Alternative Representations of the Past: The Politics of History in Modern China 9783110676136, 9783110662153

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China
From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon: Laura M. White’s Recreation of Romola (1863) in her Chinese Translation Luanshi Nühao (1923)
Globalized Memories: Creating a Historical Space for Medical Pioneers in Modern China
The Social and Political Lives of G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand
Between Chaos and Liberty: Chinese Uses of the French Revolution of 1789
Imagining the Future from History: The Tang Dynasty and the “China Dream”
May Fourth Memories: PRC Media Representations of a Historical Moment, 1959 and 1989
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Alternative Representations of the Past

Alternative Representations of the Past The Politics of History in Modern China Edited by Ying-Kit Chan and Fei Chen

ISBN 978-3-11-066215-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067613-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067618-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943808 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Le Dedans du Palais de l’Empereur de Chine à Peking, first half of the 18th century, P. van Blankaert, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements This book is situated in the interstices of representations of the past on the one hand and political uses of historical writing on the other. More specifically, it examines, through the lens of “modern China,” how the past is first represented and then used for purposes that are ultimately political. As we bring this volume to print, we acknowledge our debt to the numerous scholars whose work has shaped our thinking on the subject. We thank our contributors, who strengthen our premise with their variety of specializations and topics and, of course, timely submissions. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions for improving the chapters. We also thank our editors and staff at De Gruyter, especially Jana Fritsche and Rabea Rittgerodt, for their faith in our project and efforts in bringing the manuscript to press. The project originated in two panel sessions that we organized for the twenty-second biennial conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) held at the University of Glasgow. We thank the organizers for providing a platform for a lively and stimulating exchange of ideas. Finally, we thank Q. Edward Wang, whom we greatly respect for his generosity and scholarship on Chinese historiography, for his encouragement and suggestions for improving the chapters.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-001

Contents Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

1

Tin Kei Wong From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon: Laura M. White’s Recreation of Romola (1863) in her Chinese Translation Luanshi Nühao (1923) 23 Isaac C.K. Tan Globalized Memories: Creating a Historical Space for Medical Pioneers in Modern China 49 Sittithep Eaksittipong The Social and Political Lives of G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in 85 Thailand Egas Moniz Bandeira Between Chaos and Liberty: Chinese Uses of the French Revolution of 1789 119 Victor K. Fong Imagining the Future from History: The Tang Dynasty and the “China 149 Dream” Keith Allan Clark II May Fourth Memories: PRC Media Representations of a Historical Moment, 1959 and 1989 173 Notes on Contributors Index

195

193

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China This book is about representations of the past and what they reveal about their creators and their audience. Modes of representations arise and decline according to the shifting needs and tastes of the present. In eighteenth-century Europe, a Chinese-inspired stylistic trend known as chinoiserie followed a similar pattern. Travel to Asia was difficult and limited to a small group of explorers, missionaries, soldiers, traders, and colonial administrators, who fueled the imaginations of others with their accounts that described the splendor and oddities of Oriental civilizations. Inspired by these travelogues and the curios that appeared in increasing quantities in the marketplace, creators of art selected aspects of gardens, furnishings, and porcelains that they thought would fascinate patrons of their work. An example of such artwork is shown on the book cover. Created by a little-known Dutch painter who apparently had never visited China, the painting of what seemed to be the imperial palace—or Forbidden City—in Beijing featured motifs that would strike his audience as instinctively Chinese. With the benefit of hindsight, similar perhaps to the experience of nineteenth-century Europeans who had more direct and intense exchanges with the Chinese, we are sufficiently informed to determine how mistaken that representation was. But the goal of the painter was never about representing the “real” as accurately as possible—he would not have “dared” to produce his work if that had been the case. It had more to do with gaining the recognition and support of his audience, for reasons that were more practical than portraying a “realistic” China that he could only imagine. This book presents a critical reflection on the relationship between the past and historical writing. At the risk of stating the obvious, whatever is written as “history” is not synonymous with the past, which is strictly a temporal concept alluding to things that existed or occurred prior to the historical present. As a book on representations, the present volume does not seek to ascertain the accuracy of writings about the past. All representations are almost by default a form of epistemic violence toward the past or text (both written and non-written) that they claim to inherit and are, depending on the context, definition, or perspective, “misrepresentations” based on the fluid benchmark of historical accuYing-kit Chan, Leiden University Fei Chen, Shanghai Normal University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-002

2

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

racy. Rather than focusing on historiography or historical moments, then, the book concentrates on representations of the past related to modern China— loosely defined here as the geobody of all the Chinese dynasties or empires combined.¹ It reveals and challenges the workings of two dominant modes of historical writing in modern China: state-centrism and nation-centrism. History, as a scholarly discipline manifested in “professional” historical writing, is not a contemporary reality. People who once lived left behind evidence of their existence, and the task of historians is to decipher the traces and produce coherent, credible accounts of human actions, behaviors, and consequences. Although many people would understand that history is not a mere mirror image of the past, history continues to be portrayed as an objective, truthful, and scientific representation of the past. In twentieth-century Europe and the United States, scholars of various disciplines reflected critically on the romanticized belief in history, with some of the most powerful critiques coming from the field of memory studies. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that, as literary scholar Richard Terdiman succinctly suggests, memory is the past made present.² For sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, memory, when articulated, is collective and located in social practices. Private memories are fleeting and last only in the group context. Halbwachs invokes the concept of “collective memory,” which is embedded within a web of symbols, traditions, and power relations.³ Historian Pierre Nora, in his seminal volumes Realms of History, suggests that the social implications of collective memory are wider. According to Nora, memory and history are antithetical to each other: memory is alive and in a state of permanent evolution while history is the reconstruction of what no longer exists in lived reality; memory is multiple yet specific, plural yet individual, while history has a universal vocation.⁴ By prioritizing the individual over the collective in memory studies and distinguishing more sharply between history and memory, Nora transforms Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory into a master narrative for modern historiography. For Nora, that historians have consciously selected memories

 See Immanuel C. Y. Hsu’s China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858 – 1880 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); and also, his The Rise of Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).  Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 7.  Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).  Pierre Nora, “Introduction to Volume 1: Conflicts and Division,” in Realms of Memories: Rethinking the French Past, Volume 1: Conflicts of Divisions, ed. Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

3

of the past for purposeful writing suggests that the formation of history eradicates memories that do not fit in the narratives of individual historians.⁵ History narratives endow otherwise unremarkable personal experiences and memories with depth and poignancy so that multiple lived experiences can be woven into a single national history. In response to what he sees as history’s annihilation of memory and an increasingly fragmented world that is ruptured by the past and thus driven to consecrate sites embodying fading memories, Nora suggests that memories can be shared by a nation when they are emptied of any “real” significance and stop being divisive—in other words, when they are hollowed and homogenized for reinterpretations that justify the nation’s origins and its linear, supposedly natural trajectory to its present state. Notwithstanding his clarification of contradictory efforts by historians and nations to simultaneously destroy and rescue memories, Nora has inadvertently romanticized memory by equating it with authenticity and continuity while associating history with mediation and rupture. Inspired by the linguistic turn in humanities and social sciences since the 1970s, scholars such as Hayden White have tried to reveal the narrative or poetic nature of history, which can assume the form or presentation of memory. For them, both history and memory are invented traditions or mediated discourses.⁶ According to White, the doyen of philosophy of history who had, in fact, pioneered the linguistic turn in the study of historiography, historical work is “a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them.”⁷ Historians select, process, and arrange events into stories that are narrated via the plot structure of romance, tragedy, comedy, or satire and explained through formal, explicit, or discursive argument in order to express a certain ideology.⁸ As White’s analysis of historians’ rhetorical techniques suggests, historians invent history and maintain its validity. Nevertheless, important differences exist between history and fiction, which are both constrained by the narrative format. The fundamental difference lies in whether either the creator or the audience believes that truth exists and can be conveyed through history, which, as the logic goes, is an objective restoration of the past. Historians are then responsible for ascribing truth or a mode of realism

 Nora, Realms of Memories, 3 – 7.  Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).  Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 2.  White, Metahistory, 5, 7, 11, 27.

4

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

to history and converting their readers into believers in an objective past, all the while insisting on viewing the past through the lens of coherence and linear development. A long tradition of historical writing exists in what today is China, offering one of the best examples for understanding uses of the past beyond a mere recording of facts. Bound to a moral mission, Chinese writers of history sought to establish moral imperatives by writing about past characters and events from which they could extract lessons.⁹ Historical writing, from which analogies between comparable events in the past and the present could be established, also offered crucial precedents for formulating policies in its creators’ present.¹⁰ As illustrated by the obsession of dynastic rulers with producing official histories of their immediate predecessors, history supplied political legitimacy and continued to do so in twentieth-century China. Most Chinese dynasties had endorsed Confucianism as their state ideology, and Confucian ideology rests on the basic assumption that a state prospers when the ruler obtains the Mandate of Heaven and declines when the Mandate is lost.¹¹ Although scientific historiography introduced from the West phased out Confucian historiography in the twentieth century, history continues to lend itself to various political agendas. And although scientific historiography diminished the moral meaning of history, history remains relevant when used to justify contemporary policies or furnish political legitimacy. In our own present, for authors in a socialist China that enforces strict censorship of speech and writing through the use of modern technologies denied to its imperial predecessors, political criticisms couched in matters of a bygone era are always safer than direct attacks on the present government, and Chinese people’s discussions of current politics are frequently turned toward historical analogy.¹² Given that the focus of this book is representations of the past, contributors discuss how the past can be represented in different ways for a wide range of purposes. Against the common framework that understands histories, memories, and representations as competitive or as zero-sum struggles over scarce resour-

 Chun-Chieh Huang, “The Ch’in Unification (221 BC) in Chinese Historiography,” in Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers (Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press, 2002), 33.  On-cho Ng and Q. Edward Wang, Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China (Honolulu, Hl: University of Hawaii Press, 2005), xi.  Q. Edward Wang and Georg Iggers, “Introduction,” in Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers (Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press, 2002), 6.  See Jonathan Unger’s introduction to his edited volume Using the Past to Serve the Present: Historiography and Politics in Contemporary China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 1– 8.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

5

ces, we follow literary critic Michael Rothberg in suggesting that representations can be multidirectional, subject to ongoing borrowing, cross-referencing, and negotiation.¹³ And in the light of Rothberg’s observations about memories, we do not see all representations as necessarily tainted; rather, they are necessary and often inevitable, given the political development of China in the past century.¹⁴ To understand representations of the past more comprehensively, the book discusses not only writings on history but also literary and media representations of the past. Contributors do not limit their discussion to either “China” or “Chinese” within the People’s Republic of China. Malayan and Thai Chinese form the subject of analysis in the chapters by Isaac C.K. Tan and Sittithep Eaksittipong, respectively. Other contributors venture beyond representations of China’s past. Egas Moniz Bandeira examines Chinese impressions of the French Revolution while Tin Kei Wong explores the literary transformation of a female Italian character, created by English writer George Eliot (1819 – 1880), into a bearer of “Chinese” ideals by an American missionary translator. In short, this book does not restrict its inquiry to prolific authors of written texts and professional historians, as opposed to the existing literature that has obscured creators and subjects of history not working as professional historians and yet remaining part of the enterprise through their actions or mere presence. Ultimately, then, the book contributes to the ongoing discussion on the politicization of history, focusing on the politics of interpreting the past and its many manifestations in both China and other societies since the late nineteenth century. It is thus much broader in temporal scope than Jonathan Unger’s excellent 1993 volume Using the Past to Serve the Present, which focuses on the politics of the historiography of post-Mao (i. e., post-1978) China. Although our contributors also show how politics and political affiliations affected representations of the past, we have updated China’s politicization of history not only backward but also forward in time, to the twenty-first century, when the communist ideology was losing its grip on the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rediscovered nationalism based on “distinctive characteristics of Chinese culture” to bolster its political legitimacy.¹⁵ To explain why such uses of the past were mostly political and to highlight the key features of this book, a broad sketch of historiography in twentieth-century China may prove useful. The rest of this introductory chapter will set the backdrop against  Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 3.  Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 4.  Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 6.

6

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

which contributors make their arguments and speak to one another. It first summarizes the professionalization of history as a discipline in the Republican and Communist eras and then explains how these changes generated two modes of writing on history, against which subsequent chapters will argue. It concludes by suggesting the kind of interventions that the book as a whole seeks to make.

History in Twentieth-Century China Historical study predated classical studies in imperial China, hence the claim among ancient scholars that “the Six Classics are all history.” But prior to the twentieth century, history did not exist as an independent discipline,¹⁶ and it never quite achieved the status of classical studies, whose contents were memorized for the civil service examinations, implemented in state policies, and endorsed by emperors for acceptance of their Mandate of Heaven by the elites. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, evidential learning (考據 kaoju or 考證 kaozheng) arose as a reaction to the somewhat dogmatic Song Learning, which comprised Song-dynasty (960 – 1279) commentaries on Confucian classics that the imperial state had endorsed for centuries in the civil examinations as orthodox knowledge.¹⁷ Evidential scholars eschewed rote memorization and uncritical adherence to the classics and adopted the use of evidential methods (考辨 kaobian) to analyze texts in order to grasp the original meanings of the classics. As Chinese intellectuals became exposed to Western scholarship, they identified the similarities between evidential learning and what Westerners referred to as “method.” The study of evidential methods and ways of researching shi 史 was thus a precursor of Chinese historiography.¹⁸

 Liu Longxin 劉龍心, Xueshu yu zhidu: xueke tizhi yu xiandai Zhongguo shixue de jianli 學術與 制度: 學科體制與現代中國史學的建立 [Scholarship and institutions: The formation of disciplines and the construction of modern Chinese history] (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 2002), 2.  Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984).  Zhitian Luo, “The Marginalization of Classical Studies and the Rising Prominence of Historical Studies during the Late Qing and Early Republic: A Reappraisal,” in Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China, ed. Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011), 53 – 54. See also Zhang Qing 章清, “Zhong Xi lishi zhi‘huitong’ yu Zhongguo lishi de zhuanxiang” 中西歷史之“會通”與中國歷史的 轉向 [The confluence of Chinese and Western histories and the transformation of Chinese history], Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究, no. 2 (2005): 75 – 95.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

7

During the last decades of the Qing period, historical study experienced a dramatic rise in status and became a truly independent discipline. Persistent Western imperialism after the mid-nineteenth century led to the collapse of the imperial order and the transformation of Chinese historiography, “stimulating an internal dialogue with the indigenous historiographical tradition that was crucial in determining how the modern discipline [of history] developed.”¹⁹ Chinese literati then revisited their own historiographical tradition vis-à-vis Western learning and “rediscovered” that they had something that resembled the bourgeoning discipline of history in Western scholarship—the shi, which mainly comprised annals, biographies, and chronicles compiled by court historians. Traditional or imperial Chinese scholarship was divided into the four basic categories of classics (jing 經), history, philosophy (zi 子), and literature (ji 集), each with its own historical trajectory and constituting a historical subject in its own right. For the old literati, the categories were interrelated and formed a syncretic body of knowledge.²⁰ In contrast, Chinese elites of the late Qing era started to permanently separate history from classical studies. They sought to establish history as a modern, Western discipline so as to negotiate the “trauma of accommodation” produced by imperialism and war.²¹ Historical study continued its ascent in the early Republican period and became the mainstream of scholarship, eclipsing most other forms of traditional knowledge.²² But the separation of history from classical studies did not disassociate it from political discourse. The new historians of the time assigned an even greater political mission to history, increasingly deploying it as a key strategy for the making of loyal citizens for national salvation. Chinese historical thought and writing, once dominated by imperial diaries (起居住 qiju zhu), veritable records (實錄 shilu), and dynastic histories (正史 zhengshi), had shifted in space and focus by the early twentieth century. Leading intellectuals, such as Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873 – 1929), urged their contemporaries to turn their attention from dynastic chronicles to the history of the Chinese nation.²³ As a result, historians  Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow, “Making History Modern: The Transformation of Chinese Historiography,” in Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China, ed. Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011), 1.  Luo Zhitian 羅志田, Jindai Zhongguo shixue shilun 近代中國史學十論 [Ten essays on modern Chinese historiography] (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2003), 7.  Moloughney and Zarrow, “Making History Modern,” 1.  Luo, “The Marginalization of Classical Studies, 48 – 49.  Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Zhongguo shi xulun” 中國史敘論 [A discussion of Chinese history], in Liang Qichao Quanji 梁啟超全集 [The collected works of Liang Qichao], ed. Zhang Pinxing 張品 興 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999), 448 – 454.

8

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

pegged history to national survival, emphasizing its role as the repository of current society and future greatness. Shi became a key component of “national essence” (國粹 guocui) and “national learning” (國學 guoxue). All citizens (國人 guoren), as renowned historian Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895 – 1990) claimed, should take interest in understanding their “national history” (國史 guoshi; or 通史 tongshi) and discern the patterns of China’s past. The “Chinese nation,” as political scientist Suisheng Zhao suggests, was basically a concept of recent history; Republican-era Chinese historians were hard-pressed to find the term “Chinese nation” (中華民族 Zhonghua minzu) in classical writings.²⁴ The politicization of history for national identity conditioned the emergence of modern Chinese historiography. The “Chinese Enlightenment” of delivering objective, rational, and scientific solutions to China’s problems was thus riddled with contradictions at its inception and was never fulfilled in modern Chinese historiography.²⁵ In the practice of nationalistic historiography, “the past was no longer viewed as a guidance but as a genesis of one’s imaginary of a nation.”²⁶ In the twentieth century, new research institutions, where professional historians trained their protégés in advanced methodologies that they themselves had acquired from foreign universities, helped shape historical study.²⁷ From the founding of the first history department at Peking University in 1917, history started to be institutionalized at Chinese universities.²⁸ By referencing one another’s syllabi—particularly that of Peking University—and using the same canonical works as coursebooks, history departments across China inadvertently set in motion the standardization of historical methods and pedagogies.²⁹ In 1928, with the objectives of improving Chinese scholarship on history, competing with West Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 44– 46.  Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).  Q. Edward Wang, Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 2.  Moloughney and Zarrow, “Making History Modern,” 2.  This paragraph is largely informed by Xin Fan, “The Lost Intellectual Autonomy: State, Society, and Historical Writing in Republican China,” in State, Society, and Governance in Republican China, ed. Mechthild Leutner and Izabella Goikhman (Zurich: LIT, 2014), 64– 76. Zhu Xizu 朱希祖 (1879 – 1944) was the first and longest-serving head of Peking University’s history department. A look at his life and research reveals interesting details about the beginnings and growth of the department. See Wang Aiwei 王愛衛, Zhu Xizu shixue yanjiu 朱希祖史學研究 [A study of Zhu Xizu’s historiography] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2018).  Liu, Xueshu yu zhidu, 97– 216. See also Cha Shijie 查時傑, “Sili jidujiao Yanjing daxue lishixisuo chutan (1919 – 1952)” 私立基督教燕京大學歷史系所初探 [A preliminary study of the history department of Yenching University (1919 – 1952)], Taida lishi xuebao 臺大歷史學報 20 (1996): 617– 648.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

9

ern historians, and elevating the status of history to match that of the natural sciences,³⁰ Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896 – 1950) founded the Institute of History and Philology (IHP) within the new state institution Academia Sinica. With the assistance of history departments across China—again, that of Peking University was significant—the institute completed projects such as the compilation of an official “national history,” the collation of Grand Secretariat documents from the Ming and Qing dynasties, the excavation of relics, and the dissemination of knowledge through academic journals and public seminars.³¹ Although the institute lacked funds, it offered young archeologists, ethnologists, and historians direct experience in working with primary sources and unearthed artifacts.³² The institutionalization of history led to the ascendance of two schools of historians. One was the School of Historical Sources (史料學派, shiliao xuepai), headed by Fu Sinian, Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893 – 1980), and Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890 – 1969), which emphasized source criticism in historical study. The other was the School of Historical Explanation (史觀學派, shiguan xuepai), led by Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892– 1978), Fan Wenlan 范文瀾 (1893 – 1969), and Jian Bozan 翦伯贊(1898 – 1968), which sought universal theories to explain history. The IHP, history departments, and other learned societies constituted a structure, or intellectual network, through which the state could influence historians.³³ The Ministry of Education required historians to obtain a diploma from accredited universities in order to qualify for an academic position. Pressure for placement was great. Some historians found only part-time employment in middle schools and earned meager wages.³⁴ Others, such as Qian Mu and Chen Yinke, were recognized for their expertise but did not have the credentials for a position. They could teach at a university only by recommendation. Profes-

 Zhang Shuxue 張書學, “Fu Sinian yu Zhongguo xiandai shixue de kexuehua” 傅斯年與中國 現代史學的科學化 [Fu Sinian and the scientification of modern Chinese historiography], Dongyue luncong 東岳論叢 15, no. 6 (1997): 74– 79.  Shang Xiaoming 尚小明, Beida shixuexi zaoqi fazhanshi yanjiu (1899 – 1937) 北大史學系早期 發展史研究 (1899 – 1937) [A study of the early development of Peking University’s history department (1899 – 1937)] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010).  Hu Fengxiang 胡逢祥, “Zhongguo xiandai shixue de zhidu jianshe jiqi yunzuo” 中國現代史 學的制度建設及其運作 [The construction and operation of modern Chinese historical science], Zhengzhou daxue xuebao 鄭州大學學報 37, no. 2 (2004): 66 – 72.  Liu Longxin 劉龍心, Zhishi shengchan yu chuanbo: jindai Zhongguo shixue de zhuanxing 知識 生產與傳播: 近代中國史學的轉型 [The production and circulation of knowledge: The transformation of historiography in modern China] (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 2019), 221– 274.  Fu Sinian himself never received a degree. Another notable exception is Lü Simian 呂思勉 (1884– 1957), who taught at a high school before accepting his friend’s invitation to lecture at Kwang Hua University (later East China Normal University).

10

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

sionalization thus created authority and hierarchy. Historians, whether or not they were trained abroad, developed a strong sense of solidarity. They identified with one another and with the institutions on which their profession relied. This collective identity, shaped in no small measure by the state, “illustrates an important facet of the nature of Chinese professionalization.”³⁵ Fu Sinian’s idea of the Chinese nation reveals the politics behind the writing of history in Republican China and, perhaps more importantly, the rise of national history and the impact of the party-state on historical writing. Early in his career, Fu Sinian had insisted on the historian’s vocation “to arrange materials in order for the facts to become naturally revealed” and steered his institute away from political controversies.³⁶ But new demands were heaped on historians during the Sino-Japanese War (1937– 1945), and even Fu had to present a systematic yet teleological account of China’s past to safeguard discursively his embattled country’s national integrity and territorial sovereignty.³⁷ When Gu Jiegang proposed to discard the term “China proper” (中國本部 Zhongguo benbu) because it was invented by the Japanese to distort Chinese history, sever their puppet state of Manchukuo from the Chinese republic, and claim all territories populated by the Han race, Fu Sinian responded that the term should not even be mentioned.³⁸ While praising Gu Jiegang for his scientific methods and use of empirical evidence,³⁹ he maintained that the Zhonghua minzu possessed a single spoken language and written script, common culture, and collective ethic. He urged Gu Jiegang to reconsider Zhonghua minzu as a singular race that comprised the Han. For him, Japanese scholars, for highlighting in-house differences in culture, ethnicity, and language and for goading the Manchus—and the Mon Fan, “The Lost Intellectual Autonomy,” 66. But we should not exaggerate or romanticize such unity; geographical divides in the form of local networks and personal relationships, for example, had hampered the development of the Chinese Historical Association. See Sang Bing 桑兵, “Ershi shiji qian banqi de Zhongguo shixuehui”二十世紀前半期的中國史學會 [The Chinese Historical Association in the first half of the twentieth century], Lishi yanjiu 歷史研 究, no. 5 (2004): 116 – 139.  Fan-sen Wang, Fu Ssu-nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146.  Tze-ki Hon, “Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism: Gu Jiegang’s Vision of a New China in His Studies of Ancient History,” Modern China 22, no. 3 (1996): 315 – 339.  For how Gu Jiegang ultimately yielded to the intellectual pressures of Chinese nationalism and nationalistic historiography, see Laurence A. Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).  For Gu Jiegang’s scientific use of historical sources, see Yang Guorong 楊國榮, “Shixue de kexuehua: cong Gu Jiegang dao Fu Sinian” 史學的科學化: 從顧頡剛到傅斯年 [The scientification of historiography: From Gu Jiegang to Fu Sinian], Shilin 史林 3 (1998): 91– 101.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

11

gols—to liberate themselves from Han control, threatened the Chinese nation and had to be discredited. By the end of the war, in response to the rise of separatism in the frontiers and the continuing support by the Nationalist government of his research, Fu Sinian would claim that China had an uninterrupted cultural tradition, which fitted the Nationalist government’s version of national history.⁴⁰ That someone as staunchly supportive of objective historiography as Fu Sinian succumbed to state imperatives indicates the powerful grip of politics on historical production and writing. After the CCP replaced the Nationalist Party to rule mainland China in 1949, Marxism arose as the academic orthodoxy and was adopted to reshape history as a discipline. According to historian Wang Xuedian 王學典, the restructuring of the discipline began with the defeat of the School of Historical Sources by the School of Historical Explanation.⁴¹ The School of Historical Explanation enjoyed a slight advantage over the former in terms of membership, popularity, and reception during the Republican era, but it did not dominate the discipline of history. But by 1958, Marxist historians in the School of Historical Explanation had indeed prevailed. In retrospect, although Marxist historiography has been criticized for its teleology, which reduces history to a mere reflection of and reaction to material conditions, it complemented the School of Historical Sources by enabling Chinese historians of the Republican era to understand the relationship between class struggle and historical change.⁴² As a paradigm of historical writing, Marxist historiography is probably no more teleological than those endorsed by the pre-1949 Nationalist government. But the ultra-politicization of history, which repressed other paradigms of historical writing and subjugated the discipline of history under Marxist interpretations of human society, diminished history as a discipline. Like its predecessors, the communist regime was eager to justify its legitimacy after taking over China by proving the superiority of communism over all previous forms of political organization. To achieve this, it enlisted the Marxist theory of the universal progress of human society toward communism. Chinese historians were thus encouraged to divide their past into five periods, each of which was mapped onto the five stages of historical development as per Marxist theories—primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. During the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), history became a bourgeois pursuit to be eradicated. History journals were banned, and  Wang, Fu Ssu-nien, 194.  Wang Xuedian 王學典, “Jin wushi nian de Zhongguo lishi xue” 近五十年的中國歷史學 [The study of Chinese history in the past fifty years], Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究，no. 1 (2004): 166.  Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919 – 1937 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978).

12

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

history departments and institutes were shut. The past was only useful for its historical allegories in attacks on political adversaries.⁴³ Historical dynamics was revived only after the 1980s. By deemphasizing the notion of class struggle, Deng Xiaoping not only reformed the Chinese economy, but also opened the doors for alternative historical interpretations of China’s past. But historiography in post-Mao China remained bound to political ideologies as the CCP started to explore and endorse other forms of historiography and representations of the past for the legitimacy to rule China. Consequently, writings on history that interpreted the Chinese nation as the most important subject of history and portrayed the party-state as the key driver of significant historical progress reemerged. Marxist historiography might have lost its appeal to both professional historians and the general public, but the “New Enlightenment” movement they launched to achieve a myriad of objectives after experiencing the trauma of the Cultural Revolution—civil liberties, cultural pluralism, democratic ideals, freedom of speech, and protection of human rights, among others—remained committed to the idea of nationalism. Chinese historians could be simultaneously professionals in adopting nonpartisan, scientific methods of inquiry and nationalists with a strong aversion to foreign criticism of their nation and overt doubt about its territorial integrity.⁴⁴ Their studies often reflected a compromise between a reluctant conformity with Marxist ideology and a genuine intention to foreground events and figures that fit into a liberal schema of historical interpretation.⁴⁵ Notwithstanding the contradictions between liberalism and nationalism, the discourses on modernization returned to repudiate the Cultural Revolution and its radical ideology. Since the 1980s, Chinese historians, now optimistic about their national future, have re-narrated modern Chinese history as a story of the slow yet steady growth of modernity in China that was interrupted by Maoist radicalization but resumed in the post-Mao period through the opening-up reforms led by the patriotic CCP.⁴⁶ The chapters that follow have more to say about present or more recent uses of the past. Historian Q. Edward Wang has identified a distinct group of May Fourth scholars who shared a mixed classical-Western educational background, sought to implement the ideas of liberalism and constitutionalism, and tried to

 Wang, “Jin wushi nian de Zhongguo lishi xue,” 168. For the use of allegory as political attack in Chinese politics, see Lucian W. Pye, “Aesopian Language in Chinese Politics,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122, no. 5 (1978): 336 – 339.  Huaiyin Li, Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), 170 – 171.  Li, Reinventing Modern China, 172.  Li, Reinventing Modern China, 234– 235.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

13

construct a “scientific” historical narrative for the Chinese nation-state.⁴⁷ Historian Huaiyin Li has highlighted how Chinese historians combined traditional and modern elements in May Fourth historiography; however, his real interest lies in analyzing the development of two master narratives—modernization and revolution—from the 1930s to their ultimate decline by the beginning of the twenty-first century.⁴⁸ Despite differences in focus and political inclination, both the modernization and revolution narratives are premised on the inevitability of the nation-state and the idea of elite-directed change. By narrowing the scope of inquiry to state and nation, this book identifies and pinpoints two other modes of writing Chinese history that also emerged during the Republican era but have persisted to the present, thanks to China’s resurgence as a global power and intensified exchange with overseas Chinese and the outside world at large. The nation-centric mode regards the formation of the zhonghua minzu as integral to all representations of China’s modern past. Events or persons deemed unrelated to the idea or reality of the zhonghua minzu are sidelined or simply ignored in the representations. The state-centric mode conflates the state and the ruling parties of China—first the Nationalist Party (1928 – 1949) and then the CCP (from 1949 to the present). It credits the state—or party-state—for being the driving force behind all meaningful changes.

The Nation-Centric Mode and Its Alternatives Nation-centrism in twentieth-century China is best illustrated by the posthumous life of Zheng Chenggong. No better word than “transnational” can be used to define Zheng’s life. He was born to a Japanese mother and a Chinese father and raised in Japan. He maintained a vast commercial network linking China, Japan, Macau, the Philippines, Siam, Taiwan, and Vietnam. He also led a military campaign against the Manchus and ruled Taiwan after retreating from the mainland.⁴⁹ However, after his death in 1662, he became the subject of nationalistic imaginations and portrayals in East Asia. Amid the surge of nationalism in Meiji Japan, he was transformed into a patriot loyal to the Japanese emperor, a Japanese hero who defeated the Dutch, and a Japanese conqueror of Taiwan. After the Japanese assumed control of Taiwan in 1895, they converted  Wang, Inventing China Through History.  Li, Reinventing Modern China.  For a discussion on the legacies of Zheng Chenggong, see Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620–1720 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 22– 145.

14

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

the Confucian Zheng Chenggong temple into a Shinto shrine to integrate locals into the Japanese empire. Chinese revolutionary students in Japan also referenced him to convey their anti-Manchu agenda. They celebrated him as a Han Chinese patriot resisting the Manchus, a Chinese anti-imperialist hero expelling Dutch imperialists, and a Chinese colonizer of Taiwan.⁵⁰ In subsequent decades, his stories were narrated in school textbooks, propaganda writings, and historical dramas. Although Zheng Chenggong continued to arouse patriotism in the Republican era, details of his story changed after the 1930s, when Japan accelerated its expansion into China. Chinese discourses thenceforth concealed the link between him and Japan by either omitting the fact that he was born to a Japanese mother and raised in Japan (until he turned six) or stressing that his father saved him from Japan by bringing him to China.⁵¹ As the posthumous life of Zheng Chenggong suggests, history has been entangled with nationalism in modern China. This book uncovers facets of China’s past overshadowed by nation-centric narratives of China’s past. Tin Kei Wong highlights efforts at appropriating the foreign past to create a new ideal of womanhood for the Chinese nation in the Chinese translation of Romola, a historical novel by English writer George Eliot. Eliot meant to criticize the social restrictions on women in Victorian England through her novel. But as Wong shows by comparing the original text with its Chinese translation, American missionary Laura M. White translated—and transformed—the character Romola into a Victorian model of female sacrifice. The remaking of Romola’s image in White’s translation was shaped by the ideologies of American exceptionalism and global salvation, which had motivated White to create a passionate and selfless Romola in order to reform “backward” Chinese women. But this refashioned ideal of womanhood was not embraced by Chinese women and some American missionaries themselves, who preferred a womanhood characterized instead by independence and professionalism.

 For a discussion on changes in Zheng Chenggong’s image in China and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Fei Chen, “Loyalist, Patriot, or Colonizer? The Three Faces of Zheng Chenggong in Meiji Japan and Late Qing China,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 12, no. 1 (2018): 22– 44.  Chen Zhongchun 陳忠純, “Jindai guoren dui Zheng Chenggong xingxiang de suzao yu jingshen de chuancheng: Yi baokan wenxian zhong de Zheng Chenggong zhuanji wei zhongxing” 近代國人對鄭成功形象的塑造與精神的傳承——以報刊文獻中的鄭成功傳記為中心 [The creation of Zheng Chenggong’s image and the inheritance of his spirit by modern Chinese: A focused study of Zheng Chenggong’s biography in journals and archives], Taiwan yanjiu jikan 台灣 研究集刊 [Bulletin of the Taiwan Research Institute of Xiamen University] 31, no. 5 (2013): 69 – 77.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

15

Isaac C.K. Tan focuses on two medical doctors—Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897– 1969) and Henry Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939)—as narrated by the Nationalist Party and the CCP. Born in British Malaya and educated in Scotland, Lim helped the Nationalist government develop a modern medical service in the 1920s. As for Bethune, he was born into a lower middle-class family in Canada and went to China in the 1930s to offer medical service to Chinese communists in their fight against the Japanese. The careers of Lim and Bethune were significantly shaped by their transnational experiences and their personal aspirations. However, as Tan suggests, the Nationalist Party and the CCP attempted to tame them in their nation-centric or state-centric narratives. Bethune was hailed by the CCP as a model communist who devoted himself to the cause of his Chinese comrades, but he was largely forgotten in Taiwan. Lim was praised by the Nationalists for his decision to save China at the expense of his otherwise comfortable life, but this image of him was not fully developed because Lim left for the United States after 1949. Little attention was paid to Lim in mainland China prior to the twenty-first century, after which Lim emerged as a patriotic member of the overseas Chinese among ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia eager to reconnect with a rising China. Sittithep Eaksittipong presents a scenario in which foreign studies of overseas Chinese, who are outside the territorially bounded Chinese nation-state, have been used by scholars and governments in China, Thailand, and the United States to construct representations of overseas Chinese. He examines the transnational use of American anthropologist G. William Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, which helped shape the perceptions of China, Thailand, and the United States toward overseas Chinese in general and those in Thailand in particular. Chinese Society in Thailand resulted from Skinner’s interest in Chinese society during the 1950s, when no foreign researchers could enter China to conduct fieldwork due to Cold War geopolitics. While Skinner’s assimilation paradigm quickly lay the foundation for American and Thai policies toward Thai Chinese, the book was criticized by mainland Chinese scholars for its so-called bourgeois ideas. But after 1975, when China and Thailand normalized diplomatic relations, the book became appreciated by Chinese officials as a resource for dealing with Thailand and understanding the substantial Chinese population in Thailand. The book also shaped China’s foreign policy toward Thailand and the way the Thai Chinese viewed themselves and forged their own identity in Thailand.

16

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

The State-Centric Mode and Its Alternatives State-centrism in Chinese practices of rendering the past during the twentieth century is best revealed by the narratives of the provincial independence movement, which began in 1911. On October 10, 1911, soldiers stationed in Wuchang revolted and declared the secession of Hubei Province from the Qing Empire. The revolt triggered a chain of reactions across China, resulting in the declaration of independence by fifteen provinces prior to the end of 1911. But the movement to gain the independence of provinces was less coordinated than it appeared to be. In three of the provinces, revolutionaries infiltrated the Qing “New Army” to initiate the uprisings, and shared power with the local gentry and provincial assemblies. In nine provinces, the gentry and assemblies declared independence owing to fears that locally stationed New Armies would revolt. In three provinces, rebels in the New Army negotiated the sharing of power with the gentry and assemblies and would join the revolutionaries only later.⁵² In all, the revolutionaries had neither a coherent plan nor a uniform leadership. Gongjinghui (Forward Together Society), the group that launched the Wuchang Uprising, was more a rival than a subordinate to the largest revolutionary organization, Tongmenghui (Chinese League).⁵³ But after 1928, when the Nationalist Party began its (nominal) rule of China, the discrete provincial revolts were reconstructed as a nationwide revolution that had been coordinated and led by revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925), the founder of the Nationalist Party. The Nationalist Party endorsed the accounts by surviving participants while suppressing other voices. The cult of Sun Yat-sen characterized the orthodox or party-state narrative. He was portrayed as having founded the revolutionary organizations, invented the revolutionary ideology, and guided the revolutionary enterprise. In this narrative, Chinese history since 1894 comprised five stages of a political movement, each mapped onto a revolutionary organization of Sun’s: Xingzhonghui (Revive China Society), 1894 – 1905; Tongmenghui (Chinese League), 1905 – 1912; Guomindang (Nationalist Party), 1912– 1914; Zhonghua gemingdang (Chinese Revolutionary Party), 1914– 1919; and Zhongguo guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party), from 1919

 Chūzō Ichiko, “The Role of the Gentry: An Hypothesis,” in China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900 – 1913, ed. Mary Clabaugh Wright (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), 305 – 306.  Kit-Siong Liew, Struggle for Democracy: Sung Chiao-jen and the 1911 Chinese Revolution (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1971), 76.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

17

on.⁵⁴ Although Sun had not been the paramount leader of Xingzhonghui, Tongmenghui, and Guomindang, he was recast as their unchallenged leader.⁵⁵ His followers—not he—were blamed for the failure of pre-1911 uprisings.⁵⁶ This narrative transforms China’s past since the late nineteenth century into a history of the Nationalist Party, describing its nascence, growth, maturation, and struggle against enemies. Representations of the provincial independence movement expose the historical violence of rendering the past into history endorsed by the party-state. The final three chapters of this book present three case studies that deviate from the state-centric mode of historical writing since the beginning of the twentieth century. Egas Moniz Bandeira draws our attention to Chinese narratives of the French Revolution, a multi-faceted event in which different agendas intersected but which has been interpreted as a bourgeois revolution in the orthodox historiography of the CCP. Moniz Bandeira reveals how Chinese elites simplified its meaning for their own purposes. In the late nineteenth century, conservatives called the French Revolution out for its catastrophic damage while reformers admired its noble goals of constitutionalism and civil liberties. As for revolutionaries, they highlighted its progressive transformation of France to incite anti-Manchu sentiments. After 1949, the CCP identified the French Revolution as the European precedent to China’s own provincial independence movement. Both the Chinese and French Revolutions were deemed bourgeois to fit the CCP historiography on revolutions. In the 1980s, mainland Chinese intellectuals continued to champion the French Revolution as a popular pursuit of freedom, but this interpretation was suppressed after the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. The French Revolution has returned to the national spotlight in recent years, from which officials have sought both lessons and inspiration for China’s political reforms. Victor K. Fong argues that Chinese rulers, since a millennium ago, have romanticized the Tang Empire for their own political agenda. Emperor Taizong (r. 626 – 649) of the Tang dynasty (618 – 907) had expanded Chinese territory into Central Asia to build a vast empire encompassing what is now southern Russia, Xinjiang, and Kyrgyzstan. His achievement lasted barely a century before warlords and large-scale rebellions ultimately divided the empire. Nevertheless, emperors of subsequent dynasties aspired to the Tang Empire. Chinese President Xi

 Winston Hsieh, Chinese Historiography on the Revolution of 1911: A Critical Survey and a Selected Bibliography (Hoover Institute Press, Stanford University, 1975), 6, 26 – 27.  For a discussion of the power struggle and marginalization of Sun Yat-sen in the three organizations, see Chun-tu Hsueh, Huang Hsing and the Chinese Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), 38 – 77; Liew, Struggle for Democracy, 68 – 84.  Hsieh, Chinese Historiography on the Revolution of 1911, 6.

18

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

Jinping has also alluded to glories of the Tang when promoting the ambitious One Belt and One Road developmental project, which seeks to integrate parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe into a massive Sino-centric economic zone. According to Fong, Xi sees the Tang past as China’s future and aims to strengthen China’s global influence and build a new Tang Empire. Like emperors of the imperial past, he selects only interpretations of the Tang past that are useful for creating a discursive, historical foundation for his ambitions. Keith Allan Clark II diversifies our understanding of the state-centric narrative of the past with his study of the annual commemoration of the May Fourth Movement, a “sacred” event in the CCP’s orthodox narrative of twentieth-century China. Focusing on the commemorations of 1959 and 1989, Clark presents two settings in which meanings of the May Fourth Movement were produced by three types of media—state, municipal, and student media. In 1959, state media portrayed the movement as the genesis of Chinese communism, which was key to its narrative of the twentieth century as an era marked by continuous revolutionary progress under Communist leadership. During this period, municipal and student media were allowed their own way of commemoration within permissible party boundaries. They tended to depict it as an event in which all Chinese had participated and inherited the revolutionary spirit. In 1989, when restrictions left little room for deviation from the orthodox narrative, municipal and student media were mandated to subscribe to state media’s interpretation of the May Fourth Movement as a patriotic movement. The six chapters in this book are thematically diverse, delving into subjects ranging from Cold War sensitivities and medical history to textual reception and transcultural encounters. The chapters nonetheless constitute an integrated whole for articulating a dialogic relationship among history, perception, and representation vis-à-vis understandings of modern China. They provide a cohesive vision of the nation and state as sites that produce images and knowledge of what most of us collectively and retrospectively call China, the definitions of which are complex given the chronological span and geographical scope of its history and people. At the very least, this book shows that no one nation, person, or state can monopolize the discourse of what is for shorthand purposes called China or Chinese.

Bibliography Cha, Shijie 查時傑. “Sili jidujiao Yanjing daxue lishixisuo chutan (1919 – 1952)” 私立基督教燕 京大學歷史系所初探 [A preliminary study of the history department of Yenching University (1919–1952)]. Taida lishi xuebao 臺大歷史學報 20 (1996): 617 – 648.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

19

Chen, Fei. “Loyalist, Patriot, or Colonizer? The Three Faces of Zheng Chenggong in Meiji Japan and Late Qing China”. Journal of Modern Chinese History 12, no. 1 (2018): 22 – 44. Chūzō, Ichiko. “The Role of the Gentry: A Hypothesis”. In China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900 – 1913, edited by Mary C. Wright. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968. Dirlik, Arif. Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919 – 1937. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978. Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984. Hang, Xing. Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620–1720. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory, edited and translated by L.A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hon, Tze-ki. “Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism: Gu Jiegang’s Vision of a New China in His Studies of Ancient History”. Modern China 22, no. 3 (1996): 315–339. Hsieh, Winston. Chinese Historiography on the Revolution of 1911: A Critical Survey and a Selected Bibliography. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press, Stanford University, 1975. Hsueh, Chun-tu. Huang Hsing and the Chinese Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961. Hsu, Immanuel C. Y. China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858– 1880. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. Hsu, Immanuel C. Y. The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Huang, Chun-Chieh, “The Ch’in Unification (221 BC) in Chinese Historiography”. In Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Q. Edward Wang and Georg Iggers. Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press, 2002. Hu, Fengxiang 胡逢祥. “Zhongguo xiandai shixue de zhidu jianshe jiqi yunzuo” 中國現代史學 的制度建設及其運作 [The construction and operation of modern Chinese historical science]. Zhengzhou daxue xuebao 鄭州大學學報 37, no. 2 (2004): 66–72. Liang, Qichao 梁啟超. “Zhongguo shi xulun” 中國史敘論 [A discussion of Chinese history], in Liang Qichao Quanji 梁啟超全集 [The collected works of Liang Qichao], edited by Zhang Pinxing 張品興. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999. Liew, Kit-Siong. Struggle for Democracy: Sung Chiao-jen and the 1911 Chinese Revolution. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1971. Li, Huaiyin. Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. Liu, Longxin 劉龍心. Xueshu yu zhidu: xueke tizhi yu xiandai Zhongguo shixue de jianli 學術 與制度: 學科體制與現代中國史學的建立 [Scholarship and institutions: The formation of disciplines and the construction of modern Chinese history]. Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 2002. Liu, Longxin 劉龍心. Zhishi shengchan yu chuanbo: jindai Zhongguo shixue de zhuanxing 知 識生產與傳播: 近代中國史學的轉型 [The production and circulation of knowledge: The transformation of historiography in modern China]. Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 2019.

20

Ying-kit Chan and Fei Chen

Luo, Zhitian 羅志田. Jindai Zhongguo shixue shilun 近代中國史學十論 [Ten essays on modern Chinese historiography]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2003. Luo, Zhitian. “The Marginalization of Classical Studies and the Rising Prominence of Historical Studies during the Late Qing and Early Republic: A Reappraisal”. In Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China, edited by Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011. Moloughney, Brian and Peter Zarrow. “Making History Modern: The Transformation of Chinese Historiography”. In Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China, edited by Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011. Ng, On-cho and Q. Edward Wang. Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Nora, Pierre. “Introduction to Volume 1: Conflicts and Division”. In Realms of Memories: Rethinking the French Past, Volume 1: Conflicts of Divisions, edited by Pierre Nora and translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Pye, Lucian W. “Aesopian Language in Chinese Politics”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122, no. 5 (1978): 336–339. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Sang, Bing 桑兵. “Ershi shiji qian banqi de Zhongguo shixuehui” 二十世紀前半期的中國史學 會 [The Chinese Historical Association in the first half of the twentieth century]. Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究, no. 5 (2004): 116–139. Shang, Xiaoming 尚小明. Beida shixuexi zaoqi fazhanshi yanjiu (1899–1937) 北大史學系早期 發展史研究 (1899–1937) [A study of the early development of Peking University’s history department (1899–1937)]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010. Schneider, Laurence A. Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971. Schwarcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986. Terdiman, Richard. Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Unger, Jonathan. Using the Past to Serve the Present: Historiography and Politics in Contemporary China. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. Wang, Aiwei 王愛衛. Zhu Xizu shixue yanjiu 朱希祖史學研究 [A study of Zhu Xizu’s historiography]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2018. Wang, Fan-sen. Fu Ssu-nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Wang, Q. Edward. and Georg Iggers. “Introduction,” in Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Q. Edward Wang and Georg Iggers. Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press, 2002. Wang, Q. Edward. Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001. Wang, Xuedian 王學典. “Jin wushi nian de Zhongguo lishi xue” 近五十年的中國歷史學 [The Study of Chinese History in the Past Fifty Years]. Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究, no. 1 (2004): 165–190.

Introduction: Politicized Histories in Modern China

21

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Xin, Fan. “The Lost Intellectual Autonomy: State, Society, and Historical Writing in Republican China”. In State, Society, and Governance in Republican China, edited by Mechthild Leutner and Izabella Goikhman. Zurich: LIT, 2014. Yang, Guorong 楊國榮. “Shixue de kexuehua: cong Gu Jiegang dao Fu Sinian” 史學的科學化: 從顧頡剛到傅斯年 [The scientification of historiography: From Gu Jiegang to Fu Sinian]. Shilin 史林 3 (1998): 91–101. Zhang, Qing 章清, “Zhong Xi lishi zhi‘huitong’ yu Zhongguo lishi de zhuanxiang” 中西歷史 之“會通”與中國歷史的轉向 [The confluence of Chinese and Western histories and the transformation of Chinese history]. Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究, no. 2 (2005): 75–95. Zhang, Shuxue 張書學. “Fu Sinian yu Zhongguo xiandai shixue de kexuehua” 傅斯年與中國 現代史學的科學化 [Fu Sinian and the scientification of modern Chinese historiography]. Dongyue luncong 東岳論叢 15, no. 6 (1997): 74–79. Zhao, Suisheng. A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Tin Kei Wong

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon: Laura M. White’s Recreation of Romola (1863) in her Chinese Translation Luanshi Nühao (1923) Abstract: With a comparative textual analysis of a translation work, this paper discusses an American missionary woman’s perceptions of May Fourth Chinese, particularly women. Laura M. White (1867– 1937) was an American female missionary translator who attempted to impart certain ideologies to May Fourth Chinese women through translation. The comparative textual analysis reveals the gender notions instilled by White in one of her Chinese translations, Luanshi Nühao 亂世女豪 (A heroine in troubled times) (1923). Contextualizing such concepts in the American and Chinese contexts, this paper illustrates how a literary translation can be read as a nuanced construct and record of transnational history. This paper illustrates that translation, as representation, is an overlooked approach to understanding China’s past as opposed to the dominant nation-centric narrative of Chinese history. Keywords: American women missionaries, George Eliot, Laura M. White, literary translation, Luanshi Nühao, May Fourth women, Romola, Victorian womanhood

Introduction At the turn of the nineteenth century, American Protestant missionary women were active in China to “save” their “heathen sisters” from “uncivilized” social customs. These female missionaries, whom Carol C. Chin (2016) calls “beneficent imperialists,”¹ believed in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and hence their obligation to export to China the advanced American civilization, of which feminine ideals were an integral element. Translation was one major avenue female missionaries utilized to propagate this concept. Laura M. White (1867– 1937) was one of the American missionary women in this context with Tin Kei Wong, The University of Adelaide  Carol C. Chin, “Beneficent Imperialists: American Women Missionaries in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”, Diplomatic History 27, no. 3 (2003): 328. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-003

24

Tin Kei Wong

her prominent role as a prolific translator, with an explicit goal of teaching Chinese women the “spirit of service.”² This paper examines this notion intended for May Fourth Chinese women in Luanshi Nühao (1923), White’s Chinese translation of George Eliot’s (1819 – 1880) Romola (1863), with a comparative textual analysis that adopts André Lefevere’s concept of translation as “rewriting”.³ To Lefevere, translation is essentially a form of rewriting that is influenced by constraints in terms of “patronage”, “poetics”, and “ideology”, which are useful for investigating the factors contributing to the production of a translation.⁴ Patronage is critical in this notion of rewriting, as informed by Lefevere’s fundamental assumption of translation as an activity “carried out in the service of power”.⁵ Assuming the forms of powerful individuals or groups, religious bodies, political parties, social classes, publishers, and the media, patronage (persons or/and institutions) is linked to powers that can “further or hinder the reading, writing and rewriting of literature”.⁶ In Lefevere’s discussion, the significance of ideology precedes that of poetics.⁷ Explaining poetics as the dominant concept of “what literature should (be allowed to) be”, Lefevere states that professionals, including critics, experts, instructors, translators, and rewriters, are responsible for the poetics, which are the aesthetics of a society.⁸ However, as rewriters, these professionals are also under the constraint of ideology, which Lefevere denotes as the dominant concept of “what society should (be allowed to) be”.⁹ Lefevere has defined ideology in multiple ways in different publications. In a more political sense, Lefevere uses Terry Eagleton’s idea to refer ideology as “the maintenance or interrogation of power structures central to a whole form of social and historical life”.¹⁰ More generally, Lefevere depicts the term as “world view”,¹¹

 Margaret H. Brown, “Our Periodicals”, in No Speedier Way: A Volume Commemorating The Golden Jubilee of Christian Literature Society for China, 1887 – 1937 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society For China, 1938), 114.  Andre´ Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge, 1992).  André Lefevere, “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature”, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000), 234– 35.  Andre´ Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge, 1992), vii.  Ibid., 15.  Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 41.  Ibid., 87– 97.  Ibid., 14.  André Lefevere, “Systems Thinking and Cultural Relativism”, Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature 26, no. 7 (1988 – 9): 59.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

25

which he would describe more specifically as “the conceptual grid that consists of opinions and attitudes deemed acceptable in a certain society at a certain time”.¹² By all definitions, ideology is a prevalent system of belief that confines the act of translation. In essence, both poetics and ideology are subject to patronage—the dominant power of the social structure. Due to the unique historical context and literary system in which White was situated, Lefevere’s theory of rewriting may be used to contextualize White and her translations. White, as an American Protestant missionary, was subject to the patronage and ideology of her country and church. At the same time, her status in China as an editor-in-chief, a teacher training Chinese schoolgirls to work in a translation team, and the principal of a girls’ school with a library collecting her translations indicates that she had assumed an array of translation roles (translators, editors, revisers, publishers, and commissioners as mentioned earlier). This demonstrates the multiple layers of influences White and her patrons could exert in her translations. Specifically, this chapter aims to reveal the “ideology” of womanhood of her “patronage” (the United States and the Protestant church as White’s two major patrons) embedded in her translation. In the translation, White used this ideology as a standard to critique Chinese women. This study starts with a depiction of the American context in terms of intellectual currents and gender discourses in which White and her fellow missionary women were situated. The comparative textual analysis then illustrates how original meanings and plot are amended and manipulated and reveals that White reshaped the original image of the fifteenth-century Florentine heroine Romola and emphasized her spirit of female sacrifice to construct her as a female paragon for May Fourth Chinese women. I argue that this rewriting is to convey White’s key message—a successful nation is constructed upon women’s self-abnegation—intended for the Chinese women activists striving for gender equality. This message, in fact, is a product of ideologies such as American exceptionalism, beneficent imperialism, and altruistic Victorian womanhood, all of which

 André Lefevere, “Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm”, in The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary translation, ed. Theo Hermans (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 226.  Andre´ Lefevere, “Translation Practice(s) and the Circulation of Cultural Capital: Some Aeneids in English”, in Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998), 48.

26

Tin Kei Wong

originated in White’s major patrons, her country and her church, as this chapter will discuss.¹³ Similar to how Chinese intellectuals had appropriated the French Revolution for their discourses as suggested by Egas Moniz-Bandeira in his chapter, White chose Romola, a fictional story taking place in fifteenth-century Renaissance, to convey her message for the contemporary May Fourth Chinese women when the translation was published. This paper adopts an approach similar to Isaac Tan’s, which alternates between microscopic and macroscopic views to examine how a contextualized micro-narrative of an individual, through translation, sheds light on transnational history (see Tan’s study of the lives of Robert Kho-Seng Lim and Henry Norman Bethune in this volume). This case study provides a unique perspective of examining China’s past while revealing transnational history. My discussion contextualizes White’s particular message with gender discourses in American and Chinese socio-political contexts at the time. The nation-centric discourse of May Fourth intellectuals perceived American women as desirable models for Chinese women to emulate, because American women’s independence was what reformists believed Chinese women needed in order to contribute to national revival. In this study, however, the literary translation presents itself as an alternative narrative that reveals an American missionary woman’s intention to revert Chinese women to feminine submission and domesticity instead of independence and self-reliance. This chapter aims to illustrate the involvement of ideology in translation that serves the translator’s specific socio-cultural agenda. In this way, White’s translation serves as a historical construct to reflect how China was perceived by American Protestant missionary women.

