The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low: the Shenbao As Platform for Yangwu Discussions on Political Reform, 1872-1895

_full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 3-4 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_articletitle_toc: 0 _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en _full_article_subject: 0

T’OUNG PAO 116 T’oung Pao 104-1-3Wagner (2018) 116-188 www.brill.com/tpao

The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low: The Shenbao as Platform for Yangwu Discussions on Political Reform, 1872-1895

Rudolf G. Wagner (Cluster Asia and Europe, Heidelberg University)

Introduction In scholarly analyses of late Qing dynasty (1644-1912) political thought, the importance of the Yangwu 洋務 (“Foreign Affairs”) current has been justly emphasized, especially since leading Han Chinese officials were involved. According to the still prevailing master narrative, however, the Yangwu protagonists were focused on government mechanisms facilitating the import and production of modern military equipment as well as the training of Chinese soldiers in its employ, but they began discussing the root causes of China’s troubles as well as a need for fundamental structural change only after China’s defeat in the war with Japan in 1895.1 In 1960, Onogawa Hidemi 小野川秀美 debunked the basic assumption of this narrative, documenting a lively public debate on China’s structural problems and ways to deal with them that took place, beginning in the 1880s, primarily among men of letters from the private secretariats (mufu 幕府) of high Yangwu officials.2 Probably sharing the

1) A widely quoted and reprinted summary of this view is in Zhang Hao 張灝, “Zhuanxing shidai zai Zhongguo jin xiandai sixiangshi yu wenhuashi shang de zhongyaoxing” 轉型時代在中國近現代思想史與文化史上的重要性, Dangdai 9 (1994): 86-93. Zhang defined “transition period” as the time between 1895 and 1920. On early Yangwu discussions, see Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-chih Restoration, 1862-1874 (1957, rpt. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1991). 2) Onogawa Hidemi 小野川秀美, Shinmatsu seiji shisō kenkyū 清末政治思想研究 (Kyoto: Tōyōshi Kenkyūkai, 1960). For a Chinese translation see, idem, Wan Qing zhengzhi sixiang yanjiu 晚清政治思想研究, tr. Lin Mingde 林明德 and Huang Fuqing 黃福慶 (Taibei: Shi- bao wenhua chubanshe, 1982). The enlarged Japanese version, Onogawa Hidemi, Shinmatsu

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The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 117

intellectual historians’ disdain for the newspaper as a relevant source, he only explored writings by famous men of letters. A perusal of the Shenbao 申報 newspaper will show, however, that it was an important part of the intellectual history of the time and its opinion pieces on the first page were, from the paper’s founding in 1872 through the 1880s, the most important Chinese-language platform for this debate. It was on the pages of the Shenbao where key argumentative tropes and references for the public debates of later Yangwu protagonists were developed.3 Given the rapidly growing distribution of the Shenbao throughout the social hierarchy and across the country,4 it is reasonable to hypothesize that, compared to books or manuscripts, the opinion page had a larger impact on the development of Yangwu thinking, even if individual readership is notoriously hard to document. I propose to study as a test case the development of the idea that the main obstacle to China’s wealth and power was the “lack of communication” (butong 不通), or the “disconnect” (gehe 隔閡), between high and low, and that the establishment of a free flow of communication between high and low (shangxia zhi tong 上下之通) would be a crucial ingredient of a reformed political structure, which in turn would enable China to regain its footing in the world.5 The relevance of this test case is evident from the fact that, as will be shown below, by the time of the

seiji shisō kenkyū (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2009-10), has no changes relevant to the discussion here. 3) See Andrea Janku, “Electronic Index to the Early Shenbao 1872-1895” (http://shenbao.uni- hd.de/Lasso/Shenbao/searchSimple.lasso), last accessed 4 March 2018. 4) By 1877, the average daily circulation of the paper had reached 10,000. (“Lun benguan xiaoshu” 論本館銷數, Shenbao, 10 February 1877). References to the paper in diaries and memoranda suggest that it was read not just in the Zongli Yamen 總理衙門 and by the first batch of diplomats such as Guo Songtao 郭嵩燾 (1818-1891), but also by high-ranking officials and members of the Hanlin Academy 翰林院, and rumor had it that the Empress Dowager herself was using it as a source of information. Its horizontal spread was facilitated by the development of a regional distribution network, supplemented by the option to sub- scribe via the postal service from anywhere in the country. As Mary Rankin has documented, local elites in the Jiangnan region knew about each other’s forays (even in their own home- town such as Hankou) mostly through Shenbao reports, see her Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865-1911 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1986). 5) This study is part of a larger project about the structure and development of the public sphere in premodern China and the impact of some of its institutions on governance across Eurasia.

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Sino-Japanese War this lack of communication was pervasively quoted as the root cause of China’s crisis. The discussions in these early opinion pieces were important for their approach, the medium in which they were conducted, the institutional setting of this medium, and the resulting impact. Rather than offering a series of pragmatic proposals to fix things, their approach consisted of a systematic probing of the flaws in the Chinese body politic that prevented the country from finding its bearing in the modern world; the medium was a modern public forum, the newspaper, which allowed for continued editorial coverage and a dense interlocking of opinion and news information; the institutional setting was that of a foreign-owned property managed by an Englishman with excellent Chi- nese, and a business seat in Shanghai’s International Settlement, thus outside the guidance and control of the Peking court, but with conve- nient accessibility across the entire country in terms of newsgathering and newspaper distribution; and the resulting impact was the insertion between state and society of a platform where information could be ex- changed and opinion debated in the public sphere. At the same time, the paper’s success hinged on its—conscious or unwitting—interaction with broader trends in Chinese society at the time and its conscious use of authoritative tropes of Chinese political analysis that were familiar even to non-elite readers. These trends were, first, a perception shared by growing numbers of officials and elite members since the Jiaqing reign (1796-1820) that the state was no longer up to the task of personnel recruitment and management, water control, and the maintenance of social order. Drastic measures were needed to “save” (jiu 救) the polity, although a notion of an acute crisis was not yet articulated.6 These often wide-ranging proposals were, however,

6) During the early years of the Qing, the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors had gone out of their way to signal their interest in and openness to the concerns of the people, most importantly through their “Southern Tours” of inspection as described in contemporary official and private records. See Pierre-Étienne Will, “Vue de Shanghai,” in Kangxi, empereur de Chine, 1662-1722: La Cité interdite à Versailles: Musée du château de Versailles 27 janvier–9 mai 2004 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), 29-41; Michael G. Chang, “Historical Nar- ratives of the Kangxi Emperor’s Inaugural Visit to Suzhou, 1684,” in The Dynastic Center and the Provinces: Agents and Interactions, ed. Jeroen Duindam and Sabine Dabringhaus (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 203-24. In a lecture entitled “The first Kangxi Southern Tours Revisited” given at the Tōyō Bunko on Sept. 29, 2016, Prof. Will took up the issue again in greater detail. He

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 119 kept from public view and circulated only in manuscript form. This was still true for Feng Guifen’s 馮桂芬 (1809-1874) Jiaobinlu kangyi 校邠盧抗議, dated to the early 1860s.7 One reason for this reticence to go public was a quite realistic fear of harsh government reprisals against the “factionalism” associated with public debates of national issues.8 Even though the Huangchao jingshi wenbian 皇朝經世文編, Wei Yuan’s 魏源 (1794-1857) compilation of more restrained and practical statecraft essays, did appear in print in 1825-1826, it started to be widely circulated with numerous reprints only during the institutional reconstruction, which followed the Taiping War (1850-1864).9 Even such leading lights of the Yangwu current as Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811-1872) and Li Hong- zhang 李鴻章 (1823-1901), who, we might suspect, felt some sympathy for these forays, were actively intervening down to the 1890s to prevent the distribution of printed works that went further into probing kindly shared the lecture manuscript with me. These records contain clear allusions to the description of such tours in the Rituals of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) as well as—rare but explicit— comparisons by commoners as well as scholars, such as Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695), of Kangxi’s concern for the common people and devotion to learning with that of the sage emperors of Chinese antiquity. See Chin-shing Huang, Philosophy, Philology, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century China: Li Fu and the Lu-Wang School under the Ch’ing (Cambridge: Cam- bridge Univ. Press, 1995), chapter 7. While this practice of inspection tours was not continued by later Qing rulers, it kept alive the legitimacy of referring to the ideal of the communication between high and low. 7) Feng Guifen, Jiaobinlu kangyi (Shanghai, 1884). Another fine example of such early reformists is Bao Shichen 包世臣 (1775-1855), who, among other things, suggested in a text written in 1801—but published only in 1905—that the traditional recruitment system should be replaced by a special office, which would look out for anyone, official, secretary, farmer, or yamen runner, who could suggest relevant policy proposals. If accepted by the court, the person having submitted the proposal would be hired to implement it. Bao Shichen, “Shuo- chu” 說儲 (On Wealth), in Bao Shichen, Bao Shichen quanji 包世臣全集 (Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 1991), 134-35. See also William T. Rowe, “Rewriting the Qing Constitution: Bao Shichen’s ‘On Wealth’ (Shuochu),” T’oung Pao 98 (2012): 178-216. For similar writings by other scholars from the pre-Taiping days, see Andrea Janku, “Preparing the Ground for Revolution- ary Discourse: From the Statecraft Anthologies to the Periodical Press in Nineteenth Century China,” T’oung Pao 90 (2004): 97-100. Bao Shichen did not include his “Shuochu” in the 1844 edition of his collected works (see Rowe, “Rewriting,” 187). On Feng Guifen’s proposals and their publication, see Rudolf Wagner, “The Zhouli as the Late Qing Path to the Future,” in Statecraft and Classical Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History, ed. Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 380-87. 8) On the Qing’s obsession with the dangers of factionalism and the ensuing ban on public discussion of national issues, see Philip A. Kuhn, “Ideas Behind China’s Modern State,” Har- vard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55 (1995): 297-98, 303. 9) Janku, “Preparing the Ground for Revolutionary Discourse,” 73-74.

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Western-type structural solutions for China’s problems than the very limited measures they themselves considered sufficient.10 These trends were, second, a testament to an increasing tendency among the literati-official elite to step into areas where the presence of the state was fading and to develop independent personal, local, or regional initiatives. These ranged from literary associations that dis regarded the traditional ban on such groupings,11 to regional armies recruited to counter the Taiping rebels after the imperial troops had been defeated,12 to local developments of charity and educational in stitutions,13 to the setting up of private secretariats by the leading Han Chinese officials—which provided an increasingly important career path into publishing and education for men of letters outside of the examination system14—to, finally, and as a variant that was unique in op- posing the existing state altogether, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The actors in both trends all referred to the same patron saint, Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613-1682), who was credited with having noted the long drift of a growing disconnect between the central bureaucracy and local society and had emphasized the need for functional local agency if the polity was to thrive.15

10) Feng Guifen did not have his work printed in the early 1860s because his patron, Zeng Guofan, refused to sanction publication by providing a preface. Earlier on, Zeng had already intervened to have Xu Jiyu 徐繼畬 (1795-1873) dismissed from office for lavishing too much praise on Westerners such as George Washington in his 1848 geographical treatise Yinghuan zhilüe 瀛環志略. Zeng’s comment is quoted in the edition of Xu’s work punctuated by Tian Yiping 田一平 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2001), 235. As late as 1888, Li Hongzhang blocked the publication of Huang Zunxian’s 黃遵憲 (1848-1905) Riben guozhi 日本國志, an exceedingly knowledgeable and detailed description of the Meiji reforms in Japan, which was not published until 1895, after China’s defeat in the war with Japan. See Douglas R. Reynolds with Carol T. Reynolds, East Meets West: Chinese Discover the Modern World in Japan, 1854-1898. A Window on the Intellectual and Social Transformation of Modern Japan (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2014), 381-82. 11) See James Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 1992). 12) See, for example, Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nine- teenth-Century Chinese Regionalism (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1964). 13) See the chapter on the “Post-Taiping Reconstruction” subtitled “The Rise of the Public Sphere,” in Rankin, Elite Activism; and Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2013). 14) See Kenneth Folsom, Friends, Guests, and Colleagues: The Mu-fu System in the Late Ch’ing Period (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1968). 15) For this point, see my “The Zhouli as the Late Qing Path to the Future,” 367-69. The list

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The key figures that were part of these trends were moving toward developing broader concepts of the underlying structural problems plaguing state-society relations, but were suffering from their lack of a legitimate common public platform to develop and refine their ideas. The first group remained within the confines of partial and specific reforms, for which they started drawing upon Western models after the latter began to be known during the early 1860s; the second group focused on practical steps, but, as Mary Rankin observed, their efforts to articulate the underlying problems of the polity “were not coherently worked out.”16 Although these two trends have been studied separately with a focus on political networks and arguments, on the one side, and on local public interest activities, on the other, the two were in fact connected. Thinking and writing about the problems of the polity from outside the state’s official administrative communication system should be considered a bona fide “elite activity” equivalent to repairing bridges or setting up schools. The Shenbao itself has a twofold place in this narrative. Al- though set up and run as a business enterprise, as a public medium it was part of—and saw itself as part of—this independent “elite activism.” As the source references in studies of such elite activism by Mary Rankin and William Rowe show, the Shenbao was also the main early channel through which people engaged in this activism got to know about each other.17 Finally, the Shenbao provided the platform for the public articulation of analyses of the polity, which justified and framed elite activism. Indeed, apart from the Shenbaoguan publishing company, which was the leader in Chinese-language book publishing throughout the 1870s and 1880s,18 the charity hospitals, publishing houses, and given there may be endlessly expanded. Given that Gu had refused to serve the Qing and that most of his work had been banned, the very explicit references in the name of poetry associations, titles of collections—such as Bao Shichen’s Yi Gu tang ji 儀顧堂集 (Collection from the Hall of Revering Gu [Yanwu])—or pen names alluding to Gu—such as Feng Guifen’s pen name Jingting 景亭, a pun on Gu Yanwu’s pen name that means “admiring [Gu] Ting[lin]”—show a willingness to openly acknowledge and even advertise this connection. 16) Rankin, Elite Activism, 122. 17) This point has been noted by Frederic Wakeman, “The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture,” Modern China 19 (1993): 128. 18) Apart from publishing inaccessible classical works and materials to prepare for the examinations, the Shenbaoguan was the “most prolific publisher of the loosely defined genre

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 122 Wagner newspapers set up by Protestant missionaries between the 1830s and the 1890s should also be seen as part of this elite activism, even though the managers and driving forces were foreigners. As the Shenbao was a consciously Chinese-language newspaper for Chinese readers and was definitely not committed to a wholesale West- ernization of China in political terms, and even less so in religious terms, the opinion pieces anchored their arguments in rhetorical tropes that had developed in the long Chinese practice of confronting the actual situation of the country with the shared imaginaire of how it should be. The rhetorical strategies of Shenbao opinion pieces, including their connection to the writing of memorials and examination essays, have been the subject of specialized studies by Barbara Mittler and Andrea Janku. These authors have shown the extensive use of familiar tropes from examination essays in Shenbao’s opinion pieces,19 and the gradual merg- ing of the argumentative lines of statecraft essays and newspaper editorials, with the latter being the driver of innovation.20 By focusing on the content of the Shenbao’s opinion page in order to insert them into the late Qing history of political thought about the structural flaws of the Chinese polity and potential remedies, my study will try to go beyond the focus on the place of the Shenbao in Chinese modern media develop ment and on the rhetorical features employed in anchoring this new medium in the Chinese environment. The notion that a free flow of communication between high and low, and especially the necessity for the ruler to have access to information about society, was crucial for effective governance had a long history. It had been a recurring topic since pre-imperial times with repeated references to the channels of communication established by the sage rulers of the Three Dynasties, most prominently the “drum of remonstrance” (jiangu 諫鼓), which was located outside the imperial palace, an in

of the novel, not only for the late Qing period, but also for the Qing period as a whole.” See Catherine Yeh, “Recasting the Chinese Novel: Ernest Major’s Shenbao Publishing House (1872-1890),” Transcultural Studies 1 (2015): 174. 19) Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai’s New Media, 1872-1912 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2004), chapter 2. 20) Andrea Janku, Nur leere Reden: Politischer Diskurs und die Shanghaier Presse im China des späten 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003); idem, “Preparing the Ground for Revolutionary Discourse,” 70-71.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 123 stallation eventually resorted to in imperial times and emulated across Eurasia.21 This drum and similar devices do not appear in the Classics, but since Guanzi’s advice to Duke Huan of Qi, they have been the staple of political advice given to rulers wishing to secure their throne and their name in history.22 The Book of Changes (Zhouyi 周易), however, provides a “classical” reference. The tuan 彖 judgment for the hexagram tai 泰 is associated with the achievement of Great Peace (taiping 泰 / 太平). It connects the benefits of smooth interaction between heaven and earth with that between high and low, ruler and subjects.

“The small departs and the great comes: auspicious and successful” [as the hexagram’s definition says] [means] heaven and earth are in interaction so that the ten thousand kinds of entities are fully in communication, high and low are in interaction so that their aims are the same. 泰，小往大來，吉亨。則是天地交而萬物通也，上下交而其志同也。23

This hexagram is one in a pair. Its opposite is fou 否, which early com- mentaries describe as defining “an age of blockage” (bi zhi shi 閉之世) in the interaction between high and low.24 In this manner, the ideal of tong 通, the free flow of communication, is contrasted with its being blocked, bi or se 塞, resulting in luan 亂, social and political chaos. The rhetoric of free flow and blockage came with a second trope: the free flow of communication between high and low had been secured during the Three Dynasties of antiquity, when the rulers had still been of the rare species of “sages” (shengren 聖人), but whose presence China had been deprived of since the death of the last of them, Confucius, who had not even been a ruler. Ever since, blockage had been present in

21) See Edward A. Kracke, “Early Visions of Justice for the Humble in East and West,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 96 (1976): 492-98. 22) Guanzi 管子, “Huangong wen” 桓公問, 18.56. I made use of the edition in the Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT) database 漢達古文獻資料庫. 23) Zhouyi, Tuanzhuan 彖傳, hexagram Tai 泰. Zhouyi yinde 周易引得, Harvard-Yenching Institute Concordance Series (rpt. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Cen- ter, 1966), 9. 24) Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574-648), subcommentary to hexagram fou 否; see Zhouyi zhengyi 周易正義, Shisan jing zhushu 十三經註疏, ed. Ruan Yuan 阮元 (Nanchang, 1815), 2.43a. Others such as Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619-1692) used the term se 塞 to define fou. See his Zhouyi neizhuan 周易内傳, Chuanshan quanshu 船山全書 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1996), vol. 1, 148.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 124 Wagner different degrees. This narrative was connected with a second narrative, namely the establishment of the junxian 郡縣 system of centrally appointed administrators who were not allowed to serve in their home province. This system had become enshrined at the beginning of the empire, namely the unification of the entire realm under the Qin, although Gu Yanwu had already pointed out that this reform (and the abolishment of the fengjian 封建 system of “feudal” fiefs administered by rulers with a long-term presence and familiarity with their fief that accompanied it) went back to the end of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045-771) and the ensuing formation of independent kingdoms.25 The story about the free flow of communication in antiquity and the need to recover it in the present was a well-established trope of political advice and remonstrance, which made for a wealth of potential references, but it was only one among many such tropes. As it addressed, however, a fundamental and critical structural issue, namely the relationship between state and society, it had the potential to become an analytical tool for defining the ills of the Chinese present, and possible remedies. The Shenbao opinion pieces saw this potential and made full use of it. The Shenbao opinion pieces are written by different authors and deal with a variety of topics. Taken as a whole, they do not form a systematically structured text. They share this characteristic with many Chinese works from antiquity that came in short, independent, units of thought and argument, which may have only been connected on a deeper level. I hypothesize a consistency of argument between the Shenbao opinion pieces, but this will have to be tested and proven through actual analysis. Such a reading comes with the price of paying more attention to the connected topics than to the argumentative line of the individual pieces. To highlight the connections, I will frame the arguments in my own words followed by a translation of the passage on which it is based.26 To show the development of arguments over time, I have kept the time se- quence of the opinion pieces but also established topical connections

25) See Thomas Carl Bartlett, “Ku Yen-wu’s Response to ‘the Demise of Human Society,’” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1985); and John E. Schrecker, The Chinese Revolution in Histori- cal Perspective (Westport: Praeger, 2004), especially the Appendix. 26) Unless otherwise noted, Shenbao translations are from the article cited at the start of each section.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 125 through section titles. It should be remembered that newspapers had a substantial shelf-life at the time because they were collected and bound together at regular intervals for easy reference.

