"Kang Youwei and Institutional Confucianism"

Gan Yang, et.al., “Kang Youwei and Institutional Confucianism”[1]
 
Translated by David Ownby
 
Translator’s introduction
 
This transcription of a scholarly debate held in late June of 2014 reflects an important trend in the thought world of contemporary China:  the revival of interest in Kang Youwei (1858-1927), particularly among Mainland New Confucians.  Kang was a towering figure in the late Qing period who, despite his controversial loyalty to the Qing court, remained important in the Republican period as the leader of a campaign to establish Confucianism as China’s national religion.  For Mainland New Confucians, Kang Youwei is above all important as a conservative figure, one who understood the importance and potential of Confucianism in a modern context, and they propose taking up his reform agenda once again, arguing for the revival of Confucian culture through educational or perhaps religious initiatives.

In the 1890s, and particularly after China’s loss to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, Kang and his student Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873-1929) were important and controversial figures in reform circles among China’s literati, both in terms of setting an intellectual agenda and in implementing reform ideas on the ground (Liang was particularly active in Hunan).  Building on his status as a Confucian wunderkind, Kang fashioned a multi-faceted response to the challenges of the day that broke with the conservatism that had characterized most of China’s reform movement to this point.  In writings that shocked many of his peers, he argued that Confucius had been misunderstood throughout much of Chinese history; instead of the “ancestor-worshipper” depicted in traditional portraits of the sage (“I transmit but do not create”), Confucius was instead a dynamic institutional reformer (like Peter the Great or Itô Hirubumi) who might even have become king had the political cards been dealt differently.  Such arguments allowed Kang to agitate for important reforms while at the same time claiming allegiance to the Confucian tradition.

The concrete aim of many of these reforms was rapid modernization; Kang was impressed by Meiji Japan and other late-developers.  But what interests today’s admirers of Kang were his efforts to reform China in such a way as to avoid a destructive political revolution or a painful rupture with her Confucian roots.  To achieve these goals, Kang proposed a thorough-going restructuring of several of the basic elements of Chinese society.    He argued that the property of the temples of Chinese popular religion be confiscated, providing funding and housing for the modern schools that would be established.  He further argued that Confucianism should become a religion—indeed, China’s national religion—on the model of the Western and other examples he had studied (the Church of England, Shintô), with a clergy, a body of text, and weekend services.  The notion was both to provide China with an educated citizenry, in scientific and technical terms, and also to create a renewed Confucian culture by eliminating most of the practices of popular religion (now seen as “superstition”) and welcoming the people into a newly popularized Confucian church.  Kang’s defense of the idea of a constitutional monarchy should be understood from this angle as well; the emperor would be another symbol linking past, present, and future.  And the entire project was linked to utopian imaginings of a unified world of great harmony.

It is not difficult to understand the appeal of Kang Youwei’s ideas to today’s Mainland New Confucians, who claim to be looking for a sensible conservatism that will put an end to a century of revolution and consolidate China’s economic progress of the past few decades.  They see most of China’s twentieth century experience as a failure:  neither the Enlightenment project championed by China’s liberal tradition, nor the communist project (in either its internationalist or Maoist guise) made good on its promises.  Under Mao, communism provided faith and common purpose, but the flame of communism was extinguished by the Cultural Revolution.  If China is flourishing now, it is because Deng Xiaoping returned to Kang Youwei’s reformist tradition,[2] but this success may well be fleeting because China lacks both the moral core and the social cohesion necessary to make the good life possible on a lasting basis.  Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” calls for a revival of the Chinese nation.  Why not revive Confucianism?

The absence of Jiang Qing 蒋庆 (b. 1953) in a discussion of institutional Confucianism is surprising, since his proposals to remake China’s political institutions (see the introduction to Jiang's interview on women and Confucianism) are well known.  My impression is that Jiang’s proposals came at an earlier period, predating the wave of enthusiasm for Mainland New Confucianism that gave rise to the discussion translated here, and that Jiang’s ideas were perhaps seen by the authorities as too outlandish to be taken seriously.  By contrast, the main speakers at this event are all mainstream professors of philosophy at major universities in China, addressing questions of culture, values and education that are widely raised across the political spectrum in China.

Of course, at some level, this discussion is as abstract and utopian as the writings of Kang Youwei or Jiang Qing.  After all, China has a well-developed educational system, fueled by Communist ideology and a new iteration of the examination system, and the possibility of setting up a Confucian religion seems highly unlikely. Because their project is at present largely an abstraction, disputes turn on intellectual understandings of the meaning of “culture,” “religion,” and “education.”  Here and there the speakers wander into the deep weeds regarding details of Kang Youwei’s thought and their application.  There are translation difficulties, as well, precisely because the Mainland New Confucians are hoping to recreate a world in which education and morality and not divided as they are in most secular societies.  One of the most commonly discussed terms is jiaohua 教化, which meant, under the dynasties, “moral transformation through teaching,” and included music and rites as well as formal learning.  In a modern context, it is difficult not to translate jiaohua as “education,” but it means “education” in much the way the pre-Reformation Catholic church would have used the term.  In any event, these exchanges present some of contemporary China’s best New Confucian thinkers, discussing issues they found important at a moment such exchanges were permitted.
 
Translation
 
Chinese Editor’s Introduction
 
In the 120 years since the first Sino-Japanese War, our nation’s fate has gone through many changes.  With the waves of Westernization and the fading of Chinese tradition, today’s China is no longer the China of a century ago.  But the question “What is China?” remains as pressing as ever.  Kang Youwei was born in the late Qing period in a period of intense exchanges between China and the outside world.  Faced with the irresistible current transforming China from an ancient empire to a modern nation-state, and confronted with the powerful “other” that is Western civilization, Kang devoted himself to the institutionalization of Confucianism (or the Confucian religion), hoping to create a new cultural form from within the tradition.

Confucianism practices the way of the inner sage and the outer king.[3]   But for a reasonably long historical period in the recent past, Confucianism has basically expressed itself as the study of the inner sage.  A Confucianism that merely practices personal cultivation without attention to world affairs and popular livelihood is not the true Confucianism, and the idea of “institutional Confucianism” is to focus on revealing the characteristics of the “outer king” that Confucianism should have.  Kang Youwei’s thoughts and actions over the course of his life have much to teach us now.

