post as supervisor of the School of Current Affairs, and on the pretext of assigning him to escort students to Japan for study to avoid the storm. In a letter, Xiong Xiling, while expressing “private loyalty and gratitude,” also said he “indeed understands Uncle’s hard work in maintaining things, and your deep intent in shifting matters,”[66] with desolation in his heart. Han, Ye, and Ou—the three Chinese assistant instructors—had no alternative; coupled with earlier resentment, they resigned one after another, leaving Changsha, scattering like birds and beasts. Tan Sitong had earlier, on May 20, due to a prior recommendation by Xu Zhijing, been summoned by the Guangxu Emperor to await appointment. Without Tan Sitong, Xiong Xiling, and other radicals presiding over lectures, the radicals were thin in strength. Xiangbao, Xiangxuebao, the Hunan School of Current Affairs, and the Southern Study Society thus lost their original radical coloring. From then on, the so-called “new–old conflict” surrounding the Hunan School of Current Affairs was basically calmed. On September 21, a coup occurred in Beijing; the Wuxu Reform failed; Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei crossed east to Japan; Tan Sitong and the other “Six Gentlemen of Wuxu” fled to the execution ground; Chen Baozhen, Huang Zunxian, Xiong Xiling, and others were dismissed from office and “never to be employed again”; Hunan’s officialdom underwent a major reshuffle; the School of Current Affairs was renamed the Qiushi Academy… Thus the “new–old conflict” of the Hunan School of Current Affairs ended, for the time being, with a major victory for the conservatives.
China’s modernization process is extremely complex. History shows that in this process there have been many ups and downs, advances and reversals, yet the overall direction has still been forward. From this perspective, viewing the “new–old conflict” of the School of Current Affairs—or the dispute between radicals and conservatives—basically fits. For example, in the second section, “Modernization in Hunan Province,” the radical characteristics manifested in Hunan’s education already indicated the irreversibility of modernization: although the Hunan School of Current Affairs is no longer there, its spirit will still be expressed through other forms. This is the great historical trend of modernization, which none can reverse. It is like opening the floodgate of a new trend: it is not easy to close it again; and when one closes it again, the nature of that closing changes, and it may instead conform to the historical inevitability of a new era. But between opening and closing, a certain amount of time and cost is required. As for whether the initial floodgate should be opened, how it should be opened, and when it should be opened—that is another matter.
The “new–old conflict” of the Hunan School of Current Affairs not only broadly represented the high degree of internal differentiation among Hunan people—just as the discussion in the second section on the local ethnic character of Hunan people says, there are radicals, conservatives, and waverers—but overall, at least the ruling stratum tended toward extremes. Thus there was at one time “all participating in reform,” and at another time the “new–old conflict,” with a very tortuous development path. “The new–old uproar rose in Hunan and rippled to the capital”[67]; Hunan Province’s “new–old conflict” was in fact also a microcosm of the Beijing Wuxu Reform: both took the implementation of new policies as background; both had disputes between radicals and conservatives differentiated under new policies; both saw the radicals’ temporary victory and a standoff between the two sides; and finally both evolved into a sudden conservative reversal and a heavy blow to radical forces. And Liang happened to be one of the parties involved in both historical events; the implications behind this are quite thought-provoking. An even more striking similarity is that the “new–old conflict” did not end with the conservatives’ temporary victory, but was instead still rising and not yet at its height. The Hunan School of Current Affairs was renamed the Qiushi Academy, but later, after the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, the Qing government again sought to apply the old trick of “new policies” to save the national crisis, issuing the “Edict on Promoting Schools,” “ordering that all academies in the provinces establish university halls in the provincial capitals.” Thus in 1902 the Qiushi school was again renamed the Hunan Provincial Capital University Hall; in February 1903 it again followed the “Regulations for Schools as Decreed” and was renamed the Hunan Provincial Government Higher School, and not long after merged with the Yuelu Academy, which had been renamed the Hunan Higher School[68]. Looking within the province, Hunan’s “new–old conflict” also continued: from 1902 to 1911, Hunan changed governors seven times (from Zhao Erxun to Yu Chengge), and in the period from 1902 to the first half of 1906 alone there were five (from Zhao Erxun to Cen Chunmian). Behind this, what is implied is of course the ebb and flow of “new” and “old” forces.
If at the beginning, the radicals represented by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao and the conservatives represented by Cixi’s rear-party and its affiliated gentry were the main opposing sides of China’s domestic “new–old conflict” at the end of the nineteenth century, then by the beginning of the twentieth century, revolutionaries who sought to overthrow Qing rule by violence and constitutional monarchists who sought to maintain Qing rule constituted the two major opposing forces of the new era’s “new–old conflict.” Precisely because the “new–old conflict” under the background of modernization is historical, it will also be endowed with different connotations as history evolves, yet its basic pattern also has its consistency. Starting from the standpoint of conservatism, Geng Yunzhi discovered the constantly evolving “developmental path of China’s modernization,” which can serve as evidence. Specifically: the “new–old conflict” in the Self-Strengthening period was mainly about whether to “learn the barbarians’ superior techniques to control the barbarians”; the “new–old conflict” in the Wuxu Reform Movement period was mainly about whether “learning the barbarians” should stop at “Western craftsmanship”; the “new–old conflict” during the高潮 of the anti-Manchu revolution was mainly about whether to advocate “national essence”[69]; the “new–old conflict” after the New Culture Movement was whether “wholesale Westernization” could be carried out; the “new–old conflict” during the Chinese Communist Party’s land revolution period was mainly about whether “Marxism can be Sinicized,” and so on. From this it can be seen that the “new–old conflict” of the Hunan School of Current Affairs, which simultaneously involved society, thought, culture, and politics, has a纵向 complexity sufficient to reflect the basic developmental model of China’s overall modernization: beginning with external peril, and then seeking historical progress amid不断多变的 internal standoffs. China’s modern history has not been smooth all the way.
Correspondingly, from a horizontal perspective, looking at the “new–old conflict” of the Hunan School of Current Affairs can more deeply reveal the internal complexity inherent in the “new–old conflict” itself.
