scholarly journals Creating ‘Virtuous and Talented’ Officials for the Twentieth Century: Discourse and Practice in Xinzheng China

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia C. Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Modern China ◽  
New Order ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
New Policy Reforms

‘It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.’ Machiavelli, The PrinceCentral Xinzheng Reform and the Twentieth-Century Chinese StateThe effort of the Qing dynasty to transform itself and forge a new set of relationships with society in its last decade has been one of the less explored areas in the scholarship on modern China. Although this set of radical initiatives, collectively known as the xinzheng (‘New Policy’) reforms attracted a good deal of commentary from its contemporaries, until recently it has been relatively understudied. There are two reasons for this neglect. First, conventional periodization has divided historical turf between Qing historians (for the Qing dynasty 1644–1911), Republican historians (for the period between 1911 and 1949 ) and political scientists (who cover 1949 to the present). Second, since the dramatic narrative for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century has been largely understood as a process of ever more radical forms of revolutionary change, scholars have understandably been more taken with exploring the antecedents of revolution and/or locally based studies of elite transformation than they have been with exploring a case of seemingly bona fide failure.The central government-initiated xinzheng reform period (1902–1911) has thus borne the full brunt of a Whiggish interpretation of history; too late to command the attention of most Qing historians, too early for the majority of Republican historians, at best a prologue for the real revolution to come, and at worst an abortive failure.

The Lessons of Defeat: Transforming the Qing State after the Boxer War

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger R. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Local State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
New Policy Reforms

These four essays were first presented to an audience in Washington, D.C. in April 2002 at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Richard Horowitz, the panel organizer, argued that:the roots of China's modern state can be found in the Xinzheng or ‘new policy’ reforms during the last decade of the Qing dynasty. These reforms marked a radical departure for the Chinese state, involving a sustained effort to import foreign models and adapt them to Chinese realities. Although scholarship on reforms to provincial and local state institutions in this period is substantial, the transformation of the central government in Beijing has received little attention.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Francis Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Common ◽  
Made In

This chapter draws together the arguments made in the earlier chapters and addresses the question of nationalism, in particular after the Manchu conquest of China and the start of the Qing dynasty in 1644, which altered perceptions of China significantly in East Asia. The cultural pride that developed in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam led to greater interest in the vernaculars but it did not until later lead to a rejection of Sinitic, for until the early twentieth century Sinitic continued to be perceived as the common learned language of the whole of East Asia, rather that the property of China.

Horse Theft, Law, and Punishment in Xinjiang during the Qianlong Reign

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-164
Author(s):  
Jianfei Jia
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Law ◽  
Almost All

There are a large number of criminal cases in the Manchu archives, which occurred in Mongolia and Xinjiang and were reported to the Qing emperors. These criminal cases can be roughly divided into two groups: homicide cases and horse theft cases. Based on the records of the Manchu archives, this paper will focus upon horse theft cases in Xinjiang during the Qianlong reign. Xinjiang was a place populated by many ethnic groups under the Qing rule. In the Qing records, we found that almost all of the ethnic groups were involved in horse theft cases. The questions at issue are: why did such horse theft cases matter in the Qing dynasty, especially to the extent they even had to be reported to the central government and the Qing emperors? Based on what law were the criminals of different peoples punished in the judicial trials?My arguments are as follows: based on the Qing records, one can learn that the legislation in Xinjiang had been less mature than that in China proper, and there had not been specific regulations or laws on criminal cases including horse theft being enacted by the Qing court in Xinjiang; the law was subject to variation based on the emperors’ own will, which largely reflects the limitations and challenges that the Manchu rulers were facing during their reign in such a newly-conquered multi-cultural territory. What is certain is: first, in general, the ethnicities of horse theft criminals and owners of the stolen horses were considered by the Qing magistrates, and the criminals were punished on the basis of their and the owners’ ethnicities, thus, a diversified statutory base appeared to be applied in these trials. Second, the punishment for criminals in horse theft in Xinjiang at the time was more severe than that in other parts of the Qing Empire, and the penalties were generally borrowed from that inDaqing lüli, which, to some extent, could reflect the strong influences of Chinese and Manchu legislation.

The last guardian of the throne: the regional army in the late Qing dynasty

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Linan Peng
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Coordination Failure ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Poor Recruitment ◽  
And Training

Abstract This paper investigates the organizational structure of the Xiang Army, one of the best-known regional armies in the late Qing dynasty. The army developed an organizational form to overcome problems that plagued the imperial army of the central government, namely, the poor recruitment and training of soldiers, the lack of incentives to fight in battles, and the coordination failure. This organizational structure, I argue, played a central role in the rise of the Xiang Army in the Qing dynasty.