The contents of this special issue reflect parts of discussions held at the conference entitled “Kang Youwei and Institutional Confucianism,” held on June 26 and 27, 2014, in Kang Youwei’s home town of Nanhai 南海, Guangdong, and jointly organized by the Philosophy Department and the Lingnan Cultural Institute of Zhongshan University.  Transcriptions of the oral presentations were approved by the speakers.  Editors added this brief introduction as well as captions.
　　 
Gan Yang[4]:  Constructing a healthy conservatism on the basis of a stable and steady attitude
　　 
Gan Yang:  I have been asked to say a few words, but I’m really not the person who should give the main address.  I only read these essays on the way here, and what I’ll offer today are just a few preliminary thoughts of my own.
　　
Scholarly interest in Kang Youwei has clearly grown over recent years, a number of monographs have come out, and I have read even more manuscripts that are on their way to publication.  I believe that today’s proceedings will certainly push this trend forward.
　　
Everyone knows that views of Kang Youwei, in China, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and even abroad, are basically consistent.  In general, views of Kang’s earlier thought and activities in the Hundred Days reform period 戊戌变法[5] are viewed positively or even praised lavishly, while at the same time there is almost universal criticism of Kang’s later thought and activities aiming to protect the emperor.  My feeling is that this may change in important ways in the near future, and if my reading is correct, the best research on Kang Youwei will reverse these trends, with more people are coming to sympathize with and even affirm Kang’s conservatism after the Hundred Days period, while there will be more criticism of Kang’s earlier period.  Most of what I have read over the past few years has focused on an empathetic understanding of Kang’s later period.
　　
I suspect that all of this is probably part of a re-evaluation of the pro-emperor faction and the question of revolution, in the context of contemporary China.  We can also see this as a rethinking of conservatism.  Kang Youwei was probably the only person, before and after him, to consistently oppose revolution.  The reason that he wanted to protect the emperor and the monarchy was basically because he hoped that China could avoid taking the road of the French revolution, and instead choose the non-revolutionary path of reform, as England and Japan had done.  To repeat, he seems to have been the only one in the late Qing period to have been consistent on this point.  Everyone else, including Liang Qichao[6] (1873-1929), went back and forth.  But Kang was clearer than anyone else on the negative consequences that could ensue if China followed the path of the French revolution.  Reading his early discussions of world politics in his petition to the Guangxu 光绪 emperor (r. 1875-1908), as well as his comparative political thought as reflected in the travel diaries of his later period, we can see that his knowledge of world political history, as well as his understanding of political reform, surpassed that of many of people even today.
　　
Of course, in the period leading up to the 1911 Revolution, the debate between the protect the emperor party and the revolutionary party played out politically, and China after Sun Yat-sen, twentieth-century China, is basically a revolutionary China.  And this is why Kang’s political conservatism has had to be comprehensively condemned.  But now we are rethinking this period of history on the basis of a century of revolutionary experience.  Let me remind everyone that we should not slip into paradoxes or vicious circles.  I myself believe that if today we merely condemn China’s twentieth-century revolutions on the basis of Kang’s conservatism, then this is a bit faddish, and not an expression of political maturity.  Indeed, we might well fall into a strange pattern where we would in fact be continuing to oppose revolution on the basis of a [rigidly] revolutionary attitude [i.e., going from extreme to extreme without due reflection].  What interests me more is how a post-revolutionary society can once again cultivate a healthy conservative stance, a conservative, gradual, and progressive attitude toward current social problems and modes of reform.  Of course this is just my individual point of view.  What I want to avoid is a position which seems to sympathize with the conservatism of Kang’s later period, but which in fact is still perpetuating a radical revolutionary attitude which has been with us for more than a century already.  In my view, what has happened has happened, and what is important, in the wake of all that has happened, after a century of revolution, is how to construct a healthy conservatism on the basis of a firm and steady posture.
　　
Beginning from this conservative standpoint, the next important question to address may well relate once again to the evaluation of Kang’s early period, and especially his Confucius as a Reformer (孔子改制考).[7]  To my mind, in the two- to three-thousand year history of Chinese political thought, there has never been a work as destructive as Kang’s Confucius as a Reformer.  It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that Confucius as a Reformer symbolically overturned and brought an end to Chinese traditional thought and culture, in an act of extreme destruction.  For example, Gu Jiegang 顾颉刚 (1893-1980), a founder of China’s new historiography, wrote in his autobiography that he read Confucius as a Reformer when he was young, and thereafter felt that nothing about China’s ancient past was believable.  The impact of Confucius as a Reformer on the creation of this completely negative view of Chinese classical history and civilization was unthinkably huge.  We have a hard time imagining it now, but for many literati at the time, Confucius as a Reformer was a catastrophe.  This is very important to those of us now engaged in rethinking the Confucian tradition.
　　
One problem I have with Kang Youwei was that while he worshipped Confucius, under the cover of that worship, he emptied out all of the concrete elements of the Confucian tradition of wenjiao 文教[8]; his attitude appears to have been one of “abstract approval and concrete rejection.”  In later years he championed Confucianism as the state religion, but a glimmer of his thoughts on these issues can be found already in Confucius as a Reformer, because the notion of a “uncrowned king (素王)” must necessarily lead to this.[9]  I personally feel that we should be more critical of Kang’s reading of Confucius and Confucianism in his early period, as represented by Confucius as a Reformer, as well as his basic Gongyang 公羊stance in the late Qing period, and should not continue, as we have in the past, to praise his role in the Hundred Days reform, and his Gongyang arguments in the late Qing, and even his development of “millenarian Confucianism 末世儒学.”[10]  For example, his Gongyang “three ages theory 三世说” from the late Qing was extremely capricious, as the ages could evolve at any time, so it came to mean a stance in which you could undertake any reform whenever you wanted to.  I am hoping that there will be deeper criticisms of this kind of “millenarian Confucianism.”
　　
Simply put, my basic viewpoint is that while Kang Youwei was politically conservative, in terms of thought and culture he was an extreme radical.  And this intellectual radicalism seems to permeate his entire life, from the early period through his latter years.  For this reason, from my position as a conservative, all of late Qing Gongyang studies, including Kang’s “millenarian Confucianism,” are extremely suspect, and should be seen as a departure from or even a betrayal of the Confucian tradition, and whether or not it can provide intellectual resources for the construction of a healthy conservativism is worthy of careful thought.

And I feel that behind all this lurks another big question, which is that late Qing Gongyang thinkers, and Kang Youwei’s Confucius as a Reformer represents this thought to a certain degree, illustrate a tendency toward over-politicization, because they always insist that scholarship and thought be subservient to concrete political needs.  In other words, they did not protect the relative independence of thought and scholarship, so that they could remain outside currents of concrete politics, but instead decided the goals of thought and scholarship on the basis of great political changes they envisioned.  This is a very big problem, and can still serve as a lesson for us today.  I still believe that the true Confucian spirit gradually rectifies peoples’ hearts and brings order to popular customs through the patient work of education, and does not expect concrete results from expedient political reforms.  This is the distinction between “great politics” and “small politics.”  And this is probably the justification behind my devotion to education over the years.  That sums up what I had to say.  I look forward to your comments and criticism.  Thank you very much.
　　 　　 
Tang Wenming[11] :  The reforms of jiaohua institutions proposed by modern Confucians
　　
I wrote a book about Kang Youwei’s “theory of Confucian religion,”[12] and in the months that I was writing it I was always imagining the feeling that Kang must have had while cultivating in the Baiyun cave 白云洞 on Qiqiao mountain 西樵山.  Because of time constraints, I could not write an entire paper for this conference, so I will just talk about the major points I would have made.  My main point is to describe the context in which modern Confucians have proposed reforms to the jiaohua system.  I will focus on two key people, one being Kang Youwei, and the other being Ma Yifu 马一浮[13] [Tang’s discussion of Ma Yifu is not translated here], one from before the establishment of the Republic, the other from after the May 4th.  I’ll start with Kang Youwei’s reforms and then talk about Ma Yifu, and at the end will offer a conclusion. 

A minute ago, Professor Gan noted that, in the past, studies of Kang Youwei tended to focus on the Hundred Days Reform period, while more recently they have examined Kang’s later life.  In my case I focus on the question of Kang and Confucian religion, and have emphasized the early period when Kang was basically in his twenties.  I paid special attention to his book The Comprehensive Meaning of Education (教学通义), which has been more or less ignored by scholars.  My feeling is that from the point of view of reforming the jiaohua system, The Comprehensive Meaning of Education is perhaps Kang’s most important work, and that his jiaohua reform work in the Reform period, during his period of exile, and after the establishment of the Republic all were closely linked to this. 

