Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China: The Chenbao Fukan and the New Culture Era, 1918-1928

264 Pages·2014·2.422 MB·English

by  Xiaoqun Xu

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism,
and Individualism in Modern China
Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism,
and Individualism in Modern China
The Chenbao Fukan and the
New Culture Era, 1918–1928
Xiaoqun Xu
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Xu, Xiaoqun.
Cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and individualism in modern China : the Chenbao fukan and the new cultural era,
1918–1928 / Xu, Xiaoqun.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7391-8914-6 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-8915-3 (electronic)
1. Chenbao fukan. 2. Chinese newspapers—Social aspects—History—20th century. 3. Chinese newspapers—
Political aspects—China—History—20th century. 4. Cosmopolitanism--China—History—20th century. 5.
Nationalism—China—History—20th century. 6. Individualism—China—History—20th century. 7. Social movements
—China—History—20th century. 8. China—Intellectual life—1912–1949. 9. China—Politics and government—
1912–1949. 10. China—Social conditions—1912–1949. I. Title.
PN5369.B453C479 2014
079'.51—dc23
2014008776
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for
Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For All My Teachers in China and America
Preface
China’s rise as an economic power since the 1980s has been a source of
concern for many politicians and pundits in the developed countries and beyond,
especially in the past decade or so when China’s growing influence in the world has
seemed to be highlighted by the perceived decline of the United States. As a result, a
discourse on “China threat” in various incarnations has recurred periodically in the
West. In part to counter the said discourse, Beijing has promoted the notion of a
“harmonious world” where should prevail a new model of great power relationship
between China and the United States and a win-win scenario in economic cooperation
for all countries that have bilateral relations with China—such relationships should
replace those of zero-sum games in the past. As widely recognized, the notion of a
“harmonious world,” as well as that of a “harmonious society” in domestic context, is
not new, but a reapplication of the traditional Chinese notion of “great union all under
heaven” to the twenty-first century. Although whether such an ideal is realistic and
practicable remains a big question, the answer to which depends on the wills and
actions of all parties involved, it would be a mistake to dismiss it out of hand as no
more than a convenient Chinese rhetorical device. To better grasp the Chinese mind
and thereby interpret on a firmer ground what the rise of China shall mean to the
world, it is essential to understand Chinese history and culture. This book makes a
case in point.
Exploring the intellectual life and cultural practices in early twentieth-century
China, the following pages will reveal that educated Chinese at that time harbored a
deeply felt longing for a world of universal peace, international equality, individual
liberty, and shared culture—a cosmopolitanism that originated in Chinese tradition and
was at once reinforced and revised by the world history that the Chinese learned
from the Western narrative; and the cosmopolitan longing had an uneasy relationship
with a pragmatic imperative to wage nationalist struggle—a nationalism that was
informed by the colonial world order as part of the modern world history. That both
Chinese cosmopolitanism and Chinese nationalism were driven by the same reality of
China being weak and bullied by Western Powers and Japan constituted a poignant
intellectual-moral paradox, in a complex relationship with individualism, and in constant
negotiations between Chinese tradition and Western culture. Thus, an informed
understanding of the paradox offers a clue as to why the Chinese aspired to the
possibility of a cosmopolitan world of great union when China was a weak country
and why a harmonious world may be what the Chinese still aspire to today when
China is stronger but not without many difficulties to wrestle with or into the future
when China might be even more prosperous (or not). The Chinese thinker Liang
Qichao opined, in the wake of World War I, that cosmopolitanism was an enduring
Chinese cultural gene and nationalism was a fad learned from the modern West and a
defensive response to imperialism. If one would entertain Liang’s diagnosis, it would
seem plausible that the “China dream,” of which Chinese leaders have spoken in
recent years, may be similar to and compatible with dreams of all peace-loving
people in the world, and that the rise of China may contribute in some way to the
realization, if ever possible, of a common dream that has so far remained elusive in
the human history—universal peace, liberty, equality, justice, and a thriving world
culture shared by all.
In any case, here lies the relevance of the issues treated in this book to China
and the world today. Given the concerns on the part of Chinese leaders and citizens,
and their counterparts around the world, about China’s relations to the world in the
coming decades, it may be worthwhile to explore the Chinese experience in dealing
with the intellectual-moral paradox noted earlier as part of the cultural encounters
between China and the modern world/West against the historical backdrop of their
political encounters. Moreover, beyond a rising China and its relations to the world,
the discourses and acts of “clashes of civilizations” in other dimensions or locations
also call for alternative, more constructive visions of the world’s future. It may equally
be worthwhile, therefore, to ponder whether and how cosmopolitan, nationalistic, and
individualistic aspirations in China and elsewhere might be reconciled, and whether
and how the notion of a harmonious world might be worked out, at least to some
degree if not completely, to bear tangible fruits for the good of humankind.
I started this book project after presenting a paper at the international
conference on “The Trans-national Dimensions of the Chinese Press, 1850-1949” at
the University of Oregon in 2002. Years later I presented a part of the book
manuscript at the biannual conference of the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century
China in Hawaii in 2008, another part at the international conference on “Republican
Era Newspapers: The Journalistic and the Literary,” at the Institute of East Asian
Studies, University of California-Berkeley in 2009, and yet another part at the
international workshop on “The Power of Information in Shaping Chinese Modernity”
at University of London Royal Holloway in 2010. I thank the organizers and
participants of those conferences for the opportunities to present my research and
receive feedbacks. Q. Edward Wang read an earlier and longer version of Chapter 5
on reorganizing national heritage. An anonymous reviewer for the press offered
constructive suggestons. I am solely responsible for any defects that may remain in
the book.
The bulk of Chapter 2 was originally published as an article, “Cosmopolitanism,
Nationalism, and Transnational Networks: The Chenbao Fujuan, 1921-1928,” in China
Review, Vol. 4, No.1 (Spring 2004):145-173. I thank the Chinese University Press (of
Hong Kong) for its reprint permission.
A shorter version of Chapter 4 was originally published as an article, “Placing
China in the Colonial World Order: Travelogues in the Chenbao Fukan, 1921–1926,”
in Twentieth-Century China, Vol. 39, No.1 (January 2014):69–89
(www.maneyonline.com/tcc). I thank the publisher, Maney Publishing (of London), for
its reprint permission.
I thank Sabah Ghulamali and Brian Hill of Lexington Books for their efficient
editorial work.
I dedicate this book to all my teachers, in China and America.