Laura M. White and American Missionary Women in the Late Nineteenth Century Laura M. White (1867– 1937) (commonly known as Liang Leyue 亮樂月) sailed to China in 1891 and worked as a missionary under the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church for over forty years until 1934. She was one of many young single American women who joined the missionary force following the American Civil War (1861– 1865). By 1910, women constituted about

 Instead of overviewing or probing into broad theological notions of Protestant Christianity, this chapter will only discuss the relevant ideas in Protestantism regarding women and gender due to the chapter’s primary focus on gender ideology in White’s work.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

27

two-thirds of American missionaries.¹⁴ After the American Civil War, many Protestant denominations formed their own mission boards and sent single missionary women abroad to carry out “woman’s work for women” because they could reach heathen women. As male missionaries and Chinese women were not allowed to talk to one another, female missionaries played an important role in reaching the female half of the Chinese population. With the United States and the Protestant church as the primary patronage to her missionary career, White, with her fellow American missionary women, was conditioned by ideologies such as American exceptional civilization, cultural imperialism with benevolence, and Victorian womanhood that contextualized her dedication to education and translation for Chinese women. Since the early nineteenth century, the notion of American exceptionalism provided Americans with a mentality of international nationalism that facilitated their fervor to export the country’s civilization.¹⁵ Bolstered by Darwinian notions of the superior Anglo-Saxon race, Americans viewed themselves as the chosen race and the United States as the exceptional nation to play an “exemplary or vanguard role in world history” in terms of democracy and modernization.¹⁶ Convinced that they should be a world vanguard due to their purportedly racial superiority and advanced status of their civilization, American female missionaries believed that they could transform China for the better by imposing their culture to “Christianize” and “modernize” the country. Along with the primary purpose of evangelizing their “heathen” sisters, American missionary women also focused on the “civilizing” endeavors that were purportedly necessary for effective evangelism.¹⁷ With the strong belief of their “advanced” civilization and womanhood, American missionary women condescendingly viewed Chinese women as pathetic victims of “uncivilized” tra-

 Leslie A. Flemming, “A New Humanity: American Missionaries’ Ideals for Women in North India, 1870 – 1930”, in Western Women and Imperialism—Complicity and Resistance, ed. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 191.  An entwined concept with American exceptionalism is “manifest destiny”, a belief that God destined American settlers to expand across North America. For more on “manifest destiny”, see Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); see also David Stephen Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Manifest Destiny (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).  Dorothy Ross, “A Historian’s View of American Social Science”, in Scientific Authority & Twentieth-Century America, ed. Ronald G. Walters (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 42– 43.  See William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

28

Tin Kei Wong

ditions.¹⁸ Since the mid-nineteenth century, White’s predecessors had already recognized the “uncivilized” Chinese customs and practices for Chinese women, such as female infanticide, foot binding, and concubinage, and established initiatives such as orphanages and girls’ schools to effect change.¹⁹ With the intention of bestowing benefits to their “heathen” sisters and liberating them from “barbarism”, American missionary women engaged in what Chin calls “beneficent imperialism”.²⁰ The paradox lay in their benevolent purpose and the imperialist nature of their attempt, both of which operated under the political hegemony of the United States. As a “beneficent imperialist,” White’s contribution to “civilizing” Chinese women manifests in her multiple educative roles among Chinese women—principal of Huiwen Girls’ School in Nanjing, editor-in-chief of The Woman’s Messenger (Nüduo 女鐸), the first Christian women’s magazine in China, and also a prolific translator rendering Chinese translations of English fiction targeted at Chinese women. Granted the authority and agency accompanying these roles, White clearly stated her aim—to teach Chinese women that the womanhood they needed was a spirit of sacrifice to serve others.²¹ The notion of feminine self-sacrifice was rooted in Victorian ideals of womanhood, to which late nineteenth-century American women subscribed. One of the key ideas entailed in Victorian womanhood was the notion of “separate spheres” for members of each sex. While the competitive, assertive, and rational man would earn a living in the public sphere, the virtuous, weak, and submissive woman should remain in the private sphere, the home, to manage the household. Mid-nineteenth-century writers called this ideal woman “true woman” and her femininity “true womanhood”.²² The social endorsement of this prevalent culture was substantial in the nineteenth-century United States and Great Britain, causing contemporary historians to label it a “cult”.²³ Welter has studied

 Janet Lee, “Between Subordination and She-Tiger: Social Constructions of White Femininity in the Lives of Single, Protestant Missionaries in China, 1905 – 1930”, Women’s Studies International Forum 19, no. 6 (1996): 629.  Motoe Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution: American and Chinese New Women in the Early Twentieth Century, United States in the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), 34.  Chin, “Beneficent Imperialists”, 328.  Margaret H. Brown, “Our Periodicals”, in No Speedier Way: A Volume Commemorating The Golden Jubilee of Christian Literature Society for China, 1887 – 1937 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society For China, 1938), 114.  Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820 – 1860”, American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151.  Glenna Matthews, “Just a Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 6, 42.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

29

this cult of true womanhood and concludes that a true woman was expected to wholly embrace the four virtues of “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” to fulfill her feminine role.²⁴ As Welter’s “piety” suggests, American Victorianism was so closely linked to evangelical Protestantism that Howe describes “Victorianism as essentially Protestant”.²⁵ We can understand Christian sentiment was at the core of the cult when we consider that the idea of separate spheres was developed from the notion that God created men and women differently. Naturally, for White, who was from the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the leading Protestant denominations, Protestant Victorian womanhood informed her ideology about women. Religious historian McDannell studied the Christian influence on domesticity in Victorian America and illustrated the development of the Protestant perspective of women during the nineteenth century.²⁶ She suggests that the reason why Protestants emphasized the role of mothers as moral guardians at home is that women were considered God’s emissaries on Earth for their moral power and religiosity. With their innate virtues of piety and self-sacrifice, women had the power to convert and redeem husbands and children at home. As a household was the fundamental unit in the Christian commonwealth, this power rooted in home was perceived as so mighty that it could eventually save society from its own sins. Conditioned with ideologies of “advanced” American civilization and Victorian womanhood from the national and church patronage, White stressed the significance and benefits of a submissive Victorian womanhood to a nation, which was what May Fourth Chinese women purportedly needed to strengthen China, as will be revealed in the following analysis.

Romola (1863) and Luanshi Nühao (1923) To understand how White attempted to achieve this purpose, I analyze one of White’s translations, Luanshi Nühao, investigating ideas about self-sacrifice which are absent or portrayed differently in its original Romola. ²⁷ Romola, pub-

 Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820 – 1860”, 152.  Daniel Walker Howe, “American Victorianism as a Culture”, 513.  Colleen McDannell, “Leaders at the Domestic Altar: The Maternal Model”, in The Christian Home in Victorian America,1840 – 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).  To conduct the comparative textual analysis, I back translate the Chinese translations literally in English to indicate the semantic meaning of the Chinese words in the translation. Although back translation has its limitations, most obviously my potential subjective involvement as a translator, this method is the most viable and hence indispensable.

30

Tin Kei Wong

lished as a book in three volumes in 1863, is George Eliot’s (1819 – 1880) sole historical novel.²⁸ The title character Romola has attracted various readings from contemporary literary critics: a female intellectual with unusually broad education,²⁹ a feminist heroine,³⁰ a Madonna figure,³¹ and even a pioneer who has appeared three centuries earlier than the Victorian social reformers.³² With so many possible readings, White’s depiction of the translated Romola will reveal the translator’s particular ideas about womanhood, conveyed through the figure of Romola to Chinese readers. White translated Romola to Luanshi Nühao (A heroine in troubled times), published as a book by the Christian Literature Society for China (CLS, Guangxue hui 廣學會) in 1923.³³ The CLS book catalogue lists Luanshi Nühao as “a fine social novel” that acts as a timely sharp admonition to Chinese young people.³⁴ Despite such claims on its significance for that era, hitherto, there has been no research on this translation apart from Song’s 2015 article that analyzes how White strengthens Christianity in this work.³⁵ White’s presentation of womanhood in this translation, however, deserves academic attention because it reflects transnational ideological exchanges between modern China and the United States. My analysis contextualizes White’s conspicuous rewriting in gender discourses prevalent in Chinese and American societies at the time and attempts to reveal why White believed that Chinese women needed a

 George Eliot, Romola, ed. Andrew Sanders (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980).  Deirdre David, “Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot” (1987): 177– 96.  Nancy L. Paxton, “George Eliot and the City: The Imprisonment of Culture”, in Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, ed. Susan Merrill Squier (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).  Kimberly VanEsveld Adams, Our Lady of Victorian Feminism: The Madonna in the Work of Anna Jameson, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 164– 95.  Alison Booth, Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 110 – 34.  According to Song Lihua 宋莉華, Chuanjiaoshi Hanwen xiaoshuo yanjiu 傳教士漢文小說研究 [A Study on Chinese Missionary Novels] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2010), 181, Luanshi Nühao was published in 1917. My investigation into the annual reports of the CLS, however, discovered that Luanshi Nühao was listed as a new book in 1923, with the first edition published in the same year; Christian Literature Society for China, “Christian Literature Society for China Annual Report 1922– 1923” (Shanghai, 1923), 17. The version used in this study is Laura M. White, trans., Luanshi Nühao 亂世女豪 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1932).  Guangxuehui tushu mulu 廣學會圖書 目錄 [Catalogue of Books Published by the Christian Literature Society for China], 9.  Song Lihua 宋莉華. “Cong Luomula dao Luanshi nühao—chuanjiaoshi yiben de jidujiaohua yanjiu” 從《羅慕拉》到《亂世女豪》— 傳教士譯本的基督教化研究 [From Romola to Luanshi nühao—A Study on Christianisation of Missionary Translation], Literary Review, no. 1 (2015).

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

31

self-sacrificial womanhood. White’s act of translation is read to be reflective of how she perceived May Fourth Chinese women. Inspired by historical events that took place in fifteenth-century Renaissance Florence, the original novel revolves around selfish Tito Melema and selfless Romola de’ Bardi, husband and wife who are different in terms of values and personalities. The following synopsis outlines the significant differences in the couple’s characters, which shed light to explicate the reasons why White chose to translate this work into Chinese. During the chaotic times in Florence brought by conflicts between politics and religion, Tito cheats and betrays his acquaintances, even his own foster father, out of his narcissistic desire for power and money. Tito also has a secret wife, Tessa, and two children, but he keeps both Romola and Tessa uninformed. Conversely, Romola has insisted on filial piety to her late father and commitment to her marriage until she can no longer tolerate her incompatibility with Tito. She struggles between obedience and autonomy and has escaped from Florence twice. Despite her two flights, Romola eventually decides to return to Florence because she is determined to fulfill her obligations after being inspired by her own experience of saving lives in a plague-stricken village and words from revolutionary preacher Savonarola. At the end of the story, Tito dies and Romola becomes free. However, she decides to assume the responsibility of supporting Tessa and her children, living a family life with women as the head of the household. As mentioned above, White’s Chinese translation of this story, Luanshi Nühao, was praised as a novel with the stern purpose of reprimanding China’s young people. White’s pedantic preface to the translation is intended for Chinese youths, and it foreshadows some of her intentions throughout the translation. While literary researchers such as Bonaparte compare the Renaissance Florentine setting in Romola to the Victorian English background in which Eliot was situated,³⁶ White draws a parallel between the upheavals of Renaissance Florence and the Chinese context in which she was translating—the turbulent May Fourth period (1915 – 1925). Indeed, because of the iconoclastic New Culture Movement that attacked traditional Chinese values while celebrating Western concepts, China was experiencing similar philosophical, intellectual, and social shifts. White compares the two streams of intelligentsia in this period to Bardo and Tito. Bardo, Romola’s humanist scholar father who insists on keeping his library of classical studies, is likened to Chinese scholars who failed to impart traditional erudite learning to the new generation of intellectuals because vari-

 Felicia Bonaparte, The Triptych and the Cross: The Central Myths of George Eliot’s Poetic Imagination (New York: New York University Press, 1979).

32

Tin Kei Wong

ous aspects of Chinese culture including “Confucianism, veneration of the past, authoritarianism, social hierarchy, the patriarchal family, and classical literature” had been discarded.³⁷ The reformists supporting the New Culture Movement are compared to the egoistic Tito, the major antagonist of the story who acts solely on personal desire. These reformists, like Tito, are endangering the country and its people. In White’s words: 中國最大危險，就是許多青年新人物，雖受過很多的教育，各抱莫大志願，然往往不肯犧牲 一己，為國家謀公益，反要犧牲國家，為個人得權利。此種人與書中的梅提多又很相同。³⁸ (The greatest danger facing China is that many young people, despite being highly educated and having high aspirations, are not willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good of the country. Instead, they sacrifice the country for individual rights. This kind of person is very similar to Tito in the story.)

White states that Tito’s catastrophic ending acts as a mirror for young Chinese to observe the destructive consequences of individualist ambitions, and that the character of Romola is an exemplary woman who displays virtues to save the country. The lesson taught through Romola is that a country will never decline and vanish if its women are virtuous and strong. White expresses her purpose of translating this story: 我今最大盼望，就是在我們中國女同胞的道德及強壯，故命二三女弟子共將此書譯出，貢獻 全中國各界青年婦女。所望諸位讀了以後，能彀仿效這羅麥娜為人，如此，就可對我們的家 對我們的國對我們的社會對我們的上帝了。³⁹ (For now, I have high hopes for the virtues and strength of our Chinese female compatriots. Therefore, I have asked two to three female acolytes to translate this book with me, as a dedication to young women in all sectors of China. I hope that when you finish reading, you can fully emulate Romola’s disposition. In this way, we can be worthy of our home, our nation, our society, and our God.)

The stark contrast between Tito and Romola in the original, which White uses as an analogy for the selfish Chinese reformists and a self-sacrificing female role model, is interpreted as the reason why White chose Romola over Eliot’s more famous works, such as The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871– 1872). White has expressed an explicit stance on her purpose of translation and the significance she attaches to the character of Romola as the role model

 Yuxin Ma, “Women Journalists in the Chinese Enlightenment, 1915 – 1923”, Gender Issues 22, no. 1 (2005): 56 – 57.  White, Preface to Luanshi Nühao, 2.  Ibid.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

33

for Chinese women. In fact, as we will see in the analysis below, the translation functions to direct Chinese women to the purportedly correct pathway of womanhood and stresses that the correct way is to practice feminine self-sacrifice, which Romola embodies.

Directing Romola and Chinese Women to the “Correct” Path of Womanhood In my view, White sees both Tito and the untransformed Romola as metaphors for May Fourth Chinese female activists, the target readers of this translation. Through the male character of Tito, White criticizes female activists who stepped into the male sphere of politics and demanded gender equality and individualism. During the May Fourth period, urban educated women rallied for equality with men in areas including “voting rights, inheritance rights, education rights, divorce conditions, employment opportunities and wage rates”.⁴⁰ They campaigned for women’s rights with the declaration that they were individuals independent of men, in the pursuit of duli renge 獨立人格 (independent personhood). As one of the key May Fourth concepts that gained currency, independent personhood was viewed as being crucial to the emancipation of women from the Chinese patriarchal family system.⁴¹ White and her fellow senior American missionary women showed strong disapproval of such demands. Luella Miner (1861– 1935), White’s missionary peer who founded China’s first college for women, criticized the emancipated Chinese women as “both masculine and immoral”.⁴² Similarly, White disagreed with Chinese women on their aspirations to assume the male role in political engagement. White maintained that Chinese women should be “raising” instead of “rising”, with the pursuit of “sacrificial service” instead of “ambition” as the correct pathway to womanhood.⁴³ Therefore, I read that White projects her criticism and hope for Chinese women separately onto the characters of Tito and Romola. While the first part shows how Tito’s egoistic ambitions (Chinese female activism) would lead to per Louise Edwards, “Chinese Feminism in a Transnational Frame: Between Internationalism and Xenophobia”, in Women’s Movements in Asia: Feminisms and Transnational Activism, ed. Mina Roces and Louise Edwards (London: Routledge, 2010), 54.  Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution, 98 – 99.  Ibid., 44. Miner founded the North China Union College for Women in 1905, which later formed part of Yenching University.  Laura M. White, The Ascent of Woman, or The Struggle for the Life of Others (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society Book Depot, 1913), 30.

34

Tin Kei Wong

sonal, familial, and social disasters, the second part focuses on the transformation of Romola as a self-abnegating heroine dedicated to serving others, projecting White’s “high hopes” for Chinese women and showing them the “correct” path to ideal womanhood. In the original story, Romola’s two flights from Florence are significant because each signifies a different stage of Romola’s transformation. Romola leaves Florence for the first time when she discovers that Tito has betrayed her late father Bardo by selling Bardo’s library. She eventually returns to Florence because of Savonarola’s admonishment about her duties as a wife and Florentine. Romola leaves Florence for the second time when political chaos break out, and Romola loses faith in Savonarola and the city. Nevertheless, Romola returns to Florence again because of the new life purpose she has discovered through the experience of saving lives in a plague-stricken village. In the translation, White manipulates the description of the first flight, Savonarola’s lecture to Romola in particular, to a greater extent, because it allows more space to insert ideas about directing the untransformed Romola, the metaphor for activist Chinese women, to return and serve her people. Through Savonarola’s lecture to Romola, White conveys her own instructions to Chinese women:

Example 1 Original: Make your marriage-sorrows an offering too, my daughter: an offering to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our selfish will—to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfill the duties of that great inheritance. Live for Florence—for your own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp—I know, I know—it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup—there is the vision which makes all life below it dross for ever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place!⁴⁴

Translation: 你為什麼不將婚姻所連累的作為犧牲？你總當忘記已往的事，努力前進，起來拯救同胞的 苦楚。你當抱定目的，為上帝創辦這城的大事，為社會造幸福。果能殺身成仁，不但可贖你 平生的錯點，還有無窮的希望。況當今女子解放的時代，你何不出來趁這機會，展你才能，

 Eliot, Romola, 436.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

35

替先人增光，盡你為子孫的義務呢？你生長此城，民情自然深悉。你救此城，比他人格外切 實些，容易些。羅麥娜阿，我也知這番話，性硬如鐵，刺你心腸，味苦如藥，傷你喉舌，但不 是這樣，你後此福氣即無盼望。總之，服役社會的勞苦，能使你的生活增長價值，從此就不 難得永生了。羅麥娜阿，我言盡於此，你不可迷惑，快回頭罷。⁴⁵ (Why don’t you take all the sufferings from your marriage as sacrifice? You have to forget what is past and work hard to save your fellow countrymen from sufferings. You should set a goal to organize important matters for this city and contribute to the wellbeing of society for God. If you can sacrifice yourself for virtues, you will not only be able to redeem the wrongdoings of your life, but you will also get infinite hope. Moreover, in this age of women’s liberation, why don’t you come out and take advantage of this opportunity to show your talent and honor your ancestors to fulfill your obligation as their offspring? You grew up in this city, so you know your people well. It is more practical and easier for you to save this city. Romola, I know my words are as hard as iron, stabbing your heart, and as bitter as medicine, stinging your throat, but if I don’t talk about it, you have no hope for happiness in your life. In short, the hard work of serving society can increase the value of your life, and from then on it will no longer be difficult for you to achieve eternal life anymore. Romola, I won’t say any more than that. You must not be confused or deceived. Turn back quickly.)

The translation obviously intensifies and elaborates on the tone of persuasion of the original Savonarola. When read in the Chinese context, White’s purpose becomes discernible and specific. Although conveying messages to Chinese women using fiction is already an indirect but strategic method, White further deploys tactics to convey her messages. As republican China had been longing for national revival, the addition of “you will also get infinite hope” creates appeal to the whole concept of self-sacrifice. White also adds “in this age of women’s liberation” to attract the attention of reformist women. She asks a rhetorical question, absent in the original, as a literary device to stimulate reader reflection. The question also addresses Chinese women’s capability as a positive impetus to their service, while reminding them of the familial lineage that deserves to be respected. Although Savonarola’s original final request for Romola to return is already strong, White adds another instruction, that Romola “must not be confused or deceived”. To put the Chinese context in perspective, White apparently asks Chinese women not to be “confused or deceived” by May Fourth ideas that were unorthodox by White’s standards. In fact, White explicitly dismissed May Fourth ideas such as “free love” and “radical iconoclasm” as “evil ideologies

 White, Luanshi Nühao, 75 – 76.

36

Tin Kei Wong

and fallacies” that lured Chinese women and prevented them from identifying the “real road to freedom”.⁴⁶

Translating Romola as a Self-sacrificial Heroine for May Fourth Women As mentioned, Eliot wrote Romola as a realistic historical novel with the themes of religious and political conflicts. With heavy abridgement, however, White recenters the focus of the story to Romola’s feminine qualities, self-sacrifice in particular, to be highlighted against upheavals allegedly caused by selfish ambitions. Its dramatic Chinese title, Luanshi Nühao (A heroine in troubled times), functions not only to highlight Romola’s heroic qualities, but also to attract May Fourth women activists who sought to identify themselves with heroic models. Through translating and re-creating Romola, White offers her interpretation of “heroine” to May Fourth Chinese women. Romola’s self-abnegation is characterized by suffering in marriage and service for others. As Example 1 shows, Savonarola starts his teaching by requesting that Romola “make [her] marriage-sorrows an offering”. Indeed, Romola’s suffering mostly comes from the marriage with Tito. White, however, adds her opinion about marriage (through Savonarola’s words) and how women should endure pain because of wifely obligations:

Example 2 Original: My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You may say, “I will forsake my husband,” but you cannot cease to be a wife.⁴⁷

 Laura M. White, “Ziyou lian’ai de wojian” 自由戀愛的我見 [My Views on Free Love] (Free Love), Woman’s Messenger, November 1928, 15.  Eliot, Romola, 435 – 36.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

37

Translation: 你的小十字架，就是表明無論丈夫如何，總要守你做妻子的本分，勸他做個好人。因為你即 使丟棄了丈夫，你還是個妻子的地位，總不能回復處女的原狀。請問你有何法可以逃遁 呢？⁴⁸ (Your little cross is to show that no matter how your husband behaves, you should always keep your wifely duty and persuade him to be a good man. It is because, even if you forsake your husband, you are still a wife, and you can’t restore your virginity. So how could you escape from that [marriage]?)

While the original reminds Romola of her duty to remain in her marriage, White elaborates on what wifely duty means and how it is impossible to desert her obligation and her husband. Additional content includes “no matter how your husband behaves, you should always keep your wifely duty” which is to “persuade him to be a good man”. The extra content White adds echoes her early claim that the wife bears the responsibility of saving her husband and ensuring his moral health by converting him to Christianity.⁴⁹ The two additional sentences at the end further disclose White’s conservative view on marriage. As White writes, even if Romola leaves Tito, she “can’t restore [her] virginity”. White ends Savonarola’s words with a rhetorical question, pressing the idea that Romola cannot escape from her marriage because of this. White’s comment on marriage and divorce, expressed in the addition, is apparently a response to the May Fourth liberal conceptions of marriage, which were derived from the prevalent notion of independent personhood. Due to this humanist spirit that regarded women as natural humans instead of dependents of men, many young Chinese “new women” rejected Confucian traditions that placed them in a subordinate position in marriage. Embracing their natural emotional needs as humans, many who used to celebrate celibacy turned to supporting the ideas of free love and consensual marriage. Particularly after 1919, the ideas of lian’ai ziyou 戀愛自由 (freedom to love), hunyin ziyou 婚姻自由 (freedom to marry), and lihun ziyou 離婚自由 (freedom to divorce) became popular.⁵⁰ White expressed her conservative view on marriage in a commentary on the tragedy of Chinese woman Han Duanci 韓端慈 in 1923. Unsatisfied with her husband whom she wed through arranged marriage, Han left home to attend an art school soon after the wedding. After graduating and beginning her teaching career, Han asked for a divorce but did not get it. This failure resulted in Han suffering from

 White, Luanshi Nühao, 75.  Laura M. White, “Neizhu tan” 內助談 [About an Inner Helper] (Why Some Good Women Lose their Husbands’ Respect), Woman’s Messenger, September 1912.  Ma, “Women Journalists”, 66.

38

Tin Kei Wong

depression and eventually dying from it. While other women’s journals used this story to advocate a new woman’s independence by attacking arranged marriage, White focused on Han’s wifely duty.⁵¹ She was critical of Han’s attitude to the marriage. To White, Han had too much pride in her career, which led her to disregard and despise her husband, whom White perceived as a loving man. White lamented that Han did not understand the truth of Christianity, as it was not wise and reasonable for Han to request divorce because her husband was never abusive.⁵² Here in the fictional Luanshi Nühao, through Savonarola’s words in the translation, White reiterates her conformist view that the wife, who is responsible for maintaining her relationship with her husband, should never seek to escape from her marriage. Another salient aspect Romola embodies in her self-sacrificial spirit is her womanly service as the “social mother” for her Florentine community. Enlightened and persuaded by Savonarola, Romola returns to her city that is undergoing political turmoil, starvation, and plague. White’s translation adds details not only to Romola’s charitable acts, but also to the description of the women’s society to which Romola belongs:

Example 3 Original: And early this morning, as usual, members of the various fraternities who made it part of their duty to bury the unfriended dead, were bearing away the corpses that had sunk by the wayside. As usual, sweet womanly forms, with the refined air and carriage of the well-born, but in the plainest garb, were moving about the streets on their daily errands of tending the sick and relieving the hungry. One of these forms was easily distinguishable as Romola de’ Bardi.⁵³

 Ibid., 81– 82.  Laura M. White, “Du Minguo ribao Han nüshi zhuankan shu hou” 讀民國日報韓女士專刊書 後 [After Reading the Special Issue on Ms Han in Minguo Ribao], Woman’s Messenger, March 1923.  Eliot, Romola, 446.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

39

Translation: 歐洲各國，得此消息，一般有學識有高尚志向的女子，發起一種會，如現在女子社會服役之 類，以犧牲二字為主義，結伴前來。他們不惜犧牲光陰與精神與財產，每日都各鄉各鎮港各 街巷，照顧病人以及無依的孤苦男女。那立志悔改的羅麥娜，就是這會中的一個特別會員。 她每天忙碌的幫助賑務，真是非常熱心。 ⁵⁴ (In European countries, if such news [about the plague] is heard, it is common that educated women with lofty aspirations would initiate a kind of society, similar to women’s social service at the present time. They would come together [to the plague-stricken area] with “sacrifice” as their motto. They do not hesitate to sacrifice their time, their energy, and their possessions. They visit all counties, all towns and all harbors, all streets and all alleys, to take care of the sick, the lonely, and the helpless. Romola, who has determined to repent and reform, is a special member of this society. She is busy relieving the calamity every day. She is really fervent.)

The original and its translation describe Romola’s charity in different ways. The original depicts Romola as a member of “various fraternities” who are well-born but help the needy “in the plainest garb”. White shifts the original focus of the members’ social status and attire to their education level, vision, and motto. The translated Romola becomes one of the “educated women with lofty aspirations” joining “women’s service” with “xisheng 犧牲” (sacrifice) as her motto. White skips the original description of the volunteers’ task of handling corpses but elaborates on their “sacrifice” including “guangyin yu jingshen yu caichan 光陰 與精神與財產” (their time, energy and possessions) to visit “ge xiang ge zhengang ge jiexiang 各鄉各鎮港各街巷” (all counties, all towns and all harbors, all streets and all alleys). Using parallelism as a rhetorical device, this extra and explicit description creates a compelling amplification of women volunteers’ sacrifice in magnitude and scale, constructing a vivid picture of their sacrifice to help needy Florentines in all communities. In the translation, White specifies the “fraternities” as “a kind of society” providing “women’s social service”, and explains that the formation of such societies “in European countries” is common during plague outbreaks. White’s association of the fictional women volunteers’ charity work with common practice in European countries reflects her strategy to attract the attention of May Fourth women looking to the West, who may be drawn to the exemplary self-sacrificial acts demonstrated by these Western “educated women with lofty aspirations”. One of White’s writings shows how she celebrated women’s social service in the United States while dissuading Chinese women from radical activism, including fighting for women’s suffrage. Disagreeing with Chinese women’s ambitious demands for political power, White claimed that power and respect would follow if they were dedicated to serving Chinese  White, Luanshi Nühao, 79.

40

Tin Kei Wong

society. By detailing American women’s societies and their work toward social reforms, she attempted to convince readers that American women obtained power by virtue of service, not activism.⁵⁵ Addressing women’s service in Luanshi Nühao, White again conveys this message to her May Fourth women readers. White uses the intensified depiction of women’s service and self-sacrifice to foreground another description of Romola that immediately follows. As Romola is “determined to repent and reform”, she is “really fervent” about “relieving the calamity every day” that keeps her busy. The magnified self-sacrifice in turn dramatizes Romola’s transformation after she decides to “huigai 悔改 (repent and reform)”. After Romola decides to follow the correct path of womanhood according to Savonarola’s teaching, she transforms into a heroine performing lifesaving work in famine- and plague-ridden Florence. Romola’s transformation is enhanced in the translation to convey feminine self-sacrifice as a heroic and redemptive virtue, which Chinese women could achieve through conversion and following the “right” path of womanhood. While Romola is already a “utopian” heroine in the original, White intensifies her self-abnegating spirit to present her as an immaculate paragon of feminine sacrifice for target readers—May Fourth women. At the end of the story, when Romola returns to Florence after the second flight to embrace the responsibility to raise Tito’s children with Tessa, she realizes her altruistic belief that “we can only have the highest happiness … by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves”.⁵⁶ Romola’s extraordinary altruism makes her more of a “utopian” heroine, beyond simply “ideal”. Eliot admitted that she “painted a goddess and not a woman” as asserted by fellow British writer Sara Hennel (1812 – 1899).⁵⁷ The story of this “utopian” figure is what White considered appropriate and good literature for Chinese women. While boosting her feminine altruistic qualities further in the translation, White also tones down Romola’s assertiveness, making her more of an obedient and subordinate wife completely willing to suffer for Tito. With manipulation, White portrays and magnifies the original Romola’s characterization as a self-abnegating heroine who defines herself by passive suffering and service to others. However, she glosses over Romola’s qualities such as agency in choosing which authority to submit to and adherence to her strong conscience and moral prin-

 Laura M. White, “Meiguo nüzi dequan zhi yuanyin” 美國女子得權之原因 [The reasons why American women got rights] (Woman’s Clubs and Social Service), Woman’s Messenger, February 1915, 5.  Eliot, Romola, 674.  Sandra Zodiaco, “Romola: the Emerging Female Self in Renaissance Florence”, Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Occidentale 50, no. 1 (2016): 376.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

41

ciples even if they cause conflict with Tito, which feminists would consider empowering.⁵⁸ Therefore, White’s translation only allows readers to view Romola as an altruistic heroine, which is also the translator’s purpose in response to the Chinese context in which women were asserting their individuality. In contrast to the self-denying Romola, the most prominent fictional heroine May Fourth women celebrated was Nora, the protagonist of the play A Doll’s House (1879), written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906). In 1918, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891– 1962), one of the leading New Culturalists who advocated women’s independence from men, organized a special issue of the prominent revolutionary journal Xin qingnian (New Youth) on “Yibosheng zhuyi 易卜生主義” (Ibsenism).⁵⁹ This issue included the Chinese translation of A Doll’s House, in which Ibsen’s original critique of European patriarchy was adapted to attack the Chinese patriarchal family. Nora asserts her independence, abandons her family, and declares to her husband that she is no less of a human being than her him. Symbolizing female selfhood and resistance, Nora became an archetype of independent xin nüxing 新女性 (New Woman) and a symbol of women’s emancipation for urban educated young women.⁶⁰ Even for Chinese female martyrs such as Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875 – 1907) who sacrificed their lives for revolutionary causes, White would not have agreed that their martyrdom was appropriate feminine self-sacrifice. For White and her fellow senior missionary women, “womanly service” was the only “true service” to which women should dedicate themselves. Ida Kahn’s (1873 – 1930) didactic tale, An Amazon in Cathay, encapsulates the two distinctive mindsets about the achievements of missionary women and Chinese female activists.⁶¹ The story embodies the two distinctive mentalities in the two protagonists respectively, who are two female cousins contributing to patriotic service in very different ways.⁶² Hoying is a Chinese Christian supporting her country modestly through womanly service as an assistant in a hospital for women and children. Alternatively, Pearl is the pagan cousin who volunteers to fight for the country in men’s

 See De Jong, “Romola: A Bildungsroman” for Feminists?”, and Zodiaco, “Romola: The Emerging Female Self in Renaissance Florence”.  Hu Shi 胡適, “Yibusheng zhuyi” 易卜生主義 [Ibsenism], Xin qingnian 4, no. 6 (1918).  Zheng Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 50.  Ida Kahn, M.D., An Amazon in Cathay (Boston: Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, 1912). Kahn was the adopted Chinese daughter of another American female missionary Gertrude Howe (1847– 1928) and one of the earliest Chinese female medical doctors.  Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 257– 65.

42

Tin Kei Wong

attire. The two characters symbolize how Chinese activist women and American female missionaries viewed women’s patriotic contributions differently. While female activists strove for female accomplishment through “glorious self-sacrifice … the assumption of male roles … a transcendence of sex … and heroic, nearly theatrical action”, missionary women considered the correct way was “subtle self-abnegation … the expansion of womanly ones [roles] … the submission to sex … and womanly feeling”.⁶³ By juxtaposing the two women and arranging a disastrous ending for Pearl, who is sexually assaulted on the battlefield, Kahn uses this story to assert that “woman’s contributions to the public world must be determined by her sex”.⁶⁴ As Hunter observes, Pearl resembles mythic Hua Mulan 花木蘭 and historic Qiu Jin, both of whom were prominent female warriors known for disguising themselves as men for nationalist causes. Hua Mulan, the legendary heroine who served in the military in place of her father, was one of the most popular military women models in late Qing and early republican China.⁶⁵ In sharp contrast to these martial heroines, the translated Romola is presented as an alternative model of heroine characterized by dramatic and heroic self-sacrifice, as the title Luanshi Nühao (A heroine in troubled times) indicates. With the translated Romola embodying her interpretation of heroine, White contributed to the diversity of women exemplars presented by women’s journals and textbooks for women and girls.⁶⁶ In the early twentieth century, there were a multitude of diverse views on the proper womanhood model Chinese women required to rebuild China. Accordingly, the literary representations of a variety of model women were utilized to support such views. May Fourth women, who resolved to break free from Chinese traditional womanhood, searched eagerly for foreign role models.⁶⁷ From Western history and literature, they found eminent figures including individualist Nora and women revolutionaries such as French Madame Roland (1754– 1793) and Russian Sophia Perovskaya (1853 – 1881) to buttress their claim on women’s independence and political participation. Western military women were very often raised as key points of reference. By choosing the story of Romola, who is situated in social upheaval similar to those in wartimes, and bestowing on Romola the title “luanshi nühao” (a heroine in troubled

 Ibid., 259.  Ibid., 257.  See Louise Edwards, “The Archetypal Woman Warrior, Hua Mulan: Militarising Filial Piety”, in Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).  See Xiaohong Xia, “The Great Diversity of Women Exemplars in China of Late Qing”, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 3, no. 2 (June 2009).  Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution, 103.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

43

times), White develops her vision of a true woman warrior. She is not the military cross-dressed woman who asserts her ability to perform a man’s role. A true heroine is the self-abnegating woman who remains in the woman’s sphere, abiding by her role as woman and offering service for others, like the translated Romola, who is indeed a moral warrior who battles successfully with self-assertion. In White’s eyes, the womanly service to which Romola dedicates herself is the “safer” way to contribute to the country as “recommended by Western nations to their women”.⁶⁸ This claim, however, was paradoxical because there had been ideological shifts about womanhood that contradicted White’s notion in the United States at the time. As late nineteenth-century American women, such as White, were resolutely starting their evangelising endeavours to implant Victorian womanhood, the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) was budding at home, which eventually led to the rise of a new breed of American New Women missionaries. While the spirit of social Gospel drove some women overseas, it also sowed seeds for the emergence of American women’s rights movements and the feminist ideology of the New Woman during the Progressive Era, which denied the restrictive roles of woman as wife and mother prescribed in Victorian social norms. Influenced by this ideal, more women gained an education, remained single, and worked outside the home as professionals.⁶⁹ These college-educated New Women advocating professionalism constituted most of the missionary force in the early nineteenth century, with the goal of creating New Women like themselves in China. These New Women, however, entered into conflict with senior missionary women such as White because their ideal of the New Woman destabilised Christian Victorian womanhood, which was grounded firmly on the ideals of self-abnegation and domesticity.⁷⁰ Meanwhile, in China, the gender discourse on women was dynamic and was susceptible to Western influence at the turn of the century.⁷¹ Around the late nineteenth century, after losing the Sino–Japanese war, male intellectuals began to support female education because they associated women’s strength

 White, The Ascent of Woman, 23.  There is a sheer quantity of literature on the American new woman. See for example Estelle B. Freedman, “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s”, Journal of American History 61, no. 2 (1974). See also Jean V. Matthews, The Rise of the New Woman: The Women’s Movement in America, 1875 – 1930 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).  Motoe Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution: American and Chinese New Women in the Early Twentieth Century, United States in the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), 21– 28.  Nanxiu Qian, Grace Fong, and Richard Smith, Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Brill, 2008), 6.

44

Tin Kei Wong

with national strength and viewed women’s emancipation as beneficial to state interests. For Chinese women activists, their emancipation and rights were the cause and desired outcome for which they had fought. During the May Fourth period (1915 – 1925), Chinese women became even more active in demanding independence and gender equality.⁷² Despite having different ends for women’s issues, both Chinese men and women searched for models of womanhood to emulate, which was a distinctive feature of the May Fourth period in which foreign ideas were absorbed and received readily. When the concept of independent “xin nüxing 新女性” (New Woman) became more popular during this period, American New Women were perceived as desirable models.⁷³ Hu Shi praised American women for their self-reliance and argued that they displayed their exemplary spirit with their struggle to be free and independent human beings: a quality that Chinese women should emulate.⁷⁴ American Protestant missionaries, who worked in close contact with Chinese women in their extended roles in the public as teachers, doctors, and nurses, were naturally viewed as exemplars.⁷⁵ For Chinese reformists, American Protestant women seemed like a homogenous group who represented a foreign ideal model. However, while forming this nation-centric discourse on the “new woman” that China needed, these reformists might not have been aware of the existence of two cohorts of missionary women in China. While the senior group, to which White belonged, insisted on conservative Victorian womanhood that discouraged women from intellectual pursuits, the New Women group upheld New Womanhood, characterized by professionalism and very often celibacy and independence. Hence, the American women to whom Hu Shi referred were more likely New Women rather than Victorian women. As a senior female missionary championing Victorian ideals, White used her identity as an American woman to write articles and translate stories in which she promoted certain exemplary Western women who embodied the particular womanhood she preached. It is interesting, however, to note that the Victorian

 For more on the May Fourth period, see Tse-Tung Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); see also Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth movement of 1919 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).  For a detailed discussion of Chinese Xin nüxing and their interaction with American new women, see Sasaki, Redemption and Revolution, 98 – 110.  Hu Shi 胡適, “Meiguo de furen” 美國的婦人 [American women], Xin qingnian 5, no. 3 (1918).  Louise Edwards, “Chinese Feminism in a Transnational Frame: Between Internationalism and Xenophobia”, in Women’s Movements in Asia: Feminisms and Transnational Activism, ed. Mina Roces and Louise Edwards (London: Routledge, 2010), 57.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

45

womanhood embraced by White was similar to the Confucian ideal womanhood in many ways. The four Victorian virtues of “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” apparently resemble the traditional Confucian principles of sancong side 三從四德 (three obediences and four virtues) that prescribed a woman to submit to males in her family including her father, husband, and sons, and embody virtues including fude 婦德 (wifely virtue), fuyan 婦言 (wifely speech), furong 婦容 (wifely manner), and fugong 婦功 (wifely work).⁷⁶ As both Victorian womanhood and Confucian patriarchal gender ethics were replaced by the ideals of American New Woman and Chinese xin nüxing respectively, White occupied an obsolete position, falling behind her younger American counterparts as well as Chinese women activists in terms of progressiveness. White’s translation, in this way, serves as a construct of history at multiple levels—it not only reflects how American Victorian missionaries evaluated Chinese women, but also hints at historical paradoxes created by rapid changes in early twentieth century China and the United States, where “advanced” missionaries like White were eventually deemed conservative.

Conclusion The close reading of the comparative textual analysis above has illustrated how White rewrote the depictions of Romola to amplify her self-sacrifice. She created additional meaning in the translation for her purpose of preaching the notion that a successful nation is constructed upon the observance of Victorian femininity, which reflects the ideological constraints imposed by her historical and sociocultural contexts. The translation is essentially a representation of the past —specifically, a representation of both American and Chinese ideologies at the turn of the twentieth century. By analyzing what is rewritten and re-created in this representation, we can grasp how late nineteenth-century American missionary women had evaluated May Fourth Chinese youths, especially female activists, from a condescending perspective. We can also see how these female missionaries intended to preach Victorian ideals, which were much more conservative than the gender notions envisioned by May Fourth reformists. Hence, as this study has shown, the translation adds an alternative perspective to the Chinese reformists’ nation-centric discourse that predominantly celebrat-

 Keith Knapp, “Sancong side (Threefold obedience and four virtues),” in Encyclopedia of Confucianism, ed. Yao Xinzhong (London: Routledge, 2003).

46

Tin Kei Wong

ed and appropriated models from the West, particularly American women’s independence, for national revival. This chapter has illustrated how Chinese history can be approached from a perspective of translation studies with a “non-historical” representation, which moves beyond China’s nation-centrism. In White’s case, the translator used a historical novel depicting fifteenth-century Italy to serve a more “recent” agenda that comments on Chinese women in the early twentieth century by the standard of the late nineteenth-century notion of Victorian womanhood, involving three countries of three different historical periods. In this study, therefore, literary translation proves to be a multi-dimensional representation from which transnational history can be re-constructed.

Bibliography Adams, K.V. Our Lady of Victorian Feminism: The Madonna in the Work of Anna Jameson, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001. Booth, A. Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Brown, M.H. “Our Periodicals”. In No Speedier Way: A Volume Commemorating The Golden Jubilee of Christian Literature Society for China, 1887 – 1937, 97 – 127. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1938. Bonaparte, F. The Triptych and the Cross: The Central Myths of George Eliot’s Poetic Imagination. New York: New York University Press, 1979. Chow, T.-T. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. Christian Literature Society for China. “Christian Literature Society for China Annual Report 1922 – 1923”. Shanghai, 1923. David, D. “Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot”. 1987. De Jong, M.G. “‘Romola: A Bildungsroman’ for Feminists?” South Atlantic Review 49, no. 4 (1984): 75 – 90. Edwards, L. “Chinese Feminism in a Transnational Frame: Between Internationalism and Xenophobia”. In Women’s Movements in Asia: Feminisms and Transnational Activism, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards. London: Routledge, 2010. Edwards, L. “The Archetypal Woman Warrior, Hua Mulan: Militarising Filial Piety”. In Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China, 17 – 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Eliot, G. The George Eliot Letters. Edited by Gordon Sherman Haight. Vol. 7. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Eliot, G. Romola. Edited by Andrew Sanders. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980. Flemming, L.A. “A New Humanity: American Missionaries’ Ideals for Women in North India, 1870 – 1930”. In Western Women and Imperialism—Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

From Renaissance Heroine to May Fourth Female Paragon

47

Freedman, E.B. “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s”. Journal of American History 61, no. 2 (1974): 372. Guangxuehui tushu mulu 廣學會圖書目錄 [Catalogue of Books Published by the Christian Literature Society for China]. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1938. Heidler, D.S., and J.T. Heidler. Manifest Destiny. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Horseman, R. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Howe, D.W. “American Victorianism as a Culture”. American Quarterly 27, no. 5 (1975): 507 – 32. Hu Shi 胡適. “Meiguo de furen” 美國的婦人 [American women]. Xin qingnian 5, no. 3 (1918): 213 – 24. Hu Shi 胡適. “Yibusheng zhuyi” 易卜生主義 [Ibsenism]. Xin qingnian 4, no. 6 (1918): 489 – 507. Hunter, J. The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Hutchison, W.R. Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Kahn, I., M.D. An Amazon in Cathay. Boston, MA: Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, 1912. Knapp, K. “Sancong side (Threefold obedience and four virtues)”. In Encyclopedia of Confucianism, edited by Yao Xinzhong. London: Routledge, 2003. Lee, J. “Between Subordination and She-tiger: Social Constructions of White Femininity in the Lives of Single, Protestant Missionaries in China, 1905 – 1930”. Women’s Studies International Forum 19, no. 6 (1996): 621 – 32. Lefevere, A. “Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm”. In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary translation, edited by Theo Hermans, 215 – 43. London: Croom Helm, 1985. Lefevere, A. “Systems Thinking and Cultural Relativism”. Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature 26, no. 7 (1988 – 9): 55 – 68. Lefevere, A. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge, 1992. Lefevere, A. “Translation Practice(s) and the Circulation of Cultural Capital: Some Aeneids in English”. In Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 41 – 56. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998. Lefevere, A. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature”. In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 233 – 49. London: Routledge, 2000. Ma, Y. “Women Journalists in the Chinese Enlightenment, 1915 – 1923”. Gender Issues 22, no. 1 (2005): 56 – 87. Matthews, J.V. The Rise of the New Woman: The Women’s Movement in America, 1875 – 1930. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. Matthews, G. “Just a Housewife”: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. McDannell, C. “Leaders at the Domestic Altar: The Maternal Model”. In The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840 – 1900, 127 – 49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

48

Tin Kei Wong

Paxton, N.L. “George Eliot and the City: The Imprisonment of Culture”. In Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, edited by Susan Merrill Squier, 71 – 96. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. Qian, N., G. Fong, and R. Smith. Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Brill, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1163/ ej.9789004167766.i-417. Ross, D. “A Historian’s View of American Social Science”. In Scientific Authority & Twentieth-Century America, edited by Ronald G. Walters, 32 – 50. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Sasaki, M. Redemption and Revolution: American and Chinese New Women in the Early Twentieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016. Schwarcz, V. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth movement of 1919. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986. Song Lihua 宋莉華. Chuanjiaoshi Hanwen xiaoshuo yanjiu 傳教士漢文小說研究 [A Study on Chinese Missionary Novels]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2010. Song Lihua 宋莉華. “Cong Luomula dao Luanshi nühao—chuanjiaoshi yiben de jidujiaohua yanjiu 從《羅慕拉》到《亂世女豪》—傳教士譯本的基督教化研究” [From Romola to Luanshi nühao—A Study on Christianisation of Missionary Translation]. Literary Review, no. 1 (2015): 210 – 16. Wang, Z. Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Welter, B. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820 – 1860”. American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151 – 74. White, L.M. “Neizhu tan” 內助談 [About an Inner Helper] (Why Some Good Women Lose their Husbands’ Respect). Woman’s Messenger, September 1912, 5 – 7. White, L.M. The Ascent of Woman, or The Struggle for the Life of Others. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society Book Depot, 1913. White, L.M. “Meiguo nüzi dequan zhi yuanyin” 美國女子得權之原因 [The reasons why American women got rights] (Woman’s Clubs and Social Service), Woman’s Messenger, February 1915, 1 – 5. White, L.M. “Du Minguo ribao Han nüshi zhuankan shu hou” 讀民國日報韓女士專刊書後 [After Reading the Special Issue on Ms Han in Minguo Ribao]. Woman’s Messenger, March 1923. White, L.M. “Ziyou lian’ai de wojian” 自由戀愛的我見 [My Views on Free Love] (Free Love). Woman’s Messenger, November 1928, 8 – 16. White, L.M. Preface to Luanshi Nühao 亂世女豪, by George Eliot. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1932. White, L.M. trans. Luanshi Nühao 亂世女豪, by George Eliot. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1932. Xia, Xiaohong. “The Great Diversity of Women Exemplars in China of Late Qing”. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 3, no. 2 (June 2009): 218 – 46. Zodiaco, Sandra. “Romola: The Emerging Female Self in Renaissance Florence”. Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Occidentale 50, no. 1 (2016): 361 – 80.

Isaac C.K. Tan

Globalized Memories: Creating a Historical Space for Medical Pioneers in Modern China Abstract: A Malayan Chinese, Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897– 1969) served under the Republican banner while Canadian-born Dr. Henry Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939), better known as Bai Qiu’en, was among the Communist ranks since the Yan’an years. Upon Bethune’s premature death in 1939, he became a household name among the Chinese after Mao delivered his famous eulogy. As for Lim, he faded into obscurity after his departure from Taiwan in the initial years after the end of the Chinese Civil War. How then should we treat the stories of these individuals who transcended national boundaries and did not fit neatly in the modern national narratives of China and Taiwan? I argue that the “chronopolitics” of memory as shaped by the geopolitical situation of the Cold War created the conditions for the remembering, forgetting, distortion, and suppression of the memories of these transnational individuals. By examining the lives of Bethune and Lim, I emphasize the importance of micro-narratives of individuals in introducing a human dimension to global history. This chapter thus evinces the underlying discursive tensions surrounding representations of individuals in collective memory as well as the (mis)representation of individuals who do not fit neatly in both state-centric and nation-centric historical narratives of modern China. Keywords: Bethune, Henry Norman (Bai Qiu’en), Cold War, collective memory, Lim, Robert Kho-Seng (Lin Kesheng), micro-history, nation-state The ideal of a congruency of “nation” and “state” defines modern nationalism and features prominently in contemporary historical representations.¹ However, the formation of any modern nation-state is hardly in isolation. Mid-twentieth century China was at a crossroad where nationalist sentiments and transnational forces met. Transnational interactions contest the neatly-defined boundaries of both the nation and the state, even at the historical moment when the concept Isaac C.K. Tan, Columbia University  Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1; Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals (New York: The Century Co., 1917), 146. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-004

50

Isaac C.K. Tan

of the modern nation-state was in ferment. This chapter focuses on two medical specialists who came from different backgrounds but arrived at a war-torn country, leaving legacies that shaped the articulation of modern national identities in China and Taiwan. Dr. Robert Kho-Seng Lim (1897– 1969), a Malayan Chinese, and Dr. Henry Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939), a Canadian better known as Bai Qiu’en, came from abroad to serve behind Chinese lines in the international fight against fascism during the Second World War (WWII). Lim served under the Republican banner while Bethune was among the Communist ranks since the Yan’an years. By examining the lives of Lim and Bethune, this chapter alternates between micro- and macro- approaches, bridges this divide by situating personal biographies in global history, and emphasizes the importance of micro-narratives of individuals in introducing a human dimension to global history. At the end of WWII, the life stories of both Bethune and Lim served as propaganda fodder, used by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT), to stir up anti-Japanese sentiments in the postwar period. The global experiences of Bethune and Lim—the former took part in the Spanish Civil War and was a proud communist; the latter received his medical education in the United Kingdom and returned to serve as the medical head of the Republican government—were not a common trait of heroes in both the CCP and KMT narratives. State-centric narratives of the CCP portray Bethune as the exemplary international communist who laid down his life to resist fascism, while nationcentric narratives depict Lim as the model patriotic member of the Chinese diaspora who returned to his ancestral homeland in times of crisis. But to the KMT, though Lim was remembered as the father of modern medicine who orchestrated the modern transformation of the health service in Taiwan, his political aloofness relegated him to historical obscurity in post-war narratives. Not to mention that Bethune, being a member of KMT’s archenemy, was conspicuously absent as well. This chapter argues for the creation of a discursive space to accommodate individual narratives in the broader context of global history. I examine how their unique life experiences in different parts of the world shaped their global outlook and fostered a strong sense of comradery with the community to which each of them was closely related. By considering carefully the biographical narratives in reconstructing the context—or “the social surface” as coined by Pierre Bourdieu—in which the individual is dealing at each moment, it serves to highlight the role of personalities in carving out their special places in history, both at

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

51

the national and global levels.² The individual anecdotes thus critique conventional grand narratives that either overemphasize the role of the CCP and the KMT or venerate the supposedly inherent strengths of the Chinese population in overcoming long-time oppression to gain liberation from foreign forces as well as other internal feudalistic elements in an extraordinary period of turmoil and destruction. In their study of the shared memories of the Holocaust within the Jewish diaspora after WWII, Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider argue that in the age of globalization, the construction of collective memory no longer stays within the confines of the nation-state but rather becomes the site of how transnational elements are transforming—both disempowering and empowering—the imagination of the nation-state.³ Likewise, this edited volume challenges the dominant nation-state representations of modern Chinese history. Just as Egas Moniz Bandeira’s chapter suggests how external events such as the 1789 French Revolution informed Chinese political debates and created discourses that were integrated into the Chinese collective memory, a key theme of this chapter is how collective memory challenges the discursive limitations imposed by national boundaries. Beyond the exchange of ideas across national borders, I highlight the mobility of individuals that also form an integral part of the Chinese collective memory. Rather than view the apparent differences in historical memory of people residing in China and Taiwan as a clash of aspirations along nationalistic or ideological lines, I underline the limitations of remembering the deeds of global individuals using the nation-state paradigm. This chapter also evinces the underlying discursive tensions surrounding representations of individuals in collective memory as well as the (mis)representation of individuals who do not fit neatly in either state-centric or nation-centric historical narratives of modern China. Following Levy’s critique on Pierre Nora’s idea that the nation-state serves as the sole source of collective memory,⁴ this chapter argues that collective memory needs to be diversified to accommodate personalized memories that lie beyond the demarcations set by national borders. The focus on these transnational individuals suggests that global factors do not imply an end of the imagination of the

 Giovanni Levi, “The Uses of Biography,” in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, eds. Hans Renders and Binne De Haan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 73.  Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 2.  Daniel Levy, “Memory and Methodological Cosmopolitanism: A Figurative Approach,” in The Ashgate Companion to Memory Studies, ed. Siobhan Kattago (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 211– 24.

52

Isaac C.K. Tan

nation. Rather, they serve as a possible trigger for nationalistic rhetoric and the transformation of national narratives.⁵ This transnational approach not only introduces new perspectives to the notion of collective memory but also renders the relatively stable national boundaries demarcating memories and historical narratives more porous and flexible. Joining the affluence of recent literature in memory studies that challenge the inadequate dichotomy of memory-forgetting to understand the impact of transnational forces, institutions, and processes on collective memory,⁶ this chapter presents a relatively underexamined perspective by focusing on medical specialists and reveals how medicine and politics are deeply intertwined in the politics of collective memory. Inspired by Thongchai Winichakul’s notion of silence which he defines as “a symptom of the inability to remember or forget, the inability to articulate memories in a comprehensible and meaningful fashion, or to depart from the past completely,”⁷ I argue that the commemoration of these transnational individuals involves an active production of silence to selectively forget certain experiences and even distorting historical representations in order for them to be incorporated into officially sanctioned narratives. The various social, cultural, and political conditions in modern Thai society, as Thongchai deftly describes, provided the language for the articulation of the collective memories of the 1976 Massacre—underlining the importance of the “chronopolitics” of memory.⁸ By the same token, Takashi Yoshida presents a compelling argument on how Cold War geopolitics loomed largely over the remembrance of the Nanjing Massacre in China, Japan, and the United States where the process of historical remembrance shifted in response to the impermanent international political climate.⁹ On both sides of the Chinese or Taiwanese Straits, the geopol-

 Ibid., 217.  On some of the latest literature, see Nigel Young, Postnational Memory, Peace and War: Making Pasts Beyond Borders (New York: Routledge, 2020); Reinhart Koselleck, Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories, ed. and trans. Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018); Kendall R. Phillips and G. Mitchell Reyes, eds., Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011); Jeffrey K. Olick, States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).  Thongchai Winichakul, Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of The October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020), 9.  Ibid., 13 – 14; Carol Gluck, “Operations of Memory: ‘Comfort Women’ and the World,” in Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, eds. Shella Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 61.  Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

53

itical situation of the Cold War created the conditions for the remembering, forgetting, distortion, and suppression of the memories of these transnational individuals. Historians have pointed out how micro-history is often used as a framework to restore personal dignity and historical importance to the losers of history.¹⁰ In his suggestion to incorporate micro-history into larger narratives of history, Levi Giovanni argues for the analysis of group representation in “social institutions” of the government or bureaucracy to overcome theoretical problems inherent to biography as a credible historical source.¹¹ Biography is thus not an inferior form of history because it raises interdisciplinary issues in historiography, such as contemporary geopolitical concerns, which is key to the historical enterprise.¹² Therefore, in highlighting the significance of individuals such as Norman Bethune’s and Robert Lim’s participation in global events, this chapter reveals how their idiosyncratic characteristics interacted with the macro-, overlying economic, social, and political interests of their time. Bethune’s political allegiance propelled him to travel across the globe to fight against first the Spanish Nationalist and then the Japanese imperialists under the banner of socialism, earning him the reputation as an international fighter, a doctor beyond borders. In contrast, Lim, as part of the Chinese diaspora, traveled thousands of miles to Europe and North America, only to return and serve the country that his ancestors had left generations previously. WWII thus served as the shared historical space in bringing together individuals such as Bethune and Lim from different parts of the world toward a common goal to defeat the global fascist movement.

Away from China—Tracing Global Beginnings This section begins with the life experiences of Henry Norman Bethune and Robert Kho-Seng Lim before and during WWII, drawing similarities and highlighting differences between them to show the complexities of how external social forces had left imprints that steered the courses of their lives respectively. Born on March 4, 1890, Norman Henry Bethune (1890 – 1939) was born into a lower mid-

 Sabina Loriga, “The Role of the Individual in History: Biographical and Historical Writing in the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Century,” in Theoretical Discussions of Biography, 89.  Levi, “The Uses of Biography,” in Theoretical Discussions of Biography, 73.  Lois W. Banner, “Biography as History,” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009): 580 – 83.