First, through The Comprehensive Meaning of Education we can understand how he positioned Confucianism [within the jiaohua project].  There is a chapter in my book called “venerating Zhu Xi 朱熹.”[14]  Kang had a high opinion of Neo-Confucianism even if he also understood its inadequacies, and emphasized the importance of the New Text classics.[15]  We might say that his basic stance within Confucianism was that of Gongyang studies plus Neo-Confucianism.  In poems and song written in his youth, Kang compared Zhu Xi with Martin Luther and Hui Neng 慧能,[16] and clearly took Zhu Xi’s life ambitions as his own.  Of course we would need to delve more deeply into the notion of “Gongyang studies plus Neo-Confucianism” to truly understand it, and there’s no time for that today, but I would like to point out that this style of thinking was closely linked to that of Kang’s teacher Zhu Ciqi 朱次琦 (1807-1881), and was a style of thinking that developed within the context of Confucian thought of the late Qing period.  In the Qing there appeared a thought trend called “drawing on both the Han and the Song,” because at the time divisions between those who preferred Han Confucianism and those who preferred Song Neo-Confucianism were quite marked.  Zhu Ciqi was part of this trend, and Kang Youwei developed his own thought on this basis.

The second point I’d like to make is that The Comprehensive Meaning of Education’s main argument has to do with the reform of the jiaohua system—which I won’t go into detail about here—instead I’ll just point out some connections with Kang’s theory of Confucian religion (孔教).  In his view, ancient texts like the Book of Documents (尚书,书经) and the Rites of Zhou (周礼) made clear that in ancient times, there was a difference between the jiaohua system for the elite and that for the common people.  However, Kang argued, beginning with Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒[17] in the Han period, and continuing through the elaboration of the examination system from Song times onward, the jiaohua system focused only on the elite element, the literati, leaving serious failings at the level of popular education.  He had little to say about the village covenant system[18] of the post-Song era, but had strong criticisms of the examination system.  In summary, Kang felt that the past Confucian jiaohua system basically overlooked the education of the commoners, and that now we should promote the texts to restore commoner education (庶民之教).  This was one of Kang’s important proposals concerning the reform of the jiaohua system.  The basic method of restoring commoner education was the establishment of Confucian churches (教堂) and the compilation of texts on the basis of which the Confucian religion would be build.  Most people say that such proposals were the result of Christian influence, but I think it is more accurate to say that it was Kang’s deep understanding of modern politics that led him to his theory of the Confucian religion.  His overall system of thought in fact has nothing to do with Christianity.  At this time, Christianity was developing very quickly in Guangdong, and this surely prompted him to reflect on the question of a Confucian religion, but never in his life did he engage in deep research on Christianity.  Instead, he simply felt that the Confucian jiaohua institutions based on the examination system were inadequate.  This is especially because he felt that modern society is a society where the common people are the central figures, which meant that the education of the common people became extremely important.  The emphasis on Confucian religion in The Comprehensive Meaning of Education is important to our understanding of Kang’s later thoughts on Confucian religion, whether it be during the Hundred Days Reform, his period of exile, or after the founding of the Republic.  Of course there were minor changes in his thinking, but his basic ideas cannot be properly understood without taking The Comprehensive Meaning of Education into account, which means, in other words, that what we find in The Comprehensive Meaning of Education is a basis for his later development.  For example, during the Hundred Days Reform period, Kang’s proposal to establish a Confucian religion was part of his ideas for the reform of the examination system, and draws on his thought as expressed in The Comprehensive Meaning of Education.  As another example, in his memorials to the emperor during the Hundred Days Reform, he clearly stated that the functions of the Confucian church and [non-Confucian] schools (学校) were not the same, meaning that schools could not replace the function of the Confucian religion.  The Confucian religion was focused on society at large, and was not a school for the training of the elite.  And as yet another example, there used to be a popular theory that Kang’s A Study of the New Text Forgeries and his Confucius as a Reformer were both part of the Hundred Days Reform, but this theory is very problematic.  This is clear from the fact that at the time of the reforms, elites who were more conservative than Kang agreed with his concrete reform proposals, while they did not agree with his scholarship.  A person of Kang’s intelligence understood completely that his scholarship could produce enormous controversy, and he could have simply concentrated on the concrete details of reform, leaving scholarship aside, following a path like that of Zhang Zhidong 张之洞.[19]  But he did not do this, because he considered [classical] scholarship extremely important.  We might say that Kang’s jiaohua institutional reform plans at the time were quite radical, but his overall political reform plan was more reformist.  In addition…according to the research of Mao Haijian 茅海建,[20] Confucius as a Reformer was not submitted at the time [i.e., as part of his memorial to the Guangxu emperor]. If this was indeed the case, then the reason was probably to facilitate the passage of his political reform measures. While some might say that Kang’s two works discussed here [Confucius as a Reformer and Study of New Text Forgeries] were chiefly written for the benefit of Kang’s fellow Confucians, and were not the same as the materials submitted in memorials to the emperor, this still only offers a partial explanation, because ultimately the importance of the links between the political meaning of classical scholarship and the monarchy are no less important than the links between scholarship and elite bureaucratic institutions.  We cannot see his two studies simply as strategic instruments employed in the Hundred Days Reform.  Kang had thought deeply about the transformation of Confucian jiaohua institutions, and of course these thoughts were developed in the larger framework of the reform of political institutions.  This much is clear.

​Kang’s thoughts on Confucian religion during his period of exile and during the Republican period focused mainly on the question of the relationship between Confucian religion and China.  I won’t go into details, but his basic thinking was not to build the nation directly on the basis of classical studies, but rather to build the Confucian religion on that basis, and thus use the religion to build the nation….For Kang, nation and religion were linked through the concept of a national religion.  Religion transcends national boundaries, but from a historical perspective, China and the Confucian religion had a particular relationship, the Confucian religion having been the national religion since the Han Dynasty, a situation that could and should be continued at present, in Kang’s view.  The key here is that Kang understood that thinking about nation-building uniquely in political terms was not enough, and in fact his promotion of a Confucian religion meant that it could and should become a guiding strength holding China together.  Thus to sum up Kang Youwei’s basic thoughts on modern China, there are three elements that we must fully understand.  One is of course the republic, which is related to Kang’s understanding of modern politics, whether in terms of time or space. The second is the meaning of the monarchy, and the third is the meaning of Confucianism as the national religion.  At a recent conference in Shanghai I proposed an idea:  that Kang Youwei be seen as China’s “legislator,” in Rousseau’s terms.[21]  Not Sun Yat-sen, not Mao Zedong, and not Zhang Taiyan,[22] but Kang Youwei.  The significance of a legislator often cannot be appreciated until several generations after his time, which means that he might have failed during his life.  A legislator may not be armed, and may well be an unarmed prophet.  If we examine modern China in this light, we will discover that Kang Youwei’s thought towers over that of Zhang Taiyan 章太炎, of Sun Yat-sen, and of Mao Zedong.  For this reason, it is my opinion that the most important thing that contemporary China’s thought world should do is to affirm Kang’s position as modern China’s legislator, only after which can we begin to profitably discuss other questions from the proper perspective.
 