Defining the Problem and its Remedy: The Newspaper in the Communication Between High and Low In early May 1872, barely a month after the start of the Shenbao, the Brit- ish manager and editor, Ernest Major (1841-1908), published an editorial entitled “Why the Shenbao was Established.”27 It was signed “manager of the Shenbao” and was published on the paper’s first page, which was and remained reserved for opinion pieces by outside authors as well as journalists from the newspaper.28 After explaining the general features of this new medium—actuality, reliability, and readability—Major sketched the particular place this paper was to claim in the Chinese- language public sphere. He made the following propositions: In China, only the Chinese state has a public voice but not the people. “As a general rule, the Peking Gazette has the purpose of showing the opinions of the state, but the people are also all entitled to their opinions” 夫京抄以見國家之意，而民亦宜皆有意. The result is a dangerous lack of communication between high and low as “there never is a single event or news item from the people that will reach the ruler above” 民間曾無一事一聞以達上於君. How “then should the governance as executed by those above be capable of suiting [the people’s] minds” 則上所為治理者其何能如乎心耶 and find popular support? The benefits of newspapers for the Western nations have been such that it is the papers that “should be praised for the fact that [these nations] constantly innovated and became ever more prosperous” 其所以日新而月盛者，非新聞

27) Shenbao zhuren 申報主人 (Ernest Major), “Shenjiang xinbao yuanqi” 申江新報緣起, Shenbao, 6 May 1872. The original includes a typographical error 申主報人, but my correction is confirmed by many other instances where Major signs his name. 28) As this piece was written and signed by Major in his official function as head of the Shenbao, it might justly be defined as an “editorial.” The notion of the editorial as the newspaper’s opinion on an issue consolidated only at a later date, after the newspaper medium had become more widely accepted and started to claim the authority of its own voice. Other pieces published on the first page of the Shenbao will therefore be referred to as “opinion pieces” even if the absence of the author’s name signals that he is a member of the paper’s staff.

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紙，其誰歸美乎. The papers could achieve this because, as “the articles are all written by men of talent” 其語言文字皆出於才人之筆, the “readers are not put off, so that the broadening of their insights and the en- hancement of their knowledge are indeed remarkable” 故閱之者不憚煩，則所以廣其意而大其識者，豈淺鮮哉. As Chinese-language newspapers had already found acceptance, as seen in the fact that the Chinese Serial (Xia’erguan zhen 遐邇貫珍), published by Walter Henry Medhurst (1822-1885) in Hong Kong from 1853, and the Dragon News (Feilong baopian 飛龍報篇), which came out in London in 1866, “got to the point of circulating even in China itself” 至流傳中國, the “benefits to be derived” from a Chinese-language paper set up in China such as the Shenbao “are therefore beyond measure” 豈不獲益無窮哉. “As a consequence,” Major concludes with self-assur- ance, “the newspaper is something that is truly capable of both satisfy- ing the [Chinese] people and benefiting the [Chinese] state” 是故新聞者，眞可便民，而有益于國者也. “Why then are there no newspapers set up by Chinese commoners? As a general rule, because they are afraid of being charged [by the government] with spreading slander” 夫民間不立新聞者何 ? 懼其有誹謗之罪. At the same time, there is a problem of trust, as “the people are concerned that the [papers] would publish unfounded reports” 民也懼其有虛妄之嫌也. As a consequence, “the commoners have no way of submitting [their views] to those above” 民反無以獻於上. This attitude of the court does not correspond to the ideal of Chinese governance from the time of the Three Dynasties, when sages ruled the land, because what indeed “would be wrong with [the court] emulating the model of the ancients of collecting information about local customs and inquiring about habits [of the commoners]” 揆諸古者採風問俗之典，其咎將安歸乎 by encouraging the development of commoner- managed (rather than official) newspapers? As there is as yet neither court support nor are there Chinese commoners daring to take the risk, the Shenbao has been set up (by a foreigner in the International Settlement of Shanghai). It emulates the model of Chinese antiquity with a modern medium that originated in the West, namely a newspaper set up not by the state, but by private citizens. Its purpose is not to give foreigners a voice in Chinese affairs, but to provide a platform for Chinese public opinion. “I am now

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 127 expressly connecting with China’s men of letters and gentry in the hope that they will not shy away from the small effort but will generously benefit the land [with their writings], so that by collecting their thoughts [in the paper], the benefits will be still further increased” 吾今特與中國士大夫，搢紳先生約，願各無惜小費，而惠大益於天下, 以冀集思，而廣益. Without as yet using the later catchwords of “communication between high and low” and the “Three Dynasties,” the piece frames the later debate by taking up established tropes, namely the lack of communication between state and society at present and the realization of such communication in the golden age of Chinese governance. How ever, it also recasts earlier discussions by defining this lack of communication as the central flaw in Chinese state-society relations that prevents the country from attaining the “innovation” and “prosperity” characteristic of Western nations, and it offers the European-style citizen-managed newspaper as the modern medium to realize the ancient ideal of communication between state and society through the public sphere. While it makes clear that the state is not simply the object of the discussions in the public sphere and the medium of exchange within it, but is one of the two key players, it carefully avoids mentioning that the institutions of communication in antiquity were all set up by the grace of sage rulers rather than by the independent agency of citizens. It insists, however, that the modern newspapers were to be set up by “commoners” rather than officials, to give a voice to society. It deftly defines the “above” as the “state,” guo 國, in the form of the court and its admin istration, and the “below” as the “commoners,” min 民. In modern terms, “commoner” here translates the notion of “civil society” as opposed to officialdom.29 Major projects a national Chinese, rather than local

29) The terms “civil society” and “public sphere” have been dominated by the enlightenment nostalgia of Jürgen Habermas’ Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Luchterhand, 1962). Habermas’s core assumption that the state is only the object and not a participant of the discussion in the “public sphere” has been disproven by Keith Michael Baker, “Memory and Practice: Politics and the Representation of the Past in Eighteenth-Century France,” Representations 11 (1985): 134-64, which shows the organized efforts by Jacob Nicolaus Moreau, the royal historiogra- pher, and others on the French state side, to project a French past that supported the mon- archy’s aspirations against the magistrates during the second half of the eighteenth century; and the implication in Habermas’ analysis that the public sphere is co-terminous with the

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Shanghai, function of the paper. Yet, while addressing the issue of why no Chinese dared to publish such a paper, he only implies that at present it needed a foreign commoner protected by the Shanghai Interna- tional Settlement and his personal legal extraterritoriality to set up such a much-needed Chinese medium. The text is careful to stay away from some of the issues that were part of Western discussion on newspapers at the time, such as their role as government watchdogs, but it is bold in the arguments it makes about the disconnect between high and low in China and the practical step taken to offer a solution by setting up a newspaper. The paper in the reader’s hand was both the medium and the mes- sage because it established the line of communication, which it said was needed, by inserting the full Peking Gazette every day as the top-down communication, and reports from correspondents as well as translations of foreign news as the bottom-up information. Although the term “society,” with its counterpart “state,” had not yet been established in the Chinese context, here we see the exact pair used by a foreigner on a sub- conceptual level. The Chinese discussion about shangxia zhi tong is a discussion about the need for a structural change in the public sphere as best for the country. Establishing this frame was only a first and tentative step. It would become authoritative only if it showed its usefulness for a wide range of specific inquiries about state and society in China. As the newspaper advertised itself as the instrument of innovation and prosperity, these nation state has been invalidated by Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), chapter 5, which documents that a large part of the most controversial French printed matter was printed and imported from beyond the French state’s borders. For a discussion of the China-related arguments and a proposal to move to a more formal definition of the public sphere as “that space between state and society in which conflicts between social groups and individuals as well as between state and society are presented to public scrutiny by each side to convince and thus socially enhance the argumentative power of its position”—a definition that would also make these concepts operative outside the Western European context—see my “The Role of the Foreign Community in the Chinese Public Sphere,” China Quarterly 142 (1995): 427, and my “Intro- duction,” in Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870-1910, ed. Rudolf G. Wagner (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2007), 3-6 (where Baker’s analysis is erroneously attributed to Roger Chartier’s Les Origines culturelles de la Révolution française). See also Frederic Wakeman, “Boundaries of the Public Sphere in Ming and Qing China,” Daedalus 127 (1998): 167-69, 177-82, which takes up the formal definition suggested above.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 129 inquiries would have to show that China’s present state was the result of human action rather than the impact of natural or supernatural factors, because if it was man-made, it could be overcome by human action. The basic narrative mode to describe how this present state came about through human action is historical, and indeed the paper published a series of historical explorations of the divide between high and low.

History 1: Imperial China and the Walls Around the State A year later, in July, 1873, the unsigned Shenbao opinion piece “On the Reason why China’s Peking Gazette is Different from the Newspapers of Foreign Countries”30 consolidated the basic tropes of Major’s 1872 piece, adding historical depth to the predominantly structural analysis offered earlier by providing a narrative of the process in which the breakdown in the flow of communication between high and low came about. It also developed the key tropes further. The text has a “Western gentleman” 西士 ask a “Chinese gentleman” 中士 for an explanation. The Western gentleman had originally assumed that the Peking Gazette was similar to Western newspapers, but not only was there no news from the “lanes and alleys” of the people in this Ga- zette, but even of the court news, it carried only the most uninteresting trivia, without ever reporting anything seriously newsworthy, such as “a newly established policy or a new proposal” 新立一政，新創一議. The rest of the text offers the Chinese interlocutor’s answer. In Chinese antiquity, the free flow of communication between high and low was secured. The ruler was advised, “when in major doubt” 有大疑, to consult not only with his “heart” 謀及乃心, but also with “village scholars and with the commoners” 謀及鄉士，謀及庶人,31 to the

30) “Lun Zhongguo Jingbao yi yu waiguo xinbao” 論中國京報異于外國新報, Shenbao, 18 July 1873. 31) Advice given to King Wu, the first Zhou ruler, by an official of the Shang dynasty, which he had just overthrown, Shangshu 尚書, “Hongfan” 洪範 chapter, see James Legge, The Chi- nese Classics, vol. 3: The Shoo King, or The Book of Historical Documents (London: Trübner & Co, 1865), 337. The term min 民, “commoner,” is not a fixed legal category but is defined by its antonym. When the antonym is the ruler, it refers to all those outside officialdom, including local elites; when the antonym is a state official, it mostly refers to commoners without elite status.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 130 Wagner point that “it never occurred that a decision was made or an action un- dertaken by [the ruler] alone” 從未有獨斷，獨行之事. It also took the form of a system of regular royal tours of inspection, as well as regular reports to the center on local economic, social, and moral matters, which would be used to evaluate the performance of local officials. The result was that “one can see that [at that time] ruler and people were in the blissful situation of being as one body, with high and low being of one mind” 可以見君民一體，上下同心之休風矣. With this opening, the Chinese gentleman consolidated the trope that the Three Dynasties in antiquity presented the ideal of Chinese governance, and he developed the argument—only vaguely alluded to in the previously analyzed opinion piece—about local elites and the people being entitled to have their opinion heard on major issues. By saying that “true, the systems of our China and the West are different, but governance under Tang, Yu (=Yao and Shun) and the Three Dynas- ties, as evident from historical records, was also different from that of later times” 吾中國之制與外國殊，誠然。然唐虞三代之治，詳於載籍者，亦與後世不同, he indicated that the governance in the West today resembled that of the Three Dynasties. He then mapped the process that led from the realized ideal of antiquity to the abysmal present. The abolition of the free flow of communication between high and low was man-made, namely, the work of later rulers. “[During the War- ring States] princes were indulging in their desires, only afraid that the people would not obey them personally. That is why… as all their might was set on elevating the prince and putting the people down, there started to be a distance between the ruler and the people” 君逞其欲，惟恐民之不我從也。故 … 力是尚君尊民卑，而君與民始懸殊矣. The walls between high and low were institutionalized with the establishment of the empire under the Qin, and secured by having “commoners who made [critical] suggestions to the [Qin] government executed, and there [even] was a ban on commoners making casual remarks to each other” 民議其政者有誅; 民相偶語者有禁. All successive dynasties followed in the tracks of the Qin. Since the establishment of the Hanlin Academy 翰林院 by the Tang dynasty emperor Xuanzong 唐玄宗 (r. 713- 756) during the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763), with its extreme emphasis on the secrecy of military and eventually state matters, the rules of secrecy had become ever harsher. This trend continued because “today’s Grand Council secret memorials are the same as those of the Tang

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 131 dynasty scholar consortium secret memorials, in other words, they con- tinue this purpose of the Tang [to keep state matters secret]” 今之軍機章京，卽唐之學士領班章京，即唐之承旨也. This historical narrative implies the proposition that the late Qing institutional structure of the Chinese empire was indefensible because it was built on an undoing of the shared Chinese imaginaire of good governance by despotic rulers. As a consequence of the institutionalized blockage of communication between high and low engineered by the imperial state, China now lacked the strength that would stem from a unity of purpose and was experiencing the opposite of a “blissful situation.” The implication is that in this situation, only someone shielded from the heavy hand of the Chinese state, but with secured access to Chinese readers, could set up a Chinese newspaper, and this only in a place where the Chinese working with him could also be shielded. In terms of Chinese historiography, this 1873 document might be the earliest Chinese “history” offered by a “Chinese gentleman” to provide an argued story-line of the deterioration of state-society relations in China since antiquity, with the decisive break coming with the establishment of the empire under the Qin.32 While conceding this point, this story-line left the door open for a second line of argument against structural change: as this state-society disjuncture had become accepted normality for such a long time, changing it would be well-nigh impossible.

Analyzing the Present 1: The Cost of the Divide Between High and Low While several opinion pieces developed this historical narrative, others continued to show the fruitfulness of the concept of communication between high and low in the analysis of current events. A week after the piece on the Peking Gazette and Western newspapers, a “Western

32) The trope that the Qin marked the real rupture with the heritage of the Three Dynasties had been used since Gu Yanwu in the early Qing, and had been shared already since the 1840s by the early Yangwu leaders, the Taiping rebels, the Protestant missionaries, and, since the 1860s, by writers such as Feng Guifen and Wang Tao 王韜 (1828-1897). The earlier narratives had focused, however, on the abolition of the fengjian 封建 system or on the monothe- ism presumably prevailing in pre-imperial China, not on communication between high and low.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 132 Wagner gentleman,” introduced as an “overseas guest” (haike 海客), was given the floor. By then, the Shenbao had started to fill the slot it had mapped for a Chinese language paper with reports on the great affairs of the state, the performance of officials, and the concerns of society, while developing a correspondent and distribution network in the main cities of the empire. The “Chance Talk with an Overseas Guest” (“Haike outan” 海客偶談) deals with specific examples of “communication between high and low” in China at the time.33 The “Overseas Guest” again starts off with a question to a “Chinese gentleman”:

Why are government affairs in China and the West so far apart? Because in our Western states ruler and people form one body and court and society are in uni- son, a new policy put forward by the court is always discussed with industrialists and merchants, with the military and civilian [bodies], not to mention the ministers and officials at the court and in the provinces. And if among the common people a new book is published, a feat accomplished, or a device manufactured, this also will reach the court above and be brought to the attention of the government officers below. But there is nothing of this sort in China. 中西之政事，何以相懸若是之甚哉！吾西國, 君民一體、朝野同心，故朝廷行一新政，無不謀及工商、謀及軍民。在于内外臣工，更無論也。卽草野之間，或著一書、或作一事、或制一器，亦無不上達朝廷，下聞官長也。若夫中國，則不然。

When challenged to show his evidence, the Westerner provides actual examples to account for his main proposition that there is an institutionalized three-way disconnect in China between the ruler, the of ficials, and the people. “The ruler is elevated and the minister denigrated, which already makes for a ruler/minister divide into two. The ruler [and his officials] are honored, the people despised, which makes for another split” 君尊，臣卑，君臣已分爲二；君貴，民賤，君民更判爲三. “Whenever we see a political measure of the court, it is inevitably enacted after asking for directives [from the ruler] and managed according to precedent, and not only have the common people no way to get involved, the regulations even make sure that the officials at court and in the provinces do not dare to recklessly join with their trifling thoughts” 每見朝廷政事，無非請旨而行，照例而辦，無論草野，庶民不能干预；機宜卽爲内外諸臣，亦不敢妄参末議.

33) Shenbao, 26 July 1873.

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The evidence provided here for the ruler/officials disconnect is that instead of regular communication and consultation, the court was not informed by its local officials about the treatment of stranded fishermen from the Ryukyu Islands by a cannibal tribe in Taiwan until the Japanese complained and the incident developed into a major foreign relations issue; and the evidence for the state/society disconnect is that instead of abiding by the general principle of “the ruler and the people sustaining each other” 夫君與民，互相維持者也, there is a lack of any Chinese government knowledge about Chinese in California with the effect that, as opposed to the way in which Western states take care of their citizens abroad, it did nothing to protect them and counteract the hostility building up against them. The common root cause put forth is the blockage of the flow of information and opinion between ruler, officials, and people, as “the hardships of the commoners time and again are blocked from reaching the imperial ear, and the hidden feelings of the officials time and again have a hard time reaching those at the top” 民之疾苦，常常壅于上聞; 臣之隱衷，往往難于上達. The implied proposition of the “Chance Talk” is that the newspaper proves its use for state and people in China by actually carrying the relevant information, by pointing out the structural flaws that result in these problems, and by suggesting the principles on which relations between ruler, officials, and people should be based. The repeated dialogue and confrontation between a foreign and a Chinese gentleman in these opinion pieces can be read as a narrative strategy to foreground the importance of a perspective that is informed about Western state structures and sympathetic to basic Chinese interests, to discover and highlight the flaws that cause China’s weakness. There is still a marked asymmetry in mutual information, with the West- erner familiar with both the West and China, and the Chinese, not only ignorant about the West but also about his own country. Not pleased with this lecture about his own country, the “Chinese gentleman was silent and walked off without a word” 中士默然，不置一詞而退. These opinion pieces indicate a bandwidth of Chinese opinion that ranges from silent refusal, to the acknowledgment of the facts, to informed agreement that China has lost its way and how this came about, to doubts about the feasibility of a cure.