54

Isaac C.K. Tan

dle-class family in the small town of Gravenhurst, Ontario Province, Canada.¹³ Bethune’s biographers point out that his deeply-religious parents inculcated in him a strong desire to serve and shaped his character with a strong sense of justice.¹⁴ On the other side of the globe, Robert (Bobby) Kho-Seng Lim (1897– 1969) was born in Singapore to a well-to-do overseas Chinese family on October 15, 1897.¹⁵ Unlike Bethune, Lim was born into a family of doctors, with his father Lim Boon Keng (1868 – 1957) a prominent philanthropist who served as a personal physician to the founding father of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925).¹⁶ Despite the obvious differences in their upbringing, the onset of the First World War would bring both of them to experience first-hand the horrors of war. Both Bethune and Lim volunteered to join the military soon after Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914. Lim served mainly in the capacity as a support staff, first as an assistant to the army surgeon and later as part of the military band.¹⁷ Unlike Lim, who had a relatively uneventful war experience, Bethune was a stretcher-bearer at the frontlines in France and had experienced the horrors of chemical gas attacks launched by the Imperial German Army. After suffering a shrapnel injury in the second battle of Ypres, he joined the Royal Navy in 1917 as the surgeon of the aircraft carrier, HMS Pegasus. However, like many soldiers who survived the war, he too fell victim to the Spanish flu and was bed-ridden for almost three weeks.¹⁸ Years later, while reflecting on his war experience, he wrote, “[I am] too much the product of my generation to conceive my situation as tragic there has been no tragedy since the war.”¹⁹ Clearly, the wartime years had left an indelible impression in Bethune’s thinking, for he  Although Gravenhurst’s town official records stated Bethune’s birth date as March 3, 1890, Bethune and his father always celebrated his birthday on March 4. Hence, researchers have concluded that the town clerk might have recorded the date wrongly. See Roderick Stewart and Sharon Stewart, Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 383, n. 17; Norman Bethune and Larry Hannant, The Politics of Passion: Norman Bethune’s Writing and Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 12.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 4– 11; Tan Siang Yong and Kate Pettigrew, “Henry Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939): Surgeon, Communist, Humanitarian,” Singapore Medical Journal 57, no. 10 (2016): 526.  Shi Yan, “Robert K.S. Lim and the Development of Modern Medicine in Republican China, 1924– 1949,” Ph.D. diss., National University of Singapore, 2013, 22; Victor Sim, Biographies of Prominent Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: Nan Kok Publication Company, 1953), 1.  On Lim’s family genealogy, see Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 29.  Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 32; Horace W. Davenport, “Robert Kho-Seng Lim,” in Biographical Memoirs, vol. 51 (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1980), 282– 83.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 20 – 31; Roderick Stewart and Jesús Majada, Bethune in Spain (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 5.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 30.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

55

had stared into the eyes of death but emerged unscathed. As for Lim, he was one of the few Chinese soldiers at the European theater of the Great War.²⁰ His war involvement would serve to boost his standing and credibility among his peers. After the war, Bethune changed his job several times. He was an intern at the Hospital for Sick Children in London; a Senior Medical Officer in the Canadian Air Force; and a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in January 1922.²¹ Coincidentally, Lim had received his M.B. and Ch.B. degrees from Edinburgh University in 1919, and his Ph.D. degree two years later. After graduation, Lim remained in the university as a lecturer. Gifted with an exceptional sense of drawing and being ambidextrous, Lim was well-liked by his students.²² However, racial discrimination in his workplace prevented him from becoming a full-time staff member in the medical school.²³ Nonetheless, Lim was active in community work. He served as the acting chairman of the Central Union of Chinese Students in Great Britain and Ireland and had written several opinion pieces critiquing education policies in China and Great Britain.²⁴ In 1923, Lim accepted the Rockefeller Fellowship and set off for Germany before eventually settling down in the University of Chicago.²⁵ One of the conditions for receiving the fellowship was that Lim had to take up an appointment at the newly-formed Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) in China, which he accepted readily. In fact, it had always been his dream to teach physiology in China and to contribute to advancing the level of Chinese research to Western standards.²⁶ After publishing more than 28 articles on the control of gastrointestinal secretion and motility while researching in the labs of Chicago, Lim set off for Peking in July 1924. Shortly after assuming his post in PUMC, Lim’s father, who was organizing the University of Amoy, offered a professorship to Lim in the new medical college. In the end, Lim chose to negotiate for better employment terms with the Rockefeller Foundation, successfully attaining the position of Visiting Professor with an annual salary of 8,200 Spanish dollars, which was not only the highest among professors of color in PUMC but also higher than the  Though research on Chinese who served on the combat service in the First World War remains scant, Chinese formed the largest group of support labor in the war. See especially Guoqi Xu, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 35 – 39; Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 5 – 6.  Yao Yi, “Ji bei yiwang de Zhongguo kexue dianjiren zhi yi,” in Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren, ed. He Bangli (Taipei: Xin wenju yinshua Ltd., 2017), 104.  Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 36.  Robert K.S. Lim, “Chinese Students in Great Britain,” The Times, August 10, 1922, 11.  Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 39.  Davenport, “Robert Kho-Seng Lim,” in Biographical Memoirs, vol. 51, 285 – 86.

56

Isaac C.K. Tan

annual salary of 3,800 Spanish dollars earned by professors in government medical school. A year later, Lim was promoted to Head of the Department of Physiology in PUMC.²⁷ While Lim was about to settle comfortably in his middle-class lifestyle, Bethune was at a major crossroad of his life. In October 1925, after several failed attempts to be employed in London, Bethune took up an offer to work as a surgeon in Detroit, USA. However, shortly after his arrival in the States, he was diagnosed with one of the most fearsome diseases in modern history—tuberculosis. In his lowest moments, he turned to painting, and completed a mural which he called T.B.’s Progress—a total of nine panels depicting medieval knights battling monsters, which ended with him being carried away by the “Angel of Death.”²⁸ Accompanying these drawings was his poetry, one of which was as follows: Sweet Death, thou kindest angel of them all, In thy soft arms, at last, O let me fall; Bright stars are out, long gone the burning sun, My little act is over, and the tiresome play is done.²⁹

By analyzing his paper trails during this difficult period, Bethune’s biographers reckoned that the mural was “his confession of his sins […] his obituary.”³⁰ We may never know what exactly he was thinking in those days of seemingly inevitable death, but Bethune never gave up. Despite the risks involved in the relatively new and high-risk treatment procedure of artificial pneumothorax, Bethune took a gamble and eventually survived, successfully discharged by the end of 1927.³¹ He later shared that, “Now, in whatever time is left to me, I’m going to look around until I find something I can do for the human race, something

 Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 50; Cao Yu, “Zhongguo xiandai shenglixue dianjiren Lin Kesheng boshi,” China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 19, no. 1 (1998): 28.  For the paintings, see Preeti N. Malani and Richard L. Prager, “Journey in Thick Wood: Childhood Henry Norman Bethune,” Journal of American Medical Association 312, no. 14 (2014): 1380 – 82. For his other paintings and poetry, see David A.E. Shephard and Andrée Lévesque, eds., We are the Heirs of Norman Bethune: A Collection of Poems, Stories and Essays from Canada, China, Albania, Palestine, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Indonesia, Philippines and India (Toronto: Norman Bethune Institute, 1975).  Bethune and Hannant, The Politics of Passion, 32.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 63.  The procedure consisted of the repeated pumping of air via a hollow needle inserted through the skin between the ribs into the chest cavity outside the lung. The risk of the needle puncturing the lungs was high, which would further aggravate the condition of the patient. See Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 7– 8.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

57

great, and I am going to do it before I die.”³² Furthermore, the words of Dr. Trudeau, founder of the sanatorium, reverberated in his heart after his close shave with death, “There is a rich man’s tuberculosis and a poor man’s tuberculosis. The rich man recovers, and the poor man dies.”³³ He realized that structural inequality in society had been so deeply entrenched that it had deprived humans of their basic right to medical care.³⁴ Socialist ideas were proving to be attractive to intellectuals like Bethune and Lim who were looking for solutions to their problems. Lim was elected the President of the Chinese Medical Association in 1928 and began researching ways to improve the Chinese medical system.³⁵ He acknowledged the uphill task in improving Chinese medical education and suggested a top-down approach where the state should invest in setting up a few world-class medical training schools to train educators who would train more doctors in the different provinces.³⁶ After returning from a learning trip to Europe, Lim was very impressed by the Soviet system, and he highly recommended its adoption to higher authorities.³⁷ On the other hand, Bethune was highly politicized and had traveled to the Soviet Union to attend the Fifteenth International Physiological Congress.³⁸ To realize his ideal of a socialized medical system, he began advocating programs such as extensive medical examinations for students to eradicate tuberculosis at an early stage, but to no avail.³⁹ During the Symposium on Medical Economics Dis-

 As quoted in Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 63.  Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 9.  In the biographies of Norman Bethune that were consulted for this research, authors described Bethune after the discharge from the sanatorium as becoming a “convert,” or having experienced a moment of “awakening.” See Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 104– 126; Bethune and Hannant, The Politics of Passion, 70 – 117.  For an overview on the health system in the Republican era, see Liping Bu, Public Health and the Modernization of China, 1865‒2015 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 154– 91; John R. Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China: How Medical Reformers Built Modern Healthcare Systems amid War and Epidemics, 1928 – 1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 35 – 72.  Robert K.S. Lim, “Presidential Address,” National Medical Journal of China 16, no. 1 (1930): 118 – 20.  The Republican government only adopted recommendations that suggested small adjustments such as the emphasis on practical internship in medical education, while most of Lim’s recommendations were ignored. See Robert K.S. Lim, “Report on Medical Education in U.S.S.R,” Chinese Medical Journal 49, no. 9 (1935): 1075; J. Heng Liu, “Our Responsibilities in Public Health,” Chinese Medical Journal 51, no. 6 (1937): 1040; Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 101.  The Fifteenth International Physiological Congress was held in Leningrad and Moscow from August 9 – 16, 1935. See Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 116; Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 10.  Ibid., 11.

58

Isaac C.K. Tan

cussion held by the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society on April 17, 1936, Bethune unabashedly promoted his socialist cause, to the horror of his colleagues: Socialized medicine and the abolition or restriction of private practice should appear to be the realistic solution of the problem. Let us take the profit, the private economic profit, out of medicine, and purify our profession of rapacious individualism. Let us make it disgraceful to enrich ourselves at the expense of the miseries of our fellow-men … Let us redefine medical ethics—not as a code of professional etiquette between doctors, but as a code of fundamental morality and justice between Medicine and the people.⁴⁰

In a region where most, if not all, hospitals were affiliated in one way or another to Catholicism, and where membership in the Communist Party was illegal, Bethune’s provocative speech effectively alienated himself from Canada’s medical profession.⁴¹ With his career prospect in jeopardy, Bethune decided to pursue his altruistic aspiration and embarked on his socialist calling. He set his eyes on the southwestern corner of Europe, where news of an armed struggle against fascism was taking place—the Spanish Civil War. This was the perfect place for him as participating in this international struggle for socialism was exactly what would satisfy him, to be on the world stage filled with “some great dramatic attraction where he felt his particular qualities could be put to use.”⁴² During his eighteen months in Spain, Bethune was best remembered for setting up a mobile blood transfusion unit which had saved many lives at the frontlines. This became the Instituto Hispano canadiense de Transfusion de Sangre [Hispanic Canadian Institute of Blood Transfusion] where he served as the Director-in-Chief. However, he left a mixed legacy in Spain. Bethune’s friend, Harold Beament, best explained Bethune’s eagerness to pursue danger by pinpointing the nexus of narcissism and humanitarianism that laid at the core of his character: [It] intensified the concept of drama in relation to himself. Beth, more than most men, had a tendency to sit back and look at his own image, not in the mirror of life and say, ‘Oh well, gee, I’m quite a guy. Can’t take that away from me,’ [that] sort of thing. That’s very impor-

 The title of his speech was “Take Private Profit Out of Medicine.” For the full speech, see Bethune and Hannant, The Politics of Passion, 97– 103.  His open support for the socialist cause did not go well with the Catholic administrators of his workplace at Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur, Montreal. By mid-October, Bethune had resigned from the hospital. See Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 13; Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 127– 41.  As quoted in an interview with one of Bethune’s biographers, Frank Scott, a prominent member of a Canadian social democratic party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. See ibid., 145.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

59

tant in understanding Beth … That emerges as extreme dedication, a man who laid his life on the line time and again, persistently trying to aid people in extremely adverse circumstances. That supplied something that Beth’s ego needed consistently … I’m not taking away from the fact that he really wanted to be of service, some great service within his reach for mankind. I think he was dedicated totally in that way. But this other vanity thing still is in the picture.⁴³

Bethune had a big ego. Before arriving in Spain, he was elected to the five-man executive council of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in June 1934, an impressive feat considering that he was just an ordinary member two years ago.⁴⁴ Besides, he had a decent reputation of having invented several medical apparatus, including an improved pneumothorax apparatus, a set of special silver ligatures, and, best known of all, the Bethune Rib Shears, as adapted from a pair of shoemaker’s shears.⁴⁵ After his arrival, he refused to learn Spanish and relied totally on interpreters, exclaiming that it should be the Spanish doctors who should learn English in order to communicate with him.⁴⁶ Moreover, he often allowed officials from foreign legations and the International Brigades to join him for a drink and enjoy a chat, which made some Spanish members rather uncomfortable at the sight of a doctor getting drunk and wasted.⁴⁷ Tensions grew and when irreconcilable differences between Bethune and the Spanish authorities reached breaking point, the latter requested that he leave—under the excuse of returning to North America to raise funds for the Spanish Republicans. Bethune left willingly because he knew his time in Spain was up. But Bethune’s emotions were hit exceptionally hard when he subsequently heard of the Spanish authorities’ unpleasant evaluation of him.⁴⁸ Bethune realized the high price he paid for his vanity, and this would have a bearing on his conduct later in China.

 Ibid., 198.  Ibid., 105.  Norman Bethune, “Some New Thoracic Surgical Instruments,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 35, no. 6 (1936): 656 – 62.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 200.  Ibid., 172.  The local Spanish communist organization, the Provincial Committee of Madrid, wrote a scathing evaluation of Bethune, accusing him of misconduct, incompetency, and even of immoral character as he was constantly found in a drunk state; see ibid., 255. For more on his experience in Spain, see especially Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain.

60

Isaac C.K. Tan

Wartime China—Final Battleground against Global Fascism During his time back in North America, Bethune had the opportunity to give a speech in New York at the invitation of the China Aid Council. This was when he made the necessary arrangements to join a medical team to China in October 1937.⁴⁹ By then, he was no stranger to the plight China was in. He had read Agnes Smedley’s China’s Red Army Marches (1934) during his fundraising tours, which greatly inspired him to take up the cause of fighting the Japanese in China.⁵⁰ Upon arriving in China, Bethune had the chance to meet Robert Lim, Dr. George Hatem (1910 – 1988), and key CCP personnel such as Zhou Enlai (1898 – 1976), Bo Gu (1907– 1946), and Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) who reportedly made him a member of the Communist Party of China at their meeting.⁵¹ Bethune was instrumental in revamping the network of hospitals in wartime Communist-controlled China. Beginning with a hospital in the village of Songyankou located in the Wutai Mountains area, he established strict and transparent routines for medical staff, created a Patients’ Recreation Park to look after the rehabilitation of wounded patients, and set up a mobile operating unit to serve soldiers in the frontline.⁵² He was stern with the Chinese medical staff to the extent of censuring them for lax behavior or poor hygiene. But his impressive medical feats and austere lifestyle silenced all opposition and earned him much respect from the people who worked with him. During one of his routine checks around the hospitals in the region, he was dismayed by the appalling conditions at one of the hospitals in Hejiachuan and made the bold, unconventional decision to conduct surgeries in the peasants’ homes, with a surprising low death rate of only one causality.⁵³ In another instance, he performed seventy-one operations over a forty-hour period, with only one soldier not surviving.⁵⁴ Notwith-

 Stewart and Majada, Bethune in Spain, 147.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 242.  George Hatem, also known as Ma Haide, was a Lebanese-American doctor who practiced medicine in Shanghai and later became acquainted with prominent left-wing sympathizers including American journalist Agnes Smedley (1892– 1950) and Soong Ching-ling (1893 – 1981), wife of Sun Yat-sen. See especially Edgar A. Porter, The People’s Doctor: George Hatem and China’s Revolution (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997); Sidney Shapiro, Ma Haide: The Saga of American Doctor George Hatem in China (San Francisco: Cypress Press, 1993); Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 255.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 299 – 312.  Ibid., 287, 314.  Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China, 267.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

61

standing these remarkable accomplishments, Bethune carried a modest, humble demeanor, which was in stark contrast to the flamboyant image he had in Spain. Bethune’s biographers may be right in pointing out that this was possibly due to the accusations he had suffered in Spain of being self-indulgent and squandering money for his selfish bourgeois comforts.⁵⁵ But it would be the vanity of his ego that cost him his life. Preferring to do surgeries bare-handed, Bethune suffered a cut on his finger in one fated operation, which later developed into an abscess of his finger, worsening into upper limb gangrene, and sepsis.⁵⁶ Despite repeated suggestions of amputation to treat this serious infection, Bethune adamantly refused, for losing an arm meant he had to stop practicing surgery, and surgery was “to him more than just a profession; in its drama and incisiveness it was the expression of his way of life, his mode of being.”⁵⁷ On November 12, 1939, he breathed his last. In a cruel twist of fate, Mao gave a eulogy befitting of his ego, immortalizing Bethune as a socialist martyr whose premature death was in the service of the masses: What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people’s liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn. Leninism teaches that the world revolution can only succeed if the proletariat of the capitalist countries supports the struggle for liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples and if the proletariat of the colonies and semi-colonies supports that of the proletariat of the capitalist countries. Comrade Bethune put this Leninist line into practice.⁵⁸

On the other warfront, Robert Lim was fighting alongside the Nationalists against the Japanese who were expanding their influence into the northeastern region of Manchuria. The intensification of Japanese aggression in China marked a crucial historical conjecture for the development of modern military medicine in China.⁵⁹ In 1932, Lim collaborated with the International Red Cross (IRC) in treating wounded civilians at the northeastern border as well as responding to  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 319.  Jean Deslauriers and Denis Goulet, “The Medical Life of Henry Norman Bethune,” Canada Respiratory Journal 22, no. 6 (2015): 41.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 364– 66.  Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol II (New York: Pergamon Press, 1965), 337– 38.  Wayne Soon, “Coming from Afar: The Overseas Chinese and the Institutionalization of Western Medicine and Science in China, 1910 – 1970,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2014, 47– 48. Unlike Soon, Shi traced the beginnings of modern military medicine in China to May 1938 when the Emergency Medical Service Training School was set up by Robert Lim in response to the fullscale Japanese invasion of China. See Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 135.

62

Isaac C.K. Tan

the hostilities during the January 28 Incident in Shanghai. He took the lead in advocating “state medicine,” whereby the government would take on full responsibility in providing basic healthcare to all Chinese people.⁶⁰ When the Japanese led a full-scale invasion in 1937, Lim was the only senior staff member to leave PUMC to assist the war effort at Nanking.⁶¹ Was this a commitment to the KMT cause or simply an act of patriotism? By examining his correspondences, Shi Yan argues that Lim was a non-partisan humanitarian who worked for the Republican administration in order to improve the Chinese nation.⁶² In early 1938, during a brief meeting with Bethune in Hankou, Lim expressed his desire to organize the communist-led Eighth Route Army hospitals into an effective system that would coordinate the sending of wounded soldiers to hospitals and asked if Bethune was willing to go in his stead.⁶³ Lim was also involved in welcoming the five-member Indian medical mission, which arrived in September 1938.⁶⁴ After setting up the Emergency Medical Service Training School in the same year, Lim recommended the recruitment of medical specialists from Axis-occupied areas such as Poland as well as other Eastern European countries for his medical endeavors in wartime China.⁶⁵ Moreover, as the coordinator of the IRC activities in wartime China, Lim ensured a fair distribution of medical supplies to both KMT and Communist medical units.⁶⁶ This shows that Lim was not particularly fixated on political ideology and adopted an international outlook in solving the domestic crisis of war. However, this did not sit well with the staunchly anti-Communist leadership of the Republican

 Robert K.S. Lim and C.C. Chen, “State Medicine,” Chinese Medical Journal 51, no. 78 (1937): 781– 96.  Soon, “Coming from Afar,” 78.  Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 177– 78.  Anneliese Martens (1909‒1990), better known as Anna Wang, German-born wife of Wang Bingnan who became a prominent diplomat in Communist China, wrote in her autobiography that Lim put aside party differences and extended assistance to Bethune. See Jin Tao, “Lin Kesheng: Weida aiguozhe he jiechu kexuejia,” Minzhu yu kexue 1 (2015): 53; Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 255 – 56.  “Yindu jiuhudui laihua fuwu,” Shenbao, June 23, 1938, 1; “Yindu jiuhudui,” Shenbao, August 10, 1938, 1.  Soon, “Coming from Afar,” 111.  There was one time when medical supplies were received from the IRC, and Lim distributed two-thirds of it to the Communists while the remainder to the Nationalists. In his defense, Lim said that he was simply following orders from the IRC and highlighted that the Communists had been receiving a smaller share. See Wang Daozhong, “Budong zhongguohua de jun’i shuzhang Lin Kesheng,” Xiuzhen zazhi 2 (1949): 51; Guo Qing, “Zhongguo hongshizihui jiuhu zongduizhang Lin Kesheng—Zhanhuo renxin,” Tai sheng 1 (2016): 28.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

63

government, especially Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887– 1975) who berated him for his actions: Chiang: Why do you send medical units and drugs to the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army? Lim: The Red Cross is an international organization … Chiang (interrupts and sternly remarked): This is China!⁶⁷

“China” conveyed two different meanings to Chiang and Lim: to Chiang, KMT authority and ideology demarcated what “China” was and was not; but to Lim, “China” referred to the common plight of the Chinese people suffering under Japanese aggression. Such incidents coupled with the factional rivalry within other organizations such as the Red Cross would put a strain on the relationship between Lim and the Republican administration as he would be relieved from his official position in late 1943.⁶⁸ Lim’s dismissal parallels Bethune’s departure from Spain, whereby a clash of personalities led to the end of the collaboration between the individuals and the humanitarian organizations they had served in. As Lim remarked, “My interests lie in medicine, not in politics!”⁶⁹ His main priorities laid not in climbing the ladder of politics, but in advancing his passion in medicine. After the war, Lim continued to serve in the Republican administration, first as the Military Medical Director in 1946 and later as the Chairman of the National Defense Medicine Center in May 1947.⁷⁰ From December 1948 to January 1949, Lim was briefly appointed as Minister of Health before stepping down after the relocation of the National Defense Medicine Center to Taiwan in 1949.⁷¹ He then left to assume a research position as a Visiting Research Professor of Clinical Science in the University of Illinois, Chicago, to pursue his research interests.

 Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China, 151.  Soon, “Coming from Afar,” 112– 53; Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 157– 202; He Bangli, “Lin Kesheng yu Hongshizihui fengchao,” Zhonghua kejishi xuehui xuekan 21 (2016): 36 – 38.  Wang, “Budong zhongguohua de jun’i shuzhang Lin Kesheng,” 53; Ge Li, “Lin Kesheng diu le weisheng buzhang,” Qunyan yuekan 27 (1949): 8.  The National Defense Medicine Center was Lim’s brainchild in organizing military medicine in China after the war. See “Guofang Yixueyuan chengli Lin Kesheng churen yuanzhang,” Shenbao, May 25, 1947, 5.  On his appointment as the Health Minister, see “Geyuan mingdan,” Shenbao, December 23, 1948, 1; “Lushenfutingwei fabiao,” Shenbao, January 18, 1949, 2. On the relocation of the National Defense Medicine Center, see “Guofangbu jin zhengshi chengli,” Shenbao, June 1, 1946, 1; Ye Yongwen, “Taiwan Meishi yixue fazhan de dongliyuan,” in Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren, 178.

64

Isaac C.K. Tan

As Lim’s time in wartime Republican China revealed, his identity served as a double-edged sword for his career advancement within the bureaucracy. Shi notes that Lim was initially valued for having the international contacts that were crucial in the nascent stage of establishing educational institutions of modern medicine in China, but it was also precisely his cosmopolitan background that created friction between him and his Chinese colleagues.⁷² Upon his appointment as the Minister of Health, tabloids ran the headline, “Robert K.S. Lim, the Army Surgeon General Who Does Not Understand Mandarin Chinese,” and criticized his command of the language to be poorer than that of a former Cabinet minister, Soong Tzu-wen (1894 – 1971), who too was known for his limited Chinese language proficiency.⁷³ Postwar Communist propaganda claimed that Lim’s retreat to the United States was a cowardly plan to save himself when the tide turned against the KMT at the end of the Chinese Civil War, or possibly because of the loss of trust by members of the Republican government due to his pro-left actions during the war.⁷⁴ Such allegations remained to be proven. In fact, Lim maintained cordial terms with Chiang and his wife and had even donated all his research equipment to Taipei Veterans General Hospital for the setting up of a neurophysiological laboratory in 1968.⁷⁵ Although it was a challenge for Lim to communicate in Mandarin Chinese, both in written and verbal forms, his colleagues from Taiwan mentioned that “Although he does not speak Mandarin Chinese fluently, he was able to communicate fairly well in the Hokkien dialect.”⁷⁶ The real reason for Lim’s sudden and hushed departure remains a mystery, but in situating the timing of his departure with other concurrent developments at that historical conjecture, we may come close to understanding his decision to leave. In fact Lim was not the only medical specialist to leave Taiwan after the CCP took over mainland China: Dr. Liu Ruiheng (1890 – 1961), a close aide to Lim, departed for the States in 1959 due to health issues; on the other hand, Jin Baoshan (1893 – 1984), an immunologist and former director-general of the National Health Administration from 1940 to 1945, left for Beijing to join the Communist government

 Shi, “Robert K.S. Lim,” 220.  Wang, “Budong zhongguohua de jun’i shuzhang Lin Kesheng,” 50.  Liu Shi-yung and Kuo Shih-ching, “Lin Kesheng (1897– 1969): Anshenghuiyin de zhongyanyuan yuanshi yu guofang yixueyuan yuanzhang,” Taiwanshi yanjiu 19, no. 4 (2012): 182– 83.  Ibid., 190; Davenport, “Robert Kho-Seng Lim,” in Biographical Memoirs, vol. 51, 292– 93.  Liu and Kuo, “Lin Kesheng (1897– 1969): Anshenghuiyin de zhongyanyuan yuanshi yu guofang yixueyuan yuanzhang,” 184.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

65

in 1950.⁷⁷ After serving in the wartime Republican administration during the arduous period of resisting the Japanese invaders, many of these intellectuals, including Lim, decided to leave public service and pursue their various personal interests. Lim returned to the field of research, focusing on the neurophysiology of pain, where he published 21 academic articles before succumbing to esophageal cancer in 1969.⁷⁸

Beyond China (I)—Remembering the “Bethune Spirit” in Post-War History Historical remembrance is not static. The memoryscape of WWII is molded by both domestic agents—state and society—and international geopolitics.⁷⁹ As a hot battlefront in the Cold War, China and Taiwan were not only engaged in a military stand-off but also embroiled in a messy diplomatic dispute over international recognition of the legitimacy of their respective governments. Themes of victory, resistance, national humiliation, victimhood, and trauma are some of the key tropes that had framed Chinese war memory since 1949.⁸⁰ In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), due to succeeding episodes of destructive domestic political upheavals from the 1950s to the 1970s, there had been little or no official commemoration of the war.⁸¹ “Chronopolitics” of the Cold War dictated commemoration efforts of the war. Vanquishing each other by denouncing the opponent’s war crimes committed during the Chinese Civil War took precedence over

 Dr. Liu was the PUMC director from 1929 to 1938 who was also appointed as the Director-General of the National Health Administration, serving from 1929 to Feb 1937. He was one of the few close aides within the Republican government that Lim could depend on. See ibid., 194; Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China, 248 – 52.  Davenport, “Robert Kho-Seng Lim,” in Biographical Memoirs, vol. 51, 304– 06.  Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectic of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 43 – 65; Gluck, “Operations of Memory: ‘Comfort Women’ and the World,” in Ruptured Histories, 47– 77.  Edward Vickers, “Remembering and Forgetting War and Occupation in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,” in Remembering the Second World War, ed. Patrick Finney (New York: Routledge, 2017), 48; Wang Zheng, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 102.  Diana Lary, “Memory Times, Memory Places: Public and Private Commemoration of War in China,” in Remembering Asia’s World War Two, eds. Mark R. Frost, Daniel Schumacher, and Edward Vickers (New York: Routledge, 2019), 58.

66

Isaac C.K. Tan

the remembrance of WWII.⁸² Not only was there no ideological incentive for the CCP to commemorate a war that was fought mainly by their archenemy, the KMT, but trading relations with Japan became increasingly important for the PRC from the late 1950s.⁸³ Hence it was not until the beginning of the Reform Era in the 1980s that there was an notable increase in official war commemoration events in the PRC.⁸⁴ As the CCP undertook major structural transformation of the Chinese society and economy, the party recognized a potential danger of losing its legitimacy and prestige in the eyes of the next generation. It thus launched the patriotic education campaign in 1991. This new initiative was aimed at transforming the “master historical narrative” on the war from one that celebrated victories over its adversaries to that of “never forgetting national humiliation” to imbibe a renewed sense of nationalism among Chinese youths.⁸⁵ And the result was the surge of an intense form of nationalist, anti-Japanese sentiments among them today. Historian Edward Vickers notes that, in Taiwan, the mainstream historical discourse diverged from the victimhood narrative due to the legacy of the occupations imposed by both Japanese colonial rule and the subsequent KMT rule after WWII. Unlike mainland China, which witnessed major conflicts between opposing armies, Taiwan had a relatively different experience. Hence, the postwar commemoration of WWII was a paradoxical phenomenon. On one hand, victory over the Japanese were celebrated. On the other, it was difficult to deny the contributions of Japanese colonial rule to the social and economic developments of the island.⁸⁶ In other words, to the Taiwanese population who had survived the war, Japan was less a public enemy to them than the CCP, as it was the latter, not the Japanese, who constituted as the “other.”⁸⁷ Cold War geopolitics thus convinced the KMT to adopt a generous policy toward its former enemy in order to avoid offending an important Asian ally—this explains the absence of any state sponsorship of war museums that highlighted Japanese war atroci-

 Amy King, China–Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949 – 1971 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 3; Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”, 62.  King, China–Japan Relations after World War Two, 50 – 89; Lary, “Memory Times, Memory Places: Public and Private Commemoration of War in China,” in Remembering Asia’s World War Two, 60.  Ibid., 60 – 61.  Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation, 95 – 118.  Edward Vickers, “Frontiers of Memory: Conflict, Imperialism, and Official Histories in the Formation of Post-Cold War Taiwan,” in Ruptured Histories, 211, 227– 28.  Vickers, “Remembering and Forgetting War and Occupation in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,” in Remembering the Second World War, 55 – 56.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

67

ties.⁸⁸ The final two sections thus outline the complexities of historical remembrance of the war on both sides of the straits, showing that collective war memory contests the neatly-defined contours of nation-centric or state-centric narratives. The publication of the first non-Chinese biography of Norman Bethune, written by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon, The Scalpel, the Sword; the Story of Dr. Norman Bethune, in 1952 was mildly received as it had coincided with the height of the Cold War.⁸⁹ Popular media on Bethune was, too, unsurprisingly scarce and limited. Among the few cultural representations, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation presented a radio documentary, Comrade Bethune: A Controversial Hero in 1964, and in the same year, a biographical documentary film titled Bethune was released by the National Film Board of Canada. This documentary later won first prize at a film festival in the German Democratic Republic in 1965.⁹⁰ After full diplomatic relations were established between Canada and the PRC on October 13, 1970, Bethune’s house in Gravenhurst, Ontario Province, was officially declared as a site of “national historic significance” on August 17, 1972— an example of how Cold War concerns dictated the issue of war commemoration.⁹¹ Zhou Erfu’s 1946 biographical novel of Norman Bethune, Baiqiu’en dafu [Doctor Bai Qiu’en], was a widely read account of Bethune in wartime China. It became the basis of several biographies written by western authors. Ted Allan, one of the authors of The Scalpel, the Sword; the Story of Dr. Norman Bethune, served alongside Bethune while working as a reporter for eighteen months in Spain from 1936 to 1937. However, he and his co-author Sydney Gordon later revealed that they had never visited China and referred to only Zhou’s book for Bethune’s endeavors in China.⁹² In fact, Zhou Erfu (1914– 2004) was no ordinary writer. He was a committed member of the CCP and a former government official.⁹³ In his preface of the 1978 edition of Baiqiu’en dafu, Zhou admitted that,

 Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”, 65, 112– 13.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 371.  Ibid., 372.  Ibid., 373.  Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon, The Scalpel, the Sword; the Story of Dr. Norman Bethune (Boston: Little Brown, 1952), 9.  Born in 1914, Zhou joined the Communist ranks in Yan’an after graduation from Guanghua University, Shanghai in 1938. He then served as an editor and correspondent in Xinhua News Agency. His major work includes the four-volume Morning in Shanghai, published between 1958 and 1980. He was considered an influential figure in the literary circle in Communist China, and held several official appointments including Deputy Minister for Culture (1978) and Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Cultural Relations Committee (1981). In October 1985, he

68

Isaac C.K. Tan

the majority of characters have been selected for practical reasons … They are all fictitious composite characters … The events in the story are also all the result of accumulation and combination. Sometimes I have made one character the center of a number of different episodes and with others, I have changed the time and location for succinctness.⁹⁴

Whether this was ever picked up by Allen and Gordon is beside the point, as the main agenda was to present a venerated biographical account of Bethune to enhance the prestige of the CCP’s war involvement.⁹⁵ A comparison with another non-Chinese physician who had also died prematurely in the Chinese battlefront, Dr. Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis (1910 – 1942), also known as Ke Dihua, may help us appreciate the nuances behind the commemoration efforts of Bethune.⁹⁶ By the same token, media portrayal of Dr. Kotnis had blurred the distinction between the real-life individual and the movie character in popular memory.⁹⁷ Furthermore, in an uncanny parallel on how historical sources of individuals were manipulated to serve political interests of the time, the 1946 film on Kotnis was later edited and released in the United States as an anti-communist propaganda film, Nightmare in Red China, in 1955.⁹⁸ In a publication commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Kotnis’ death, a pro-left Indian publication wrote, “Dr. Bethune and Dr. Kotnis were two among many victims, who were it not for the blockade (emphasis added) might have still been living and fighting, in the cause of the World’s free peoples.”⁹⁹ The blockade was referring to the Republican administrative red tape that had impaired the function of warfront hospitals in CCP-controlled areas. As in the case of Kotnis, the collective memory of Bethune may thus have been a distorted representation, a lionization created to suit the respective agendas of both sides of the Cold War.

led a team of CCP representatives on an official trip to Japan but was found to have severely broken the moral code of conduct by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine as well as allegedly employing the services of prostitutes. He was then dismissed from all his official posts and expelled from the CCP. His biographical note is adapted from Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie, eds., The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (London: Hurst, 1997), 241– 43.  Zhou Erfu, Baiqiu’en dafu, trans. Alison Bailey (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1982), 5.  Bethune and Hannant, The Politics of Passion, 4.  It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss Dr Kotnis, but interested readers may consult Mangesh Shantaram Kotnis, The Bridge for ever: A Biography of Dr. Kotnis (Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1983); B.K. Basu, Call of Yanan: A Story of the Indian Medical Mission to China 1938 – 1943 (New Delhi: All India Kotnis Memorial Committee, 1986).  Neepa Majumdar, “Immortal Tale or Nightmare? Dr. Kotnis Between Art and Exploitation,” South Asian Popular Culture 6, no. 2 (2008): 146.  Ibid., 141.  Harjit Daudharia, ed., The Immortal Stories of Dr. D.S. Kotnis and Dr. Norman Bethune (Chandigarh: Unistar Books, 2012), 230.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

69

Less than a month after Bethune’s death, a eulogy given by Mao Zedong immortalized Bethune in the minds of the Chinese. This 990-word essay was incorporated into the school curriculum as one of the three important texts by Mao, making Bethune, or rather Bai Qiu’en, a household name.¹⁰⁰ Mao highlighted two main characteristics of Bethune that made him worth remembering by fellow comrades. Firstly, he was described as a real international socialist committed to the liberation of the colonized and proletariats. Bethune was the manifestation of internationalist communism, in which Mao explained that it was “the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism” that motivated Bethune to travel thousands of miles at the age of fifty to join the Chinese struggle against fascism. Mao further highlighted that “This is our internationalism, the internationalism with which we oppose both narrow nationalism and narrow patriotism.”¹⁰¹ This juxtaposition of internationalism and nationalism was not coincidental. Though framed within the notion of an international socialist comradery, the memory of Bethune was articulated with a nuance of Chinese nationalism. Despite his foreign background, Bethune was the embodiment of the ideal, new Chinese citizen—a patriotic socialist with an international outlook.¹⁰² Furthermore, by engaging in the rhetoric of universal values (i. e., resistance against oppression), the memory of Bethune serves as the site of intersection between cosmopolitan forces and nationalistic discourses where the articulation of universal values and principles transcend local boundaries.¹⁰³ Using a nationalist rhetoric to celebrate him as a patriot would be inappropriate. Hence, by underlining Bethune’s identification as a non-member of the Chinese nation, this connection underscored the notion that the communist ideology transcends national identities—one that is not confined by geographical space. Secondly, Mao highlighted the noble, selflessness of Bethune’s character as he wrote, “in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness toward all comrades and the people. Every Communist should learn from him.”¹⁰⁴ By overcoming the physicality of representation, “the Bethune spirit” embodied the moral traits that enhanced the relevance and appeal of Bethune across time. This notion of “the Bethune spirit” was crucial to the dual synchronous mi-

 Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol II, 337– 38.  Ibid., 337.  James Farley, Model Workers in China, 1949 – 1965: Constructing A New Citizen (London: Routledge, 2019), 4– 6.  Will Kymlicka and Kathryn Walker, eds., Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), 1.  Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol II, 337.

70

Isaac C.K. Tan

lieus of “perpetual revolution” and “revolution-accomplished.”¹⁰⁵ In times of state-inspired, large-scale social movements such as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, Bethune became “the symbol of the revolutionary zeal, altruism, and absolute dedication to duty.”¹⁰⁶ After the dust had settled with the stable transition of political power within the ruling elite, CCP’s rhetoric of Bethune’s portrayal took on a slight twist: Bethune became the model of learning for all health professionals in China, a deemphasis of one’s political allegiance.¹⁰⁷ For example, the Bethune International Peace Hospital became the site of immortalizing Bethune’s life contributions to the Chinese cause. And in 1975, former premier Zhou Enlai initiated the building of the Bai Qiu’en Memorial Museum within the compound of the hospital, while Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) dedicated the words “To become Bethune-style revolutionaries and Bethune-style scientists” to the hospital staff during his visit in 1979.¹⁰⁸ Moreover, in 1997, the Bethune Spirit Research Association was established in Beijing and its main activities included organizing workshops and forums to study and promote “the Bethune Spirit” among health practitioners.¹⁰⁹ Yuan Yonglin, the current director of the Association, remarked that the moral bearings of Bethune remained relevant today as it is “connected to the current anti-corruption campaign [where] things like, ‘How to be a noble person and a man of moral integrity who is above vulgar interests,’ are still very meaningful.”¹¹⁰ Despite the vastly different sociopolitical circumstances between wartime China and today’s China, memories of Norman Bethune have withstood the change of time in adapting to the needs of contemporary political climate. However, as Mark H. Rowswell (1965–), a Canadian entertainer in China who has also served as a goodwill ambassador for Canada, aptly describes, “like all historical figures in China, Bethune has become a one-dimensional cartoon character.”¹¹¹ Under the exigencies of the war and social dislocation, the CCP priori-

 Christos Lynteris, “‘In Memory of Norman Bethune:’ Two Resurrections of the ‘Spirit of Selflessness’ in Maoist China,” Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies 1 (December 2011): 21– 49.  Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 372.  Yang Jingqing, Informal Payments and Regulations in China’s Healthcare System: Red Packets and Institutional Reform (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 80.  Wu Weihong, “Zai Bai Qiu’en suxiang xia—Bai Qiu’en guoji heping yiyuan huli gongzuo jianjie,” Jiefangjun huli zazhi 14, no. 3 (1997): 62.  Yang, Informal Payments and Regulations in China’s Healthcare System, 138.  Nathan Vanderklippe, “Beijing finds renewed use for Norman Bethune’s legacy,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), September 3, 2014, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ news/world/beijing-finds-renewed-use-for-norman-bethunes-legacy/article20342374/.  Ibid.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

71

tized its state-centric agenda by consolidating its legitimacy as the new state and asserting its socialist relevance. Bethune was thus portrayed as a martyr who died for a socialist cause and for the masses. With the gradual restoration of political stability after the fanatism of the Cultural Revolution subsided in the late 1970s, the CCP turned to arousing nationalistic emotions to preserve and sustain socialist values for its legitimacy as the ruling power. The CCP portrayed Bethune as a model comrade who epitomized the socialist values of keeping the revolution relevant across the times. Instead of highlighting Bethune’s multiple identities, a shift toward focusing on his personality—a trait untainted by the nationalistic agenda—seemed to suit contemporary concerns best as patriotism undertook a resurgence amid China’s growing assertion of power in the region. To conclude this section, it might be instructive to introduce the politics behind the historical remembrance of Bethune in his homeland. In August 2016, Bethune grabbed the headlines when Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau made his first official visit to China. During the meeting, Trudeau presented two portrait medallions of Dr. Norman Bethune to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. The gifts were historically significant because the medallions bore the same mold design as those presented during the first heads of state meeting between the two countries more than four decades ago, in October 1973, when Canada’s then prime minister Pierre E. Trudeau (1919 – 2000), father of Justin Trudeau, made the first ever official visit to the PRC by a Canadian Prime Minister and met with the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong. During that visit, he gave Mao a Norman Bethune medallion.¹¹² This was a far cry from earlier representations of Bethune as his legacy in China, and in Spain too, was hardly mentioned in his home country of Canada. In fact, Bethune remains a controversial figure in Canada as his reputation remained shrouded by his communist involvement.¹¹³ To sharpen this contrast, Dr. Kotnis became a well-known war hero in his homeland after WWII. In 1944, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas wrote a novel And one did not come back! which was later adapted into one of India’s most celebrated films, Dr. Kotnis ki amar

 CBC News, “Justin Trudeau’s Official Gifts to China a Nod to his Father,” August 31, 2016, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-china-gifts-bethune-med allions-1.3742783.  There was a political cartoon that portrayed the controversy around Bethune’s reinstatement by the Canadian government in 1972. It showed the Canadian Minister of External Affairs, Mitchell Sharp, pushing a wheelbarrow indicating a long-term wheat deal out of the gates of China, while an Australian businessman comments to an American, “The password sounds like Bethune.” See Roderick Stewart, The Mind of Norman Bethune (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1977), 147.

72

Isaac C.K. Tan

kahani [The Immortal Tale of Dr. Kotnis], in 1946.¹¹⁴ Although this was the first and only time that India sent a humanitarian support mission to China during the war, it subsequently led to the blossoming of a close bilateral relationship between both countries.¹¹⁵ In the remaining years of the war, letters between the leaders for closer economic and social cooperation were exchanged and both the nationalist and communist Chinese press ran articles in support for the Indian independence movement.¹¹⁶ Similar to the representation of Bethune’s struggle against fascism, Kotnis’ medical contributions were portrayed as liberation from imperialism.

Beyond China (II)—Situating Robert Lim in Cross-Straits Historical Remembrance Unlike Bethune whose memories were institutionalized into the CCP social fabric, with the exception of the medical community in Taiwan, public commemoration of Lim was less conspicuous, or even non-existent. As mentioned earlier on the reasons surrounding the lack of official commemoration of the war by the CCP, it was only after the 1980s when discourses on Lim’s war contributions appeared in literature published in the PRC. Historiographical treatment of Lim, including both of mainland China and Taiwan, seldom deviates from the framework of KMT-CCP ideological differences in explaining the self-exile of Lim after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In an attempt to situate Lim’s historical position in wartime China, narratives in Taiwan often emphasize his international connections—especially with the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China—which were crucial in providing the necessary financial and material support to the humanitarian efforts in resource-scarce, wartime China. By deviating from his political associations and emphasizing his personal self-sacrificial decision to abandon the comfort of academia and put himself in danger by joining the frontlines to serve the country, the focus on the individual provides the discursive space to both justify and accord significance to his wartime involve Coonoor Kripalani, “Reading China in Popular Hindi Film—Three Points in Time: 1946, 1964 and 2009,” Asian Cinema 23, no. 2 (2012): 219 – 21; Maria Framke, “‘We Must Send a Gift Worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and Political Humanitarianism in Late Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 6 (2017): 1969 – 98.  The amicable Indian-Chinese relations would deteriorate by the late 1950s, culminating in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. By then, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964) had felt disillusioned and betrayed. See ibid., 1996.  Ibid., 1994.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

73

ment.¹¹⁷ Moreover, as noted by a Taiwanese historian in 2000, “Lim was never mentioned in the histories of China and Taiwan. Before the economic reforms of China, no one dared to speak of him. After the reforms, historians often deliberately avoided or glossed over his wartime contributions. It is only in the last few years that people began to conduct serious research on him.”¹¹⁸ Echoing Chinese scholars who have observed that Lim’s name was often omitted or glossed over due to certain “sensitivities” in postwar commemorative events,¹¹⁹ I argue that such sensitivities were shaped by “chronopolitics”—the ideological intricacies of contemporary Cold War geopolitics. This was not just a domestic affair between the CCP and the KMT. It was also about the global implications for the legitimacy of rival Chinese governments. The historical complexity surrounding the life story of Lim makes it difficult to situate him neatly in both nation-centric and state-centric narratives. An overseas Chinese who was very much Anglicized, it was a rather tenuous attempt to claim him as part of the Chinese nation. Moreover, despite serving in the Republican government, he ultimately left for the United States shortly after the KMT retreated to Taiwan. This casted doubts on his allegiance to the state, which effectively forfeited his position in state-centric narrative. Hence, there are few historical connections to link him to the current administrations in China and Taiwan. In the postwar period, mainstream historical narratives remained confined to the nation-state paradigm. A case in point is how former KMT soldiers residing in mainland China had to suppress their past connections after the CCP took power as associations with the KMT were considered treacherous and deemed as acts of disloyalty to the new Chinese state.¹²⁰ Discourses on nation-state and identity are inseparable as both concepts exhibit a mutual dependency. Scholars have explored various interventions from the social, cultural, or political perspectives in understanding the construction of identity, recognizing that history and memory are major sources of legitimacy in the creation of national

 He Bangli, “Hanmei qi pa fengxue ya: Lin Kesheng zai Honghui yingqi de zhengyi yu shiyi,” Zhonghua kejishi xuehui xuekan 23 (2018): 24– 37; He, “Lin Kesheng yu Hongshizihui fengchao,” 32– 47.  Chen Changwen, “Yi rendao boai chengjiu liang’an liangzhi—Jinian Lin Kesheng de zui hao fangshi,” in Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren, 14.  Jin, “Lin Kesheng: Weida aiguozhe he jiechu kexuejia,” 51; Deng Jing, “‘Jinian kangri fenghuozhong de Zhongguo Hongshizihui Jiuhuzongdui ji Lin Kesheng jiaoshou xueshu zuotanhui’—Juxing huigu lishi mianhuai xianjing jianzheng jinri qidi weilai,” Tai sheng 1 (2016): 24– 27.  Lary, “Memory Times, Memory Places: Public and Private Commemoration of War in China,” in Remembering Asia’s World War Two, 59.

74

Isaac C.K. Tan

identity.¹²¹ Without biographies or autobiographies, public commemoration of Robert Lim was fairly limited. A diasporic individual dislodged from his geographical and chronological spaces, Lim’s eventual departure from China left him without a space in the state-centric histories in both China and Taiwan. However, in the publications of research institutions, Lim’s name was mentioned sporadically at times, coinciding with the anniversary commemorations of the founding of such organizations in both mainland China and Taiwan. For example, in commemorating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Neuroscience in the Shanghai campus of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009, Lim was mentioned as one of the Chinese scientists who had pioneered the study of neurophysiology in modern China.¹²² Then, in the centennial anniversary of the founding of PUMC in 2017, a series of articles and an compendium of letters from former colleagues and relatives of Lim was published.¹²³ Historical remembrance of Lim is thus closely associated with the histories of institutions, a form of non-state entity, which unfortunately obscures the virtue of memorializing an individual’s idiosyncratic position in history and often omits entire details of his experience. It might seem a straightforward affair in commemorating Lim through supposedly non-official channels, but for the academic association that he founded in 1926—the Chinese Physiological Society (Zhongguo shengli xuehui)—subtle tensions lie beneath where it is the unspoken that reveals the awkward position of Lim in post-war China collective memories. In commemorating the founding of the Society, both the Chinese Physiological Society (based in Taipei) and the Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences (based in Beijing) published tributary pieces to honor Lim’s irreplaceable role in laying the foundation of the development of physiological science in modern China. Despite the hiatus in the

 Some of the most prominent scholars in the field include Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, who argue the centrality of history in the creation of national identity; Pierre Nora, who emphasizes memory as opposed to history; and Marc Matten, who considers the cultural and social aspects of memory in understanding the Chinese identity. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991); Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7– 24; Marc Andre Matten, “History, Memory, and Identity in Modern China,” in Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity, ed. Marc Andre Matten (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 1– 14.  Poo Mu-Ming, “Neuroscience in China 2000 – 2009: Introduction,” Science China Life Sciences 53, no. 3 (2010): 301.  He Bangli, ed., Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren (Taipei: Xin xin wenju yinshua ltd., 2017); Wang Zhongjia and He Bangli, “Bainian xiehe yi Kesheng,” Zhonghua kejishi xuehui xuekan 22 (2017): 235 – 37.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

75

1940s and 50s, both organizations positioned themselves as the legitimate successor of the Society after the Chinese Civil War, tracing their histories back to 1926. It is interesting to note the different emphases by scholars from both China and Taiwan on Lim’s historical role in modern Chinese history. The articles published by mainland Chinese academics carried subtle references of political betrayal by the KMT. For example, one of Lim’s students claimed that Lim was so “dismayed with the Nanjing bureaucratic practices that he left for America despite his fervent patriotism to serve his country.”¹²⁴ To the mainland Chinese academics, it was solely Lim’s patriotism that defined his participation in the war. This was the perfect veneer to steer attention away from Lim’s political affiliation to the Republican administration as well as to weave a convincing tale of KMT corruption and betrayal of a self-sacrificing patriot.¹²⁵ As for their Taiwanese counterparts, it was Lim’s contributions to the advancement of medical research that took center stage. Nothing was mentioned of Lim’s departure to the States.¹²⁶ This selective omission of Lim’s life story reveals an attempt to construct a memory of Robert Lim that served the best interests of the respective authorities on both sides of the straits. Nonetheless, similar to the conceptualization of “the Bethune spirit,” Robert Lim’s place in history is framed by emphasizing his non-partisan, humanitarian virtue in his quest to advance the standard of scientific research of modern China. Such a rhetoric was in line with a shift toward emphasizing the “united” character of Chinese resistance in WWII commemorations held across the PRC since the mid-1980s.¹²⁷ For example, in celebration of Lim’s one hundred and twentieth birth anniversary, the Red Cross Society of China honored Lim as the pioneer of modern physiology in China.¹²⁸ Similarly, in a series of articles published in the China-based journal Minzhu yu Kexue [Democracy and Science] in 2015, the authors portrayed Lim as a patriotic scientist who, despite having served in the Republican government, did not oppose the idea of supporting

 Zhang Xijun, “Huiyi Zhongguo shenglixue xianqu Lin Kesheng jiaoshou,” Shengli kexue jinzhan 17, no. 2 (1986): 185.  Chen Mengqin, “Zhongguo jindai shenglixue de fazhan yu Zhongguo shengli xuehui-jinian Zhongguo shengli xuehui chengli liushi zhounian,” Shengwuxue tongbao 10 (1986): 23 – 24; Yang Xiongli, “Lishi de qishi—Jinian Zhongguo shengli xuehui chengli 90 zhounian,” Shengli Tongxun 35, no. 5 (2016): 165.  Tsai Mei-Ling, “A 90-Year history of the Chinese Physiological Society,” accessed June 23, 2020, http://cps.org.tw/userfiles/en/file/PHysiology%20history-2017.pdf.  Rana Mitter, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Nationalism, History and Memory in the Beijing War of Resistance Museum, 1987– 1997,” The China Quarterly 161 (2000): 279 – 93.  He Xiaosheng, “Zhongguo hongshizi yundongshi shang de yizuo fengbei,” Zhongguo hongshizi bao 3 (2017): 3.

76

Isaac C.K. Tan

the CCP medical team, and instead exhibited the noble, humanistic trait of serving the greater social good.¹²⁹ In Taiwan, scholars also highlighted his humanitarian efforts by giving him titles such as “Nightingale of the Resistance War” and “Henry Dunant of the East.”¹³⁰ Lim was also credited as the founding father of modern medicine in Taiwan as he had selflessly donated all his research equipment to local institutions in the final years of his life.¹³¹ On December 17, 2015, a symposium commemorating wartime contributions of the Red Cross Society of China and Robert Lim was organized in the city of Guiyang. More than fifty participants from organizations in Taiwan and mainland China, such as the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriot [Zhonghua Quanguo Taiwan Tongbao Lianyihui], the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the National Defense Medical Center, attended the one-day event.¹³² Honored as the “Father of Life Sciences in China,” Lim was eulogized as “the model overseas Chinese with a strong national consciousness and fervent patriotism for the Chinese motherland.”¹³³ In the opening address, the organizers referred to Lim’s unwavering, apolitical dedication to humanitarian efforts “that had contributed to the liberation of the Chinese people.” By associating Lim with the Chinese people and the modernization of medical services, a non-state-centric discursive space was effectively created to accommodate Lim. Such was the rhetoric that placed Lim in line with both the CCP’s trope of liberation and KMT’s emphasis on modernization, as well as portrayed Lim as the ideal, non-political, altruistic link—transcending politics and appealing to fundamental human values—that connects the people in Taiwan and mainland China. Unlike Bethune who shared no commonality with the Chinese people, Lim could trace his ancestry to the southern Chinese province of Fujian. Ironically, due to his upbringing overseas, Lim was more Anglicized than Chinese, and yet he was a leading member of the Republican administration. This contradiction of identity could have manifested in ways deeper and more complex than that in Bethune’s case. As seen earlier in how he was ridiculed for not being

 Jin, “Lin Kesheng: Weida aiguozhe he jiechu kexuejia,” 51– 55; Li Chuanxi, “Hu Shi wei Lin Kesheng bianhu,” Minzhu yu kexue 2 (2015): 69 – 72.  Chen, “Yi rendao boai chengjiu liang’an liangzhi—Jinian Lin Kesheng de zui hao fangshi,” in Lin Kesheng, 16, 19.  Yao, “Ji bei yiwang de Zhongguo kexue dianjiren zhi yi,” in Lin Kesheng, 101– 05; Ye, “Taiwan Meishi yixue fazhan de dongliyuan,” in Lin Kesheng, 178 – 80.  Deng, “‘Jinian kangri fenghuozhong de Zhongguo Hongshizihui Jiuhuzongdui ji Lin Kesheng jiaoshou xueshu zuotanhui’—Juxing huigu lishi mianhuai xianjing jianzheng jinri qidi weilai,” 24– 27.  Ibid., 25.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

77

able to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently,¹³⁴ the gap in expectation—between the common assumption of a Chinese government official having no language incompetency and Lim’s lack of Mandarin proficiency—might have complicated Lim’s position in Chinese histories. Furthermore, no Chinese leader had articulated Robert Lim’s selfless deeds in the same way as Mao did for Bethune, and neither public monuments nor efforts to immortalize Lim in national texts had ever taken place.

Conclusion This chapter begins by taking broad strokes in looking at significant events at different points of Norman Bethune’s and Robert Lim’s lives to account for their worldviews and decisions made during the tumultuous and volatile time period before WWII. By juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated individuals who had contributed to the development of medical sciences in modern—specifically wartime—China, this chapter highlights the context of a global interaction within the Chinese side of the war. Each of the individuals was born in areas under British rule—Bethune in the Dominion of Canada while Lim in the British colony of Singapore. Both had retained clear distinct marks of alien origins in the places where their contributions mattered the most—Bethune hardly spoke either Spanish or Mandarin Chinese while Lim had a strong Scottish accent and was often ridiculed for having a poor command of Mandarin. Their non-Chinese identities thus stressed the ultimate sacrifice of the individual for the greater good of the country or even the world. In examining the case studies of Bethune and Lim, this chapter highlights how individuals with multiple, overlapping, sometimes contrasting, identities complicate the process of how they would be memorialized in historical representations. A key theme of this volume is the adoption of different historical representations by Chinese authorities in both mainland China and Taiwan after 1949 to legitimize their rule and to fortify their political significance in local histories. Similar to how Chinese intellectuals in the Qing dynasty, as discussed in Moniz Bandeira’s chapter, appropriated the foreign event of the French Revolution to suit their discursive objectives, both the CCP and the KMT have incorporated foreign-born individuals into their respective propagandas. The presence of Bethune and Lim in wartime China was a vivid reminder of how humanitarian aid had served as a medium for international cooperation

 Wang, “Budong zhongguohua de jun’i shuzhang Lin Kesheng,” 50.