Zhang Xiang[23] :  The political meaning of Confucius as a Reformer
　　 
I would like to add something in relation to Tang Wenming’s presentation.  What is the political meaning of Confucius as a Reformer?  There’s a source that could help us figure this out.  In his Study of the History of the Hundred Days Reform 戊戌变法史研究, Huang Zhangjian 黄彰健 uses a letter that Kang wrote to Zhao Bizhen 赵必振[24] in about 1901.  In my reading, Kang reflects on his mistakes in the reform process in a way rarely seen elsewhere.  Kang points out that he himself was different before and after his meeting with the Guangxu emperor.  Before meeting the emperor, in writing On Dong Zhongshu’s Teaching of the Annals (春秋董氏学) and Confucius as a Reformer, his feeling was that there was no hope for the Qing, meaning that “with nothing to gain at the top, we must fight for the bottom,” which led him to greatly promote popular sovereignty and similar themes.  But once he met the emperor, he thought there might be hope, which meant that he by all means had to keep the confidence of the emperor.  The document that we have now is incomplete, but it contains the chief points of debate between Kang and Liang Qichao and other disciples in 1903.  He did not feel that the reason for the failure was that reform had proceeded too hastily, but rather felt that the conditions had been in place to move quickly.  He felt that the failure was because at the time people didn’t know whether they could rely on the Guangxu emperor, so they placed their hopes on the reforms underway in Hunan, where “the Chinese people would be reborn.”[25]  Why was the conservative reaction to the reforms in Hunan so strong?  This was the result of Liang Qichao’s having established schools and newspapers in Hunan.  In the spring of 1898, people in Hunan were already broadcasting the revolutionary notion of “independence and renewing the race (自立易种)” Looking back from the perspective of this letter, Confucius as a Reformer surely contained political content.
 
Gan Yang:  The question is how Kang intended to carry out jiaohua.  Let me also mention a doubt I have about Tang Wenming’s presentation.  My feeling is that Kang’s discussion of commoner education was nothing more than what Liang Qichao talked about in “renewing the people 新民.”[26]  The idea that Kang felt that Confucianism had historically neglected commoner education is a very strange theory.  How could Confucians not educate the people? The point was that Kang was not pleased with how Confucians had traditionally educated the commoners, and so he hoped for a “new teaching” (新教) [which is also the word for Protestantism] which to my mind, again, is the same as Liang’s “renewing the people.”  Confucianism traditionally of course took measures to carry out commoner education, and its entire success relied on its outreach to the people, which early on penetrated their hearts.  Of course, this commoner education can be reduced to two characters, those of “filial piety” and “fraternal love” (孝悌).  The problem was that Kang thought this was insufficient, that there was no real educational content in the commoner education.  So he turned Confucian commoner education on its head, but this does not mean that there had been no commoner education prior to this point.  So I think Tang Wenming’s point is doubtful and needs discussion. 

As for Kang’s differences before and after meeting the emperor, this is a problem, and here it means precisely that he can be suspected of completely turning his back on Confucianism.  I feel that this still needs a lot of research, including his later discussions of national religion, which also relate to this.  The whole question is:  What will be taught?  What transformation is he looking for?  How will the teaching be carried out?  If Kang meant to leave the traditional commoner education of “filial piety and fraternal love” behind and offer a new kind of commoner education, then this would raise too many questions, such as that of the difference between this and Liang Qichao’s “renewing the people.”  My feeling is that this was precisely his most radical point, not his most conservative.  So I invite Wenming to mull this over.  Thank you! 
 
Tang Wenming:  It is best to reform the jiaohua system through narrowly focused political reform
　　 
I’ll give a quick answer.  First, as for Zhang Xiang’s comment, I’m actually not intending to challenge the old theory, but only want to make clear that while in the past, we saw Confucius as a Reformer as a tool employed in service of reform, we now see this is inaccurate.  My feeling is that Kang Youwei had reflected deeply on the reform of the jiaohua system, otherwise he would not have sacrificed his political reforms to it.  Of course, in Kang’s eyes, the reform of the jiaohua system also had political implications.  His understanding was that the goal was a narrowly focused political reform that would be in with line the reform of the jiaohua system.  For example, this is very clear when we compare it with Zhang Zhidong’s proposals.  For Zhang, all that was needed was political reform; jiaohua could be left alone.  Here, the difference is that Kang, faced with the changing times, understood that the jiaohua system had to be reformed as well.

As for Professor Gan’s question, this relates to the two separate issues of Kang’s opinions and how we evaluate Kang’s opinions.  Kang’s views were what I pointed out earlier, that, in part, developments in Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism meant that Confucianism had already taken the road of populism, especially through the use of community compacts.  He is of course right about this.  Yûzô Mizuguchi 溝口雄三 has a theory which roughly conveys this idea:  he argues that the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming periods meant a change in the focus of jiaohua.[27]  The Song saw a move away from the original monarchy toward gentry rule, and the Ming saw a change from the gentry to the commoners.  There are problems with this argument, but it probably helps us to understand social transformations in the Song to Ming periods and the relationship of Neo-Confucianism to these transformations.  From another angle, Kang Youwei was also sharply critical of the methods employed in Song-Ming Neo-Confucian jiaohua.  He felt that community compacts had outlived their usefulness, and that what was required was a move toward religion.  Yet this idea was not solely a response to the challenge of Christianity, but was instead based on his understanding and experience of Confucianism…Kang had a profound religious experience while meditating on Xijiao mountain, which means that he didn’t invent his theories of Confucian religion out of thin air, but instead fashioned them from his experiences of meditation.  So while he naturally felt that Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism was superior to Han-Tang Confucianism in terms of broadening popular knowledge and consolidating popular morality, the consolidation of popular morality among the common people now required progressing to the level of religion, even if the core concepts remained the seemingly simple moral notions of filial piety, fraternal love, benevolence and righteousness.  I have a hard time seeing this as upending anything at all, unless we want to see Neo-Confucianism as a reversal of Confucianism.  But these conceptual questions do not completely match up with institutional questions.  I think that what Gan Yang meant was that China’s traditional political institutions, and in particular the monarchy and the examination system, at an institutional level guaranteed Confucian jiaohua for commoners.  There was nothing particularly wrong with these institutions, but my feeling is that Kang Youwei understood that in a new era, Confucian jiaohua could no longer be accomplished in the same way.  In this sense, Kang’s views upend the methods employed in traditional Confucian jiaohua.  As I said a few minutes ago, when he was young, Kang Youwei saw Zhu Xi as the Confucian equivalent of Martin Luther or Hui Neng, and later saw himself as the Martin Luther of the Confucian religion.  Here we get a sense of Kang’s self-investment in the matter of jiaohua reform.  In terms of significance, the change from Han-Tang Confucianism to Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism can be compared to the change from Catholicism to Protestantism, in particular the change from a system based on ritual and music to a system grounded in mental or spiritual cultivation, which is extremely important in the history of Confucianism.  In addition, there was a fundamentalist character to what the Neo-Confucians were searching for.  They believed that they were expounding on what Confucius said, while the Han-Tang Confucians had instead revered the Duke of Zhou 周公.[28] 