First, the “new–old conflict” of the Hunan School of Current Affairs was fundamentally not a dispute between “new faction” and “old faction” in the historical sense. Liang Qichao admitted: “In other provinces there are no true diehard conservatives, nor true reformers. In Hunan, however, true conservatives are indeed many, and true reformers are also not few.”[70] And speaking only in the historical sense, among the so-called “new faction” in the School of Current Affairs, not all the reform measures they advocated and implemented (wanting to change) were “responding to change”; many were even “not responding to change,” so they were in fact radicals (wanting to change ≠ responding to change). And among the so-called “old faction,” their blocking of some radical proposals (wanting not to change) did indeed “not respond to change” (wanting not to change = not responding to change), with more现实感. But to call them conservative merely because they defended the Three Bonds and Five Constants is perhaps overstated. For caution, they can be called conservatives, or non-radicals. Conservatives are not necessarily unenlightened in thought, but to avoid rashness they certainly do not dare to be avant-garde—at least they will not reveal it through words and actions.
In fact, since the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, plus the practice of more than thirty years of the Self-Strengthening Movement before that, the mainstream of the scholar-official class—or, more precisely, the vast majority of officials with real power—was entirely no longer in the conservative state of the closed-door era. They too advocated some degree of reform and advocated continuing to deepen self-strengthening; as for changing the examination method of selecting officials, and establishing schools or reforming academies to recruit specialized人才, some actively advocated it, and those below them, even if not advocating, generally would not bitterly oppose it. This was an important reason why the early Hunan Reform Movement could proceed smoothly and officials, gentry, and commoners could “all participate in reform.” For example, Wang Xianqian, as head of the Yuelu Academy, took the lead in reforming the academy curriculum, adding arithmetic and dialects and other content; he also took the lead in订购 Shiwubao so that all students in the academy could browse it. In addition, he “threw tens of thousands of gold into manufacturing,” first co-founding the Hefeng Match Company with Zhang Zutong and others, and later co-founding the Baoshancheng Machinery Manufacturing Company with Huang Ziyuan, Jiang Dejun, Zhang Zutong, Xiong Xiling, and others, worrying that “if China’s craftsmanship does not rise, there will never be a day of self-reliance.”[71] Inviting Liang Qichao to Hunan to teach, he was not opposed at first. Even when the School of Current Affairs was renamed the Qiushi Academy, the six assistant-instructor divisions established under conservative control were still “three Chinese learning, two arithmetic, one dialect.” In the overall direction, the conservatives were consistent before and after the “new–old conflict”; what differed may have been a more disgusted, resistant, and impolite attitude toward radicals[72]. Moreover, they had no differing words about Li Weige, showing that they were not all targeting people, but also matters, and at least did not implicate Li because of Liang.
In the final analysis, both radicals and conservatives had a strong awareness of national peril, but their fundamental difference lay in how they understood the domestic and international situation and how to respond. Radicals feared that if the new policies could not be implemented quickly and effectively, the nation would soon be partitioned and eaten away by the powers, at which point the nation would no longer be a nation. But for rapid success, they felt that creating an atmosphere and fully opening popular understanding should come first, and craftsmanship second. Conservatives feared that if one did not more deeply grasp the foreigners’ “superior techniques” and gradually promote Western arts nationwide, China would forever suffer great-power bullying and never achieve self-strengthening; for now one could only do solid work, and the atmosphere would open of itself—haste makes waste. However, deep down, at least in their expressed stance, they might also think this was forced by the times and not necessarily truly approve of Western arts. Yet many among the old faction also no longer insisted that the West was without ruler and without father, utterly rebellious—this too was progress in understanding[73].Liang Qichao’s and Wang Xianqian’s words can well illustrate the fundamental positions of these two groups. Liang Qichao said: “The peril of the overall situation is as urgent as a fire burning the eyebrows; if one does not wish for Hunan to preserve itself, then that is all. But if one does wish it, then it is necessary to make the ethos of more than sixty prefectures and counties open up simultaneously, the people’s intelligence awaken simultaneously, and talent be formed simultaneously—like ten thousand armies exerting force together, ten thousand horses neighing in unison.” This is also why he felt that “Hunan’s officials and gentry have seen that the people’s intelligence is of paramount importance, and so there is at times the establishment of the School of Current Affairs; the intention is most admirable, yet in the way of broadening it there is still something not fully done. The school has only one hundred and twenty students; even if each person is of use, what it can accomplish is still limited.” Hence what he wanted to do was to have the students “need not achieve something lofty and grand, but merely hear a little of the fundamentals of politics and learning, be in no way kept in the dark about the situations in China and abroad, and thereby broaden the ethos and dispel resistance—thus, and that is all.” He also naïvely believed that in this way, “within three years, opinions will all have changed; perhaps there will be salvation, and it certainly cannot be supported by the power of tens or hundreds of people within a single provincial capital—this is decisive.” [74] Then democracy could be obtained, popular rights could be extended among the gentry, an assembly could be established, a parliament could be opened, and China could achieve good governance. This is perhaps a modern replica of Confucius’s “accomplishment in three years”—overly idealized and inevitably somewhat childish.
Wang Xianqian, by contrast, leaned toward practical industry. He said: “What China urgently ought to carry out today lies only in the learning of crafts and industry.” This is because: “The source of Western countries’ strength lies in wealth; the source of wealth lies in commerce; the source of commerce lies in industry; the source of industry lies in learning. Therefore, Western learning, whether large or small, should only be unified under crafts and industry; special craft-and-industry schools should be established, with specialized subjects and specialized officials.” [75] And the world situation at present is: “Today the globe is greatly interconnected; countries interact; the court cannot but speak of translation studies. Westerners found their states on industry and commerce; using their goods, they squeeze our fat and marrow. We cannot forbid their goods from coming, and since we cannot forbid our people from buying, we must investigate crafts and industry in order to counterbalance them; then China’s mechanisms may perhaps turn. Therefore sound, light, chemistry, electricity, and all manufacture and mining studies should all open up the ethos and establish refined capabilities.” But it was only “amid ten thousand difficulties, seeking a strategy for self-preservation. If governors-general and governors undertake and carry it out, it is not excessive; if the gentry respond to it, it is not excessive. Therefore, as for the former match and machinery companies, Xianqian took part in those matters; it indeed came from sincerity at the center, believing they should be handled; to this day there is no other statement.” [76] Judging from his Kuiyuan Sizhong, this kind of steady-mindedness in thought is credible.