78

Isaac C.K. Tan

that transcended ideological differences in combating a global threat. Although significantly different in their respective associations with political ideologies, both representations reinforced the dichotomy of humanitarian aid and bureaucracy. Bethune’s unpleasant dealings with the Canadian medical authorities and the Spanish Republican government highlighted his disdain of authority which often obstructed his pursuits of attaining both humanitarian goals and socialist ideals. During Bethune’s short stint in China, the CCP fully supported his lofty plans, creating the impression of minimal bureaucratic obstacles in the CCP camp.¹³⁵ In contrast, though closely affiliated with the Republican government, Lim maintained a non-partisan approach in his humanitarian dealings. Although his political indifference had placed him in an uneasy position with the anti-Communist KMT leadership, institutional red tapes actually posed a greater threat to Lim’s position within the bureaucracy. Furthermore, in their humanitarian efforts, both Bethune and Lim shared similar traits of anti-establishment, which characterized their often-antagonistic dealings with the authorities. Even in times of crisis, humanitarian efforts remained embroiled in politics, where one’s apparent ideological inclination dictated one’s access to medical care. The key question remains: how can we create a historical space for these international medical pioneers in modern China? In order to appreciate the roles of these globalized individuals, we need to reconsider the narratives framed by the nation-state paradigm. Nation-centric and state-centric representations, as this chapter has shown, emphasize the individuals’ personalities in displaying traits that are deemed beneficial to the construct of the nation-state. The sensitive issue of sovereignty remains unresolved in the current geopolitics. In other words, the entity of what comprises “China” remains vague and undefined, and individuals with multiple identities were conveniently written out of history. It is perhaps important to first recognize that “the past is not fixed or something, given that it can be comprehended by objective methods as the positivists of the nineteenth century had claimed.”¹³⁶ To arrive at this understanding involves an act of construction in which social and cultural processes play equally important roles as politics does. Ideologies and patriotism aside, an individual’s choice of

 Bethune’s biographers noted that the only time when Bethune’s suggestion was overruled by the Chinese authorities was when one of his suggestions to improve the hospitals in the JinCha-Ji border region, the creation of the Hospital Central Committee, had been allowed to lapse during his time of absence when he was on a duty tour in Central Hebei. See Stewart and Stewart, Phoenix, 353.  Matten, “History, Memory, and Identity in Modern China,” in Places of Memory in Modern China, 8.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

79

geographical displacement should not be judged according to national concerns —Bethune leaving Canada to serve the communist cause in wartime China, and Lim departing Taiwan to pursue research in the United States—as this would privilege the nation over individuals in terms of historical importance. In conclusion, there are three main takeaways in this chapter’s critique of the contemporary monopolistic nation-centric and state-centric narratives. First, a micro-historical approach provides a different lens in understanding how national histories were shaped, not by overarching institutions or great men or women but rather by individuals who did not conform to national boundaries. Global historical developments might have shaped the nature of the engagements between Bethune and Lim with the Chinese, but as this chapter reveals, personal ambitions and ideological allegiances also had a significant role that is often written out of both nation-centric and state-centric narratives. Second, the medical development of wartime China reveals a complex narrative that is more than just a one-sided, Western-led modernization of local medical practices. The stories of the individuals mentioned in this chapter show how transnational humanitarian interactions break down conventional dualistic representations in Chinese history—Western versus local, communists versus noncommunists. Finally, the focus on idiosyncratic characteristics in history challenges the supposed homogenous representation of historical narratives. Both Bethune and Lim had non-conventional affiliations, i. e., transcending the static, exclusive association of national identity, and are thus perceived as misfits of both nation-centric and state-centric narratives. The historical representations of such individuals are sites revealing the tenuous, instable nature of the nation-state paradigm. The extraordinary lives of Henry Norman Bethune and Robert Kho-Seng Lim thus present a unique vantage point from which to examine the globalization of wartime medicine in modern China and challenge the ideologically skewed grand narratives that obscure anomalies in its monolithic representation.

Bibliography Newspaper Sources “Geyuan mingdan [Name List of Cabinet Ministers].” Shenbao, December 23, 1948, 1. “Guofang Yixueyuan chengli Lin Kesheng churen yuanzhang [The Formation of the National Defense Medical Center; Robert K.S. Lim appointed as its Chancellor].” Shenbao, May 25, 1947, 5. “Guofangbu jin zhengshi chengli [The Ministry of Defense is Officially Formed Today].” Shenbao, June 1, 1946, 1.

80

Isaac C.K. Tan

“Lushenfutingwei fabiao [Announcement from the Shantung Provincial Office].” Shenbao, January 18, 1949, 2. “Yindu jiuhudui [Medical Mission Team from India].” Shenbao, August 10, 1938, 1. “Yindu jiuhudui laihua fuwu [Medical Mission Team from India Arriving to Serve in China].” Shenbao, June 23, 1938, 1. Lim, R.K.S. “Chinese Students in Great Britain.” The Times, August 10, 1922, 11.

Other Sources Allan, T., and S. Gordon. The Scalpel, the Sword; the Story of Dr. Norman Bethune. Boston: Little Brown, 1952. Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1991. Banner, L.W. “Biography as History.” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009): 579 – 86. Basu, B.K. Call of Yanan: A Story of the Indian Medical Mission to China 1938‒1943. New Delhi: All India Kotnis Memorial Committee, 1986. Bethune, N. “Some New Thoracic Surgical Instruments.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 35, no. 6 (1936): 656 – 62. Bethune, N., and L. Hannant. The Politics of Passion: Norman Bethune’s Writing and Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Bu Liping. Public Health and the Modernization of China, 1865‒2015. New York: Routledge, 2017. Cao Yu. “Zhongguo xiandai shenglixue dianjiren Lin Kesheng boshi [Founder of Physiology in Modern China: Professor Robert K.S. Lim].” China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 19, no. 1 (1998): 26 – 41. CBC News. “Justin Trudeau’s Official Gifts to China a Nod to his Father.” August 31, 2016. Accessed March 30, 2019. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-china-gifts-be thune-medallions-1.3742783. Chen Chengwen. “Yi rendao boai chengjiu liang’an liangzhi—Jinian Lin Kesheng de zui hao fangshi [Using Humanitarian Fraternity to Achieve a Mutually Beneficial Cross-Strait System—Ways of Remembering Robert K.S. Lim].” In Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren [Robert K.S. Lim—The Pioneer in the Medical History of the Republican History], edited by He Bangli, 14 – 17. Taipei: Xinxin wenju yinshua Ltd., 2017. Chen Mengqin. “Zhongguo jindai shenglixue de fazhan yu Zhongguo shengli xuehui—Jinian Zhongguo shengli xuehui chengli liushi zhounian [The Development of Physiology in Modern China and the Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences—Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences].” Shengwuxue tongbao [Physiology Bulletin] 10 (1986): 23 – 24. Daudharia, H., ed. The Immortal Stories of Dr. D.S. Kotnis and Dr. Norman Bethune. Chandigarh: Unistar Books, 2012. Davenport, H.W. “Robert Kho-Seng Lim.” In Biographical Memoirs, vol. 51, 281 – 306. Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1980. Deng Jing. “‘Jinian kangri fenghuozhong de Zhongguo Hongshizihui Jiuhuzongdui ji Lin Kesheng jiaoshou xueshu zuotanhui’—Juxing huigu lishi mianhuai xianjing jianzheng

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

81

jinri qidi weilai [‘Symposium on the remembrance of the Anti-Japanese efforts of the China Red Cross Medical Relief Corps and Professor Robert K.S. Lim’—Reflecting on History, Commemorating Pioneers, Bearing Witness to the Present, and Inspiring the Future].” Tai sheng [Voice of Taiwan] 1 (2016): 24 – 27. Deslauriers, J., and D. Goulet. “The Medical Life of Henry Norman Bethune.” Canada Respiratory Journal 22, no. 6 (2015): 32 – 42. Farley, J. Model Workers in China, 1949 – 1965: Constructing A New Citizen. London: Routledge, 2019. Framke, M. “‘We Must Send a Gift Worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and Political Humanitarianism in Late Colonial South Asia.” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 6 (2017): 1969 – 98. Ge Li. “Lin Kesheng diu le weisheng buzhang [Robert K.S. Lim Lost his Position as the Minister of Health].” Qunyan yuekan [Monthly Voices] 27 (1949): 8. Gellner, E. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Gluck, C. “Operations of Memory: ‘Comfort Women’ and the World.” In Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, edited by Shella Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, 47 – 77. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Guo Qing. “Zhongguo hongshizihui jiuhu zongduizhang Lin Kesheng—Zhanhuo renxin [Head of the China Red Cross Medical Relief Corps, Robert K.S. Lim—Benevolence in War].” Tai sheng [Voice of Taiwan] 1 (2016): 28. He Bangli. “Hanmei qi pa fengxue ya: Lin Kesheng zai Honghui yingqi de zhengyi yu shiyi [Plum Trees Withstanding the Elements During Winter: The Controversies and Doubts Over Robert K.S. Lim’s Involvement in the Red Cross].” Zhonghua kejishi xuehui xuekan [Bulletin of Association for the History of Science] 23 (2018): 24 – 37. He Bangli. “Lin Kesheng yu Hongshizihui fengchao [Robert K.S. Lim and the Disputes within the Red Cross].” Zhonghua kejishi xuehui xuekan [Bulletin of Association for the History of Science] 21 (2016): 32 – 47. He Xiaosheng. “Zhongguo hongshizi yundongshi shang de yizuo fengbei [A Monolith in the History of the Red Cross Movement in China].” Zhongguo hongshizi bao [China Red Cross Press] 3 (2017): 1 – 3. Jin Tao. “Lin Kesheng: Weida aiguozhe he jiechu kexuejia [Robert K.S. Lim: A Great Patriot and Outstanding Scientist].” Minzhu yu kexue [Democracy and Science] 1 (2015): 51 – 55. King, A. China–Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949 – 1971. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Koselleck, R. Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories. Edited and translated by Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. Kotnis, M.S. The Bridge for ever: A Biography of Dr. Kotnis. Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1983. Kripalani, C. “Reading China in Popular Hindi Film—Three Points in Time: 1946, 1964 and 2009.” Asian Cinema 23, no. 2 (2012): 217 – 29. Kymlicka, W., and K. Walker, eds. Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012. Lary, D. “Memory Times, Memory Places: Public and Private Commemoration of War in China.” In Remembering Asia’s World War Two, edited by Mark R. Frost, Daniel Schumacher, and Edward Vickers, 56 – 71. New York: Routledge, 2019.

82

Isaac C.K. Tan

Levi, G. “The Uses of Biography.” In Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, edited by Hans Renders and Binne de Haan, 61 – 74. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Levy, D. “Memory and Methodological Cosmopolitanism: A Figurative Approach.” In The Ashgate Companion to Memory Studies, edited by Siobhan Kattago, 211 – 24. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. Levy, D., and N. Sznaider. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. Li Chuanxi. “Hu Shi wei Lin Kesheng bianhu [Hu Shi in Defense of Robert K.S. Lim].” Minzhu yu kexue [Democracy and Science] 2 (2015): 69 – 72. Lim, R.K.S. “Report on Medical Education in U.S.S.R.” Chinese Medical Journal 49, no. 9 (1935): 1075. Lim, R.K.S. “Presidential Address.” National Medical Journal of China 16, no. 1 (1930): 118 – 120. Lim, R.K.S., and C.C. Chen. “State Medicine.” Chinese Medical Journal 51, no. 78 (1937): 781 – 96. Liu, J.H. “Our Responsibilities in Public Health.” Chinese Medical Journal 51, no. 6 (1937): 1040. Liu Shi-yung and Kuo Shih-ching. “Lin Kesheng (1897 – 1969): Anshenghuiyin de zhongyanyuan yuanshi yu guofang yixueyuan yuanzhang [Robert K.S. Lim (1897 – 1969): Academician of Academia Sinica and Chancellor of National Defense Medical Center in Silent Shadow].” Taiwanshi yanjiu [Taiwan Historical Research] 19, no. 4 (2012): 141 – 205. Loriga, S. “The Role of the Individual in History: Biographical and Historical Writing in the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Century.” In Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, edited by Hans Renders and Binne De Haan, 75 – 93. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Lynteris, C. “‘In Memory of Norman Bethune:’ Two Resurrections of the ‘Spirit of Selflessness’ in Maoist China.” Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies 1 (December 2011): 21 – 49. Majumdar, N. “Immortal Tale or Nightmare? Dr. Kotnis Between Art and Exploitation.” South Asian Popular Culture 6, no. 2 (2008): 141 – 59. Malani, P.N., and R.L. Prager. “Journey in Thick Wood: Childhood Henry Norman Bethune.” Journal of American Medical Association 312, no. 14 (2014): 1380 – 82. Mao Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Volume II. New York: Pergamon Press, 1965. Matten, M.A. “History, Memory, and Identity in Modern China.” In Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity, edited by Marc Andre Matten, 1 – 14. Leiden: Brill, 2012. McDougall, B.S., and K. Louie, eds. The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst, 1997. Nora, P. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (1989): 7 – 24. Olick, J.K. States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Phillips, K.R., and G.M. Reyes, eds. Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011.

Globalized Memories: Medical Pioneers in Modern China

83

Poo Mu-Ming. “Neuroscience in China 2000 – 2009: Introduction.” Science China Life Sciences 53, no. 3 (2010): 301 – 03. Porter, E.A. The People’s Doctor: George Hatem and China’s Revolution. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. Russell, B. Political Ideals. New York: The Century Co., 1917. Shapiro, S. Ma Haide: The Saga of American Doctor George Hatem in China. San Francisco: Cypress Press, 1993. Shephard, D.A.E., and A. Lévesque, eds. We are the Heirs of Norman Bethune: A Collection of Poems, Stories and Essays from Canada, China, Albania, Palestine, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Indonesia, Philippines and India. Toronto: Norman Bethune Institute, 1975. Shi Yan. “Robert K.S. Lim and the Development of Modern Medicine in Republican China, 1924 – 1949.” Ph.D. diss., National University of Singapore, 2013. Sim, V. Biographies of Prominent Chinese in Singapore. Singapore: Nan Kok Publication Company, 1953. Soon, W. “Coming from Afar: The Overseas Chinese and the Institutionalization of Western Medicine and Science in China, 1910 – 1970.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2014. Stewart, R. The Mind of Norman Bethune. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1977. Stewart, R., and J. Majada. Bethune in Spain. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. Stewart, R., and S. Stewart. Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. Tan, S.Y., and K. Pettigrew. “Henry Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939): Surgeon, Communist, Humanitarian.” Singapore Medical Journal 57, no. 10 (2016): 526 – 27. Thongchai, W. Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of The October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020. Tsai Mei-Ling. “A 90-Year History of the Chinese Physiological Society.” Accessed June 23, 2020. http://cps.org.tw/userfiles/en/file/PHysiology%20history-2017.pdf. Vanderklippe, N. “Beijing finds renewed use for Norman Bethune’s legacy.” Globe and Mail (Toronto). September 3, 2014. Accessed March 30, 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail. com/news/world/beijing-finds-renewed-use-for-norman-bethunes-legacy/ar ticle20342374/. Vickers, E. “Remembering and Forgetting War and Occupation in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.” In Remembering the Second World War, edited by Patrick Finney, 46 – 67. New York: Routledge, 2017. Vickers, E. “Frontiers of Memory: Conflict, Imperialism, and Official Histories in the Formation of Post-Cold War Taiwan.” In Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the post-Cold War in Asia, edited by Shella Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, 209 – 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Wang Daozhong. “Budong zhongguohua de jun’i shuzhang Lin Kesheng [Robert K.S. Lim, the Army Surgeon General Who Does Not Understand Mandarin Chinese].” Xiuzhen zazhi [Pocket-sized Magazine] 2 (1949): 50 – 53. Wang Zheng. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Wang Zhongjia and He Bangli. “Bainian xiehe yi Kesheng [The Centennial Anniversary of the Peking Union Medical Center and in Remembrance of Robert K.S. Lim].” Zhonghua

84

Isaac C.K. Tan

kejishi xuehui xuekan [Bulletin of Association for the History of Science] 22 (2017): 235 – 37. Watt, J.R. Saving Lives in Wartime China: How Medical Reformers Built Modern Healthcare Systems amid War and Epidemics, 1928 – 1945. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Wu Weihong. “Zai Bai Qiu’en suxiang xia—Bai Qiu’en guoji heping yiyuan huli gongzuo jianjie. [Under the Statue of Bethune—An Introduction to the Nursing Work at the Bethune International Peace Hospital].” Jiefangjun huli zazhi [Journal of Nursing in the Revolutionary Army] 14, no. 3 (1997): 62. Xu Guoqi. Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Yang Jingqing. Informal Payments and Regulations in China’s Healthcare System: Red Packets and Institutional Reform. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Yang Xiongli. “Lishi de qishi—Jinian Zhongguo shengli xuehui chengli 90 zhounian [Historical Revelation—In Commemoration of the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese Physiological Society].” Shengli Tongxun [Physiology Newsletter] 35, no. 5 (2016): 164 – 66. Yao Yi. “Ji bei yiwang de Zhongguo kexue dianjiren zhi yi [The Forgotten Pioneer who Laid the Foundations of Modern Chinese Science].” In Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren [Robert K.S. Lim—The Pioneer in the Medical History of the Republican History], edited by He Bangli, 101 – 05. Taipei: Xin wenju yinshua Ltd., 2017. Ye Yongwen. “Taiwan Meishi yixue fazhan de dongliyuan [The Beginnings of the Development of American-inspired Medical Education in Taiwan].” In Lin Kesheng—Min’guo yixueshi shang diyi ren [Robert K.S. Lim—The Pioneer in the Medical History of the Republican History], edited by He Bangli, 178 – 80. Taipei: Xin wenju yinshua Ltd., 2017. Yoneyama, L. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectic of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Yoshida, T. The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Young, N. Postnational Memory, Peace and War: Making Pasts Beyond Borders. New York: Routledge, 2020. Zhang Xijun. “Huiyi Zhongguo shenglixue xianqu Lin Kesheng jiaoshou [In Remembrance of Professor Robert K.S. Lim, the Pioneer of Physiology in China].” Shengli kexue jinzhan [Advancement of Physiological Science] 17, no. 2 (1986): 184 – 86. Zhou Erfu. Baiqiu’en dafu [Doctor Norman Bethune]. Translated by Alison Bailey. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1982.

Sittithep Eaksittipong

The Social and Political Lives of G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand Abstract: Aiming to look beyond nation-centric historiography, this chapter deploys a transnational perspective to explore the social and political lives of G. William Skinner and his classic, Chinese Society in Thailand, in American, Thai, and Chinese Academia. Unlike previous scholarship that tries to evaluate either the reliability of the book’s content or its argument on the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand, this chapter explores the political and social aspects of the book and its author. It explores how the book became an authoritative text in the studies of overseas Chinese and its role in creating perceptions toward overseas Chinese, particularly the Chinese in Thailand during the Cold War. Furthermore, I trace the uses and circulation of the book and the knowledge that it creates in American, Thai, and Chinese academia to see how the book has created different meanings and played different roles among scholars. The chapter thus looks beyond territorial-bound China to shed light on historical representations of China expressed in the form of overseas Chinese representations during the Cold War. Keywords: Chinese society in Thailand, China, overseas Chinese, Skinner, Thailand

Introduction Since the end of World War II, the growing importance of Chinese studies as a result of the Cold War and then the rise of China have led to the production of numerous monographs on China and the Chinese in academia. Over time, scholars have produced academic knowledge that constructs particular images of China and the Chinese. While these pieces of knowledge to a certain extent direct the way we see and understand China and the Chinese, they are also a reflection of scholars’ worldview and context in which they live.¹ However, once produced,

Sittithep Eaksittipong, Chiang Mai University  Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-005

86

Sittithep Eaksittipong

academic knowledge is always susceptible to various interpretations and manipulations. To further other contributors’ arguments in this book on historical representations of China, this chapter intends to explore G. William Skinner’s production of knowledge by focusing on his magnum opus Chinese Society in Thailand ² produced in the Cold War when overseas Chinese was utilized as an epitome to comprehend China. Unlike previous scholarship that tries to evaluate either the reliability of the book’s content, its argument on the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand or approaches employed by Skinner,³ this chapter explores the political and social aspects of the book and its author. It focuses on the process in which the book was created and established as an authoritative text in the studies on overseas Chinese, particularly the Chinese in Thailand, by tracing the uses and circulation of the book and the knowledge that it creates in American, Thai, and Chinese academia. As Barabantseva argues, an exploration of discourses on overseas Chinese that place domestic and transnational identity politics in a single analytical framework is important in gaining insights into Chinese nationcrafting.⁴ It is thus necessary to decenter nation-centric modes of historiography by seeing beyond China to understand China and its interactions with the outside world. This chapter reveals the political use of overseas Chinese representations produced outside the territorially bound Chinese nation-state that underlined the interaction between states, scholars, and the Chinese in the United States, Thailand, and the People’s Republic of China. It explores how the book has created different meanings and played different roles in the three countries as knowledge derived from the uses and interpretations of the book both defines Chinese representations and serves as a medium of national-self perceptions in the United States, Thailand, and the People’s Republic of China.

 G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957).  Kasian Tejapira, “Pigtail: A Pre-history of Chineseness in Siam”, Sojourn 7, no. 1 (February 1992): 95 – 122; Michael Montesano, “Beyond the Assimilation Fixation: Skinner and the Possibility of a Spatial Approach to Twentieth-Century Thai History”, Journal of Chinese Overseas 1, no. 2 (November 2005): 184–216.  Elena Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2011).

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

87

Skinner, Social Sciences, Cold War, and the Chinese in Thailand The end of World War II that was followed immediately by the Cold War and decolonization was a novel world for many people. With the declining of colonialism, the old Eurocentric knowledge about the world explicitly premised on racial superiority of white people and associated with colonization became irrelevant. A new kind of knowledge was needed to comprehend this world. With the rise of the United States to superpower status and leader of the free world vis-à-vis the communist camp led by Soviet Union, the United States found itself engaging with a changing world about which it knew so little. Area studies underpinned by American social sciences flourished in this context as a significant tool for the United States to explore the world in order to contain the spread of communism. From the American point of view, the United States was different from the old European colonizers because it exercised power through culture rather than political coercion or the violence of force. Furthermore, unlike the European colonizer who had stressed the difference between the East and the West, Americans envisioned its global expansion as taking place in a system of reciprocity that bridged the differences between the East and the West. Through forging a kind of tutelary relations in which the United States assumed the role of a teacher and the East the eager student in pursuing modernization, the differences could be bridged.⁵ Modernization modeled after advanced democratic Western countries, especially America, was used as a developmental prototype for nonWestern countries because it was viewed as a solution to prevent those countries from politico-economic instability that could lead them to embrace another type of modernization represented by communism in particular.⁶ In this sense, social sciences, anti-communism, sentimentalism, and modernization were interlocked. The years 1949 – 1950 were tumultuous years for the free-world camp. The loss of China in late 1949 and the outbreak of Korean War in the early 1950s made the specter of communism loom large. As it became impossible to conduct research in mainland China, sinologists had to shift their interest to overseas Chinese instead as a way to comprehend China. Furthermore, the loss of China heightened the fear of a domino effect, that communism would spread  Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945 – 1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).  Nils Gilman, Mandarin of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003).

88

Sittithep Eaksittipong

southward to Southeast Asia. In this context, Southeast Asia became a major focus for communist containment while the overseas Chinese in the region were seen as a potential fifth column. Thailand, the only safe place where westerners were welcome amidst anti-westerner sentiment that spread over the region, became the center for American anti-communist operations. Fearing the spread of communism, Washington passed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act to provide military assistance to help combat communist aggression in Southeast Asia and dispatched the Griffin Mission headed by R. Allen Griffin, former deputy chief of the U.S. economic aid mission in China, to Southeast Asia to analyze conditions in the region and formulate an economic development program in 1950. In Thailand, Griffin found that the country’s most obvious threat “comes from the possibility of communist control by way of the large and powerful Chinese minority”.⁷ Indeed, the American Embassy in Bangkok had begun to engage seriously with the Chinese community in Thailand since 1949 to prevent the spread of communism. In 1949, The United States Information Service (USIS) in Bangkok had started to publish a Chinese version of news and press releases.⁸ The United States embassy’s political staff also included Chinese language officers whose task was to engage with the Chinese community.⁹ However, a contemporary observer pointed out that the relationship between the officers and the community was superficial, because these officers were all Caucasians and only knew Mandarin, which was rarely spoken by the local Chinese.¹⁰ To make matters worse, another scholar argued, some of their operations were misleading and encouraged the growth of Chinese nationalism in the region. For example, the USIS operation to exploit the overseas Chinese emotional attachment to the nationalist regime in Taiwan was misleading, as it only facilitated communal separatism and political aloofness between the Chinese and their host countries.¹¹ Thailand was then used by the U.S. Department

 Economic Survey Mission to Southeast Asia, “Needs for United States Economic and Technical Aid in Thailand”, in The Beginning of American Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffin Mission of 1950, ed. Samuel P. Hayes (Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books, 1971), 223.  Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, “Olcott H. Deming, First Secretary and Public Affairs Officer, USIS Bangkok (1948 – 1951)”, interviewed by Horace G. Torbert, in Thailand: Country Reader (Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training), 22, http://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Thailand.pdf.  Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, “Frank Burnet, Chinese Language Officer, Bangkok (1957– 1959)”, interviewed by Charles S. Kennedy in ibid., 95 – 98.  Richard J. Coughlin, “The Chinese in Bangkok: A Study of Cultural Persistence” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1953), 107.  Lea E. Williams, The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (New York: McGrawHill, 1966), 119.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

89

of State as “a sort of guinea pig” to test the possibility of using more of a “carrot” and less of a “stick” approach to encourage local orientation among the Chinese.¹² However, as such an operation could not be conducted effectively without scientific knowledge on the subject, knowledge on the Chinese in Thailand was in demand. The source of knowledge then was quite limited. Indeed, the only major source available then was Kenneth Landon’s The Chinese in Thailand, a sweeping survey on the Chinese based mainly on his experience as a missionary in Thailand between 1927– 1937.¹³ Apart from Landon’s survey, there were only a few OSS files containing interviews with Americans who had resided in Thailand during the 1940s about the Chinese community.¹⁴ Thus, a more scientific and up to date research that would provide a “cookbook” approach for “enlightened policies and practice” was in demand. This was the context in which Skinner began to conduct his research on Chinese society in China in the late 1949. After conducting field research for a few months, the communist revolution discontinued his research. Placed under house arrest for several months, and with his research materials for doctoral thesis confiscated by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Chengdu, G. William Skinner, a twenty-four-year-old PhD student in anthropology at Cornell University, began to take an interest in the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Realizing that in China he could not “gain field experience, cannot arrive (scientifically) at anything of theoretical value … and, as an American cannot make suggestions along practical line, even if I [Skinner] were capable, that would be heeded,” Skinner began to look for other research topics that could meet his expectations. At this stage, in his own words, having lived through “injustices, restrictions, and loss of freedom for months”, Skinner developed “an increasingly negativistic attitude” toward communist authorities. Pondering for a new topic that would fit his expectation, Skinner started to consider doing research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Like other sinologists of his time, Skinner had to shift his interest

 Letter attached to Bangkok dispatches nos. 71 and 861, 12p Thailand, 1953. Records of the Office of Chinese Affairs “P” Files, 1948 – 1955, General Records of the Department of State, 1763 – 2002, Record Group 59, The United States National Archives at College Park, Maryland.  Kenneth Landon, The Chinese in Thailand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941).  Thailand: Chinese in Thailand, New York Office Record, 1942– 1945, OSS E106, Folder 482, Records of the Office of Strategic Services, 1919 – 2002, Record Group 226, The United States National Archives of at College Park, Maryland.

90

Sittithep Eaksittipong

to the overseas Chinese. For Skinner, “comparative studies of acculturation in Chinese overseas communities could profitably be made in Southeast Asia”.¹⁵ After Skinner was allowed to leave China, his supervisor Lauriston Sharp tasked him to conduct a general survey on the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.¹⁶ At the same time, he also convinced Skinner to do field research on the Chinese community in Thailand because the situation there was safer than in other Southeast Asian countries and Cornell’s in-country infrastructure for research had by then been laid down by the Thailand-Cornell Project since 1947.¹⁷ Furthermore, with extensive support from Thai and American government agencies, such a research plan promised to be successful. As he started to do a general survey on the Chinese in Southeast Asia in late 1950, Skinner found that there were “limitless possibilities for fascinating studies, especially in the area of culture change and assimilation” among the Chinese.¹⁸ Conducting his survey in an era when nationalism in Southeast Asia, and Thailand in particular, had reached its height and the fear of communism loomed large, Skinner saw the Chinese as a potential fifth column and mentioned that the situation in Thailand was the most dangerous in the region. Part of the problem, he believed, derived from what he labeled the Bangkok government’s “rabid anti-Chinese policy” that imposed severe restrictions on Chinese business and education while not offering attractive alternatives. This “unrealistic” policy, Skinner felt, made “assimilation [of the Chinese] impossible”.¹⁹ According to his review of Chinese relations with majority peoples in various countries, the Chinese traditionally possessed an assimilable nature that could be used as a medium to prevent them from allying with communist forces. He believed that “enlightened policies and practice on the part of non-communist forces can still induce the vast majority of Southeast Asian Chinese to travel the roads towards freedom and democracy”.²⁰ For him, studies on the assimila-

 G. William Skinner, Letter written on May 1, 1950, Lauriston Sharp Papers, Box 78, Skinner China: 1949 – 1950. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.  Lauriston Sharp, Preface to Report on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1951), i.  Charles F. Keyes, “G. William Skinner and the Study of Chinese in Thailand and the Study of Thai Society” (paper presented at a workshop on “The Legacy of G. William Skinner’s Field Research: China and Southeast Asia,” University of Washington, May 27, 2011), 1.  Skinner, Letter to Knight Biggerstaff on November 12, 1950, Lauriston Sharp Papers, Box 78, Skinner, G.W. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.  Skinner, Report on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1951), 11– 86.  Ibid., 88.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

91

tion of the Chinese could provide solutions to pressing social and technical problems and offer something of theoretical value. Skinner’s survey on the Chinese in Southeast Asia was part of a larger project exploring the region through three major functionally related subjects: the Chinese, technological and economic development, and politics and ideologies. According to Sharp, the founder of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program, an increasing understanding of one topic should provide a greater understanding of others.²¹ The Chinese were thus seen as a factor related to political and economic modernization in the region. After completing his survey on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Skinner followed Sharp’s advice to focus his research on Thailand. He was appointed Field Director of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program in Bangkok. During his time administering the Cornell Research Center in Bangkok from 1951– 1953, Skinner conducted field research for his PhD dissertation entitled “A Study of Chinese Community Leadership in Bangkok, together with a Historical Survey of Chinese Society in Thailand”.²² His dissertation would be published as two separate monographs, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History and Leadership and Power in Bangkok Chinese Community of Thailand, both by Cornell University Press.²³

Defining the Chinese and the Thai For social scientists working on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand, there is a vexing problem that continues to haunt them—who are the Chinese? Unlike in the United States, where marked physical and cultural differences obviously separate Caucasians from Asians, intermarriage and physical similarities between Southeast Asians and the Chinese made it difficult to delineate the two races. Indeed, the exact population of the “Chinese” in the region, especially in Thailand, remains unknown, and this estimation varies depending on the definition of “Chinese”. It was thus no coincidence that the first task for pioneering social scientists working on the Chinese in Southeast Asia was to de-

 Sharp, Preface to Report on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, i.  Skinner, “A Study of Chinese Community Leadership in Bangkok, Together with a Historical Survey of Chinese Society in Thailand” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1954).  Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957); Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community in Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958).

92

Sittithep Eaksittipong

fine who the Chinese were.²⁴ In the case of Thailand, the works of Skinner defined who the Chinese in Thailand were, as will be discussed below. This led to the reification of the Chinese and transformed them into an object of knowledge that could be dissected and studied “scientifically”. As Skinner dealt with the cultural assimilation of the Chinese, his presupposition was based on the existence of marked cultural differences between the Thai and the Chinese that could be ended with assimilation. Because assimilation assumes a dichotomy between the two groups, it was necessary for Skinner to essentialize these differences. In so doing, he found the solution in John Embree, who saw the Thais as living in “loosely structured system,”²⁵ another set of knowledge on Thailand that had just been published and was in the process of establishing its authority. In contrast, the Chinese in Thailand seemed to live in what might be called a “closely structured society”. Differences in social organization, religious beliefs, and values between the Chinese and the Thais were brought to the forefront to portray the latter as individualistic, undisciplined, and spiritual, while the former were depicted as group-oriented, disciplined and materialistic.²⁶ In this sense, the definition of being Chinese was drawn from the cultural distance between the Chinese and the Thai. Hence, while defining “Chineseness”, Skinner’s work also reinforced and reproduced the understanding of “Thainess”. The next step was to provide the Chinese in Thailand with a history that would make their status as “the Other” more substantial. In the first part of his dissertation, Skinner devoted almost four hundred pages to constructing a history for the Chinese in Thailand from the thirteenth century to the late 1940s. The work also included a historical demography of the Chinese population, an attempt to quantify it scientifically by inventing a formula based on the evaluation of the Chinese population from various sources.²⁷ In writing

 William E. Willmott, The Chinese in Cambodia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1967), xii.  John F. Embree, “Thailand–A Loosely Structured Social System”, American Anthropologist 52, no. 2 (1950): 181– 93.  Skinner, “A Study of Chinese Community Leadership in Bangkok”, 111– 14.  The quantification of the Chinese population was taken as a serious task for scholars working on the Chinese in Southeast Asia in that era. For instance, William E. Willmott perceived his success in doubling the population of the Chinese in Cambodia through complicated calculations and numerous assumptions as his greatest achievement. His calculation raised the number of Chinese to 425,000 from the previous estimates which were in the range of 200 to 250,000. See William E. Willmott, “Research in Cambodia, Half a Century Ago”, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 4 (September 2012): 15. With hindsight and belief in hybrid identity, Kasian points out that scientific identification of the Chinese through quantification employed

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

93

this history, Skinner plotted it as a recurring cycle between assimilation and persistence in their Chinese identity. This plot would serve as a basis for his assimilation argument. After identifying the Chinese as a group through defining, historicizing, and quantifying, hypotheses and theories derived from classrooms in America were ready for testing. In studying the leadership of the Chinese in Thailand and the implications for assimilation, Skinner used the American experience as a basis for enquiry. He acknowledged the special intellectual indebtedness to Harold D. Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan’s Power and Society, a Framework for Political Inquiry,²⁸ a famous work of American political and behavioral scientists, and James E. White’s unpublished doctoral dissertation at Cornell entitled “Leadership and Social Structure in a New York Rural Community”.²⁹ Hence, after laying the historical background on the development of Chinese society in Thailand and its assimilable nature in the first part of his dissertation, various aspects of the Chinese leaders were evaluated and examined, such as their social backgrounds, values and influences, political attitudes, business activities, and most importantly, their degree of assimilation into Thai society. In discussing the degree of assimilation, Skinner devised criteria to gauge a scale of “Thainess” versus “Chineseness” depending on the leaders’ generational and educational backgrounds, the use of a Thai name, proficiency in Thai, nationality, choice of organization, choice of spouse, and children’s education and proximity to Thai government circles. The correlation between these variables was carefully presented in percentile form. Applied statistical and sociological methods used by contemporary American sociologists such as the chi-square method and the leader interlock matrix were utilized to prove his case.³⁰ Skinner argued that the Chinese

by scholars in this generation, especially Skinner, was problematic. The fluid meaning of the pigtail that Skinner mistakenly took as a static cultural marker separating the Thai and the Chinese in his quantification of the Chinese population in Siam is a case in point. For there were Thai who pretended to be Chinese by wearing a queue and Chinese who wore the pigtail but were considered as Thai since they chose to incorporate themselves into the phrai system, a form of corvée labour system that was the fundamental governmental structure dividing people in the kingdom into two different classes: the munnai (masters) and the phrai (serfs). Hence, a static categorization that overlooks the dynamic interaction between the two groups is misleading; see Kasian Tejapira, “Pigtail”, 95 – 122.  Harold D. Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society, a Framework for Political Inquiry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952).  James E. White, “Leadership and Social Structure in a New York Rural Community” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1948). White’s influence on Skinner was specifically methodological and had no relevance to issues of ethnicity or ethnic difference.  Skinner, “A Study of Chinese Community Leadership in Bangkok”, 471– 521, 707– 35.

94

Sittithep Eaksittipong

would be fully assimilated into Thai society within a few generations because Chinese leaders at the time had been subject to gradual Thai-ification.³¹ Synthesizing a newly constructed history of the Chinese in part one with the theoretical discussion in part two, Skinner stated that in the absence of any powerful backing from China, ironically, the official Thai intransigence toward the preservation of a separate identity among the Chinese community in the 1950s was actually “functioning to draw influential Chinese leaders into the Thai élite, just as the official Thai benevolence had done a half century earlier”.³² Furthermore, “since prestigious leaders in any society function as exemplars for the whole society”, the high percentage of Chinese leaders orienting themselves toward Thainess suggested to Skinner that Chinese leaders would lead the whole community toward assimilation.³³

Competition to Establish Authority: Assimilation as Authoritative Knowledge Indeed, social scientific research focusing on the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand as a solution to the “Chinese problem” was modeled on the American experience in dealing with its Chinese immigrants on the West coast. Since the mid-nineteenth century, when the Chinese arrived on the West coast as immigrants and labor, they had been considered a threat to American society. As the Chinese brought with them culture and world views that differed from the White American, they were demonized as exotic non-American and treated as a problem that need to be solved. Supported by arguments of sociologists from the University of Chicago led by Robert E. Park in the 1920s, Americans saw assimilation as a solution to the “Chinese problem”. The Chicago sociologists argued that, after a series of social interactions involving competition, conflict, and accommodation, interaction between the two groups coming into contact would end with assimilation.³⁴ Shaped by a national ideal perceiving the American nation as a place where different ethnic groups could live peacefully together, Americans including Skinner assumed that international cultural and

 Ibid., 745 – 46.  Ibid., 741.  Ibid., 745 – 46.  Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

95

ethnic differences were going the way of ethnic differences amongst American of European extraction–assimilation toward a single national culture.³⁵ However, it does not mean the construction of knowledge on the Chinese, especially on the assimilation of ethnic Chinese, by American scholars went without challenge. After 1945, American social sciences had to establish their authority to supersede the preexisting colonial scholarship. At the same time, there was internal competition among young ambitious American social scientists, each believing in their own view of the world and that their knowledge was more suitable than that of their colleagues for solving the world’s “pressing social and technical problems”. The growing voice of Asian scholars, especially Chinese-Americans who yearned to speak about their own identities, complicated the matter. As soon as his dissertation was published as Chinese Society in Thailand in 1957, Skinner had to defend the validity of his argument and his name in the field. Indeed, Skinner was not the sole producer of knowledge on the Chinese in Thailand. While Skinner was conducting his research in Bangkok, Richard Coughlin, a Yale doctoral student, was also conducting fieldwork for his dissertation entitled “The Chinese in Bangkok: A Study of Cultural Persistence”.³⁶ Coughlin’s dissertation was later published as Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand by Hong Kong University Press in 1960.³⁷ Although both Skinner and Coughlin addressed the Chinese assimilation question, they arrived at different conclusions. While Skinner concluded that the Chinese would be assimilated into the Thai population within a few generations, Coughlin believed otherwise. Influenced by Elin Anderson’s study of social pluralism in Burlington, Vermont, a population divided along class lines and between various American-born and immigrant groups of European ancestry,³⁸ and Nathan L. Whetten’s and Arnold W. Green’s research on Finnish immigrants in Connecticut,³⁹ Coughlin adopted their unique concept of assimilation based on public and private spheres to examine the Chinese in Thailand. Similar to Skinner, Coughlin also saw the Chi-

 Gilman, Mandarin of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America, 16.  Richard J. Coughlin, “The Chinese in Bangkok: A Study of Cultural Persistence” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1953).  Coughlin, Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960).  Elin L. Anderson, We Americans, A Study of Cleavage in an American City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938).  Nathan L. Whetten and Arnold W. Green, “Field Research and the Concepts of Assimilation”, Rural Sociology 7, no. 3 (September 1942): 252– 60.

96

Sittithep Eaksittipong

nese community in Thailand as a laboratory for testing Western social scientific theories. He argued that “if social science is ever to achieve its goal of universal generalization, then theory derived from studies in any given society must be tested in other societies”.⁴⁰ Coughlin began his research by exploring three different but important social and cultural groups in Bangkok: Westerners, Thais, and Chinese. Different social and cultural aspects of each group were delineated in detail such as their religious practices, occupation, associations, and so on. He then narrowed down his research by exploring how the Chinese adapted to these three social and cultural groups in both public and private spheres. Influenced by British colonial scholar John S. Furnivall who coined the term “plural society” to describe colonial societies in Southeast Asia, Coughlin also saw Thailand as a plural society where Westerners, Thais, and Chinese lived side by side but did not mingle.⁴¹ Coughlin stated that the Chinese formed only superficial relationships with the Thais in the public sphere.⁴² As each group retained its own social, political, and economic entities, the “unity of purpose was impossible”. Hence, Coughlin predicted the persistence of a separate Chinese identity. However, even for Coughlin, there was still hope for integrating the Chinese into Thai society. As the Thais and the Chinese were continually adopting Western technology and material culture, they were orienting themselves toward Westernization. This process would make the two groups gradually abandon their traditional culture and become more similar.⁴³ As young ambitious scholars at the beginning of their academic career, they wanted to prove their academic qualification and establish their name. Skinner and Coughlin wrote highly critical reviews of each other’s books with sarcastic overtones. Each accused the other of being subjective and misleading on the assimilation of the Chinese based on inaccurate research of the Chinese society’s historical development. The review section of an academic journal is not just a place for neutral and creative reviews; it is also a platform for competition to claim authority and prestige in the field. In his review on Chinese Society in Thailand, Coughlin criticized Skinner for not presenting readers with a “well-rounded picture of the Chinese society in Thailand such as the title implies”.⁴⁴ In his opinion, Skinner focused on the politico-economic dimension of the Chinese at the expense of the socio-cultural dimension, a significant

     16.

Coughlin, “The Chinese in Bangkok”, ii. John S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice (London: Cambridge University Press, 1948). Coughlin, “The Chinese in Bangkok”, 377. Ibid., 593 – 95. Coughlin, review of Chinese Society in Thailand, Far Eastern Survey 27, no. 1 (January 1958):

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

97

dimension for portraying Chinese assimilation. Furthermore, even though Coughlin himself could not read Thai and used only limited Thai sources in his research, he strongly criticized Skinner’s uncritical reliance on European and Chinese sources as it could produce misinformation. Coughlin implicitly accused Skinner of giving false impressions about the assimilation of the Chinese based on a distorted and misinformed analytical history of Chinese society in Thailand.⁴⁵ Reacting to Coughlin’s criticism, Skinner criticized Coughlin’s book as “neither systematic nor wholly free of contradiction”.⁴⁶ He argued that Coughlin failed to properly recognize assimilation as he approached it with “an almost militant ahistoricity”.⁴⁷ Furthermore, Coughlin’s generalization by imposing a first-generation immigrant’s experience on the whole Chinese community made him “miss entirely the very considerable amount of assimilation going on all around him”. According to Skinner, since Coughlin failed to see the continuous historical development of Chinese society in Thailand that began as early as the fifteenth century, he did not realize that assimilation, albeit at a slow pace for some time, has been a continuous trend in Thailand.⁴⁸ Skinner concluded that Coughlin’s book offered academic colleagues “no more than a pale reflection of the breadth of his knowledge”.⁴⁹ In the end, it was Skinner who prevailed. Coughlin’s westernization model of assimilation was deemed too Western-centric and unconvincing while Skinner’s Thai-ification model of assimilation was perceived to be more Thai-oriented and thus more suitable. In the new world of decolonization, an overt Western-centric argument could easily be seen as having tinges of colonialism. Skinner’s monographs, especially Chinese Society in Thailand, have thus become widely cited classics in the field while Coughlin’s work is barely mentioned. But the struggle was not confined to a mere squabble between Skinner and Coughlin. Since studies on overseas Chinese had been conducted by colonial officials-turned-scholars, it presented a ready basis for comparison. Contrary to American social scientists’ emphasis on the potential for assimilation of the Chi-

 Ibid. It should be noted that, unlike Coughlin who completely relied on a Thai interpreter, Skinner acquired a rudimentary knowledge of written and spoken Thai. However, since his knowledge of Thai was limited, the use of Thai sources in his research was limited by this capability. See Keyes, “G. William Skinner and the Study of Chinese in Thailand”, 4.  Skinner, review of Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand, American Anthropologist 63, no. 3 (June 1961): 606.  Ibid., 607.  Ibid., 608.  Ibid.

98

Sittithep Eaksittipong

nese, the colonial scholars believed otherwise. As early as the late 1940s, the competition between American social scientists and colonial scholars to claim academic authority on the Chinese in Southeast Asia had begun. Victor Purcell, a British colonial scholar whose books The Chinese in Malaya and The Chinese in Southeast Asia ⁵⁰ had just been published, was harshly criticized by American scholars for his amateurish and misleading approach. Critical of colonialism, Purcell’s American critics were attempting to promote the social sciences as the way forward for comprehending the world. Purcell’s observations were criticized for being made from the official (colonial) desk in Singapore. Purcell was also censured for a perceived lack of familiarity with a social scientific point of view and for conflating cultural and racial factors. The focus of argument between American and British colonial scholars was whether the difference between peoples was based on biological or cultural factors. American scholars saw colonial scholars as producers of a misguided belief of essential differences between peoples based on the logic of race that had underpinned colonialism. The Americans advocated culture rather than race as a basis for these differences. Since the differences between peoples resulted from relatively superficial cultural factors rather than essentially biological ones, they could be overcome through cultural change such as assimilation. Amongst American scholars, Skinner was the most critical reviewer of Purcell. Purcell, he maintained, failed to address the question of Chinese assimilation, a question of “vital importance to an understanding of contemporary Southeast Asia problems”. By conflating biological and cultural factors as a result of his colonial mindset and lack of familiarity with social scientific knowledge, Purcell, Skinner argued, lacked cultural sensitivity and lumped the Chinese in Southeast Asia into a homogeneous group that possessed an “essential nature” of its own. Purcell wrote that “their religion, their attitude of mind has an almost uncanny similarity”.⁵¹ It was thus unsurprising that Purcell responded harshly to Skinner, questioning whether Skinner’s research was indeed “scientific analysis” or merely a “procrustean bed”.⁵² Overall, Purcell’s review criticized Skinner’s research and the American social scientific method in general, seeing assimilation as a

 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Malaya (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948); Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).  Junko Koizumi, “Studies of the Chinese in Thailand and Thai Studies in the United States in Historical and Geographical Contexts”, Acta Asiatica 104 (2013): 29 – 30; G. William Skinner, “Review of The Chinese in Southeast Asia by Victor Purcell”, Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 2 (February 1952): 268 – 70.  Victor Purcell, “Scientific Analysis or Procrustean Bed? Chinese Society in Thailand by G. William Skinner”, Journal of Asian Studies 17, no. 2 (February 1958): 223 – 32.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

99

Procrustean bed that imposed an American racial management experience on “the unfortunate community singled out for attention”.⁵³ Purcell and Skinner were certainly not alone in this academic war between the social sciences and scholars from the colonial system. They were joined by their colleagues who used the review sections of academic journals as a battlefield to protect their own academic authority.⁵⁴ Even in the United States, Skinner’s assimilation paradigm and his production of knowledge on the overseas Chinese were not without question. Concern from Chinese American scholars began to grow in the late 1950s. Indeed, American scholars saw Skinner’s works as a contribution to the understating of interethnic relations and social scientific development in America. His works were cited and even used as a model to study the Chinese in America.⁵⁵ Hence, for American scholars, be they Americans of European or Chinese ancestry, the production of knowledge on overseas Chinese even in faraway places like Thailand was closely knitted with their self-identity in American nation. Thus, it was unavoidable that they engaged with this topic seriously. In the same year that Chinese Society in Thailand was published, the meeting of American Anthropological Association was held in Chicago with a special session–Colloquium on Overseas Chinese. Francis L.K. Hsu, a native of Liaoning who migrated to the U.S. in the mid-1940s, raised a serious concern about assimilation paradigm and the American view on Chinese. Hsu, then the newly appointed first Chinese faculty member at Northwestern University, criticized the assimilation paradigm and its underlying assumption. For Hsu, the assimilation paradigm had a colonial tinge as it assumed inequality between Chinese and Europeans/Americans. Hsu shrewdly questioned why being Chinese in certain countries was seen as a “Chinese problem” while being “European/American” in certain countries was not seen as a “European/American problem”. He asked: Where are the studies of the Belgian minority in Congo, the Dutch minority in Indonesia, the English minority in India and American minority in Thailand? I would like to see such studies … Have Americans living in India taken Indian nationality, adopted Indian foods as

 Ibid., 226.  Koizumi, “Studies of the Chinese in Thailand”, 28 – 33.  Andrew W. Lind, “Chinese Society in Thailand,” American Sociological Review 23, no. 1 (February 1, 1958): 116 – 17; Morton H. Fried, “Leadership and Power”, American Sociological Review 24, no. 3 (June 1959): 425 – 26; Cora Dubois, “Chinese Society in Thailand”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 314 (November 1, 1957): 170 – 71; Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960); Mely G. Tan, The Chinese in the United States: Social Mobility and Assimilation (Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971).

100

Sittithep Eaksittipong

a normal diet, taken to Indian clothing, learned to sit like Indians, or gone to the temple to worship Linga? … Perhaps there is a “colonial type”.⁵⁶

The correlations between the production of knowledge on overseas Chinese and Chinese American scholars’ intellectual expression of their self-identity was clearly seen in the case of a squabble between Skinner and Rose Hum Lee, the author of the Chinese in the United States of America. ⁵⁷ Her book was harshly criticized by Skinner as “neither a good book nor a definitive one” because it was lacking in scientific analysis and solid knowledge on sinology.⁵⁸ Above all, for Skinner, the concern with Americanization that Lee advocated so strongly was an “emotional and personal one”.⁵⁹ Lee hit back to Skinner’s comment emotionally since she was also a Chinese in the United States of America. Proud of her emotional attachment to the subject she studied, Lee declared that “if by being human being, before being a sociologist, makes me unscholarly rejected by sinologists, sociologists … and others, I accept this as a price one pays for nonconformity”.⁶⁰ Protecting her legitimacy to speak out emotionally on behalf of the Chinese, Lee satirized Skinner that “for some unknown reason, Caucasoids believe that genuine emotional reactions are their monopoly”.⁶¹ Regardless of how the assimilation paradigm and how the production of knowledge on overseas Chinese by American scholars were questioned, American production of knowledge emphasizing on assimilation was perceived as the practical and effective way to deal with “Chinese problem” in the Cold War era. Hence, knowledge derived from Chinese Society in Thailand was utilized to formulate policy toward the Chinese there by American and Thai government agencies. In the mid-1960s, there was an idea that the accumulation of knowledge on the Chinese in Southeast Asia was sufficient for synthesis to produce guidelines for American policy toward China and Southeast Asia. This idea materialized in the form of a book entitled The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, which systematically portrayed how the assimilation of the Chinese would benefit American interests in the region. The monograph was part of a research series called The United States and China in World Affairs and directed

 Morton H. Fried, ed. Colloquium on Overseas Chinese (New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1958), 68.  Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America.  Skinner, “Review of The Chinese in the United States of America by Rose Hum Lee”, The China Quarterly, no. 5 (January–March 1961): 153.  Ibid., 154.  Lee, “Comment on Skinner’s review”, The China Quarterly, no. 6 (April–June 1961): 172.  Ibid.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

101

by Lucien W. Pye, an influential political scientist. It was supported by the Council on Foreign Relations through a generous grant from the Ford Foundation. The study group responsible for this monograph consisted of Lea E. Williams (the author), G. William Skinner, Harry J. Benda, and four American diplomats who had worked in Thailand during the 1950s–1960s—Edwin F. Stanton, Kenneth T. Young Jr., Rolland Bushner and Gerald Stryker—as well as some sinologists and journalists. Utilizing knowledge deriving from Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand as a model, the monograph suggested that the United States should encourage Chinese assimilation in the rest of Southeast Asia as “the Chinese are superbly equipped to stimulate economic development vital to political health” and their “prosperity can be regarded as proof of the productivity of free enterprise”.⁶² In this sense, the assimilation of the Chinese was viewed as a significant step toward creating a capitalist fortress against communism. Williams argued that American economic aid and training programs could be exploited to promote assimilation. Military aid was also justified, as Williams referred to his experience in Bangkok where he met a Chinese who “cited his past service in the Thai army as the chief reason for his identification with Thailand”.⁶³ Williams’s monograph advocating the promotion of assimilation was something of a reflection of the ongoing American policy experiment in relation to the Chinese in Thailand. Around the same time, in Thailand where forced Thai-ification of “the Other” served as a basis of national ideology, Skinner’s magnum opus was read and used as a guideline to assimilate the Chinese into Thai society. In 1965, the Thailand National Security Council issued a research report that served as a guideline for dealing with the “Chinese problem”. It was the first time in Thai history that a policy guideline on the Chinese based on social scientific research had been issued. The report warned against using repressive measures against the Chinese as it would lead to friction within the country. It urged all government agencies to find a way to assimilate the Chinese into Thai society. Recommended measures included encouraging interethnic marriages, determining a policy that would lower the Chinese birth rate, limiting the influence of the Republic of China official representatives and embassy, encouraging the change of personal names from Chinese to Thai, praising the Chinese and their descendants who had contributed to Thai society, and exerting greater control over Chi-

 Williams, The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, 89 – 92, 114, 118.  Ibid., 117.

