RICE UNIVERSITY Chen Duxiu's Early Years: The Importance of Personal Connections in the Social and Intellectual Transformation of China 1895-1920 by Anne Shen Chap A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: Richar^TTSmith, Chair, Professor History, George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities Nanxiu Qian,Associate Professor" Chinese Literature '^L*~* r^g^- ^J-£L&~^T Sarah Thai, Associate Professor History, University of Wisconsin- Madison HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 2009 UMI Number: 3362139 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform 3362139 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI48106-1346 ABSTRACT Chen Duxiu's Early Years: The Importance of Personal Connections in the Social and Intellectual Transformation of China 1895-1920 by Anne Shen Chao Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), is without question one of the most significant figures in modern Chinese history. Yet his early life has been curiously neglected in Western scholarship. In this dissertation I examine the political, social and intellectual networks that played such an important role in his early career—a career that witnessed his transformation from a classical scholar in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), to a reformer, to a revolutionary, to a renowned writer and editor, to a university dean, to a founder of the Chinese Communist Party, all in the space of about two decades. INTRODUCTION Chen Duxiu in History and Historiography Networking: An Analytical Framework CHAPTER 1: THE CRISIS OF LATE QING CHINA The Inherited Political and Social Order Checks and Balances The Examination System Gentry and Merchants Historical Developments in China from c. 1800 to 1895: The Origins of Late Qing Reform Qing Intellectual Life Chinese Perspectives on he Unequal Treaty System Rebellion and Restoration Reform Efforts in the Immediate Aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War The Formation of New-Style Study Societies Anti-footbinding and Opium Eradicating Societies Organizations Supporting the Education of Women Early Oppositional Organizations The Emergence of a New-Style Chinese Periodical Press Late Qing Journalism Prior to the Sino-Japanese War The China Progress (Shiwu bad) State-Sponsored Reform: From the "One Hundred Days" to the Inauguration of the "New Policies" The Reform Movement of 1898 The Boxer Uprising The Begining of the "New Policies" The Post-1900 Role of Japan in Chinese Reform and Revolution Uprisings in China Japan as a Safe Haven Overseas Students and the Spread of Reformist and Revolutionary Ideas CHAPTER 2: NETWORK-BUILDING IN ANQING, TOKYO AND SHANGHAI Chen Duxiu's Pre-Revolutionary Life The Determination Society and Its Vicissitudes Chen's Return to Anhui and His Early Ties with Fellow Provincials Chen Duxiu's Return to Japan Patriotic Organizations in Anhui and Elsewhere The Rise and Fall of the Anhui Patriotic Society Schools as Sites of Protest The China Education Society Chen Duxiu and the Citizen's Daily The Legacy of Liang Qichao Anti-Imperialism The Slave-like Nature of the Chinese Orthodoxy of the Way The Need for a New Chinese Spirit The Period in Retrospect: A Brief Analysis CHAPTER 3: CHEN DUXIU AND THE ANHUISUHUA BAO The Beginnings of the Anhui Vernacular Paper Imperialism and Its Lessons National Pride and National Shame Variations on a Theme The Anti-US Boycott Strategies to Strengthen China The Critical Role of Education Economic Development Rights Recovery Playing It Safe The Politics of Indirection The Vagaries of Late Oing Social Reform CHAPTER 4: CHEN DUXIU AT THE CROSSROADS: ENLIGHTENMENT OR ENGAGEMENT? The Rising Tide of Revolution The Patriotic Association and the Network of Assassination Squads The Anhui Public School The Yuewang Hui Toward a Universal Outlook: Anti-racism, Pan-Asianism, and Anarchism An Interlude of Poetry and Wine Self-Rule Movement and Constitutionalism Rights Recovery The 1911 Revolution Anhui and Chen Duxiu in the 1911 Revolution CHAPTER 5: CHEN DUXIU'S POST-REVOLUTION REVOLUTION Tokyo and the Tiger Magazine Domestic and International Politics Chen Duxiu and the New Culture Movement: A Productive Partnership Ethics and Religion East Versus West Science as Methodology Experiments in Vernacular Prose, Poetry and Plays War, Peace and Struggle Socialist Currents and Consequences The Weekly Critic and Chen's Conversion to Communism CONCLUSION APPENDICES BIBLIOGRAPHY TABLES Table 1. The ties of Qiangxue hui members to other groups and activities. Table 2: The Shanghai-Tokyo networking of intellectuals in 1900. Table 3: Names of members