Xiaoqun Xu
Chesapeake, Virginia
Introduction
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) and the founding of the Republic
of China in 1912, the promise of a functioning parliamentary government was quickly
turned into a deep disillusionment for Chinese citizens. In the wake of the authoritarian
presidency of Yuan Shikai (1912–1916), the political scene was dominated by
warlords who fought one another for the control of the national capital and various
provinces. China’s domestic disorder did not help its international standing. It failed to
recover full national sovereignty from the unequal treaties with Western Powers and
Japan dating back to the nineteenth century; worse, Japan’s encroachment on
mainland China only stepped up, with the takeover of the German leasehold in
Shandong province and the imposition of the Twenty-One Demands on China in 1915.
As a result, Chinese citizens were awakened to the national crisis, crystallized in
China’s failure to regain the German leasehold in Shandong from Japan at the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919. The ensuing May Fourth movement marked the rise of
Chinese nationalism. Its twin goals of anti-imperialism and anti-warlordism were
culminated in the Northern Expedition (1926–1928) and the founding of the Nationalist
Government of the Guomindang (GMD, a.k.a. Nationalist Party). In the process the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 as a participant in the
nationalist cause, but with a Marxist-Leninist ideology. The Nationalist Party initially
cooperated with the CCP in 1924–1927 and then turned against it. Through a
prolonged civil war, suspended during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)
and resumed in 1946, the struggle between the GMD and the CCP finally resulted in
the latter’s victory and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Against this broad political backdrop of the early Republican period (1912–28),
emerged an important development in cultural-intellectual spheres, known as the New
Culture movement. The movement was predicated on certain important social
changes that had been occurring, despite the political instability associated with
warlord fighting and frequent change of the central government. The education reform
dating back to the final decade of the Qing dynasty gave birth to Western-style
schools and universities; publishing industry and print media grew on an
unprecedented scale, with increasing influence on an expanding readership, especially
in cities and towns; along with print media, the growth of marketing and entertainment
industries and the proliferation of public spaces (such as libraries, museums, movie
houses, theaters, parks, public squares, coffee shops, tea houses, college
campuses, school auditoriums, etc.) provided venues for cultural production and
consumption; and new social groups or classes, elite and non-elite, emerged with
new social roles to play, from modern bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants,
engineers, journalists, writers, university professors, school teachers, college and
middle school students, government employees, white-collar workers, industrial
workers, to various urban residents collectively known as petty urbanites (xiao