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Analyzing the Present 2: The Benefits of shangxia zhi tong and the Risks of Blocking it In August 1873, the unsigned in-house opinion piece “On the Reasons Different Countries Establish Newspapers” (“Lun geguo xinbao zhi she” 論各國新報之設)34 came back to the point of Major’s opinion piece that private newspapers were an indispensable accoutrement of the prosperity of a country and of the welfare of its people, and that a government’s attitudes towards them were effective indicators of the quality of the governance it provided.

Generally speaking, everyone who has the good of the country and the livelihood of the people at heart will be in favor of newspapers and will time and again encourage commoners to publish newspapers in different places. And generally speaking, those who ban such enterprises invariably do not have the good of the country and the livelihood of the people at heart, but just wish to be unimpeded in the pursuit of their private cravings and are only afraid that the multitude will ex- pose them. 凡以國計民生為心者，無不喜有新聞紙，往往勸民各處刋行。凡有禁止此事者，必無益國利民之實心，而欲逞一（？）已之坠慾, 惟恐衆人彰之也。

Whereas in the opinion piece just analyzed a Westerner would explain the merits of the newspaper to a doubtful Chinese, here we have a Chi- nese speaking with a personal voice and referring knowledgeably to newspapers in England, France, Prussia, the United States, Japan, and China to make a strong case for the benefits offered by papers such as the Shenbao. His opponent doubted whether such a “trifle” (xiaopian 小篇) as a newspaper could possibly have an impact on the prosperity of a country, doubts that may have been shared by many readers, who had their eyes on court memorials and the examination essays. The advocate claims that the Three Dynasties did optimally by achieving “superb order” (shengzhi 盛治) under the rule of individual sages, but that the modern West did even better by reaching not only order but “booming prosperity” (xingwang 興旺) under various forms of institutionalized governance. The relationship between rulers and ruled in both cases is based on a blunt maxim that is said to circulate among

34) Shenbao, 18 August 1873.

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Westerners: “Generally speaking, the intelligence and virtue of those who rule others and those who are ruled is about the same” 大概而論，治人者與治於人者其智愚賢否相等. Careful not to mention any agency of the sage rulers of antiquity in setting up channels for the popular voice to reach them, he simply says “each one of these four sages, without any exception, was listening to the words of others and was following them. That is why they managed to establish a superb order in their own time and had their fame handed down through myriad generations” 此四聖者皆無不聽從人言者也。故盛治成於一時，令名傳於萬世. Their fame even spread internationally: “The setting up of newspapers in the Western countries was done in full recognition of this insight of the ancients [from China]” 初泰西諸國之設新聞紙也，蓋亦深明古人此義也. Western newspapers had their origin in Chinese wisdom, they were a modernized form of the ancient channels of communication. For this very reason, the speaker implies, they were also compatible with the imaginaire of optimal Chinese governance.35 The newspapers set up by commoners do more than just connect rulers and ruled, they also connect members of society.

With commoners in charge of these newspapers, everything can be publicly discussed, from the pros and cons of the grand issues of the court above to the likes and dislikes of the small issues in the lanes and alleys below. Those in charge of government in the West rely on these [newspapers] to stay informed about actual events. [In short,] in terms of increasing profit, avoiding loss, enriching the country, and providing comfort to the people, the benefits that the newspaper has for present times are indeed an undeniable fact! 民之為此紙也，上則朝廷廣大之利ᚁ，下則閭閻纖小之善惡，無不可以暢論。泰西之操政柄者，藉以得悉時事。興利，除ᚁ，裕國，便民，新聞紙之有益於世誠不謬矣。

35) The notion that Western political institutions, science, and technology were ultimately derived from China was widely repeated by Chinese reformers at the time. It served the double purpose of proving cultural compatibility and claiming the global cultural superiority of China’s Three Dynasties. See Quan Hansheng 全漢升, “Qingmo de Xixue yuanchu Zhongguo shuo” 清末的西學源出中國說, Lingnan xuebao 6 (1935): 57-102; and more recently Gao Yuan 高源, “Cong ‘Dong Xi yi yuan’ dao ‘Xixue Dong yuan’” 從《東西異源》到《西學東源》, Kexuexue yanjiu 科學學研究 9.1 (1991): 32-42; Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 23-42; and Michael Lackner, “Ex Oriente Scientia. Reconsidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge,” Asia Major 21.1 (2008): 183-200.

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Government agencies in the West (as opposed to China) make sure to keep the newspapers fully informed “so that the newspapers all carry fact-based reports and the misinterpretations and mistakes of hearsay can be avoided” 令新報皆據實錄載，以免傳聞之貽誤失實也. This is better, as the speaker implies, than trying to control the spreading of unfounded rumors by persecuting people who are denied access to the actual facts. In the West, too, governments had to learn to appreciate this medium and people had to learn to trust it, and this “was a gradual process that was completed only after a long time” 蓋亦逐漸多時而後成. The negotiation between the government and the public through newspapers is often a long process, but the result is consent and unity of purpose.

[In the West], once a policy is established by the court, the newspaper in one place might say that something in it brings no benefits whereas the paper elsewhere might say that something about it is detrimental. The court, then, directly goes about making revisions always waiting until the newspapers from these different places have declared it to be perfect, and afterwards they proceed in the same way when it comes to the implementation of measures or the manufacture of devices. That is the reason why getting something on the way might take many years and involve the knowledge of a dozen people, but once it is achieved, there is nobody to oppose it. 凡朝廷之立一政也，此處之新聞紙，或言其無益，彼處之新聞紙，或言其有損，朝廷卽行更改，必待各處新聞紙，言其盡善盡美，而後為至於行事、制器，無不皆然。所以有一舉動，必歷數十年之久、必經十數人之智，及其成功，則莫能與敵。

As the examples of England, the United States, Prussia, and France show, “the countries which are most prosperous today … are also those in which the newspapers are most developed. The two mutually rein- force each other” 目今興旺最大之邦 … 而新聞紙亦為最盛。二者相輔而行. The newspaper, here, is a medium to distribute information, but, most importantly, it is a medium of opinion and critique, with the ultimate purpose of improving state governance. “That is why one cannot do without the newspaper. It makes it possible for the high and low to communicate, and to have those in the court and in society informed

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 137 about each other, to urge each other on, and to keep watch over each other so as to assist in the governance of the state” 故新報之不可無，為上下可以相通，遠近可以相達，相勉，相戒以輔成國家政事也. The opposite of the four sages of antiquity, who are admired by all, are the uniformly despised four “despots” (baojun 暴君). In order to be free to follow their whims, the latter, as well as the officials following their example, suppressed critical information and opinion while re- warding sycophants.

Treacherous officials from former times were afraid that others might criticize their shortcomings and therefore banned unofficial histories and destroyed private writings, and while they might have been able to dupe their lord, they could not dupe the people, and while they might have been able to deceive the present, they could not deceive future generations. The more they wanted to cover up, the more they became exposed, and in the end their debauched ways were recorded. 前代權奸恐人議論其短，是以禁野史，毀私書，卒之能欺其君，不能欺其民，能欺當時，不能欺後世。欲蓋彌彰，而穢德終有傳述。

The officials in today’s China—the court is not directly addressed—are following this example. “There is no exaggeration in what one hears in the streets, namely that ‘the different officials hate the newspapers to such a point as to definitely want to tear down their buildings, burn their papers, and persecute their staff, only then will their mind be at ease!’” 乃道路傳聞，則云：各官之惡新聞紙也，必欲毀其館，火其紙，逐其人而後快於心吁！ Quoting an ancient adage, the speaker asserts that banning public opinion is ineffectual, because it is “like surging water, when Gun diked it up, it broke through, but when Yu [a sage from antiquity who then became emperor] went along with its flow, it ran smoothly” 譬如水之橫流也，鯀陻之，則氾濫。禹順之，則平行. “They might be able to ban Chinese-language papers, but will they be able to ban Western-language papers? And even so, will they be able to completely forbid public appraisal of them in the streets?” 能禁中字之新報，果能禁西字之新報乎？卽能並禁西字之新報，果能盡禁口碑之不載道乎. Still, Chinese-language papers other than the Shen- bao are afraid of such officials, so that “what they carry besides [reprint- ing] the Peking Gazette neither touches on the pros and cons of state policies nor does it report the achievements and failures of officials”

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其所錄載，除京報外，並未及國政之是非，亦不敘官吏之優劣也. The text ends with an encouragement to these papers to develop their potential benefits for China to the full, in the hope that they may avoid being persecuted or closed down. Importantly, the piece neither criticizes the court directly nor does it make an appeal to the court to change its policy; it rather encourages Chinese men of letters to dissociate themselves from the attitudes and institutions of despotic rule, and to use their writings in the newspaper to contribute to the welfare of the state and the livelihood of the people. As it turns out, the main defender of newspapers and proponent of a necessary reform is now a Chinese with some knowledge of Western political institutions and of newspaper history.

Analyzing the Present 3: Has the Time Come for a Parliament? By 1874, the paper had already taken advantage of the ongoing debate in Japan about setting up a parliament to address the suitability of such an institution of communication between high and low in East Asia.36 After giving some factual information about the function of par liaments and their various forms and responsibilities in the West, the in-house opinion piece addressed the qualifications citizens would rea- sonably expect from members of parliament. Besides clean morals, the main prerequisites were, above all, being competent and broadly informed. “Only if they have a thorough understanding of the concerns37 of the people, a deep knowledge of trade, manufacture, as well as the true and false and pros and cons of domestic politics, is it possible for them to be above the people” 要在洞悉民情、深識貿易、製造，及國內之虚實利弊，而後可居民上耳. As a consequence, parliaments in the West have members in their ranks competent about every subject, a situation which accounts for the quality of their work and the flourishing of these countries. After this statement of principle, the text summarizes the discussion in Japanese newspapers about the appropriateness of setting up a par-

36) “Lun chuangxing yiyuan shi” 論創行議院事, Shenbao, 17 June 1874. 37) The term translated here as “concerns” is qing 情, which carries a double meaning of “feelings” and “information.” “Concerns” is used to cover them both.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 139 liament at that time, precisely the type of public debate that the Shen- bao was trying to foster in China. Some argued that the Meiji emperor (r. 1867-1912) had promised to set up a parliament when he deposed the mighty clans with the help of the people; that he could not now go back on his promise; and that such an institution would be of benefit to the country. The second opinion considered such a step “premature at this time.” The opinion piece maps two modern institutions for communication between high and low, the newspaper and the parliament. As had been said earlier, even in the West newspapers had developed in a gradual process; the same was true for parliament. “One should be aware that in the West, the establishment of parliaments through which ruler and people, high and low, achieved communication with each other, was a gradual process” 要知泰西之設立議院，君民上下得以聲氣相通，其所由來者漸也. This gradualism was not just a fact, but a necessity, because setting up a parliament presupposes general literacy and well developed news media to secure the necessary levels of domestic and international information both among the public—to judge the candidates for parliament—and among the members of this body. “Once people in the West have learned to read, they constantly rely on news papers to probe state policies. This has the consequence that those entering parliament are perfectly well informed about the policies and customs of the different countries and are up-to-date on recent changes” 蓋泰西諸人，自會文以後，時藉新報以考國政，所以一入議院，凡各國之政俗，以及時勢之變通，皆瞭然於心，罔不畢備. While literacy in Japan was already widespread, newspapers were as yet underdeveloped and “people from their early youth on only peruse classics without any bearing on the present, or novels and homely say- ings of no benefit to governance” 自幼所習誦者惟古藉，無及於近事者，或小說家言，無益於政治者. Furthermore, a “complex transition of the state with many issues at hand” 國家方在叢脞之交, such as Ja- pan’s pursuit of “self-strengthening” along Western lines, “is best left to one single person invested with all powers. Once things have calmed down, it will not be too late to negotiate the [necessary government measures] with a great number of people” 將圖釐剔弊端，不如一人總握大權。一俟局面旣平，而後商諸衆人，似亦非晚. In China, the article implies, conditions were even worse. Literacy was lower, the press

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History 2: The Stultification of the Public The July 1873 opinion piece on the difference between the Peking Ga- zette and Western newspapers had opened the debate about the historical development of the separation between high and low. A year later, the paper began developing this historical narrative for particular realms. In August 1874, it carried the opinion piece of a reader, “Letter from Suzhou” (“Sucheng lai han” 蘇城來函),38 about the historical changes in the capacity of the people to become involved in public matters. The letter shows the spread of the paper’s argumentative line among Chinese readers. Addressing himself “to the most honorable editor of the Shenbao Company,” and including empty spaces of honor when mentioning the Shenbao’s name and Major’s home country, this “outside observer” agrees with the twofold benefits of newspapers as outlined in Major’s first editorial. “Debating political matters [of the government] above is capable of bringing benefits to the state and collecting and reporting news below [from society] is capable of bringing benefits to the gentry and the people. So it is fitting that [newspapers] have spread far and have lasted” 上之議論政事，可以有益於國家；下之采述見聞，可以有益於士庶。宜乎其行之遠而且久也. The author’s main concern is with the capacity of the public to par- take in the political process. This capacity hinges on literacy and, based on this, on knowledge about matters of state and society. These conditions are met in the West today, and were present during the Three Dy- nasties when, as he claims, everyone went to school.

As a matter of general principle, before the early Zhou dynasty, our China had a [political] system that was similar to that in the various Western states today …

38) Shenbao, 12 August 1874.

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everyone, from the crown prince above to the sons of craftsmen and merchants below, was going to school, and even the peasants’ sons would peruse the Book of Songs and the Book of Documents during the slack seasons of fall and winter and in their spare time from military training. 夫我中國在成周以前亦與今日之泰西各國制度彷彿 …上自王公大夫士，下及工商之子弟無不令其入學，卽農家子弟，每於秋冬農軶之時，講武之餘亦皆訓以詩書。39

Farmers knew about astronomy, and women could articulate opinions on rulers. “Even peasants were familiar with everything from the stars above to ritual and justice below, and now when reading the “Odes of Bin” [in the Book of Songs, we see] that even women and children were enlightened, fervently abiding by the righteousness of the king, without any resentment” 至農夫亦上知星象，下識禮義。今讀豳風諸詩，雖民間婦人孺子亦明，慷慨從王之義，而毫無怨言. Things deteriorated until the Qin, which marked the final “demise of the way of the early kings to provide education for the people” 先王教人之道泯焉. As “those among craftsmen and merchants capable of widely reading books and with a good understanding of literature and the arts were becoming ever rarer” 至於工商之中能博覽羣書、深通文藝者更鮮, literacy became a privilege of the literati, which enabled them to gain access to information and develop argumentative tools to join the political process. Starting from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), however, literati stultification set in, as the range of required knowledge was reduced and stereotyped essays were emphasized rather than “essays on policy” (celun 策論).

After the Ming came to power, they focused on stereotyped writing [the so-called “eight-legged essay”] when promoting literati and downgraded essays on policy. [From then on,] the so-called literati were only required to memorize the Four Books and one of the five classics. There was no requirement to study classical prose and poetry, not to mention going through the classics, histories, and masters. The books they were reading therefore not only differed from those read abroad, but also from those read in the past. In this way not only were those above separated from the people, even the literati were separated from each other [because of a lack of shared knowledge].

39) This image of early education is based on the idealizing organigram of the Zhouli (Rituals of Zhou) with its dense network of schools down to the village level.

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及有明之興也，專用制藝以取士，卽策論之文亦不甚重。故所謂士者僅須誦讀四子之書，及五經之內，各習一經而已，無論古文詩賦，不必學習，卽經史子集亦無須備覽。是士所讀之書不徒中外各殊，而且古今亦異。不徒上與民分，而且士與士亦別也。40

With a stultified and uninformed elite and an illiterate population where “a farmer capable of reading a short note or an expense account, and able to write out a deed, would be hailed as the village hero” 倘農家者流能讀雜字之書紀、日用之帳，書寫文契者，亦可稱雄一村矣, China was now in need of fundamental reforms. It would primarily have to focus on increasing popular literacy, informing its population about the world today, and increasing its capacity to articulate opinions. To this end, the author developed his own elite activism by planning to set up a school, but then found that the Shenbao already provided the required daily fare of reading and information to shop keepers, workmen, and students. “I have carefully studied the situation: Whenever I see the newspaper lying in a shop, the owner, the customers, as well as school students hand articles around and discuss them among each other— this is like a daily school lesson!... Only a short time is thus needed for them to be up to date on world affairs” 細察情形，每見市肆之間，置有一紙，其店中之主賓以及學徒彼此傳觀，互相問辨，竟若每日之課誦焉！僅須片刻之光陰，得悉世間之事理. If China “would now follow this example and have newspapers established in different places,” this “would not only benefit craftsmen and merchants,” but it “would be even better if men of letters would also rely on them to increase their understanding and broaden their learning, instead of seeing them just as useless waste paper” 今中國若推廣此法，以行之各處，均任設有新聞紙館，不但有益於工商，卽士人亦可藉以益識見、廣學術，斷不可視爲無用之廢紙也，則幸矣 which, obviously, many of them still did. Like the editorial about the rising walls between state and society, this essay establishes a close resemblance, without any direct borrow- ing, between the Three Dynasties and the modern West, and it stresses the structural continuity throughout imperial China, a point which does

40) “Lun dushu” 論讀書, Shenbao, 30 June 1875, gives another narrative of the deterioration of universal literacy since the Three Dynasties, with a special focus on having access to the laws. It claims that by now even many officials were ignorant in this domain.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 143 not single out the present dynasty for particular blame. With its plan to help create the conditions for public participation in politics, it links up with the many local and private initiatives to address China’s governance problem, which have been mentioned above, and with its strong support for the Shenbao as a non-state newspaper managed by a foreigner familiar with the “best practice” in England. It also shows an openness to Western innovations in the areas around Shanghai, which was probably not yet widely shared by Chinese literati. The letter reinforced the proposition that China’s actual disconnect between high and low was a man-made structural problem. By detailing the many ramifications of this disconnect, it enhanced the power of an analysis of China’s history from the perspective of the communication between high and low. By highlighting the imperial state’s agency in deepening the divide and the passive acceptance of the state’s policies by the literati, it provided the framework for legitimate and crucial independent private action in the field of education and publishing. The letter also suggested that the “craftsmen and the merchants” would be important players in a future public sphere, which would only welcome literati if they were able to change their thinking and practices.

History 3: The Growing Divide and its Price Major had already addressed the role of newspapers and periodicals in spreading knowledge about innovations. A January 1875 in-house opinion piece, “On the Difference Between Chinese and Western Customs” (“Lun Zhong Xi fengsu zhi yi” 論中西風俗之異), has a Chinese speaker taking up this issue and following up on the argument by the “Western gentleman” from July 1873, by detailing the consequences of the social divide for technical innovation in China.41 The occasion was a comment by Western officials on the New Year’s well-wishes from Chinese officials. Rather than being treated to empty formalities on just that one day, the Westerners claimed they would prefer substantive exchanges throughout the year.