As for the question of how we evaluate Kang Youwei’s opinions, I basically agree with Professor Gan in the sense that Kang is not conservative enough.  At the same time, in my view, Kang’s reflections at one level are a response to Rousseau.  Once Rousseau’s theories of popular sovereignty took hold, notions of political legitimacy were upended, and you could no longer seek legitimacy in traditional ideas like the divine right of kings or China’s Gongyang school.  To put it simply, the initial goal of Kang Youwei’s Gongyang arguments was not to discuss political legitimacy, but instead to consolidate the basis of jiaohua.  In other words, it is clear that Kang was trying to solve difficult problems related to republican rule and popular sovereignty.  In a republican age, in an age of popular sovereignty, in a situation where a democratic republic is the norm, how should we imagine the construction of our jiaohua system?  Should we aim for another theocracy?  Clearly this is not how Kang Youwei thought.  Of course, Kang Youwei never conceived of our present Party-State system.  So in Kang’s thinking, the sole and necessary function of the Confucian religion was as the state religion, and from the point of view of institutional change, the point of having a national religion was to permit the separation of church and state.  I talk about this in detail in my book.  In terms of the construction of a new republican politics, national religion was an important measure to protect the republic.  One of my very practical concerns is that for Confucian religion to enter society, we cannot be content with academic theories, but must think of other institutions outside of the university.  This means that, yes, maybe our content should be a bit more conservative, but we still need to innovate institutionally.  I might call this “putting old wine in new bottles.” 
　　 
Yao Zhongqiu[29] :  Saving Kang Youwei from Western educational superstition
　　 
In my view Kang Youwei is truly an important figure in the modern history of Chinese thought, or as Tang Wenming put it, Kang is the legislator of modern China, and virtually all of modern Chinese thought can be traced back to Kang Youwei.  I feel that Kang was more astute than others, particularly in the importance he accorded to teaching (教), because in the process of building a modern nation, he particularly emphasized this question. 

Yet after reading Kang’s systematic explanations, to tell the truth I’m rather disappointed, because his theories are full of contradictions.  The fact that he failed to establish his Confucian religion was predetermined from the start, and is doomed to failure in the future as well.  So from my point of view, the goal shared by people like Tang Wenming and Chen Ming [who proposes the establishment of a Confucian religion] is equally doomed to failure.

So what’s the problem?  On the one hand, I quite admire Kang Youwei, because as an observer of China’s jiaohua system he was able to describe it very accurately, in ways that are similar to how I view it now.  For example, in a series of arguments, he pointed out that the teachings of Confucius are not “sacred teachings” (神教). Confucius was a revered teacher (先师), and people study him, which means that the teachings of Confucius are first a field of “study,” something that was realized through the process of study.  What most people study is wen 文, the meaning of which is very rich; at least from the time that the Book of Documents was composed, wen should be understood as the most important concept for our community.  I’ve been teaching a course on The Book of Documents over the past couple of years, and at the beginning couldn’t figure out what the “accomplished ancestor” (文祖) in the sentence “Shun went to [the temple of] the accomplished ancestor (舜格于文祖)” meant.[30]  In the past couple of years, I have been thinking about wenjiao 文教 and Confucius’s explanations of wen, and have come to an initial understanding of the passage.  Wen seems to be a particularly important concept, including its meaning in compounds like wende 文德(accomplished virtue or power).

A few minutes ago, Tang Wenming said that Kang Youwei believed that traditional China had no “commoner education.”  Gan Yang disagreed, insisting that our huge community, with its own coherence, which is still growing and expanding, must possess its own commoner education?  Of course it does, but the problem is that now there are too many people using Western notions of sacred teachings to view our educational system.  In fact, jiao is the same as wen, and rituals, music and popular customs are all means by which jiaohua is conveyed to the masses.

I would like to add something else, which is that in fact there were two levels to China’s traditional jiaohua system.  One level did indeed produce an elite group through a program of “gentlemen studies 士君子之学,” an elite which truly did shape its body and soul through studies of things like the six classics.  The other level concerned the common people, who practiced rituals and music originally produced by the elites.  And something else that I find extremely important is that in traditional Chinese society, the “sacred” was contained in the wen.  In our jiaohua system, wenjiao dominated sacred teachings, and these sacred teachings were dependent on wenjiao.  We are holding our conference on Xijiao mountain, which is very representative in that it has all sorts of gods, but all of these gods are bearers of a common wen, bearers of the Chinese value system preserved by Confucians.  In other words, many sacred teachings are organic elements of wenjiao, or in the Confucian context, Confucius used all sorts of sacred teachings to jiaohua the masses.  On the one hand, Confucius used his own texts to jiaohua the elite, so that some of them reached the stage of “those who learn, and so, readily, get possession of knowledge,”[31] including those for whom “study was difficult.”  For those who abandoned their studies because it was too difficult, the only remaining method was to “teach using the sacred way [from The Book of Changes].”[32] In fact to “teach using the sacred way” means to invest these values with religious meaning.  This means that the various kinds of religion are in fact paths by which Confucian jiaohua has been transmitted.  Among these are rituals and music, something we find in many sacred teachings.  Hence, in the observable life of the common people everywhere, what we see is a religious system with many gods, and in fact an individual can believe in many gods at the same time.

There is another point we could discuss.  Tang Wenming has written a book called Fujiao zaikuan, in which he argues that Confucian values not only infused low-level popular beliefs in the way described by modern academic discourse on religion, but also infused mature, orthodox mainstream Chinese religions, like the Chinese Buddhism that everyone is familiar with.  The sinicization of Buddhism was in fact, properly speaking, the Confucianization of Buddhism, which we can see very clearly in today’s “Buddhism of the human realm 人间佛教.”[33]  This “humanization” of Buddhism has become ever clearer since the Song-Ming period, and reflects a wide-scale adoption of Confucianism.  Hence Buddhism and Daoism can become channels for the transmission of Confucian values.

I think that this is the basic situation regarding the Chinese jiaohua system.  In simple terms, Confucianism is a wenjiao which teaches and transforms the people through another set of means, rather than directly through Confucian elite practice.  In sum, this was the very effective jiaohua system in place in our China over the course of the last two millennia.

Kang Youwei understood this, but was not satisfied with it.  He wrote a few essays on the subject, concluding that our jiaohua system was too primitive.  So my profound feeling is that in Kang’s construction of Confucian religion, we see his acceptance of the Western superstition concerning the jiaohua system of monotheism.  He saw one of these systems as primitive, and the other as civilized. 

The influence of Kang’s thinking on this subject has been huge over the past century, to the point that the majority of Chinese intellectuals believe that the Chinese belief system and the jiaohua system of such a society are primitive, while that of a monotheistic society is superior.  At the time, Kang’s reasoning was a matter of personal feeling, while intellectuals of our generation have probably been more influenced by Weber’s theories of religion, which have shaped our superstitions concerning Western jiaohua systems, convincing us that only monotheistic systems are sophisticated.  In his Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber proved the close relationship between Protestantism and various institutions.  Hence our superstitions regarding the superiority of monotheism are perhaps stronger than Kang Youwei’s, to the extent that many intellectuals have been seduced by Protestantism.  I find that this is a very serious problem.

From the beginning of his exploration of the differences between Chinese and Western teachings, Kang took a heterodox path.  At the outset of his comparison, he decided that we were not as good as the West.  All comparisons of Chinese and Western culture seem to follow this pattern, as we get the worst of any comparison, which requires complete self-abnegation.  Although Tang Wenming argues that Kang’s thoughts on establishing Confucian religion were not directly influenced by Protestantism, from what I’ve seen, they were directly stimulated by it.  Even today, scholars like Jiang Qing and Chen Ming who talk about setting up a Confucian religion have all been motivated by Christianity, without exception.  They are most worried about the wide-scale spread of Christianity in China, which requires the establishment of another religion to block it. But the way they propose to go about it is to establish a Chinese-style Protestantism, which to me is the equivalent of a “capitulationist religion.”