Centralization and decentralization of power structure: A theory of ruling risks and empirical evidence from Chinese history

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenghan Cao
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Han Ethnicity ◽  
The Social

In Chinese history, the power relationship between the central and local governments has undergone perennial and critical changes. These changes have given rise to three questions: First, why did some dynasties adopt feudalism at an early stage, merely to curtail the local authority in times of stability? Second, why did the Yuan and Ming dynasties employ a native chieftain system, while the Qing dynasty struggled to bureaucratise the native officers in ethnic minority areas? Third, why were the dynasties of Han ethnicity so hesitant to set up a provincial government while nomadic societies did not view this as a dilemma? Furthermore, why was the Qing dynasty, which was ethnically Han, able to break down these contradictions and create a stable provincial government and provincial state? This paper demonstrates that these changes may be explained by the propensity of the rulers to minimise the ruling risks and constraints that they encountered. Specifically, the ruler’s decision to centralise or decentralise power was constrained by certain challenges, such as fiscal and administrative costs, military technology limitations and political competition. These constraints impelled the ruling class to deviate from the system of prefectures and countries. Under these circumstances, the central government was forced to endure higher social risks and also the potential delegation of power. However, it would reduce the social and delegate risks provided that the constraints were loosened, which triggered the evolution of a power structure between the central and local governments. Another potential driving force behind the changes in the power structure was the dynamic between the social and agency risks. When these risks increased, the central government would readjust the centralisation and decentralisation of power at different government levels to control the rising risks.

Through A Japanese Prism: Foreign influence and Chinese telecommunications in the early Republican era

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 858-894
Author(s):  
DAQING YANG
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Republican China ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
China And Japan ◽  
Early Republican

AbstractThis paper examines the key modern infrastructure of telecommunications in early Republican China, through the eyes of a Japanese, Nakayama Ryûji, who served as a telecommunications adviser to the Chinese government from 1913 to 1928. Nakayama's numerous reports and recommendations to his Chinese employer and frequent confidential dispatches to the Japanese government, when read together, constitute a fascinating prism. They not only reveal problems as well as the potential in China's telecommunications sector, they also highlight Japan's efforts to compete with other foreign actors in China through the provision of Japanese equipment, expertise, and loans. While Nakayama strove to shape China's telecommunications development in ways that would, in his view, benefit both China and Japan, his efforts were often undercut by the aggressive actions of the Japanese government in China, such as the infamous Twenty-One Demands. Though promising at first, Japan's influence on China's modernization in the early Republican era came to be more limited, especially when compared with the final decade of the Qing Dynasty. Ultimately, what can be seen through this Japanese prism confirms that the development of an information infrastructure in modern China, as elsewhere, was as much shaped by technological and economic forces as it was influenced by political and diplomatic factors.

Red China, Red translation

Babel ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-158
Author(s):  
He Aijun
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Masses

This thesis gives a concise introduction to Professor Fang Huawen, the most productive literary translator in contemporary China, and concentrates on his important translation theory “Red Translation in Red China”. He is most productive based on the fact that he has published translated works of about 6 million words. China’s translation is “red” based on the fact that politics plays a dominant role in China’s translation activities. To drive home this notion which is the key point in Professor Fang’s theory, the author of the thesis traces the reasons from the following four aspects:. 1.Historical and social reasons. China’s weakness in the closing years of the Qing Dynasty and China’s failure of the war with Japan in 1895 dealt a heavy blow on the patriotic scholars of the country, so they regarded translation as the most important means of saving the nation from being enslaved; such “patriotic” translation developed into “red” translation as times changed. 2. Human reasons. Nearly all of the translators following the line of “red translation”, who had formed a large body in the teams of Chinese translators before and after 1949, were either communist leaders like Maodun and Liu Bocheng or ardent supporters of socialist cause. They guided the direction of translation in modern China by taking the lead in introducing “red” books into China. 3. Reasons of political systems. P. R. China is governed by the Party who sticks to “red” (proletarian) politics, which has decided the nature of translation in China. 4. Reasons of public wills. The scholars in old China were in continuous search of a way to save their motherland from slavery; Darwinism, Anarchism, Utopian socialism and many other “isms” had aroused their interests, but they chose socialism as the masses, who suffered in poverty, thought that only socialism could help them get rid of poverty and achieve national independence. The nature of socialist China permits only red translation.

From Teahouse to Playhouse: Theaters As Social Texts in Early-Twentieth-Century China

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
Public Theaters ◽  
The Ideal

The qing court had a love-hate relationship with popular drama. From the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95) to the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), several Qing rulers were renowned for their doting patronage of popular opera, yet the state was far from sanguine about drama's social effects, viewing public theaters with great suspicion. Theaters, in the eyes of the authorities, were notorious hangouts for ruffians, slackers, gamblers, and insurgents, providing these roustabouts with the ideal environment in which to scheme and swindle. In addition to waging campaigns to censor and weed out “seditious passages” from popular dramas (Guy 1987, 92), emperors throughout the Qing dynasty issued dozens of edicts regulating the construction, location, and clientele of commercial theaters. In rural areas, especially in times of unrest, local authorities often canceled scheduled performances for fear that such occasions offered gangs and secret societies prime opportunities for stirring up trouble (Mackerras 1972, 37). Urban theaters were no safer. According to popular lore, even the Kangxi emperor was cheated by hoodlums when he ventured into a public theater during one of his legendary outings disguised as a commoner (Liao 1997, 80). Yet in spite of their reputation for breeding disorder and moral vice, commercial theaters—commonly known as teahouses (chayuan)—increasingly thrived, and in this new social space, the genre of Peking opera came into full flower during the last century of the Qing dynasty.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document