of the China Education Society, the Patriotic School, the speakers at the Resist-Russia meeting at Zhang Garden in 1903, the contributors to Subao, to the Citizen's Daily, and to the Warnings on Russian Affairs. Table 4: The Tokyo Radicals: Names of members of the Qing Overseas Student Club, the participants of the 242nd anniversary of the death of China, the Youth Society, the speakers at the Resist-Russia meeting in Kanda, and members of the Military Citizen's Education Society. Table 5. The activities of selected members of the Military Citizen's Education Society upon their return to China. Table 6. Names of the members of the Tokyo Assassination Squad and Shanghai Patriotic Association. Table 7. Names of members of the Yuewang Hui and their activities 1905-1911. Table 7 (A) The Anhui network. Table 8- Railways built in China, 1880s-1911. (Miles) INTRODUCTION Chen Duxiu (1887-1942) is without question one of the most interesting and significant figures in modern Chinese history. Yet he has been poorly understood, especially in Europe and America. Relatively few studies of Chen's life and times have appeared in Western languages, and although there has been a huge outpouring of Chinese scholarship on Chen over the past three decades or so, most of it emphasizing his life from 1920 onward—from the period in which he co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to his solitary death in 1942. Moreover, the bulk of this literature in China reflects a deep-seated historiographical tendency to allocate "praise and blame" {baobian). Thus, Chen generally appears in the literature as a hero, a villain, or some combination of the two, whose personal virtues and/or character flaws explain his tumultuous career and his role in China's turbulent twentieth century history. In these politically driven and teleologically oriented accounts, Chen's early experiences led him inexorably to Communism and his later mistakes led inevitably to failure and humiliation. This study attempts a more more nuanced view of Chen's life and times, focused primarily on the comparatively neglected period from 1895-1920. Drawing not only upon his own writings and those of his friends and associates but also upon the vast body of secondary literature in Chinese and other languages, I have tried to go beyond politically motivated or morally based evaluations of Chen and his career. Moreover, I have tried to place him in a larger historical and interpretive framework. In this framework he remains an undeniably central and significant figure, but his significance is 1 in large measure a product of his relationships with a great many other individuals who worked together, and occasionally also at cross-purposes, to solve the pressing problems of their place and time. Since these problems are of crucial importance to an understanding of the way China's twentieth century history unfolded, the effort seems worthwhile. In order to give a general sense of Chen's place in the picture, I begin with a brief overview of his life, and a discussion of the way that it has been depicted in the past. This discussion is followed by an outline of my methodology in this study. Chen Duxiu in History and Historiography Chen Duxiu was bora in the area of Anqing, Anhui province, in 1887. Bright and well-educated, he placed first in the district-level civil service examinations and gained the prestigi6us title of xiucai ("cultivated talent") at age seventeen. A year later he failed the provincial-level exam but wrote "A Treatise on the Defense of the Yangzi River"~a reflection of his rapidly growing patriotism. He studied in Japan on five different occasions and, while there, joined a revolutionary overseas Chinese student organization, the Youth Society (Qingnian hui), in 1902.1 He was expelled from Japan in 1903 for 1 Symptomatic of much of the scholarship on Chen's early life, biographers differ on the number of trips Chen made to Japan (Chen Wanxiong says four while Wang Guanquan says five); the years in question are between 1900 and 1902. Prof. Shen Ji, in his definitive analysis of Chen's early life, concludes that he made five trips to Japan, and did not attend Qiushi Academy after his failed second level civil service exam in 1898; nor did he attend Nanjing's Jiangnan Military Academy. Therefore he did not meet Zhang Shizhao, Zhao Sheng, and Qin Yuliu there. See Chen Wanxiong, Xin wenhua yundong qian di Chen Duxiu, 7. Wang Guanquan, Bei bang di Puluomixiusi, 56, 60, 64, 69. Shen Ji ed. Chen Duxiu yanjiu, vol. 2, 236- 242. There is also some disagreement among the biographers on whether or not Chen went to Japan first in 1901 or 1902.