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How did intellectuals define “Chinese” identity in the late Qing?…
How did intellectuals define “Chinese” identity in the late Qing?
Intellectuals?
So many pseudo-intellectuals
Is everyone going through the examination system an intellectual
Cultural and social class
The literati are isolated
court factions and echo-chambers do not reach most of China
National pride
1895 Loss to Japan
Shock culturally
Western interference
Barbarians
Internal rebellions masked as foreign interventions
Taiping - Christianity agitating
Catholicism seen to be in serious decline
Reformation
Revolutions in France, Germany
Power of Protestant powers in Britain and the Netherlands
Not seen as a Chinese matter in need of addressing
White Lotus - Buddhism
Ethnic composition
Are the Manchus Chinese?
Do the Chinese deserve indigenous Han government?
Are the Manchu incapable of reform?
Behaviour indicates not
Manchus innately inferior (racist argument)
Ming revivalism
Would the Ming have the answers?
Mandate of Heaven - are the Qing illegitimate
Does it matter?
'Chinese'
Level of threat posed by reform
Culturally-appropriate Westernisation
Chinese precedents for reform
Guangxu reformers - only doing what Zhuan Zhinang had already done in the Hunan province
Total Westernisation
Wholesale change required
Because China needs to use Western innovation to grow equal and then better than it
Because China has it completely wrong
The energies of the Chinese and West are different, and while the former is reticent, the latter is aggressively progressive
Culture of innovation
The Chinese have been strategically misled and underdeveloped
Classical education does not encourage critical thinking or engagement, and by prioritising rote learning makes things extremely difficult
Confucian reform
Chinese values but Western tech
Barbarian culture would infect and destabilise the Chinese state, which is only held together by the provision of the emperor's government
Western political institutions are corrupt and unstable
The need for democracy there can be explained by very repressive regimes that needed to be overthrown - this is incomparable to China
Western philosophy and high culture is useless
Western technology is to plug the gaps in a fundamentally good Chinese basis
No reform
Cosmological kingship theory
There is a proper alignment and the emperor's power should not be curtailed