The Year Book of World Affairs, 1981 by George W. Keeton & Georg Schwarzenberger

Author:George W. Keeton & Georg Schwarzenberger [Keeton, George W. & Schwarzenberger, Georg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Globalization, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780865311503
Google: 3zToMQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 10704803
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1981-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

II—The Development of Divergent Views

"Chinese learning as the base, foreign learning for use," did not solve China's problems. The Western Powers, now supplemented by Japan, continued to apply unacceptable pressures, and to encroach on Chinese sovereignty. The dynasty did not reform the political system and the Court obstructed much needed innovations. A growing division between the ideas of the younger generation and those of the elder, who remained deeply conservative, developed into a three-way division of opinion. To the Left, as we would put it, were the young reformers for whom Dr. Sun Yat-Sen became the leader and prophet. Failing to persuade Li Hong-chang to take up his reformist views, Dr. Sun became a revolutionary, dedicated to the overthrow of the dynasty and the establishment of a democratic republic, based on the model of the United States, with some ideas drawn from France. It must be remembered that outside South America, which did not offer desirable models, there were at that time only the United States, France, and Switzerland as republics, and none in Asia. Even a democratic parliamentary republic was then a very revolutionary concept. There were also the Constitutional Monarchists, who held that China could not make so great a change with safety, but that the dynasty must accept reform, beginning with a limited Constitution, and more sweeping changes in the educational and economic fields. They had Japan as their model, where, under the overriding authority of the Emperor, a parliament had been established, and many far-reaching, modernising reforms carried out. This group, led by highly intelligent younger men, had for a time much influence.

The old fashioned high officials, the Princes of the Court, and most of the powerful provincial governors, or viceroys, either still maintained the theory of "base and use," as it was known for short (ti yong), or were still devoted to the unchanged ideas of the past. The mass of the people were untouched by any new ideas, but in the south and to a lesser degree in the western part of China, anti-Manchu secret societies provided a potential source of revolutionary power. Realisation of China's altered standing in the world was, nonetheless, inescapable for all educated persons. The revolutionaries came to believe that national recovery depended mainly on expelling the dynasty and adopting a Western form of government. They assumed that once these ends were achieved, foreign acceptance of China's equality with other Powers would be unquestioned and automatic. They knew very little about the real economic and social problems which were already disturbing the foundations of Chinese society, for their young lives had been largely spent in foreign countries attending universities. The monarchist reformers, often a few years older, and coming from official families with direct experience of the government of the empire, were more inclined to believe that reform must come from the top; the Emperor, when he came of age, must authorise and lead the reform movement—as the Emperor Meiji (perhaps mainly as a figure head) had successfully done in Japan.

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