Next, judging from this fundamental difference in position between the radicals and the conservatives, the failure of the “new-versus-old struggle” cannot be blamed entirely on the strength of conservative forces. Perhaps the facts are precisely the opposite: it was exactly the radicals’ feverish aims and blind methods, and their misjudgment of the situation and reality, that led to results not matching their wishes. Israeli scholar S. N. Eisenstadt, when discussing the contest between the two forces of resistance to modernization and change, believes that the modernization process has two closely related levels: “one is the disintegration of the existing ways of life of various groups; one is that the mutual connections and mutual influences among different groups in this process continuously strengthen, and they are incorporated into a common framework.” [77] The domestic and international environment in China after the Sino-Japanese War was a fact that both radicals and conservatives had to face, or perhaps the fundamental cause of the high differentiation between radicalism and conservatism. Both radicals and conservatives demanded a change in the status quo, but their fundamental starting points and fundamental methods were not the same. If each side went its own way, both sides’ respective aims would be unable to be realized, because within the broad framework of China’s colonial system at that time, radicalism and conservatism both influenced each other within the framework and yet, teeth clenched, were mutually incompatible. The radicals thought the conservatives were obstructing things; the conservatives thought the radicals were ruining things. The radicals first broke through the bottom line, and then used politically incorrect labels such as “old faction” to intimidate opponents; the more extreme among them even resorted to “killing and bloodshed” [78] as coercion, pushing toward mutual destruction—how could the conservatives not resist? Once matters reached this point, it was no longer a rational dispute. The root behind it may be: conservatives often had real power, radicals often did not, and the radicals were too eager to change.
The radicals’ dissatisfaction with the conservatives may have been for a simple reason: not being “new” enough—taking it as the task to remove the “old,” while overlooking the conservatives’ steady approach to becoming new. But the conservatives’ accumulated resentment toward the radicals may have been very complex. The conservatives said it was to rectify scholarship, cultivate talent, and maintain moral customs, speaking with righteous and stern words; later researchers believe it was entanglements of political differences, scholarly differences, funding, personnel power, and issues of status and legitimacy [79], and the collision of different regional cultures [80]. But taken together, it is more likely that they feared the radicals’ disruption of the existing situation and the resulting national disorder: the new policies would not work (promoting Western techniques), talent would not be cultivated, and there were also factors of personal emotions and private interests. Their worry about the latter in fact already encompassed consideration of many of the former factors. Yijiao Congbian is the grand synthesis of conservative objections; its preface says: “Since Huang Gongdu spoke of methods and principles for Hunan, speaking to high officials, and employed Liang Qichao, a disciple of Kang, to serve as chief lecturer of the School of Current Affairs… he spread his master’s doctrines. For a time the class of officials and gentry, disregarding name and righteousness, revered him as a religious leader. His words took Kang’s New Learning, Kao on the Forged Classics, and Kao on Confucius’s Institutional Reform as the mainstay, supplemented by such fallacies as equality, popular rights, and Confucius chronology. To forge the Six Classics is to destroy the sacred classics; to invoke reform is to throw established statutes into disorder; to advocate equality is to cast down the bonds and norms; to extend popular rights is to have no ruler’s authority; Confucius chronology is to make people not know that there is the present dynasty.” [81] Later Wang Xianqian, co-signing with ten Hunan gentry, submitted a memorial to Chen Baozhen as well, saying: “We privately deem that in governance one must first settle the people’s will; in establishing learning one must first rectify people’s hearts. Gains and losses are what can be known across a hundred generations; bonds and norms are truly unchanging through a thousand ages.” [82] The radicals’ political propaganda and the Confucius-as-reformer ideas that Kang Youwei forced into correspondence (later his doctrine also met Liang Qichao’s fierce opposition) bore the suspicion of shaking the Qing government’s foundations, severing the lifeline of traditional society, and distorting orthodoxy; in the conservatives’ eyes it was extremely base—how could it be tolerated? In addition, in 1898 Wang Xianqian wrote a poem, “Ballad of the Mad Youth,” expressing disdain for the radicals’ frivolous “empty talk”: “If one cannot be an official, leave and become a thief; how can changing Xia with barbarians be possible? … Do you not see the two mad youths Zhang and Wu—only their wall-inscribed poems have been passed down!” [83] In any case, regarding the preservation of the fundamental system, regarding pragmatic methods of reform, and regarding personal emotions and interests, the conservatives could not possibly compromise with the radicals—unless “the times so compelled,” brought about by a revolutionary situation. Of course, by then the conservatives still mostly continued to be conservative, while quite a few radicals shifted toward a new conservatism; this reversal of positions between conservatives and radicals may be worth deep reflection.
Finally, what is worth noting is the differentiation between radicals and conservatives, especially the conciliatory faction, represented by Hunan Governor Chen Baozhen at that time. If we temporarily set aside a dynastic-change perspective to view the shock and even violence of the radicals and even the revolutionaries, radicals are not a good thing for any country that seeks modernization and development with stability; they are not worth advocating. But as a social phenomenon and historical phenomenon, the existence of radicals is by no means groundless; it has its positive and progressive significance. In fact, every era has radicals, and every era has conservatives. The significance of the radical–conservative struggle over the Hunan School of Current Affairs lies in that this dispute occurred in a transitional period of a “change unseen in a thousand years,” so that both sides sought reform yet found it hard to compromise with each other.