102

Sittithep Eaksittipong

nese schools. The report was undoubtedly influenced by Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand because it was included in the report’s selected references.⁶⁴ Simultaneously, the thriving American social scientific network on the overseas Chinese studies particularly in Southeast Asia facilitated the circulation, reproduction, and reinforcement of social scientific knowledge on the assimilation of the Chinese proposed by Skinner. During this period, the number of social scientists and social scientific publications on the Chinese in Southeast Asia was quite limited. It was a small world in which knowledge circulated back and forth. Personal connections and cross-referencing of each other’s works were all part of knowledge production. Assimilation was the conceptual cornerstone for many social scientists in the 1950s–1960s, serving both as a conceptual tool to locate the social status of the Chinese in their countries of interest and as a solution to solve the “Chinese problem”. In general, these scholars focused on how the relative cultural attributes of the Chinese and their host societies might facilitate or impede the assimilation process.⁶⁵ As one of the earliest systematic and pioneering social scientific pieces of research on the Chinese in the region, Skinner’s works on Thailand were cited and referenced by social scientists in their own production of knowledge on the Chinese in neighboring countries. Skinner’s assimilation paradigm and his research method influenced the studies of Chinese communities in Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. As a pioneering product of social scientific research, it was compulsory for subsequent generations of scholars to read and discuss Skinner’s publications in their own work. In some cases, the paucity of English and native scholarship on the Chinese in some countries also made it natural for scholars to use Skinner’s studies as a point of reference to depict the situation of the communities they were studying. John M. Halpern’s research on the Chinese in Laos is a case in point. He repeatedly used Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand as a point of reference to depict the situation in Laos. It was thus unsurprising that he saw assimilation as an ongoing trend among the Chi-

 National Security Council No. 6/2508, “Sarup ekkasan kho phitcharana khong Khanakammakan Wang phaen khong Sapha Khwammankhong haeng Chat No. 6/2508 rueang nayobai kiaokap khon Chin lae luk Chin nai prathet Thai” [Synopsis of the document reviewed by the Planning Committee of the National Security Council No. 6/2508 on a policy towards the Chinese and their descendants in Thailand], Kanprachum Khana Ratthamontri [Cabinet meetings]; Kan borihan ratchakan [Government administration], M.L. PIN, สบ. 5.1.1/414 Box 90, National Archives of Thailand.  Jennifer W. Cushman, “The Chinese in Thailand” in The Ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN States: Bibliographical Essays, ed. Leo Suriyadinata (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 1989), 222.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

103

nese in Laos.⁶⁶ Personal connections between Skinner and other scholars also played a significant role. Through personal discussion, suggestions, training, and offers of help in reading manuscripts, Skinner influenced the studies of William E. Willmott on the Chinese in Cambodia,⁶⁷ Donald E. Willmott’s studies on Semarang,⁶⁸ Edgar Wickberg’s research on the Philippines,⁶⁹ and Mely G. Tan⁷⁰ and Ong Hok Ham,⁷¹ whose works focused on the assimilation of the Indonesian

 Halpern also concluded that the barrier between the Chinese and Lao societies was not rigid, and that intermarriage and education seemed to facilitate this assimilation. This conclusion resembled Skinner’s research in Thailand. See Joel M. Halpern, The Role of the Chinese in Laos Society (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1961), http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/ pubs/papers/2008/P2161.pdf.  Skinner was one of the readers of William Willmott’s manuscript The Chinese in Cambodia funded by the Cornell-LSE project and provided him with helpful suggestions and corrections. Indeed, William and his brother Donald, a specialist on the Chinese in Indonesia, had forged a close relationship with Skinner since they had been under house arrest together in Chengdu in 1949. Like Skinner, Willmott also saw assimilation as the telos of the Chinese in Cambodia; see William E. Willmott, The Chinese in Cambodia.  Skinner gave suggestions, advice, and criticism on Donald Willmott’s book at every stage, since it was in the format of Cornell’s Ph.D. dissertation. The structure of his book and methodology quite closely resembled Skinner’s works on Thailand; see Donald E. Willmott, The Chinese of Semarang: A Changing Minority Community in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960). It should be noted that unlike Willmott who believed that the Chinese in Indonesia were on the path to assimilation, Skinner (1966) opted to see them as “creolized”, which was a separate status from being assimilated. Significantly, he does not seem to have felt that “creolized” was a viable term to apply to the community in Thailand.  Wickberg’s seminal work on the Philippines Chinese was modeled after Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand and Skinner was one of the readers of his manuscript. Wickberg believed in the assimilable nature of the Chinese in the Philippines; Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850 – 1898 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).  Tan worked as Skinner’s research assistant in Indonesia for eighteen months. Later, she was chosen by Skinner to receive the Cornell Southeast Asia Training Fellowship for studying a master’s degree in sociology at Cornell. Her thesis, addressing the assimilation of the Chinese in Indonesia based on her study with Skinner, was later published as The Chinese of Sukabumi: A Study in Social and Cultural Accommodation (Ithaca, NY: Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1963); Aimee Dawis, “Mely G. Tan: The Remarkable Sociologist,” in Breaking Barriers: Portraits of Inspiring Chinese-Indonesian Women (Singapore: Tuttle, 2014), 102– 109.  Ong was another of Skinner’s research assistants in Indonesia. His experience working with Skinner led him to believe strongly in assimilation. In the 1950s, he began to publish his articles advocating the assimilation of the Chinese in Indonesia in Star Weekly, an influential magazine in Indonesia. For his biography, see David Reeve, “Ong Hok Ham” in Southeast Asian Personalities of Chinese Descent, Vol. 1, ed. Leo Suriyadinata (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), 823 – 26.

104

Sittithep Eaksittipong

Chinese. These works would also become classic texts on the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Personal connection, cross reference, academic network, and the nexus between academia and state agencies reinforced Skinner’s assimilation paradigm. Skinner’s studies on Thailand had thus become a paradigm and prototype for conceiving the social realities of the Chinese.

The Arts of Decontextualized Reference and a New Life of Chinese Society in Thailand If the late 1940s to the early 1950s were a tumultuous moment that gave rise to Chinese Society in Thailand and its underlying assimilation paradigm, then the 1970s to the 1980s were another tumultuous moment that led to the reincarnation of Chinese Society in Thailand in new languages and meanings. Ping-pong diplomacy and Nixon’s 1972 visit to China delegitimized “Chinese communist threat” and “Chinese problem”. The changing direction of U.S. diplomatic strategy toward the PRC paved the way for the establishment of Thailand–PRC diplomatic relations in 1975. However, cordial relations between the two countries could not prevail without forgetting their past animosity. Furthermore, an important issue of concern for both Thailand and the PRC was the Chinese in Thailand and their relations with China. A survey released when official diplomatic relations were established revealed the Thai public concern over the appearance of the PRC embassy in Bangkok. The Thai public feared that it might instigate Chinese nationalism, which could in turn lead to political chaos.⁷² In this context, the Chinese in Thailand became a focus for reorienting Thai perception toward China. Since the Chinese and their descendants in Thailand are the personification of China in Thai life, it is necessary for China and Thailand to reorient the Thai perception toward the Chinese in Thailand. Indeed, since the 1970s, there was a significant change. News of a possible establishment of Thailand-PRC diplomatic relations gave a kind of relief for the Chinese in Thailand, who were stigmatized as potential fifth columnists by the military regime that ruled the country for decades. Furthermore, it instigated interest in China and the Chinese in Thailand– the topics that were strictly censored by the military regime. The surge of interest in China and the Chinese from the 1970s eventually permitted the Thais of Chi-

 Khien Theeravit, Thatsana khong khon Thai thi mi to Chin lae Yipun [Thai Perspectives towards Chinese and Japanese] (Bangkok: Social Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University, 1975), 37.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

105

nese descent to “come out of the closet”. After the overthrow of the military regime by student-led uprising in 1973, the number of publications on Chinese-related issues rose sharply; between 1973 – 1975, there were one hundred and seventy-six publications on China, compared to the previous fifteen years where one hundred and fourteen pieces of research had been published.⁷³ An outburst of the Chinese disclosure of their identity was outstanding when Thais of Chinese lineage swarmed to the “Exhibition on Red China” organized by Thammasat University students during the Chinese New Year celebrations of 1974. Although the Anti-Communist Act was still in place and the deputy interior minister had issued a warning that the event was illegal, no one seemed to care, and with the more open political climate of civilian rule, it was still possible to proceed with the event.⁷⁴ The exhibition was even extended from one week to two to serve the crowd.⁷⁵ In this context, the establishment of Sino-Thai diplomatic relations and the gradual waning paranoid on the Chinese in Thailand as a potential fifth column led to the sudden increase on academic and semi-academic publication relating to the Chinese in Thailand, especially in history, in the 1980s. With the growing publication and interest on the Chinese in Thailand among Thai academics, Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand was translated into Thai in 1986. After two decades, Skinner’s magnum opus fully secured its position in Thai academia. However, shaped by a changing Thai national ideal that became more tolerant of “the Other”, the translated version conveyed a different meaning and served a different purpose from the original work. Instead of forced assimilation, the translated version was utilized to encourage and portray Chinese integration while defining the Chinese as a significant part of the Thai nation. Skinner’s book was translated by the Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbook Project. The choice of translating only Chinese Society in Thailand while ignoring Leadership and Power suggests the political aspect of

 This figure derives from a calculation based on the publication list appearing in Khien, Thatsana khong khon Thai thi mi to Chin lae Yipun, 110 – 26.  Chaothai, January 24, 1974, Banchi pramuan khao lae hetkan samkan phuttasakkarat 2517 reuang khwamsampan rawang Thai kap Sataranarat Prachachonchin: nitatsakan chin daeng thi mahawitthayalai Thammasat [News and Events Review 1974 on Relations between Thailand and the People’s Republic of China: Red China Exhibition Case], ก/ป5/2517/13, National Archives of Thailand; “Khamhaikan phayan chot kiaokap kankhlueanwai khong naksueksa sarup phon kansadaptrapfang rueang ‘Kanchat nithatsakan Chin Daeng’” [Summary of a Testimony Relating to the Student Movement in the “Red China Exhibition” case], B 5.2.2/11, Thammasat University Archives.  Nareerat Parisutthiwutphon, “Ong khwamru rueang Chin nai Thai tangtae Kho. So. 1975 – 1995” [Thai Knowledge of China, 1975 – 1995] (Master’s thesis, Thammasat University, 1997), 17.

106

Sittithep Eaksittipong

the translation project. More straightforward, quantitative, and theoretical than the former, Leadership and Power was relatively less open to a manipulation of its meaning. Furthermore, since the book focused on leadership and power in the Chinese community, it implicitly emphasized the Chinese as a separate and unassimilated community with its own political resources autonomous from those of the state—not a perspective which the Thai government would wish to encourage. In contrast, Chinese Society in Thailand provided an analytical historical background and was relatively open to reinterpretation as it positioned the Chinese more in a Thai socio-political context than Leadership and Power. The translation of Chinese Society in Thailand was thus perceived as a tool to integrate the Chinese into the discussion of Thai history. For Charnvit Kasetsiri, the editor of the translation project, this project was polemical and political. Charnvit was campaigning for an understanding of the Chinese influence on Thai society and the need to “explore various dimensions of the Chinese to understand Thai history”.⁷⁶ Thai history for Charnvit was not merely an enquiry into the past. “History must be used to change our society to a better one and History must serve the masses”, declared Charnvit in the 1980s.⁷⁷ The translation of Skinner’s magnum opus served his purpose. In his reflection on the book, he pointed out that Skinner’s work diverged from Thai mainstream history, which was based on royal-nationalism and the purity of the Thai race. Citing Skinner’s work, he also acknowledged that Chinese blood did run through the veins of the Thai monarchy, the paragon of Thainess. However, Charnvit did not agree with Skinner’s conclusion regarding the assimilation paradigm. Quite the contrary, he stated that complete assimilation had not occurred. Instead, it had been “integration” that had caused the Chinese to become part of the nation. The Chinese in Thailand, stated Charnvit, were neither “Thai” nor “Chinese”, but possessed a unique identity resulting from the admixture of both cultures.⁷⁸ Instead of “the Other” that needed to be completely assimilated into Thai society as embedded in the book when it was originally written in the context of paranoia over the “Chinese problem” in Thailand, the Thai version of

 Charnvit Kasetsiri, Introduction to Khon Chin 200 pi tai phabaromphothisomphan phak 2 [200 Years of Chinese Under Royal Protection, Vol.2], ed. Witthaya Witthaya-amnuaikun (Bangkok: Senthangsetthakit, 1983), 4.  Charnvit, “Prawatsat withi” [Historical Approach] in Rueang khong song nakhon [The Tale of the Two Cities] (Bangkok: Chaopraya, 1981), 275 – 76, 279.  Charnvit, Introduction to Sangkhom Chin nai prathet Thai: prawatsat cheong wikhro [Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History], by G. William Skinner, trans. Phannee Chatpolrak et al. (Bangkok: Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbooks Project, 1986), 18 – 23.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

107

Chinese Society in Thailand was exploited by Thai scholars to portray the Chinese as a significant part of the nation. Indeed, prior to its publication, the book was already interpreted in this manner. The release of the Thai version of Chinese Society in Thailand helped reinforce and secure this discourse. Just a few years before the Thai version of Chinese Society in Thailand was published, a semi-academic book entitled Two Hundred Years of the Chinese Under Royal Protection ⁷⁹ was released. Containing several articles written by Thai scholars who were mostly Thai of Chinese ancestry, the book narrated how the Chinese and their descendants had contributed to Thai nation building. The plot ran that as poor immigrants who had left famine-ridden China behind, they found Thailand to be a good place in which to make their fortunes under benign royal protection. The book also linked the Chinese to Thai monarchs by viewing the latter through a more Chinese “lens”. The publisher included two eye-catching paintings of revered Thai monarchs, King Rama IV and King Rama V, in Qing Dynasty royal costumes that were painted in their lifetime. In the previous two decades, when Chinese elements connoted negative meaning, it would have been impossible for the public to have seen such paintings in print. These paintings were vested with further meaning by articles that outlined the partially Chinese heritage of the Chakri monarchs as a result of several royal marriages with Chinese women. Many articles in this book included selected citations from Chinese Society in Thailand as references to portray the Chinese as a significant part of the Thai nation–not “the Other” that need to be assimilated. For instance, in writing their article on “the Chinese economic roles in Thailand”, Chesada and Somboon utilized information deriving from Chinese Society in Thailand to portray the number of the Chinese in Thailand and their contribution to the development of Thai economy. For Chesada and Somboon, who are Thais of Chinese ancestry, the Chinese have always been a part of Thai nation. Thus, at one point, Chesada and Somboon somewhat ludicrously played with assimilation paradigm and its underlying assumption that distinguished the Thai and the Chinese by suggesting that “since the Chinese have been assimilated into Thai society to the point that it is hard to distinguish between Thai and Chinese, it is absurd to identify whether one is Thai or Chinese”.⁸⁰ Thai scholars were not alone in decontextualizing Skinner’s magnum opus and using it to reorient the Chinese status in Thai society. After the establish-

 Witthaya Witthaya-amnuaikun and Sinlapa Honpichai eds., Khon Chin 200 pi tai phrabaromphothi somphan.  Chesada Loha–unchit and Somboon Siriprachai. “Botbat chao Chin nai setthakit Thai” [The Chinese Roles in Thai Economy], in Khonchin 200 pi tai phabarom phothi somphan, 108.

108

Sittithep Eaksittipong

ment of the PRC, the new regime saw overseas Chinses as a force in facilitating socialist China nation-building. The newly established regime hoped to tap into overseas Chinese human and financial capital for its nation-building project.⁸¹ However, the status of overseas Chinese in the Chinese nation was hard to define. During three decades from the 1950s to the 1980s, contradictory views on the overseas Chinese found expression in new China; they were viewed at times as patriots who could contribute to the construction of socialist China and at times as enemies from within.⁸² For the Chinese Communist Party, the overseas Chinese’s transterritoriality and subordination to the authority of other sovereign territories made them a group that was difficult to define, influence, and control.⁸³ To better understand the overseas Chinese, the party began to accumulate knowledge on them. As early as 1962, Chinese Society in Thailand was partly translated into Chinese and serially published in Nanyang wenti ziliao yicong [Southeast Asian Studies: A Quarterly Journal of Translations], a journal published by Nanyang Institute of Xiamen University. Founded in 1956 through a collaboration between Central Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee and Xiamen University, Nanyang Institute was assigned the task of collecting and researching Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. One of the institute’s main tasks was the translation of foreign scholars’ research, which could be used to produce academic knowledge and formulate policies toward the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Despite being criticized by a communist scholar as one among many works of bourgeois authors who saw the matter through the “interests of ‘their own’, ‘national’ imperialism”,⁸⁴ the PRC decided to translate Chinese Society in Thailand into Chinese because it could be used as a tool for formulating policies towards the Chinese in Thailand.⁸⁵ However, the Cultural Revolution, which was marked by political and social chaos during the 1960s and 1970s, disrupted the production of academic knowledge on overseas Chinese, who were perceived as fifth columnists trying to subvert socialist nation-building by promoting capitalism to China.

 Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism, 39.  Glen Peterson, Overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China (New York: Routledge, 2012), 22.  Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism, 39.  N.A. Simoniya, Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, a Russian Study, trans. United States Joint Publications Research Service (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1961), 6.  Zhuang Guotu, “Huigu yu zhanwang: Zhongguo dalu huaqiao huaren yanjiu shuping” [Retrospect and Prospect: A Review of Overseas Chinese Studies in Mainland China], Shijie Minzu 1 (2009): 54.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

109

The end of Cultural Revolution saw the revival of Chinese academia. Studies on overseas Chinese thus reemerged as an important issue. On one hand, capital and economic know-how possessed by overseas Chinese could be utilized to support reform and opening up policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping. On the other hand, the present of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia was an issue of concern for Southeast Asian countries in establishing diplomatic relations with the PRC. The production of academic knowledge on overseas Chinese thus became a central issue. In the case of the PRC–Thailand relations, the production of knowledge on the Chinese in Thailand played an important role. A few years after the establishment of Sino-Thai diplomatic relations, Beijing issued an order to the Yunnan Institute of History (YIH) head by Chen Lüfan⁸⁶ to conduct systematic research on the China–Thailand relations.⁸⁷ A key focus of the research project was removing animosity between the Thai and the Chinese by using history as a tool. Knowledge produced by the team was aimed not only to provide correct information to Beijing but also to correct incorrect foreign bourgeois thought. Barely a few months after the team was formed, Chai Zemin, the first Chinese ambassador to Thailand, visited it in Yunnan to discuss the issue. Offering to send the team to conduct fieldwork in Thailand as a cultural or academic delegation, Chai emphasized the significance of scholarly knowledge to Chinese foreign policy and hinted at the use of academic diplomacy. He stated: Foreign bourgeois produced a large quantity of works and disseminated everywhere their wrong views. We Chinese have not produced our own positive views, which is why those who are not clear about historical truth would for sure be influenced by Western and Thai scholars’ views. We should work hard on this and use the Marxist view to produce our own research. At least, as a first step, our work could be used as a reference in inner circles.⁸⁸

 Chen was a senior researcher at the YIH. In 1980, the YIH merged with other research institutes to form the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Southeast Asia Studies. Chen was promoted to director of the institute in 1984. There, he continued his task of directing academic research on Sino-Thai relations.  Chen Lüfan, “Zhongtai guanxi ruogan wenti yanjiu keti xiaojie” [A Summary of Specific Issues Relating to Sino-Thai Relations Research], in Taizu qiyuan yu Nanzhaoguo yanjiu wenji Vol. 1 [A Collection of Research on the Origin of the Tai and Nanchao Kingdom Vol. 1], ed. Chen Lüfan (Beijing: Zhongguo shuji chubanshe, 2005), 1– 2.  Yunnansheng lishi yanjiusuo, “Zhu Taiguo Dashi Chai Zhemin lai wosuo zuotan” [The Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Chai Zhemin Came to Our Institute for Discussion], in Taizu qiyuan yu Nanzhaoguo yanjiu wenji, Vol. 2, p. 226. Originally written on October 25, 1975.

110

Sittithep Eaksittipong

After a year of research, the team began to publish articles on ancient Thai history and China-Thailand relations that could be used to promote friendly SinoThai relations. These articles were published in the PRC’s academic journals and circulated “for internal distribution” (Neibu liutong). Academic institutions working on the relations between China and Southeast Asia such as Sun YatSen University and Xiamen University were included in the project because their expertise could be utilized to serve Beijing’s foreign policy. Indeed, after reading articles by members of Chen’s research team, senior scholars from the two universities praised them for demonstrating “how historical research could serve the practical purpose of the class struggle”.⁸⁹ For its research project on China–Thailand relations that lasted almost two decades from its inception as a project associated with the YIH to its elevation to a project associated with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (henceforth, Yunnan ISEAS), the research team made it clear from the beginning that history of China-Thailand relations had always been a friendly one and the Chinese in Thailand played an important role in these friendly relations. Studies depicting the contribution of this community to the Thai nation were produced. G. William Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand, translated into Chinese, was one of the significant sources of knowledge. Similar to Thai scholars who reinterpreted and decontextualized Skinner’s work from its original context portraying the Chinese as “the Other” that needed to be Thai-ified, the PRC scholars used it to portray the Chinese contribution to and identification with the Thai nation. Like Thai scholars, these scholars reinterpreted and adopted Skinner’s assimilation paradigm, which suited their political aims in establishing trust between Thailand and China. An article released in the early stages of the team’s research is a prototype reflecting the plot that repeatedly appeared in subsequent Chinese scholars’ works. Wang Xiaoyan of Yunnan’s ISEAS published “The Cause of Chinese Migration to Thailand and Their Economic Activities” in 1982.⁹⁰ Her article used the Chinese in Thailand as a tool to express China-Thailand friendly relations. Citing Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand, Wang stated that, historically, the Chinese had lived peacefully in Thailand and many Chinese had served the Thai court to the extent that they were ennobled as officials. Even one of the national heroes, King Taksin, was of Chinese ancestry. Then, after briefly discussing the factors that led to Chinese migration to Thailand, such as increasing demand in Thai Chen Lüfan, “Zhongtai guanxi ruogan wenti yanjiu keti xiaojie”, 5.  Wang Xiaoyan, “Huaren yimin ju Taiguo de yuanyin jiqi jingji huodong” [The Cause of Chinese Immigration to Thailand and their Economic Activities], Yunnan shehui kexue 6 (1982): 91– 8.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

111

land for labor, the threat of Western imperialism, famine in China, and the improvement of transportation technology, the article relates the Chinese contribution to the Thai economy in various aspects. Information derived from Skinner’s work, such as the number of Chinese rice mills in Thailand and the number of Chinese tin miners in Phuket, were utilized to depict Chinese roles in Thai economic life. In sum, it portrayed how the Chinese of all walks of life, from coolies to merchants to entrepreneurs, had served as economic dynamos in developing the economy. Implicitly arguing that the paranoia over the Chinese problem in Thailand was groundless, be it the Chinese identification with Chinese nationalism or the lingering fear of the Chinese as fifth columnists that would affect China-Thailand ties, Wang made a contrast between Western imperialists and the Chinese in Thailand to show that it was the former, not the latter, that were the real threat. Unlike Western imperialists, the Chinese migrants were humble laborers and builders who obeyed Thai laws, stated Wang. To reinforce her argument, a reinterpretation of the assimilation paradigm was used. Wang believed that “the Chinese have been assimilated into Thai society”. However, for Chinese scholars like Wang, complete assimilation as proposed by Skinner had not occurred. It was quite the contrary, in fact: the Chinese in Thailand had politically identified with the nation but retained their cultural identity. Indeed, as Wang has suggested, “cultural and kinship ties became the main ties between them and China. They are significant bridges linking the political and economic relations between Thailand and China”.⁹¹

Conclusion What is China? Who are the Chinese? And how to define Chinese culture? These are perennial questions that generations of scholar have tried to answer by using various approaches. Cohen once proposed a China-centered approach as antidote to the intellectual imperialism of American historians that deprived China of its agency.⁹² However, this China-centered approach as proposed by Cohen has its own Achilles’ heel. Without careful and meticulous examination, it could easily lead us into adopting a Sino-centric view. A new approach that offers a balanced view of China and Chinese is thus needed.

 Ibid., 98.  Cohen, Discovering History in China, 150 – 53.

112

Sittithep Eaksittipong

Furthermore, despite the recent plethora of research, a basic question of how scholars play a crucial role in defining the Chinese has been overlooked. Tapper’s observation that scholars play a crucial role as creators and manipulators of identities but that their roles have been largely unrecognized certainly holds true in the case of the Thai Chinese.⁹³ Hence, instead of taking the Chinese as an essentialized object that could be dissected and studied from various perspectives, be they political, economic, cultural or social, this chapter sees the entire process of academic knowledge production on the Chinese in Thailand as an identification project that poses these questions: Who are the Chinese? What constitutes being Chinese in Thailand? Through examining the social and political lives of G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand, this chapter tries to propose a transnational approach that unravels the roles of scholars in making Chinese as an ethnicity conceivable as a way to comprehend the changing representations of Chinese. As seen in the production and reception of Chinese Society in Thailand through time and space and scholarly interactions with it, the circulation of the text has facilitated changes in the meaning of being Chinese and their counterpart (in this case, being Thai) that reinforced the historical presentation of the Chinese in particular historical moments and spaces. The transnational approach as utilized in this chapter also sheds light on the simultaneous but diverse academic conceptions of Chineseness and on the strange parallels that have been ignored and understudied in America, China, and Thailand. As a historical representation, Chinese ethnicity is a product of interactions between various interlocking forces cutting across time and space. To understand this historical representation, which is closely related to the formation of the Chinese nation (and other nations as mentioned in this chapter), scholars have to look beyond the nation-centric mode of historiography. Furthermore, they need to realize that the meaning of being Chinese is constantly changing and that scholars have always played an important role in this process.

 Richard Tapper, “Ethnic Identities and Social Categories in Iran and Afghanistan”, in History and Ethnicity, ed. Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald, and Malcolm Chapman (London: Routledge, 1989), 232– 33.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

113

Bibliography English Anderson, E.L. We Americans, A Study of Cleavage in an American City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. “Frank Burnet, Chinese Language Officer, Bangkok (1957 – 1959)”, interviewed by Charles S. Kennedy in Thailand, Country Reader, 95 – 8. Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. https://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Thailand.pdf. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. “Olcott H. Deming, First Secretary and Public Affair Officer, USIS Bangkok (1948 – 1951)”, interviewed by Horace G. Torbert, in Thailand, Country Reader, 19 – 22. Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. https://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Thailand.pdf. Barabantseva, E. Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism. London: Routledge, 2011. Cohen, P.A. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Coughlin, R.J. “Review of Chinese Society in Thailand, by G. William Skinner”. Far Eastern Survey 27, no. 1 (January 1958): 16. Coughlin, R.J. “The Chinese in Bangkok: A Study of Cultural Persistence”. PhD diss., Yale University, 1953. Coughlin, R.J. Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960. Cushman, J.W. “The Chinese in Thailand”. In The Ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN States: Bibliographical Essays, edited by Leo Suriyadinat, 221 – 59. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 1989. Dawis, A. “Mely G. Tan: The Remarkable Sociologist”. In Breaking Barriers: Portraits of Inspiring Chinese-Indonesian Women, 102 – 09. Singapore: Tuttle, 2014. Dubois, C. “Chinese Society in Thailand”. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 314 (November 1, 1957): 170 – 71. Embree, J.F. “Thailand–A Loosely Structured Social System”. American Anthropologist 52, no. 2 (1950): 181 – 93. Fried, M.H. “Leadership and Power”. American Sociological Review 24, no. 3 (June 1959): 425 – 26. Fried, M.H., ed. Colloquium on Overseas Chinese. New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1958. Furnivall, J.S. Colonial Policy and Practice. London: Cambridge University Press, 1948. Gilman, N. Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Halpern, J.M. The Role of the Chinese in Laos Society. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1961. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P2161.pdf. Hayes, S.P, ed. The Beginning of American Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffin Mission of 1950. Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books, 1971. Kasian Tejapira. “Pigtail: A Pre–History of Chineseness in Siam”. Sojourn 7, no. 1 (February 1992): 95 – 122.

114

Sittithep Eaksittipong

Keyes, C. “G. William Skinner and the Study of Chinese in Thailand and the Study of Thai Society” (paper presented at a workshop on “The Legacy of G. William Skinner’s Field Research: China and Southeast Asia”). University of Washington, May 27, 2011. Klein, C. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945 – 1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Koizumi, J. “Studies of the Chinese in Thailand and Thai Studies in the United States in Historical and Geographical Contexts”. Acta Asiatica 104 (2013): 19 – 56. Landon, K.P. The Chinese in Thailand. London: Oxford University Press, 1941. Lasswell, H.D., and A. Kaplan. Power and Society, A Framework for Political Inquiry. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. Lee, R.H. The Chinese in the United States of America. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960. Lee, R.H. “Comment on Skinner’s review”. The China Quarterly, no. 6 (April–June 1961): 170 – 73. Letter attached to Bangkok dispatches nos. 71 and 861, 12p Thailand, 1953. Records of the Office of Chinese Affairs “P” Files, 1948 – 1955. General Records of the Department of State, 1763 – 2002, Record Group 59, The United States National Archives at College Park, Maryland. Lind, A.W. “Chinese Society in Thailand”. American Sociological Review 23, no. 1 (February 1, 1958): 116 – 17. Montesano, M. “Beyond the Assimilation Fixation: Skinner and the Possibility of a Spatial Approach to Twentieth-Century Thai History”. Journal of Chinese Overseas 1, no. 2 (November 2005): 184–216. Peterson, G. Overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China. New York: Routledge, 2012. Purcell, V. “Scientific Analysis or Procrustean Bed? Chinese Society in Thailand by G. William Skinner”. Journal of Asian Studies 17, no. 2 (February 1958): 223 – 32. Purcell, V. The Chinese in Malaya. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948. Purcell, V. The Chinese in Southeast Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951. Reeve, D.”Ong Hok Ham”. In Southeast Asian Personalities of Chinese Descent, edited by Leo Suriyadinata, 823 – 26. Vol. 1. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012. Sharp, L. Preface to Report on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, by G. William Skinner. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1951. Simoniya, N.A. United States Joint Publications Research Service, Translator. Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, a Russian Study. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1961. Skinner, G.W. “A Study of Chinese Community Leadership in Bangkok, Together with a Historical Survey of Chinese Society in Thailand”. PhD diss., Cornell University, 1954. Skinner, G.W. “Creolized Chinese societies in Southeast Asia”. In Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid, 50 – 93. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996. Skinner, G.W. “Review of Double Identity: The Chinese in Modern Thailand, by Richard J. Coughlin”. American Anthropologist 63, no. 3 (June 1961): 606 – 08. Skinner, G.W. “Review of The Chinese in Southeast Asia by Victor Purcell”. Far Estern Quarterly 11, no. 2 (February 1952): 268 – 70. Skinner, G.W. “Review of The Chinese in the United States of America by Rose Hum Lee”. The China Quarterly, no. 5 (January–March 1961): 153 – 55.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

115

Skinner, G.W. Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957. Skinner, G.W. Leadership and power in the Chinese community in Thailand. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958. Skinner, G.W. Letter to Knight Biggerstaff on November 12, 1950. Lauriston Sharp Papers. Box 78. Skinner, G.W. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. Skinner, G.W. Letter written on May 1, 1950. Lauriston Sharp Papers. Box 78. Skinner China: 1949 – 1950. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. Skinner, G.W. Remark attached to letter sent to Lauriston Sharp on February 1, 1950. “The Position of Western [social] Scientists Today in the Chinese Field”. Lauriston Sharp Papers. Box 78. Skinner China: 1949 – 1950. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. Skinner, G.W. Report on the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1951. Tan, M.G. The Chinese in the United States: Social Mobility and Assimilation. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971. Tapper, R. “Ethnic Identities and Social Categories in Iran and Afghanistan”. In History and Ethnicity, edited by Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald and Malcolm Chapman, 232 – 33. London: Routledge, 1989. Thailand: Chinese in Thailand, New York Office Record, 1942 – 1945, OSS E106, Folder 482, Records of the Office of Strategic Services, 1919 – 2002, Record Group 226, The United States National Archives at College Park, Maryland. Whetten, N.L., and A.W. Green. “Field Research and the Concepts of Assimilation”. Rural Sociology 7, no. 3 (September 1942): 252 – 60. White, J.E. “Leadership and Social Structure in a New York Rural Community”. PhD diss., Cornell University, 1948. Wickberg, E. The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850 – 1898. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965. Willmott, D.E. The Chinese of Semarang: A Changing Minority Community in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960. Williams, L.E. The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by McGraw-Hill, 1966. Willmott, W.E. “Research in Cambodia, Half a Century Ago”. Cross–Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 4 (September 2012): 12 – 22. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/e-journal/articles/willmott.pdf. Willmott, W.E. The Chinese in Cambodia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1967. Yu, H. Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact and Exoticism in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Thai Chaothai, January 24, 1974, Banchi pramuan khao lae hetkan samkan phuttasakkarat 2517 reuang khwamsampan rawang Thai kap Sataranarat Prachachonchin: nitatsakan chin daeng thi mahawitthayalai Thammasat [News and Events Review 1974 on Relations between Thailand and the People’s Republic of China: Red China Exhibition Case], ก/ ป5/2517/13, National Archives of Thailand.

116

Sittithep Eaksittipong

Charnvit Kasetsiri. Introduction to Sangkhomchin nai prathet Thai [Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History], 18 – 23. Translated by Phannee Chatpolrak et al. Bangkok: Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbooks Project, 1986. Charnvit Kasetsiri. “Prawatsat withi” [Historical Approach]. In Rueang khong song nakhon [The Tale of the Two Cities], 275 – 79. Bangkok: Chaopraya, 1981. Charnvit Kasetsiri. Introduction to Khonchin 200 pi tai phabarom phothi somphan, phak 2 [200 Years of Chinese Under Royal Protection, Vol. 2], edited by Witthaya Witthaya– amnuaikun, 4. Bangkok: Senthangsetthakit, 1983. Chesada Loha–unchit and Somboon Siriprachai. “Botbat chao Chin nai setthakit Thai” [The Chinese Roles in Thai Economy]. In Khonchin 200 pi tai phabarom phothi somphan [200 Years of Chinese under Royal Protection], edited by Witthaya Witthaya–amnuaikun and Sinlapa Honpichai, 99 – 111. Bangkok: Senthangsetthakit, 1983. “Khamhaikan phayan chot kiaokap kankhlueanwai khong naksueksa sarup phon kansadaptrapfang rueang ‘Kanchat nithatsakan Chin Daeng’” [Summary of a Testimony Relating to the Student Movement in the “Red China Exhibition” case], B 5.2.2/11, Thammasat UniversityArchives. Khien Theeravit. Thatsana khong khon Thai thi mi to Chin lae Yipun [Thai Perspectives towards Chinese and Japanese]. Bangkok: Social Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University, 1975. Nareerat Parisutthiwutphon. “Ong khwamru rueang Chin nai Thai tangtae Kho. So. 1975 – 1995” [Thai Knowledge of China, 1975 – 1995]. Master’s thesis, Thammasat University, 1997. National Security Council No. 6/2508, “Sarup ekkasan kho phitcharana khong Khanakammakan Wang phaen khong Sapha Khwammankhong haeng Chat No. 6/2508 rueang nayobai kiaokap khon Chin lae luk Chin nai prathet Thai” [Synopsis of the document reviewed by the Planning Committee of the National Security Council No. 6/2508 on a policy towards the Chinese and their descendants in Thailand], Kanprachum Khana Ratthamontri [Cabinet meetings]; Kan borihan ratchakan [Government administration], M.L. PIN, สบ. 5.1.1/414 Box 90, National Archives of Thailand. Skinner, G.W. Sangkhom Chin nai prathet Thai: phrawatsat cheong wikhro [Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History]. Translated by Phannee Chatpolrak et al. Bangkok: Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbooks Project, 1986. Witthaya Witthaya–amnuaikun and Sinlapa Honpichai, eds. Khonchin 200 pi tai phabarom phothi somphan [200 Years of Chinese under Royal Protection]. Bangkok: Senthangsetthakit, 1983.

Chinese Chen Lüfan. “Zhongtai guanxi ruogan wenti yanjiu keti xiaojie” [A Summary of Specific Issues Relating to Sino–Thai relations Research]. In Taizu qiyuan yu Nanzhaoguo yanjiu wenji, Vol. 1 [A Collection of Research on the Origin of the Tai and Nanchao Kingdom Vol. 1], edited by Chen Lüfan, 1 – 17. Beijing: Zhongguo shuji chubanshe, 2005.

G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand

117

Wang Xiaoyan. “Huaren yimin ju Taiguo de yuanyin jiqi jingji huodong” [The Cause of Chinese Immigration to Thailand and their Economic Activities]. Yunnan shehui kexue 6 (1982): 91 – 98. Yunnansheng lishi yanjiusuo. Originally written on October 25, 1975. “Zhu Taiguo Dashi Chai Zhemin lai wosuo zuotan” [The Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Chai Zhemin Came to Our Institute for Discussion]. In Taizu qiyuan yu Nanzhaoguo yanjiu wenji, Vol. 2 [A Collection of Research on the Origin of the Tai and Nanchao Kingdom Vol. 2], edited by Chen Lü fan, 226. Beijing: Zhongguo shuji chubanshe, 2005. Zhuang Guotu. “Huigu yu zhanwang: Zhongguo dalu huaqiao huaren yanjiu shuping” [Retrospect and Prospect: A Review of Overseas Chinese Studies in Mainland China]. Shijie Minzu 1 (2009): 51 – 59.

Egas Moniz Bandeira

Between Chaos and Liberty: Chinese Uses of the French Revolution of 1789 Abstract: This chapter traces the trajectory of one of the most emblematic events of modern history, the French Revolution of 1789, in Chinese political debates from late Qing to contemporary times. It shows that the French Revolution has been appropriated and used by Chinese actors—intellectuals, politicians, students, and others—in the light of their own historical experiences and for widely varying discursive objectives. It has been referenced in China both for the ideals it espoused and for the bloodshed and instability that it brought about in late 18th century France. Thus, it has not only served as an inspiration and a point of comparison for China’s own revolutions, chiefly the republican revolution of 1911, or as a democratic inspiration for Chinese intellectuals. Representations of the French revolution as an event of chaos and brutality have just as often been used by revolutionists to search for more suitable revolutionary models, as well as by conservative intellectuals and governments to debate reforms designed to prevent instability and political strife. Ultimately, the chapter shows that landmark events such as the French Revolution are far from being exclusive memories of the West. The French Revolution has not only been used in revolutionary contexts as a stimulus for democratic political reforms, but also—and this might have been its most frequent use since the late Qing—to debate policies designed to prevent instability and political strife. Ultimately, the chapter shows that landmark events such as the French Revolution are not only emblematic events of European history. They have also accordingly become crucial elements of Chinese memory, and their diverse Chinese uses have become local refractions of global elements of collective memory. Keywords: Alexis de Tocqueville, ancien régime, constitutionalism, democracy movement of 1989, French Revolution, political reforms, Tocqueville effect, Xinhai revolution Es ist aber immer ein ergötzliches Faktum, daß das älteste und unerschütterlichste Reich der Erde durch die Kattunballen der englischen Bourgeois in acht Jahren an den Vorabend einer gesellschaftlichen Umwälzung gebracht worden ist, die jedenfalls die bedeutendsten Resultate für die Zivilisation haben muß. Wenn unsere europäischen Reaktionäre auf ihrer dem-

Egas Moniz Bandeira, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-006

120

Egas Moniz Bandeira

nächst bevorstehenden Flucht durch Asien endlich an der chinesischen Mauer ankommen, an den Pforten, die zu dem Hort der Urreaktion und des Urkonservatismus führen, wer weiß, ob sie nicht darauf die Überschrift lesen: République chinoise. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Karl Marx (1850)¹ La Révolution n’aura achevé son tour du monde que le jour où nous aurons coupé notre queue, et ce jour est loin. La Chine n’a que faire des principes de 1789; nous avons mieux depuis longtemps … Notre empire de 500 millions d’âmes est une démocratie paisible, disciplinée, travailleuse, stable, qui, depuis des milliers d’années, a su conquérir et conserver les biens que vos petits États européens poursuivent vainement depuis cent ans … Vos révolutions sont une fièvre de jeunesse. En Chine, au contraire, nous sommes à l’âge adulte, nous sommes mûrs, nous avons renoncé aux jeux coûteux, comme aux songes et aux chimères … Le règne de la Raison que la Révolution prétendait inaugurer, il est établi chez nous, depuis les Ming. Fictitious Chinese character in Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, “Le Centenaire de 1789” (1889)²

Introduction In the introduction to his book When the King Took Flight, Timothy Tackett states that “in the summer of 1789 a revolution began in France that is widely considered one of the turning points in the history of Western civilisation.”³ The French  “But it is always an amusing fact that, within eight years, the cotton bales of the English bourgeois have brought the oldest and most unshakeable empire of the world to the cusp of a social upheaval, which in any case shall have the most important results for civilisation. When our European reactionaries, in their soon upcoming flight through Asia will finally arrive at the Chinese Wall, i. e., at the gates which lead to the refuge of arch-reaction and arch-conservatism, who knows whether they will not see the inscription on it: République chinoise. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, eds., Werke [Works] Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1956– 1990), 7:222. All translations are the author’s own, if not otherwise noted.  “The Revolution will not have completed its tour du monde until the day when we will have cut our queue, and that day is far. China has nothing to make out of the principles of 1789; we have had better for a long time that day is far away. Our Empire of 500 million souls is a peaceful, disciplined, hard-working, stable democracy, which, since thousands of years, has been known to conquer and conserve the goods that you small European states have been pursuing in vain for a hundred years … Your revolutions are a juvenile fever. In China, to the opposite, we are of an adult age, we are mature, we have renounced costly games as we have renounced dreams and chimeras … The rule of reason which the Revolution intended to inaugurate—it has been established with us, since the Ming.” Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, “Le Centenaire de 1789” [The Centenary of 1789], Revue des Deux Mondes 4 (1889): 901– 02.  Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Cambridge [USA] and London [UK]: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1.

Between Chaos and Liberty

121

Revolution—together with many other historical moments from the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece to the Renaissance to the Holocaust, to name just a few—is often taken to be one of the building blocks of a quintessentially European, or, more broadly speaking, Western identity. The present chapter, instead, traces the complex inter-continental itinerary through which it has also become part of Chinese memory.⁴ It explores the French Revolution as a “colligatory concept”⁵ which has acquired meanings of its own and has been adapted in multiple ways to advance various agendas in the past two centuries of Chinese history. Certainly, scholarship has noticed that the French Revolution has had a significance which far transcends the boundaries of Europe, or of “Western civilisation.” More often than not, however, it has limited the discussion of its significance to only some of its aspects. Scholars such as David Bell have stressed the global allure exerted by the “new model of revolution” throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to Bell, although the French Revolution itself was mostly seen as a failure and few revolutionaries across the world attempted to reenact the events of 1789, the concept of revolution shaped by those events inspired revolutionary movements across all continents.⁶ Next to its role as the starting point of revolutionary tradition, even as “the mother of all revolutions,”⁷ others have also stressed the role of the French Revolution as a beacon of progressive ideas and as a symbol of modernity and progress. For example, in his book From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia, Pankaj Mishra writes that, in the nineteenth century, many Asian intellectuals were fascinated by an idea of Europe that “emerged from the American and French Revolutions” and that “seemed to place the West in the avant-garde of progress” through its “manifold achievements of technology, constitutional government, secular state and modern administration.”⁸ In the Chinese case, historiography has most frequently discussed the French Revolution in view of China’s own revolutions. Focussed on narrating

 On the approach see further Leigh K. Jenco and Jonathan Chappell, “Introduction: History from Between and the Global Circulations of the Past in Asia and Europe, 1600 – 1950,” The Historical Journal (2020), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X19000633, 1– 16.  William H. Walsh. “Colligatory Concepts in History,” in The Philosophy of History, ed. Patrick L. Gardiner, 127– 44 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).  David A. Bell, “Global Conceptual Legacies,” in The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, ed. David Andress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 654.  Dick Geary, “The Revolutionary Tradition in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560 – 1991, ed. David Parker (New York: Routledge, 2000), 133.  Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 25.

122

Egas Moniz Bandeira

the emergence and development of the modern Chinese state, i. e., first of the Republic and later of the People’s Republic of China, as well as the role played in it by the respective ruling parties, Chinese historiography has been keen to draw parallels between the French Revolution and China’s own Xinhai revolution. If the first was the key moment in the emergence of the modern state and, particularly in Marxist historiography, the prototypical “bourgeois revolution,”⁹ the Xinhai revolution of 1911 was its Chinese equivalent which brought about the demise of the millenar ancien régime and gave birth to the first Chinese republic. Scholarship, accordingly, has often narrowed down the role of the French Revolution to an inspiration for China’s revolutions, in particular the “bourgeois” Xinhai revolution.¹⁰ Shen Jian 沈堅, for example, remarked that the French Revolution had two effects on China, which coincide with its two defining features discussed above. It gave the Chinese a prime example of a revolution, and it “propagated the ideal principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity” to China.¹¹ Going further in temporal width, Diana King had argued that, since the 1911 Xinhai revolution, “and throughout the twentieth century … social, political and cultural crises in both China and France led each to seek inspiration in the revolutionary ideals of its ‘Republican sister.’”¹²

 See, e. g., the title of the most-edited book on the topic in China, a compilation of translated documents which saw several editions between the 1950s and the 1980s: Wu Xu 吳緒 and Yang Renpian 楊人楩, ed., trans. 18 shiji mo Faguo zichan jieji geming 十八世紀末法國資產階級革命 [The French Bourgeois Revolution at the End of the 18th Century] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1957, and Shangwu yinshuguan, 1962, 1989). See also Huazhong Shifan Daxue lishi xi 華中示範大學 歷史系, ed. 18 shiji mo Faguo zichan jieji geming 十八世紀末法國資產階級革命 [The French Bourgeois Revolution at the End of the 18th Century] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1974), a book with the same title, but different content.  E. g. Shen Jian 沈堅, “Zhongguo jindai sixiangjia yan zhong de Faguo dageming xingxiang” 中國近代思想家眼中的法國大革命形象 [The Image of the French Revolution in the Eyes of Modern Chinese Intellectuals], in Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji 法國大革命二百週 年紀週年論文集 [Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution], ed. Liu Zongxu 劉宗緒 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1990), 81– 94; Yu Danchu 俞旦初, “Ershi shiji chunian Faguo dageming zai Zhongguo de jieshao he yingxiang” 二十世紀初年法國 大革命史在中國的介紹和影響 [The Introduction and Influence of the French Revolution in Early 20th Century China], in Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji, ed. Liu, 173 – 186; Zhang Kaiyuan 章開沅, “Faguo dageming yu Xinhai geming: jinian Faguo dageming erbai zhounian” 法 國大革命與辛亥革命——紀年法國大革命二百週年 [The French Revolution and the Xinhai Revolution: In Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution], in Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji, 64– 80.  Shen, “Faguo dageming xingxiang,” 93.  Diana King, “Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France” (PhD diss.: Columbia University, 2017), 3.

Between Chaos and Liberty

123

This chapter argues that the Wirkungsgeschichte (“effective history”)¹³ of the French Revolution in China is far broader than the possible inspiration it gave to Chinese revolutionaries, or what Diana King calls the “invention of a unique revolutionary discourse that attempted to negotiate between a race-based nationalism, and a socialist internationalism.”¹⁴ Being reductive by their very nature, colligatory concepts are continuously reassembled for the needs of whoever employs them in discourse. Accordingly, the various objectives for which the French Revolution has been put to use have engendered widely differing representations of the French Revolution. Although they were all aimed at creating a modern and prosperous China, they have not fitted in the teleological straightjacket of the dominating historiography and have not been adequately captured by it. Accordingly, this chapter reconstructs the uses of the French Revolution not only in revolutionary, but also in reformist and conservative, discourses from the Qing up to the present day, showing that even in the People’s Republic, the writing of history in terms of neatly defined national “bourgeois revolutions” has not succeeded in erasing competing memories of the French Revolution. In her seminal article on the role played by the French Revolution in the Xinhai revolution, Marianne Bastid has cautioned against overestimating the role played by the “ideas of 1789” as an inspiration for the Xinhai revolution, for it is difficult or at times impossible to disentangle and single out the specific contribution of the French Revolution to Chinese revolutionary—and in fact, as will be shown, also non-revolutionary—thinking.¹⁵ However, this is precisely because it has become part of a general pool of historical knowledge used for political debates. This chapter shows that emblematic moments of European history like the French Revolution were not only key moments in the history of Western civilisation. The history of how it has been used and reused in modern and contemporary China defies state-centric modes of understanding history. Neither is “European” history an exclusive property of Europe, nor is the “Chinese” past composed exclusively of events which took place in China. Rather, far from being an exclusive memory of the West, the French Revolution has become a significant part of the Chinese collective imaginary.

 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik [Truth and Method: Basic Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics], 6th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 305 – 12.  King, “Translating Revolution,” 21.  Marianne Bastid. “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident: Quelle influence de la révolution française sur la révolution républicaine de 1911?” [The Opening to Western Ideas: What was the Influence of the French Revolution on the Republican Revolution of 1911?], Extrême-Orient Extrême Occident 2 (1983): 21– 39.

124

Egas Moniz Bandeira

A “Cataclysmic Catastrophe”: The French Revolution in the Qing Empire From the very beginning, news about the French Revolution circulated globally. Accounts of the French Revolution in Chinese language can be found well-nigh in real time. Although the French revolution took place within the context of a global “age of revolutions,” which can be argued to have included China,¹⁶ there is no evidence of news about the French events being known in the late eighteenth-century Qing Empire. However, news found their way from France to the capital of the Dutch Indies, Batavia, and were recorded in the local Chinese annals, the Chronicle of the Development of the Kingdom of Kalapa (Kai Ba Lidai Shiji 開吧歷代史紀). The annals, written by an anonymous inhabitant in the early to mid-1790s, circulated in various versions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹⁷ Permeated with Christian elements, the Chronicles report a story of a five hundred-year-old Hebrew-language inscription which had been recently found in France and had allegedly prophesied the events of the French Revolution as well as the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. To the expected events in France, the Chronicles applied the prophecy of Gog from Magog, a prince who, according to the Old Testament, would threaten Israel before the beginning of lasting peace: In 1790, the French people plot to harm their king … In 1791, the kings of neighbouring countries … will engage in a great war with the king of France … In 1797, in the Jewish book Namo Xiqi 南無西訖 [Ezekiel], it is written that a Gog of the land of Magog will appear and engage in a big fight with all kinds of people in the world. Nobody can resist him … In 1799, the descendants of King Louis will receive lawful power from Heaven and wipe out Gog from Magog. In 1800, different kinds of people in the world (gese ren 各色人) will return in the fold of one government and get along with one another like brothers, act in accordance with customs and laws, and hold in awe and veneration Heaven’s will.¹⁸

Over the course of the nineteenth century, as interest for Europe grew and more and more descriptions of European countries appeared in China, the French Rev David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760 – 1840 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). For China see in particular Kenneth Pomeranz, “Their Own Path to Crisis? Social Change, State-Building, and the Limits of Qing Expansion, c. 1770 – 1840,” in The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, ed. Armitage and Subrahmanyam, 189 – 208.  Leonard Blussé and Nie Dening. The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai Ba Lidai Shiji and Other Stories (1610 – 1795) (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), x.  Translation adapted from ibid., 198 – 99.

Between Chaos and Liberty

125

olution could hardly be missed in Chinese accounts of France. Until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Marianne Bastid has counted some twenty works dedicated exclusively to the French Revolution (most translated from the Japanese), a few dozen specialized articles on it, and thousands of more or less detailed mentions in more general works and articles.¹⁹ These numbers show that by the end of the Qing dynasty, key moments of European history such as the French Revolution had become firmly entrenched as elements of Chinese intellectual debates. But how exactly was the French constitution discussed? The most widelyheld view about the French Revolution is present from the earliest discussions of the event, such as in Wei Yuan’s 魏源 (1794– 1854) seminal 1843 book Illustrated Treatise on the Countries of the Seas (Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志). The Treatise resumes a century of French history by stressing how the royal court’s morals decayed and the country’s financial situation became bleaker—a story familiar to readers of Chinese dynastic histories—ending in the total chaos of French Revolution: In the 53rd year of Kangxi [1714], his grandson [Louis XV] ascended the throne. Of loose customs and amoral, he lost reason and destroyed pudor. Fond of debauchery and flattery, he abused power and squandered public money. Defeated in battle, the low-ranking soldiers deserted, and the state’s treasury was empty. When the new king inherited the throne, the people of North America were at war with England, and the king supported the Americans to win the war. However, the money for military salaries decreased. Hence, he convened the three classes of nobles, monks and commoners to find a way to gather funds quickly. The citizens overthrew the king and killed him, and state affairs were in chaos for seven years. There was a subject called Napoleon who subdued the masses with military power and ascended the throne in the eighth year of Jiaqing [1813]. For nine consecutive years, he undertook military conquests in all directions, using his strength to monger war until it was his turn to be defeated and lose the throne. 當康熙五十三年，其孫登位，縱情背理，喪心滅恥，娼佞弄權，奢用公錢，弁兵敗散，國帑空 虛。新王嗣位，是時北方亞墨裏加之民，與英吉利國交戰，王助亞墨裏加戰勝，然其餉銀漸 減，故招爵僧民三品會集，以尋聚斂之法。國民棄王殺之，七年國政混亂。有臣曰那波利稔 者，武功服眾，嘉慶八年登王位，連九年戰服四方，恃強黷武，旋敗失位。²⁰

Similar descriptions of the French Revolution as a bloody catastrophe which derived from the French government’s incompetence can be found in other nineteenth-century Chinese works, the most well-known of which was probably

 Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 23.  Wei Yuan 魏源, Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 [Illustrated Treatise on the Countries of the Seas], 3 vols. (Changsha: Yuelu shushe chubanshe, 1998), 1: 1203 – 04.

126

Egas Moniz Bandeira

the monograph A Brief Account of France (Faguo zhilüe 法國志畧), penned by Wang Tao 王韜 (1828 – 1897), a prolific writer who had visited France. Neither Wei Yuan’s nor Wang Tao’s works drew lessons for China yet. But soon after Chinese intellectuals began debating their own countries’ political future, such important events in a major international power as the French Revolution were discussed and used as a “mirror” of China’s own situation.²¹ Reflecting Wei Yuan’s and Wang Tao’s narrative of decay and chaos, the French Revolution became a counterexample to be avoided by China at all costs. For example, in 1898, Kang Youwei 康有爲 (1858 – 1927) presented to the Emperor a lengthy memorial containing, as he claimed, the first exclusively dedicated Chinese-language history of the French Revolution. The text discussed the history of the French Revolution and incisively argued that reforms from above had to be enacted by the Emperor lest such a calamity repeat itself in China.²² Conforming to such opinions, Shen Jian has argued that, in the eyes of the reformers, the French Revolution was “merely chaos” (zhi shi dongluan 祇是動 亂).²³ However, this is not completely accurate, as the function of the French Revolution in Chinese reformist thought was more complex. While the French Revolution still meant chaos, it now acquired a new historical significance. At around the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals identified most great powers as constitutional polities, while all those governed without constitutions seemed to be ailing. Constitutions increasingly came to be seen as the key to creating a strong empire. Accordingly, Chinese descriptions of constitutional law acknowledged that France was one of the birthplaces of modern constitutionalism, and that the French Revolution had brought about iconic documents such as the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the country’s first written constitutional charter of 1791. An example for this can be drawn from the 1902 book Essential Principles of Constitutional Law (Xianfa jingli 憲法經理), a compendium of material on foreign constitutions collected by Zhou Kui 周逵 (1878–?), a Hunanese student based in Tokyo. The preface to the work explicitly accorded a central historical significance to the French Revolution:

 Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 35 – 36.  Contained as Falanxi geming ji 法蘭西革命記 [Record of the French Revolution] in Kang Youwei 康有爲, Buxing er yan zhong; bu ting ze guo wang 不幸而言中不聽則國亡 [Unfortunately, my Words Have Come True. If One Does Not Listen to Me, Then the Country Will Perish], ed. Jiang Guilin 蔣貴麟 (Taipei: Hongye shuju, Minguo 76 [1987]), 101– 61.  Shen, “Faguo dageming xingxiang,” 93.

Between Chaos and Liberty

127

Alas! From the end of the 18th century to the mid-19th century, the Europeans promoted people’s rights and freedom. The vigour of this wave has shaken the entire continent, and hundred wars have followed each other. If one investigates what the gain of this was, it was: a few dozen constitutions. During the French Revolution and the upheavals in the various countries, one has fought for rights and shed blood; the first have died for this, and the latter ones have followed. The number of those who sacrificed themselves for this is in the tens of thousands. If one investigates what this was done for, it is: a few dozen constitutions. 嗚呼。自十八世紀之末。至十九世紀之中期。歐人唱民權。唱自由。其風潮之猛。震蕩全 州。蔓延百戰。究其所得者爲何。曰，數十條憲法而已。法蘭西之革命。與夫列國之政 變。競權力。流膏血。前者死之。後者繼焉。爲之犧牲者以數十萬計。究其所爲者何事。 曰數十條憲法而已。²⁴

Kang Youwei’s disciple Liang Qichao (1873 – 1929), who had a longstanding debate with his teacher on the interpretation of the French Revolution, provides another example of how ambiguous and multi-faceted Chinese reformist positions were. In an essay published in 1901 in his magazine China Discussion (Qing yi bao 清議報), he reported that the wholly new sphere (xin tiandi 新天地) recently reached by civilisation in Western countries (jinshi Taixi geguo zhi wenming 近世 泰西各國之文明) was a product of the French Revolution (Faguo dageming zhi chan’er 法國大革命之產兒).²⁵ Remarkably, the French Revolution was not simply a Western historical experience for Liang. In his report on his trip to Hawaii, entitled “Record of the Wide Ocean” (Hanman lu 汗漫錄) and published in the year previous (1900), Liang draws parallels between the French Revolution, which had “swept Europe in a few decades” (pimi quan Ou zhe shu shi nian 披靡全 歐者數十年), and the various revolutions the members of his group had seen in Hawaii, and relates this to China’s own condition.²⁶ As Rebecca Karl puts it, “Liang takes that moment of universalized revolutionary modernity, transformed now from its French meaning to its modern colonial meaning, and reattaches its transformative potential, via the Hawaiian Chinese, to a spatially distant China,”

 Zhou Kui 周逵, ed., trans., Xianfa jingli 憲法精理 [Essential Principles of Constitutional Law] (Shanghai: Guangzhi shuju, Guangxu 28 [1902]), zixu 自序 1a.  Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Benguan di yibai ce zhuci bing lun baoguan zhi zeren ji benguan zhi jingli”本館第一百册祝辭並論報館之責任及本館之經歷 [Congratulatory Words on the 100th Issue of this Magazine, Together with a Discussion of the Responsibilities of the Press and the Experiences of this Magazine], Qing yi bao 清議報, no. 100 (1901), 2a; on this see Tang Xiaobing, Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity. The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 50 – 51.  Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Hanman lu (yiming ban jiushi lu)” 汗漫錄（一名半九十錄）[Record of the Wide Ocean (also entitled Record of a Tortuous Journey)], Qing yi bao 清議報, no. 38 (1900): 2452.