So here I’ll come directly to my conclusion.  China’s complex jiaohua system, with wenjiao at its center, is both the simplest and most exalted jiaohua system.  If mankind were searching for a universal teaching, it would be Chinese-style, a jiaohua system with wenjiao at its core.  I’ll just mention one superior point of this kind of system, which is that it can link up with all sacred teachings and take charge of them, so that religious wars no longer need occur.  This is a historical fact that we can see in China.  Precisely because wenjiao penetrated into the various sacred teachings, the extreme elements of these sacred teachings were suppressed.  The wenjiao can also bring believers in the other religions to share a common cultural identity.  And on the basis of this common cultural identity, we built a huge political community. 
　　 
A core problem that China is facing now is how to bring religious believers to identify with the state.  For that, we need a common wen, and this wen ultimately requires the reconstruction of a jiaohua system.  So my conclusion is that we must rescue Kang Youwei from his superstitious belief in Western jiaohua.
　　 　　 
Chen Ming[34] :  Returning to Kang Youwei
　　 
What characterizes Mainland New Confucians 大陆新儒家 in terms of their basic orientation is that they are concerned with the construction of the state and the nation, unlike the diaspora New Confucians, whose concerns are democracy and science, a passive reaction following the attack of Western culture.  In terms of academic style, Mainland New Confucians employ the discourse and perspective of religion, not philosophy or ethics, the choices of the diaspora New Confucians.  Many people oppose our theory of “Confucianism,” because, in the view of some of these people, it reflects the influence of Christianity.  This underestimates us and overestimates Christianity, as well as their own grasp of Confucian classics and history.  In fact, there are clear examples attesting to a belief in God in the Confucian classics, in the Book of Documents 书经 and the Classic of Poetry 诗经, for example, where God appears as both creator and master.  And it was precisely on the basis of this long tradition that Confucius pierced the primeval chaos (described in the Ten Wings 十翼[35] as “the great attribute of heaven and earth is the giving and maintaining life”[36]) thus transforming a mysterious tradition, one full of the flavor of natural religion, into Confucianism, which is guided by the spirit of humanism.  This was a transformation from a communication between heaven and man dominated by shamans, to a unity between heaven and man achieved through cultivation of heaven and virtue. Confucian practice plays out in the ways of the world and the hearts of men; the plaque bearing the characters “heaven-earth-lord-parent-teacher 天地君亲师” is still found in many places.[37]  If we avoid the narrow Christian definition of religion, then it is obvious that Confucianism belongs to the broad category of religion.  Qiu Feng’s concept of wenjiao is an awkward reading, and in is fact an artefact of the May Fourth desire to establish a difference between Confucianism and Christianity, while at the same describing the social function of Confucianism.  If we analyze it closely, the “jiao” of “wenjiao” is a verb, meaning the “teaching of wen,” as opposed to the Legalist formula of the “teaching of laws” and taking government officials as masters.  The culture of Confucianism resided in the hands of the ancient Educational Ministry, who, following the logical of complementarity (顺阴阳) created jiaohua, crafting teachings out of the sacred way.  The foundation of these teachings is benevolence (ren).  Dong Zhongshu said it most clearly: “benevolence is the heart of heaven;” or in the words of Song Neo-Confucians: “[benevolence means that] heaven and earth are the heart of living things.” Or to cite Confucius himself: “[benevolence describes] the great power of heaven and earth.”  This tells us that what is taught in a wenjiao perhaps cannot be understood as religion, but the wen at the core must be understood as religion.  Han Wudi 汉武帝 (r. 141-87 BCE) chose to single out Confucianism, which gave it a political function, creating the special nature of Confucianism.  This was extremely important for Confucianism, in the sense that it was invested with an overly worldly purpose, but this particularity does not negate Confucianism’s religious nature.  Obviously there’s no time here to discuss the special characteristics of religions in general.  To put it simply, from a religious perspective, understanding the Confucian tradition requires attention not only to its role in building the state and the nation, and not only to its concern with rebuilding a modern Confucian social basis.  We must correct the error, originally committed during the May Fourth period, of “philosophizing” the Confucian classics, and return to Confucianism’s original nature and the values that it objectively revered. 

This is also a point of departure for correctly understanding Kang Youwei.  In the last few weeks, I have been talking about returning to Kang Youwei at conferences in Beijing and Shanghai, and here will emphasize once again my basic points.

First, returning to Kang Youwei means returning to the problems faced by Kang Youwei, which were those of state-building and nation-building.  The most important political narratives in modern times are the Revolutionary Party’s [i.e., Guomindang] plan to save the nation, the CCP’s plan to save the nation, and the liberal theory of Enlightenment.  Their respective political goals were:  getting rid of the Manchus, the achievement of communism, and individual liberation.  They were conceived and developed in the wake of the intensification of China’s internal and external crises and the intervention of the international communist movement.  The emotional distress associated with these changes led people to blame the trauma of modern times on culture, thus leading to the Enlightenment narrative, seen as valid for all times and places.  The history and philosophy of the communist international movement is basically the same.  The insights afforded by Enlightenment thought brought China’s problems into clear focus, and China’s path and goals became clear.  But these same insights reveal the limitations of the May Fourth, and direct us toward a rediscovery and a renewed understanding of Kang Youwei.  Compared to the China imagined by Kang Youwei, a China which the frontiers of the Qing empire, established by the Manchus’ military force, would be maintained, alongside its ethnic integration, even as China navigated the transition toward a modern republic, the ideas of both the left and the right appear pitiful.

The challenge we faced in the modern era was an existential crisis under pressure from foreign invasion, involving the protection of our territory and sovereignty and the preservation of our bodily and material safety.  This crisis created a consensus around the ideas of salvation and the search for wealth and power.  In this context, the effectiveness of the government’s performance became the most important measure of its legitimacy, and its most important goal.  This is not the same thing as the social reorganization resulting from the industrial revolution, or the understanding and pursuit of political justice arising from this reorganization.  An important difference is that the rights of the individual, the central pursuit of the Enlightenment narrative, a theme explored artistically during the New Culture Movement through Ibsenism, among others, in fact exist in a certain tension and conflict with the urgent tasks of modern Chinese history.  From this perspective the sacralisation of the Enlightenment project is utterly immature.  Communism, with its internationalist background, also grew out of a plan to “save China.”  But the continuing revolution of the proletariat not only led to internal struggles in Chinese politics, but also brought the national economy to the verge of collapse.  