The weirdness of China’s early modern history seems to tell later generations: the radicals’ radical demands seemed unreasonable; even if implemented, they might not take effect immediately; China’s domestic social contradictions might even intensify—let alone that they could not be implemented. Even if the Hundred Days’ Reform had continued, it might not have been able to avoid the irresistible invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance two years later; this still seems to have been a price that backward China was bound to pay, foreshadowing “the end of the imperial system.” Of course, the conservatives were likewise powerless here. The meaning of the radicals here, looking at the past decade or two, seems only to have accelerated “the end of the imperial system,” carried out by the revolutionary faction that evolved from them; but in the long run, Wang Rongzu even believes that radical reform thought represented by Kongzi Gaizhi Kao had negative effects that far exceeded its positive effects [84]. Whether in the morals and hearts of the people or in ethos and popular intelligence, one sees neither improvement nor opening. And judging from its own original purpose, that set of reform propositions of the radicals has never been implemented in modern China; it has always failed to meet the requirements of the times. Fairbank and others believed that the failure of the Hunan reform movement and even the Hundred Days’ Reform should be attributed to the radicalization displayed in the later stage of the movement. [85] Then to some extent, the radicals even hindered the process of modernization.
But if we think the other way around: although the Self-Strengthening Movement led by the conservatives had undeniable merits (the later conservatives were in fact the earlier Westernizers as well), laying the foundation for opening a nationwide reform situation, the thirty years of the Self-Strengthening Movement also seemed to expose the intransigence of the conservative forces, the irreconcilability of social contradictions, and that the old system could not but be removed. Having studied the West for thirty years, yet being defeated by the small country Japan that started at roughly the same time—this, in any case, was bound to be eliminated by history. Therefore, in this sense, the radicals were precisely fostered by their current opponents, the conservatives—who provided soil for the radicals’ growth. In other words, the conservatives became the grave-diggers of the late Qing political system they sought to maintain; this is history’s weirdness.
For the above reasons, the conciliatory faction represented by Chen Baozhen—who both held fast to the conservatives’ position and appreciated the radicals’ courageous advance, wanting to reconcile the two sides’ positions and carry out reform smoothly, quickly, and effectively—is highly meaningful for comparison. From another angle: although the Self-Strengthening Movement ultimately failed, and although it was also highly controversial, it nevertheless unfolded for more than thirty years within an aged feudal empire. If the radicals’ reform ideas could have been implemented mildly on Chinese soil for thirty years, what kind of historical picture would it have been? This is what the conciliatory faction dreamed of achieving.
As a centrist faction between radicals and conservatives, the conciliatory faction often seems to have a clearer understanding of the situation. First, they knew that reform had two paths, radical and conservative, but both paths had gains and losses, and thus needed reconciliation. Take Chen Baozhen: his grandson, the great historian Chen Yinke, said of him: “In the Xianfeng era, my ancestor also answered the metropolitan examination and resided in the capital. He personally witnessed the sky-high flames of the Old Summer Palace, and in pain returned south. Thereafter, in managing troops and managing the people, he increasingly knew that China’s old methods could not but be changed.” Later he became close friends with Guo Songtao and was deeply influenced; thus, having “experienced and tested worldly affairs,” he “wished to borrow the mirror of Western countries to change the old methods of Shenzhou.” [86] But Guo was reviled by contemporaries, and Chen Baozhen, as his close friend, naturally knew the strength of the conservative forces, so Chen Yinke also said: “For my ancestor held that China is so vast that it cannot all be changed at once; therefore he wished first to use Hunan Province as a model for the whole country. As for nationwide reform, it must take the central government as leader. At that time the central power truly belonged to the Empress Dowager Nala; if the Empress Dowager Nala did not wish to change the old system, and the Guangxu Emperor, having no power, further aroused conflict between mother and son, then the overall situation would become irretrievable.” [87] This is why, when Chen Baozhen initially chose instructors for the School of Current Affairs, he “set Kang aside and hired Liang.” [88] The conservatives’ attitude toward Kang was firm, with no compromise: “Kang Youwei’s intentions have been exposed and chaotic; all people know it. His Guangdong clique of diehards protect him diligently; the circumstances are also most unpredictable. Such people use Western learning to embellish themselves, and then communicate with foreigners to raise their own importance… leaving this root of calamity will in the end become a severe step.” [89] Chen Baozhen understood this, and also agreed that Kongzi Gaizhi Kao was Kang’s “strained and forced embellishment,” “almost as if he did not know the great boundary between ruler and subject, father and son.” What differed was that Chen could see Kang’s “outstanding” “insight and strategy” and “broadly penetrating” “arguments,” feeling that “as to the origins of order and disorder across ancient and modern times, and the great matters of Chinese and Western politics and education, he can largely explore with painstaking effort, expounding them in detail; and his spirit is impassioned and generous, doing what others will not do and saying what others dare not say—he cannot be said not to be a remarkable man of the times.” Although because of his unrestrained talents and fierce ambition he offended many people by using the forced Kongzi Gaizhi Kao to promote equality and popular rights, still, “at this moment of comprehensive reform, striving mightily for self-strengthening, a thousand people saying yes yes is not as good as one man speaking frankly; it is said he should be compared to the wildly simple, to be cultivated and shaped.” So long as “Kang Youwei destroys the edition of his book Kongzi Gaizhi Kao himself,” in order to “stop error and quell disputes” [90], he could be employed. In fact, Chen originally hired Liang because he had set his sights on Liang having Kang Youwei’s “idealism,” “ardor,” and “courage,” [91] while his discourse was even better than his teacher’s—that is, with less far-fetched forced correspondence; it was not an absolute negation of Kang Youwei.
Upon taking office, Chen Baozhen worked hard at governance. From practical enterprises to cultural and educational undertakings, he led Hunan Province from a province “long called conservative” to one “most full of vigor,” and he had from the beginning the ambition to manage one corner of Hunan so as to lead the world. Yet in the end he was removed from office for “luring in treacherous evildoers,” and soon after was granted death; this is undoubtedly very regrettable. At the time, the Guangxi juren Li Wen, recommending Chen Baozhen to Guangxu for appointment to the Grand Council in the capital, said: “Select seasoned and highly respected men whose will lies in reform, and whose talents and knowledge are sufficient to shoulder the realm—such as Zhang Zhidong, Viceroy of Huguang, and Chen Baozhen, Governor of Hunan—quickly transfer them to the capital and appoint them to pivotal posts; then weigh gains and losses and implement step by step. Perhaps then it will not become jumbled and disorderly, with doubts and slanders boiling over.” [92]
Placing him alongside Zhang Zhidong shows his prestige. In the “new-versus-old struggle” at the Hunan School of Current Affairs, although both radicals and conservatives had complaints about Chen Baozhen’s coordination, even thinking it was shielding both sides, and did not understand him, both sides actively sought to win Chen over—this is the best recognition of his prestige. So steady, so experienced in worldly affairs, yet in such a process of intense social transformation and suddenly accelerated modernization, he was overwhelmed by the torrent of the times—this is also thought-provoking. Perhaps it was a sacrifice required by historical development itself in order to obtain dynamic self-sufficiency.
