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Tan Sitong also played a leading role in the 1898 reforms. In the Hunan Journal （Xiangbao） of April 1898 he advocated that academies be extensively built. He urged that every province should have one central academy while prefectures and counties built branch academies that would be led by local scholars. The role of academies would be such that: When an official wished to raise a certain matter or reform learning, he would first discuss it with the people in the academy. After they reached agreement, they would carry it out. If they couldn‘t reach agreement, they would follow the wishes of the majority. If the people wished to raise a certain matter or reform learning, they would first go to a branch academy, then from there to the central academy, where the matter would be resolved… When there are great affairs on which the high and the low are agreed, the entire group will work as a team to accomplish them.20 Tan considered that establishing such academies would create “unity of sentiment” （tongqing） and “equality” （pingquan）， and that academies would also foster talent formulate laws, manage the economy, and even enlarge group strength （qunxue）。 Such academies would not be normal social organizations but rather constitute local assemblies possessing certain kinds of political powers. In Tan’s own words, the academies “would not be called assemblies but they would in fact be assemblies.”21 Yan Fu was a well-known reformer of the 1898 period. Examining the worsening national crisis, he had published numerous important political essays urging that China learn from the West. After the 1898 coup d‘etat he worked on translating famous Western works, and he introduced Western bourgeois culture in a fairly systematic manner. His early reformism included support for local self-government. Before the 1898 reform movement, Yan wrote “On Strength” （Yuan-qiang）， which pointed out that the wealth and power of the West basically lay in “benefiting the people” （limin）。 For policies to benefit the people, they must start with the capacity of each person to benefit himself. The capacity for each person to benefit himself must start with the people obtaining self-determination （ziyou）。 For policies to let the people obtain self-determination, it is particularly incumbent that they start with the capacity of each person for self-rule（zizhi）。 Otherwise, chaos will follow. Moreover, the strength, wisdom, and virtue of people who can practice self-rule and self-determination are truly exceptional. Therefore, the crucial policies for today can be summarized as fostering the people’s strength; expanding the people‘s knowledge; and renewing the people’s virtue.22 After the defeat of the 1898 reforms, Yan recognized that “Since ancient times, China has never possessed the institutions of self-government… This kind of government has long left China corrupt.”23 In his translation of Montesquieu‘s Spirit of the Laws, Yan clearly pointed out that although representative institutions to strengthen China could not be immediately created, the establishment of local self-government “must not be delayed a single day.”24 Aside from the men mentioned above, Huang Zunxian, a leading reformer in Hunan during the 1898 period, was also an enthusiastic proponent of local self-government. Huang served the Qing in the area of foreign affairs. He was an ambassador to Japan, the United States, Great Britain, and other countries. In his comparison of the political institutions of Britain and the United States, he concluded that the Chinese national polity “must follow the joint monarch-populace rule （junmin gongzhu） of Britain.”25 Huang spoke at the inaugural meeting of the Southern Study Society in February 1898. He attacked bureaucratic government and appealed for scholars and gentry to “govern themselves and to govern their districts,” urging them to “ promote benefits, remove venality, reform the schools, plan irrigation works, advance commerce, improve agriculture, aid industry, be more diligent in policing, regard disturbances of the teachings and disasters as a family misfortune, regard the formation of criminal gangs as a personal concern, make plans before problems arise, and get prepared at the proper time--these are the affairs of all our scholars.” Huang wrote: If they can do this, then officials and the people, above and below, will find themselves in agreement and combine their strength and obtain the advantages of planning together… To get the advantages of a feudalism of great families while avoiding local abuses of power, the good government of republicanism can be extended from prefectures and counties to provinces and from provinces to the empire, until we are set on the flourishing path toward Utopia.26 Huang continued to support constitutional monarchism and local self-government until about 1905. Moreover, Huang influenced Liang through the numerous letters they exchanged. In sum, ideas about local self-government were more developed in the 1898 reform era than before the Sino-Japanese war. First, the bourgeois reformers linked local self-government to the central task of the times: strengthening the nation. They thought that in order to solve the national crisis and make China strong and wealthy, it was necessary to start by putting local self-government into effect and then extending local self-defense and independence to the whole nation. Second, the bourgeois reformers linked local self-government to the demands of the reform movement to expand popular power. They thought that in order to expand democracy it was necessary first to expand the powers of the gentry, and that the best way to do this was to institute local self-government. The concept of local self-government in the late Qing thus came to encompass bourgeois democracy. It reflected what the newly arisen bourgeoisie wanted, and it also established the foundation for the formation and development of the local self-government movement of the early twentieth century. The Rise of Local Self-Government Ideas in the Early Twentieth Century Chinese society was greatly disturbed at the beginning of the twentieth century, dissolving and reorganizing. On the one hand, under the guise of “preserving China” （the so-called open door） imperialism opened a fierce rights struggle against China while the Qing government, under the control of the Manchu aristocracy, sold out the nation to foreigners and increased their plundering of the people. China’s internal and external contradictions were thus pushed to an unprecedented level. On the other hand, with the initial development of national capitalism that followed the Sino-Japanese War, the national bourgeoisie formed an independent class. Bringing an activist approach to modern Chinese reformism, the bourgeoisie instigated the revolutionary and the constitutionalist movements. |