41) Shenbao, 4 January 1875.

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These formalities, the author argues, had grown over time. The ease of ruler/minister communication, on an equal footing, characteristic of the Three Dynasties and of the modern West, had been replaced since the Qin with a ritualization that epitomized hierarchical difference. “During the Three Dynasties, ruler and minister greeted each other with the same gesture of folded hands” 三代以前，臣拜君，君亦答拜 and would both be sitting down for discussion. “Since the Qin, because the ruler was [now] supreme and his subjects lowly, ministers and commoners kneeled below while the ruler calmly sat high up to receive [their reports]” 至秦以後君尊，臣卑故，臣民跪拜於下，君則安然坐受於上矣. This gradually spread throughout the bureaucracy, with the commoners at the lowest end. “By the Song dynasty, the arrangement of sitting in discussion was abolished and even the prime minister was endlessly kneeling as he memorialized without getting up” 宋以後坐論之禮癈，卽宰相奏事，亦長跪不起. Lower officials repeated the same with their subordinates. “When subordinates greeted superiors with folded hands, these would not reciprocate, but sit to receive reports like the son of heaven. As to small folk, one does not even have to mention [how they were treated]” 屬官之拜上官，而上官亦有不答拜，且有坐受如天子之見臣下者，至於小民更無論矣. The cost has been an emotional estrangement that suffocated open communication and criticism between high and low in China. “Although such ceremony counts as honoring someone, it creates an emotional barrier” 禮儀雖屬尊嚴，而情意故相隔絕.

[However], generally speaking, the reason why, among the people, father and son, older and younger brother, teacher and student, as well as friends are able to encourage each other to do good and to censure each other for transgressions is that there is no such ceremonial barrier. Because the divide between ruler and subject is too threatening, the minister does not dare to speak up in front of the ruler. Be- cause the divide between high and low is too pronounced, those below also do not dare to say much. That is the reason why the communication of concerns between high and low is so difficult. 大約民間父子兄弟師弟朋友可以善相勸，過相規者皆由無此尊嚴隔絕也。上下之分太殊故，下於上前亦不能多言。是以上下之情，難以相通也。

A similar institutionalized hierarchy separated areas of competence and the people associated with them, resulting in a deep divide between the men of letters and those in practical pursuits.

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Chinese literati only care about writing and are perfectly uninterested in the business of farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and traders, which also means that they have no general knowledge about current affairs... And because literati do not con- sider Chinese craftsmen/industrialists as important, the latter also do not dare to associate with them. 中國之士，僅工文義，其餘農工商賈之事，毫不與聞。故世務亦不周知 … 中國之工人，士大夫不以爲重，卽工人亦不敢與士大夫爲伍。

In the West, both sides actively bridge the gaps in knowledge and competence, which results in innovation and development, with men of letters making major contributions and practical men being knowledgeable about the world and active worldwide. “Although [by contrast] literati in the West mostly are not engaged in the business of farmers, craftsmen/industrialists, or merchants, they are not ashamed to mingle with them, and this is the reason why manufacturing [there] can be constantly modernized and further developed” 西國之士，大約惟不務農至工商之事，皆不恥置身於其間。故製造之事所以能日新而月盛也. In China, the disconnect results in a waste of resources. “The sophistica- tion and skill [of the Chinese inventions] were not inferior to those of the Westerners, but unfortunately no use has been made of them to manufacture useful devices” 其巧思、精工亦不遜于西人，無如其不用之，以造有用之器也, while “China’s rich men will not even be willing to go a short distance in China itself, not to mention going overseas to other lands [like Western merchants]” 中國之富人，卽中國少遠之地，尚不肯往，何况涉重洋而遊他國乎！ In a further boost to the analytical pertinence of the divide between high and low, the piece shows how the deepening man-made ritual divide ends up blocking the technical and commercial progress of the country.

History 4: The Erosion of Trust I The in-house opinion piece “On the Divide Between High and Low” (“Lun shangxia xiangge” 論上下相隔), dated 23 October 1875, finally put this divide right into the title.42 Written on the occasion of the first dis-

42) Shenbao, 23 October 1875.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 146 Wagner cussions about a Chinese state loan, it provided a historical narrative about yet another issue: the loss of society’s trust in the state and its consequences. Relying again on the authority of the Rituals of Zhou,43 the article claims that during the Three Dynasties officials were trusted with managing people’s economic affairs even though there was no monied economy to speak of yet. Taking up the thread from Gu Yanwu’s critique, it argues that with the abolishment of the system of small feudal estates and the establishment of a system of central administration, this trust had eroded because “the officials from the (new) jun and xian (administrative districts) were not accepted by the people at the time” 封建旣亡，而郡縣之官，不由世守. Under this new system, “the higher-ups took from the people and the people [reciprocated by] also starting to only care for themselves” 上取諸民，民間亦各自爲謀矣; in short, “as the position of the officials became ever more elevated, the concerns of the people was ever more cut off, the state’s financial pressure became ever heavier, and the people became ever more secretive with their finances” 官體愈尊，民情愈隔，國課愈重，民財愈私. Further- more, the ignorance of scholar-officials in technical matters made them “incompetent to spot the abuses [by lower officials and craftsmen in government projects]” 總司者無從知其弊竇也. The effect of the ensuing loss of trust is that nowadays China cannot muster the financial resources needed for emergencies or big projects, as is done in the West. “That when the states in the West are in need of great credits, the people by the thousands and tens of thousands are willing to provide for these needs, is due to the ruler and the people, high and low, trusting each other in good faith. There is nothing of the sort in China” 泰西國家凡有大費告貸，民間數千萬可以立致，君民上下以信相孚。若中國不然. The principle that should guide state/society financial relations is to “use the money of the people to take care of the people’s affairs” 以民之錢，理民之事, as is the case with the City Council in the Shanghai International Settlement. The article is pessimistic about chances for a change. Earlier efforts to return to the Three Dynasties’ model have

43) On the role of the Zhouli 周禮, or Zhouguan 周官, in the late Qing reform debates, see Rudolf Wagner, “The Zhouli as the Late Qing Path to the Future;” idem, “Denouement: Some Conclusions about the Zhouli,” in Statecraft and Classical Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History, ed. Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 388-96.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 147 proved unsuccessful. “When Wang Anshi, in the Song, developed a reform model, he tried to follow the system of the Rituals of Zhou … but he did not take into consideration that bad habits die hard, and after pushing it for a few years, the entire country was in chaos” 宋王荊公創行新法，取周官地官之制，試行之 … 無知積重難返。故行之數年，而天下已大亂. Recent efforts to emulate the example of the Shanghai City Council did not fare better. “In Suzhou and Hangzhou, there was a measure to levy fees for street cleaning … but after a few days, resentment grew among the shops. This incident already shows that it is impossible to enforce behavioral norms” 蘇杭兩處有清道捐之舉 … 不數日，而店鋪羣有怨言。卽此一端已可見風氣之不能相强也. However, as China evolved from what it was during the Three Dynasties to what it has become today, the reverse may well be possible, but sadly we will not live to see it. With its astute analysis of the dialectics of trust between state and society, and the consequences of this loss in the behavior of commoners, the piece shows the viability of the “communication between high and low” concept for understanding state/society financial relations and opens a window on the complex ways in which Chinese businesses to this day try to deal with a state that is perceived as predatory. The pessimistic ramblings in the end betray some of the frustrations about the dead weight of Chinese traditions endured by people advocating reforms, even though they insisted that, in principle, man-made changes could be reversed by man.

Analyzing the Present 4: The State and the Commoner Critic In February 1876, the silent toleration of the Shenbao by the Qing court came under threat through events in Japan. The paper had praised the Meiji reforms for successfully emulating Western institutions. In Janu- ary 1876, John Black (1826-1880), a Scottish journalist working for Eng- lish-language newspapers in Japan (he did not know Japanese) followed in the tracks of Major (who, however, was fluent in Chinese) and set up a vernacular newspaper in Yokohama, the Bankoku Shimbun 万国新聞. As high-ranking Japanese officials contributed information and articles, some of them critical of government measures, it started to irritate the

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Japanese government. When it asked the British ambassador, Harry Parkes (1828-1885), to ban British subjects from publishing vernacular papers, the latter complied, afraid of being faced with endless Japanese government complaints about articles in the paper without having any instruments to control their content. There was a real possibility that the British consulate in Shanghai, as well as the embassy in Peking, irri- tated by Chinese complaints about the Shenbao as well as by the paper’s lack of deference to British sensibilities, would issue a similar ban, if asked by the Qing court.44 A Shenbao news report defended Black’s paper for pointing out that the cost of servicing the huge government loans exceeded state income and expressed “concern” that the “Japanese court, after emulating the Western model of encouraging private persons to set up newspapers in great number,” was now banning his paper.45 The report neither mentioned that the paper’s editor was a foreigner, nor that the ban had been issued by the British ambassador (which might not yet have been public knowledge).46 Two days later, the in-house opinion piece “On Japan’s Ban of a Newspaper” (“Lun Riben jinzhi xinbao” 論日本禁止新報)47 offered a systematic presentation of the newspaper’s role in the communication between high and low. Stating from the onset that, “among the best Western methods, the newspaper deserves the highest rank because it still retains the legacy of the Three Dynasties” 西法之良，當以新聞紙爲第一。因其尚有三代以上之遺風也,48 the opinion piece used many references to show how close ancient rulers were to the people and how much they encouraged their officials and the people to speak out. As this piece contains some of the standard lore of such references, I will quote it in full:

At the time of the Three Dynasties there was not a large separation between the ruler and the commoners. That is why emperor Yao was able to personally hear [the peasants sing] the ‘Beat the Drum’ song49 and the praise by the border guard

44) See Rudolf G. Wagner, “The Shenbao in Crisis: The International Environment and the Conflict between Guo Songtao and the Shenbao,” Late Imperial China 20 (1999): 107-38. 45) “Ri ting jinzhi xinbao” 日廷禁止新報, Shenbao, 21 February 1876. 46) Eventually, the Shenbaoguan was to offer Black a new home in Shanghai. 47) Shenbao, 23 February 1876. 48) In Meiji Japan, references to the ideal of the Three Dynasties were also frequent. 49) The earliest references to this song are in Wang Chong 王充 (1st cent. ce), Lun heng

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at Hua [as a ‘sage’];50 as for [emperor] “Shun, he liked to ask and to have a careful look at simple words [by commoners],”51 while [emperor] “Yu appreciated straight- forward words” with joy.52 As a consequence, we see in later generations instances of “officials encouraging each other as well as government workmen going about their jobs to present remonstrance.”53 [Emperor] Tang alerted both ruler and ministers: “To appreciate [advice and criticism] brings affluence, while being self-serv- ing ends up in one being diminished.”54 He also said: “A [true] king is one who is able to find teachers for himself, but [a king] who declares himself to be superior to all, will go under.”55 When later [the Shang emperor] Gaozong [=Wu Ding] hired Fu Yue, he ordered him: “I want instruction from morning to night.”56 When Pan Geng moved the capital of Yin, he discussed the matter with the people, providing several thousand words of explanation.57 The Zhou [dynasty local rulers] ordered the grand historian [should be: music master] to present [the people’s] songs [at court,] [so that they could] observe their customs;58 in the village schools, it per- mitted critical discussions of government, and common folk could recite [critical] verse,59 all of this with the aim that the intentions of those above would reach those below, and that the concerns of those below would get to the top. From this we know that there is no state in the past or present that did not flourish by being able to make use of good advice, and none that did not go under for failing to do so. That is why, generally, sage rulers and capable ministers are always anxious to have the search for remonstrance as a most urgent duty, while those benighted and vulgar start off with the opposite. 三代以上, 君民不甚相隔. 故擊瓖之歌，華封之祝，帝堯得親聞之，至舜則好問與好察邇言，禹則喜拜昌言。其後世遂有官師相規，工執藝事以諫之例，湯則君臣相戒曰：好問則裕，自用則小；又曰：能自得師者王，謂人莫己若者亡。

論衡, in the chapters “Ganxu” 感虛 and “Yizeng” 藝增. See Alfred Forke, Lun-Heng, Part 2: Miscellaneous Essays of Wang Ch’ung (Berlin: Georg Remier, 1911), 187 and 267 respectively. In the latter, the song is quoted from a “tradition” 傳, a regular reference to the Zuozhuan, but it does not contain this story. 50) The earliest surviving reference is in Zhuangzi 莊子, “Tiandi” 天地. Zhuangzi zhuzi suoyin 莊子逐字索引, ed. D.C. Lau (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2000), 12.30/20-24. 51) Zhongyong 中庸, section 6, in Liji 禮記, Shisan jing zhushu, 52.880b. 52) Shangshu, “Da Yu mo” 大禹謨, Shisan jing zhushu, 4.58b. 53) Shangshu, “Yin zheng” 胤征, Shisan jing zhushu, 7.102a. 54) Shangshu, “Zhong Hui zhi gao” 仲虺之誥, Shisan jing zhushu, 8.112a. 55) Ibid. 56) Shangshu, “Shuo ming A” 說命, Shisan jing zhushu, 10.139b. 57) For reference to his written explanations of the need for such a move see Shangshu, “Pan Geng A” 盤庚上, Shisan jing zhushu, 9.126a. 58) Li ji 禮記, “Wang zhi” 王制, Shisan jing zhushu, 5.226a. 59) A reference to Zichan 子產 who refused to close down local schools in the state of Zheng because critical discussions about government were carried on. Zuozhuan 左傳 (Xianggong 31), Shisan jing zhushu, 40.688b.

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其後高宗之得傅說，命之曰：朝夕納誨。盤庚遷殷，與民辨論至數千言。周則命太吏 [ 師 ] 陳詩觀風，鄕校可以議政，輿人可以致誦，無非欲上意下逮，下情上達也。

Nearly all the references are taken from the canon of the classics. They do not include any of the widely quoted later narratives of the institutions set up by the sage rulers of antiquity to make sure information and opinion from commoners would reach them, evidently because these narratives stressed the rulers’ agency rather than that of those below. The emphasis is not on the wisdom of these rulers kindly granting this access, but on the independent formation of opinions by commoners, workers on government contracts, and lower-level officials, about the quality of governance, as well as on the dependency of any ruler on such independent articulation, if they are to secure a “flourishing” of their state. “The newspapers set up in the West time and again take the place that statements of remonstrance [have in China]” 西國之設新聞紙也，往往可以代諫章. “Indeed, newspapers are able to establish communication of information and opinion between high and low and they have the wherewithal to serve as a fine yardstick for governance. The prosperity of the Western states is largely due to them” 是新聞紙者實可以通上下之情意，足爲政治之良規。西國之興, 多藉乎此. While the writer is not afraid of coming up with the new argument that the newspaper is the “yardstick for governance,” and to assert its substantial contribution to the West’s prosperity, he also sets up a rule that secures the independence of the paper from the state, and vice versa. After arguing that “if indeed the newspaper approves [of something], [the court] might follow through, and if not, it might drop it” 使果日報之言善，從之可也；其言不善，置之可也, the rule is spelled out: “The right/power to speak up or not is with the paper, and the right/ power to listen or not is with the court” 言不言之權在報舘，聽不聽之權仍在君宮也. This being the case, “what need is there for a ban?” 何必禁之 ? It would only be an exercise in self-defeating despotism. There- fore, it defies reason why Japan with its “relatively enlightened ruler” 君尚屬英明, as well as “mostly capable ministers” 臣亦多能幹, rather than following the sage rulers of the Three Dynasties, should follow the evil despots of antiquity, such as the last Shang emperor Zhou, who “killed people who remonstrated and, as a consequence, lost the

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 151 country” 殺諫，以亡國, or the Zhou ruler Li, who “banned critical comments and ended up a refugee” 止謗，以流身. There are no sage rulers in modern times who would understand their dependency on information and critical opinion from below; moreover, the willingness of officials to risk their careers with frank words is at a low point. As the writer implies, objectively, it would be in the interest of state and society if commoners were to assume the responsibility of independently opening this channel of information and opinion, and it would be in that of the court to encourage rather than stifle this new medium. For countries such as Japan and China, which are “adapting the Western model” 改尚西法, or pondering doing so, newspapers with editors who are well informed about the West are par- ticularly important because of the high risks of their overreaching in their desire to quickly match this model. The writer does not spell out the evident conclusion, namely that vernacular newspapers set up by foreigners familiar with the local situation, as well as with the “West,” and disposing of a network among local elites, can thus have a pioneer- ing function for the local development of newspapers. There is no question that the Shenbao is counted as a bona fide part of the “newspapers with commoners [rather than officials] in charge” 民之為此紙 referred to in the August 1873 opinion piece analyzed above. Also in 1876, the literary monthly Huanyu suoji 寰宇瑣記, published by the Shenbaoguan, just like the Shenbao, reminded readers that per- ceptive Chinese local and regional officials had noticed, decades earlier, the blockage of the communication between high and low as the major structural flaw in local governance. It published two stiff letters by Cheng Hanzhang 程含章 (1762-1832), seemingly from his position as a judicial commissioner for the entire province, to his Shandong subordinates, starting off with the claim that “no evil in the commanderies and districts is greater than the disconnect between high and low and the [ensuing] lack of circulation of information and opinion” 州縣之患，莫患乎上下隔絕，而情意不通.60

60) Cheng Hanzhang, “Yu Shanzuoshu guan shu er” 與山左屬官書二, Huanyu suoji 10 (1876): 2a. Pierre-Etienne Will kindly alerted me that an excerpt of it was previously published in Xu Dong 徐棟 comp., Muling shu 牧令書 (n. p., 1848), 54a. Similar references could be found elsewhere.

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History 5: Rejecting the Story of the Inevitable Deepening of the Ritual Divide A Shenbao news report entitled “On a Battle between Soldiers and Civil- ians in Guangdong that Resulted from a Misunderstanding” (“Lun Guangdong bing min wudou shi” 論廣東兵民誤鬥事),61 published on the occasion of a tussle between soldiers and local people in Guang- dong province in late 1877, started off with the following desperate statement: “In the entire universe nothing is more damaging for a country than a disconnect between high and low” 宇宙之間，國家之患莫大於上下閡隔 ! In an emergency situation like that in Guangdong, it resulted in the soldiers and the people fighting each other, while the robbers whom the soldiers had come to arrest looked on laughing.

From this, it becomes even clearer that the concerns between high and low are crucial for mutual trust …. The reason explaining why during the Three Dynasties governance was so prosperous and why Western countries have achieved such wealth and power is simply that [in both cases,] high and low were not separated! What else could it be, really! 於此愈足見，上下之情意，貴乎相孚也 …. 三代以上之政治所以極其隆盛、泰西各國之規模所以成其富強，亦不過上下不至閡隔而已，豈有他哉，豈有他哉 !

This was a fine occasion to show that even an occurrence such as this tussle could be meaningfully analyzed in terms of the lack of communication between high and low. The newspaper thus came back to the incident in January, with an editorial “On Barriers Between High and Low” (“Lun shangxia gehe” 論上下隔閡).62 It used the form of a dialogue between the editorialist and a “colleague” ( you 友)—a term in use among journalists—to reflect actual controversies in society. Against the writer’s plan to elaborate on the main proposition of the previous editorial, the colleague argued that indeed the divide was now very marked, but that it had developed as society grew more complex, was now accepted by all, and ensured that “the lowly … do not dare to inadvertently stick up their heads to oppose their superiors.”