China’s modernization development up to today has been anything but easy; present-day modes of social transformation and increases in modernization are also no longer what they once were. Facing chronic social ills and facing the so-called “new-versus-old struggle,” everyone seems to ought to be humble and guard against arrogance, taking steadiness as best. But the premise of steadiness is that chronic social ills and the “new-versus-old struggle” can be accommodated within the entire broad framework of social modernization, and that their contradictions are not irresolvable. This may be where the paradox of early modernization lies: treating a malignant social system with malignant struggle, and within a difficult and tortuous transitional period, gradually establishing a benign social system; but how to treat this benign social system, and how to keep the benign social system from deteriorating, may still require continued exploration for quite a period of time. This is not to belittle the power of the masses, but to emphasize: the reform and improvement of social systems, and the “new-versus-old struggle” around what lies behind them, have always been top-down. Agreement on the general direction may still require deeper trust and democratic consultation; it may still require building a social system with greater resilience and capacity for accommodation—then China’s modernization process can truly advance steadily while seeking speed. The leadership forces in all respects bear a heavy responsibility and have a long road ahead.
[1] [Israel] S. N. Eisenstadt. Modernization: Protest and Change [M]. Trans. Zhang Lüping, Shen Yuan, Cheng Yugguo, Chi Gangyi. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 1988: 1-21. ↩
[2] See Peng Guoxing. “A Review of the School of Current Affairs” [J]. Qiúsuǒ, 1985(6): 89-90. Also, Ma Yong. “The Tragedy of Enlighteners in Modern China—An Inquiry Centered on the Hunan School of Current Affairs” [C]//School of Social Sciences, Soochow University (ed.). The Late Qing State and Society. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2008: 678-679. ↩
[3] See: Wang Xianming, Zhang Yong, Cai Lesu. A Historical Account and Discussion Draft of the Wuxu Reform [M]. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2011: 493-522. ↩
[4] Mao Haijian. Another Side of the Wuxu Reform—Reading Notes on the “Zhang Zhidong Archives” [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2014: 1 (“Preface”). Zheng Hailin holds the same view and cites Chen Yinke, Huang Zhangjian, Kong Xiangji, Fu Sinian, and others as evidence; see also: Zheng Hailin. “The Friendship between Chen Baozhen and Huang Zunxian and the Hunan New Policies (I)” [J]. Wenshi Zhishi, 2008(6): 19-21. Luo Zhitian provides detailed argumentation, explaining the bias and inequality in the selection of historical materials and in the positions of figures; also worth consulting: Luo Zhitian. “The Dislocation between Ideational Concepts and Social Roles—Rethinking the Hunan New–Old Struggle around the Wuxu Reform—Focusing on Wang Xianqian and Ye Dehui” [J]. Historical Research, 1998(5): 56-59. ↩
[5] Ye Dehui (ed.). Yijiao Congbian [C]. Taipei: Wenhan Publishing House, 1971: 2. Note: This is the 65th series of the Modern Chinese Historical Materials Series edited by Shen Yunlong. But the editor of Yijiao Congbian should be Su Yu; the “editor” seems influenced by Liang Qichao’s error in An Outline of Qing-Dynasty Scholarship that “Ye Dehui wrote Yijiao Congbian of several hundred thousand words” (see Liang Qichao. An Outline of Qing-Dynasty Scholarship [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1998: 85.), and thus errors were transmitted; correction is hereby proposed. Same below. ↩
[6] See: Liang Qichao. Records of Impressions from Travels in Europe; Travelogue of the New Continent [M]. Beijing: Oriental Press: 2006. ↩
[7] Jiang Tingfu. Modern History of China [M]. Wuhan: Wuhan Publishing House, 2012: 17. ↩
[8] Jiang Tingfu. Modern History of China [M]. Wuhan: Wuhan Publishing House, 2012: 21-22. ↩
[9] Zhang Pengyuan. Early Progress of Hunan’s Modernization [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2002: 137. ↩
[10] Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 174. ↩
[11] The above discussion mainly referenced Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015: 54-63. And Deng Tanzhou. “The Reform Movement in Hunan at the End of the Nineteenth Century” [J]. Historical Research: 18-20. ↩
[12] Fan Wenlan. Modern History of China [M]//Complete Works of Fan Wenlan (Vol. 9). Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press: 237. ↩
[13] Guo Songtao. Diary of London and Paris [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1982: 40. ↩
[14] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 130. ↩
[15] Quoted from Luo Zhitian. “The Dislocation between Ideational Concepts and Social Roles—Rethinking the Hunan New–Old Struggle around the Wuxu Reform—Focusing on Wang Xianqian and Ye Dehui” [J]. Historical Research, 1998(5): 60. ↩
[16] Luo Zhitian. “Modern Hunan Regional Culture and the Wuxu New–Old Struggle” [J]. Studies in Modern History, 1998(5): 68-74. ↩
[17] Quoted from Zhang Pengyuan. Early Progress of Hunan’s Modernization [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2002: 100-115. ↩
[18] Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 174, 412. ↩
[19] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 130. ↩
[20] Chen Baozhen. “Notice on Recruiting Students for the Newly Established School of Current Affairs” [M]//Chen Xuexun (ed.). Teaching Reference Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Education. Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1986: 389. ↩
[21] Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015: 182-183. ↩
[22] Zhang Pengyuan. Early Progress of Hunan’s Modernization [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2002: 345-362. ↩
[23] Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015, 34-38. ↩
[24] For Pi Xirui’s ideological shift around the time of the Jiawu War, see Wu Yangxiang. “A Commentary on Pi Xirui’s Thought of ‘Civilized Anti-Foreignness’” [J]. Social Science Journal, 2001(4). ↩
[25] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 130. ↩
[26] Liu Yangyang. “The Historical Position of the Hunan Reform Movement” [J]. Huxiang Forum, 1998(4), 52. ↩
[27] Luo Zhitian: “Modern Hunan Regional Culture and the Wuxu New–Old Struggle” [J]. Studies in Modern History, 1998(5): 63. ↩
[28] Quoted from Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015, 275. ↩
