Research Article

Sun Yat-sen’s English writing and revolutionary image after his kidnapping and imprisonment in London

LI Shan

ABSTRACT

English writing was an important medium for Sun Yat-sen to promote his revolutionary ideas and seek foreign support. In 1896, Sun’s kidnapping and imprisonment in London caught great public attention. Being slandered and misunderstood on his desertion from the Guangzhou Uprising and his unpermitted entry into the Legation, Sun wrote in English Kidnapped in London, “China’s Present and Future,” and “Judicial Reform in China” in collaboration with his friends James Cantlie and Edwin Collins after his release from the Legation. In these works, Sun recorded the cause and effect of the Guangzhou Uprising, exposed the corruption of the rule and the darkness of justice in the Qing court, and expounded his revolutionary ideal of learning from the West and reforming China. The publication and dissemination of these works changed Westerners’ attitudes towards Sun: they saw him as a revolutionary with Western cultural background and political consciousness rather than a common rebel and political offender. The English writing of Sun’s thoughts dictated by himself and written by someone else not only constituted personal characteristics of his revolutionary career but also reflected the connection and interaction between Chinese and foreign politics in the era of globalization.

KEYWORDS: Sun Yat-sen Kidnapped in London English writing James Cantlie Edwin Collins

The international background of Sun Yat-sen’s The International Development of China

XU Tao

ABSTRACT

Sun Yat-sen particularly treasured his English book The International Development of China (known in Chinese as Shiye Jihua), considering it as a general plan for China’s peaceful development and even more important than the armed struggles he led to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The formation and publication of the book, however, experienced a long, complex, and tortuous process. The manuscripts mixed both Chinese and English text, and fragments of the work had been printed out and published in many countries in several editions. Compared with text analysis of the book, which predominated in previous studies, the process of the formation of the book is still barely mentioned in the existing narratives and thus requires a thorough examination. The letters of Sun Yat-sen and his wife Soong Ching Ling to various quarters from 1918 to 1922 can be found in the files of personal archives, such as George Ephraim Sokolsky, Julean Herbert Arnold, Hendrik Christian Andersen, and Paul Samuel Reinsch, collected in cultural and educational institutions. These letters left various clues for revealing the formation of the book. By employing these documents, this article presents Sun’s book’s formational process and mainly analyzes the relevant international background.

KEYWORDS: Sun Yat-senThe International Development of China Plans of National ReconstructionPaul Samuel Reinsch The Far Eastern Republic

Dreaming of a Three Gorges dam amid the troubles of Republican China

MEYSKENS Covell F.

ABSTRACT

This article examines Republican-era efforts to turn the Yangzi River into an engine of national development by building the Three Gorges Dam (abbreviated as TGD). Beginning with Sun Yat-sen’s initial proposal in 1919 and ending with a Sino-American attempt in the 1940s, it analyzes how Chinese and foreign actors went about developing such a dream. Every endeavor ran into a similar problem: China did not have the industrial, administrative, or financial capacity to accommodate the gargantuan hydraulic feat, an issue which critics repeatedly raised. Undeterred, the dam’s backers pushed for China to overcome a domestic lack of capital by collaborating with foreign technocrats. A joint venture would purportedly benefit both China and foreigners by not only facilitating trade with inland areas and producing a huge monument to the powers of modern engineering, but also because the dam’s immense electrical output would boost China’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse, one that would increasingly desire foreign goods. Although the Three Gorges Dam was not realized in the Republican Period, Chinese and foreign actors continued to pursue their infrastructure dream in order to fuel national industrialization on both sides of the Taiwan Straits during the Cold War.

KEYWORDS: History China government water environment

Foreign experts in the People’s Republic of China: an historical review from the perspectives of modernization and globalization (1949-1966)

ZHANG Jing

ABSTRACT

In the history of the People’s Republic of China we see two waves of foreign experts who contributed to China’s becoming a self-reliant, modern industrialized country. The first wave took place in the 1950s when experts from the Soviet Union and other Eastern Europe countries were dispatched to China. The second wave, beginning in the 1960s, was mainly driven by experts, workers and technicians from the Western capitalist countries. In the early days of the P. R. C, the arrival of a large number of Soviet experts precipitated the systems established by the CCP Central Committee and the State Council in order to manage issues related to the foreign experts. Under the leadership of a bureau within the State Council that was responsible for these issues, the system incorporated government organizations both at the central and local levels, including those established by Central ministries and commissions. Under the principle of “equal treatment,” the Chinese government made policies concerning payment and benefits for experts from capitalist countries, using as reference the standards observed in the Soviet Union and other East European countries in the mid-1950s. From the time when Soviet and East European experts departed China to 1966, the Chinese government still adhered to the principles of “seeking common ground” and “different approaches towards internal and external issues,” respectively. The approach of the Chinese government was largely cost efficient.

KEYWORDS: Foreign experts modernization economic rationality

Breaking diplomatic isolation: the origin of the People’s Republic of China’s assistance to Africa

SONG Wei

ABSTRACT

Following the Bandung Conference held in 1955, China and Africa strengthened their contacts, and the provision of assistance to Africa gradually became an important part of China’s diplomacy. In light of its uncompromising support for African national liberation movements, China’s assistance programs to Africa targeted promoting African countries’ independence and self-reliance, including a variety of forms of assistance to support African countries in various fields such as agricultural cultivation, primary industrial development, and medical and health care. After China’s Reform and Opening Up in 1978, its assistance to Africa adjusted accordingly in terms of its guiding ideology and implementation methods. Assistance to Africa encouraged China-Africa cooperation to become deeper, China’s policy itself was given higher expectations, and its history deserves study.

KEYWORDS: The People’s Republic of China foreign aid Africa Third World independent development

Between practical and liberal statecraft: Guo Songtao and his political and economic ideas

LAI Chi-Kong & WAN Kent

ABSTRACT

“Liberalism” has served often as an analytical concept in Chinese intellectual history. In this paper, I use this term to refer to the thinking of a group of “open-minded” and unorthodox thinkers who espoused progressive and/or radical opinions about institutional reforms for nineteenth century China. To a certain extent, these reformers’ political thinking had features similar to some that are found in J. S. Mill’s liberalism – namely, political participation, popular initiative, free enterprise, religious toleration, individualism, and commitment to long-term moral ideals.

KEYWORDS: Guo Songtao reforms liberalism

Book Review

A general history of the Chinese market (3 volumes)

by WU Chengming, CHEN Zhengping, LONG Denggao, LI Yan, LI Bozhong, and DENG Yibing, Beijing, Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2021, 1337 pp., ISBN 9787547317358

YUN Yan (云妍)

The “Bipolar disorder” of civilization: the entanglement of disasters and history

by XIA Mingfang, Guilin, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2020, 387 pp., ISBN 987–7-5598-2842-2

ZHU Qing (朱庆)

Against all heterogeneities: Guo Songtao and the view of culture competition

by LI Xinran, Beijing, Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2020, 259 pp., ISBN 978–7-301-31598-9

ZHOU Haijian (周海建)