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ABSTRACT
Kang Youwei康有為 (1858–1927) was a late Qing intellectual who pioneered modernization efforts in China during an era of foreign imperialism. In this paper, I trace the way in which he reformed Confucianism to fit into the Protestant category of religion. I then argue that his reformed Confucianism could be understood as offering a political theology. Echoing British liberalism, Kang’s reformed Confucianism adopts the progressive theory of history grounded in divine providence used by British imperialists to justify imperial expansion. I conclude by cautioning against attempts to frame Kang’s reformed Confucianism as a potential successor to Western liberalism.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Robert Yelle for his illuminating comments on an earlier draft. I am also indebted to Chloë Starr and Peter Perdue for their helpful comments and reading suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 van der Veer, The Modern Spirit of Asia, 157.
2 For more information on Confucius Institutes, see Sahlins, Confucius Institutes: Academic Malware.
3 Throughout this paper, I use “Euro-America” when referring to the geographical region, and the “West” when referring to the idea or ideology.
4 Other popular translations for datong include: “One World” and “Great Community.”
5 Wang, Chinese Visions of World Order, 15; Bell, China’s New Confucianism, 24.
6 Smith, “Datong and Xiaokang,” 65.
7 Klein, “Political Religion in Twentieth-Century China and Its Global Dimension,” 75.
8 Ownby, “Kang Xiaoguang,” 105; Bell, China’s New Confucianism, 20. Xiaoguang, “Confucianization.”
9 Bell, “Introduction.” See also Bell, China’s New Confucianism, 175–91. A brief caveat: Jiang Qing’s Confucian constitutionalism is greatly influenced by Kang Youwei, but it also departs from the latter. Attending to the specificities of current debates in contemporary Confucianism would be beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice to say, the point here is not that all contemporary Confucianisms are direct reproductions of Kang Youwei’s Confucianism; the point is that Kang Youwei’s Confucianism has been influential in recent Confucian thinking. Given – as I hope to show in the coming pages – the extent of Western influence on Kang, scholars should account for the overlaps between Christianity and Confucianism rather than assume that they are easily separable, discrete systems of thought.
10 Wang, Chinese Visions of World Order, 4.
11 In this paper, I employ “political theology” to describe Kang’s reformed Confucianism because his writing is – like ostensibly secular Western political theory – very much influenced by Christian thought. However, I am by no means suggesting that there can be no political theology without Christianity. Indeed, many of the essays in this special issue illuminate the political theologies of non-Christian traditions. But when I went into the literature on Kang in order to write this paper, I was struck by the extent to which Christianity influenced his Confucianism. As a result, this paper responds to the way in which the desire for the “otherwise” – that is, non-Christian traditions – can sometimes obfuscate the extent to which Christianity is already imbricated with the apparently non-Christian other.
12 By attending to the co-constitution of Christianity and Confucianism in the nineteenth century, this paper also has implications for the field of Asian American theology. Inculturation – the translation of Christian theology into “Asian” idioms (see, for example, Phan, Christianity With an Asian Face) – is a prevalent strand of Asian American theology. However, projects of inculturation risk treating “Christianity” and “Asian culture” as discrete wholes, thus obscuring the colonial histories that tie Asian religio-philosophical traditions with Christianity. Acknowledging that Chinese political theology is also in some sense Christian political theology should push Asian American theologians to consider alternative goals to inculturation.
13 Mauldin, “Special Issue on Human Dignity, Religion, and Rights in Contemporary China.”
14 Chang, “Intellectual Change and the Reform Movement, 1890–8,” 274.
15 Chang, 278.
16 Zarrow, After Empire, 30.
17 Chang, “Intellectual Change and the Reform Movement, 1890–8,” 286.
18 Chen, “Zongjiao-Yige Zhongguo Jindai Wenhua Shi Shang de Guanjian Ci 「宗教」─一個中國近代文化史上的關鍵詞,” 38.
19 Zongjiao is adopted from the Japanese word shūkyō. Matthew Perry’s gunboat diplomacy in the mid-nineteenth century culminated in the signing of treaties between Japan and the United States. This process was repeated by the Russian, Dutch, British, and French fleets. While the treaties mostly focused on opening up Japan for trade, they also guaranteed “religious freedom” to missionaries from the American and European colonial powers. Japanese scholars recovered shūkyō, which was originally a classical Chinese phrase, and ascribed to it the new meaning of “religion” in order to translate the treaty documents. Thus, as Max Müller formalized religious studies as a discipline in Europe, Japanese treaty-makers adopted shūkyō as the translation for religion in Japan. Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei’s student who also became a famous Chinese reformer, then took up shūkyō and popularized the phrase in China. See Chen, 46–54. Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 7–8. Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan.