[29] Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 153-168. ↩
[30] Tan Sitong, in a letter to Jiang Biao requesting the opening of a Liuyang Mathematics Academy, said: “Only the provincial capital’s ethos has not yet opened; regardless of sudden change, doubts will arise in ears and eyes, and funds have not been eased—amid ten thousand difficulties it is hard to gather and organize swiftly…” Jiang Biao commented: “If Liuyang indeed greatly promotes mathematics, examines mathematics and Western affairs, its name will surely surpass other prefectures and counties, and even be pushed as the crown of a province; then the provincial capital’s people will begin to feel ashamed and roused, and the ethos of learning will thereby open greatly” (Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 182, 183.) Tang Caichang later also flattered somewhat: “Hunan Province is directly the sprout of China; Liuyang is directly the sprout of Hunan Province; mathematics is moreover the sprout of the sprout” (Tang Caichang. “Record of Promoting Mathematics in Liuyang” [C]//Hunan Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (ed.). Collected Works of Tang Caichang (Vol. 1). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1980: 160). The significance is evident. ↩
[31] Wu Chunhui. Research on Modernized Education in Hunan (1894-1929) [D]. Changsha: Hunan Normal University, 2007: 5. ↩
[32] Zongli Yamen, Ministry of Rites: “Detailed Regulations for the Special Examination in Economics” [M]//Xun (ed.). Teaching Reference Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Education. Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1986: 263. ↩
[33] Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 430. ↩
[34] Xie Feng. Research on Reform of Academies in Late Qing Hunan [D]. Changsha: Hunan University, 2006: 16-22. ↩
[35] Lu Xun. Complete Works of Lu Xun (Vol. 2) [M]. Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2005: 303-307. ↩
[36] Tan Sitong. Complete Works of Tan Sitong [M]. Cai Shangsi, Fang Xing (eds.). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1981: 418. ↩
[37] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 143 ↩
[38] Quoted from Zhang Pengyuan. Early Progress of Hunan’s Modernization [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 2002, 200. ↩
[39] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizhong [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 929-930. ↩
[40] See Jia Xiaoye. “An Examination of the First Person to Recommend Liang Qichao as Chief Instructor of the Hunan School of Current Affairs” [J]. Historical Archives, 2013(2): 109-114. ↩
[41] For Li Weige’s deeds and contributions at the School of Current Affairs, see Wu Xiaodong. Li Weige—A Little-Known Pioneer of Modern Science and Technology Education [D]. East China Normal University: 35-49. ↩
[42] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizhong [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 875 ↩
[43] Ding Wenjiang, Zhao Fengtian. A Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao (Expanded Compilation) [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1983: 87. ↩
[44] Quoted from Peng Guoxing. “A Review of the School of Current Affairs” [J]. Qiúsuǒ, 1985(6): 88. ↩
[45] Chen Baozhen. “Notice on Recruiting Students for the Newly Established School of Current Affairs” [M]. Chen Xuexun (ed.). Teaching Reference Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Education. Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1986: 389. ↩
[46] Peng Guoxing. “A Review of the School of Current Affairs” [J]. Qiúsuǒ, 1985(6): 86. ↩
[47] Li Yu. “A Study of the Number of People at the Hunan School of Current Affairs” [J]. Studies in Modern History, 2000(2): 312. ↩
[48] For example: “It is necessary to carefully examine the student’s temperament and aptitude; only if he can indeed be cultivated may he be given an examination credential… If his aptitude is dull, his temperament stubborn, or his conduct frivolous, then without waiting for the three-month selection period, he shall be dismissed at any time… If he is difficult and absconds from school, makes excuses to cancel leave, or intentionally stirs up trouble, hoping to be expelled and pursue another livelihood… in addition to expelling the student, the stipend and expenses shall be recovered. If he has father or elder brothers, hold only that father or elder brothers responsible; if he has no father or elder brothers, hold only the recommender responsible.” See “General Regulations for Opening the School of Current Affairs in Hunan” [C]//Chen Xuexun. Teaching Reference Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Education (Vol. 1). Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1986: 392. ↩
[49] Ding Wenjiang, Zhao Fengtian. A Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao (Expanded Compilation) [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1983: 86. ↩
[50] Note: The following discussion of Chen Baozhen and his son “setting Kang aside and hiring Liang” can serve as corroboration (see Section 4). ↩
[51] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizhong [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 863. ↩
[52] Liang Qichao. An Outline of Qing-Dynasty Scholarship [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1998, 85. ↩
[53] From Ding Wenjiang, Zhao Fengtian. A Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao (Expanded Compilation) [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1983, 87-88. ↩
[54] Liang Qichao. An Outline of Qing-Dynasty Scholarship [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1998, 85. ↩
[55] Quoted from Peng Guoxing. “A Review of the School of Current Affairs” [J]. Qiúsuǒ, 1985(6): 88. ↩
[56] Liang Qichao described in Self-Account at Thirty : “(In the Wuxu year) in spring, I was gravely ill and nearly died; I went to Shanghai for medical treatment; after recovering, I entered the capital.” This may have been self-justification, but Chen Yinke recorded his father’s recollection, which seems not so simple: “Not long after Xinwei began lecturing at the School of Current Affairs, he often suffered from febrile illness.” (Chen Yinke. “After Reading Wu Qichang’s Biography of Liang Qichao” [C]//Collected Works of Chen Yinke. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2001, 167.) Because Liang was new and fell ill, when everyone was very polite to him at that time, Chen Sanli’s memory was relatively deep, basically credible. Also, given Liang Qichao’s work pattern of “often not sleeping through the night,” his illness indeed could easily worsen. Therefore, Liang’s illness is credible. ↩