128

Egas Moniz Bandeira

in a process which she calls “historical nativisation.”²⁷ In the following years, Liang changed his mind from defending revolution to advocating for an “enlightened autocracy” (kaiming zhuanzhi 開明專制). Accordingly, beginning from 1903, he stressed the chaotic and violent part of the French Revolution—not denying, however, the immense historical significance of the French Revolution.²⁸ In the following years, demands for constitutional reforms within the Qing government intensified, and in September 1906, the government officially announced that it would prepare for a constitutional regime. As has been seen, positive assessments of the historical significance of the French Revolution as a turning point in global—not merely European—history did not mean advocacy for a French-style revolution in China. Most reformists hoped that China could follow the example of Japan, where, according to their interpretation, constitutional reforms implemented by the Meiji government had strengthened the country. France, on the other hand, was soon discarded as a positive constitutional model precisely because it was, at the time, a republic.²⁹ But the chaos of the French Revolution, which had been so often described, continued to be discussed under the viewpoint of how it had been brought about and how similar calamities could be avoided in China, with different interpretations being offered according to political standpoint. Such can be seen in a debate involving the conservative Yu Shimei 于式枚 (1853 – 1916), the Qing government’s constitutional commissioner to Germany, and the Shanghai newspaper Shenbao 申報. In 1908, when he resided in Germany, Yu produced several reports recommending that the Chinese government proceed slowly in adopting a constitution. He was concerned about preserving the prerogatives of the Emperor. More specifically, as Kang Youwei had done in 1898, he juxtaposed the Meiji constitution of 1889 with the French Revolution: “The Japanese reforms are (an example of) carrying it out well; the French constitution is (an example of) carrying it out badly” (xing zhi er shan, ze Riben zhi weixin; xing zhi bu shan, ze Faguo zhi geming 行之而善，則日本之維新，行之不善，則爲法國之革命).³⁰ However,  Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham et al.: Duke University Press, 2007), 71.  Ibid., 239. For a full treatment of Liang’s changing views of the French Revolution see Tang, Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity, 102– 14.  See, for example, the school textbook by Gao Fengqian 高鳳謙, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟, and Jiang Weiqiao 蔣維喬, Gaodeng xiaoxue guowen jiaokeshu di yi ce 高等小學國文教科書第一册 [National Language Textbook for Senior Elementary Schools], 2nd ed. (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, Guangxu 33 [1907]), lesson 2.  Gugong Bowuyuan Ming-Qing dang’anbu 故宮博物院明清檔案部, ed., Qingmo choubei lixian dang’an shiliao 清末籌備立憲檔案史料 [Archival Material Concerning Constitutional Preparation in the Late Qing], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 337.

Between Chaos and Liberty

129

his conclusion is the opposite of Kang’s. In Yu’s eyes, the cardinal mistake made in France was to allow the idea of a liberal. In Yu’s eyes, the cardinal mistake made in France was to allow the idea of far-reaching political reforms as a solution to national problems: constitution as a solution to national problems: In the past, the French General Lafayette helped the American continent to become independent. His huge success earned him a brilliant reputation. Having come back, he could not bear the bitter suffering of the French people and promoted the adoption of a constitution. Wanting to transplant the way of governing the USA onto France, he did not notice the differences of the circumstances. As soon as the idea was out, it could not be taken back, thereupon leading to a cataclysmic catastrophe. 昔法之大將辣飛葉，助美洲獨立，成大功，負盛名者也。歸而不忍法民之荼毒，倡言立憲， 欲以治美者移而治法，而不知情勢之不同，一發而不能收，遂致滔天之禍。³¹

The Shenbao, on the other side of the debate, changed its political positions with time. In January 1906, i. e., months before the Qing government officially declared that it would pursue constitutional policies, the paper was sceptical about including the lower strata of society (xia deng shehui 下等社會) into politics and criticized the Chinese progressives for having destructive forces but no constructive talents (you pohuai zhi li er wu jianshe zhi cai 有破壞之力而無建設 之才), adducing both the French Revolution as well as the contemporary Russian revolutionary movement as warning examples.³² However, a year later, in January 1907, an article in the Shenbao accused the Qing government of paying only lip service to constitutional ideas. The interpretation for the chaos of the French Revolution had become akin to Kang Youwei’s: it was not that liberal ideas had spread too much, but that the reforms undertaken under the French King Louis XVI had not been earnest.³³ This new position naturally collided with Yu Shimei’s. When Yu submitted his memorials from Berlin, he was widely criticized in the Shenbao and in other media. Whereas Yu had described constitutional reformers and revolutionaries as the same, the Shenbao accused him of “seeing white as black” (ren bai wei hei 認白為黑) and deemed that, Yu’s opposition to constitutional reforms and the revolutionary party were equivalent, just that the revolutionaries had ethnic (anti-Manchu) motives and Yu was concerned about his personal income. In

 Ibid.  Shenbao, “Lun jinri guomin zhi dongji” 論近日國民之動機 [On the Recent Intents of the Citizens], January 1, 1906 (n°11751), 2.  Shenbao, “Lun zhengfu jinri zhi zhengce” 論政府近日之政策 [On the Government’s Recent Policies], January 8, 1907 (n°12115), 2.

130

Egas Moniz Bandeira

sum, the newspaper reiterated its stance of a year earlier that the government’s unwillingness for real reform had resulted in the French Revolution.³⁴

The French Revolution and the Chinese Revolutions The revolutionary party referred to in the Shenbao article gained considerable traction in the following years. In 1911/12, the Qing Empire was overthrown in the wake of the so-called Xinhai revolution. The most important role played by the French Revolution in the Xinhai revolution was that it was a significant part of the general pool of historical knowledge on the basis of which the Chinese revolutionaries drew their discourse and their practices. For example, in 1906, Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879 – 1936) deplored that the Manchus were the Chinese equivalent of the aristocracy of the French ancien régime (Wuhu! Zhina zhi manmin you Falanxi zhi guizu ye! 鳴呼。支那之滿民猶法蘭西之貴族也。).³⁵ This parallel of China with the French ancien régime was far from exclusive, but just one of numerous variants of the argument in which the Manchus were compared with other supposed “oppressor” groups across the world. To name just two examples, Liu Yazi 劉亞子 (1887– 1958), as early as 1903, had argued that constitutionalism was of no benefit to the non-ruling ethnic group. Even in the motherland of constitutionalism, Great Britain, it was of no benefit to the Irish, and it would be of no benefit to the Chinese vis-à-vis the Manchu.³⁶ Seven years later, in 1910, Wang Jingwei 汪精衞 (1883 – 1944) and Hu Hanmin would equate China with Greece and the Manchus with Turkey.³⁷ As Marianne Bastid has pointed out, the direct influence of the French Revolution is somewhat harder to grasp. It figured as a positive example in revolutionary writings, such as Zou Rong’s 鄒容 (1885 – 1905) Revolutionary Army (geming jun 革命軍), but overall, the “ideas of 1789” played a rather diffuse role in late-Qing Chinese revolutionary discourse and practice.³⁸ As Bastid writes, al-

 Shenbao, “Lunshuo” 論說 [Commentary], June 30, 1908 (n°12721), 4– 5.  Hanmin 漢民 [Hu Hanmin 胡漢民], “Shu houguan Yan shi zuijin zhengjian” 述侯官嚴氏最近 政見 [The Latest Political Views of Mr. Yan from Houguan], Minbao 2 (1906): 13  Liu Yazi 柳亞子, “Zhongguo lixian wenti (1903 nian 9 yue)” 中國立憲問題 （1903年9月） [China’s Constitutional Question (September 1903)], in Liu Yazi xuan ji 柳亞子選集 [Selected Works of Liu Yazi], ed. Wang Jingyao 王晶垚 et al. (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1989), 23.  Minyi 民意 [Wang Jingwei 汪精衛; Hu Hanmin 胡漢民], “Tuerqi geming” 土耳其革命 [The Turkish Revolution], Minbao 民報 25 (1910): 7.  Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 33, 35.

Between Chaos and Liberty

131

though knowledge about the French Revolution was quite widespread in China in the 1900s, the revolutionaries of 1911 were not directly influenced by the French example. Rather, in Chinese discourse, the French Revolution was merely one of several events in world history, being discussed at the same level as others, such as the Anglo-Saxon revolutions,³⁹ Bismarck’s deeds, and the decay of Poland and of the Ottoman Empire. Among the examples provided by French history, even more than the revolution itself, it was the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821) that impressed nineteenth and twentieth century Chinese—as well as Japanese and Korean—intellectuals.⁴⁰ Furthermore, one might also add a strong interest for pre-revolutionary Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712– 1778).⁴¹ If one could pin down more concrete contributions by the French Revolution to the Xinhai revolution, what would they be? Firstly, as Diana King has argued in her doctoral dissertation, Chinese interpretations of Japanese-mediated histories of the French Revolution have reshaped how Chinese intellectuals conceived of rights and revolution, beginning from the word for revolution itself (geming 革 命), which, from its traditional meaning of “change in the mandate of heaven,” came to acquire its modern and universal meaning.⁴² Secondly, its influence is to be found in the personal motivations and ideas of revolutionaries like Zhu Zhixin 朱执信 (1885 – 1920), Hu Hanmin, and especially Wang Jingwei.⁴³ Just as reformers had argued that the Qing Empire should undertake reforms lest it be overthrown by a revolution, revolutionaries paralleled the “despotism” of late eighteenth century France to China’s contemporary political situation and concluded that no reform, but only a revolution, could put an end to it. Wang Jingwei was

 On the appeal of the American revolution in China see Fei Chen, “Disassembling Empire: Revolutionary Chinese Students in Japan and Discourses on Provincial Independence and Local Self-Government,” Journal of Asian History 2 (2017): 297– 99, 304– 11.  Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 23. On some Chinese interpretations of Madame de Staël (1766 – 1817) and her relationship to Napoleon see also Joan Judge, The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 174– 75.  See Wang Xiaoling, Jean-Jacques Rousseau en Chine: de 1871 à nos jours [Jean-Jacques Rousseau in China: From 1871 to Our Days] (Montmorency: Socie´te´ internationale des amis du Muse´e Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2010). For a broader view on Rousseau in Asia see Wang Xiaoling, Tanguy L’Aminot T, and Eddy Dufourmont, Rousseau en Asie [Rousseau in Asia] (Geneva: Slatkine, 2015). Specifically on Rousseau and the anarchist Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884– 1919) see Wang Xiaoling, “Liu Shipei et son concept de contrat social chinois,” [Liu Shipei and his Concept of a Chinese Social Contract] Études Chinoises 1– 2 (1998): 155 – 90.  King, “Translating Revolution,” 36 – 37.  Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 34.

132

Egas Moniz Bandeira

the clearest in expressing this motivation. In 1910, when he was arrested for plotting to assassinate the Prince Regent, he admitted his guilt and explained what had convinced him that no compromise was possible and that reform was not possible from within the ancien régime: In any country, constitutionalism, be it monarchic constitutionalism or republican constitutionalism, must be established through a revolution. This is because, as despotic power has accumulated for a long time and has become the foundation of the state’s exertion of power, it is impossible to obtain the results of discarding the old and promoting the new without destroying this strong power. It is precisely because of this that France ultimately failed to avoid the Revolution, although it had almost established a constitutional monarchy by the time Louis XVI acceded to the throne. 大抵各國之立憲，無論其爲君主立憲爲民主立憲，皆必經一度革命而後得之。所以然者，以 專制之權力，積之旣久，爲國家權力發動之根本，非摧去此強權，無由收除舊佈新之效故 也。法國當路易十六卽位之初，葢已幾樹立憲君主政體矣，而後卒不免於大革命，其故實由 於此。⁴⁴

Thirdly, the French revolution is palpable as a negative, not positive, example, in a manner not so different from its reception by reformers and conservatives. Although violence did occur during the Xinhai revolution, the fall of the Qing Empire and the subsequent transition to the Republic of China were comparatively peaceful. Bastid writes that this was, to a large extent, because the Chinese revolutionaries had drawn their lessons from past experiences of turmoil, among them the Taiping war (1851– 1864) and “a European revolution which one meant to surpass.”⁴⁵ Moreover, Bastid speculates that the aversion to the French scenes of slaughter with the king ending up under a guillotine probably played a role in the negotiations about the fate of the Qing emperor, who retained his right to live in the palace and obtain a handsome apanage.⁴⁶ Bastid’s conclusions cannot be taken as absolute, for the comparative lack of violence in the Xinhai revolution was certainly not only due to voluntary restraint on the part of reformers, but more a result of the correlations of power on the ground, as influential reformers in the government and society negotiated the transition from monarchy to republic.⁴⁷ Yet, Bastid is right in that the bloodbath in which the French revolution ended played a significant role as a negative

 Ye Zhiru 葉志如, “Qingmo Wang Zhaoming bei bu hou de gongdan ji youguan shiliao” 清末 汪兆銘被捕後的供單及有關史料 [Protocol of the Arrest of Wang Zhaoming in the Late Qing, and Related Historical Documents], Lishi dang’an 歷史檔案 2 (1983): 22– 23.  Bastid, “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident,” 35.  Ibid.  See Chen, “Disassembling Empire,” 309 – 11.

Between Chaos and Liberty

133

example even for Chinese revolutionaries. While the revolutionaries made many positive references to the French revolution and its historical significance, they saw it in a critical light and often denounced its excesses of violence. For example, in 1906, Wang Jingwei explained in an article for the main revolutionary magazine Minbao 民報 what the Chinese revolutionaries would do better than their French predecessors: Now, in particular, this is different from the time of the French revolution. In that revolution, there were at first no norms that regulated the relationship between the popular parties. Therefore, they ended up killing one another, creating the age of terror. Here, however, we trust each other, everyone has his position, and there are legal relationships. It is a common enterprise. Hence, there will be no calamity of an age of terror. This is the function of (our) pact. 且尤於法蘭西大革命時異。彼之革命，民黨之間初無規律其關係之準則。故終相戕殺以成 恐怖時代。而此則互相信任，各有職司，有法定之關係，爲共同之活働。故無恐怖時代之慘 狀。約法之爲用如此。⁴⁸

The Chinese revolutionaries, thus, embraced violence in so far as it was necessary to expel the Manchus. However, they strove to avoid the lurid scenes of bloodthirsty mobs wreaking havoc and killing one another which they associated with the French Revolution. Such a narrative of the French revolution might not have been the most accurate, but it provided a powerful background against which the Chinese revolutionaries sought for other positive models.⁴⁹ After the overthrow of the Chinese monarchy, the Xinhai French Revolution was soon—internationally—paralleled to the French Revolution. Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924) himself did so in his article “Democracy and Populism in China” (Demokratiia͡ i narodnichestvo v Kitae Демократия и народничествов Китае), written in the very year of 1912. Although he did not specifically mention the French Revolution, he paralleled the Chinese revolutionaries with not only the “great preachers of the Enlightenment,” but also the “great personalities of the end of the 18th century” in France.⁵⁰ The Xinhai revolution of 1911, thus, came to be

 Jingwei 精衛 [Wang Jingwei 汪精衛], “Zai bo Xinmin Congbao zhi zhengzhi geming lun” 再 駁新民叢報之政治革命論 [Refuting Again the Xinmin congbao’s Theory of Political Revolution], Minbao 民報 7 (1906): 51.  See, e. g., on the American model, Chen, “Disassembling Empire,” 297– 99, 304– 09.  Vladimir Il’ich Lenin Владимир Ильич Ленин, “Demokratiia ͡ i narodnichestvo v Kitae” Демократия и народничество в Китае [Democracy and Populism in China], in Polnoe sobranie sochineniĭ Полное собрание сочинений [Complete Collection of Works], ed. Institut Marks͡ KPSS Институт Марксизма-Ленинизма при ЦК КПСС, 5th ed. (Mosizma-Leninizma pri TSK cow: Politizdat, 1966 – 1981), 21: 400 – 06.

134

Egas Moniz Bandeira

seen as China’s equivalent to the French “bourgeois” revolution of 1789. But history went a step further. When, six years later, the two Russian Revolutions of 1917 overthrew the Russian Empire and created the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), Chinese liberals and communists alike hailed it as a landmark for social revolutions across the world.⁵¹ Such was, for example, the Marxist Li Dazhao’s 李大釗 (1889 – 1927) assessment. In his 1918 article “A Comparative View of the French and Russian Revolution” (Fa-E geming bijiao guan 法俄革命 比較觀), he put the two revolutions at the same level of outstanding historical importance not only for France and Russia but also for the world. He also argued that the Russian revolution was a step forward that brought the “dawn of a new civilisation” (xin wenming zhi shuguang 新文明之曙光): The French Revolution was not only an expression of the changes in the mind of the French people; it was in fact the expression of the common changes in the mentality of mankind in the entire world in the 19th century. The Russian revolution was not only a harbinger of the changes in the mind of the Russian people; it is in fact the harbinger of the common changes in the mentality of mankind in the entire world in the 20th century. 法蘭西之革命，非獨法蘭西人心變動之表徴，實十九世紀全世界人類普遍心理變動之表 徴。俄羅斯之革命，非獨俄羅斯人心變動之顯兆，實二十世紀全世界人類普遍心理變動之 顯兆。⁵²

Not only Li Dazhao praised the French Revolution. In 1915, Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879 – 1942) had proclaimed that “if it were not for France,” he “did not know in what darkness the world would still be,” for the French “had taken up arms to fight for equality, fraternity, and liberty” (shijie er wu Falanxi, jinri zhi hei’an bu shi reng ju he deng … zhige er wei pingdeng, bo’ai, ziyou zhan 世界而無法蘭 西，今日之黑暗不識仍居何等。…執戈而爲平等、博愛、自由戰 …).⁵³ On July 14, 1926, on the occasion of the French national holiday, the Republican Daily News (Minguo ribao 民國日報), a newspaper connected to the nationalist party (Kuomintang 國民黨), carried an opinion piece extoling “the spirit of the Parisian citizenry’s attack on the Bastille” (Bali shimin jingong Bashidi yu zhi jingshen 巴黎

 See Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History. The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919 – 1937 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1989), 38 – 39.  Li Dazhao 李大釗, “Fa-E geming bijiao guan” 法俄革命比較觀 [A Comparative View of the French and Russian Revolution], in Li Dazhao xuanji 李大釗選集 [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1959), 104.  See Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, “Falanxiren yu jinshi wenming (1915 nian 9 yue 15 ri)” 法蘭西人與 近世文明（一九一五年九月十五日） [The French and Modern Civilisation (September 15, 1915)], in Chen Duxiu wenzhang xuanbian 陳獨秀文章選編 [Selected Essays of Chen Duxiu] (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 1984), 1: 81.

Between Chaos and Liberty

135

市民進攻巴士的獄之精神) to exhort the Chinese people to “collectively fight for liberty and equality in China and strive for the national revolution” (qi wei Zhongguo de ziyou pingdeng er fendou, qi wei guomin geming er nuli 齊爲中國 底自由平等而奮鬥，齊爲國民革命而努力).⁵⁴ In short, the French Revolution figured in the “euphoric revolutionary eclecticism” which emerged in the wake of the New Culture Movement of 1915 and the May Fourth Movement of 1919.⁵⁵ Hence, as Diana King has argued, “anarchist ideology cut from the mold of the French Revolutionary tradition” informed “the elaboration of Chinese social, cultural, and Communist revolution,” culminating in the victory of the Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.⁵⁶

The French Revolution and the People’s Republic of China If, in Marxist historiography, the Russian October Revolution of 1917 was the prototype of a socialist revolution just as the French Revolution had been the prototype of a bourgeois revolution, and if the Xinhai revolution had been equivalent to the French Revolution, then the victory of the Communist Party in the Chinese civil war was interpreted as a second, socialist, revolution, which completed the unfinished Xinhai revolution. Now, if, according to official historiography, China has not only experienced its own equivalent of the French Revolution, but also taken a historical step further with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, has the French Revolution then ceased to be useful in the Chinese political discourse? No—the French Revolution has continued to be used in Chinese discourse, and, again, with diverging discursive objectives. In the years following the victory of the Communist Party in 1949, little deviance from the orthodox model of history was possible. However, different interpretations of the French Revolution survived and resurfaced in the 1980s. As China had suffered its own fair share of revolutionary and cultural-revolutionary violence, the desire for a more open society shifted the focus of attention towards

 De Zheng 德徵 [pseud.]. “Cong Faguo geming guancha dao Zhongguo geming” 從法國革命 觀察到中國革命 [Observing the Chinese Revolution from the French Revolution], Minguo ribao 民國日報, July 14, Minguo 15 [1926], 1.  Arif Dirlik, “The New Culture Movement Revisited: Anarchism and the Idea of Social Revolution in New Culture Thinking,” Modern China 3 (1985): 253.  King, “Translating Revolution,” 36 – 37.

136

Egas Moniz Bandeira

the liberal ideas which emanated from the French Revolution. The element of liberty thus unprecedentedly came to the fore. In 1987, Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 (1936 – 2012), a professor at Fudan University, published a book under the title “Coming out of the Middle Ages” (Zou chu shong shiji 走出中世紀), suggesting that the historical mistake of China’s government and people had been to attempt to directly jump out of the Middle Ages to “contemporary modernity” (xiandai 現代) without first passing through the historically necessary phase of “early modernity” (jindai 近代) marked by the end of absolute governments and the ideals of the Enlightenment. China, thus, was unable to attain real modernity.⁵⁷ The next year, in 1988, Yao Peng 姚鵬 (1956–) a professor at the Central Party School in Beijing, published a book directly reflecting on the French Revolution. Written to commemorate the approaching two hundredth anniversary of the event, the work with the evocative title Daydreams of the Goddess of Liberty: A Historical Reflection on the Basic Principles of the French Revolution (Ziyou nüshen de xiaxiang: Dui Faguo dageming jiben yuanze de lishi fansi 自由女神的遐想：對法國大革命基本原則的歷史反思) was to become one of the most remarkable books of the late 1980s. As could not be expected otherwise, the work was solidly grounded in Marxist historiography, at the same time as Yao fielded quotes from a wide range of non-Marxist literature, including the Bible, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824), Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BC), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832). Without mentioning Goethe’s rather negative attitude towards the French Revolution, Yao ended his work with famous verses from Goethe’s Faust: “Only he deserves freedom and life,/ who must conquer it every day” (Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,/ der täglich sie erobern muß).⁵⁸ Yao’s verdict on the importance of the French Revolution was clear:

 Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚, Zou chu zhong shiji 走出中世紀 [Coming Out of the Middle Ages] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1987). An enlarged edition was published in 2007 by Fudan Daxue chubanshe (Shanghai). On Zhu’s book and on Chinese notions of “Middle Ages” see Joachim Kurtz, “Chinese Dreams of the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Utopia, Propaganda,” Medieval History Journal 1 (2018): 17. On the Chinese life of European periodisation schemes, in particular on the notion of “Renaissance,” see Thomas Maissen and Barbara Mittler, Why China did Not Have a Renaissance—and Why that Matters: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018).  Yao Peng 姚鵬, Ziyou nüshen de xiaxiang: Dui Faguo dageming jiben yuanze de lishi fansi 自 由女神的遐想,對法國大革命基本原則的歷史反思 [Daydreams of the Goddess of Liberty: A Historical Reflection on the Basic Principles of the French Revolution] (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1988), 347; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Der Tragödie zweyter Theil in fünf Acten [Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy in Five Acts] (Stuttgart and Tübingen: J.G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1832), 321.

Between Chaos and Liberty

137

The principles of freedom relied on, upheld, solidified, and propagated by the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution are some of the greatest ideas in human intellectual history … 法國啟蒙運動和法國大革命所依據、舉行、確立、和傳播的自由原則是人類思想史上最偉 大觀念之一 …⁵⁹

The two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, commemorated by Yao Peng in this manner, coincided with a series of other anniversaries, a fact which was readily remembered at the time. Su Xiaokang 蘇曉康 (1949–), the scriptwriter for the controversial documentary River Elegy (Heshang 河殤), which paved the way for the 1989 democracy movement and the large-scale protests that were violently suppressed by the Chinese government in June that year, wrote: It seems that the year 1989 is destined to become a spectacular anniversary of many historic events: the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the Centennial of the Second International, the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, the seventieth year of the Third International, the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the thirtieth anniversary of the Lushan Conference, the twentieth anniversary of the “Ninth Conference” of the Party, the twentieth anniversary of Liu Shaoqi’s unfortunate demise. 1989年——一個仿佛注定要同許多歷史巨靈會晤的奇異的紀念年：法國大革命200週年、 第二國際成立100週年、五四運動70週年、第三國際70周年、建國40週年、廬山會議30 年、「九大」20週年、劉少奇死難20年祭，等等。⁶⁰

Mu Ling writes that “May Fourth obviously occupied a central position” among these events.⁶¹ Yet, by beginning his enumeration with the French Revolution, Su also accords it a special position as the key event which brought about a new order of things to Europe at the same time as China was set to live through “unlucky 200 years” (daomei de 200 nian 倒霉的200年) of “excruciating suffering” (tongku wanfen 痛苦萬分).⁶² In the 1980s, May Fourth was widely considered as having been a period of enlightenment, but as one which, in contrast to the

 Yao Peng 姚鵬, Ziyou nüshen de xiaxiang, 337.  Su Xiaokang 蘇曉康, “Shijimo huimou—guanyu yi bu dianshipian de liuchan jilu” 世紀末回 眸——關於一部電視片的流產記錄 [Looking Back at the End of the Century: Record about the Abortion of a TV Film], Wenhui yuekan 文匯月刋, no. 5 (1989): 16. The author would like to thank Su Xiaokang for sending him the original of the article (written communication of July 6, 2020). The translation is adapted from Mu Ling, “Chinese Cultural and Literary Criticism in the 1980s” (PhD dissertation: Cornell University, 1994), 133.  Ibid.  Su, “Shijimo huimou,” 16.

138

Egas Moniz Bandeira

eighteenth century European movement, had not been the long prelude to a revolution, but a comparatively short intermezzo in a long series of revolutions and political strife, and which had thus remained unfinished.⁶³ In this way, in that significant year of 1989, many Chinese invoked both the French Revolution of 1789 and the Chinese May Fourth movement of 1919 as part of the Chinese collective imagination in order to think about the present and future of China and how to fulfil the ideals represented by and the hopes attached to these historical events.⁶⁴ Hence, against the background of works like that of Zhu and Yao, and invocations such as that of Su, the French Revolution became one of the discursive elements that fed into the 1989 democracy movement and added a “universalistic look” to it.⁶⁵ But did such evocations of the French Revolution in the name of its ideals of freedom obliterate other uses of the French Revolution? Again, they did not. After the suppression of the democracy movement and the political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union, the attention has turned even more to the country’s stability. Anxious that a similar fate might befall their polity, Chinese elites have been preoccupied with the causes that make even seemingly powerful states collapse.⁶⁶ One of the dangers which has been identified for China’s stability is a phenomenon which Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) had described for both ancien régime France and the colonial United States, and which later has

 Mu, “Chinese Cultural and Literary Criticism,” 136; Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and Legacy of the May Fourth Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 8 – 9, 297– 98.  See Huang Yibing, Contemporary Chinese Literature: From the Cultural Revolution to the Future (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 20; Zuo Jiping and Robert Benford, “Mobilization Processes and the 1989 Democratic Movement,” The Sociological Quarterly 1 (1995): 134– 35.  Huang, Contemporary Chinese Literature, 20.  On the Soviet Union’s demise see, e. g., Zhou Shangwen 周尚文, Hao Yuqing 郝宇青 et al., Hefaxing shiye xia de Sulian zhengzhi 合法性視野下的蘇聯政治 [Soviet Politics from the Perspective of Legitimacy] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2006); Xi Jinping 習近平, “‘Yi mo gao yu ai min, xing mo hou yu le min’—zai Guangdong kaocha gongzuo shi jianghua (2012 nian 12 yue 7 ri zhi 11 ri)”「意莫高於愛民，形莫厚於樂民」——在廣東考察工作時講話（2012 年12月7日至11日）[“The Greatest Meaning is Loving the People; the Most Generous Action is Making the People Happy”—Speech Given During Inspection in Canton (December 7– 11, 2012)], Da shijian 大事件, no. 19 (2013), 21; Wu Enyuan 吳恩遠, “‘Shiyue geming yu Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi’ lilun yantaohui fayan zhaiyao: Sulian jieti jiaoxun yu jianchi shiyue geming jiben yuanze”「十月革命與中國特色社會主義」理論研討會發言摘要：蘇聯解體教訓與堅持十 月革命基本原則 [Summary of the Contributions at the Theory Conference “The October Revolution and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Holding Fast to the Basic Principles of the October Revolution], Renmin Ribao 人民日報, September 28, 2017, 16.

Between Chaos and Liberty

139

come to be known in political science as the “Tocqueville effect.”⁶⁷ In contrast to the contemporary opinion reflected in China by Wei Yuan, Wang Tao, Kang Youwei, and others, Tocqueville argued in his work L’ancien régime et la révolution that the reign of Louis XVI (1754– 1793, r. 1774– 1792) had in reality been the most prosperous (plus prospère) period in French history, and that the government, while still omnipotent, was becoming less despotic (un gouvernement resté très-puissant en cessant d’être despotique).⁶⁸ Tocqueville argued that it was “this very prosperity which hastened the Revolution” (cette prosperité même hâta la Révolution) in that it fostered an “inner shudder” (un tressaillement intérieur), “public dissatisfaction” (mécontentement public), and “hate of all ancient institutions” (haine contre toute les institutions anciennes).⁶⁹ It is not surprising that Tocqueville’s analysis of the French revolution has resonated strongly with many Chinese. Since the beginning of the “reform and opening” policies, China has also witnessed decades of fast-paced accumulation of wealth. The economic growth has been accompanied by a development of the legal and administrative systems which is aimed at fostering “law-based governance” (fazhi 法治), but not at diminishing the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. First published in Chinese in 1992,⁷⁰ Tocqueville’s book on the French Revolution became one of the key texts read by the elite of the Communist Party of China around 2012. Its most prominent advocate is probably Wang Qishan 王岐山 (1948–), a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and the secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, who has publicly recommended the text and distributed it to his colleagues and acquaintances.⁷¹ One of his interlocutors, the economist Hua Sheng 華生 (1953–), recorded Wang’s thoughts about the book in a widely-read social media post:

 See Jon Elster, Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 162– 69.  Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien régime et la révolution [The Ancient Regime and the Revolution] (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1856), 259, 266.  Ibid., 259, 261, 268.  Alexis de Tocqueville, Jiu zhidu yu dageming 舊制度與大革命 [The Ancient Regime and the Revolution], tr. Feng Tang 馮棠 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1992).  “Wang Qishan tuijian Jiu zhidu yu dageming: Zhongjiwei zuotanhui shang, zhichu xinguan shangren yao runwu xi wusheng” 王岐山推薦《舊制度與大革命》：中紀委座談會上，指出新 官上任要潤物細無聲 [Wang Qishan Recommends the Ancient Regime and the Revolution: at the CCDI’s Panel Discussion, he Points out that New Officials Should be “Nourishing, Delicate and Soundless”], Qilu Wanbao 齊魯晚報, December 11, 2012, A07. See further Nele Noesselt, “Spiegeldebatten über Reformbedarf und Revolutionsgefahr” [Mirror Debates about Need for Reform and Danger of Revolution], Leviathan 3 (2014): 346.

140

Egas Moniz Bandeira

I went to the ‘Hai⁷² to see a senior leader, and was recommended to read a book, Tocqueville’s The ancient regime and the revolution. He thinks that the transformation to modernity of a big power like China, which plays a decisive role in the world, will not be that smooth, no matter whether one looks at it from history or whether it be today’s external environment. The price paid by the Chinese people has not been enough. In the past few years, things have gone comparatively smoothly, but one will hardly be able to avoid setbacks further down the road. 去海裏見老領導，被推薦讀本書，托克維爾的「舊制度與大革命」。他認爲中國這樣在世 界上舉足輕重的大國，從歷史上看也好，今天的外部環境也好，現代化轉型不會那麽順利。 中國人自己的代價也没有付夠。過去這些年走得順利些，下面難免會有反復。⁷³

Hua’s post reflects a widespread anxiety that, for both internal and external factors, China’s development might enter a “deep-water zone” (shenshuiqu 深水區) much more difficult to navigate than the comparatively smooth first three decades of the “reform and opening” policies.⁷⁴ The search for the right lessons to be drawn from the past and in particular from the French Revolution is a significant part of the ongoing debate about how China could avoid dangers for the stability of her political system and undertake reforms to create a modern administration capable of dealing with the “deep-water zone.” To observers of contemporary China, the use of a French text discussing an event commonly associated with the call for freedom, democracy, and human rights with the aim of securing China’s current political system might seem “astonishing.”⁷⁵ Yet, mutatis mutandis, it is a continuation of some of the very first political uses of the French Revolution in China at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, which urged the Qing government to promote constitutional reforms in order to secure its own existence. It is the most recent in a long and varied tradition of uses of this emblematic moment of seemingly “European” history for the purposes of Chinese political debate.

 I.e. Zhongnanhai 中南海, the seat of the Chinese government.  Hua Sheng 華生, Weibo post, February 25, 2012, 23:03, https://www.weibo.com/1223237202/ y7aHqaSrx (accessed July 7, 2020).  See Zou Dongtao 鄒東濤, Gaige fazhan zai yangfan: Tupo shenshuiqu gaige de 8 nanti 改革發 展再揚帆：突破深水區改革的8難題 [Setting Sails Again for Reform and Development: 8 Difficult Problems for Reforms to Break through the Deep Water Zone] (Beijing: Guojia xingzheng xueyuan chubanshe, 2013), who also refers to Tocqueville.  Noesselt, “Spiegeldebatten,” 346.

Between Chaos and Liberty

141

Conclusion It is often reported that Zhou Enlai 周恩來 (1898 – 1976; in other versions of the story, the protagonist is Mao Tse-tung 毛澤東, 1893 – 1976), when asked by Richard Nixon (1913 – 1914) what he thought about the French Revolution, answered with the statement “it is too soon to tell.”⁷⁶ The story is apocryphal and probably originated in a misunderstanding between the two statesmen. According to Charles (Chas) Freeman (1943–), who acted as a translator between the two, Zhou was not referring to the French Revolution of 1789, but to the recent French student protests of 1968.⁷⁷ Hence, the apocryphal quotation cannot be used as an example of a special profoundness or long-term view supposedly inherent to Oriental thought. Yet, there is a different truth to it. For as little as there is a definitive interpretation of the French Revolution in Europe, there is a definitive interpretation of the French Revolution in China. Was the French Revolution the “mother of all revolutions” and the harbinger of the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity? Or was it a catastrophe which engendered chaos and bloodshed? Has China already seen its equivalent of the French Revolution, or is China comparable to the pre-revolutionary ancien régime? The dominant, state-centric narrative would see the French Revolution as the birth moment of the bourgeois state and thus as a precursor and inspiration for China’s Xinhai revolution. Yet, this representation of the French Revolution conceals a rich history of appropriation by Chinese actors of the most diverse political affiliations and for the most diverse political uses. Many, if not most, of these representations were in one way or the other addressed at the Chinese state, yet they differed as much as ideas about China’s future. Uncovering the various representations of the French Revolution across the board also helps in understanding the vast political diversity hidden beneath simplistic accounts of national history. Although the connections between revolutionary or democratic ideas of 1789 and Chinese revolutionary or democratic ideas are certainly an important element of the story, they are just part of a wider, more complex picture. The French Revolution has been used not only in revolutionary contexts, but also as a stimulus for political reforms, for policies designed to prevent instability and political strife, and as a negative example. While some late Qing intellectuals, including non-revolutionary reformers, recognized the French Revolution as a key event in human history and one of the defining moments of

 See, e. g., Simon Schama, Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2004), xv.  James Fallows, “Arab Spring, Chinese Winter,” The Atlantic 308, no. 2 (2011): 58.

142

Egas Moniz Bandeira

modern constitutionalism, other intellectuals, including the revolutionaries, saw its concrete history with its excesses of chaos and bloodshed as something to be avoided by China. Varying interpretations of the French Revolution have persisted throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Whereas intellectuals in the years leading up to the two hundredth anniversary of the Revolution emphasized the positive ideals of 1789, the most recent debate on Alexis de Tocqueville continues the tradition of conservative and reformist uses of the French Revolution. Notwithstanding the significant differences between the China of the 1900s and today’s China, the underlying question behind the debate remains remarkably similar: how and through what reforms can the Chinese government secure its stability? In his classic work La mémoire collective, Maurice Halbwachs (1877– 1945) writes that memories are not completely isolated and closed, as any person will often recur to memories of others, in a process which ultimately creates a collective memory.⁷⁸ Neither are the collective memories of social groups such as nations isolated, as they often refer to significant events which have taken place within other social groups. Such memories, which are by definition simplified abstractions, develop lives of their own in which they undergo constant reconfiguration according to the circumstances of the respective time and place. Even if China’s own revolutions have been mainly shaped by other factors than the “ideas of 1789,” Chinese intellectuals, politicians, students, and others have made it a significant element of political debates by interpreting it through the lens of their own historical experiences. The history of decline and fall of the ancien régime resonates with traditional Confucian modes of dynastic historiography, while the implications of the French Revolution for global history have necessitated interpretations as to what it means for China. Based on notions of scientific historiography, some interpretations might have claimed objective truth, but none of them has remained exclusive, and several Chinese layers of meanings for the French Revolution have accumulated over time. For whatever objective the memory of the French Revolution is put to use, it has, in the words of Huang Yibing, “long been etched into the deepest layers of the contemporary Chinese political unconscious and collective imagination.”⁷⁹ Its diverse Chinese uses have become local refractions of global elements of collective memory.

 Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective [The Collective Memory] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 36.  Huang, Contemporary Chinese Literature, 20.

Between Chaos and Liberty

143

Bibliography Armitage, David, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed. The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760 – 1840. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Bastid, Marianne. “L’ouverture aux idées d’occident: Quelle influence de la révolution française sur la révolution républicaine de 1911?” [The Opening to Western Ideas: What was the Influence of the French Revolution on the Republican Revolution of 1911?] Extrême-Orient Extrême Occident 2 (1983): 21 – 39. Bell, David A. “Global Conceptual Legacies.” In The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, edited by D. Andress. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Blussé, Leonard, and Nie Dening. The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai Ba Lidai Shiji and Other Stories (1610 – 1795). Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀. “Falanxiren yu jinshi wenming (1915 nian 9 yue 15 ri)” 法蘭西人與近世文 明（一九一五年九月十五日）[The French and Modern Civilisation (September 15, 1915)]. In Chen Duxiu wenzhang xuanbian 陳獨秀文章選編 [Selected Essays of Chen Duxiu], 1:79 – 81. 3 vols. Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 1984. Chen Fei. “Disassembling Empire: Revolutionary Chinese Students in Japan and Discourses on Provincial Independence and Local Self-Government.” Journal of Asian History 2 (2017): 283 – 315. De Zheng 德徵 [pseud.]. “Cong Faguo geming guancha dao Zhongguo geming” 從法國革命觀 察到中國革命 [Observing the Chinese Revolution from the French Revolution]. Minguo ribao 民國日報. July 14. Minguo 15 (1926): 1. Dirlik, Arif. “The New Culture Movement Revisited: Anarchism and the Idea of Social Revolution in New Culture Thinking.” Modern China 3 (1985): 251 – 300. Dirlik, Arif. Revolution and History. The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919 – 1937. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1989. Elster, John. Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Fallows, James. “Arab Spring, Chinese Winter.” The Atlantic 308, no. 2 (2011): 50 – 58. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik [Truth and Method: Basic Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics]. 6th ed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Gao Fengqian 高鳳謙, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟, and Jiang Weiqiao 蔣維喬. Gaodeng xiaoxue guowen jiaokeshu di yi ce 高等小學國文教科書第一册 [National Language Textbook for Senior Elementary Schools]. 2nd ed. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, Guangxu 33 (1907). Geary, Dick. “The Revolutionary Tradition in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” In Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560 – 1991, edited by David Parker, 132 – 50. New York: Routledge, 2000. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust: Der Tragödie zweyter Theil in fünf Acten [Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy in Five Acts]. Stuttgart and Tübingen: J.G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1832. Gugong Bowuyuan Ming-Qing dang’anbu 故宮博物院明清檔案部, ed. Qingmo choubei lixian dang’an shiliao 清末籌備立憲檔案史料 [Archival Material Concerning Constitutional Preparation in the Late Qing]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979. Halbwachs, Maurice. La mémoire collective [The Collective Memory]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.

144

Egas Moniz Bandeira

Hanmin 漢民 [Hu Hanmin 胡漢民]. “Shu houguan Yan shi zuijin zhengjian” 述侯官嚴氏最近政 見 [The Latest Political Views of Mr. Yan from Houguan]. Minbao 民報 2 (1906): 1 – 17. Hua Sheng 華生. “Weibo/@1223237202: Qu Hai li jian lao lingdao 去海裏見老領導” [I went to the ‘Hai to see a senior leader …]. February 25, 2012. 23:03. https://www.weibo.com/1223237202/y7aHqaSrx. Huang Yibing. Contemporary Chinese Literature: From the Cultural Revolution to the Future. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. Jenco, Leigh K., and Jonathan Chappell, “Introduction: History from Between and the Global Circulations of the Past in Asia and Europe, 1600 – 1950.” The Historical Journal (2020), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X19000633: 1 – 16. Jingwei 精衛 [Wang Jingwei 汪精衛]. “Zai bo Xinmin Congbao zhi zhengzhi geming lun” 再駁 新民叢報之政治革命論 [Refuting Again the Xinmin congbao’s Theory of Political Revolution]. Minbao 民報 7 (1906): 33 – 62. Judge, Joan. The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Kang Youwei 康有爲. Buxing er yan zhong; bu ting ze guo wang 不幸而言中不聽則國亡 [Unfortunately, my Words Have Come True. If One Does Not Listen to Me, Then the Country Will Perish]. Vol. 16 of Kang Nanhai xiansheng yizhu huikan康南海先生遺著彙刋 [Collected works of Mr. Kang Nanhai], edited by Jiang Guilin 蔣貴麟. Taipei: Hongye shuju, Minguo 76 (1987). Karl, Rebecca E. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham et al.: Duke University Press, 2007. King, Diana. “Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France.” PhD diss.: Columbia University, 2017. Kurtz, Joachim. “Chinese Dreams of the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Utopia, Propaganda.” Medieval History Journal 1 (2018): 1 – 24. Lenin Ленин, Vladimir Il’ich Владимир Ильич. “Demokratiia ͡ i narodnichestvo v Kitae” Демократия и народничество в Китае [Democracy and Populism in China]. In Polnoe sobranie sochineniĭ Полное собрание сочинений [Complete Collection of Works], edited ͡ KPSS Институт Марксизма-Ленинизма при ЦК by Institut Marksizma-Leninizma pri TSK КПСС, vol. 21, 400 – 406. 5th edition. 56 volumes. Moscow: Politizdat, 1966 – 1981. Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole. “Le Centenaire de 1789.” [The Centenary of 1789]. Revue des Deux Mondes 4 (1889): 860 – 904. Li Dazhao 李大釗. “Fa-E geming bijiao guan” 法俄革命比較觀 [A Comparative View of the French and Russian Revolution]. In Li Dazhao xuanji 李大釗選集 [Selected Works of Li Dazhao], 101 – 04. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1959. Liang Qichao 梁啟超. “Benguan di yibai ce zhuci bing lun baoguan zhi zeren ji benguan zhi jingli” 本館第一百册祝辭並論報館之責任及本館之經歷 [Congratulatory Words on the 100th Issue of this Magazine, Together with a Discussion of the Responsibilities of the Press and the Experiences of this Magazine]. Qing yi bao 清議報, no. 100 (1901): 1 – 8. Liang Qichao 梁啟超. “Hanman lu (yiming ban jiushi lu)” 汗漫錄（一名半九十錄）[Record of the Wide Ocean (also entitled Record of a Tortuous Journey)]. Qing yi bao 清議報, nos. 35, 36, 38: 2257 – 2265; 2323 – 2330; 2451 – 2457. Liu Yazi 柳亞子. “Zhongguo lixian wenti (1903 nian 9 yue)” 中國立憲問題 （1903年9月） [China’s Constitutional Question (September 1903)]. In Liu Yazi xuan ji 柳亞子選集

Between Chaos and Liberty

145

[Selected Works of Liu Yazi], edited by Wang Jingyao 王晶垚 et al., 22 – 25. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1989. Liu Zongxu 劉宗緒, ed. Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji 法國大革命二百年紀 週年論文集 [Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1990. Maissen, Thomas, and Barbara Mittler. Why China did Not Have a Renaissance—and Why that Matters: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Marx, K., and F. Engels. Werke [Works], edited by Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED. 44 vols. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1956 – 1990. Minyi 民意 [Wang Jingwei 汪精衛; Hu Hanmin 胡漢民]. “Tuerqi geming” 土耳其革命 [The Turkish Revolution]. Minbao 民報 25 (1910): 1 – 7. Mishra, Pankaj. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Moniz Bandeira, Egas “China and the Political Upheavals in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia: Non-Western Influences on Constitutional Thinking in Late Imperial China, 1893 – 1911.” Transcultural studies 2 (2017): 40 – 78. Mu Ling. “Chinese Cultural and Literary Criticism in the 1980’s.” PhD dissertation: Cornell University, 1994. Noesselt, Nele. “Spiegeldebatten über Reformbedarf und Revolutionsgefahr” [Mirror Debates about Need for Reform and Danger of Revolution]. Leviathan 3 (2014): 346 – 62. Pomeranz, Kenneth. “Their Own Path to Crisis? Social Change, State-Building, and the Limits of Qing Expansion, c. 1770 – 1840.” In The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760 – 1840, edited by David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 189 – 208. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Qilu Wanbao 齊魯晚報. 2012. “Wang Qishan tuijian Jiu zhidu yu dageming: Zhongjiwei zuotanhui shang, zhichu xinguan shangren yao runwu xi wusheng” 王岐山推薦《舊制度 與大革命》：中紀委座談會上，指出新官上任要潤物細無聲 [Wang Qishan Recommends the Ancient Regime and the Revolution: At the CCDI’s Panel Discussion, he Points out that New Officials Should be “Nourishing, Delicate and Soundless”]. December 11, 2012: A07. Schama, Simon. Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Schwarcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and Legacy of the May Fourth Movement. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Shenbao. “Lun jinri guomin zhi dongji” 論近日國民之動機 [On the Recent Intents of the Citizens]. January 1, 1906 (n° 11751): 2. Shenbao. “Lun zhengfu jinri zhi zhengce” 論政府近日之政策 [On the Government’s Recent Policies]. January 8, 1907 (n° 12115): 2. Shenbao. “Lunshuo” 論說 [Commentary]. June 30, 1908 (n° 12721): 4 – 5. Shen Jian 沈堅. “Zhongguo jindai sixiangjia yan zhong de Faguo dageming xingxiang” 中國近 代思想家眼中的法國大革命形象 [The Image of the French Revolution in the Eyes of Modern Chinese Intellectuals]. In Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji 法國大 革命二百週年紀週年論文集 [Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution], edited by Liu Zongxu 劉宗緒, 81 – 94. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1990.

146

Egas Moniz Bandeira

Su Xiaokang 蘇曉康. “Shijimo huimou—guanyu yi bu dianshipian de liuchan jilu” 世紀末回眸 ——關於一部電視片的流產記錄 [Looking Back at the End of the Century: Record about the Abortion of a TV Film]. Wenhui yuekan 文匯月刋, no. 5 (1989): 16 – 24. Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. Cambridge (USA) and London (UK): Harvard University Press, 2003. Tang Xiaobing. Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity. The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Tocqueville, Alexis de. L’Ancien régime et la révolution [The Ancient Regime and the Revolution]. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1856. Chinese translation as Jiu zhidu yu dageming 舊制度與大革命. Translated by Feng Tang 馮棠. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1992. Walsh, William H. “Colligatory Concepts in History.” In The Philosophy of History, edited by Patrick L. Gardiner, 127 – 44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Wang Xiaoling. “Liu Shipei et son concept de contrat social chinois.” [Liu Shipei and his Concept of a Chinese Social Contract]. Études Chinoises 1 – 2 (1998): 155 – 90. Wang Xiaoling. Jean-Jacques Rousseau en Chine: de 1871 à nos jours [Jean-Jacques Rousseau in China: From 1871 to Our Days]. Montmorency: Socie´te´ internationale des amis du Muse´e Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2010. Wang Xiaoling, Tanguy L’Aminot, and Eddy Dufourmont. Rousseau en Asie [Rousseau in Asia]. Geneva: Slatkine, 2015. Wei Yuan 魏源. Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 [Illustrated Treatise on the Countries of the Seas]. 3 vols. Changsha: Yuelu shushe chubanshe, 1998. Wu Enyuan 吳恩遠. “‘Shiyue geming yu Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi’ lilun yantaohui fayan zhaiyao: Sulian jieti jiaoxun yu jianchi shiyue geming jiben yuanze”「十月革命與中國特 色社會主義」理論研討會發言摘要：蘇聯解體教訓與堅持十月革命基本原則 [Summary of the Contributions at the Theory Conference “The October Revolution and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Holding Fast to the Basic Principles of the October Revolution]. Renmin Ribao 人民日報, September 28, 2017: 16. Wu Xu 吳緒 and Yang Renpian 楊人楩, ed., trans. 18 shiji mo Faguo zichan jieji geming 十八 世紀末法國資產階級革命 [The French Bourgeois Revolution at the End of the 18th Century]. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1989. Xi Jinping 習近平. “‘Yi mo gao yu ai min, xing mo hou yu le min’—zai Guangdong kaocha gongzuo shi jianghua (2012 nian 12 yue 7 ri zhi 11 ri)”「意莫高於愛民，形莫厚於樂民」 ——在廣東考察工作時講話（2012年12月7日至11日） [“The Greatest Meaning is Loving the People; the Most Generous Action is Making the People Happy”—Speech Given During Inspection in Canton (December 7 – 11, 2012)]. Da shijian 大事件, no. 19 (2013): 13 – 24. Yao Peng 姚鵬. Ziyou nüshen de xiaxiang: Dui Faguo dageming jiben yuanze de lishi fansi 自 由女神的遐想對法國大革命基本原則的歷史反思 [Daydreams of the Goddess of Liberty: A Historical Reflection on the Basic Principles of the French Revolution]. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1988. Ye Zhiru 葉志如. “Qingmo Wang Zhaoming bei bu hou de gongdan ji youguan shiliao” 清末 汪兆銘被捕後的供單及有關史料 [Protocol of the Arrest of Wang Zhaoming in the Late Qing, and Related Historical Documents]. Lishi dang’an 歷史檔案 2 (1983): 21 – 24.

Between Chaos and Liberty

147

Yu Danchu 俞旦初. “Ershi shiji chunian Faguo dageming zai Zhongguo de jieshao he yingxiang” 二十世紀初年法國大革命史在中國的介紹和影響 [The Introduction and Influence of the French Revolution in Early 20th Century China]. In Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji 法國大革命二百週年紀週年論文集 [Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution], edited by Liu Zongxu 劉宗緒, 173 – 86. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1990. Zhang Kaiyuan 章開沅. “Faguo dageming yu Xinhai geming: jinian Faguo dageming erbai zhounian” 法國大革命與辛亥革命——紀年法國大革命二百週年 [The French Revolution and the Xinhai Revolution: In Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution]. In Faguo dageming erbai zhounian jinian lunwenji 法國大革命二百週年紀週 年論文集 (Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution), edited by Liu Zongxu 劉宗緒, 64 – 80. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1990. Zhou Kui 周逵, ed., trans. Xianfa jingli 憲法精理 [Essential Principles of Constitutional Law]. Shanghai: Guangzhi shuju, Guangxu 28 (1902). Zhou Shangwen 周尚文, Hao Yuqing 郝宇青 et al. Hefaxing shiye xia de Sulian zhengzhi 合法 性視野下的蘇聯政治 [Soviet Politics from the Perspective of Legitimacy]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2006. Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚. Zou chu zhong shiji 走出中世紀 [Coming Out of the Middle Ages]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1987. Enlarged edition in Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 2007. Zou Dongtao 鄒東濤. Gaige fazhan zai yangfan: Tupo shenshuiqu gaige de 8 nanti 改革發展 再揚帆：突破深水區改革的8難題 [Setting Sails Again for Reform and Development: 8 Difficult Problems for Reforms to Break through the Deep Water Zone]. Beijing: Guojia xingzheng xueyuan chubanshe, 2013. Zuo Jiping and Robert Benford. “Mobilization Processes and the 1989 Democratic Movement.” The Sociological Quarterly 1 (1995): 131 – 56.