For this reason, stressing the Kang Youwei question involves not only the standpoint and wisdom of Confucian political philosophy, but also the promise and challenge of Confucian political philosophy.  In fact, all of those who worked on this front in the modern era, including reformers, constitutionalists, even those who argued for “Chinese learning for fundamental principles and Western learning for practical application," all were part of the world of Confucian thought, and in making their demands and proposals did so from the point of view of Chinese agency.  Returning to Kang Youwei means returning to the problems Kang faced, returning to this intellectual genealogy, these demands and proposals, and on this basis building a narrative structure of modern and contemporary Chinese politics.  This first requires a new institutional arrangement.  As a political and legal starting point for a transition away from empire, the last Qing emperor Puyi’s 溥仪 (1906-1967) abdication edict made the solemn promise to transfer power to the “five-people republic 五族共和.”[38]  As an institution, the Republic, in comparison to the imperial institutions of the family-state, embodied the notions of public, common, and harmony differently. “Public” meant “the world belongs to all (天下为公)” and popular sovereignty; “common” signified common goals and mass participation; “harmony” evoked citizen virtues such as moderation, negotiation, public welfare.  In a sense, these are in harmony with the values and principles of Confucian political philosophy.  This is illustrated  by the saying from the Book of Rites that “When the Grand course was pursued, a public and common spirit ruled all under the sky,”[39] as well as by concrete expressions of Confucian commitment to the values of “equality, wealth, peace and harmony.”  If we say that the main expression of state-building is an institutional arrangement then we can also understand nation-building as having social, cultural, and psychological aspects, and a sense of identity with and belonging to this state.  Because of its nature, function, and origin, the nation possesses a particular character and cannot be reduced to politics or law; it requires a separate discussion.  This requires systematic effort from society to create a sense of identity with the state.  The Confucian proposal to create a state religion should be understood in this sense.

Second, returning to Kang Youwei means returning to Kang Youwei’s way of thinking.  Kang’s thought is rooted in the doctrine of the mean,[40] and in rational analysis.  This meant paying equal attention to the preservation of the state and the realization of institutional justice, balancing individual rights and national identity.  This meant not forgetting the original intention (不忘初衷)[41] of self-strengthening, which was to maintain the Qing—not the Ming—borders and ethnic structures.  In sum, balancing state and institutions, reality and ideals, maintaining unitary politics and law and plural cultural and religious relations.  Kang was clear in his mind as to the nature of China’s predicament:  foreign powers were attacking, a minority ethnic group was in power, the territory was extensive and the ethnic situation complex.  This meant that the transition would be perilous, and that the only possible course would be gradual reform and not utopian experimentation.  Kang Youwei’s golden mean and his rational approach meant remaining faithful to original intentions and respecting reality, valuing results and not surrendering to perverse principles or logic. 

The point of state-building and nation-building was to effect the modern transformation of the empire, but the resulting national institutions and social structures had to be appropriate, capable of guaranteeing their survival in the dog-eat-dog world of international competition, while also creating wealth for the citizens through management of society.  In this context, the preservation of the nation and of the people’s livelihood takes historical priority over individual rights, constitutional democracy, freedom of belief and other values cherished by the enlightenment project.  For reasons of sequence, priority could not be accorded to the individual; the philosophy of struggle and utopian longings should have been refused as well.  In other words, from the beginning we should not have foregrounded “modernity” in our project of state-building and nation-building.  The original goal should have been to “protect the county, protect the race, and protect the faith 保国保种保教.”  The Enlightenment project and the utopian narrative should only have been chosen if they were effective means of salvation; we should never have allowed theory to swallow up facts, or means to become ends, but sadly this is precisely the source of today’s biggest problems.

Kang Youwei’s way of thinking can be found in this passage :  “The Way of the state is first to avoid chaos and then to seek proper governance…The best plan for China today is to rectify law and social order, carry out the laws and directives, restore order, and maintain the borders.  The key to everything is to avoid violence and chaos so as to reassure the occupations.”  There is nothing brilliant about this, but the reason that the left and the right are called “antiquated” and “heterodox” is basically because they have forgotten this.

Third, returning to Kang Youwei means transcending Kang Youwei.  First, Kang’s notion that “state’s rights are more important than people’s rights” made sense at the time or as a means to the next objective, and today we must still accord a certain importance to the interests of the state, but the concept of popular sovereignty needs to be established.  Especially in terms of Chinese domestic politics, the logical relationship of “people’s rights are higher than state’s rights” needs to be clear.  The effectiveness of the governing power must forever be guaranteed, but the principle of popular sovereignty must never be obscured.  Since today we have already made important advances on the road to industrialization and urbanization, questions of “civilization, equality, freedom, and self-reliance,” which have long been given short shrift, now can and should be improved.  The most pressing objective of the China dream is to ensure a happy life for the people, which means feeling at ease as well as enjoying material fulfillment, which means that individual self-expression and political participation should also be part of the equation.  Consequently, proposals to make Confucianism the national religion must also be adjusted to admit the importance of civil religion 公民宗教, so as to better create common republican values and contribute to national cohesion.  Kang Youwei understood the importance of cultural homogeneity in Republicanism, as well as the important role and function of Confucianism in this process.  But whether this should be achieved through a national religion is something that should be discussed.  When the Republic replaced the monarchy with its constitution, this naturally meant that the status of citizens rose to the top, and that in addition to politics and law, the question of cultural homogeneity should be examined within the context and principles of modern politics and law.  Civil religion may be a more appropriate alternative.  In China’s traditional society, the Chinese people arrived at a homogeneity in terms of culture and citizenship via Confucian jiaohua and identity, and at the same time, Confucianism came to play an important role in terms of basic political values and social cohesion.  Given the changes over the years, Confucianism will have difficulty achieving the same support and foundation, and will need to be updated.  In concrete terms, this means making use of modern political principles and structures to guide the political community, currently held together by ambiguous interest relations, toward a relationship with clearer legal and economic foundations, which will both reduce the tension between the current structure of national politics, the status of citizenship, and Confucianism, as well as maintaining Confucianism’s positive function in terms of national identity and social cohesion.  The idea of civil religion is to transform the Confucian system from its historical political character into a contemporary social character, allowing it to compete freely and achieve its own position and influence in the “cultural marketplace.”

Fourth is that this is truly possible.  In left-wing discourse, the state is in fact the party, because it is based in class theory.  Indeed, from the perspective of historical development, both the CCP and the GMD were founded with the original intention of saving the country, and for this reason cannot be understood in the same way as in Western theories of political parties, cannot be confused with political parties that aim to win political power through their organization and activities, especially against the background of elections and representation, where their goal is to represent the demands of special interests.  For the right, the “state” is in reality society (society standing in for the activities of people).  In fact, the challenge the Chinese people are facing, or the problem they need to resolve, is how to maintain China’s existing borders, sovereignty, and people (人民) in the face of the pressure of Western powers, and the related question of finding a government that will lead the Chinese people to wealth and power.  In the search to fulfill this basic demand, questions have been raised concerning the justice of the system.  From a developmental standpoint, justice follows the achievement of wealth and power.  However, when questions of justice become important, they leap to the head of the line regardless of questions of logic.  This often leads liberals not only to separate the two, but to think about them as antagonistic.  It is in this opposition to the right that the party-state theory of the left finds its basis in legitimacy.  From a Confucian standpoint, seeking a balance between the two is the golden mean and the proper Way.

Replacing “individual” and “class” with “state” and “people” is the basic characteristic of the new generation’s ideological discourse whose goal is the China Dream.  This is a return to the central question of the modern era, a return to Confucian ideas, and a new understanding of the CCP’s original intent in founding the party to “save China.”  To propose returning to Kang Youwei in this context has not only theoretical significance, but possesses an equally important practical significance.
　　 
 
Notes

[1] Gan Yang 甘阳, et.al., “康有为与制度化儒学,” originally published in 开放时代 2014.5, available online at www.aisixiang.com/data/79543.html . 