[57] Quoted from Peng Guoxing. “A Review of the School of Current Affairs” [J]. Qiúsuǒ, 1985(6): 88. ↩
[58] Tang Caichang. “Letter to Ouyang Zhonghu (9)” [C]//Hunan Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (ed.). Collected Works of Tang Caichang (Vol. 1). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1980:237. ↩
[59] Ye Dehui (ed.). Yijiao Congbian [C]. Taipei: Wenhan Publishing House, 1971: 405. ↩
[60] Jia Xiaoye. “Chen Baozhen and the Personnel Changes at the Hunan School of Current Affairs in the Wuxu Year” [J]. Humanities Journal, 2011(6): 96-98. ↩
[61] Tang Zhijun. “On the Southern Study Society” [J]. Journal of Hunan Normal College, 1982(2): 49-52. ↩
[62] Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015: 177, 182. ↩
[63] Quoted from Mao Haijian. “Kang Youwei’s Faction’s Misunderstanding and Exaggeration of Chen Baozhen and His Son’s Political Attitudes” [J]. Social Sciences, 2013(8): 151. ↩
[64] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizhong [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 874. ↩
[65] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizhong [M]. Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 870-879. Note: Here, based mainly on Wang Xianqian’s correspondence and attached texts, the general course of this dispute is inferred. Many scholars have discussed this point, but their accounts are often confused in chronology. For example, Ma Yong says that on June 30, Bin Fengyang and others reported Huang Zunxian, Xu Renzhu, Liang Qichao, and others to Wang Xianqian, yet Wang Xianqian on June 10 “submitted a co-signed letter to Hunan Governor Chen Baozhen, and attached Bin Fengyang and others’ report letter”! (Ma Yong. “An Evaluation of Internal and External Conflicts of the Hunan School of Current Affairs.” Jinyang Academic Journal, 2011(2): 105.) Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs edited by Deng Dahua miscellaneously collects various opinions, and there are also many inconsistencies. In fact, the true situation of this dispute, and who was right and who was wrong, is already hard to determine. The only certainty is that in order to win discursive power, both conservative and radical sides were willing to use rumors; both sides may have done so. ↩
[66] Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan School of Current Affairs [M]. Beijing: . Democracy and Construction Press, 2015: 357. ↩
[67] Liang Qichao. Preface to “Fragmentary Remaining Volume of Notes from the Hunan School of Current Affairs” [M]//Collected Works from the Ice-Drinking Studio (Vol. 37). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1989: 69. ↩[68] The renaming route from “xuetang—shuyuan—xuetang” profoundly reflects the changes in modern educational history, as well as the subsequent contest between “new” and “old” forces. Specifically, the Qing government’s initial establishment of xuetang was a self-rescue measure forced by external powers, aiming to grasp Western techniques at a deeper level and then better “learn the barbarians’ superior techniques to control the barbarians”; later, changing back from “shuyuan” to “xuetang” was likewise the case, but with a more resolute attitude. This reflects the increasingly intense pressure from external powers and the Qing government’s growing sense of crisis and peril—characteristics of modernization within the framework of the colonial system. Within this framework, the interim regression from “xuetang—shuyuan” was essentially a temporary phenomenon of differentiation and struggle arising from differing domestic understandings of internal and external situations. This is a big topic, but simply put: for the radicals, establishing xuetang from the outset carried political significance; they would never accept the outcome that after shuyuan reform it would still be shuyuan—shuyuan had to be clearly demarcated from xuetang (the Shiwu Xuetang also had “inner courses” and “outer courses”; although they intersected, there was absolutely no ambiguity); for conservatives or other non-radicals, they were not opposed to progress, but leaned more toward a cautious, conciliatory plan—“shuyuan” and “xuetang” for them were more a “difference in name,” that is, they still viewed new things through the lens of the old system (see Deng Hongbo. A New Observation on the Reform of Late-Qing Shuyuan [J]. Journal of Hunan University (Social Sciences Edition), 2011 (11).). For example, Pi Xirui viewed American universities through the lens of Chinese shuyuan: “They have great shuyuan, with very orderly and solemn scale. Knowing that their attaining wealth and strength has its great root in recitation and reading.” (Quoted from Wu Yangxiang: Pi Xirui and Late-Qing Educational Reform [J]. Journal of Social Sciences of Hunan Normal University, 2001 (3): 87.) Later, when conservative forces reversed the situation, they often blamed radicals for using the name of xuetang to feign reform and bewitch people’s minds: “If one truly verifies real matters, why must one completely change [to] xuetang?” (Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 900.) From the perspective of shuyuan reform, Xie Feng concluded that in the early Hunan New Policies, “those who introduced Western learning and carried out reforms did not deliberately focus on changes in the names of educational institutions,” but with the “struggle between new and old,” “shuyuan and xuetang were symbolized in political struggle, and the name and reality of the two then diverged,” which can be said to be quite perceptive. (Xie Feng. A Study on the Reform of Late-Qing Hunan Shuyuan [D] Changsha: Hunan University, 2006.) ↩
[69] Geng Yunzhi. Viewing the Development Path of Modern Chinese Culture from the Evolution of Conservatism’s Role [J]. Journal of Hunan University (Social Sciences Edition), 2008 (6): 5-12. Note: the latter two items were added by the author himself to be closer to the political aspect of the “new–old struggle” at the Shiwu Xuetang. ↩
[70] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 130. ↩
[71] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 862. On the role Wang Xianqian played in the Hunan New Policies, see also Zheng Yan. Wang Xianqian’s Promoting Role in the Early Hunan Reform Movement [J]. Hunan Normal University Journal of Social Sciences, 1986 (3): 49-52. ↩
[72] For example, when Wang Xianqian wrote a poem in the Wuxu year and sent it to Ye Dehui, he wrote: “These fellows are only fit to provide laughter and talk; early on they act as monsters and will wantonly bring chaos for you to see.” (Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 744.) ↩
