Reform – Global Political Theory

KANG Youwei (1858-1927) was a prominent Chinese public intellectual and reformer, best known for his socialist interpretation of Confucianism and radical reforms. Kang grew up during the end of the Qing dynasty and was an influential voice in guiding China’s development and modernization at the start of the 20^th century. An advocate of constitutional monarchy, Kang saw Meiji Japan as a model for China’s future development. This view earned him the ire of his contemporaries, leading Kang to be branded as a heretic.

Kang and his student Liang Qichao participated in the Hundred Days’ Reform effort in 1898, the failure of which forced Kang and Liang to flee to Japan to escape execution. Kang’s subsequent travel through Europe and Canada cemented his belief in the danger of revolution, opting instead for reform. Kang would later return to China, and in 1917 attempted to overthrow Sun Yat-sen’s newly established Republic and restore a Qing monarch to the throne. This did not go very well, however, as public sentiment had by this time shifted heavily against monarchism, and after becoming suspicious of his compatriot General Zhang Xun’s motives, Kang abandoned the effort. While public opinion weighed against Kang by the end of his life, his ideas would continue to influence Chinese thinkers for decades to come. His most influential work, Datong Shu (大同書) or “Book of Great Unity,” argued for the dissolution of traditional Chinese family structures (to be replaced with governmental institutions), the liberation of women, the implementation of socialist-style welfare, and the advancement of Chinese technology to improve quality of life.

FURTHER READING

De Bary, Theodore and Richard Lufrano, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Brusadelli, Federico. Confucian Concord: Reform, Utopia, and Teleology in Kang Youwei’s Datong Shu. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

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After China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, a group of civil service examination candidates led by Kang Youwei wrote the “Ten Thousand Word Memorial,” which advocated for a series of reforms aimed at modernizing China along Western lines. After being largely ignored by the Qing government, in 1898 Kang caught the attention of the Guangxu emperor, who granted him an audience with high government officials.

The emperor agreed with the suggestions of Kang and his fellow reformers, and began to issue edicts. If allowed to stand, these edicts would have radically transformed Chinese society, abolishing the civil service examination system, revising the code of law, and promoting western industry and technology. As these reforms directly targeted traditional Chinese power structures, however, they sparked fierce opposition from the ruling classes, who rallied behind empress dowager Cixi and enacted a coup deposing the Guangxu emperor. As a result of this Kang and his student Liang Qichao were forced to flee to Japan to avoid execution, but six of their fellow reformers were not so fortunate. The Hundred Days’ Reform Movement is especially interesting because despite its failure, many of its proposed reforms were later adopted (such as the abolition of the civil service exam system or the adoption of western science and medicine), suggesting that the movement’s failure could have been as much on the part of the reformers to make their suggestions politically viable as it was a reaction of vested interests against social and technological reform.

FURTHER READING

Luke S. K. Kwong. “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898.” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2000): 663–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/313144.

Tag: Reform

Kang Youwei

Hundred Days’ Reform Movement