Gender and Internationalization in China: The Case of Nüxue bao (1898) By Dušica Ristivojević Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Gender Studies Supervisor: Professor Allaine Cerwonka CEU eTD Collection Budapest, 2012 Declaration I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degree in any other institutions and no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Dušica Ristivojević ----------------------------------- CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This project is about the initial phase of China’s positioning in the modern world order. It is about the Wuxu reforms (1898), a historical juncture when neo/Confucian elite tried to position the Chinese Empire more favorably within the symbolic and political hierarchies of the modern world. Differing from earlier reforming efforts, 1898 intellectuals opted for social change that would entail a wider embrace of foreign ideas and ideals; differing from iconoclastic modernizing ideologies and political visions of republican revolutionaries and the adherents of New Culture and May Fourth movements, the reformers active in the final years of the nineteenth century tried to enhance China’s international standing by reinterpreting and reinvigorating cultural and socio-political cannons and practices of China’s present and past. In their calling for gradual but systematic change of Chinese society, intellectual elites leading the Wuxu reforms considered the change of women’s position as necessary step towards China’s strengthening, thus providing the space for the entrance of Chinese women as both objects and subjects of the public debates and activities. My dissertation investigates the Wuxu reform movement through the prism of women’s direct participation in the debates and actions pointed to the improvement of China’s and Chinese women’s socio-political conditions. I analyze historically unprecedented emergence and operation of three women-oriented reformist projects – the association The Society for Women’s Learning (Nüxue hui), the journal Chinese Girls’ Progress (Nüxue bao) and the Girls’ School (Nüxue tang) - as a key for understanding the crucial role that gender has played within the processes of social changes in China in general, and within the reform movement of late- Qing period in particular. Despite the inherent historical uncertainties related to the authorship, I use Nüxue bao as the central source for an investigation of the ways in which women used the agendas of the Wuxu reforms to conceptualize and actualize historically unprecedented opportunities to organize and act as recognized legitimate socio-political actors. CEU eTD Collection In the dissertation, I read the texts and actions ascribed to reform-oriented women within (neo)Confucian interpretative framework which informed socio-cultural and political discourses and practices of late-Qing elites. I argue that the process of formation of collective political identity of women and the discursive struggles over its past, present and future defining ii boundaries, content and meanings reveal the focal role that multiple destabilizations of the relationships between nei (inner) and wai (outer) spheres played in proposed and/or practiced social changes in late-Qing China. Focusing on Nüxue bao, my thesis will show that a redefinition of the relationships between nei and wai spheres, spatio-symbolic notions crucial for both gender roles and for cultural and socio-political ordering of the world defined by Imperial China, facilitated and got facilitated by women’s organizing, theorizing and acting for social change. Keywords: gender, late-Qing China, social change, internationalization, women’s press, nei-wai CEU eTD Collection iii Acknowledgements I want to thank my supervisor Professor Allaine Cerwonka for her enduring patience and inspiring advice, as well as for the academic freedom that I enjoyed. I also thank Professor Francisca de Haan for her supervision and support during the first years of my Ph.D. My special gratitude goes to Professors Linda Fisher and Prem Kumar Rajaram whose courses and lectures changed my thinking profoundly. I owe a debt of gratitude to my dear friend Sudo Mizuyo for our joyful conversations, and her unselfish assistance and solidarity. I am also indebted to Professor Radosav Pušić who taught me how to be sincere and devoted in my approach to China, and to Mirjana Pavlović who have encouraged me all the way. When it comes to institutional help, I want to thank Central European University for the financial support throughout the years. I also want to thank Professor Melissa Dale and the USF Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History for the generous grant that enabled me to use their rich sources. Chevening Scholarship allowed me to spend one year at the Oxford University and to work with Professor Maria Jaschok, having an extended influence on my academic work. I am indebted to Professor Olga Lomová and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for supporting my research visit to Prague, as well as to Dr. Peng Hsiao-yen for enabling my research stay at Academia Sinica. I am especially grateful to Professor Wei Guoying from Beijing University for her kind hospitality during my visits to Beijing University and for helping me with the most important part of my research: with obtaining Nüxue bao from the Wuxi City library. I feel very deep gratitude to Professor Lü Meiyi who generously shared her resources with me. I want to thank Zhou Lei for making my research in Beijing enjoyable and inspiring, and to Chen Ruyong for his help and support. I am greatly indebted to Miha Fugina and Alp Biricik who helped me with the resources when needed, and to Li Guochun for her patient linguistic instructions and clarifications. To Zhang Yun I wish all the luck in her future academic career. My friends and family are the ones who shared my joys and burdens. I am grateful to my family for their unfading support and to Nebojša, Tibor, Marija and Marko. My most special thank you goes to Katja. CEU eTD Collection iv Table of Contents Declaration ..................................................................................................................................................... i Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Introducing the project ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Methodology, sources, and my position as a researcher ......................................................... 19 2.1. Overall methodological frames: China-centered approach and problematization of Western- centric conceptualizations in analyzing Chinese history......................................................................... 19 2.2. Gathering and analyzing historical records ...................................................................................... 30 2.3. My position as a researcher ............................................................................................................. 33 Chapter 3: Destabilization of the Sinocentric order: China, the world, and the Wuxu reform period ..... 37 3.1. Nei and wai: Political geography of civilization ............................................................................... 40 3.2. Tribute system and the beginning of its decomposition ................................................................. 49 3.3. Three faces of reforms: Alicia Little, Mary Richard and Kang Youwei ............................................. 58 3.3.1. Alicia Ellen Neva Bewicke (1845–1926): Mrs Archibald Little .................................................. 65 3.3.2. Mary Martin (1843-1903): Mrs. Timothy Richard ..................................................................... 75 3.3.3. Kang Youwei (1858 - 1927): Visions of Confucianism, women and racial eugenics ................. 80 Chapter 4: Extending the nei: Chinese women’s association, the school and the journal ........................ 95 4.1. Nei and wai: Gendered divisions of space, labor, and discursive genre .......................................... 97 4.2. Setting the networks in motion: Chinese “public”, press and cooperating men .......................... 111 4.3. The time for women to get to know each other: The preparatory meeting of Nüxue tang’s female steering committee, Nüxue hui and the grand meeting on December 6th, 1897 ................................. 126 4.3.1. Deciphering December 6th, 1897 ............................................................................................ 132 4.4. Announced practices of Nüxue tang ............................................................................................. 144 4.5. Nüxue bao: Its first nine issues ...................................................................................................... 154 Chapter 5: Nüxue bao and the defining of boundaries of collective identity of women as recognized socio-political actors ................................................................................................................................