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Local Self-Government in Late Qing: Political Discourse and Moral Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Theresa Man Ling Lee
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Extract

This article is a study of the concept of local self-government (difang zizht) in the context of reform efforts from 1898 to 1911. Of the institutional changes proposed, local self-government rapidly gained much support among China's educated elites. The author explores the reasons behind much enthusiasm for self-government institutions by analyzing the works of two key reformists, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929). While the reformist approach to local government indicated the continuing influence of the fengjian (feudal) tradition on the one hand, and the reformist notion of citizenship was suggestive of the Neo-Confucian conception of self-cultivation on the other, the article argues that the reformist thought on local self-government represents an important step in moving China beyond an imperial political order.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , Winter 1998 , pp. 31 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1998

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References

1 Qichao, Liang, “Xin dalu youji jielu” (Excerpts of travel notes from the New World), in Yinbinshi heji (Collected works of Ice-Drinker's Studio) vol. 7 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), p. 121.Google Scholar

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3 The work that inspires studies on the subject is Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989)Google Scholar. In Habermas's formulation, the public sphere must facilitate the “public debate” that aims at “the consensus about what was practically necessary in the interest of all” (p. 83, emphasis in original).

4 For an excellent overview and assessment of scholarship on the subject, see the April 1993 special issue of Modern China, titled “Symposium: ‘Public Sphere’/‘Civil Society’ in China.” The issue contains articles by Heath B. Chamberlain, Philip C. C. Huang, Richard Madsen, Mary Backus Rankin, William T. Rowe and Frederic Wakeman Jr.

5 Both have written extensively on the subject. See, for example, Rankin, , Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Rowe, , Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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11 Yutang, Lin, A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936), p. 109.Google Scholar

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27 De Bary, , The Liberal Tradition in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 11–42Google Scholar, passim. As is well known, de Bary notes that the Neo-Confucian approach to education reveals the quintessential liberal faith in the individual's potential for growth and renewal. This claim is at the heart of de Bary's convergence thesis. See also de Bary, , Learning for One's Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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31 Ibid, pp. 265–66.

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35 Ibid, pp. 115,120–22.

36 Ibid, pp. 107–109.

37 Kuhn, , “Local Self-Government Under the Republic,” p. 273.Google Scholar

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42 Liang, , “Lun zizhi” (On self-government), in Xinmin shuo (Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), pp. 50–51, 54.Google Scholar

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44 Ibid, p. 52.

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48 Ibid, p. 158.

49 Kuhn, , “Local Self-Government under the Republic,” pp. 276–80Google Scholar. Also see Fincher, John H., Chinese Democracy (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1981)Google Scholar for a detailed description of local self-government.

50 Kuhn, , “Local Self-Government Under the Republic,” p. 282.Google Scholar

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53 “Lun difang zizhi zhi ji” (On the urgency for local self-government), in DFZZ 5, no.3 (1908): 36.Google Scholar

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55 Ibid, p. 533.

56 Ibid, p. 534.

57 Ibid, p. 536.

58 Judge, , Print and Politics, pp. 100–101.Google Scholar

59 Shi bao, reprinted in DFZZ1, no.12 (1904–5): 299–300. For a more detailed analysis of the content of Shi bao on the subject of local self-government, see Judge, , Print and Politics, pp. 170–79.Google Scholar

60 Tongwen huibao, reprinted in DFZZ 3, no.6 (1905): 125.

61 Shi bao, reprinted in DFZZ 1, no.9 (1904–05): 109–10. This article is also discussed in Kuhn, , “Late Ch'ing Views of the Polity,” pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

62 Shimin bao, reprinted in DFZZ 1, no.10 (1904–5):254.

63 Lingdong ribao, reprinted in DFZZ 4, no.4 (1907): 71–74.

64 “Lun lixian dangyou yubei” (Constitutionalism ought to require preparation), DFZZ 2, no.3 (1906): 45–46.Google Scholar

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66 Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 61–98, passim.Google Scholar

67 Ibid, pp. 88–89.

68 Ibid, p. 506.

69 Ibid, p. 10.

70 Ibid, pp. 506 and 525.

71 Ibid, p. 735.

72 Ibid, p. 668.

73 Ibid, p. 69.

74 Ibid, p. 93.

75 Ibid, p. 70.

76 See, for example, Putnam, Robert D., “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 65–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, p. 521.Google Scholar

78 Liang, , “Xin dalu youji jielu,” p. 123Google Scholar. As in the case of many Western writings, Tocqueville's work would have been available to Chinese intellectuals in late imperial China by way of Japanese translation. Although the first Japanese translation of Democracy in America was published between 1881 and 1882, there is no evidence that is suggestive of Liang's knowledge of Tocqueville. The first Chinese translation of Democracy in America was published in 1966.

79 Mitchell, Harvey, Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 133–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Judge makes the same observation in her analysis of the writings in Shibao, see Print and Politics pp. 83–99.