Reformer in Modern China Chang Chien, 18J3-1926 Studies of the East Asian Institute COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Chang Chien, 1853-1926 SAMUEL C. CHU Reformer in Modern China Chang Chien, iS;3-1926 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London, 1963 Samuel C. Chu is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Copyright © 1958, 1965 Columbia University Press Library of Congress Catalog Card Number : 65-10541 Printed in the United States of America The East Asian Institute of Columbia University THE EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE was established by Columbia University in 1949 to prepare graduate students for careers dealing with East Asia, and to aid research and publication on East Asia during the modern period. The research program of the East Asian Institute is conducted or directed by faculty members of the University, by other scholars invited to participate in the program of the Institute, and by candidates for the Certificate of the Institute or the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Some of the products of the research program are published as Studies of the East Asian Institute. The faculty of the Institute, without necessarily agreeing with the conclusions reached in the Studies, hope with their publication to perform a national service by increasing American understanding of the peoples of East Asia, the development of their societies, and their current problems. The Faculty of the East Asian Institute are grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation for the financial assistance which they have given to the program of research and publication. Dedicated in loving appreciation to my parents Shih-Ming Chu and Grace Zia Chu Foreword VERY FEW scholarly biographies of Chinese leaders are available in Western languages. Chang Chien, the subject of Professor Chu's fascinating study, was a most unusual Chinese: a truly transitional figure standing astride the late imperial era and the modern day. Although eminently fitted for a distinguished official career, he forsook officialdom to become a modern entrepreneur. Yet he was a most unusual entrepreneur in devoting the profits from his successful businesses to the modernization of his native community. With an excellent traditional education, he devoted most of his talents to the problems of bringing his country into the modern world. Chang Chien's active career was almost equally divided between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and between national and local problems. He moved with equal ease among officials, merchants, and scholars; in the "examination world" of imperial days as in the world of assemblies and cabinets of the early repub­ lican era. In his efforts to provide public primary schools, good roads, or a modern hospital for his native district he acted in the best traditions of the Chinese gentry. In struggling to cope with the periodic flooding of the Huai River or to rationalize the national salt administration he devoted himself to problems which have con­ cerned public-spirited Chinese officials for centuries. In his efforts to modernize Chinese education or to inaugurate a Chinese-owned modern textile industry he was actuated by motives of recent-day patriotism. Chang Chien was, in short, the all-round Chinese scholar-leader, characteristic of the best his culture produced, yet highly indivi­ dualistic in his interests and style. A product of his age, he also left his mark upon it through many pioneering enterprises. Fortunately a great deal of primary information on Chang Chien and his environment is available in Chinese. Professor Chu, a graduate of the East Asian Institute and a Ph. D. in history at Columbia, has used this material most effectively to present a well­ FOREWORD rounded, analytic biography of this man of many parts. Students of China's modernization may draw from this study an appreciation of the difficulties confronting a late Ch'ing entrepreneur. An illuminating example is the unbelievable difficulties Chang Chien encountered in accumulating the capital to start his first cotton- spinning mill, despite his national reputation and excellent connec­ tions with sponsoring officials. For another example, in the attempt to create a modern local school system he had to start at the very beginning—to establish China's first modern normal school. Student's of traditional Chinese society should find the account of Chang Chien's education, his encounters with the examination system, and his apprenticeship as a personal secretary to a high official very revealing. This study, like those before it in the East Asian Institute Series, was in large part done at Columbia University using the resources of Columbia's East Asian Library. C. MARTIN WILBUR September, 1964 Professor of Chinese History Columbia University Preface THE ACTIVE LIFE of Chang Chien as a modernizer, spanning an eventful quarter century from the last few years of the nineteenth century to the early 1920s, is still recent enough to be recalled by many of the older living Chinese of today. Even those of his countrymen who had no personal knowledge of him have heard of him by reputation. Within the past decade several Chinese studies of various aspects of Chang Chien have also appeared. Outside China (and the neighboring country of Japan), however, he is virtually unknown. In fact, only in the last few years has there been any mention of him in Western-language study of modern China. My primary purpose then, is to make him better known to the world at large. There is, however, a related purpose. Where Chang Chien is at all mentioned, he is referred to primarily as an industrialist.1 Hence I have felt it appropriate to trace his career in some detail, in order to bring out his other important roles of educator, conservationist, and public benefactor. In tracing his career, I have made an attempt also to sketch in the history and the particular characteristics of the institutions with which he was dealing, such as the educational system and the salt administration, wherever such information would contribute to a clearer under­ standing of Chang Chien's role in these fields of endeavor. As a result this study is at once a biography but also something less. It is a biography because the actions and thoughts of the central figure dominate the discussion at every one of its stages. It also follows a generally chronological sequence. Yet it is some­ thing less than a full biography because certain facets of Chang Chien's life have been regarded as largely irrelevant to an under­ standing of his career as a modernizer, and therefore slighted or omitted altogether. For instance, his reputation as an essayist, poet, and calligrapher is acknowledged, but no attempt is made to describe his activities in the literary field, or to assess his literary ability. Similarly, his collected writings contain numerous correspondences XII PREFACE which he carried on with various warlords and national political figures after 1915, when his active work was virtually confined to his native district of Nan-t'ung. These writings have also been ignored, on the ground that they actually accomplished little, and are not essential to our understanding of the man or his times. A full-length biography should also include as full as possible a treatment of the subject's childhood and young manhood (which in Chang Chien's case extended to his forty-second year). Since this study concentrates on Chang Chien the modernizer, it draws upon his earlier years only where certain experiences seem to bear directly upon his later career. Finally, Chang Chien's private life and personal idiosyncrecies are probably better known than most of his contemporaries, but details of his personal life have been included only where they contribute to our understanding of his actions and motivations. It is my hope that what emerges from this study would be an account of the public career of a most unusual man, not only for China of his time, but in the world at large as well. His career, while it can in no sense be considered typical of men of his gentry back­ ground and scholarly tradition, still reflects enough of his class status and training so that this study is no mere isolated account of a single individual. In a sense it can be regarded as a case study of the potentialities and limitations of one man's effort to transform the life pattern of a single region, given the benefit of certain favorable factors, but also operating within certain self-imposed and external restraints. In a specific sense Chang Chien the moder­ nizer represents the pragmatic Confucian who personally made a distinction between what was essential in Confucianism and what was not, sloughing off the latter to pursue a highly unorthodox course of action, yet holding true to the former throughout his life. In the pursuit of this study I have benefitted from a great many persons, to whom my public acknowledgment of gratitude has long been overdue. The study was originally suggested by Professor Franklin L. Ho, and completed as a doctoral dissertation under the joint guidance of Professor C. Martin Wilbur and Professor Ho. My debt to my two lao-shih can never be fully acknowledged. I am grateful also to Professor Shepard Clough and the late Professor J. Bartlet Brebner for greatly widening my mental horizons in the latter stages of this study. The kind interest shown to the study PREFACE XIII by professors L. S. Yang, Mary Wright, and Howard Boorman at various times have helped to sustain me in my labors. A special note of thanks is due to Mr. King-kong Wong, who, quite unbe­ knownst to me (and I to him), completed an independent study of Chang Chien as a master's thesis at the University of Washington.