61) Shenbao, 27 December 1877. 62) Shenbao, 21 January 1877.

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[Because] during the Three Dynasties ritual was not yet properly developed the divide between elevated and lowly, high and low, had not yet been marked all too well. But since the Zhou Dynasty, the ritual gradations increased, excessive ceremony developed and turned into inveterate habits, which were handed down without change. Consequently, the exalted became ever more exalted, and it was not acceptable that they should lower themselves in the slightest to show easy familiarity [with those below,] while the lowly lowered themselves on their own accord and did not dare to inadvertently stick up their head to oppose their superiors. There lies the real reason for the lack of communication of concerns between high and low, which has been going on for thousands of years without change. 三代以上禮教未備，尊卑上下之分不甚相懸。自周以來，禮數旣多、繁文縟節、積習相沿。於是尊者愈尊，不可稍貶以示褻；卑者自卑，不敢偶陵以犯上，而上下之情因此不能相通，數千年來沿而未改。

Should the writer “not give careful consideration to this argument as well?” 子爲此說不亦愼乎. Against this veiled charge of being an extremist fostering rebellion, which reflected apprehensions among many literati, the editorialist defends himself awkwardly: “It is not that I wish that those who nowadays are at the top should go to extremes in lowering their superior status, and that those below should all dare to go beyond their station” 此非欲今之爲上者，盡貶其尊，而在下者，皆敢越分也, before quickly lay- ing out his argument: “The divide between high and low is not due to the ever more complex ritual rules, it in reality developed during a time when there was no ritual” 上下之不通，盖非由於禮文之繁，而實起於無禮之世, as epitomized by the reign of the first Qin ruler.

When Qin Shi Huangdi burned the books and buried the scholars alive, the system of rituals came to a complete end, but as he claimed that his merits surpassed that of the Three August Ones and matched that of the Five Emperors, he assumed the title ‘August Emperor,’ and later generations all emulated that.... Eventually, … whatever the court officials did [in terms of insisting on hierarchical difference], the border officials imitated, whatever the high administrators did, the little bu- reaucrats did as well. 皇帝奏皇焚書坑儒，禮制盡失，而自謂功高三皇，德兼五帝，故併稱皇帝，而後世效之 … 。皇帝既若是之尊，然後朝臣如是，疆臣亦如是; 大吏如是，有司亦如是。

The result is that even the lowest-level officials, on whose reports all higher levels build, are too overburdened and distant from their sub-

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 154 Wagner jects, so that “their daily tours have nothing whatsoever to do with people’s concerns” 此卽日日巡遊，亦與民事無關焉. The opponent’s claim that the divide should be left in place defends a structural flaw in Chi- nese state/society relations, which has no moral justification and is responsible for China’s present crisis. The writer himself doubts, however, whether there are people able and willing to overcome the divide, suggesting, as a weak remedy, that local officials should hire “eyes and ears” to provide them with realistic reports about the concerns of the people.

History 5: The Erosion of Trust II—State Projects and Public Credit After probing other issues, such as the division between gender roles,63 in a piece published in February 1881, entitled “On Financial Interaction and Joining Forces [Between State and Society]” (“Tong cai he li shuo” 通財合力說),64 the Shenbao took advantage of the first state loan floated by the Qing court to return to the issue of trust between state and society in financial matters, which it had first broached in the 1875 opinion piece analyzed earlier. The piece starts by pointing to the prevalence of a marked asymmetry in the benefits derived by China and the West from their trade.

If we got hold of the profits the Westerners make in China so that they stay in our country and are not taken abroad, our China would never again lack wealth, and, once it had wealth, it would never again lack power. While this might not be had amicably from the four continents, would it not be wonderful if our China was able to manage our China and the wealth we have accumulated for two thousand years could be secured in the present without letting it be diminished by other countries? 西人之所以利於我者，我先奪而有之 … 則我中國固未嘗不富，旣富矣卽亦未嘗不强 ! 以我中國治我中國，雖不能混四洲而有之，而二千年以來之富，庶可常保於今日，而不為他國所陵夷，豈不幸甚 ?

What is the cause of the country’s present conditions?

63) See Rudolf Wagner, “Women in Shenbaoguan Publications, 1872-1890,” in Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China, ed. Nanxiu Qian, Grace S. Fong, and Richard J. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 235-38. 64) Shenbao, 12 February 1881.

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If one measures social relations in China and the situation of the country against [those of] foreign countries since trade with the four continents was opened, all one sees is that foreign countries are always well off, while China is permanently in trouble, and foreign countries are always relying on cooperation, while China is always relying on separation, but nobody can explain this conundrum. 乃自四洲諸國通商之後，以中國之人情、事勢，揆之於外國，但見外國恒處其易，而中國恒處其難，外國常居於合，而中國常居於分，不禁疑莫能解。

Providing an explanation to this situation is precisely what the author of the piece seeks to do. Chinese social relations, he argues, have not changed apace with the change in the overall conditions of the state.

From the Tongzhi reign (1862-1874) to this day, China has not had a single success in its emulation of the West. Why? Because [only] the situation of the country underwent an extreme change. As China is now emulating Westerners, her overall situation is the same as in the West, but as long as the [traditional] social relations of China are situated in an overall situation [as developed by] Westerners, China will not be able to manage without conceiving of a plan to adjust to [this] change. 然而同治以來，凡所仿傚西人之事，至今日而一無成效，何也？蓋事勢至變者也。今中國仿傚西人，則與西國之事勢同。以中國之人情處乎西人之事勢，則不知變計，而無所措手矣。

The term “overall situation” (shishi 事勢) is not further defined here, but the date given for the change marks it as the beginning of the broad range of “conservative” Yangwu reform policies since 1861.65 The key issue in state-society relations, the author claims, is money. “The difficul- ties and ease in the overall situation depends on division or cooperation in social relations, but the latter are realized in financial [relations]” 事勢之難易，由於人情之分合，而人情之所以分合，則在乎財 because “as a manner of general principle, what man relies on for his livelihood is money” 夫人之一身所恃以生活者財也. As the author goes on to explain, in this key realm of finance, the historical deterioration of social relations has taken its toll. “[During the Three Dynasties,] people could on their own initiative reach the court with their concerns” 民情可自達於朝廷. Since then, however, “etiquette and protocol went from bad to worse, and the distance in rank between

65) Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservativism.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 156 Wagner honored and lowly, eminent and humble, became ever more marked, a flaw which got to the point that high and low were no longer in communication with each other” 禮文相尚，尊卑，貴賤之等，相去懸絕，而其流獘乃至於上下不相通. “Senior officials also gradually stopped being in communication with craftsmen, merchants, scholars, and common folk—how then should it be possible to achieve the pooling of financial resources to get things done and the joining of forces to achieve success, as done by the Western countries?” 卽公卿大夫亦漸與工商士庶不相通問，而謂能如西國之通財以集事、合力以成功得乎. While it was accepted that “the people invariably had to make contributions to those above to enable them to govern the people” 民必有以奉於上者，以其能治民也, the state ended up reneging on this reciprocal relationship to provide government services in exchange for taxes. Since the Three Dynasties, “despotic rulers and corrupt officials have ex- tracted ever more from the people, and thereafter, the people did not dare to have any surplus beyond what they had to hand over to those above. Thereupon, everybody under heaven privately held on to his money” 三代以來，暴君污吏多取於民，而後民於所應奉上之外不敢有所溢焉。於是天下皆自私其財. The outcome was fragmentation instead of cooperation in social relations, or, in short, “as a general rule, the flaw in Chinese social relations lies in separating rather than connecting” 夫中國之人情病在散，而不聨. This takes the form of a lack of trust towards the state as a reliable financial counterpart who will make sure both sides benefit. “If people pay their levies and the ruler takes them without anything in return, how could anybody have the illusion of extracting even more by enacting a law [for the state] to take loans from the people” to cover emergencies or big projects? 葢以民奉上，君受之而無有以還之也，若立一法以借民，則安得有多取之思哉. The low quality of governance nowadays, linked in part to the ever-growing number of people having bought their offices, has further decreased the credibility of the state, with the result that rather than “establishing [equitable] financial relations with the people, it actually gathers wealth [for itself]” 非通財於民，而實歛財也. Far from advocating a revolution, the writer argues for the necessity of “some change.” “While China did reform its overall situation according to the Western model, its social relations also need some change” 苐以中國而仿西法事勢改殊，則人情亦當少變. Only an improvement

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 157 on this aspect of social relations, through legislation and recruitment for public service, will enable the state to be successful in getting the funds and cooperation required for big projects and emergencies. “If the court were to consolidate its renown” 朝廷之聲望猶可堅 … by “getting its legislation and employment policies in proper order” 立法、用人處處妥籌, the confidence of the wealthy would “not suffer from the fear that, whether in establishing railways or in setting up banks, they might not be able to complete it successfully” 天下富人之信不患乎建造鐵路，創設銀行之不能成功也. If the state would adjust to the require- ments of a modernized state structure, it would be sure to quickly secure a place for China among the world’s leading nations. “If only China with her [vast] land and [large] population was able to do joint [state/ society] financing and get its forces together, it would by far surpass the [other countries] of the four continents” 以中國之地與人但能通財合力，豈不遠駕於四洲之上哉. As this would require changes in inveterate social relations, the writer ends with what amounts to a Shenbao editorial line, namely that a mea- sured pace of change had to be kept for China to avoid failure.

Since old habits are really difficult to eradicate and one cannot get the ruler and the people to have a beneficial relationship of [equitable] financial relations that joined forces, in all undertakings it would be best to carefully ponder [the best way to proceed] at an early stage and definitely avoid proceeding recklessly rather than abandoning the[se enterprises] midway and ending up becoming the foreigners’ laughing stock. 倘眞積習難除，不能使君民有通財合力之誼，則一切興作與其隳於半途，不若愼於先事，切勿輕舉妄動，終為外人所竊笑也。

The writer is keenly aware of the weight of tradition on all parts of the equation and does not see agents strongly committed to change in the court, among the elite, or among the people. Fearful of altogether wrecking an already fragile structure, he opts for pointing out where the problem lies, while meekly suggesting step-by-step changes.

Remedies 1: Steps Towards a Chinese Parliament Parliamentary institutions, such as city councils, already existed in some Chinese treaty ports as well as in Hong Kong. Their members were all

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 158 Wagner foreigners. In 1880, the Shenbao opinion page came back to the qualifications needed for members of parliament with a piece entitled “On the Appointment of a Chinese to Expand the [Hong Kong] Council” (“Tui- guang yiyuan, yanzhi huaren shuo” 推廣議院、延置華人說).66 Wu Tingfang 伍廷芳 (Wu Zhiyong 伍秩庸, 1842-1922),67 the founder of a Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong who also held a British law degree, had been appointed as an unofficial member of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong to report on matters of concern to Chinese residents, acting as a channel of “communication between high and low,” between British Council members and Chinese residents. His appointment prompted demands to include Chinese in the Shanghai City Coun- cil. The problem is acknowledged: a governing body must be informed about the concerns of those under its jurisdiction and the Western members of the city councils in Hong Kong, or the treaty ports, are like- ly to be not well enough informed about the concerns of the Chinese majority. “The Shanghai City Council has always wished to accommo- date the concerns of the Chinese residents” 工部局之意亦末嘗不欲俯順華人之情, but “for Westerners in Chinese lands [such as Hong Kong], there are also changing circumstances that are not easy to manage, because they might not be fully familiar with the proper response to a situation and the most urgent issues to address” 然以西人而處華地，則又有不容，不略爲變通者何，則時勢之所宜，措置之所亟，西人未必皆熟悉也. Wu Tingfang was an ideal candidate. Like the Western Coun- cil members, he was committed to the public good and respected by his constituency. He was better informed about the concerns of the majority Chinese population, but would not abuse his position. Therefore, the governor’s appointment was “in the spirit of all being one family,” and as similar candidates were available in Shanghai, a similar step should be taken there. “[Someone] should be appointed who is capable of careful observation, striving to have his heart set on the public good and justice, is thoroughly familiar with the concerns of the people, is of good virtue, and has enough public renown to be respected by the Chinese” 能留心

66) Shenbao, 28 February 1880. 67) On his background, see Linda Pomerantz-Zhang, Wu Tingfang (1842–1922): Reform and Modernization in Modern Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press, 1992).

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察視，求其秉心公正，周知民情，素有碩德，重望足以爲華人所欽佩者舉而用之. The opinion piece maintains a step-by-step approach. The appointment of a Chinese as an unofficial member of the Council should be done only after a “very careful” selection by the Western authorities, but he should also have the support of his community, and—not mentioned—be fluent in English and familiar with the rights and duties of the Council, as was Wu Tingfang. Implied in this piece is the prospect that such people might form the core of a future Chinese parliament. The April 1882 opinion piece “Parliament, a Bequest from China’s Golden Age” (“Yiyuan wei Zhongguo shengshi yifa lun” 議院爲中國盛時遺法論)68 has a Chinese speaker rebutting Chinese objections to the basic suitability of this institution for China. The present lack of free communication between high and low in the country, he argues, goes counter to the ideal of China’s golden age. “In antiquity, … even commoners had the right to take part in the discussion of actual policies …. In China’s age of full bloom, the ruler and the people were basically close to each other sharing weal and woe as one body, and there was no ban preventing the people from speaking up” 古者 … 雖庶人亦得與議時政 … 中國盛時，原有君民一體，休戚與同之誼，非禁民以勿言也. Moreover, such a ban could not be justified with references to Confu- cian teaching. True, Confucius had said, “once the Dao prevails in the empire, the common folk will not have critical comments” 天下有道則庶人不議, and Mengzi had added “an age when the feudal lords are self- indulgent and the local scholars have contentious debates, is one that lacks a sage ruler” 以諸侯放恣，處士横議，爲聖王不作之世. These statements have been used by later rulers who “wished to taboo the fact that they themselves did not possess the Way” 欲諱無道之實 in order to ban public criticism, although Mengzi’s critique only referred to the doctrines of Mozi and Yang Zhu. The opponent finally claims that it would be impossible to achieve consensus in a country with the size and diversity of China, so that the first Qin Emperor could not help but put a general ban on critical comments. “Everybody has something to say, and what they say is all different. If during a time of grand reform one probes public opinion to

68) Shenbao, 13 April 1882.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 160 Wagner determine right and wrong, one only gets confusion” 人各有言，言人人殊，苟一興革之際，而必採輿論以定是非，徒見其紛紛然也. Such a poll might have been possible during the Three Dynasties, when the fiefs were small and homogenous, but “once one gets to a unified dynasty, it is absolutely not feasible… As for the despotic Qin’s merger [of the different territories], it could not but follow it with a stringent ban on exchanging [even] private opinions [about government]. This was necessitated by the circumstances of the time, there was no intention of breaking with antiquity” 若一統之朝，則萬不可行… 。至暴秦混一，遂不得已，而嚴偶語之令。夫亦時勢使然，非有意戾古也. European territorial states with diverse populations, the writer coun- ters, show that a parliament can actually establish social peace.

Parliaments established in Prussia, France, or Spain, with a territory covering two or three thousand Chinese miles, provide access from below to the top. Settling the course to be pursued according to majority vote, they decide after deliberation, and once a decision has been made, it is executed with everything being perfectly correct and appropriate. Why should this not be practicable in China, with its provincial divisions and multitudes of people?! 若普，法，西班牙亦踞有幅員二三千里 … 乃所設議院，自下達上。綜人數之多寡，而定事理之是非，議而後决，决而後行，無不極正至當。然則中國直省之分，民數之衆，推而行之，安見其不可也。

The real reason why the Three Dynasties’ model of an ideal state cannot be realized is the obsession of rulers with shielding themselves from public opinion, together with a willingness of scholar-officials to justify this by composing flattering accolades for the ruler.

Once men in China are at the top, they are incapable of acting in the public interest and therefore have taboos in all their affairs; before something has been done, they are afraid that others might know, and after it has been done, they force everybody to fall in line. [As a consequence,] resentful critiques arise all over to the point that even knowledgeable and far-sighted scholars take to posting anonymous placards. 中國之人，惟在上不能秉公，故事事有所忌諱，未行之先，則畏人知。旣行之後，則强人從。謗言四起，而具深識遠慮之士，轉而效匿名揭帖之爲。

“Japan managed to achieve great results in less than a decade of vigor- ous emulation of the Western model” 日本步武泰西，願宏力猛，不及

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十年，大著成效, while “China has bragged of establishing foreign learning (Yangwu) for twenty years now, but the efforts have been stunt- ed, the effects have been slow to come, and not a single enterprise has actually been successfully completed” 二十年來羣相誇曰：辦理洋務，而其功鈍拙，其效濡遲，曾無一事之底於成也. Given the abysmal failure of the Yangwu reform efforts, the author considered that bolder steps were needed. He thus set out to “outline how a parliament had points in common with the antique [Chinese] idea of governance so as to wipe out objections against its feasibility and make it clear that studying the Western method is the best way to restore the system of [Chinese] antiquity” 略述議院有合於古制之意，以袪當事之疑，俾知學西法卽所以復古制. The earlier discussion about the feasibility of establishing a parliament in China focused on the values and the level of knowledge required among the people, as well as from the candidates, for such an institution to be successful. It concluded that those conditions had not been met. In contrast, the present opinion piece objects to the argument that a parliament is in principle impracticable given China’s size, population, and diversity, an argument widely shared among Chinese elites to this day. While not addressing the question whether the country is prepared, it articulates a strong frustration about the failure of the Yangwu efforts, even before they had been put to a serious test during the war with France in 1884, and eventually in the war with Japan in 1894-1895,69 and seems to suggest that a parliament might be needed here and now, whether the country was readily prepared for it or not.

Remedies 2: The Newspaper and the State With “On the Benefits of the Newspaper” (“Lun xinwenzhi zhi yi” 論新聞紙之益)70 in August 1886, the Shenbao, to which the North China

69) A fine example of the “bragging” about Yangwu efforts is the article written for an international audience by the Yangwu advocate Zeng Jize 曾紀澤 (1839-1890), China’s ambassador to London, Paris, and St. Petersburg. See “China. The Sleep and the Awakening,” Asiatic Quarterly Review 3 (1887): 2-10. For a discussion, see Rudolf G. Wagner, “China ‘Asleep’ and ‘Awakening.’ A Study in Conceptualizing Asymmetry and Coping with It,” Transcultural Studies 1 (2011): 35, 58-69. 70) Shenbao, 11 August 1886.

