Liang Qichao follow-up

Yes, yes, it's been a long time coming. I've finally gotten around to it, though.

According to his wiki, Liang Qichao was an influential intellectual in many respects, but I am most interested in his historiography, his presentation of China as a single nation.

Liang Qichao’s historiographical thought represents the beginning of modern Chinese historiography and reveals some important directions of Chinese historiography in the twentieth century.

For Liang, the major flaw of "old historians" (舊史家) was their failure to foster the national awareness necessary for a strong and modern nation. Liang's call for new history not only pointed to a new orientation for historical writing in China, but also indicated the rise of modern historical consciousness among Chinese intellectuals.

During this period of Japan's challenge in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Liang was involved in protests in Beijing pushing for an increased participation in the governance by the Chinese people. It was the first protest of its kind in modern Chinese history. This changing outlook on tradition was shown in the historiographical revolution (史學革命) launched by Liang Qichao in the early twentieth century. Frustrated by his failure at political reform, Liang embarked upon cultural reform. In 1902, while in exile in Japan, Liang wrote New History (新史學), launching attacks on traditional historiography.

All very interesting, but annoyingly vague. How exactly did "old historians" fail to foster national awareness, in his view? How did the historiographical revolution address this--what new perspective did it offer?

(You may have noticed that Liang's wiki is not one of the best written articles out there. Keep this in mind when considering its completeness and impartiality.)

His views on political philosophy come tantalizingly close to current received PRC/"East Asian" wisdom--"'Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. (…) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other.'" And they do dovetail nicely with Liang's stated wish to reconcile Confucianism with Western ideas--Hobbes seems to have been his preferred choice here.

But meeting and diagnosing the patient come before prescribing treatment, and those areas remain frustratingly hazy. Following the link to Chinese historiography proves equally disappointing, though Chinese nationalism bears some interesting fruit:

The official Chinese nationalistic view in the 1920s and 1930s was heavily influenced by modernism and social Darwinism, and included advocacy of the cultural assimilation of ethnic groups in the western and central provinces into the "culturally advanced" Han state, to become in name as well as in fact members of the Chinese nation. Furthermore, it was also influenced by the fate of multi-ethnic states such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. It also became a very powerful force during the Japanese occupation of Coastal China during the 1930s and 1940s and the atrocities committed by such regime.

Over the next decades Chinese nationalism was influenced strongly by Russian ethnographic thinking, and the official ideology of the PRC asserts that China is a multi-ethnic state, and Han Chinese, despite being the overwhelming majority (over 90% in the mainland), they are only one of many ethnic groups of China, each of whose culture and language should be respected. However, many critics* argue that despite this official view, assimilationist attitudes remain deeply entrenched, and popular views and actual power relationships create a situation in which Chinese nationalism has in practice meant Han dominance of minority areas and peoples and assimilation of those groups.

(*Allow me to clear up any Wikipedian ambiguity by noting that these "many critics" are, by and large, quite correct)

No mention of Liang Qichao here, but, interestingly enough, his wiki does mention a fascination with Social Darwinism, something I dismissed as irrelevant on my first read-through. After some thought, I realized that whoever wrote these articles doesn't define "social darwinism" the same way I do. I see it as applying the "survival of the fittest" concept to human society, with the implication that the best individuals are those who attain the most fame, money, and/or power, and vice versa, regardless of the tactics used--pretty largely removed from cultural comparisons, hence my initial dismissal of the term as used in these articles.

While that sort of social darwinism certainly isn't far removed from post-Mao China, what these articles are discussing could be more accurately described as "cultural darwinism." That is, assimilation of minority ethnic groups into the supposedly superior Han culture, as the quote describes.

According to Wikipedia, the proper Western anthropological term is cultural colonialism, the "internal domination by one group and its culture or ideology over others." The page goes on to use the U.S.S.R. as an example, noting its "domination...by Russian language and culture." As for official reasons, it notes that "The oneness of socialist internationalism was to unite all the republics and their peoples."

But cultural colonialism is not new in the world, nor is it really what Fear of a Red Planet meant by 'nationalism', is it?

As I mentioned in the previous post, the current, particularly intense brand of Chinese nationalism is largely couched in bitter memories of Western influence and control. Whatever his actual role may have been, Liang does appear to have drawn much of his motivation from a desire to see a strong, free China stand unmolested on the international stage, which in turn grew out of indignation and despair at its treatment by the West and Japan. Again, I would need to see what he wrote in greater detail in order to properly address this.

Was Liang so crucial in making this connection, though? Couldn't it be argued that the idea of a zhong hua min zu, a Chinese race, would have been a natural reaction among most Chinese to the humiliations of the 19th century? "Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately"--isn't that the basic gist of Liang's message?

Perhaps it's the combination of the abovementioned socialist internationalism and memory of past humiliations that has made Chinese nationalism so potent...I really must research this further.