20 Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 8. Nedostup then relates the fascinating story of the way in which zongjiao is eventually popularized by Kang’s student, Liang Qichao, and contrasted from mixin 迷信, or “superstition.” The mutual exclusivity between zongjiao and mixin is a departure from earlier categories of orthodoxy (zhengjiao 正教) and heterodoxy (xiejiao 邪教). These earlier categories “operated within a closed system of mutual opposition and, therefore, mutual need,” much like the relationship between yin and yang. In contrast, religion does not need superstition, and zongjiao does not need mixin. As Nedostup summarizes, “the perfectibility of the modern self-conscious subject demanded that he be able to overcome superstition once and for all.” See Nedostup, 9. Vincent Goossaert also affirms that Kang was participating in the discourse of religion versus superstition before it was popularized in the twentieth century in China. See Goossaert, “1898.”
21 Chang, “Intellectual Change and the Reform Movement, 1890–8,” 286.
22 Chang, 286.
23 Goossaert, “1898,” 308.
24 On the use of a Protestant understanding of religion in the British colonial project in India, see Yelle, The Language of Disenchantment. On the use of a Protestant understanding of religion in the context of American settler colonialism, see Wenger, We Have a Religion. On the relationship between the development of the idea of “world religions” and European colonialism, see Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions.
25 The influence of Christianity on Kang’s thought cannot be emphasized enough. Notably, Vincent Goossaert draws a direct connection between Kang’s religious and educational reforms and the writings of Baptist missionary Timothy Richard, who was personally acquainted with Kang. See Goossaert, “1898,” 313. Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 46, 70.
26 For more on the Chinese state’s appropriation of temple property for educational purposes in the twentieth century, see Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes; Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 85–114; Katz, Religion in China and Its Modern Fate, 17–68; Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 67–90.
27 For more on the legacy of the Hundred Days’ Reform, see Goossaert, “1898.”
28 Chen, “Kang Youwei and Confucianism in Canada and beyond, 1899–1911,” 6.
29 Kang Youwei, “Da Zhu Rongsheng shu,” [A Reply Letter to Zhu Rongsheng] vol. 1, Kang Youwei quanji [The Complete Works of Kang Youwei], edited by Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua, 322–326. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007, 325, quoted in Chen, 4.
30 Kang Youwei, “Shang Qingdi diershu,” [The Second Memorial to the Guangxu Emperor] vol. 2, Kang Youwei quanji [The Complete Works of Kang Youwei], edited by Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua, 32–45. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007, 43, quoted in Chen, 5.
31 Kang Youwei, “Yuduolibu changshe xuexiao quanjuan qi,” [Call for Donations for the Initiative to Found a School in Victoria’s Chinatown] Qingyi bao [The China Discussion], no. 13 (1899): Gebu jinshi, 8a-b.Quoted in Chen, 6–7.
32 Chen, 8. Cf Kang Youwei, “Yuduoli bu changsi Kongzi qi” [Notice to Initiate the Worship of Confucius in Victoria’s Chinatown]. Qingyi bao [The China Discussion], no. 21 (1899): Gebu jinshi, 1a-3a. Although Chen translates si 祀as “cult,” I have translated it as “worship” to avoid confusion with the negative implication of “cult” (i.e., as false religion) that does not apply here.
33 Kang traveled globally during his exile, and his proposals for reform were reproduced throughout the Chinese diaspora. One notable example is the Chinese Peranakans in the Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia). The Peranakans are the descendants of the Chinese traders to the region in the fifteenth century and local communities. Peranakan leaders formed the Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan (THHK) in the early twentieth century to coordinate the Sinicization of the region, spurred by the rise of Chinese nationalism and increased immigration from China. Following Kang, the THHK sought to spread the “Confucian religion” along the lines that he set out in the Hundred Days’ Reform. They advocated for a similar system of “preaching” by Confucian scholars and reproduced the moral dichotomy of “right” belief (i.e., a particular understanding of “Chinese tradition”) versus “wrong” belief (i.e., “impure customs” and “superstitious beliefs.”) See Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity, 214–16.
34 By thematizing the providential, progressive view of history for critique in my reading of Kang’s political theology, I am not implying that it is the only way scholars can use the tools of political theology in the context of China. Christianity has no doubt influenced Chinese political thinking in other ways. I simply take the progressive view of history undergirded by providence as a case study to gesture towards a way of thinking about political theology in China that accounts for the imbrication of Christianity and Confucianism.
35 Another periodization Kang offers is the Age of Moderate Prosperity (xiaokang 小康) and the Age of the Great Unity (datong 大同). Kang, Da Tong Shu, 11.
36 Mizoguchi, “The Chaotic Late Qing and Early Republican Periods,” 595. Thompson, “Introduction,” in Ta Tʻung Shu, 37–61; Kang, Da Tong Shu, 81–454.
37 Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World, 99.
38 Kang discusses qi on Kang, Da Tong Shu, 3–11. I borrow the translation of “spirit” for qi from Kang and Thompson, Ta Tʻung Shu.
39 Wang, Chinese Visions of World Order, 97.
40 McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 166–7.
41 Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents, 103.