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Herald had referred as the “censorate at Shanghai,”71 addressed exactly the question of what entitled it to publicly voice opinions on issues of state governance in a country that had an official censorate, as well as a select group of officials with the privilege to “speak,” namely the yan- guan 言官. Given the state’s authority to regulate, persecute, or ban newspapers, much hinged upon the need to convince the authorities that the newspapers had the interests of the country in mind and were abiding by lofty principles in their reporting, and therefore, that their independence was objectively in the state’s best interest. The piece was written to counter official doubts about the newspapers’ loyalty to the throne and to greet two new papers that were modelled after the Shen- bao, Timothy Richard’s (1845-1919) Shibao 時報 in Tianjin, and Kuang Qizhao’s 鄺其照 (1836-1891) Guangbao 廣報 in Canton. Newspapers, it is true, originated in the West. “In Antiquity there was no talk about newspapers, and once they were mentioned, [it was said] that they had their beginning in the West, although it is not clear whether this is true” 從古無新聞紙之說，有之則自泰西始，而不知其實非創於泰西也. Three Dynasties China, however, had its own forms of “soliciting people’s comments” (qiuyan 求言), and the author lists some of the most widely quoted. “In antiquity, the satires and recitals of the blind, the drum of remonstrance [outside the imperial palace], and the banners of appraisal [for good officials] were all, without exception, ways of soliciting people’s comments” 古者瞽箴，矇誦，諫鼓，善旌，無非求言之道. High officials such as Zichan 子產 (6th cent. bce) would go on record refusing to close down village schools in which government policies were evaluated, with the argument that “a path has to be provided for the concerns of the people to be articulated, and one should not block them from speaking up” 民之情當導之使言，不可遏之而不言. “This,” the author comments, “can be called knowing the correct way of governance” 是則可謂知治道矣, because blocking the avenues of speech has irreversible consequences, as Jigong Moufu [a descendant of the Duke of Zhou who remonstrated with the despotic Zhou ruler King Li] had explained: “Blocking the people’s mouths is worse than blocking a river. This is so because when a river pushes and breaks through [the dams,] one can still get things right afterwards, but

71) “The Censorate at Shanghai,” North China Herald, 11 September 1880.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 163 once the people’s situation reaches a breaking point, getting that right [again] is much more difficult” 善乎祭公謀父之言曰：防民之口甚於防川。盖謂川决而潰，猶可以善其後。若民情至於潰決，則收拾（掄）為尤難.72 In short, the “true way of rulership is nothing but [being attuned to] the people’s concerns” 王道不外乎人情. The main obstacle for a Chinese parliament is what the author calls the refusal to accept a “devolution of state power.” “As to setting up a parliament, as long as Chinese state power is not transferred down- wards, it cannot compare to the Western democracies and constitutional monarchies, and therefore China is absolutely unable to follow [the Western model on this point]” 然議院之舉，中國權不下移，非可與泰西之民主與夫君民共主之國相比，故斷不可以踵行. Under these conditions, however, the independent newspaper becomes the indispensable tool to connect high and low, and to prevent chaos in state and society caused by the unchecked abuses of power by middle-level officials. “The newspaper [as opposed to parliament] is the only thing that has something about it that [China] in fact cannot avoid making use of” 新聞紙一事，則實有不可不行者. “The linchpin for order and chaos in the land is nothing else but the free flow of communication between high and low” 天下治亂之機，祗在乎上下之通不通而已, and the “newspaper is most nimble in securing knowledge of the people’s concerns” 欲知民情莫捷於新聞紙.

If the ruler undertakes a measure, but the people below have no way of knowing about it, or if those below have a complaint about something and the ruler above has no way of learning about it, the consequence is that all is topsy-turvy and in chaos, secretive and deceptive, with all power handed over to those in the middle [between high and low,] and the [resulting] damage being immeasurable. 上有所施，下民末由知也; 下有所訴，君上無從見也，其所以顚倒播弄，隱蔽蒙混，全授其權於中間之人，而弊為無窮矣。

Taking up long standing complaints about the unchecked powers of the “men in the middle” (zhongjian zhi ren 中間之人), between officialdom and the people, the clerks and yamen runners, the medium of the newspaper promises to undercut their monopoly of the knowledge of local

72) A reference to Guoyu 國語, “Zhou yu A” 周語上. Guoyu zhuzi suoyin 國語逐字索引, ed. Ho Che Wah (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1999), 1.3/2/16.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 164 Wagner conditions and to strengthen the effectiveness of the central government. The independent and “unsolicited” (zigong 自貢) reports and comments of the newspaper are even superior to the procedure of the Three Dynasties. “If now the concerns of those below could be supplied to those above unsolicited, this would be even more practical than the procedures of antiquity” 今乃令下情得以自貢於上，斯其事較古時為更便矣, especially as the newspaper can provide specific information about different localities to officials who are unfamiliar with them, as they are not allowed to serve in their home province. “As the customs in different provinces differ, they cannot be all managed in the same way. It is the newspaper that reports on local affairs” 各省民風往往不同，不可一律而治。新聞紙則採訪各處之事, so that officials can take appropriate measures. Speaking for the Shenbao in a truly editorial voice, the writer lays out the “straight way” (zhidao 直道) for this newspaper’s operation, namely to go all out in its commitment to the order and prosperity of the country rather than the interests of those in power, by daring to take up things that might grate the imperial ear.

The first principle of our company consists in honoring the emperor. Honoring the emperor, [however], does not simply consist in singing the praise of [the ruler’s] achievements and eulogizing his virtues by way of raising the hands in endless admiration and composing paeans about achieving Great Peace (Taiping 太平). As a general rule, everything about government business that brings benefit to the state will be made clear [by our newspaper], and considered in the long term with the single purpose of ensuring that the state will be at peace, without any government business being in disarray. [But] in [another] general rule, for what regards government business that does harm to the state, [our newspaper] will not refrain from painful considerations or fear to utter words unpleasant to the ear, it will speak with a clear voice and go into every detail to the point of not even shrinking from things offensive to the imperial ear or violating taboos. Proceeding like this is what we call the “great principle of the straight path.” 報舘之體例第一在於尊王。所謂尊王者，非但以歌功頌德，為賡颺之拜，作昇平之頌，已也。凡事之有裨於國家者，則剴切詳明，深謀遠慮，必思貽國家以安，而無一事之杌隉。凡事之有損於國家者，不辭苦口，不憚逆耳，聲明昭著，詳盡曲折，雖批逆鱗觸忌諱所不辭也。若此者謂之直道大義。

A division of labor between the newspapers’ unprejudiced news and opinions and the constraints of the executive is accepted. “What makes

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 165 for unprejudiced comments [by the newspaper] is not that all of them are feasible, but that they come from the same motive, namely, the considerations of loyalty to the ruler and patriotism in promoting beneficial policies and eliminating harmful [ones]” 蓋淸議所在，卽非必事事可行，而其心則一，以忠君，愛國，興利，除弊為念也. Taking up the old maxim that “the right to speak or not is in the hands of the newspaper companies, but the right to listen or not is in the hands of the court,” which had already been quoted in the opinion piece critical of the Japa- nese court’s ban on papers as a despotic measure, the writer links it to another rule often mentioned in earlier times in defense of government critics: “he who utters [criticisms of government] will be without crime, and he who hears them will be sufficiently warned” 言之者無罪，聞之者足戒. In the West, the state has remained in line with the wisdom of the Three Dynasties and has thus greatly benefitted from this type of newspaper reporting. “Once the different states in the West had [such newspapers,] their situation improved by the day, but before they had them, they were not as strong” 泰西各國以有此，一舉而蒸蒸有日上之勢。前此無之，未見其强如此也. Accordingly, it would now be in the best interest of the Chinese state to show its commitment to the public good and to reduce the abuses of privileged access to state information by officials, by making information, especially on financial matters, accessible to newspapers for dis- semination and analysis. People would then be able to check whether officials might be withholding some piece of information in order to squeeze the population before making it known to the public—for example about tax relief in times of emergency. “Once there are newspapers, … whenever an imperial decree is promulgated, it will be reported in detail with the precise facts, so that readers will know right away the extent of imperial benevolence” 有新聞紙，而恩詔何日頒發，一一詳敘，而實記之，而見之者已知天恩之下賁 before the “men in the middle” can squeeze them. State acceptance of independent and outspoken newspapers, however, is still low in China, and so is the willingness of Chinese men of letters to set up such papers. The result is that most Chinese papers just contain market prices or entertaining trivia, while the official Peking Gazette is full of “elaborate and fluid” 洋洋灑灑滔滔汨汨 words that fill the page but are just “empty chatter” 空談, instead of making their full

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 166 Wagner contribution to the country’s welfare. The references to the exceptions, the Shenbao itself and the two new papers, signal that those independent newspapers, which dared to take on state policies and the performance of officials, were still strongly connected with foreigners and the foreign settlements, notwithstanding all the appeals to the ideals of Chi- nese antiquity. At this point of our analysis, we have reached the time when the writings of authors highlighted by Onogawa began to appear in print. The Shenbao opinion pieces about the communication between high and low hitherto analyzed are consistent in their line of argumentation, whether written by in-house journalists or external contributors. They take up and elaborate a basic argumentative grid developed in the piece signed by Ernest Major as the head of the Shenbao. They give depth and substance to the core idea of the crucial importance of the communication between high and low by elaborating on the history of this divide, with the beginning of the imperial state as the main turning point, by presenting the reasons that brought about the divide, and by providing details on the wider impact this had on state secrecy, society’s trust in the state, the ability of the public to engage in public affairs, social relations, and the quality of governance. They showed that this concept was also a powerful tool to analyze present-day issues. The critical angle was gained by contrasting the imaginaire of the Three Dynasties with the present, which, in turn, opened the way for the argument of emulating Western structures of governance—especially the newspapers and parliaments—since they were considered compatible with the ideas underlying governance during the Three Dynasties. They proposed a cautious assessment of the potential to realize much-needed changes in China, advocating the need for such a change, but warning of the eventual fall-out which could derive from proceeding too hastily. The independent newspaper itself became the “linchpin for order and chaos” in the country, and, as opposed to a parliament, it could be set up by committed individuals in an environment to a degree protected from the state’s heavy hand. The fact that these opinion pieces written over a period of some fif- teen years show such consistency suggests a guiding hand.

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The Authors The early Shenbao did not define its front-page opinion pieces as editorials that would state the opinion of the paper and claim the authority stemming from this new informed medium. Rather, it offered its front page as a platform for responsible public discussion, and while the majority of pieces were written anonymously by Shenbao journalists, the paper managed to attract signed opinion pieces from contributors ranging from enraged Cantonese merchants to an enthusiastic Suzhou reader.73 As was the custom at the time, the outside authors signed with a pen name. They were only a small fraction of the paper’s reach. The Shenbao, the other periodicals published from early on by the Shenbao- guan, and the books published by this company all managed to attract people of culture and knowledge to submit their poems, essays, and works, join in the poetry gatherings organized by one of the editors, Jiang Zhixiang 蔣芷湘 (1842-?),74 contribute prefaces or editorial work, or simply make the connection with a collector who had a rare book or a painting that the Shenbaoguan might want to make publicly available through reproduction. We thus might speak of a “Shenbaoguan community,” which greatly enhanced the cultural and social standing of this foreign-owned enterprise. The unsigned in-house pieces did not use a rhetoric of authority nor did they talk down to the readers. Actually, it was rather the opposite: they were written with all the marks of modesty and politeness, often referring to the readers as the ultimate judges of the worth and accuracy of the opinions expressed. Short of convincing named and famed men of letters and politicians to go public with their own opinions, the

73) Major was aware that maintaining civility in such discussions would involve a learning process for contributors. When opinion pieces from outside contributors on a highly controversial issue degenerated into shouting matches, he intervened, sometimes with a signed piece, to lay down the rules. See Natascha Vittinghoff, “Readers, Publishers and Officials in the Contest for a Public Voice and the Rise of a Modern Press in Late Qing China (1860- 1880),” T’oung Pao 87 (2001): 432. 74) The career of Jiang Zhixiang, also known as Jiang Qizhang 蔣其章 (zi Zixiang 子相), has been the object of a recent study: see Shao Zhize 邵志擇, “Shenbao diyi ren zhubi Jiang Zhixiang kaolüe,” 《申報》第一任主笔蔣芷湘考略, Xinwen yu chuanbo yanjiu 新聞與傳播研究 15.5 (2008): 55-61. The author shows that Jiang passed the jinshi examination in 1877. He most probably left the Shenbao in late 1875, after three years there, to prepare for it, and then pursued an official career. No evidence is presented of his being editor-in-chief.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 168 Wagner editorial pieces brought in their points of view and objections, often in the form of controversial dialogues on a given issue between a foreign guest and a Shenbao journalist, or between two Chinese discussants. As the above documentation has shown, the overall thrust of the discussion developed over time around issues such as the suitability of a parliament for China, but at any given moment, the opinion expressed— or dominant in discussion pieces—was fairly homogenous. This might have been the result of Major’s role in recruiting the staff, but given the newness of both the medium and of many of the issues, as well as the inevitable nervousness about official reactions, it would have been well- nigh impossible for him to predict how a given journalist would react under pressure. Accordingly, we have to assume the presence of a strong guiding hand together with that of knowledgeable and well-connected members of the staff to explain the production of many substantial pieces that echoed and influenced wider discussions. Natascha Vittinghoff has convincingly shown, in a wide-ranging prosopographic study, that far from fitting the characterization of failures in the examination system and in life, early Chinese journalists had substantial education, close connections to officials as well as men of letters, manifold links to others in the same profession, and years of exposure to foreigners and foreign ideas.75 While Feng Guifen stayed in Shanghai and began working with Young John Allen (1836-1907), editor of the Xinwenbao 新聞報, the Chinese-language newspaper published by the North China Herald, it is possible that Feng’s Jiaobinlu kangyi manuscript or some of its contents were known in the Shenbaoguan, although I have not been able to find any particular point in the editorials that would suggest this. Similarly, Wang Tao’s writings from the early 1860s were not circulating in manuscript form, as he himself only redis- covered them much later, but after his return from Scotland in 1870, he

75) Natascha Vittinghoff, Die Anfänge des Journalismus in China (1860-1911) (Wiesbaden: Har- rassowitz, 2002). See also idem, “Readers, Publishers and Officials” and Natascha Gentz, “Useful Knowledge and Appropriate Communication: The Field of Journalistic Production in Late Nineteenth Century China,” in Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870-1910, ed. Rudolf G. Wagner (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2007), 47-104. She has also explored the invention and popularization of the notion of “New Journalism,” above all by Liang Qichao, and its link to the history of early journalism in China: see Natascha Vittinghoff, “Unity vs. Uniformity: Liang Qichao and the Invention of ‘New Journalism’ for China,” Late Imperial China 23 (2002): 91-143.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 169 became active in setting up his own newspaper, the Xunhuan ribao 循環日報, in Hong Kong,76 was in close professional contact with the Shen- bao, which reprinted many of his early editorials—although none about the issues covered here—and was the father-in-law of Qian Xinbo 錢昕伯 (1832- after 1907), a Shenbao journalist. We have a list of names of the early Shenbao journalists. In an obituary for one of them, Wu Zirang 吳子讓 (1818-1878), Major not only lists his titles during a distinguished official career before joining the paper, but also writes that during the first six years of the paper, “the majority of the grand essays and wide-ranging disquisitions came from his hand” 崇論閎議大半出君手.77 There have been various claims that there was an “editor in chief” among the four or five Chinese journalists working at the paper during the first phase. Archival sources about the internal organization of the paper have not survived, but Vittinghoff has unearthed a description of the general organization of Chinese newspapers written by Sun Yusheng 孫玉聲 (1864-1939) in the early 1930s. Sun became a Shenbao journalist in 1893, several years after Major had returned to England. He claims that papers were managed by a single editor-in-chief (zongbianzuan 縂編纂), who was the ultimate authority in all matters and was legally responsible.78 Further down the text, he mentions, in a subordinate section about the extreme shortsightedness of some early journalists, that Qian Xinbo and He Guisheng 何桂生 (?-1894?) “each had once been editor-in-chief,”79 and in still another section he also elevates Wang Tao to this same position.80 Vittinghoff gives some credence to these statements in her notes on “the editors of the foreign- owned Shenbaoguan,”81 and Shao Zhize assumes without further ado that Jiang Zhixiang was the “first editor-in-chief” of the journal.82 Wu Zirang, however, whom Major credits with writing a good part of the

76) Elizabeth Sinn, “Fugitive in Paradise: Wang Tao and Cultural Transformation in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong,” Late Imperial China 19 (1998): 59-62. 77) The obituary, itself a symbol of the appreciation and standing of journalists in the Shen- bao, was published on the newspaper’s first page on 4 July 1878, in a black frame. 78) Haishang soushisheng 海上摗石生 (Sun Yusheng), Baohai qianchen lu 報海前塵錄 (Shanghai: n. p., preface dated 1934), 5. 79) Ibid., 25. 80) Ibid., 24. 81) Gentz, “Useful Knowledge,” 51-55. 82) Shao Zhize, “Shenbao diyi ren zhubi,” 55.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 170 Wagner opinion pieces, is never mentioned in this role. The argument that a Chinese editor would have played such a role at this early stage, and have had the authority to unify the argumentation of an editorial staff, is not plausible and is contradicted by direct and indirect evidence. When arrest warrants against Chinese writers of the Shenbao were issued by the daotai in 1874, Walter Henry Medhurst, the British Consul in Shanghai at the time, was blunt in rejecting them by claiming that “[Major’s] writers are simply servants who do his bidding,” so that the sole legal responsibility was with Major.83 The indirect evidence supports the assumption that Major was the guiding hand. This seems to have been true for all aspects of the enterprise, from the selection of a novel for publication into Chinese, to corresponding with readers, to tracking down rare books for reproduction by the Shenbaoguan, or sitting down with Cai Erkang 蔡爾康 (1851-1921) every morning for a stretch of time to tell him what made the individual Chinese titles the Shenbao- guan had decided to publish—later to be found in the entries of the Shenbaoguan book catalogue—so special.84 There is no question that Medhurst’s formula of “simply servants” was presented as a legal argument and did not describe the actual work situation. From the personal testimonies mentioned, Major indeed had a strong and respected voice in the enterprise. His status as a foreigner shielded him from Chinese officialdom, but above all it shielded the people working in his company from having to personally assume responsibility for the often bold forays of the paper, which in fact had come from their brushes, even if they were based on a general proposition or even an oral outline presented by Major. In 1873, the Shenbao carried a report from a Hong Kong newspaper about the work of the London Times, which reads as if it contained a vision of what the Shenbao aspired to become and the model of

83) Foreign Office Archives, 228/540, no. 3, Medhurst to Wade, 28 January 1874, enclosure 3, 137, quoted in Vittinghoff, “Readers, Publishers and Officials,” 434. 84) Shenbaoguan, Shumu 書目 (Shanghai: Shenbaoguan, 1877). Cai Erkang’s comments about Major’s role are found in the preface. Cai Erkang had been working in the Shenbao itself as well as co-editing one of the early periodicals published by the Shenbaoguan before leaving for a career in other foreign-managed newspapers. For a biographical sketch, see Natascha Vittinghoff, “Ein Leben am Rande des Ruhms: Cai Erkang (1852–1921),” in China in seinen biographischen Dimensionen: Gedenkschrift für Helmut Martin, ed. Christina Neder, Heiner Roetz, and Ines-Susanne Schill (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), 195-205.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 171 operations that it was already following. It shows a division of labor where the “high ministers manage the levers of state power while the editor-in-chief is in charge of pure [non-partisan] argument. [The Times’] pure arguments are the wherewithal to secure the state and therefore the Western nations all take them as their standard” 宰臣之所操者朝權也，而總主之所持者清議也。清議之足以維持國，是泰西諸國皆奉以為矜式. While this depiction may well describe the expecta- tions regarding the Shenbao’s future, the newspaper’s operations might have already followed that of its British model.