Victor K. Fong

Imagining the Future from History: The Tang Dynasty and the “China Dream” Abstract: Proposed by Xi Jinping right after his assumption of the Chinese presidency in 2012, the “China Dream” has been a keyword that symbolizes his rule and goal of the present-day PRC. Referring to the “the great revival of the Chinese nation”, such a dream has been widely regarded as the manifestation of Xi’s ambition to restore China’s historical position as a dominant power in Asia or even in the world. This paper focuses on the historical memory of the Tang dynasty in the past and present in China, and it traces the source of inspiration for the “Chinese Dream” in history. It investigates how Chinese rulers over the past millennium have selectively remembered the glorious part of the Tang Empire and formulated a state-centric narrative of the dynasty. Such a narrative defines the Tang as the highest point of the Chinese civilization and a model of imperial rule, and Chinese rulers employ that version of historical memory to justify their expansion campaigns in the name of revival of the Tang historical power. This paper argues that Xi inherits this state narrative from previous regimes and takes the Tang as the goal of “the great revival of the Chinese nation”, indicating the deep historical roots of the “China Dream”. Keywords: Belt and Road Initiative, China Dream, historical memory, Tang Dynasty, Tang Taizong, Xi Jinping

Introduction The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had an unusual state visit to China in May 2015. Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to receive him in Xi’an 西安, a major city in Central China, rather than in Beijing where he usually accommodates foreign leaders. Xi also welcomed him with a special ceremony and performance in the style of China’s Tang 唐 dynasty (618 – 907).¹ Upon Modi’s arrival,

Victor K. Fong, The Australian National University  See the news report by Ananth Krishnan, “Modi, Xi Set for Historic Xi’an Summit”, India Today, May 14, 2015, accessed March 15, 2019, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/modi-xijinping-china-visit-252761-2015 - 05 -13. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-007

150

Victor K. Fong

two guards of honor in golden imperial armor guided him to the city’s south wall, where a group in Tang costumes performed Tang classical dances.² As Chinese newspaper Xinhua indicated, this arrangement was a “carefully orchestrated choice” to show the “deep historical links” between the two countries.³ Known in the past as Chang’an 長安, Xi’an was the capital of the Tang Empire and the place where the eminent Tang Buddhist monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (aka Tang Sanzang 唐三藏, 602– 664) began his pilgrimage to India.⁴ A figurine of Xuanzang was therefore given to Modi as a gift of the trip. These arrangements were Xi’s attempt to create cultural affinity through history between China and India, as some observers have suggested.⁵ But this also fuels speculation that Xi is ambitious and sees the China under him as a successor of the Tang Empire.⁶ The Tang was arguably one of the mightiest powers in Chinese history and across the globe in the Middle Ages, governing a vast territory from present-day Korea to Kyrgyzstan at its peak. Indeed, the “China Dream” 中國夢 that Xi proposes, intended as “the great revival of the Chinese nation” 中華民族的偉大復興, is often regarded as his ambition to rebuild the Chinese empire and restore China’s historical status as a dominant power in Asia and even in the world.⁷

 A part of this ceremony was recorded in footage by DuoWei News 多維新聞 on YouTube, “Modi fang Hua, Xi Jinping shouchi yi Tangdai chuantong yishi huanying” 莫迪訪華, 習近平 首次以唐代傳統儀式歡迎 [Modi’s visit to China: Xi Jinping’s first time to welcome [him] by Tang traditional ceremony], accessed March 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ qE5LBXFbo.  Xinhua 新華社, “Trust between Two Oriental Giants”, May 14, 2015, accessed March 15, 2019, http://china.org.cn/world/2015 – 05/14/content_35571627.htm.  For first-hand records of Xuanzang’s trip, see his biography by his disciple Huili 慧立 (b.615), Da Tang Daci’ensi sanzang fashi juan 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳 [A Biography of the Sanzang Dharma of the Great Ci’en Temple of the Great Tang] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983). For English translation, see Li Rongxi (trans.), A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang dynasty (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1995).  Shannon Tiezzi, “Modi’s First Stop in China: Why Xi’an?”, The Diplomat, May 15, 2015, accessed March 15, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/modis-first-stop-in-china-why-xian/;.  For instance, see a comment on Boxun News 博訊新聞 by Liu Dong 劉東, “Xi Jinping menghui sheng Tang huihuang shi Yandi” 習近平夢回盛唐輝煌實煬帝 [Xi Jinping Dreams to Return to the High Tang [but he] in fact is Emperor Yang], June 17, 2016, accessed March 16, 2019, https://www.boxun.com/news/gb/pubvp/2016/06/201606172319.shtml.  For instance, Jamil Anderlini, “The Dark Side of China’s National Renewal”, Financial Times, June 21, 2017, accessed March 15, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/360afba4-55d1-11e7-9fedc19e2700005 f; and Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Imagining the Future from History

151

Certainly, during its imperial history, China has seen several mighty dynasties besides the Tang, such as the Han 漢 (202 BC–220), Yuan 元 (1271– 1368), Ming 明 (1368 – 1644), and Qing 清 (1644 – 1912), which were also dominant powers in their known world. While they all inform the present “China Dream”, the Tang dynasty is paramount in this regard. As we see below, Tang’s glorious achievements inspired Chinese leaders of later imperial and Republican times to dream and pursue. Even today, in the official narratives of the PRC represented by the state media, the Tang is still regarded as the most glorious time in Chinese history and is therefore significant in the discourse on the “China Dream”. In fact, Tang was not always a strong empire, and it declined soon after it reached the greatest extent of its territorial expansion. For about half of its two hundred and eighty-nine years, the empire was only a regional power and under constant foreign threats and internal conflicts. However, subsequent dynasties and regimes have selectively represented the heyday of the Tang, romanticized the empire, and made it the goal of their expansions to restore the glory of the Tang. In line with Egas Moniz Bandeira’s and Keith Clark’s chapters, this is another case study of how Chinese states have used and manipulated the past for their contemporary political agendas and how Xi inherited the state-centric narrative of the past from previous emperors and leaders to take the Tang’s achievements to be the goal of “the great revival of the Chinese nation”. This chapter focuses on how historical memories of the Tang dynasty have inspired imagination of China’s future developments in the past and present. It first reviews the Tang dynasty’s achievements and failures and how the empire’s legacy was selectively remembered as a model in later imperial periods and Republican times. It then discusses the image of the dynasty in the official narratives to explain how the PRC state represents the Tang in endorsing Xi’s “China Dream” and promoting the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. This chapter therefore argues that the present desire to restore China’s power is deeply rooted in history. The Tang Empire has long been regarded as a high point of Chinese civilization, and the party-state inherited the narrative of a glorious Tang Empire to justify the country’s restoration to a position of comparable power and hegemony.

The Achievements and Failures of the Tang Empire Overall, the Tang achieved a series of accomplishments that were remarkable in Chinese history. Firstly, the Tang was the only regime that firmly reunited China

152

Victor K. Fong

after a long division in the Middle Ages. Previously, China had been fragmented for nearly four centuries since the fall of Western Jin 西晉 (266 – 316), except during the short-lived unification under the Sui 隋 dynasty (581– 619) for thirty-eight years. Only the Tang could achieve a long-lasting unification for two hundred and eighty-nine years that consolidated a fragmented China. Secondly, the Tang’s second emperor, Taizong 太宗 (Li Shimin 李世民, 598 – 649; r. 626 – 649), conquered the dominant power in Central Asia, the Turks 突厥, expanding the Tang territory over present-day southern Russia, Xinjiang, and Kyrgyzstan.⁸ From the defeated tribal leaders in the region, he also earned a glorious title, “the Khan of Heaven” 天可汗, meaning the “incarnation of Heaven”.⁹ This was unprecedented in Chinese history, and the title was a supreme claim in both Confucian and Turkic cultures. While in both orthodoxies the conventional titles for rulers, “the Son of Heaven” 天子 and “Heaven (Tängri)-born Khan”, referred to junior kindreds of Heaven on earth, “the Khan of Heaven” recognized Taizong as Heaven’s embodiment in the human realm per se, regarding him as the only legitimate monarch on earth.¹⁰ Besides the military success, Taizong re-

 In fact, Tang was built under the shadow of the Turks, who were the superpower across Inner and Northeast Asia since the mid-sixth century. Although the Turks split into eastern and western empires in the 610s, they were still very powerful with a number of kingdoms and tribes serving as their dependants. The Tang founding emperor, Gaozhu 高祖 (Li Yuan 李淵, 566 – 635; r. 618 – 626), had to submit to the Eastern Turks for military protection and support. But Taizong was successful in strengthening Tang in his reign. See Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), 101– 32; Jonathan Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012), 39 – 50; Chen Yinque 陳寅恪(1890 – 1969), “Lun Tang Gaozu chengchen yu Tuque shi” 論唐高 祖稱臣於突厥事 [On the Tang Gaozu’s submission to the Turks], in his anthology Hanliu Tang ji 寒柳堂集 (The Collection of Hanliu Hall) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001), 108 – 32; Joseph Wong 黃約瑟, “Luelun Li-Tang qibing yu Tuque guanxi” 略論李唐起兵與突厥關係 [A Brief Discussion on the Uprising of the Li Tang Dynasty and its Relation to the Turks], Shih-Huo Monthly 食貨月刊 16 (1988): 434– 45; Iwami Kiyohiro 石見清裕, Tō no hokupō mondai to kokuzai chisujo 唐の北方問題と国際秩序 (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1998), 17– 66.  Jiu Tang Shu 舊唐書 [hereafter as JTS] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 3.39 – 40.  Jonathan Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors, 122; Lin Guanqun 林冠群, Yubo gan’ge: Tang-Fan guanxi shi yanjiu 玉帛干戈: 唐蕃關係史研究 [Jade and Silk, Shield and Glaive: A Study on Tang-Tibet Relations] (Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2016), 83 – 86. After Taizong, Tang emperors also enjoyed this title until Emperor Daizong 代宗 (Li Yu 李 豫, 726 – 779; r.762– 779). Some scholars believe that, under this title, a corollary diplomatic system was established for the Tang emperors to exercise their rule in inner Asia. But others are more inclined to see this as only an honorific title. Interestingly, Emperor Taizong was not the only Asian ruler who received this title. According to Inner Asian sources, the title of “Khan of Heaven” came from Turkish, “Tängri Qahan”, since Tängri meant “heaven” in the language. This title was bestowed upon a few Turkish rulers after Taizong as well, but the Tang

Imagining the Future from History

153

formed the empire’s administrative and legal systems, and Tang law came to be seen as the fairest in Chinese history.¹¹ Furthermore, Taizong respected his ministers and always welcomed their advice, particularly in his early reign. His appreciation of the straight remonstration by Wei Zheng 魏徵 (580 – 643) was widely regarded as the best example of an ideal relationship between ruler and minister in the Chinese tradition. His reign title “Zhenguan” 貞觀 therefore became a synonym of “good governance” in Chinese history. Taizong was also proud of these achievements. In 649, the second last year before his death, he compiled a guidebook of imperial rule, The Model for Emperor (Difan 帝範), to instruct his successors on rulership and establish himself as a role model of imperial governance. His son Emperor Gaozong 高宗 (Li Zhi 李治, 628 – 683; r. 649 – 683) conquered the Korean peninsula and achieved the greatest extent of territorial expansion for the empire. However, in terms of military control, the Tang declined soon thereafter. Tang rule was never firmly established on the Korean peninsula, and local unrest forced the withdrawal of all Tang troops within a few years.¹² Besides, once conquered by the Tang, the Turks revived in the late seventh century during the reign of Empress Wu 武后 (Wu Zhao 武曌, 624– 705; r. 690 – 705) and took control over present-day Mongolia, which the Tang were never able to reclaim.¹³ In the

sources transcribed them as “Deng li ke han” 登利可汗 or 登里可汗 rather than a literal translation for Taizong, leaving an impression that he assumed a supreme status with no one in the same league. This may show the bias of Tang records and histories. See JTS, 3.39; ZZTJ, 81.6037; Luo Xiang-lin 羅香林, “Tangdai Tiankehan zhidu kao” 唐代天可汗制度考, Tangdai wenhua shi 唐代文化史 (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuju, 1955), 54– 87; Liu Yi-tang 劉義棠, “Tiankehan tanyuan” 天可汗探源, Zhongguo xiyu yanjiu 中國西域研究 (Taipei: Zhong zheng shu ju, 1997), 71– 109; Cai Hong-sheng 蔡鴻生, Tangdai jiuxing hu yu Tujue wenhua 唐代九姓胡與突厥文化 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 136; Zhu zhen-hong 朱振宏, “Tangdai Huangdi Tiankehan shiyi” 唐代「皇帝 天可汗」釋義, Hanxue yanjiu 漢學研究 21, no.1 (June 2013): 413 – 33.  See Qing scholars’ comments on Tang codes in Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目提 要 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuju, 1933), 1735.  See Wang Xiaofu 王小甫, “Sui Tang Wudai dongbeiya zhengzhi dashi” 隋唐五代東北亞政治 大勢 [The General Political Trends of Northeast Asia in Sui, Tang and the Five Dynasties]; “Tangchao yu Xinlou guanzi shilun” 唐朝與新羅關係史論 [On the History of Tang and Silla Relations], in Sheng Tang shidai yu dongbeiya zhengju 盛唐時代與東北亞政局 [The High Tang and the Political Situation of Northeast Asia], ed. Wang Xiaofu (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2003), 3 – 34; 426 – 442.  See Wang Xiaofu, “Sui Tang Wudai dongbeiya zhengzhi guanxi dash”; Li Songtao 李松濤, “Lun Qidan Li Jizhong, Sun Wanrong zhi luan” 論契丹李盡忠, 孫萬榮之亂 [On the Rebellion of Khitan Li Jizhong and Sun Wanrong] Sheng Tang shidai yu dongbeiya zhengju, ed. Wang Xiaofu, 3 – 33; 94– 115.

154

Victor K. Fong

eighth century, the Tang Empire fell apart during the massive rebellion provoked by a mighty Tang general An Lushan 安祿山 (703 – 757) in 755. Tang lost most of its western territories conquered during the Taizong reign after it withdrew its frontier armies to suppress the insurrection.¹⁴ The rebels who surrendered to the Tang also joined with local warlords across the empire, leading the Tang court to lose effective control of lands north of the Yellow River.¹⁵ No foreign rulers addressed Tang monarchs as “the Khan of Heaven” anymore. Chang’an was also exposed to invasions. In 763, for instance, the Tibetan Empire annexed and looted the city for fifteen days. They even enthroned a Tang prince as the new Tang emperor and planned to control the empire. This attempt failed thanks to the strong resistance of the Tang forces that restored the capital later.¹⁶ The second half of the dynasty was therefore full of struggles. Rulers began to dream of revival and the early Tang success became their model. During this period, the High Tang, or the reign of Taizong in particular, became remembered as a glorious time in history, giving rise to these late Tang attempts of revival that were an early version of the “China Dream” in the Middle Ages.¹⁷. For example, as the first Tang monarch who assumed the throne after the An Lushan Rebellion, Emperor Dezong 德宗 (Li Kuo 李适, 742– 805; r.779 – 805) commanded his court to recommend talents who were comparable to the great ministers of Taizong.¹⁸ He also took “Zhenyuan” 貞元 (785 – 805) as one of his reign titles, which derived from Zhenguan.¹⁹ In addition, the reformist emperor Xianzong 憲宗 (Li Chuan 李純, 778 – 820; r. 805 – 820), who also dreamed of restoration, often asked his ministers for advice on how he could achieve triumphs comparable to those of Taizong.²⁰ With this aspiration, he successfully conquered some rival warlords, reverted them to following Tang’s rule, and checked the Tibetans’

 ZZTJ, 217.6935 – 6950; 218.6951– 6961.  Zhang Guogang 張國剛, Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu 唐代蕃鎮研究 [A Study on Tang Local Warlords] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2010), 9 – 30.  ZZTJ, 223.7150 – 7159.  For more discussions on late Tang perception towards the High Tang, see Liao Yifang 廖宜 方, Tangdai de lishi jiyi 唐代的歷史記憶 [The Historical Memories of Tang China] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chubanshe, 2011), 122 – 88.  Han Yu 韓愈 (768 – 824), “Henan fu tongguan ji” 河南府同官記 [A Note on the Fellowship in the Henan Prefecture], in Han Changli wenji zhushi 韓昌黎文集注釋 [A Commentary and Annotation on the Anthology of Han Yu], ed. Yan Qi 閻琦 (Xi’an: Sanqin chubanshe, 2004) vol. 2, 491.  Zhou Xunchu 周勛初, ed., Tangren yishi huibian 唐人軼事彙編 [A Collection of Anecdotes of Tang People] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006) vol. 2, 767.  XTS, 152.4836.

Imagining the Future from History

155

further expansion toward the Tang Empire.²¹ Unfortunately, despite this strong aspiration of revival, no late Tang emperors succeeded in achieving their dreams, and the Tang collapsed in 907.

The Memory of the Tang Glories in Later Dynasties The Song and Yuan Times Although Tang was weak for the rest of its time after the An Lushan Rebellion, the late Tang narrative about the High Tang passed down to the Song 宋 dynasty (960 – 1279). The glory of Tang was highlighted by Song rulers to endorse their expansion campaign as well. As the next unified dynasty after Tang, the Song was not able to reclaim the territories of the High Tang Empire and was subject to threats from the strong foreign powers of the Khitan 契丹, Tangut 党項, Jurchan 女真, and Mongols 蒙古. “To make the empire great again” was also the dream of the Song court, and the Tang success shaped their minds as well. The prime example was Emperor Shenzong 神宗 (Zhao Xu 趙頊, 1048 – 1085; r. 1067– 1085) who came to power with a great ambition of restoration. He modelled himself after Tang Taizong and supported the progressive Grand Chancellor Wang Anshi 王安石 (1021– 1086) to carry out large-scale reforms to strengthen the empire.²² A major revival project of his was to conquer the Tangut Xia 夏 (1028 – 1127) and restore China’s control over Central Asia. In 1081, he invaded Xia and almost reached the Xia capital. But this campaign failed eventually, and he died of depression in 1085.²³  Michael Dalby, “Court Politics in Late Tang times”, The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), vol. 3, 611– 34.  Huang Yizhou 黃以周 (1828 – 1899), ed., Xu zizhi tongjian changbian shibu 續資治通鑑長編拾 補 [hereafter, XZZTJCBSB] [A supplement of the long draft of the continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 92– 93. The Shenzong’s aspiration to Tang Taizong has attracted scholarly attention; see Higashi Ichio 東一夫, Ō Anseki shinpō no kenkyū 王安石新法の研究 (Tōkyō: Kazama Shobō, 1970), 95 – 108; Zhang Yuan 張 元, “Cong Wang Anshi de xianwang guannian kan ta yu Shenzong de guanxi” 從王安石的先 王觀念看他與宋神宗的關係, in Songshi yanjiu ji 宋史研究集 [A Collection of the Studies on Song History], ed. Songshi zuotan hui 宋史座談會 [The Committee of the Song History Forum] (Taipei: Guoli bianyi guan, 1988), vol. 23, 273 – 300.  Paul C. Forage, “The Sino-Tangut War of 1081– 1085”, Journal of Asian History 25, no. 1 (1991): 1– 28; Fang Zhenhua 方震華, “Zhanzheng yu zhengzheng de jiuge: Beisong Yonglecheng zhi yi de jishi” 戰爭與政爭的糾葛: 北宋永樂城之役的紀事 [The Entanglement between Wars and Po-

156

Victor K. Fong

With the significant loss of territory to the Jurchen in northern China, Southern Song Emperor Xiaozong 孝宗 (Zhao Shen, 趙眘, 1127– 1194; r. 1162– 1189) was even more eager to restore China than the previous Song rulers. He often compared himself with Tang Taizong and urged his ministers to behave as Wei Zheng had to support his rule.²⁴ He also manifested his ambition that: What I do not forget about restoration is to unify the Four Seas. I will model on Tang Taizong’s militia system. 朕不忘恢復者，欲混一四海。效唐太宗為府兵之制。²⁵

The “Four Seas” was a metaphorical water boundary invented by ancient Chinese theorists, with each sea corresponding to a cardinal direction around China. These four seas together were commonly referred to as the known world, similar to tianxia (“all under Heaven”). “The unification of the four seas” showed that what Xiaozong dreamed of remained an imperial enterprise comparable to Tang Taizong’s and aimed at conquering both the Han Chinese and barbarians as the Tang empire had. To achieve this, Xiaozong also proposed to emulate Taizong’s militia system. In 1163, barely into the second year of his reign, he organized a failed massive counterattack on the Jurchen. This indicates how Tang achievements had again inspired Chinese rulers with the idea of revival. In Yuan times, Tang governance was held as a reference point by the Mongolian rulers. Compared with the military failures of the Song, the Mongols had established a vast Eurasian empire with the four Khanates, and “revival” became irrelevant to them at this historical high point of their civilization. Yet, to achieve effective rule over China, Yuan leaders also sought knowledge of Han Chinese history and culture. For instance, Emperor Shizu 世祖 (aka Kublai 忽必烈,

litical Conflicts: The Records of the Battle of Yongle city of Northern Song], Hanxue yanjiu 漢學研 究 (Journal of China Studies) 29, no. 3 (2011): 125 – 54; Shao Bowen 邵伯溫 (1057– 114), Shaoshi wenjian lu 邵氏聞見錄 [A Record of the Hearsays of Mr. Shao] (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 2006), 132.  Song shi 宋史 [The Song History] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956), 388.11902.  Xu Song 徐松 (1781– 1848), ed., Song huiyao jigao 宋會要輯稿 [A Draft Compendium of Song Institutional Records] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2014), vol. 1, 243. For more discussions on the use of Tang Taizong in early southern Song political debates, see Fang Zhenhua, “Tang Song zhengzhi lunshu zhong de Zhenguan zhi zheng: zhiguo dianfan de lunbian” 唐宋政治論述中的貞觀之政: 治國典範的論辯 [The Zhenguan Statecraft in the Tang and Song Political Discourses: A Debate on State Ruling Model], Taida lishi xuebao 臺大歷史學 報 (The Historical Journal of the National Taiwan University) 40 (2007): 34– 55.

Imagining the Future from History

157

1260 – 1294; r.1271– 1294) greatly admired Taizong.²⁶ He referenced the Tang institution in establishing the Hanlin Academy 翰林院.²⁷ He encouraged his empress to be upright like Taizong’s Empress Zhangsun 長孫 (601– 636) to assist his rule.²⁸ The Yuan Emperor Renzong 仁宗 (Aiyu 愛育, 1285 – 1320; r. 1311– 1320) also commissioned the court to translate Taizong’s Difan into Mongolian and urged his princes to read it.²⁹

The Ming and Qing Times Following the fall of the Yuan in the fourteenth century, Han Chinese were able to regain their rule over China through the establishment of the Ming dynasty. In this new era of restoration, the Tang was once again the guiding model of governance. This was because the Mongolian Yuan system was not suitable for the new Han Chinese regime, and the weak Song dynasty did not appeal to the Ming court either. Therefore, in admiration of the Tang political institutions and legal systems, the Ming founding emperor Taizu 太祖 (Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋, 1328 – 1398; r. 1368 – 1398) commanded his ministers to offer him daily lectures on Tang codes, on which he based the Ming codes.³⁰ His successor, Emperor Chengzu 成 祖 (aka Yongle 永樂) (Zhu Di 朱棣, 1360 – 1424; r. 1402– 1424), in particular saw Tang Taizong as his role model. He had expressed his respect for Taizong as follows: As for the Way of sage emperors and enlightened kings … I have exhaustedly searched it day and night to reach it… but [I] could not understand its enigma. Looking back to the previous times, like the Tang Emperor of Wen (Taizong) who upheld justice, pacified chaos and unified the known world into one … His thoughts and concerns could not be seen as not comprehensive … He compiled Di fan with 12 chapters to instruct his sons …

 Yanai Watari 箭内亙, “Gen no Seiso to Tō no Taisō” 元の世祖と唐の太宗 [Emperor Yuan Shizu and Tang Taizong], in Mōko shi kenkyū 蒙古史研究 [The Study of Mongol History] (Tōkyō, Tōkō Shoin, 1966), 979 – 89.  Yuanshi 元史 [The Yuan History] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 160.3765.  Ibid., 3757.  Ibid., 137.3311. For more discussions on Yuan perception towards Tang Taizong, see Xiao Qiqing 蕭啟慶, Jiuzhou sihai fengya tong: Yuandai duozu shiren quan de xingcheng yu fazhan 九州四海風雅同: 元代多族士人圈的形成與發展 [The Coherent Elegance and Culture in the Nine Provinces and Four Seas: the Formation and Development of a Multi-ethnic Literati Circle in the Yuan Dynasty] (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan, 2012), 368 – 70.  Ming shilu 明實錄 [The Verified Records of the Ming] (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan, 1966), Taizu, 92.1604– 1605.

158

Victor K. Fong

If his descendants could adhere to and practice it, they could also achieve good governance, and they would not suffer from the troubles of the inner court, the local warlords and the eunuchs. 聖帝明王之道 … 朕夙夜孳孳，勉求其至 … 莫能領悟突奧。縱觀前代，若唐文皇帝，倡義靖 難，定天下於一 … 其思患也，不可謂不周 … 作《帝範》十二篇以訓其子 … 使其子孫能守 而行之，亦可以為治，終無閨門、藩鎮、閽寺之禍。³¹

In Chengzu’s opinion, Taizong was an outstanding emperor who understood the crux of governance. He often referenced Taizong’s statecraft in court debate.³² In the military campaign against the Mongols, he also instructed his generals to learn Li Jing’s tactics towards the Turks.³³ His admiration for Taizong stemmed from personal reasons. Chengzu usurped the throne from his nephew, Emperor Jianwen 建文 (Zhu Yunwen 朱允炆, b. 1377; r. 1398 – 1402), in what resembled Taizong’s murder of his brothers to inherit the crown in the Xuanwu Gate Incident 玄武門之變. Chengzu’s own political agenda led him to hold Taizong as a role model. He was eager for achievements to justify his rule and dreamed of people’s appreciation by scoring significant accomplishments like those of Tang Taizong. He commanded troops against remnant Mongol forces in the north and expelled them to present-day Siberia. He also supported the voyages of Zheng He 鄭和 (1371– 1433) to expand Ming influence overseas to Southeast Asia. Again, the Chengzu example illustrates how Chinese leaders upheld the Tang glory to pursue their own imperial enterprises. During the Qing dynasty, Tang Taizong was also embraced by the court as a key reference point. Similar to the Mongols, the Manchus made the greatest triumph in history. While their ancestors, the Jurchens, had failed to conquer the Song, they in their turn succeeded in occupying China and establishing the Qing dynasty. And again, as in Yuan times, the Qing emperors studied Tang experiences for historical examples on how to rule China. For instance, Emperor Shengzu 聖祖 (aka Kangxi 康熙) (Xuanye 玄燁, 1654– 1722; r. 1661– 1722) often quoted Tang Taizong’s practice to express his view on state affairs, such as on the relationship between the monarch and his officials: In my view of the emperors and kings from the ancient past, Yao and Shun were close to their ministers; Tang Taizong was also open to remonstration, so rulers and ministers had close rapport like father and son, and they could promote goodness and suppress evilness to exert each of their talents to reach the best governance. In the late Ming, rulers and ministers were apart, and therefore everyone suffered … From our Taizu, Taizong and Shizu on-

 Ming shilu, Taizong, 92.1205.  Ibid., 19.337; 39.658; 56.832; 68.1139.  Ibid., 263.2404.

Imagining the Future from History

159

ward, our court has been united with the union of Manchu and Han civil and military officials … which reflects the previous times. 朕觀古來帝王，如唐虞之都俞吁咈、唐太宗之聽言納諫，君臣上下，如家人父子，情誼浹 洽，故能陳善閉邪，各盡所懷，登於至治。明朝末世，君臣隔越，以致四方疾苦 … 我太祖、 太宗、世祖相傳以來，上下一心，滿漢文武，皆為一體 … 以前代為明鑒也。³⁴

This was a speech given by Emperor Shengzu to his chief Manchu minister, Nara Mingzhu 納蘭明珠 (1635 – 1708). Although the emperor claimed that the Qing court had “been united with the union of Manchu and Han officials” since the early time of the dynasty, there were tensions and conflicts between the two factions.³⁵ This was why the emperor quoted the close rapport between Taizong and his ministers to urge cooperation between the Manchus and the Han people. The use of Tang examples to contrast with the Ming precedents also indicates the special role of Tang history in Qing court debates. Since the Manchus regarded the Ming as a vanquished regime, the Ming usually served as a negative example of state decline and collapse in Qing discourse. Compared with the Ming, the Tang dynasty appeared to be a better model of imperial rule. In line with this view of Tang and Ming histories, Emperor Gaozong 高宗 (aka Qianlong 乾隆) (Hongli 弘曆, 1711– 1799; r. 1735 – 1796) also expected himself to rule as well as Tang Taizong did.³⁶ Since the late Tang period, Chinese rulers have remembered the High Tang as a golden era and romanticized Taizong as a legendary emperor and standard model for monarchical rule.

The Changing Role of Tang Historical References in the Late Qing and Republican Periods However, when it came to modern times, Tang was no longer the standard model for rule and governance as China encountered fundamentally different challenges from before. Since the mid-nineteenth century, China had drastically declined

 Qing shilu 清實錄 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), Shengzu, 73.944– 1.  Conflicts between Manchu and Han officials in the early Qing were obvious and ranged from foreign relations to religions. I point this out elsewhere. See my “Kangxi liyu zaitan: Qing chu fazhi xia de xiyang chuanjiaoshi” 康熙曆獄再探: 清初法制下的西洋傳教士 [Revisit the Kangxi Calendar Case: European Missionaries under the Early Qing Legal System] in Bianju xia de xichao: jidujiao yu Zhongguo de xiandai xing 變局下的西潮：基督教與中國的現代性 [Western Tides Coming Ashore in a Changing World: Christianity and China’s Passage into Modernity] (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2015), 375 – 96.  Ibid., Gaozong, 99 – 493 – 2.

160

Victor K. Fong

under Western invasions, with many parts of the country being colonized and occupied by European powers. Losing its long hegemony over Asia, China had to open its ports for free trade and recognize the extraterritoriality of Western countries and Japan under a series of “unfair treaties”. The upheavals and rebellions that broke out following the foreign invasions only led the country to further chaos.³⁷ In the wake of these troubles and disturbances, another wave of the revival campaign arose to restore China’s lost hegemony. However, given the pressing need to modernize the empire and compete with the Western rivals, the late Qing emperors turned their focus to modern Western powers rather than to the Tang. For example, the reformist emperor, Dezong 德宗 (aka Guangxu 光緒) (Zaitian 載湉, 1871– 1908; r. 1875 – 1908) intensively consulted the achievements of Peter the Great of Russia (1672– 1725; r. 1682– 1725), who also ascended to the throne at a young age and strove for modern reformation.³⁸ He also studied the recent success of the Meiji Emperor of Japan (1852– 1912; r. 1865 – 1912) for details on how the Japanese achieved rapid modernization in the preceding decades.³⁹ In contrast to the late Qing, however, the Tang legacy remained essential to nation-building in the Republican period. Following the collapse of the Qing Empire, China needed a new collective identity to unite the ordinary people who had understood themselves as the subjects of a dynasty but never as members of a modern country. As was the case with the growth of nation-states in the west, Republican leaders also proposed to merge the former Qing subjects of different ethnicities into one new nation, Zhonghua minzu 中華民族, in the ideal of the Han Chinese majority. This project was meant to conclude the merits of Chinese culture reflected by the glorious time in history and define the characteristics of the new nation. It also attempted to further reform the country by improving the quality of the people. Therefore, the glorious past of China became a point of reference again, and Tang history reappeared in the political discourse. For instance, Sun Yatsen 孫逸仙 (aka Sun Wen 孫文 and Sun Zhongshan 孫中山, 1866 – 1925) quoted the popularity of sports, especially Cuju 蹴鞠, an ancient Chinese football game, in the Tang dynasty to argue that traditional Chinese culture

 For a general reference for the decline of Qing and traditional China, see John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China: Late Ch’ing 1800 – 1911 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978).  See Bao Siu-lam 鮑紹霖, Wenming de chongjing: Jindai Zhongguo dui minzu yu guoija dianfan de zhuixun 文明的憧憬: 近代中國對民族與國家典範的追尋 [Vision of Civilization: The Search of National Models in Modern China] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1999), 31– 66.  Ibid., 35 – 36.

Imagining the Future from History

161

also valued military spirits.⁴⁰ He suggested that this love of sports contributed to the robust physical body of Tang people and the sharp military power of the magnificent empire; it was only when Chinese intellectuals neglected sports to concentrate on the civil service examinations that China declined. To restore the “original” qualities of Chinese people and build a strong nation, they should start to exercise.⁴¹ In addition, the legendary military success of the Tang empire also inspired Republican political leaders to restore supposedly lost, historical territories. An outstanding example was Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (aka Chiang Chungcheng 蔣 中正, 1887– 1975), who remarked in his diary in 1934 that: Only by recovering Taiwan and Korea and to restore the original territories of Han and Tang would [I] have no shame to be a descendent of the Yellow Emperor. 收復臺灣朝鮮，恢復漢唐固有領土，方不愧為黃帝之裔。⁴²

The ancient king, the Yellow Emperor, had been regarded as the first ruler of China and became the symbolic ancestor of the new Chinese nation during the project of nation-building.⁴³ Chiang also saw himself as a descendant of the legendary king, and recovering Taiwan and Korea was to fulfil his responsibility as a member of the Chinese nation. Taiwan was the Qing territory lost to Japan following the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894 – 1895). Before the conquest, China had always seen Japan as a minor, barbaric country; the defeat of the Qing to Japan shocked the Chinese and the loss of Tai Sun Yatsen, “Sanmin zhuyi yu Zhongguo minzu zhi qiantu” 三民主義與中國民族之前途 [Three People’s Principles and the Future of Chinese Nation], in Guofu quanji 國父全集 [The Complete Works of the Father of the Nation], ed. Guofu quanji bianji weiyuanhui 國父全集编 輯委員會 [The Editorial Committee of the Complete Works of the Father of the Nation] (Taipei: Jindai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1989), vol. 3, 9 – 10.  Sun Yatsen, “Minsheng zhuyi yu le liangpian bushu” 民生主義育樂兩篇補述 [The Supplementary Records of Two Essays, ‘Yu’ and ‘Le’, on the Principle of Mínsheng], in Guofu quanji, vol. 1, 204– 05.  While the full diary of Chiang has not been published, some parts of it have been extracted by Academia Historica 國史館 of Taiwan and released as Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wu ji 蔣中 正總統五記 [The Five Records of President Jiang Zhongzheng]. For the record above, see the entry on March 23, 1934, in Xingke ji省克記 [The Record of Self-reflection and Self-control], Huang Tzu-chin 黃自進 and Pan Kwang-che 潘光哲, eds., Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wu ji (Taipei: Academia Historica, 2011), 804.  See Shen Sung-chiao 沈松僑, “Wo yi wo xuejian xuanyuan——Huangdi shenhua yu wanqing de guozu jiangou” 我以我血薦軒轅——黃帝神話與晚清的國族建構 [The Myth of the Yellow Emperor and the Construction of Chinese Nationhood in Late Qing], in Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 台 灣社會研究季刊 [Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies] 28 (December 1997): 1– 77.

162

Victor K. Fong

wan marked a painful national humiliation. At the time of Chiang’s diary entry, Taiwan was still under Japanese colonial rule, and therefore it was no surprise to see him eager to recover the island. In contrast, China only occupied and ruled parts of Korea in the Han and Tang periods, and the Tang was able to govern its territories on the peninsula for only a few years. But Chiang still regarded it as a territory that he should reclaim, showing how the Tang fueled the military aspirations of a modern Chinese leader. In 1943, Britain and the US decided to abandon their extraterritorial rights in China, and their actions further encouraged Chiang to reclaim China’s international status as a world-dominating power. He noted in his diary again that he wanted the China under him to “restore the grandeur and spirits of the Han and Tang empires” 復興漢唐之規模與氣魄.⁴⁴

The Status of the Tang Historical References in Contemporary China Early Communist Period under Mao Nevertheless, the Tang glories did not impress the Communist leader, Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893 – 1976), as they had Chiang. Under the influence of historical materialism, Mao interpreted human history in terms of the revolutions of modes of economic production. He regarded the Chinese imperial ages as the stage of feudalism when royal houses and noble classes controlled the land and exploited commoners as serfs for economic production. The imperial times were a dark age.⁴⁵ In 1940, Mao articulated this vision in his speech, remarking that: Since the Zhou and Qing dynasties, China had been a feudal society. Its politics had been feudal politics; its economy had been a feudal economy. And those dominant cultures that reflect these politics and economy are feudal cultures … these dominant forms of politics,

 These were his comments on the reason for publishing his book, Zhongguo zhi mingyun 中國 之命運 [China’s Destiny], a work that explains Chiang’s view on the future of China after Western powers abandoned their extraterritorial rights in China. See the diary entry on January 9, 1943, “Xue ji” 學記 [The record of study], Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wu ji, 276. For the discussion on the aims of the book, see Chen Chin-Ching 陳進金, “Xiandai Zhongguo de jiangou: Jiang Jieshi ji qi Zhongguo zhi mingyun” 現代中國的建構: 蔣介石及其《中國之命運》[The Construction of Modern China: Chiang Kai-Shek and his China’s Destiny], Guoshi guan guankan 國史館館刊 (The Journal of Academia Historica) 42 (December 2014): 31– 62.  Mao Zedong, “Zhongguo geming he Zhongguo gongchandang” 中國革命和中國共產黨 [Chinese Revolutions and Chinese Communist Party], in Mao Zedong xuanji 毛澤東選集 [Selected Works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1991), vol. 2, 632– 52.

Imagining the Future from History

163

economy, and cultures are the targets of our revolution … What we need to build up are exact opposites, which are the new politics, economy and cultures of the Chinese nation. 自周秦以來，中國是一個封建社會，其政治是封建的政治，其經濟是封建的經濟。而為這種 政治和經濟之反映的占統治地位的文化，則是封建的文化 … 這些統治的政治、經濟和文化 形態，就是我們革命的物件 … 而我們要建立起來的，則是與此相反的東西，乃是中華民族 的新政治、新經濟和新文化。⁴⁶

Mao, therefore, proposed to build a “new China” with a revolution against the traditional past, and the imperial experiences served no role for such a project of nation-building except as negative examples. Instead of following imperial successes in the past, Mao believed that development should be guided by communism.⁴⁷ Therefore, even though he also enjoyed reading Chinese history as his hobby and admired Tang Taizong as a military genius, he never modelled his “new China” on the Tang.⁴⁸ This critique of traditional culture reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 (1966 – 1976), during which many historical relics from the imperial ages were destroyed as a further rejection of “feudalist ideas”.⁴⁹ While Mao also aimed to revive China, his target was not to regain the historical status of the Han and Tang in Asia but “to surpass Britain and catch up with America” 超英趕美.⁵⁰ This critical view of traditional China would prove influential for future Chinese rulers as well. In 1997, in the 15th National Congress, when the third generation of the PRC’s leaders, Jiang Zemin 江澤民 (1926–), first coined the slogan for “the great revival of the Chinese nation”, he simply suggested achieving such restoration based on the principle

 Mao Zedong, “Xin minzhu zhuyi lun” 新民主主義論, in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 2, 663.  Ibid., 667.  Mao had read the entire 24 standard histories of imperial China in his spare time and left plenty of personal notes on historical events and figures. See Mao Zedong pingdian ershisi shi zhengli chuban weiyuanhui 毛澤東評點二十四史整理出版委員會, ed., Mao Zedong pingdian ershisi shi 毛澤東評點二十四史 [The Editorial and Publication Committee of the “Mao Zedong’s Comments on the 24 Histories”] (Beijing: Zhongguo dang’an chubanshe, 1996). For his admiration of Tang Taizong’s military talents, see Mao Zedong du wenshi guji piyu ji 毛澤東讀文史古籍 批語集 [The Collection of Mao Zedong’s Comments on Ancient Arts and Historical Works] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 65 – 66.  See Barbara Barnouin and Changgen Yu, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 98.  Mao first proposed this slogan in 1957 to surpass Britain and the US in steel production. For further historical context, see Qi Weiping 齊衛平 and Wang Jun 王軍, “Guanyu Mao Zedong “Chao Ying gan Mei” sixiang yanbian jieduan de lishi kaocha” 關於毛澤東「超英趕美」思想 演變階段的歷史考察 [A Historical Observation on the Stages of Change of Mao Zedong’s Thought about “surpassing Britain and catching up with America”], in Shixue yuekan 史學月 刊 [Historical monthly] 2 (2002): 66 – 71.

164

Victor K. Fong

of socialism and by catching up with advanced countries. There was no mention of restoring China to any previous dynasties.⁵¹

The Usage of Tang History under Xi Among modern Chinese leaders, it was only Xi Jinping who began to explicitly link the restoration of modern China to its historical successes. This is where the glory of the Tang Empire enters the picture of the “China Dream”. Since Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 (1904 – 1997) opened China after the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, the People’s Republic has shifted from a communist country to a market economy, with this new path of progression termed “socialism with Chinese characteristics” 中國特色的社會主義. Under the “Open-door Policy,” China has achieved dramatic economic growth since the 1980s. But abandoning the founding ideology of the regime leaves the identity of the communist party and the future direction of the country in question. Since the end of the Cold War (1947– 1991), democratic capitalism has become the dominant alternative to authoritarian communism, as in Western Europe and the US. But while the PRC has embraced market economy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership believe that democratization contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and are therefore hesitant to follow the European and US model for liberal political reforms.⁵² Therefore, in search of the Chinese way to the future, Xi looks back to Chinese history. His “China Dream” recalls the golden times in Chinese history to point out the ideal state of governance. In 2019, the chief state media, the People’s Daily 人民日報, explained: When it comes to glorious times in Chinese history, the Han and Tang must be mentioned first. The Han dynasty is more than 2,000 years away from now, but we still refer to the Chinese language as the ‘Han Language’ and China Studies as ‘Han Studies’, which show its influences. In the Tang times, when [the empire] was best developed, it had a

 “Jiang Zemin zai Zhongguo gongchandang di shiwu ci quanguo daibiao dahui shang de baogao” 江澤民在中國共產黨第十五次全國代表大會上的報告 [Jiang Zemin’s Report on the 15th National Congress], on Zhongguo gongchandang lici quanguo daibiao dahui shujuku 中國共產黨歷 次全國代表大會數據庫 [The database of National Congress of the Communist Party of China], accessed March 12, 2020, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168/64568/65445/4526285.html.  For example, Xi has repeatedly pointed out in his speeches that the USSR fell under its own democratic reforms and this is the lesson the CCP should remember; see Jack Dickens, “Beijing’s Ruling Class is Haunted by the Fall of the Soviet Union”, in Reaction, December 12, 2019, accessed March 13, 2020, https://reaction.life/beijings-ruling-class-is-haunted-by-the-fall-of-thesoviet-union/.

Imagining the Future from History

165

strong and benevolent image. ‘[Being] strong and benevolent’ is what our comrade Mao Zedong has said, which is the ideal state of governance. At that time, it was a picture of a peaceful empire with its culture attractive to foreigners that pacified myriad states. China declined after the mid-Ming. Our comrade Deng Xiaoping has talked about this period of history: ‘If we count from mid-Ming until the Opium War, there had been three-hundred years of door-closing and self-isolation. The long period of door-closing and self-isolation made China poor, falling backwards, stupid and ignorant’. 中國歷史上的輝煌時期，首推漢唐。漢朝距今已有2000多年，現在世界上還把中國的語言 文字稱作漢語，把中國學稱作漢學，可見它的影響。在唐朝的時候，發展得最好的時期，是 又強大又可親的形象。「強大而可親」，這是毛澤東同志說過的話，是治國的理想境界。 當時是時清海晏、文懷遠人、和睦萬邦的景象。中國的衰落，是在明朝中葉以后。鄧小平 同志講過這段歷史。他說：「如果從明朝中葉算起，到鴉片戰爭，有三百多年的閉關自守 … 長期閉關自守，把中國搞得貧窮落后，愚昧無知。」⁵³

Therefore, in the CCP’s view of Chinese history, the Opium War marked the beginning of China’s suffering in modern times, which was ultimately rooted in the Ming dynasty. The periods worthy of emulation were thus the two great, unified Han and Tang dynasties. Between them, the Tang is even better as it represented the “ideal of state rule”. Interestingly, the quoted Mao phrase “strong and benevolent” 強大而可親 originally was not his comment on the Tang dynasty but the ideal image of a successful socialist China.⁵⁴ Here, the news article uses the quote to describe the Tang, seemingly to replace the socialist utopia by the imagined Tang Empire, and therefore to manipulate Mao’s words to endorse the new “ideal of state rule” proposed by Xi. All in all, this passage frames “the great revival of the Chinese nation” as the restoration of China in the image of the powerful Tang Empire. In line with this proposition, the Tang has been conspicuous in other official narratives of the China Dream as well. In November 2013, a leading cultural magazine, Wenming 文明 (civilization), published a special issue on the concept. This issue included an in-depth interview with Xi and his cabinet to introduce their ruling philosophy and personal life, to introduce the new Chinese leaders

 Leng Rong 冷溶, “Shenme shi Zhongguo meng, zenyang lijie Zhongguo meng” 什麼是中國 夢, 怎樣理解中國夢, Renmin Ribao 人民日報 [People’s Daily], April 26, 2013, accessed May 30, 2019, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0426/c40531– 21285625.html.  See the phrase in its original context in Mao Zedong, “Zai Nanjing, Shanghai dangyuan ganbu huiyi shang jianghua de tigang” 在南京上海黨員幹部會議上講話的提綱 [The Outline of the Speech on the Party Committee Meeting in Nanjing and Shanghai], March 19, 1957, in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao 建國以來毛澤東文稿 [Mao Zedong’s Work Since the Establishment of the Nation] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992), vol. 6, 405.

166

Victor K. Fong

in a “lively, fashionable and friendly” way as explained by the magazine.⁵⁵ After these interviews, an introductory passage on the China Dream explained the official state view on the relationship between Chinese imperial history and the Dream.⁵⁶ According to this passage, the China Dream comes from a deep historical context, in which the “Chinese civilization had led the world for 1,500 years of history” that is “sufficient to form the foundation and vision of the China Dream”.⁵⁷ In tracing this glorious history, the magazine describes the Tang dynasty as follows: The Great Tang was China’s strongest time in history. Its territory was the largest in Chinese history … More than half of the internationally famous commercial cities were in China … Since the Zhenguan era, almost all the ethnic minority regimes in the west, southwest and the north hailed the Great Tang emperor as the Khan of Heaven, similar to how the British Commonwealth countries uphold the Queen of England as their supreme head of the states. 大唐是中國歷史上最強盛的時期, 疆域面積是中國歷代最大的 … 當時世界著名的商業城市, 有一半以上集中在中國 … 從貞觀年間開始, 西域各國和西南、北方幾乎全部的少數民族政 權都擁戴大唐皇帝為天可汗, 就像各英聯邦國家擁塞英國女王為國家最高元首一樣。⁵⁸

Like all kinds of propaganda, this account is problematic. As Keith Clark’s chapter has suggested, the CCP’s presentation of history is selective. Here, it exaggerates the power of the Tang to illustrate the Dream. Failures of the Tang are not mentioned. The glorious side of the history is represented to argue China was as strong as the British Empire, which should be the goal of “the great revival”. Using this exaggerated image of the Tang, this magazine and the concept of the China Dream exploit history to justify the state’s desire for growth and expansion in the name of restoration. Similar to Song and Ming times when the memory of Tang success motivated the emperors’ military expansion, the magnificent Tang images have also inspired PRC policies and projects that seek to restore its global influence, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Also known as “One Belt One Road” 一 帶一路, the initiative is a global development project launched by Xi in 2013

 See the abstract of that issue (2013.11) of the magazine on its website, accessed March 30, 2019, http://www.civilization.com.cn/web/c_000000040001/d_0793.htm. Indeed, this section was uploaded to official party media, CPC News [Communist Party of China’s News] 中國共產 黨新聞網, later as well. See “Zhongguo meng de youlai: Wenming xunmeng” 中國夢的由來: 文明尋夢 [The Origins of China Dream: A Dream in Search of Civilization], December 23, 2013, accessed March 30, 2019, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/1223/c40531– 23924627.html.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Ibid.

Imagining the Future from History

167

and focuses on infrastructure and investments in over one hundred and fifty countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The concept of the BRI is derived from the historical trade routes.⁵⁹ The “Belt” is inspired by what are now known as the “Silk Roads”, starting from present-day Xi’an and running westward through Central Asia and Europe. These land-based routes emerged in the Han dynasty and flourished during the Tang. Under the Song, the focus shifted to the seas as a consequence of the obstruction of land routes by Central Asian powers and maritime technological improvements. The initiative drew an analogy between the emergent maritime trade routes and the “Road”. In a similar pattern, the BRI began with commercial cooperation between China and Central Asian countries. Xi first proposed the initiative during his state visit to Kazakhstan in 2013; the first phase targeted business ventures in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, while the flagship enterprise is the infrastructure investments in Pakistan.⁶⁰ In 2019, the People’s Daily indicated the relationship between the historic trade routes and the initiative as follows: The Silk Road, a romantic name like a poem, bares the glorious history of how different countries and civilizations interacted with one another … China’s proposal of the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative encompasses this spirit of interconnectedness and revitalizes this old road … which is to let the spirit of the ancient Silk Road shine in our time. 絲綢之路, 一個詩般浪漫的名字, 承載著沿線各國互通有無, 各文明交流互鑒的輝煌歷史 … 中國提出「一帶一路」倡議, 正是以互聯互通精神, 重新啟動這條古老的道路 … 讓古老的 絲路精神煥發時代的生機。⁶¹

Under the BRI, the Silk Roads are no longer an academic concept in historical geography only, but rather have been vitalized as a source of inspiration for the PRC to formulate and carry out public policy. The initiative not only replicates the ancient trade roads but also aspires to shift the focus of China’s development from the coasts in the east to the hinterland in the west. The initiative projects center on infrastructure investments, such as building roads, railways,

 Richard T. Griffiths, Revitalising the Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Leiden: HIPE Publications, 2017), 1– 4.  Shaanxi sheng shehui kexueyuan 陝西省社會科學院 [The Institute of Social Sciences of Shaanxi Province], ed., Sichou zhilu jingjidai fazhan baogao 絲綢之路經濟帶發展報告 [The Development Report of the Silk Road Economic Belt] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2017), 1– 5.  Guo Jiping 國紀平, “Yidai yilu, zouxiang gongtong fazhan de jiaxiangyue” 一帶一路, 奏響共 同發展的交響樂 [One Belt One Road Plays a “Symphony” of Co-development], Renmin Rebao, May 11, 2017, accessed June 10, 2019, http://world.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0511/c1002– 29267072.html.

168

Victor K. Fong

and ports across partner countries, one aim of which is to solve the problems of Chinese industrial overcapacity. Furthermore, it also seeks to improve inter-regional connectivity for greater financial cooperation and integration of cross‑border markets, especially to increase the use of the Renminbi in international trade. This would contribute to the long‑term ambition of internationalizing the Chinese currency alongside the US dollar and the Euro.⁶² Most importantly, the BRI is the centerpiece of Xi’s project of national rejuvenation. By expanding economic influence across the globe, Xi intends to restore China’s historical status as a dominant power based on the image of the Tang dynasty.

Conclusion “Imagination” usually refers to new ideas or the ability to have such novelty and innovation. This seems irrelevant to old matters or past events, but the so-called “new” ideas often come from experience. People envision tomorrow by things known and remembered. To China, which has a long and well-documented history, the past leaves rich intellectual resources for the state to formulate the future. This chapter has analyzed how history has been remembered and used by Chinese political leaders to imagine the future of the state. It has indicated that these rulers have selectively recalled the glories of Tang history and romanticized the dynasty as a legendary empire. For a millennium since the late Tang, with the exception of late Qing and early PRC periods, the High Tang has been upheld as the highest point of Chinese civilization to endorse and legitimize rulers’ desire of expansion in the name of revival. In light of this grand historical context, Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” does not only stem from his own ambition but also derives from such traditional, state-centric historical narratives. Xi’s aggressive plan of “the great revival of the Chinese nation”, articulated as the “Belt and Road Initiative”, is another restoration project inspired by the memory of the Tang, drawing on imaginations inherited from the Song and Ming emperors and figures such as Chiang Kai-shek. Over the centuries, historical memories have had practical implications for policymaking. History is thus the key to understanding China and its actions today.

 Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road, 1– 40.

Imagining the Future from History

169

Bibliography English Anderlini, Jamil. “The Dark Side of China’s National Renewal”. Financial Times. https://www. ft.com/content/360afba4 - 55d1 - 11e7 - 9fed-c19e2700005 f. Barfield, Thomas. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989. Barnouin, Barbara, and Changgen Yu. Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 98. London; New York: Routledge, 2010. Dalby, Michael. “Court Politics in Late Tang Times”. The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Dickens, Jack. “Beijing’s Ruling Class is Haunted by the Fall of the Soviet Union”. Reaction. December 12, 2019. https://reaction.life/beijings-ruling-class-is-haunted-by-the-fall-ofthe-soviet-union/. Fairbank, John K, ed. The Cambridge History of China: Late Ch’ing 1800 – 1911. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Forage, Paul C. “The Sino-Tangut War of 1081 – 1085”. Journal of Asian History 25, no. 1 (1991): 1 – 28. Griffiths, Richard T. Revitalising the Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Leiden: HIPE Publications, 2017. Krishnan, Ananth. “Modi, Xi Set for Historic Xi’an Summit”. India Today. May 14, 2015. https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/modi-xi-jinping-china-visit-252761 - 2015 - 05 - 13. Miller, Tom. China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Skaff, Jonathan. Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012. Tiezzi, Shannon. “Modi’s First Stop in China: Why Xi’an?”. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat. com/2015/05/modis-first-stop-in-china-why-xian/

Chinese Academia Historica, ed. Chiang Zhongzheng Zongtong Wu Ji (The Five Records of President Chiang Zhongzheng). Taipei: Academia Historica, 2011. Bao, Siu-lam. Wenming de chongjing: Jidai Zhongguo dui minzu yu guojie dianfan de zhuixun [Vision of civilization: The Search of National Models in Modern China]. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1999. Cai, Hong-sheng. Tangdai jiuxing hu yu Tujue wenhua. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998. Chen, Chin-Ching. “Xiandai Zhongguo de jiangou: Jiang Jieshi ji qi Zhongguo zhi mingyun” [The Construction of Modern China: Chiang Kai-Shek and his China’s Destiny]. Guoshi guan guankan (The Journal of Academia Historica) 42 (December 2014): 31 – 62. Chen, Yinque. “Lun Tang Gaozu chengchen yu Tuque shi” [On the Tang Gaozu’s submission to the Turks]. Hanliu Tang ji (The Collection of Hanliu Hall), 108 – 32. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001.

170

Victor K. Fong

CPC News (Communist Party of China’s News). “Zhongguo meng de you lai: Wenming xunmeng” [The Origins of China Dream: A Dream in Search of Civilization]. December 23, 2013. http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/1223/c40531 – 23924627.html. DuoWei News. “Modi fang Hua, Xi Jinping shouchi yi Tangdai chuantong yishi huanying” [Modi’s visit to China: Xi Jinping’s first time to welcome [him] by Tang traditional ceremony]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqE5LBXFbo. Fang, Zhenhua. “Tang Song zhengzhi lunshu zhong de Zhenguan zhi zheng: zhiguo dianfan de lunbian” [The Zhenggguan statecraft in the Tang and Song Political Discourses: A Debate on State Ruling Model]. Taida lishi xuebao (The Historical Journal of the National Taiwan University) 40 (2007): 34 – 55. Fang, Zhenhua. “Zhanzheng yu zhengzheng de jiuge: Beisong Yonglecheng zhi yi de jishi” [The Entanglement between Wars and Political Conflicts: The Records of the Battle of Yongle city of Northern Song]. Hanxue yanjiu (Journal of China Studies) 29, no. 3 (2011): 125 – 54. Fong, Victor. “Kangxi liyu zaitan: Qing chu fazhi xia de xiyang chuanjiaoshi” [Revisit the Kangxi Calendar Case: European Missionaries under the Early Qing Legal System]. In Bianju xia de xichao: jidujiao yu Zhongguo de xiandai xing [Western Tides Coming Ashore in a Changing World: Christianity and China’s Passage into Modernity], edited by Wong Man-kong, Cheng Wanhoi, and Chan Ziheng. Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2015. Guo, Jiping. “Yidai yilu, zouxiang gongtong fazhan de jiaxiangyue” [One Belt One Road Plays a “Symphony” of Co-development]. Renmin Rebao. May 11, 2017. http://world.people. com.cn/n1/2017/0511/c1002 – 29267072.html. Guofu quanji bianji weiyuanhui [The editorial committee of the complete works of the father of the nation], ed. Guofu quanji [The Complete Works of the Father of the Nation]. Taipei: Jindai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1989. Han, Yu. “Henan fu tongguan ji” [A Note on the Fellowship in the Henan Prefecture]. In Han Changli wenji zhushi [A Commentary and Annotation on the Anthology of Han Yu], edited by Yan Qi. Vol. 2. Xi’an: Sanqin chubanshe, 2004. Huang, Yizhou, ed. Xu zizhi tongjian changbian shibu [A supplement of the long draft of the continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004. Huili. Da Tang Daci’ensi sanzang fashi juan [A Biography of the Sanzang Dharma of the Great Ci’en Temple of the Great Tang]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983. English translation, A Biography of the Tripit ̣aka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang dynasty, translated by Li Rongxi. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1995. Jiang, Zemin. “Jiang Zemin zai Zhongguo gongchandang di shiwu ci quanguo daibiao dahui shang de baogao” [Jiang Zemin’s Report on the 15th National Congress]. Zhongguo gongchandang lici quanguo daibiao dahui shujuku (The database of National Congress of the Communist Party of China). http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168/64568/ 65445/4526285.html. Jiu Tang Shu [The old Tang history]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977. Leng, Rong. “Shenme shi Zhongguo meng, zenyang lijie Zhongguo meng” [What is the ‘China Dream’, how to understand the ‘China Dream’]. Renmin Ribao [People’s Daily]. April 26,

Imagining the Future from History

171

2013. http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0426/c40531 – 21285625.html. Liao, Yifang. Tangdai de lishi jiyi [The Historical Memories of Tang China]. Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chubanshe, 2011. Lin, Guanqun. Yubo gan’ge: Tang-Fan guanxi shi yanjiu [Jade and Silk, Shield and Glaive: A Study on Tang-Tibet Relations]. Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 2016. Liu, Dong. “Xi Jinping menghui sheng Tang huihuang shi Yandi” [Xi Jinping Dreams to Return to the High Tang [but he] in fact is Emperor Yang]. Boxun News. June 17, 2016. https://www.boxun.com/news/gb/pubvp/2016/06/201606172319.shtml. Liu, Yi-tang. “Tiankehan tanyuan”. Zhongguo xiyu yanjiu, 71 – 109. Taipei: Zhong zheng shu ju, 1997. Luo, Xiang-lin. “Tangdai Tiankehan zhidu kao”. Tangdai wenhua shi. Taipei: Shangwu yinshuju, 1955. Mao Zedong pingdian ershisi shi zhengli chuban weiyuanhui, ed. Mao Zedong pingdian ershisi shi [The Editorial and Publication Committee of the “Mao Zedong’s Comments on the 24 histories”]. Beijing: Zhongguo dangan chubanshe, 1996. Mao, Zedong. Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected Works of Mao Zedong], 632 – 52. Vol. 2. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1991. Ming shilu [The Verified Records of the Ming]. Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan, 1966. Qi, Weiping, and Wang Ju. “Guanyu Mao Zedong “Chao Ying gan Mei” sixiang yanbian jieduan de lishi kaocha” [A Historical Observation on the Stages of Change of Mao Zedong’s Thought about “surpassing Britain and catching up with America”]. Shixue yuekan [Historical monthly] 2 (2002): 66 – 71. Qing shilu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986. Shaanxi sheng shehui kexueyuan [The Institute of Social Sciences of Shaanxi province], ed. Shichou zhilu jingjidai fazhan baogao [The Development Report of the Silk Road Economic Belt]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2017. Shao, Bowen. Shaoshi wenjian lu [A Record of the Hearsays of Mr. Shao]. Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 2006. Shen, Sung-chiao. “Wo yi wo xuejian xuanyuan——Huangdi shenhua yu wanqing de guozu jiangou” [The Myth of the Yellow Emperor and the Construction of Chinese Nationhood in Late Qing]. Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan [Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies] 28 (December 1997): 1 – 77. Shiao, Qi-qing. Jiuzhou sihai fengya tong: Yuandai duozu shiren quan de xingcheng yu fazhan [The Coherent Elegance and Culture in the Nine Provinces and Four Seas: the Formation and Development of a Multi-ethnic Literati Circle in the Yuan Dynasty]. Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan, 2012. Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao [Abstracts of titles in the general catalog of the Complete Books of the Imperial Library]. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuju, 1933. Song shi [The Song History]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956. Wang, Xiaofu, ed. Shengtang shidai yu dongbeiya zhengju [The High Tang and the Political Situation of Northeast Asia]. Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2003. Xinhua. “Trust between Two Oriental Giants”. May 14, 2015. http://china.org.cn/world/2015 – 05/14/content_35571627.htm. Wong, Joseph. “Luelun Li-Tang qibing yu Tuque guanxi” [A Brief Discussion on the Uprising of the Li Tang Dynasty and its Relation to the Turks]. Shih-Huo Monthly 16 (1988): 434 – 45.