42 Mill, “Considerations on Representative Government,” 565. Cited in Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents, 113. For more on Mill’s relationship with British colonialism in India, see Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India.
43 Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 84.
44 Mehta, 77.
45 Schmitt, Political Theology, 36.
46 Fergusson, The Providence of God, 133.
47 Fergusson, 137. The relationship between providence and imperialism extends further back in intellectual history as well. Fergusson points to Kant, whose cosmopolitanism reflects a secularized understanding of providence. Kant’s “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” elucidates the way in which the contentious world order will eventually be resolved and give way to an era of cosmopolitanism. Fergusson references Genevieve Lloyd, who connects Kant’s progressive theory of history to Augustine’s view of the work of providence in the march towards the city of God. Providence in Kant’s thinking undergirded European expansionism and bolstered European supremacy.
48 Fergusson, 150. For more on the Christian underpinnings of the periodization of modernity and the conception of history as progressive, see also Karl Löwith, Meaning In History; Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty.
49 Zarrow, After Empire, 49.
50 Zarrow, 47. Albert H.Y. Chen explains Kang’s departure from Confucian tradition by drawing a connection to He Xiu (129–82), a Confucian scholar of the Latter Han dynasty who also articulated a philosophy of history as progressing through the three Ages in Confucius’ writing. See Chen, “The Concept of ‘Datong’ in Chinese Philosophy as an Expression of the Idea of the Common Good.” While it is possible that Kang was influenced by He Xiu, he was more likely inspired by Christian accounts of providence in the development of his teleological account of history given his preoccupation with the Euro-American imperialism in China at the time, as well as his close personal relationship with the Welsh missionary Timothy Richard, who was involved in modernization efforts in China. See Goossaert, “1898”; Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China; Pfister, “A Modern Ruist Religioust Vision of a Global Unity.”
51 For example, Hsiao’s A Modern China and a New World barely touches upon Kang’s eugenic project. And when it does, Hsiao is not especially critical of Kang. Mizoguchi’s “The Chaotic Late Qing and Early Republican Periods” and Zarrow’s After Empire also note Kang’s racism in passing without much substantial engagement. Essays by Wang Hui, Daniel Bell, and Ban Wang in Chinese Visions of World Order discuss Kang Youwei’s project and either write off or neglect to mention Kang’s racism altogether.
52 On the way in which space is mapped onto race in Western literature and philosophy, see McKittrick, “Plantation Futures.”
53 Kang, Da Tong Shu, 179.
54 Kang, 189–91. I reproduce the racism in Kang’s text with some hesitation, wary of Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick’s caution about the limits of the work that exposure is able to achieve (namely, that the exposure of violence can become a form of violence in itself). See Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You.” However, given that the literature on Kang Youwei typically glosses over his racism or fail to mention it altogether, I thought it important to pause on this point and offer translations of the original Chinese text.
55 See also Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 89–90; Teng, Eurasian, 112–34.
56 My interest in highlighting the parallels between the categories of race across the Euro-American and Chinese contexts is inspired by Ann Laura Stoler’s work on comparative history. She compellingly argues for pursuing comparative historical work because it draws out the parallels across instances of colonialism and imperialism that appear disconnected at first blush. While Stoler is interested in bridging the gap between American and European imperialism, I hope to bring the discourse of Chinese neo-colonialism closer to British colonialism. See Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties.”
57 Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Kang’s suggestion of the proximity between yellowness and whiteness is a logic that is familiar to scholars in Asian American studies. In particular, the Asian American appropriation of anti-Blackness as a way of gaining proximity to whiteness is a foundational concept in Asian American studies. For more on racial triangulation, see Kim, “A Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” In spite of the prominence of racial triangulation in Asian American studies, the idea is rarely discussed in East Asian studies. Shu-Mei Shih has written about the aversion to “American approaches to race” in Asian studies; see Shih, “Comparative Racialization,” 1348. I flag racial triangulation’s transpacific resonance to suggest the transnational development of parallel racial logics in the nineteenth century between the positionality of Chinese immigrants in the Americas and that of China in a world dominated by Euro-American imperialism and colonialism.
58 Potter, “Belief in Control,” 320.
59 Yang, “Nearly 100 Folk Religion Sites Suppressed in Three Provinces.”
60 The movement to categorize Confucianism as a religion has made a comeback in recent decades since the Republican Era in post-independence Indonesia as well. See Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People, 148–51.
61 Billioud and Thoraval, 153, 163.
62 Billioud and Thoraval, 164.
63 Xiaoguang, Renzheng. See also Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People, 165–6.
64 Tingyang, “Can This Ancient Chinese Philosophy Save Us from Global Chaos?” Zhao further developed his argument for tianxia in Zhao, Redefining A Philosophy for World Governance.
65 Bell, China’s New Confucianism, 24.
66 Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 254.
67 Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West.”
68 For the use of supersessionism as a way of understanding the succession of structures of political thought, see Lloyd, The Problem with Grace.
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Kathy Chow
Kathy Chow is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Yale University.