Within this paper, there is an editor-in-chief, his name is Thaddeus Delano. … In the office, there are some ten editors, all of exceptional talent and wide learning. [For the day’s work,] Delano selects three or four of them according to their spe- cialty to deliberate with them [about the content of next day’s paper]. 日報中為總主筆一人。其人名低靈. … 館中主筆十餘人，具皆才識超邁，學問淹通者也。低君於其中遴選三四人，至以其所長與之商確。

After having gone through the dispatches and interviews, the group meets in his office, and “whatever needs to be done is assigned [to these editors] according to his [Delano’s] personal opinion” 欲作之事，皆低君授之以意. The editors then get to work, and “submit the results to him at the fixed time for him to decide whether to accept, reject, shorten, or elaborate” 主筆諸人閉戶搆思，限時立就以呈於低君或可或否，或詳或略，咸受裁焉.85 It seems that the available evidence from the opinion pieces, as well as statements by people working with Major at the time, support the assumption that the actual decision-making process in the paper followed the lines described here for the London Times, with Major not matching the recognition and prestige of Delano in Eng- land, but playing a similar decision-making role.

The Named and Famed Join in By the early 1880s, the editorials had developed a consistent analysis of the main flaws of the Chinese polity, of the history of their develop-

85) “Yingguo xinbao zhi shengxing” 英國新報之盛行, Xianggang huazi ribao 香港華字日報, reprinted in Shenbao, 18 February 1873.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 172 Wagner ment, of the state’s abandonment of the ideals of the Chinese imaginaire of good governance, of the need to pursue this imaginaire, and of the emulation of modern Western institutions as the way to do it. This historical narrative was prefigured in Protestant missionary and Taiping claims that China had been monotheistic before the founding of the empire, and that the return to this faith was the way into the future.86 By the early 1860s some Chinese literati with exposure to the foreign community in Shanghai, such as Feng Guifen and Wang Tao, had begun to privately probe the hypothesis that the lack of communication between high and low on the one hand, and the Qin establishment of the empire on the other, were respectively the structural and the historical causes for China’s weakness.87 While they both wrote in 1862, their writings were only published in the early 1880s after, and perhaps because, the Shenbao had fully developed its narrative. The authors writing since the 1880s studied by Onogawa were clearly taking their cues from the Shenbao’s narrative.88

86) In 1834, Karl Friedrich Neumann developed a similar idea in a widely circulated and translated essay. The ancient Chinese emperors had indeed “civilized” and unified the various peoples living in the territory, but, “as if sprung suddenly from the head of Pallas, Chi- nese [political] wisdom showed itself completely developed and armed at all points at the beginning of the nation,” with no further change. It is, therefore, “the particular character of Chinese civilization that it has no history.” The resistance to change, however, is based not on superiority but on “vanity and presumption.” See K.F. Neumann, “Coup d’œil historique sur les peuples et la littérature de l’Orient,” Nouveau Journal Asiatique 14 (1834): 53. The China-related section was translated as “The Chinese Intellectual System,” Canton Register 8.24 (16 June 1835): 94. 87) Feng Guifen: “The sages were afraid that the concerns of high and low would not be communicated, and established this communication through the songs [of the people]” 聖人蓋懼上下之情不通而以詩通之. Feng set out to “search the cause that brought about chaos after the Three Dynasties” 三代以下召亂之源. See Feng Guifen, Jiaobinlu kangyi, 2.12a-b. Wang Tao: “In the golden age of antiquity, ruler and people were close to each other, the sufferings of the people could be communicated to the ruler, and the concerns of the officials could also be reported to the ruler. The elevation of the ruler and the lowering of the minister’s status started with Qin rule” 降古之世，君與民近，民間痾癢得以上達，而臣下所懷亦得以告諸君。尊君卑臣，自秦制始. See Wang Tao, “Qiu yan” 求言 (Requesting Critical Comments), in idem, Yi tan 臆譚, in Taoyuan wenlu waibian 弢園文錄外編 (Hong Kong, 1883), 12.21b. 88) Onogawa, Shinmatsu seiji shisō kenkyū, has suggested that this shift to a more intense discussion about the need for political reform had to do with the Sino-French War in 1884. However, the Yangwu perception at the time, as expressed in Zeng Jize’s essay, and shared by the court, was that the French had been reduced to begging for peace. The Shenbao opinion pieces, on the other hand, considered that the outcome could have been worse. The need

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In 1884, Zhang Zimu 張子牧 (d.u.) was among the first to write about the ultimate political reason for the strength of the West:

[In the West] the state’s major policy areas are the production of wealth and the use of the military. … In both of these areas, the merchants and the people have more weight than the ruler and the high officials [because the funds have to be approved by Parliament]. This is true for all constitutional monarchies and democracies. The ruler and his subjects, the high officials and their underlings, fre- quently meet face to face with very simple formalities, so that between high and low no energy [of the people] is blocked from interacting [with the state] and no concerns [of the people] are prevented from being diffused [to those above]. As a consequence, their hearts and minds are united as one, and the orders given are clear and strict. … The reason why such states as Germany and England alone dominate the eight regions of the world is exclusively that the energy of their people is in full interaction and the minds of their men are united. This and nothing else brought about their wealth and power! 國之大政以生財用兵為剛領。 … 爲此二者商民之權重於君相。凡郡主民主之國皆然，君之與臣民，長官之與屬吏時相見，儀文簡易，上下之間無閡格不通之氣，無壅閼不宣之情，故其心志齊一，號令嚴明， … 德意智，英吉利等國獨雄張八州者，則惟其民氣通，而人志齊，爾其所以致富強者，豈有他栽。

Zhang then connects this free flow of communication with a specific institution, namely parliament, writing that “preserving the idea from [Chinese] antiquity” 泰西猶有古意存焉, “the deputies convey the people’s concerns to the attention of the officials in a timely manner” 議紳時以民情達於官.89 By the 1890s, renowned writers and politicians started to join in. In 1890, Tang Zhen 湯震 (1856-1917), a man who had left a career as an official and had joined the secretariat of one of the key Yangwu advocates, Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909), proposed a parliament because the for fundamental political reform had been suggested in Shenbao editorials starting from the early 1870s, and I cannot see a marked shift in direction or tone after 1884, comparable to that after the loss against Japan in 1895. 89) Zhang Zimu, Lice zhiyan 蠡測卮言 (Random Comments by Someone Trying to Empty the Ocean with a Calabash), in Xiaofanghuzhai yudi congchao 小方壺齋輿地叢鈔, ed. Wang Xiqi 王錫祺 (1855-1913) (Shanghai: Zhuyitang, 1897) case 11, 499a-b; see also Onogawa, Shinmatsu seiji shisō kenkyū, 46-47. One other work by this author is known, the Yinghai lun 瀛海論 (On [the Countries beyond the] Oceans), the latter part of which contains a discussion with the author rejecting objections to the development of foreign relations by a “guest.” An excerpt survives in the same collection as his Lice zhiyan. The editor of the collection says Zhang Zimu was from Xiangyin 湘陰 near Changsha in Hunan.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 174 Wagner available avenues of speech were far too narrow.90 In 1892, Chen Qiu 陳虬 (1851-1904), a man from the same region in Zhejiang province as Tang Zhen and mentioned in the same breath as being one of the local great talents, but one who went his own way in setting up newspapers and a science journal rather than searching for an official position, proposed “to set up a parliament so as to provide communication for the concerns of those below” 剏設議院以通下情, because this was how the West managed to attain wealth and power.91 In 1896, Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應 (1842-1922), a businessman and comprador from the south with a strong public voice, who had already contributed articles to the first page of the Shenbao in 1872,92 suggested a parliament as a remedy against “ruler and people being disconnected” 君民隔閡, and as a platform where people could “put together their thoughts” (集思, using the formula from Major’s editorial), which he followed up with a proposal to spread newspapers.93 This has been well documented by Onogawa and does not need repetition. However, one other important source for a discussion of Yangwu structural reform escaped him—possibly for the same reasons that lead him to sideline the Shenbao—namely that the authors of the articles were not famous men of letters. A recent article by Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之

90) Tang Zhen (also known as Tang Shouqian 湯壽潛), Weiyan 危言 (Crisis Warning), section “Yiyuan” 議院 (1890) (Shanghai: Shanghai shuju, 1898), 1.3. See also Onogawa, Shin- matsu seiji shisō kenkyū, 51. 91) This first reform proposal by Chen Qiu was submitted in 1892 to a Shandong official; see Chen Qiu, “Dongyou tiaoyi” 東游條議, in his Zhiping tongyi 治平通議 (Eyatang, 1893), 6.3a. See also Onogawa, Shinmatsu seiji shisō kenkyū, 59. 92) In the preface to his Jiushi jieyao 救時揭要 (Essentials for Saving our Times), Zheng Guanying mentioned that some of the pieces in this text had previously appeared in the Shenbao. A check shows that indeed a substantial number had appeared there under various pen names or anonymously, and sometimes in abbreviated form, on the first page. Most of them deal with social and ethical issues ranging from the treatment of coolie laborers to the killing of fish and piglets, and the need for stricter examinations of Chinese doctors. Exam- ples are the anonymous “Lun jinzhi fanren wei nu shi” 論禁止販人爲奴事 (On Banning the Sale of Humans Beings as Slaves) (Shenbao, 18 October 1872), which reappears in Jiushi jieyao, in Zheng Guanying ji 鄭觀應集 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1982), vol. 1, 12, or “Yi bian kao yijia yi jiu shengming lun” 議遍考毉傢以救生命論 (Proposal for Univer- sal Examinations of Medical Doctors for Purposes of Saving Lives) which was submitted as “manuscript from the woodcutter of Luolang Mountain” 羅浪山樵稿 (Shenbao, 25 Septem- ber 1872) and was reproduced in Jiushi jieyao, ed. cit., 1.25. 93) Zheng Guanying, Shengshi weiyan 盛世危言 (Crisis Warning at a Time of Bloom) (Shanghai: Shanghai shuju, 1896), 1.32-40.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 175 has possibly revealed this source.94 After Wang Tao had been appointed head of the Shanghai Polytechnic (Gezhi shuyuan 格致書院) in 1885, he organized essay competitions and asked leading Yangwu figures such as Li Hongzhang, Zeng Guoquan 曾國荃 (1824-1890), Zhou Fu 周馥 (1837- 1921), Liu Kunyi 劉坤一 (1830-1902), and Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1838- 1894) to suggest topics and join in the evaluation. The winning essays on topics such as parliament were published and show many of the discur- sive routines developed in the Shenbao editorials.95

China in Crisis One important element present in the writings of the 1880s and later that was not part of the earlier Shenbao narrative was the urgency of a crisis. Its absence can possibly be related to the fact that the editor felt it would encourage rash action. While one might see objective signs of crisis in China starting from the turn of the nineteenth century, such as population explosion, various uprisings, and the deteriorating management of the Grand Canal, first perceptions of such a crisis only came in the 1860s, in the wake of Feng Guifen’s mention of the “momentous changes” (shibian 世變) of the present, which brought about a redis covery of the forgotten Three Dynasties.96 With Tang Zhen’s Crisis Warn- ing (Weiyan 危言) and Zheng Guanying’s Crisis Warning at a Time of Bloom (Shengshi weiyan 盛世危言), the crisis entered book titles as part of the rhetoric of reform. The lack of communication between high and low became accepted as the root cause of this crisis. Entitled “Probing the Cause for the Defeat of the Army and the Loss of Land” (“Zhuilun sangshi shidi zhi you” 追論喪師失地之由),97 a Shenbao editorial in February 1895, just after China’s surprising loss in the war with Japan, stepped in to articulate this link: “Alas! Our Chinese Dynasty certainly is a country with great potential. How could it come to this? If we search for the reason, it is all due to the

94) Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之, “Xin zhishi, xin qunti, xin wangluo yu xin huayu tixi queli—yi Gezhi shuyuan keyi wei zhongxin” 新知識、新群體、新網絡與新話語體系確立— 以《格致書院課藝》為中心, in Xueshu yuekan 7 (2016): 140-56. 95) Ibid. 96) Feng Guifen, Jiaobinlu kangyi, preface, 3a. 97) Shenbao, 18 February 1895.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 176 Wagner palace being high and far away, the divide between the ruler and the ministers being too rigid, and the concerns not being communicated between high and low” 嗚呼我中朝固大有可爲之國也。何爲一至於此哉。追求其故，皆由於堂廉高遠，君臣之分太嚴，上下之情不通. In the following months, the paper continued to editorialize along this line, as the first efforts at reform got under way.98 Already in late 1894, Timothy Richard, following a suggestion of Weng Tonghe 翁同和 (1830-1904), the tutor of the young Guangxu emperor, had drafted his Policies for a Reform of Governance, perhaps the first text commissioned by the court that linked the crisis and the disconnect with specific reform proposals.99 Characterizing China’s situation “with one phrase: there simply is no communication” 一言以蔽之曰不通而已矣100 both within the country and internationally, Richard proposed a series of measures to remedy this situation, starting with “setting up newspapers” 立報館 as the first step (he thought a parliament would be premature).101 A good indicator of the impact of the crisis/disconnect discourse is the letter sent to the emperor by Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858-1927) in May 1895, after the terms of the Shimonoseki Treaty had become known. As the letter was signed at personal risk by ten thousand participants in the highest national examination, they shared its core assumptions. In the text, the crisis is presented in terms of a deadly disease:

As a general principle, China’s great disease lies primarily in blockage. If the vital spirits are depressed, disease is the outcome and the blockage of the pharynx leads

98) An example is the editorial “Lun yi fu gufa yi tong shangxia zhi qing” 論宜復古法以通上下之情 (On Returning to the Method of Antiquity as the Best Way to Bring the Concerns of High and Low into Communication), Shenbao, 9 September 1895. It supported the elec- tion of regional representatives to an annual assembly. 99) Li Timotai 李提摩太 (Timothy Richard), Xinzheng ce 新政策 (Shanghai: Zhixuehui, 1896). It may justly be considered the blueprint for the 1898 reforms, as well as of their revival in 1901 under the name “Xinzheng” (Reform of Governance), which was directly taken from his work. 100) Ibid., 1a. 101) “As in today’s Chinese-Western relations [China] is unwittingly suffering gigantic losses, we must make sure that state and society are in a position to be informed about the country’s concerns and about those of the various Western countries, and also that communication of the concerns between high and low in China itself is established” 今日中西交涉，隱受巨虧，必須使中國朝野能通中西各國之情，並通本國上下之情. Ibid., 1b-2a.

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to death. If one wants to provide help, the adequate remedy is to remove the clog- ging so that the circulation of blood is freed and the body’s vital energies can strengthen themselves of their own accord. 夫中國大病，首在壅塞，氣郁生病，咽塞致死。欲進補劑，宜除噎劑，使血通脈暢，体氣自強。

The old metaphor of the state as a body is the basis for the concept of tong 通 in the formula shangxia zhi tong 上下之通. Widely used already during the Warring States period, it assumes that if the mai 脈, the channels through which the qi 氣 flows inside the body, are blocked, disease occurs and the physician has to remove these blockages to allow for the body to heal itself.102 Translated into the political world, this metaphor transforms the critic who analyses the flaws of the Chinese polity into a physician of the state. The relationship of the physician to a patient, especially a patient such as a ruler, is complex. The physician’s medical qualification entitles him to offer a matter-of-fact diagnosis and to suggest strong remedies if needed. At the same time his professional ethics entail a full commitment to the patient’s health. Translated into political language, he owes the ruler absolute loyalty, or else his interventions will be suspected of being prompted by other motives; but he can still prescribe bitter medicines. The translation of this medical reflection into a diagnosis of China’s ills follows directly:

Today, the governance of the empire is all form and no substance, and its officials are all treacherous and work only for their own interest. The ruler has virtuous intentions, but they are not publicly promoted, and those below cry out in pain, but this does not reach him. The fact that at the same time there are prosperous undertakings together with methods to achieve them, and when the foreigners apply them and they lead them to success whereas when China applies them the draw- backs only get worse—this all is brought about by the disconnect between high and low and the people’s concerns not being communicated. 今天下事皆文具而無實，吏皆奸詐而營私。上有德意而不宣，下有呼號而莫達。同此興作，並為至法，外夷行之而致效，中國行之而益弊者，皆上下隔塞，民情不通所致也。

102) For background on the use of this metaphor, see Rudolph G. Wagner, “Treating the Body Politic: Political Aspects of the Medical Metaphor in China,” forthcoming in The Body and the State, ed. Susan Richter (manuscript under review).

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This, Kang argues, is not due to the emperor not working hard enough; it is due to a structural flaw that has been around since the beginning of imperial times and leaves both sides hurt. Among the remedies Kang suggests, one finds the forceful promotion of newspapers as well as the establishment of a parliament.103 Shortly thereafter, the Peking Wanguo gongbao 萬國公報, which was later on renamed Zhongwai jiwen 中外紀聞—Kang Youwei was involved in both of these newspapers—came out with an editorial entitled “On Starting a Citizen-run Newspaper in the Capital” (Lun duzhong chuang xing gongbao shi 論都中創行公報事), which echoes many of the themes we have already pointed to. Without further ado, the editorial begins:

A single expression to cover all the flaws of China at this time would be: No free flow of communication. As a general principle, what we call here “no free flow of communication” does not refer to the incomprehensibility of the work of some scribblers, and neither does it refer to the incomprehensibility of what goes on in the minds of those holding the levers of government, it refers to the gap in the station, and the disconnect in concerns, between the Court and the country, the inner and the outer, high and low, as well as high-ranking and humble people. 中國近世之弊，一言以蔽之曰: 不通。夫所謂不通者，非謂操觚染翰之流筆下之不通也，亦非謂當軸秉鈞之輩胸中之不通也，謂夫朝野內外上下貴賤間其勢暌而其情隔也。104

After the familiar historical sketch of how things deteriorated from the Three Dynasties to the present, the editorial claims that “if one now wishes to connect court and society, high and low, and bring their concerns into harmony, nothing is more urgent than newspapers” 為今日計欲使朝野上下聯其勢，而洽其情事，莫有急於日報者 endowed with

103) Kang Youwei, “Shang Qingdi di er shu (gongche shang shu)” 上清帝弟二書 (公車上書), 2 May 1895, in Kang Youwei quanji 康有爲全集, ed. Jiang Yihua 姜義華 and Zhang Ronghua 張榮華 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007), vol. 2, 44. Already in his first letter to the emperor dated 1888, Kang defined three areas in urgent need of action: “reforming the long-established patterns of governance; providing access of the concerns of those below [to the government]; and paying careful attention to the selection of the officials advising the emperor” 變成法，通下情，慎左右. See Onogawa, Shinmatsu seiji shisō kenkyū, 38 and 75. 104) Wanguo gongbao (Beijing), 1 August 1895. Quoted from the Huangchao jingshiwen tongbian 皇朝經世文統編 in 107 juan, ed. Runfu 潤甫 (Shanghai: Baoshanzhai, 1901), Wenjiaobu 文教部, 15.6b.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 179 full leeway to critically discuss government policies and personnel. This argumentative line of reasoning was later pushed forward by the reform papers edited by Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929), first in China and then from Japan, after 1898.105 The editorials analyzed here were summarized or included in full in some late Qing encyclopedic collections of new knowledge. The entry on newspapers in Qian Feng’s 錢豊 (Yixian 頤仙) 1897 A Comprehensive Summary of Current Affairs by Category and for All Nations opens after a short introduction devoted to official gazetteers:

The establishment of newspapers was from the outset to state opinions; their main purpose is to bring into communication the concerns of high and low, to make understood the ideas of both, and distribute them inside and outside of the court, without distinction between near and far. 新聞紙之設，其初立意所在，主於通上下之情，達彼此之意，傳之内外，無間遐邇。106

By 1901, a fair number of the editorials we have analyzed here were included in a massive new resource for preparing for the new type of examinations, the Huangchao jingshiwen tongbian.107 In a last step, the Qing court itself started buying into this story line. Implicitly, this is already evident in 1897 and 1898, when the Court began to open channels of communication to enhance its own voice in the public sphere by getting involved—via Zhang Zhidong—in the publishing of newspapers, which were manned by reformers such as Liang Qichao. The ineffectual 1898 ban on publishing non-official papers also illustrated an effort to rein in such media. Both efforts were continued after the beginning of the Reform of Governance (Xinzheng 新政) period in 1901, with the wave of new “official newspapers” accompanied by a new Press Law designed to curtail private papers at least outside of the

105) In 1896, Liang Qichao launched the Shiwu bao 時務報 with a first article on “The Ben- efits of Newspapers,” which also focused on their facilitating the communication between high and low. 106) Wanguo fenlei shiwu dacheng 萬國分類時務大成, ed. Qian Feng (Shanghai: Xiuhai shan fang, 1897), 14.50a. 107) Huangchao jingshiwen tongbian in 107 juan, ed. Runfu. The texts on newspapers will be found (without any mention of their origin) in chapters 15 and 16.