[73] As Ye Dehui said: to say Westerners have no ethics is what shallow Confucians do; to say Western teachings surpass Confucian teachings is a fallacious breed. Also, for Luo Zhitian’s rebuttal of Wang Xianqian’s and Ye Dehui’s “conservative” image, see: Luo Zhitian. The Misalignment of Ideas and Social Roles—Rethinking the Hunan New–Old Struggle Around the Wuxu Period—Focusing on Wang Xianqian and Ye Dehui [J]. Historical Research, 1998 (5): 59-75. ↩
[74] Liang Qichao. Record of the Wuxu Coup [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1954: 131. ↩
[75] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 889-900. ↩
[76] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 863-864. ↩
[77] [Israeli] S. N. Eisenstadt. Modernization: Protest and Change [M]. Translated by Zhang Lüping, Shen Yuan, Cheng Yugou, Chi Gangyi. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 1988: 23. ↩
[78] For example, Xiong Xiling publicly wrote a letter to Chen Baozhen in Xiangbao: “I have observed Japan’s reforms; new and old attack each other, to the point of killing and bloodshed—how could it be helped? … Now, since enmity is deep and cannot be resolved, please file this letter in your yamen as evidence; if henceforth I die an untimely death, it must be the doing of three people—my teacher Wang Yiwu, Zhang Yushan, and Ye Huanshan—and it will not do unless their lives are used in compensation.” (Xiong Xiling. Collected Works of Xiong Xiling [M]. Edited by Lin Zengping and Zhou Qiuguang. Changsha: Hunan People’s Publishing House, 1985: 58.) Zou Daijun, who split off from the radical faction, said: “Xiong… whenever he moves, he speaks of blood flowing into rivers, and his conduct is like a rogue; it seems hard to reason with… Alas! Kang’s disciples are everywhere under heaven; they are to be feared.” (Quoted from Ma Yong. Commentary on the Internal and External Conflicts of the Hunan Shiwu Xuetang. Jinyang Journal, 2011 (2): 105.) ↩
[79] See Deng Dahua. Research on the Hunan Shiwu Xuetang [M] Beijing: Democratic Construction Press, 2015: 207-249. ↩
[80] See Yang Niangun. The Modern Form of the Regionalization of Confucian Learning—A Comparative Study of the Interaction of Three Major Knowledge Groups [J]. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company: 504-543. Yang Niangun does not in fact deny the influence and constraints of other factors, but the fundamental conflict of the Shiwu Xuetang lay in the entry of Cantonese people into Hunan, which produced an irreconcilable clash between the Lingnan knowledge group (Liang, Han, Ye, and Ou as Chinese-instruction teachers) and the Huxiang knowledge group (Wang Xianqian, Ye Dehui, etc.). Other constraining factors could only play a role on the basis of regional cultural differences. However, in order to explain the internal differentiation of the Huxiang knowledge group—i.e., that within the radicals there were also Huxiang factions such as Xiong Xiling and Tan Sitong—he further divided the Huxiang knowledge group into the Huxiang “native-color” scholar group and the Huxiang “new-school” scholar group (p. 510). In fact, the internal differentiation of the Huxiang knowledge group was also quite complex, and this explanation seems somewhat forced. ↩
[81] Compiled by Ye Dehui. Yijiao Congbian [C]. Taipei: Wenhan Publishing House, 1971: 1-2. ↩
[82] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 875-876. ↩
[83] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 627. Note: as for personal grudges, one sentence said by Wang Xianqian may serve as a reference. He said: “Unexpectedly, Xiong Bingsan’s alterations to the petition text spoke exclusively of the Shiwu Xuetang… With those in charge being like that, and the gentry who worked together being also like this, even if a sage handled it, how many would not fail? Let alone someone insignificant and not worth mentioning like Xianqian?” (pp. 929-930) That is to say, when the Shiwu Xuetang was first established, rifts already arose within the gentry; Wang believed these rifts were an omen of the later “new–old struggle,” and that this omen was precisely stirred up by Xiong Xiling’s troublemaking. ↩
[84] Wang Rongzu. On the Ideational Factors in the Failure of the Wuxu Reform [J]. Modern Chinese History Studies, 1982 (2): 191. ↩
[85] Edited by [U.S.] John K. Fairbank. The Cambridge History of China: Late Ch’ing [M]. Translated by the Translation Office of the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1985, 358. ↩
[86] Chen Yinke. After Reading Wu Qichang’s “Biography of Liang Qichao” [C]//Collected Works of Chen Yinke. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2001, 167-168. ↩
[87] Chen Yinke. Selected Collection of Chen Yinke’s Historical Papers [C]. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1992, 718. ↩
[88] Chen Yinke recalled: “First, Elder Huang Gongdu (Zunxian) of Jiaying strongly recommended Mr. of Nanhai to my late grandfather, requesting that he be hired to preside over lectures at the Shiwu Xuetang. My late grandfather asked my late father about this; my late father replied that he had seen writings from Xinhui, and what he discussed seemed better than his teacher; it would be better to forgo Kang and hire Liang. My late grandfather agreed. Thus Xinhui was hired to come to Changsha. Not long after Xinhui began presiding over lectures at the Shiwu Xuetang, he often suffered from feverish illness; in his comments on students’ essay papers, his wording and intent were not particularly radical—he merely had ideas such as opening a parliament, and that was all.” See also Jia Xiaoye’s commentary on this. Jia Xiaoye. Chen Baozhen and the Personnel Changes at the Hunan Shiwu Xuetang in the Wuxu Year [J]. Humanities Journal, 2011 (6): 99-101. ↩
[89] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986: 865-866. ↩
[90] Wang Xianqian. Kuiyuan Sizh种 [M] Changsha: Yuelu Publishing House, 1986 ↩
[91] Liang Qichao. Biography of Mr. Kang of Nanhai [A]. Yinbingshi Wenji (VI). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1989: 64. ↩
[92] Quoted from Mao Haijian. Misunderstanding and Exaggeration by the Kang Youwei Faction of the Political Attitudes of Chen Baozhen and His Son [J]. Social Sciences, 2013 (8), 153. For details see “Copies Recorded by the Grand Council • Guangxu Reign • Internal Affairs Category • Wuxu Reform Item,” 3/108/5617/27, Censorate’s memorial on behalf [of someone], fifth day of the eighth month. ↩
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