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.

The District Magistrate Profession in the Early Republican Period: Occupational Recruitment, Training and Mobility

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odoric Y. K. Wou
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Government ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Administrative Leaders ◽  
Administrative Unit ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Local Levels ◽  
Direct Implementation

The subject of magistrates, the local administrative leaders in the hsien, districts, is central to the study of Chinese government and society. The district has always been and still remains the basic administrative unit in China. Magistrates, the ‘offcials close to the people’, in the districts, are the chief administrators, who have always been singly responsible for the direct implementation of governmental policies at the local levels. Although several studies have been published on local administrators of the Ch'ing dynasty and the Communist period, district magistrates of the Republican era have been little studied.

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.

Tempest over Teapots: The Vilification of Teahouse Culture in Early Republican China

1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1009-1041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qin Shao
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
River Region ◽  
The Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Traditional Institutions ◽  
Early Republican

The Chinese Teahouse was one of a few traditional institutions of sociability whose wider social and cultural appeal overshadowed its primary business. Historically, it was closely woven into the fabric of Chinese life. In many communities the teahouse served as a center of information, a locus of leisure and social gatherings, an occasional office and marketplace for many practitioners, and an arena where various social forces competed for status and influence. Urbanization in the late Qing dynasty further contributed to the growth of teahouses, especially in the Yangzi River region (Suzuki 1982; Yan 1997, 17). However, while teahouses continued to flourish in the early Republic, teahouse culture became a target—a constant target in some areas— of social critics. Why this tempest over teapots?

Standard Oil and Petroleum Development in Early Republican China

1971 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel H. Pugach
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Government ◽  
American Business ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
American Government ◽  
Petroleum Potential ◽  
History Of ◽  
Business In China ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Petroleum Development

Despite the efforts of American government officials, attempts to establish a joint Chinese-American company to develop China's petroleum potential met with failure during the initial years of the Wilson administration. Duplicity and misunderstanding on the part of Standard Oil and of the Chinese government added another chapter to the dismal history of American business in China.

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.

Government, Private Enterprise and Ethnic to Build Up Local Society In South Meinong(1989s-1945s)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Jun Zhou ◽  
Shu-Chuan Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Alluvial Fans ◽  
The South ◽  
Local Society ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Town

<p>Located in the northern part of the Pingtung Plain of southern Taiwan, the town of Meinong is surrounded by Jade Mountain Range in the northeast, Laonong River in the south. After a period of land management and social operation in the Qing Dynasty, Hakka ethnic groups kept traditional lifestyle in Meinong. In the Qing Dynasty, the settlement development of Meinong was mainly distributed in the northern as a result of Laonong River usually flooded and deposited to alluvial fans with gravel and developed hardly in the southern. Until the Japanese colonization period, the Japanese government and the private enterprise begun to develop the alluvial fan. This study has two mainly purposes to analyze. First, the cooperation relationship between private enterprise and government. Second, the social operation and interaction between the original residents and immigrants in Meinong by the new developments that through existing research, literature review, field study and mapping.</p><p>In 1908, the Japanese government constructed Shihzihtou Irrigation System to irrigate a new reclamation site in the south of Meinong and set up a dike to block flood on the right bank of the Laonong River. In 1909, the Governor's House gave the permission to the private enterprise—Sanwu Company—to develope the NanLong farm. The NanLong farm attracted the nearby Hoklo ethnic group, the Hakka group of the northern Taiwan and the families of the old tribes of Meinong came here for reclamation. </p><p>The NanLong farm is alluvial soil of sandstone and shale, so it is conducive to agricultural development. It mainly grows the second-phase rice, sucrose, banana and miscellaneous grain crops. The NanLong farm controlled as a committee, representatives were from the settlements of new reclamation site and farm manager who was councilman. That built up a local society center on the NanLong farm, it was different from Meinong was mainly distributed in the northern that was center on the town office. Through state resources supported the private enterprise and private enterprise provided job opportunities for immigranst, the south of Meinong became liveable, culturally inclusive and sustainable landscapes from a alluvial fans with gravel.</p>

Grammatical Descriptions in Manchu Grammar Books from the Qing Dynasty

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Takashi Takekoshi
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The 19Th Century

In this paper, we analyse features of the grammatical descriptions in Manchu grammar books from the Qing Dynasty. Manchu grammar books exemplify how Chinese scholars gave Chinese names to grammatical concepts in Manchu such as case, conjugation, and derivation which exist in agglutinating languages but not in isolating languages. A thorough examination reveals that Chinese scholarly understanding of Manchu grammar at the time had attained a high degree of sophistication. We conclude that the reason they did not apply modern grammatical concepts until the end of the 19th century was not a lack of ability but because the object of their grammatical descriptions was Chinese, a typical isolating language.

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