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Treaty Ports.108 The January 1901 decree that launched the Reform of Governance period acknowledged many of the arguments made about the empty formalism of official communications and the blockage of the flow of communication by middle-level officials. While the edict does not make verbatim use of the shangxia zhi tong formulation, it is quite clear that it is implied in the expression qiong ze bian 窮則變—repeated twice in the edict—which points to the needed change: “when things have come to a point of exhaustion, there will be change.”109 This graphically describes the moment of the crisis after the Boxer upheaval, the foreign intervention, and the Court being forced to flee its capital after having supported the Boxers. Not included in the text of the edict, the two sentences which directly follow in this quotation from the Xici xia (繫辭下) are revealing. They say: bian ze tong, tong ze jiu 變則通，通則久: “once change has been made, there will be free flow of communication, and once there is free flow of communication, there will be du- rability.” These together form a well-known proverb. The 1906 decree announcing a time plan for developing a constitution, including the founding of a parliament, directly focused on the central role of the communication between high and low:

Recently, Zaize 載澤 [1868-1929] and the others have returned [from their mission abroad] and have memorialized. They are convinced that the real reasons for the nation’s weakness lie in the fact that those above and those below are separated, and that those within and without the government are alienated from each other. The officials do not know how to protect the people, and the people do not know how to protect the country. The real reason why other countries have become wealthy and powerful lies in the fact that they have a constitution and decide through public discussion, and that ruler and people form one indivisible unity. … However, at present [in China], neither the regulations are ready nor is the knowledge of the masses sufficient.

108) For a sketch of the spread of official newspapers (guanbao 官報) after 1901, see Vitting- hoff, “Unity vs. Uniformity,” 92-104. 109) Guangxu chao Donghua lu 光緒朝東華錄, ed. Zhu Shoupeng 朱壽朋 (s. l., 1909), vol. 4, 135. The edict is translated in Douglas R. Reynolds, China 1898-1912: The Xinzheng Revolu- tion and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 1993), 201-4.

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現載澤等回國陳奏，皆以國勢不振，實由於上下相暌，内外隔閡，官不知所以保民，民不知所以衛國。而各國之所以富強者，實由於實行憲法，取決公論，君民一體 … 但目前規制未備，民智未開。110

The Qing court, accordingly, engaged in these reforms in the hope of bringing about a state of tong , which would eventually lead to an endur- ing peace and stability. It even adopted the gradualism suggested by the Shenbao, as well as its stress on the level of information needed among the people.

Conclusions The early Shenbao opinion pieces discussed here publicly developed a consistent analysis of the manifold flaws of the late Qing Chinese polity as being caused by one structural flaw, the lack of communication between high and low. Tracing the historical development of this deepening divide, they showed that it was man-made and therefore reversible. Using it as an analytical tool, they also showed that it was able to explain a wide range of problems in state-society relations at the time. Anchor- ing their critique in the well-established Chinese trope shangxia zhi tong, rather than in the translation of a Western term such as democracy or dictatorship, allowed them to claim Chinese authenticity for their analysis, although their method of structural analysis of state-society relations was similar to that of an emerging political science. They reconfigured the trope of justifying the critique of the present by means of a contrast with China’s golden age of the Three Dynasties. They highlighted the underlying similarities between the ideals guiding the sages of Chinese antiquity and the emulation of Western remedies described as specific, modern, and of proven effectiveness, namely the newspaper and parliament. Of these two, the former could be imple- mented right away, whereas the implementation of the latter, while also needed, presupposed a longer process that required the institutionalized devolution of state power as well as the spread of literacy, informa-

110) “Xuanshi yubei lixian xian xing liding guanzhi yu” 宣示預備立憲先行釐定官制諭, Qingmo choubei lixian dang’an shiliao 清末籌備立憲檔案史料, ed. Gugong bowuguan Ming Qing dang’an bu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), vol. 1, 43-44.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 182 Wagner tion, and enlightened opinion among the populace. With its historical depth, a wide range of up-to-date applications, and a set of tested remedies, the story about the high/low divide, and the best way to overcome it, gained credence to the point of becoming widely shared among reformers who had a “Western learning” background, but were critical of this current’s achievements. The historical narratives provided to account for the divide share a basic structure: There was a gradual deterioration starting with the beginning of the Eastern Zhou through the Warring States period, but it was the brutal “merger” (hunyi 混一)—a term distinctly less glorious than “unification” (tongyi 統一)—of the different states by the “despotic” Qin, with the ensuing abandonment of the reciprocal relationship between state and society, that marked a fundamental break. This break was significant because the abolishment of the channels of communication was now written into law, and the extreme elevation of the first Qin ruler above all others became the standard for all later rulers down to the end of the imperial regime. The result was the cutting off of communication between high and low, which led to mutual ignorance. Oth- er important developments included: the enclosure of the state into ever expanding forms of secrecy; people distrustful of the state developing their own secret ways; a dramatic increase in popular illiteracy; a stultification of the officials through an examination system that emphasized rote learning; and a replication of the steep hierarchical divide separating the emperor from all the rest at the lower levels of the bu- reaucratic hierarchy, as well as the officials from the commoners. The effect of that separation was that the former looked down upon what in modern languages would be called agriculture, industry, and com- merce—as well as upon the practitioners of these trades—and felt justified in maintaining perfect ignorance about these fields, the result being a lack in innovation and state-supported economic initiatives. For the Shenbao opinion pieces, there was no legitimacy in defending these contemporary structures, and the men of letters who were doing so were simply protecting the turf of their own privileges out of ignorance and self-interest. These same structures, and the people manning them, had moreover proven their dysfunctionality by leading China to the difficult position it was in at the time, when she was suddenly con- fronted with states that did not break with the ideals of governance dating back to the Three Dynasties, but took up these ideals and devel-

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 183 oped them into new and modern forms. In a way, it can be argued that Ernest Major’s Shenbao presents itself as part of a process of re-intro- ducing the Three Dynasties forms of governance from the West. For the authors of the opinion pieces, the main function of the newspaper lay in establishing communication between society and the state rather than in establishing communication among members of society, although the latter is mentioned as a benefit. The newspaper printed the information circulated through the Peking Gazette as a recognition of the legitimacy of the state’s voice in the public sphere, while remain- ing critical of its lack of substantial content. The opinion pieces reset the historical record about the agency in establishing channels of communication. Historically, references to the establishment of such channels had been used by remonstrating officials to show to their ruler how the sages of antiquity had handled matters. The Shenbao opinion pieces are based on sources which point out the sage rulers’ dependence on information and opinions coming through such channels as well as the independent agency of commoners offering information and opinions during the golden age of antiquity. In discussing the establishment of newspapers in contemporary times, the agency is again on the side of the general public, in particular those social elites outside the imperial bureaucracy and foreigners residing in the country. It should also be noted that there are no direct appeals to the imperial court to establish newspapers. All one finds are repeated suggestions that it is the court which is in dire need of the information and opinions provided by newspapers, in, as one Shenbao author put it, an “unsolicited” way or “delivered on their own agency.”111 The category of commoners, min, is not explicitly defined in these pieces, but rather it is established through the context in which it is used. When newspapers managed by officials, guanbao, are contrasted with those managed by the min, the word does not refer to the common folk but to all private individuals. In this reading, it includes foreigners residing in China (or perhaps, rather, foreigners residing in China who

111) When the discussion about a constitution and a parliament heated up during the Reform of Governance period after 1901, provincial elites extended this commoner agency to par liamentary representation by pushing for an acceleration of the government’s plan for gradually setting up such assemblies. See Roger R. Thompson, China’s Local Councils in the Age of Constitutional Reform, 1898-1911 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 1995), chapter 6.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 184 Wagner knew the language and were committed to the country). The defense of the Shenbao’s commitment to China’s best interest aims at putting to rest eventual doubts that would be expressed about the newspaper medium itself as well as its foreign ownership. The inclusion of foreign residents among the legitimate non-state actors is less remarkable than might appear at first sight. In Europe, journalists, publishers, and even printers, were a highly mobile group, and it was a normal sight to see the most important eighteenth-century French books published in the Prussian enclave of Neufchatel in Switzerland, while the most important French language newspapers came out in the Netherlands. The Shenbao opinion pieces are thus a legitimate and important part of late Qing political thought and intellectual history. The Shenbao in- teracted with contemporary Chinese trends in three ways. Its opinion page offered a public platform for critical thinking, a little-studied but important form of elite activism at this time. As an institution, the Shen- bao joined hands with other institutions for social betterment, which were set up not against, but independently of the state. As a medium, it started to remedy what it considered the main structural flaw of the time by facilitating communication between high and low, by printing every day opinion pieces originating from society, by circulating the information included in the Peking Gazette, and news reports about China and the world.112 Vicariously, the Shenbao news section was also instru- mental in connecting the “elite activists” in the Jiangnan region. The fact that it was edited by a foreign commoner living in the International Set- tlement of Shanghai provided the newspaper with a modicum of legal protection, but most importantly it ensured that it was well-informed about the West and abided by British standards of reliable reporting. The continuous debate of core political issues on the first page of the paper, and its public character, provided the argumentative and rhetori-

112) By the end of the century, the combination of building local non-state institutions with independent political analysis and advocacy became more widespread. A good example is Sun Yirang 孫詒讓 (1848-1908), who, besides setting up a school and a chamber of com- merce, wrote a handbook in 1902 that juxtaposed Western institutions with the Three Dynasties imaginaire, based on the Rituals of Zhou, the Zhouli zhengyao 周禮政要 (The Political Essentials of the Rituals of Zhou), which was widely used in new school curricula of modern learning. See Rudolph G. Wagner, “A Classic Paving the Way to Modernity: The Ritual of Zhou in the Chinese Reform Debate Since the Taiping Civil War,” in Modernity’s Classics, ed. Sarah C. Humphreys and Rudolf G. Wagner (Heidelberg/Berlin: Springer, 2013), 77-99.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 185 cal framework for general discussion, which started during the mid- 1880s and by then involved famed authors mostly from the secretariats of Yangwu leaders. While it is possible that Shenbao writers had heard about or seen manuscript copies of Feng Guifen’s essays, the ground for the publication of these essays in 1884 was clearly prepared by the Shen- bao pieces, and when the essays were eventually published, they par- ticipated in an already well-developed public discussion. While written by different in-house and external authors over more than two decades, and dealing with a wide range of specific issues, the consistency of the opinion pieces signals a guiding hand. The internal evidence stemming from statements of Shenbao journalists and editors, and the external evidence from conflicts with the Chinese authorities, suggests that Ernest Major was this guiding hand between 1872 and 1889, with the paper continuing along the same track during the years following his return to England in 1889. The consistency of the opinion pieces is evident in their focus on the shangxia zhi tong concept; in the commitment to a step-by-step betterment of China’s governance and international standing; in a willingness to publicly address unpleasant truths; in the assumption that any reform in China must be based on shared ideals of governance; and in a wariness about premature radical change, with the latter fitting well into the Yangwu agenda. This consistency suggests that the opinion pieces should be treated as editorials. The opinion pieces appeared in a medium that had yet to establish its authority. They did not talk down to the readers, telling them what the truth was. In the absence of readers willing to submit essays with their objections, they often used the form of a dialogue to counter assumed, or anticipated, objections. Reflecting perhaps a growing acceptance of the basic thrust of the Shenbao pieces, the Westerners arguing against Chinese objections in the early pieces, were gradually replaced by increasingly informed Chinese voices, arguing against compatriots who agreed with the critical view of the present times, but doubted that change was possible. Anecdotal evidence about the Shenbao readership and the Shenbaoguan community supports the view that the opinion pieces had a much wider circulation among officials, merchants, men of letters, and common Jiangnan residents, than the print runs alone would suggest. The opinion pieces engaged in a discussion, which they never mention directly, with Italian and French Jesuits who had glorified Chinese

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 186 Wagner governance by claiming that the maxims of the Three Dynasties were applied in China’s governance of their day. In their thinking, the agency of establishing prosperity and order was with the rulers, in tune with the European eighteenth-century discussion about “enlightened despots” trying to end religious strife. The problem was how to establish a continuous supply of such enlightened despots. An entire literature had sprung up in Europe in the wake of Fénelon’s Télémaque,113 which offered ways to educate a crown prince to become such an enlightened ruler. In England, Montesquieu had seen a different way to solve this problem: institutional controls and a separation of powers. In his Esprit des Lois, he opted for this solution and denounced Chinese governance as the model for “enlightened despotism.” The Shenbao took up the already existing narrative of the Chinese imaginaire of the Three Dynas- ties as the golden age of Chinese governance, but followed the Montesquieu narrative in its bleak depiction of the imperial despotism since Qin Shi Huangdi. Although not visible on the surface, the primary “text” in these late Qing discussions on structural reform and the Three Dynasties imaginaire is a narrative about the “West,” in particular about England. This narrative is reduced to two elements, visible wealth and power, and the structural conditions—namely communication, cooperation, and trust between high and low—for bringing about those results. For maximum contrast and effectiveness, both results and causes are stripped to the bone with little of their complex historical concreteness and ambiguity ever addressed. In the light of this Western “text,” the record of the Chi- nese Three Dynasties is in its turn reread and rearranged to certify the compatibility of modern reforms with Chinese ideals of governance, and to confirm the authentic roots of eventual structural changes. The discussion about the Three Dynasties was not a discussion among historians about history, but a discussion among people looking for a struc-

113) François de Fénelon, Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse (s.l., 1699), originally published anonymously. Fénelon wrote this as the tutor of the grandson of Louis XIV. Espe- cially in the German-speaking world, a sizeable number of eighteenth-century works emulated this example, often with references to China, such as Albrecht von Haller, Alfred—König der Angel-Sachsen (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1773).

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access The Free Flow of Communication Between High and Low 187 tural cause, and solutions to steer out of what they increasingly saw as an acute crisis of their country.114 The Shenbao opinion pieces up to the mid-1880s had been instru- mental in developing the argumentative routines that the reformers later followed. Later Shenbao pieces continued to play a part in framing the discussion, especially about China’s loss in the war with Japan, but the late Qing debates about the flaws in the structure of the public sphere moved towards political action, in an attempt to change this structure in a crisis-mode the Shenbao continued to warn against. This process eventually led to the demise of the empire altogether, without, however, the underlying issue of communication between high and low, and the role of press and parliament, having found a solution.

Abstract This article studies the role played by the Shenbao 申報 between 1872 and 1895 in framing Chinese discussions of the problems of their polity and possible reforms. It challenges the narrative that such discussions only began after the loss of the war in 1895, and shows that the discussions documented by Onogawa Hidemi for the 1880s actually followed earlier Shenbao precedents. The case study presented here concerns how the lack of communication between high and low social classes was at the heart of China’s problems. The Shenbao discusses modern Western institutions such as independent newspapers and a parliament as ways to ensure such communication, and as modern developments of a political ideal that existed in the Three Dynasties (Sandai 三代). The dismantling of that ideal state reflects, in the lines of thought expressed in the Shenbao articles, the despotic nature of Chinese rule since the Qin dynasty (221-206 bce).

Résumé Cet article explore le rôle joué par le quotidien Shenbao entre 1872 et 1895 dans la structuration des débats chinois sur la situation politique et l’identification de réformes possibles. Il remet en cause l’historiographie courante selon laquelle ces débats ne virent le jour qu’après la défaite militaire de 1895, et montre que les discours déjà mis en évidence par Onogawa Hidemi pour les années 1880 ne faisaient que

114) Between 1872 and 1895, there are 1,395 references to the term Sandai (Three Dynasties) alone in the news and opinion section of the Shenbao; if the many and systematically posi- tive references to “antiquity” (gu 古) are added, the number might be over two thousand.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 08:04:19PM via free access 188 Wagner suivre la voie ouverte la décennie précédente par le Shenbao. Le cas étudié ici est la notion qu’un manque de communication entre le bas et le haut de la société se trouvait au cœur des problèmes de la Chine. Le Shenbao présente des institutions propres à l’Occident moderne telles que les journaux indépendants et les parlements comme des façons de permettre une communication entre bas et haut, mais aussi comme des développements modernes d’un idéal politique qui avait déjà cours en Chine à l’époque des Trois dynasties (Sandai 三代). Dans cette perspective, l’abolition de cette forme politique idéale de la Chine antique reflète la nature despotique de l’Etat impérial depuis les Qin (221-206 avant notre ère).

提要本文的研究對象為 1872 年至 1895 年間申報在構建中國關於其政體問題以及可能的改革的討論中所扮演的角色。本文反對認為此類討論是直到 1895 年戰敗后才開始的這樣一種觀點，并指出已由小野川秀美 (Onogawa Hidemi) 所記錄過的十九世紀八十年代的該種討論實際上已經是在步申報的後塵。本文所探討的一個重心是社會上下階層之間缺乏交流如何構成了中國問題的核心。在該時期的申報中，對類似于獨立報紙和國會的這種現代西方制度的討論被視作一種手段，以之來確保上下階層之間交流的存在，且以一種夏商周三代的政治理想之現代發展模式的形式所存在。在申報文章的邏輯中，這種政治理想在中國的廢除反映了中國政權自秦朝 (221-206 bce) 以來就所具有的專政本質。

Keywords Shenbao, independent newspapers, political reform, parliament, Yangwu

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