[2] See Zeng Yi 曾亦, et. al., "From Kang Youwei to Deng Xiaoping,” available online at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/kang-xiaowei-to-deng-xiaoping.html .

[3] The idea of “inner sage and outer king” (内圣外王) refers to the core Confucian idea that the ultimate goal of self-cultivation is service to state and society.

[4] Gan Yang (b. 1952) is Dean of the Boya Institute at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.

[5] A brief period during 1898 when the Guangxu emperor, allegedly influenced by Kang Youwei, attempted sweeping reforms of China’s basic institutions.

[6] Originally Kang’s discipline, Liang Qichao was a leading figure in the reform movements of the 1890s, and went on to have a major influence as a journalist and an intellectual.

[7] First published in 1897, Kang’s Confucius as a Reformer offered a radical revision of traditional views of Confucius, casting him as a dynamic, innovative reformer.  Kang’s goal was perhaps to mobilize as much elite support as possible by suggesting that major institutional reform could be consistent with Chinese tradition, but his arguments shocked many of his contemporaries.

[8] “Wen” means pattern, form, writing, culture, and “jiao” means “teaching” or a set of “teachings.”  In modern Chinese, wenjiao means “culture and education,” but in the context of the discussion translated here, wenjiao refers to teachings, like those of Confucius, which ground their truth claims not in gods or sacred mysteries, but rather in human possibilities. 

[9] I.e., the notion that as a statecraft master, Confucius would have been made king were it not for unfortunate political circumstances.

[10] The Gongyang, or Gongyangzhuan 公羊传, is a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋传, a Zhou-period work classically attributed to Confucius, in which Confucius can be seen as a visionary reformer.  Over the course of China’s long history, the Gongyangzhuan has been used by Confucians such as Kang Youwei as an intellectual source for the advocacy of profound political changes which will emerge organically from the Confucian tradition.  The Gongyang school also argued that history moves through three great ages:  the age of disorder (据乱世), the age of approaching peace (升平世) and the age of universal peace (太平世).  Gan Yang’s mention of Kang’s “apocalyptic Confucianism” refers to his arguments, developed in his The Book of Great Unity (大同书) and elsewhere, that such a change was imminent.

[11] Tang Wenming 唐文明, (b. 1970), is professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

[12] Tang Wenming, 敷教在宽 : 康有为孔教思想申论 (Spread the Teachings Gently:  Kang Youwei’s Thoughts about Confucian Religion). (Beijing:  Renmin daxue chubanshe, 2012). 

[13] Ma Yifu (1883-1967) was an important New Confucian thinker in the Republican period.

[14] Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was a major figure associated with the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty.

[15] A major debate among Confucian scholars over the centuries opposed the “old texts” and the “new texts” as valid sources of moral and textual authority.  Both were bodies of texts purporting to contain the essence of Confucian culture.  Kang Youwei, a proponent of the new text school, argued (in his Study of New Text Forgeries 新学伪经考) that they were actually older and more authentic, and had been denied their rightful place in history.    

[16] Hui Neng (638-713) was a major figure in the establishment of the Chan Buddhist tradition in China.

[17] Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE) was a major figure in the adoption of Confucianism as Chinese state ideology in the Han period.

[18] The village covenant system (乡约) was originally imagined as a source of village self-government, but became over the centuries, and especially in the Qing period, a more top-down exercise through which officials sought to spread Confucian ideology through period lectures.

[19] Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909) was an influential scholar-official in the late Qing period, active in a variety of reform efforts.  In the educational context Tang Wenming is referring to, Zhang is best known for his proposal that “Chinese learning serve as fundamental principles and Western learning as practical application (中学为体，西学为用).”  Tang clearly thinks that Zhang’s proposal to simply add Western studies to existing Chinese practices was simplistic when compared to Kang Youwei’s more far-reaching reflections.

[20] Mao Haijian is a professor of history at East China Normal University in Shanghai.

[21] “Legislator 立法者” is a term borrowed from Rousseau, who, in The Social Contract, uses it to refer to the figure who intervenes at a critical moment to give concrete institutional shape to the popular will.  To my mind, what they mean is “conceptual founder,” the person that lays the intellectual groundwork for something to come

[22] Zhang Taiyan (1869-1936) was a complex if important figure in the intellectual world of late Qing China.

[23] Zhang Xiang 张翔 (b. 1974) is a professor at the Institute for Cultural Studies, Capital Normal University, Beijing.

[24] Zhao Bizhen (1873-1956) was a prolific translator of Japanese texts in the late Qing period.

[25] This phrase taken from Kang’s letter to Zhao, the source under discussion.  See Yin Feizhou 尹飞舟, 湖南维新运动史料 (Changsha:  Yuelu shushe, 2013), p. 227.

[26] Gan Yang is referring to Liang’s well-known essay on “renewing the people”, in which he argued that China needed a new citizenry to go along with new institutions.

[27] Tang is likely referring to Mizuguchi’s Chûgoku kintai shisô no kussetsu to tenkai (Change and Development in Modern Chinese Thought). (Tokyo:  Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980).

[28] The Duke of Zhou was one of Confucius’s heroes and a towering figure in China’s cultural history, credited with creating the “mandate of heaven” and many court rituals.

[29] Yao Zhongqiu 姚中秋 (b. 1966), who often publishes under the pen-name Qiu Feng, is professor at the Advanced Institute of Confucian Studies at Shandong University in Ji’nan.

[30] “On the first day of the first month (of the) next year, Shun went to (the temple of) the Accomplished Ancestor. He deliberated with (the President of) the Four Mountains how to throw open the doors (of communication between himself and the) four (quarters of the land), and how he could see with the eyes, and hear with the ears of all.”  See the online Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han . 

[31] Taken from this passage in The Analects:  Confucius said, "Those who are born with the possession of knowledge are the highest class of men. Those who learn, and so, readily, get possession of knowledge, are the next. Those who are dull and stupid, and yet compass the learning, are another class next to these. As to those who are dull and stupid and yet do not learn - they are the lowest of the people."  See the online Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han  .
[32] “The sages, in accordance with (this) spirit-like way, laid down their instructions, and all under heaven yield submission to them.”  See the online Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han .

[33] Buddhism of the human realm (人间佛教) is one of the major expressions of modern Chinese Buddhism, seen particularly in large Taiwanese Buddhist institutions like Ciji gongdehui 慈济功德会.

[34] Chen Ming 陈明 (b. 1962) is professor of philosophy in the College of Political Science and Law, Capital Normal University

[35] A collection of commentaries on the Book of Changes.

[36] James Legge translation of the Great Treatise II, see the online Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han .

[37] These were the objects of devotion for Confucians, and the plaques were found in Confucian temples, among other places of worship.

[38] I.e., the multi-ethic republic including Han, Manchu, Tibetan, Mongol, and Hui.

[39] James Legge translation, see the online Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han .

[40] The doctrine of the mean is both a basic principle of Confucian practice, emphasizing moderation and self-control, as well as a classic in the Confucian canon, the 中庸.

[41] “Not forgetting original intentions” is a phrase often evoked in efforts to suggest parallels between Confucianism and communism.  A true Confucian, like a true communist, should not lose sight of their “original intention.”  See for example Jiang Shigong: “Philosophy and History:  Interpreting the ‘Xi Jinping Era’ through Xi’s Report to the Nineteenth National Congress of the CCP,” available online at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/jiang-shigong-philosophy-and-history.html  .