172

Victor K. Fong

Xu, Song (1781 – 1848), ed. Song huiyao jigao [A Draft Compendium of Song Institutional Records]. Vol. 1. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2014. Yuanshi [The Yuan History]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Zhang, Guogang. Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu [A Study on Tang Local Warlords]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2010. Zhang, Yuan. “Cong Wang Anshi de xianwang guannian kan ta yu Shenzong de guanxi”. In Songshi yanjiu ji [A Collection of the Studies on Song History], edited by Songshi zuotan hui [The Committee of the Song History Forum], 273 – 300. Vol. 23. Taipei: Guoli bianyi guan, 1988. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiu shi [Party Literature Research Center, CPC Central Committee], ed. Mao Zedong du wenshi guji piyu ji [The Collection of Mao Zedong’s Comments on Ancient Arts and Historical Works]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiu shi [Party Literature Research Center, CPC Central Committee], ed. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong’s Work Since the Establishment of the Nation]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992. Zhou, Xunchu, ed. Tangren yishi huibian [A Collection of Anecdotes of Tang people]. Vol. 2. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006. Zhu, zhen-hong. “Tangdai Huangdi Tiankehan shiyi”. Hanxue yanjiu 21, no.1 (June 2013): 413 – 33.

Japanese Higashi Ichio. Ō Anseki shinpō no kenkyū. Tōkyō: Kazama Shobō, 1970. Iwami Kiyohiro. Tō no hokupō mondai to kokuzai chisujo. Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1998. Yanai Watari, “Gen no Seiso to Tō no Taisō” [Emperor Yuan Shizu and Tang Taizong]. Mōko shi kenkyū [The Study of Mongol History], 979 – 89. Tōkyō, Tōkō Shoin, 1966.

Keith Allan Clark II

May Fourth Memories: PRC Media Representations of a Historical Moment, 1959 and 1989 Abstract: On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing protested their government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War. In what became known as the May Fourth movement, these students marched against transferring territories in Shandong from Germany to Japan, rousing the Chinese nation and catching the world’s attention. The movement eventually succeeded, and the former German concessions were later returned to China. Thereafter, the May Fourth incident became a celebrated moment in modern Chinese history. This work analyzes how state, municipal, and student media represented May Fourth in two periods after 1949. I detail how the Communist Party of China portrayed May Fourth to bolster its legitimacy and how those depictions changed to suit different moments. Through assaying party mouthpieces, municipal newspapers, and student periodicals, this paper examines how May Fourth was commemorated during the Great Leap Forward and the lead up to, time of, and then aftermath of, the 1989 student protests and occupation of Tiananmen Square. I argue the CPC repurposed a popular protest against the state into a rallying cry to serve the state. Keywords: legitimacy, May Fourth, Mao Zedong, media, student protests

Introduction On May 4, 1919 students from universities across Beijing gathered before Tiananmen 天安門, the Gate of Heavenly Peace. These students had come together to protest Chinese representatives’ failure to have Shandong returned to China in the Paris Conference that concluded the First World War; Shandong would switch from German to Japanese control. News that Chinese delegates to Paris had not only failed but seemed to have sold China out to Japan reached the country as students planned mass demonstrations to protest the anniversary of Japan’s Twenty-One-Demands, which Yuan Shikai’s 袁世凱 (1859 – 1916) government had accepted. Beijing students were not alone in protesting the corrupKeith Allan Clark II, Northwestern University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110676136-008

174

Keith Allan Clark II

tion they saw in the government. Students across the country also demonstrated their displeasure through protests. While the students were not immediately victorious, they succeeded in pressuring Chinese representatives to not sign the Treaty of Versailles agreed to at the Paris Conference and Shandong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1922.¹ This moment belonged to the students, though they were not alone, and it became one of the most celebrated events in modern China’s history, known simply as May Fourth 五四or the May Fourth movement 五四運動. May Fourth presents an opportunity to understand how states repurpose history to serve their agendas. In this piece, I examine how the Communist Party of China (CPC) employed state, municipal, and student media in China to represent May Fourth after 1949. I argue that the CPC repurposed a popular protest against the state into a rallying cry to serve the state. For the periods analyzed, the Party focused on portraying May Fourth as the seminal moment where communism entered China and positioned it as the turning point in history that led to the CPC’s founding. PRC Media fulfilled this goal by presenting May Fourth as a first step in the teleological progression to CPC rule of the Chinese nation. This state-centric narrative, then, helped naturalize CPC rule and gave them historical legitimacy. My examination also reveals subtle variations in how different levels of media represented this moment of history as well as consistent themes that appeared around it. State media focused more on May Fourth’s links to communism, municipal media encouraged participation in the event, and student media focused on the calls to save the nation. Media in the PRC was, and at present remains, tightly controlled by the Party and no outlets were independent. The variations in media representations reflect CPC messaging for different audiences. Those variations, though, all occurred within a narrative Mao Zedong first established to understand May Fourth. As this brief investigation will show, the CPC transformed May Fourth to suit their contemporary needs and demonstrates how states shape narratives of the nation. The CPC created a state-centric narrative on May Fourth that naturalized their rule over China. CPC propagandists, from Mao Zedong on down, claimed that the 1919 protestors were motivated by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik’s

 For some general overviews of May Fourth see Chow Tse-tung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). For works that focus on students see Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); Fabio Lanza, Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

May Fourth Memories

175

1917 October Revolution in Russia. By linking May Fourth with the October Revolution, CPC officials represented communism as foundational to the development of national consciousness in China. PRC media flattened the events of 1919 into a precursor of the CPC’s rise and eventual rule, eliding the contentions and disagreements among Chinese as they sought to create a modern China. CPC rhetoric bolstered their authority to represent the Chinese nation by linking communism with a defining moment in modern Chinese history. While the term May Fourth refers to the student protests and activities in the spring of 1919, it also refers to a broader movement proposing social, political, and cultural renewal and change for Chinese society. The fluidity of “May Fourth” as event and era complicates efforts to understand the reverberations it has had in Chinese history. Mao Zedong, a Peking University librarian in 1919, demonstrated the plasticity of the term May Fourth on the incident’s twentieth anniversary in 1939, saying, “The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May 4th Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution.”² The timeline Mao presented is problematic. The cultural reform he described growing out of the May Fourth movement is often traced to earlier in the decade. In particular, CPC luminaries, such as Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879 – 1942) who founded the influential journal New Youth 新青年 in 1915 and served as its editor, and intellectuals, like Hu Shih 胡適 (1891– 1962) whose essays on writing in vernacular Chinese appeared as early as 1917, were among the leading lights of the New Culture movement which sought to revolutionize Chinese society and culture. Mao, however, commemorates the student protests and presents the incident as the foundational cause for the movement, rather than an event correlated with an era of broader social upheaval and change. The plasticity of May Fourth in Chinese discourse is one of the things this piece explores to demonstrate variations in how the CPC represented May Fourth to state, society, and students in the decades after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. For my purposes, the May Fourth incident refers to the event and May Fourth movement the era from about 1915 to 1922. This work is not, however, an exhaustive study of Chinese-media representations of May Fourth after 1949. I have selected two periods of change and several publications to analyze how May Fourth was remembered during distinct moments in time. The selected moments are representations around the May Fourth incident’s fortieth anniversary during the Great Leap Forward 大躍進

 Mao Zedong, “The May Fourth Movement,” (May 1939), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung Vol. II (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press), accessed March 14, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_13.htm.

176

Keith Allan Clark II

(1958 – 1962) and the lead up to and aftermath of the event’s seventieth anniversary and the 1989 Democracy Spring in Tiananmen. During the Great Leap Forward, the CPC’s control of China was not uncontested. While there were few domestic challengers to CPC rule, the Kuomintang continued to claim that their state, the Republic of China (ROC), represented the Chinese nation. The ROC held China’s place in the United Nations (UN) and far more states recognized it as the legitimate government of China. During this period, the CPC sought to ensure that Chinese citizens identified the PRC as China while struggling for that acceptance on the world stage. By 1989 the CPC had no real external challenges to its rule. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1971, the UN determined that the PRC was the legitimate government of China and expelled the ROC. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, however, resulted in unrest among rising elites anxious about their economic and social status. Thus in 1989 the CPC perceived the challenge to their legitimacy as internal. Consequently, these two periods provide a glimpse of how CPC officials used the media to bolster their authority against challenges both foreign and domestic, as well as during two different points in time. Media in the PRC offers a window into how the CPC sought to guide public opinion on May Fourth. For state media I rely primarily on the People’s Daily 人 民日報, for municipal media the Beijing Daily 北京日報 and Nanjing Daily 南京 日報, and I turn to the Nanjing University School Journal 南京大學校刊 for student media.³ None of these media outlets, however, operated without CPC guidance or approval. The People’s Daily was the CPC’s primary mouthpiece. The Beijing Daily was established and run by the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee 中國 共產黨北京市委員會, and the Nanjing Daily by the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee 中國共產黨南京市委員會. While the Nanjing University School Journal was not directly run by an organ of the CPC, CPC members and cadres were embedded throughout university administrations and student organizations, thus even student papers reflected CPC opinions. Because the CPC controlled these media outlets, an analysis of their discourses on May Fourth provides insights into how the CPC sought to represent this historical event. Because PRC media bound itself by the parameters Mao Zedong established in his writings and speeches, it is necessary to know how Mao portrayed May Fourth before turning to post-1949 interpretations. In 1939, Mao argued in “The

 The titles for news publications were not consistent throughout this period, especially during the Cultural Revolution. For example, Peking University Weekly 北京大學週刊 became New PKU 新北大 on August 22, 1966, before becoming Peking University School Journal 北京大學校刊 sometime around the end of the Cultural Revolution.

May Fourth Memories

177

May Fourth Movement” that “The May 4th Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism.”⁴ By bourgeois-democratic revolution, Mao meant a revolution that did not abolish private capital. He traced this revolution from the Opium War to the ongoing war against Japan to claim that “The aim of this [new stage in the] democratic revolution is to establish a social system hitherto unknown in Chinese history, namely, a democratic social system having a feudal society (during the last hundred years, a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society) as its precursor and a socialist society as its successor.”⁵ Mao reiterated in “The Orientation of the Youth Movement,” a speech delivered on May 4, 1939 to celebrate the day’s new designation as China’s Youth Day, that the goal of May Fourth was to overthrow imperialism and feudalism and pointed to the significant role of students in the event.⁶ Early in 1940, Mao elaborated further in “On New Democracy” that May Fourth marked a change from China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution as “The May 4th Movement came into being at the call of the world revolution, of the Russian Revolution and of Lenin. It was part of the world proletarian revolution of the time.”⁷ The transformation Mao referred to was from a capitalist-style revolution to a socialist one, a change that occurred because of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. In these essays, then, Mao presented the movement as an anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic event led by students who were emboldened by the October Revolution to agitate for a socialist state. In other words, May Fourth was the beginning of China’s communist revolution and laid the groundwork for the CPC’s founding and their establishment of the PRC. Scholars since have both challenged and supported Mao’s interpretations of May Fourth.⁸ The pertinence or accuracy of Mao’s analysis, however, is

 Mao, “The May Fourth Movement.”  Mao, “The May Fourth Movement.”  Mao, “The Orientation of the Youth Movement,” (May 4, 1939), in Selected Works of Mao Tsetung Vol. II (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press), accessed March 14, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_13.htm.  Mao, “On New Democracy: XIII, The Four Periods,” (Jan. 1940), in Selected Works of Mao Tsetung Vol. II (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press), accessed March 14, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_13.htm.  Chow, The May Fourth Movement; Jia Yijun 賈逸君，五四運動簡史 [A Brief History of the May Fourth Movement] (北京：新潮書店印行，1951); Fabio Lanza, “Of Chronology, Failure, and Fidelity: When did the May Fourth Movement End?”, Twentieth-Century China 38, vol. 1 (Jan. 2013): 53 – 70; Peng Ming 彭明, 五四運動簡史 [A Brief History of the May Fourth Movement] (北京： 新華印刷廠印刷，1989); Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China; Xie Dikun, “The Eternal ‘May Fourth Movement’: Between Enlightenment and Tradition,” Social Sciences in China 38, no. 2 (2017): 165 – 74.

178

Keith Allan Clark II

not significant for this piece. Rather, his depictions of May Fourth formed leitmotifs that ran through post-1949 CPC narratives of the event and era.

Fortieth Anniversary In 1958, Mao sought to transform the PRC into a socialist state with an industrialized economy through the Great Leap Forward. The Leap’s objective was to surpass the United Kingdom’s industrial output in fifteen years. The results of Mao’s experiment, however, were disastrous: it left tens of millions dead and shrank the economy.⁹ Adding to the complexity of this moment, the PRC initiated the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis, heavily shelling ROC controlled territory, in 1958 and deployed People’s Liberation Army forces to quell a Tibetan uprising in 1959. Mao’s interpretations of May Fourth were not challenged during this period, though his theories did undergo some modifications, such as the United States replacing Japan as the principal imperialist enemy. Overall, media was sanguine on the PRC’s past and future as the fifties drew to a close. Whether state, municipal, or student media represented the events of 1919, they offered people an optimistic vision of the state and nation as they celebrated May Fourth’s legacy ahead of the PRC’s ten-year anniversary. That is not to say, however, that media remembered and represented the event or era in similar ways. State media sought to tie the movement to a larger narrative on the historical inevitability of communism’s success. Municipal and student media invited the people to participate in the event, and for students it was also a call to action. The People’s Daily ran articles in the lead up to and early years of the Great Leap Forward that claimed the May Fourth movement was inspired by the October Revolution. Li Longmu 李龍牧 (1918 – 1986), a journalism professor in Shanghai’s Fudan University, wrote a piece commemorating CPC founder Li Dazhao’s 李大釗 (1989 – 1927) passing thirty years earlier, which quoted Mao’s claim, “The May 4th Movement came into being at the call of the world revolution, of the Russian Revolution and of Lenin. It was part of the world proletarian revolution of the time.”¹⁰ Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department Zhou Yang 周陽 (1908 – 1989) stated in a speech commemorating the October Revolution that “After the October Revolution, in 1919, the ‘May Fourth’ move Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (New York: The Free Press, 1996); Frank Dïkotter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958 – 62 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).  Li Longmu 李龍牧，“紀念偉大的革命先烈李大釗同志” [Commemorating the Great Revolutionary Martyr Comrade Li Dazhao], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], April 28, 1957, 7.

May Fourth Memories

179

ment occurred in China [我國, our country],” a few lines before quoting the same line Li had from Mao’s “On New Democracy.”¹¹ While few articles of note appeared in the People’s Daily in 1958, they resumed in honor of the May Fourth incident’s fortieth anniversary. A piece by translator and Shanghai Foreign Language University Professor Jiang Chunfang 姜椿芳 (1912– 1987) also provided Mao’s quote verbatim and historian Peng Ming 彭明 closed an article by quoting only the first part.¹² While this selection demonstrates that state media did not challenge Mao’s presentation of May Fourth, that finding is unsurprising. More interestingly, these authors deepened and broadened Mao’s original narrative to make it axiomatic. By repeating, often verbatim, Mao’s words, these authors solidified not only Mao’s stature in the PRC but also elevated his views on events into dogma. For Mao and those who followed, tying May Fourth as both event and era into a global communist movement served to place the PRC into a global struggle against capitalism. Mao had formulated these thoughts while China was fighting against Japan, but a struggle against capitalism was of value for Mao and the CPC in all the events that followed, from the Chinese Civil War to the Great Leap Forward. Thus, state media during the late 1950s sought to reinforce the narrative that a direct line of causation ran from the October Revolution to May Fourth and eventually the PRC. Editors at the People’s Daily also ran articles linking May Fourth to Marxist ideologies entering China. Li Longmu claimed that Li Dazhao’s introduction of Marxism to China was significant, in part, as “the May Fourth Movement became a completely anti-imperial and anti-feudal movement, only after the promotion and development of Marxism united with worker movements, was the Communist Party of China ready to be founded.”¹³ Wang Zisong 汪子嵩, an associate professor at Peking University, wrote a piece supporting the Anti-Rightist Campaign 反右運動, 1957– 1959. Wang accepted May Fourth as a movement of young students and intelligentsia. He argued, however, that it was only after “the intelligentsia had accepted Marxism, and the masses of industrial and agricultural workers united together using proletariat ideology to transform themselves, walking socialism’s path, could they achieve their goal to save China. This

 Zhou Yang 周陽，“十月革命和建設社會主義文化的任務” [The October Revolution and the Mission to Develop Socialist Culture], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], October 9, 1957, 3.  Jiang Chunfang 姜椿芳，“五四運動與馬克思列寧主義在中國的傳播” [The May Fourth Movement and the Spread of Marxism-Leninism to China], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 5, 1959, 7; Peng Ming 彭明，“十月革命和五四運動” [The October Revolution and the May Fourth Movement], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 3, 1959, 7.  Li Longmu 李龍牧，“紀念偉大的革命先烈李大釗同志” [Commemorating the Great Revolutionary Martyr Comrade Li Dazhao], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], April 28, 1957, 7.

180

Keith Allan Clark II

is May Fourth’s spirit and legacy.”¹⁴ Jiang had titled his article “The May Fourth Movement and Marxism-Leninism’s Transmission to China.” In it he described that in “The May Fourth Movement—China’s advanced intelligentsia used Marxism to objectively analyze circumstances, observed in the country’s destiny a focused manifestation of Marxism-Leninism’s arrival in China that had already developed an undefeatable effect.”¹⁵ Peng asserted, “The May Fourth Movement evolved to serve as China’s first Marxist thought movement.”¹⁶ The CPC sought, through their primary mouthpiece, to demonstrate that May Fourth was not only a precursor for the Party’s founding, it was also the result of a nascent Chinese Marxism. State media certainly represented May Fourth as an embryonic-socialist movement to accord with Mao’s interpretations and bolster his descriptions of the past. More than that, however, CPC representations of May Fourth as a manifestation of Marxism directly strengthened their claim to legitimacy. Marxism and Leninism were, after all, foreign ideologies. PRC officials and intellectuals presented the event and era as arising naturally within the nation, which also defended CPC sovereignty as they were depicted as the nation’s inchoate will made manifest, not the bearers of a foreign ideology. The CPC used municipal media in Beijing during the Great Leap Forward to represent May Fourth as an experience all China’s people could participate in. That is not to say Beijing Daily represented a different interpretation of the event or era than state media, but rather focused more on people’s interactions with the event.¹⁷ One way editors made the event participatory was to print the memories of people who had engaged in the May Fourth incident. Fan Yun’s 范 雲 1957 recollection of the event included descriptions like “the fourth’s weather was sunny and cloudless, with gusts of gentle wind” and detailed the students’ march through the streets of Beijing.¹⁸ Fan’s account invited readers to experience the May Fourth incident with him, as a lived memory that they could relate to their own lives.

 Wang Zisong 王子嵩，“誰是‘五四’精神的真正繼承者” [Who are the True Inheritors of the “May Fourth” Spirit], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], July 24, 1957, 7.  Jiang Chunfang 姜椿芳，“五四運動與馬克思列寧主義在中國的傳播” [The May Fourth Movement and the Spread of Marxism-Leninism to China], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 5, 1959, 7.  Peng Ming 彭明，“十月革命和五四運動” [The October Revolution and the May Fourth Movement], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 3, 1959, 7.  For pieces supporting the progression from May Fourth to the CPC then PRC see Xinhua News Agency 新華社，“繼承和發揚”五四“革命神經，在黨的領導下，大力建設祖國” [Inherit and Develop “May Fourth” Revolutionary Spirit, under the Party’s Leadership, Vigorously Develop the Motherland], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], April 18, 1959, 4; Zhu Wushan 朱务善，“星火燎原” [A Single Spark can Start a Prairie Fire], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1959, 6.  Fan Yun 范雲，“‘五四’那天” [“May Fourth” That Day], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1957, 3.

May Fourth Memories

181

Municipal papers also ran articles on celebrations of May Fourth by local students and societies. For the thirty-ninth anniversary, local reporters for the Beijing Daily described over 8,000 people coming together for a May Fourth memorial.¹⁹ The next year, the Beijing Daily’s lead story on page one was a May Fourth celebration attended by thirty thousand people.²⁰ For readers of municipal media in Beijing, May Fourth was not just an historical event, but also a current one they could interact with. None of these events occurred naturally, as any large gathering needed official approval. Consequently, whether the individuals in these gatherings were there voluntarily is unknown. Regardless of why people attended these events, however, the CPC used municipal media to make May Fourth participatory. Whether readers joined Fan Yun as protestors on May 4, 1919 or engaged in spectacles commemorating the incident, they were interacting with May Fourth as a real and lived experience. By encouraging people to participate in May Fourth, municipal media incorporated the people into the event represented as seminal for communist China. Municipal media enticed broad social engagement with May Fourth to expand it from a student incident or ideological era to a universal Chinese event, increasing the audience who could identify with it. Thus, people were vested not only in the incident or movement; they were active participants in introducing Marxism to China and founding the CPC. The CPC used municipal media, then, to legitimize their rule by incorporating all Chinese into an event portrayed as integral to the Party’s founding. The CPC focused student media on students’ roles during the May Fourth incident and how it pertained to students in the current era. Similar to municipal media, Nanjing University Student Journal also represented the event as participatory.²¹ One author, Fan Cunzhong 范存忠, chose to direct students’ attention to one of the more celebrated aspects of the era, student-led education groups. Fan explained that students needed to adhere to the CPC proposals to “teach

 Beijing Daily dispatch 本報訊，“思想來個大解放技術革命打先鋒” [Thoughts on a Great Revolutionary Pioneer in Liberating Technology], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1958, 1.  Xinhua News Agency 新華社，“首都盛會紀念五四四十週年” [The Capital’s Grand Meeting Commemorating the May Fourth Movement’s Fiftieth Anniversary], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1959, 1.  Li Taolan 李兆蘭，“我校青年舉行盛大的紀念「五四」晚會” [Our School Youth Hold a Grand Evening of Entertainment to Commemorate “May Fourth”], 南京大學校刊 [Nanjing University School Journal], May 12, 1954, 1; Propaganda Department of the Youth League Committee 團 委會宣傳部，“我校青年紀念‘五四’青年節” [Our School’s Youth Commemorate “May Fourth” Youth Day], 南京大學校刊 [Nanjing University School Journal], May 3, 1955, 1; “紀念‘五四’運動 四十週年” [Commemorating “May Fourth” Movement’s Fortieth Anniversary], 南京大學 [Nanjing University], May 6, 1959, 1.

182

Keith Allan Clark II

well” and “study well” in order to “carry on this [May Fourth] tradition, develop this tradition, to raise a high-study tide higher still, even higher, in order to go a step further in carrying out the Party’s education policy and struggle.”²² Fan’s piece detailed how students in 1959 could honor those in 1919 through taking action. What Fan left unspoken, however, was the implicit assumption that students were the intelligentsia during May Fourth and the contemporary period, thus the fate of the nation remained with them as its future leaders. The Nanjing University History Department also held a series of discussions around May Fourth and the university’s anniversary.²³ Fan’s theme of student action continued in those discussions, such as the history department’s group announcement to “Carry on and develop May Fourth’s revolutionary tradition.”²⁴ Student media represented students as the unique inheritors of May Fourth. Students’ role in the events of 1919 were translated as a call to action for students in 1959. That call, however, was no longer against the state. It was a call to service in support of the state. Thus, media focused on students evoked May Fourth to inspire future leaders of the Party and state. PRC media presented common themes on the importance of the CPC and communism around the fortieth anniversary of May Fourth. Mao’s earlier interpretations of May Fourth remained the baseline for portrayals of the incident and movement. There were, however, minor variations in focus between media aimed at different audiences. State media represented May Fourth as part of a global communist movement, influenced by Marx’s and Lenin’s writings, to bolster CPC legitimacy. Municipal media represented the event as a participatory experience that people could imagine and engage with, keeping the event and era real for people and the CPC’s explanations of their significance germane. Student media represented May Fourth as a call to serve the nation and state. In this narrative, students should aid the CPC in governing China as the Party had realized the demands of May Fourth protestors. Cumulatively, PRC media portrayals of May Fourth strengthened CPC legitimacy as the first decade of their new state drew to a close. While the May Fourth movement and era were about iconoclasm and challenging the state, by the Great Leap Forward period the Party had turned May Fourth into an idea and event that supported the state and communism.

 Fan Cunzhong 范存忠，“應當以教好，學好來紀「五四」” [Should by Means of Teaching Well, Studying Well Remember “May Fourth”], 南京大學 [Nanjing University], May 6, 1959, 1.  Nanjing University established its anniversary as May 20 in 1954.  History Department News Report 歷史系通訊組，“開展科學研究迎接‘5.20’校慶” [Scientific Research Opens to Greet “5.20” University Anniversary], 南京大學 [Nanjing University], May 13, 1959, 1.

May Fourth Memories

183

Seventieth Anniversary As the PRC prepared to celebrate the May Fourth incident’s seventieth anniversary, the CPC was in a very different position than it had been during the fortieth. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping initiated the Open Up and Reform 改革開放 policy, ushering in stability and prosperity in the PRC after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Student reactions to Hu Yaobang’s 胡耀邦 (1915 – 1989) passing in 1989, however, resulted in a protest that held traces of May Fourth in 1919.²⁵ During this period, May Fourth received a significant amount of media attention. Before 1989, state and municipal media representations were decidedly banal. State media even ran an article questioning the relevance of May Fourth for contemporary China.²⁶ In 1989, however, Chinese print-media presented numerous articles to portray the May Fourth incident as a patriotic event, thus distancing protestors throughout the nation from one of modern China’s defining moments. After 1989, reporting on May Fourth was subdued, but maintained that the May Fourth movement was about loving one’s country rather than protesting for social change. That state, municipal, and student media continued to cover May Fourth during the 1989 Democracy Spring demonstrates how integral the events in 1919 were to the CPC’s claim to legitimacy. Consequently, the Party sought to delegitimize the 1989 protestors. The CPC’s state media representations of May Fourth prior to 1989 continued to focus on it as a precursor to Marxism entering China and the CPC’s establishment. The People’s Daily ran a piece on a meeting on culture in Shanghai in 1986 that focused on Culture Fever 文化熱, an independent intellectual and cultural movement in the 1980s. Earlier in 1986, however, students from the University of Science and Technology of China中國科學技術大學 in Hefei, Anhui, took to the streets in a democracy movement that, while short-lived, spread quickly throughout China. The conference attendees, in light of students’ earlier protests, argued that the May Fourth movement could be understood as China’s first Culture Fever that challenged Confucianism and introduced Marxism. These delegates went on to argue, “Its [the May Fourth movement] historical contribution cannot be effaced. Nevertheless, it did not solve China’s modernization problem. That re-

 For more on the causes and actual events during the 1989 Student Movement, also sometimes called 1989 Democracy Spring, see Zhao Dingxin, The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).  I have found no student media on May Fourth from the years leading up to 1989. This may have resulted from crackdowns following 1986; they were not relevant to the larger project this data was gathered for.

184

Keith Allan Clark II

sponsibility has historically fallen on Chinese Communist Party members’ shoulders.”²⁷ By running this piece after a student protest movement, the CPC reiterated that May Fourth’s legacy was introducing Marxism to China, not protesting for change. The following year Wang Zhen 王震 wrote a short piece that maintained “the May Fourth movement received influence from the October Revolution and Marxism.” Wang further claimed, however, that “from the May Fourth movement to today, 68 years of history have proven only socialism is capable of saving China.”²⁸ Wang rearticulated tropes Mao had espoused around the May Fourth era, but went on to downplay the incident and the movement’s significance to the PRC’s development. State media representations of May Fourth were much the same as those thirty years earlier, however the CPC and its adherence to socialism was presented with more emphasis. As the PRC approached its fortieth anniversary, the CPC no longer had to turn to an event before it was founded to bolster its legitimacy. While Deng’s reforms had lessened state control over some aspects of the PRC’s economy and society, the Party’s right to rule the nation appeared axiomatic. State media, then, continued to represent May Fourth as significant for allowing the CPC to emerge, but the Party’s founding was the more significant event. The CPC still portrayed May Fourth as participatory in municipal media before 1989. Citizens’ engagement with May Fourth was less critical than before because CPC power was more solidified by the eighties. For example, Nanjing Daily ran a piece on a forum held for the May Fourth movement’s sixty-seventh anniversary that CPC Politburo member Xi Zhongxun 習仲勛 (1930 – 2002), who was also Xi Jinping’s father, attended along with over one hundred and fifty people: a number far fewer than those in the late fifties.²⁹ A year later, in 1987, the Beijing Daily ran an article on May Fourth medals and prizes awarded to winners of a sports meet in Beijing.³⁰ Interestingly, on the day of the May Fourth incident’s sixty-ninth anniversary, Peking University celebrated its ninetieth year. The article commemorating it in the Beijing Daily, however, went no further back than  Da Jiang 大江，“改革的事件呼喚著理論的繁榮——上海文化發展戰備研究會述評” [Reform’s Events Call for Theory to Flourish—A Review of the Shanghai Cultural Development Readiness Research Association], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], July 11, 1986, 5.  Wang Zhen 王震，“為社會主義中國的前途奮鬥——五四青年節寄話青年” [For Socialist China’s Future Struggles—May Fourth Youth Day Depend on Youth], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1987, 1.  Xinhua News Agency新華社，“首都舉行紀念‘五四’座談會” [Capital Holds “May Fourth” Commemoration Symposium], 南京日報 [Nanjing Daily], May 4, 1986, 1.  Cao Jianguo 曹建國 and Xiong Chenghong 熊承紅, “團市委向首批四十八名青年頒發「五四 獎章」” [The Communist Youth League Committee Awarded Forty-eight Youth with “May Fourth medals”], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1987, 1.

May Fourth Memories

185

the Cultural Revolution, thus eliding one of the most significant moments in the university’s history.³¹ Essentially, May Fourth celebrations appeared as routine news. Compared to municipal media representations during the Great Leap Forward where thousands attended memorials of May Fourth, these celebrations were more subdued. By the eighties, however, urban audiences did not need to participate in the May Fourth incident or movement to be included in the communist project. After four decades of CPC rule, people were vested in the PRC. The May Fourth incident’s seventieth anniversary occurred as students’ occupation of Tiananmen stretched into weeks. The CPC asserted in state media that the May Fourth era introduced Marxism to China and thus laid the foundation for the CPC. The Party, however, added a heavy emphasis on May Fourth protestors’ patriotism during this period. Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽 (1919 – 2005), General Secretary of the CPC who was politically purged after 1989, gave a speech at a May Fourth memorial meeting in the Great Hall of the People that was subsequently published in the People’s Daily. In his speech, he argued “the May Fourth movement was foremost a great anti-imperial, anti-feudal patriotic movement.”³² Zhao claimed that, to commemorate the May Fourth movement, people should “carry on and develop May Fourth’s patriotism.”³³ He also included the need to promote democracy and science, key calls in 1919 echoed by protestors in 1989, but maintained that the CPC had already assumed those responsibilities. The People’s Daily declared the May Fourth incident had been a “patriotic democratic movement” of youth that sought to transform and modernize China and that the “80s-generation youth under the Party’s leadership, can continue developing this purpose.”³⁴ A few days later, People’s Daily editors ran an article that was aptly titled “A brief discussion of May Fourth’s patriotic spirit”, and avowed “Patriotism was one of the May Fourth Movement’s principal details and charac-

 Zhao Xuewen 趙學文 and Ji Tao 紀濤，“奮進中的北京大學” [Peking University Advances Bravely], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1988, 1.  Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽，“在建設和改革的新時代進一步發揚五四精神——在首都青年紀念五四 運動七十週年大會上的講話” [To Develop and Reform the New Era Further Develop May Fourth Spirit—the Capital Youth Day May Fourth Movement Seventieth Anniversary Meeting’s Speech], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.  Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽，“在建設和改革的新時代進一步發揚五四精神——在首都青年紀念五四 運動七十週年大會上的講話” [To Develop and Reform the New Era Further Develop May Fourth Spirit—the Capital Youth Day May Fourth Movement Seventieth Anniversary Meeting’s Speech], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.  Editorial 社論, “發揚五四精神，推進改革和現代化事業” [Develop May Fourth Spirit, Advance Reform and Modernization Activities], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.

186

Keith Allan Clark II

teristics.”³⁵ State media, then, portrayed May Fourth as a patriotic movement even as student protests in Tiananmen echoed the events from seven decades earlier. The CPC had to delegitimize the protests occurring contemporaneously with the May Fourth incident’s seventieth anniversary. On April 26, 1989, a People’s Daily editorial distanced the 1989 protestors from May Fourth by claiming, They [the protestors] undermined the democratic legal system under the banner of democracy. Their purpose was to distract the people, disrupt the country, and undermine the political situation of stability and unity. This is a planned conspiracy. It is a turmoil. Its essence is to fundamentally deny the leadership of the Communist Party of China and deny the socialist system.³⁶

In short, the editorial represented the protestors not just as unpatriotic, but also as traitors. Therefore, they were not acting in the tradition of May Fourth, an event which state media had clarified was a patriotic movement. These articles maintained the narrative promulgated by Mao, but they all had a renewed focus on the patriotism of the May Fourth movement. This change in emphasis was a direct reaction to student protestors demanding greater participation in government and a secure future as elites. State media used patriotism to argue that those demands were spurious; student calls for democracy and science in 1919 had been fulfilled by democratic socialism and Deng’s Four Modernizations. Student protests were, therefore, not comparable to the events seventy years earlier because patriotism was expressed through loyalty to the state that developed from the communism May Fourth had inspired. The CPC also employed municipal media to represent the May Fourth movement as patriotic while students actively participated in recreating the incident in 1989. The Nanjing Daily and Beijing Daily continued to run articles on commemorations of the event and movement. Those representations were also changed, however, as both papers’ lead article on May 4, 1989 was about Zhao Ziyang’s May Fourth commemoration speech before three thousand people.³⁷ The Nanjing Daily piece included selections such as “Zhao Ziyang said, today when we discuss patriotism, it is simply a desire for China to develop,

 Lei Yi 雷颐，“略論‘五四’的愛國精神” [A Brief Discussion on “May Fourth’s” Patriotic Spirit], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 8, 1989, 6.  Editorial 社論, “必須旗幟鮮明反對動亂” [Must Have a Clear-cut Stand Against Turmoil], 人 民日報 [People’s Daily], April 26, 1989, 1.  Xinhua News Agency 新華社，“首都青年舉行大會紀念五四運動七十週年” [Capital Youth Hold a Mass Meeting Commemorating the May Fourth Movement’s Seventieth Anniversary], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.

May Fourth Memories

187

to bring about the Four Modernizations, and rejuvenate China.”³⁸ Next to the summaries of Zhao’s speech in each paper was a transcript of it.³⁹ Beijing Daily editors also ran an article that day reporting on Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee Li Yangming’s 李鍚銘 speech to a Communist Youth League meeting on May Fourth titled “Uphold patriotic tradition to cherish a stable political environment.” The article title was drawn from Li’s admonition that “Contemporary youth commemorations of May Fourth, adhering to patriotic tradition, simply must cherish the difficultly attained stable political climate.”⁴⁰ On May 6, Nanjing Daily ran a piece on a May Fourth competition under a headline that proclaimed “Enhance May Fourth spirit, express patriotic zeal.”⁴¹ Municipal media and state media were aligned during this period as the CPC sought to control the narrative and defang the protestors. Municipal media continued to highlight commemorations of the May Fourth incident, but rather than inviting people to participate in the event these representations served to demonstrate that not all youth were aligned with those protesting. Municipal media worked to make the narrative that May Fourth was a patriotic movement dominant and also represented students not engaged in protest to demonstrate that there were still patriotic students. Student media had an ambivalent outlook on the protests occurring in Tiananmen. This ambivalence resulted from students’ unique relationship with the May Fourth incident’s historical legacy. Nanjing University Paper articles on May Fourth display that those students not involved in the protests were concerned about their place in society. A student reporter interviewed Dong Jianfu 董健 副, Nanjing University’s Vice Chancellor, for an article about May Fourth. In the interview, the student asked, “Now society calls university students ‘the tumultuous restless generation,’ what is your outlook on this problem?” Dong re-

 Xinhua News Agency 新華社，“首都青年舉行大會紀念五四運動七十週年” [Capital Youth Hold a Mass Meeting Commemorating the May Fourth Movement’s Seventieth Anniversary], 南京日報 [Nanjing Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.  Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽，“在建設和改革的新時代進一步發揚五四精神——在首都青年紀念五四 運動七十週年大會上的講話” [To Develop and Reform the New Era Further Develop May Fourth spirit—the Capital Youth Day May Fourth Movement Seventieth Anniversary Meeting’s Speech], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily]，May 4, 1989, 1; Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽，“在建設和改革的新時代進一步發 揚五四精神——在首都青年紀念五四運動七十週年大會上的講話” [To Develop and Reform the New Era Further Develop May Fourth spirit—the Capital Youth Day May Fourth Movement Seventieth Anniversary Meeting’s Speech], 南京日報 [Nanjing Daily], May 4, 1989, 1.  Cao Jianguo 曹建國，“堅持愛國主義傳統珍惜穩定政治局面” [Uphold Patriotic Tradition to Cherish a Stable Political Environment], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily]，May 4, 1989, 1.  Xiao Wei 焦衛，“弘揚五四精神， 抒發愛國熱情” [Enhance May Fourth Spirit, Express Patriotic Zeal], 南京日報 [Nanjing Daily], May 6, 1989, 1.

188

Keith Allan Clark II

sponded by saying that students had to struggle to find their way and that the May Fourth generation could also be considered tumultuous and restless. He added, “I hope today’s university students can also emulate ‘May Fourth’ youth’s same brimming patriotic fervor, democratic spirit, and be awakened to realize and pursue a true-science spirit.”⁴² Here Dong reiterated the CPC’s position that May Fourth protestors were patriots. The CPC was the manifestation of May Fourth’s patriotic zeal and had realized the 1919 calls to create a modern China. Thus, Dong was calling on students to honor May Fourth by supporting the CPC. Other Nanjing University Paper articles on May Fourth, though, were little more than recountings of meetings and short interviews for the event’s seventieth anniversary.⁴³ For this student-media outlet, the 1989 protests detracted from the May Fourth movement’s legacy. Students’ connection to that legacy was what prompted the CPC to make May 4 Youth Day in 1939. With the current protests garnering scrutiny and opprobrium from the CPC, however, it was harder for students to celebrate their role in one of modern China’s defining moments. Thus, a student reporter sought reassurances from Vice Chancellor Dong that students would maintain their traditional place in society, to which Dong responded that patriotism was the path for students to achieve academic and social standing. Essentially, a good student and citizen was one who did not challenge the state. On June 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army cleared the students from Tiananmen Square. While PLA soldiers had been sent in before, this time the CPC was intent on ending the protests. Scholars are uncertain how many people died during the PLA’s crackdown. Dingxin Zhao quotes Ding Zilin’s figure of 92 deaths among civilians and that the CPC acknowledged over 300 deaths among both soldiers and civilians.⁴⁴ Jonathan Spence describes the chaotic scenes in Beijing from June 3 – 4 in The Search for Modern China, but only hazards that “many hundreds were dead and thousands more wounded.”⁴⁵ While  “紀念‘五四’運動七十週年專訪” [Exclusive Interview Commemorating the May Fourth Movement’s Seventieth Anniversary], 南京大學報 [Nanjing University Paper], May 1, 1989, 1.  “小團委召開紀念‘五四’七十週年討論會”[Small Youth League Committee Convene Symposium to Commemorate “May Fourth’s” Seventieth Anniversary], 南京大學報 [Nanjing University Paper], May 15, 1989, 1; “五四與中大校長羅家倫” [May Fourth and NCU President Luo Jialun], 南京大學報 [Nanjing University Paper], May 15, 1989, 1; “我校隆重舉行‘五-四’70週年紀念晚會” [Our School Held a Grand “May Fourth” 70th Anniversary Commemoration Evening of Entertainment], 南京大學報 [Nanjing University Paper], May 15, 1989, 3.  Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 204.  Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), 663.

May Fourth Memories

189

the number of casualties that night is unknown, the CPC’s use of force was a direct rebuke to any who might challenge their legitimacy. The CPC’s crackdown on June 4, then, indicated that participation in May Fourth was solely the purview of the state. After 1989, CPC officials continued to highlight the patriotism of May Fourth. A year after the PLA ended the Tiananmen protests, Jiang Zemin 江澤民 (1926‐), who had replaced Zhao Ziyang as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC, gave a speech to commemorate the May Fourth incident’s seventy-first anniversary. State and municipal media reprinted Jiang’s speech for urban audiences. The title of Jiang’s address was “Patriotism and the mission of China’s intelligentsia.” The speech was focused on the proper role of the PRC’s intellectuals, and made a special point to condemn “a very small group of people who incited, planned, and directed turmoil and counter-revolutionary riots in 1989.”⁴⁶ A People’s Daily editorial pointed out that May Fourth “was a great anti-imperial, anti-feudal patriotic movement”, and then elaborated that “patriotism is one of the most cohesive stances, it is also the May Fourth movement’s richest spiritual deposit” for China.⁴⁷ The Beijing Daily, a couple of days later, ran a series of articles that discussed Jiang’s speech under a banner that read “develop patriotic tradition, undertake the important task of realizing the Four Modernizations.”⁴⁸ After the 1989 Tiananmen protests, state and municipal media’s representations of May Fourth had changed. While they continued to celebrate May Fourth as an anti-imperial, anti-feudal movement that had paved the way for Marxism to enter China and establish the CPC, there was now a heavy emphasis on May Fourth protestors’ patriotism. Jiang also made the point that there were correct and incorrect ways to honor the legacy of May Fourth, and the protests of 1989 were not correct. The correct way to honor May Fourth’s legacy was to celebrate socialism and the CPC.

 Jiang Zemin 江澤民，“愛國主義和我國知識分子的使命——在首都青年紀念五四報告會上的 講話” [Patriotism and the Mission of China’s Intelligentsia—Speech at Capital Youth Day May Fourth Commemoration Public Lecture], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1990, 1; Jiang Zemin 江澤民，“愛國主義和我國知識分子的使命——在首都青年紀念五四報告會上的講話” [Patriotism and the Mission of China’s Intelligentsia Speech at Capital Youth Day May Fourth Commemoration Public Lecture], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 4, 1990, 1.  Editorial 社論, “發揚優良傳統 青年奉獻中華——紀念五四運動71週年” [Carry on the Fine Tradition of Youth Dedication to China—Commemorating the May Fourth Movement’s 71st Anniversary], 人民日報 [People’s Daily], May 4, 1990, 1.  “發揚愛國主義傳統擔起實現四化重任” [Carry on the Patriotic Tradition to Take up the Task of Realizing the Four Modernizations], 北京日報 [Beijing Daily], May 6, 1990, 1.

190

Keith Allan Clark II

Conclusion The May Fourth incident and movement did not change after 1949. CPC representations of that historical moment, however, did. CPC officials developed a statecentric narrative around May Fourth that legitimated their rule over China. Within CPC rhetoric, the May Fourth incident marked a seminal moment, inspired by communism, in a broader movement that unified the Chinese nation. During the Great Leap Forward era, media representations of May Fourth were constructed around Mao’s interpretations and meant to bolster CPC legitimacy. In the years leading up to 1989, media representations of May Fourth continued to adhere to the established formula where state media portrayed May Fourth as the precursor to the CPC and municipal media focused on making it a participatory event, even after student protests in 1986. When students took to the streets again and with greater fervor in 1989, they challenged the CPC’s legitimacy, even though that was not their explicit intention. With students emulating their predecessors from seventy years earlier, the CPC refocused May Fourth to take its historical capital away from the protestors. In other words, in 1989 the Party redefined May Fourth as a patriotic movement and the current protesters as unpatriotic, therefore the 1989 protests were not in the tradition of May Fourth. May Fourth, then, was no longer about protesting against the state; it was about celebrating the CPC and socialism. CPC officials used the media to transform a moment of mass protest for cultural, social, and political changes into a celebration of Party and state.

Bibliography Primary Sources 北京日報 [Beijing Daily]. Mao Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Vol. II. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Accessed March 15, 2020. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/index.htm. 人民日報 [People’s Daily]. 南京日報 [Nanjing Daily]. 南京大學報 [Nanjing University Paper].

May Fourth Memories

191

Secondary Sources Becker, J. Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Chow Tse-tung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. Dïkotter, F. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958 – 62. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. Jia Yijun 賈逸君. 五四運動簡史 [A Brief History of the May Fourth Movement]. 北京：新潮書店 印行，1951. Lanza, F. “Of Chronology, Failure, and Fidelity: When did the May Fourth Movement End?” Twentieth-Century China 38, no. 1 (Jan. 2013): 53 – 70. Lanza, F. Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Peng Ming 彭明. 五四運動簡史 [A Brief History of the May Fourth Movement]. 北京：新華印刷 廠印刷，1989. Schwarcz, V. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Spence, J.D. The Search for Modern China. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. Wasserstrom, J. Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Xie Dikun. “The Eternal ‘May Fourth Movement’: Between Enlightenment and Tradition.” Social Sciences in China 38, no. 2 (2017): 165 – 74. Zhao Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Notes on Contributors Ying-kit Chan is a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University. He received his PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University and BA and MA degrees in Chinese Studies from the National University of Singapore. Broadly interested in late imperial China and Republican China, he is researching the development of natural history as an academic field and establishment of natural history museums in twentieth-century Chinese coastal provinces. Fei Chen is Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese History at the Department of World History, Shanghai Normal University. He is interested in the transnational production of modern knowledge in East Asia, which has been situated at the intersection of multiple layers of power relations. His research so far has explored the emergence of Western-style education in China, Chinese elites’ endeavors to transplant the American Revolution to China, transnational discourses on Zheng Chenggong, Japanese influence on China’s Tibet policy, and a Japanese Buddhist monk’s travels in Tibet. His recent publications have appeared in journals such as Asian Studies Review, Journal of Asian History, International Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Modern Chinese History, and Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. Keith Allan Clark II is an Upper School History Teacher at the Hockaday School. He holds a MA and PhD in East Asian History from Northwestern University. In his dissertation, “Defining China: Beijing, Taipei, and the United Nations’ ‘China Seat,’ 1949 – 1992,” he examines how the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Kuomintang (KMT) competed to represent “China” after 1949, and the international consequences of that competition. A central theme of “Defining China” is that both the CPC and KMT developed distinct models of China to support their legitimacy, and the UN was a key venue for demonstrating international legitimacy. His research has been supported in China through a Fulbright Fellowship and in Taiwan by a Center for Chinese Studies research grant. A Quinn Fellowship from Northwestern University’s Chabraja Center for Historical Studies helped fund his dissertation writing. Sittithep Eaksittipong is a lecturer at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University. Sittithep received his BA in Political Science (International Relations) from Chulalongkorn University, MA in History from Chiang Mai University, and PhD in History from the National University of Singapore with the support from Harvard-Yenching InstituteNational University of Singapore Joint Doctoral Scholarship. He was a research fellow at Harvard-Yenching Institute during the 2016 – 2017 academic year. His research interests lie in Chinese overseas and transnational and cross-cultural exchanges between China and Southeast Asia, particularly those between China and Thailand. Victor K. Fong is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University (ANU), where he focuses on law, identity, and migration in medieval China and East Asia. At ANU, he has been a research officer for an Australian Research Council (ARC) project on the reforms of Chinese criminal law under the rule of Xi Jinping. He received his MPhil and BA in History at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he studied the issue of local justice during the Ming-Qing

194

Notes on Contributors

transition and court cases on missionaries in late imperial China. Victor has published and presented his works in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, and Australia. Egas Moniz Bandeira is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany, as a member of a comparative research project on the emergence of modern legal practice in Japan, China, and the Ottoman Empire. After studying Law and East Asian Studies at the University of Heidelberg, he completed his PhD program at the Universities of Heidelberg and Tohoku with a dissertation on late Qing constitutional history. In 2018/19, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Autonomous University of Madrid for the collaborative research project “East Asian Uses of the European Past—Tracing Braided Chronotypes,” which was supported by the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) network. His main research interest is global intellectual history with a focus on its refractions in modern East Asia. Isaac C.K. Tan is a PhD candidate in modern Japanese history at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. He completed a double degree program and received a BA (History) from the National University of Singapore and a BA (International Liberal Studies) from Waseda University, Japan. His research interests include the history of medicine, science, and technology and the historical conception of the body in the East Asian context. For his doctoral dissertation, he is looking at the history of blood type research in modern Japan. He has published on colonial biometrics and the issue of historical remembrance in peer-reviewed journals such as Japan Forum. Tin Kei Wong is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Department of Asian Studies, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, the University of Adelaide. She received her BA and MPhil in Translation Studies at the University of Hong Kong and her PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Queensland. Her research interests include translation studies, translation of children’s literature, women’s studies, and cultural studies.

Index American women missionaries 1, 19 Ancien Régime 119, 122, 130, 132, 139, 141 f. Bastille 135 Batavia 124 Belt and Road Initiative 149, 151, 166 – 168 Bethune 4, 15, 49 f., 53 – 63, 65, 67 – 72, 75 – 79 Bible 136, 159 Bismarck, Otto von 131 Central Party School 136 Chen Duxiu 134 f., 175 China 1 – 24, 49 – 57, 59 – 79, 85 – 90, 94, 100 f., 104 f., 107 – 112, 119 f., 122 – 128, 130 – 136, 138 – 142, 146, 149 – 152, 154 – 168, 173 – 190 China Dream 149 – 151, 154, 164 – 166, 168 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 5, 50, 108, 139, 162, 164, 184 Chinese Society in Thailand 15, 85 f., 91, 93, 95 – 108, 110, 112 Chinese translation 1 f., 6 f., 9, 14, 19 Chinese women 1 – 9, 11 – 14, 17 f., 20, 22 – 24, 107 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 136 Cold War 15, 18, 49, 52 f., 65 – 68, 73, 85 – 87, 94, 100, 164 collective memory 2, 49, 51 f., 68, 119, 142 f. Communist Party 58, 135 f., 164 Communist Party of China 60, 139, 164, 166, 173 f., 179, 186 constitutionalism 12, 17, 119, 126, 130, 132, 142 contemporary modernity 136 deep-water zone (shenshuiqu) 140 1989 democracy movement 137 f. despotism 132 Dutch Indies 124 Dwarkanath Shantaram (Ke Dihua) 68

early modernity 136 Eliot, George 1 f., 5, 8 – 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 First World War 54 f., 173 France 17, 54, 119 f., 123 – 126, 128 f., 132, 134, 139, 142 French Revolution 4 f., 17, 51, 77, 119, 121 – 143 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 136 f. Great Britain 6, 54 f., 130 Great Leap Forward 173, 175 f., 178 – 180, 182, 185, 190 Haiguo tuzhi (Illustrated Treatise on the Countries of the Seas) 125 f. Halbwachs, Maurice 2, 142 Hawaii 127, 128 Hebrew 124 Heshang (River Elegy) 137 historical memory 51, 65, 149 Hua Sheng 140 Hu Hanmin 130 – 132 imperialists

1, 6, 14, 53, 111

Kai Ba Lidai Shiji (Chronicle of the Development of the Kingdom of Kalapa) 124 Kang Youwei 126 – 129, 139 Kotnis 68, 71 f. Kuomintang 50, 135, 176 legitimacy 4 f., 11 f., 65 f., 71, 73, 100, 138, 173 f., 176, 180, 182 – 184, 189 f. Lenin 133 f., 174, 177 f., 182 Liang Qichao 7, 127 f. Li Dazhao 134, 178 f. Lim, Robert Kho-Seng 4, 15, 49 f., 53 – 55, 64 f. literary translation 1, 3 f., 24 Liu Yazi 130 Lord Byron 136

196

Index

Louis XVI 129, 132, 139 Luanshi Nühao 1 f., 7 – 10, 13 – 18, 20 Madame de Staël 131 Manchu 10, 13 f., 17, 130 f., 133, 158 f. Mao Zedong 60 f., 69, 71, 162 f., 165, 173 – 176 May Fourth Movement 8, 18, 22, 135, 137 f., 173 – 175, 177 – 189 May Fourth women 1, 14, 17 – 20 media 2, 5, 18, 67 f., 130, 140, 151, 164, 166, 173 – 176, 178 – 190 Meiji Constitution 129 micro-history 49, 53 Middle Ages 136, 150, 152, 154 Minbao 130 f., 133 missionary translation 8 missionary women 1, 3 – 6, 11, 19 – 23 nation-state 13, 15, 49 – 51, 73, 78 f., 86, 160 Norman, Henry (Bai Qiu’en) 4, 15, 49 f., 53 f., 56 f., 59, 61, 67 f., 70 f., 77, 79 Ottoman Empire 131 Overseas Chinese 13, 15, 54, 61, 73, 76, 85 – 89, 97, 99 – 102, 104, 108 f. Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) 55 People’s Republic of China 5, 65 f., 86, 105, 122, 135 – 137, 175 Poland 62, 131 political reforms 17, 119, 129, 142, 164 Romola 1 – 4, 7 – 21, 23 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 131, 146 Russia 17, 20, 108, 129, 134 f., 152, 160, 175, 177 f. Second World War 50, 65 f. Shenbao (newspaper) 62 f., 128 – 130

Skinner, G. William 15, 85 – 87, 89 – 107, 110 – 112 Soviet Union 57, 87, 138 f., 164 student protests 141, 173 – 175, 177, 186, 190 Taiping war 132 Tang Dynasty 17, 149 – 152, 159 f., 165 f., 168 Tang Taizong 149, 155 – 159, 163 Thailand 15, 85 – 99, 101 – 112 Tiananmen 17, 173, 176, 183, 185 – 189 Tocqueville, Alexis de 119, 139 f., 142 Tocqueville effect 119, 139 Tokyo 127, 152 translation 1 – 5, 7 – 19, 23 f., 106, 108, 120, 125, 137, 150, 153 translators 2 f. transnational 1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 15, 22, 24, 49, 51 – 53, 79, 85 f., 112 Turkey 131 Victorian womanhood

1, 3, 5 – 7, 21 – 24

Wang Jingwei 131 – 133 Wang Qishan 139 f. Wang Tao 126, 139 Wei Yuan 125 f., 139 White, Laura M. 1 – 24, 87, 93 f., 130 Xi Jinping 18, 71, 138, 149 f., 164, 168, 184 Xinhai Revolution 119, 122 f., 130 – 135, 141 Yao Peng 136 f. Yu Shimei 128, 130 Zhou Kui 127 Zhu Weizheng 136 Zhu Zhixin 132 Zou Rong 131