A Kaleidoscopic View of Chinese Philosophy of Education

Ruyu Hung

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138489288
• eBook ISBN: 9781351038089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book breaks the stereotype that links Chinese philosophy solely to Confucianism, instead providing a kaleidoscopic view of Chinese philosophy of education. The contributors explore a variety of issues, including the journey of modernisation (or Westernisation) of China's education between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries; Chinese identity and the concept of race in education and history; contemporary interpretations of Confucian pedagogy in relation to twenty-first-century skills; the life story of a teacher in modern China as embodying the spirit of a Confucian pedagogue; the ecological self in education; an original interpretation of postmodern-Daoist symbolism; and the role of translation in producing and transmitting knowledge across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Eastward Expansion of Western Learning: A study of Westernisation of China’s modern education by Chinese government overseas-study scholarships

REN-JIE VINCENT LIN

Abstract

This article aims to trace back the history of how Chinese Government attempted to strengthen its national power by learning from the USA, Western Europe and Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, as well as to analyse the influences Westernisation had on the development of China’s modern education. In this process, the Chinese Government overseas-study scholarships played a key role in speeding up China’s learning from the West, and assisted numerous students in experiencing Western modernisation while they studied abroad. By examining this historical retrospect, some findings are concluded from this research. First, several significant conflicts between China and foreign countries stimulated Chinese officials deeply to learn the knowledge and skills of Western navy, military, sciences, technologies and philosophies. Second, Chinese scholars also began to reflect and criticise the influence of these Westernised reforms on Chinese traditional culture and values.

Background: Histories of China-West interactions

Interactions between China and the West in culture, religion, technology and consumption products had been expanded by Chinese and European traders, Catholic and Christian missionaries, Buddhist monks, travellers and Islamic merchants before the sixteenth century (Chen, 2002). Since the sixteenth century, printing was invented and improved in China and the West, so knowledge and technologies could be largely and intermediately dispersed (Burke, 2012). This mutual influence in disseminating knowledge was greatly expanded and distributed more broadly across national borders and geographical boundaries.

For example, Islamic traders and scholars, such as Martino Martini, the Italian Catholic Sinologist, and Jacob Golius, the Dutch Protestant Arabist, can be seen as transmitters of knowledge diffused between China and the West (Burke, 2000). Originally encountered in Leiden in 1654, Martino translated the history of transnational knowledge distribution recorded in Chinese documents into Latin, and Golius simultaneously translated Arabic documents into Latin. Therefore, this connected history of cultural interactions can be found in some historical documents.

In addition to these traders, Catholic missionaries also played an important role in promoting the transmission of knowledge between China and the West. For example, Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit missionary, not only introduced the achievements of European science, mathematics and philosophy to China, which stimulated Chinese scholars and officials to learn Western academic knowledge, but also introduced the Confucian classics to Europe and translated them into Latin. In addition, the German scholar, Athanasius Kircher, and the French scholar Jean-Baptiste du Halde also recorded the Chinese experiences of Martino Martini, Michael Boyd and other missionaries. This contributed to the rise of a certain ‘Sinology fever’ in Western Europe from the mid-seventeenth century to the eighteenth century (Yan, 2002).

However, China, as well as Japan, had implemented an isolationist policy from the late seventeenth century, during which time, the West experienced industrial and scientific revolutions, which propelled Western countries to become more modernised. Then, the West’s increasingly hostile attitude towards China and Japan in the mid-nineteenth century forced the Chinese and Japanese governments to renew their contacts with the West.

From the late nineteenth century, after a policy of diplomatic isolation that lasted for several hundred years and following military defeats by Western powers, the Chinese Government was eventually persuaded by some Chinese intellectuals to expand its Western learning journey. In order to acquire the latest technologies from the West, official scholarships were established by Chinese central and provincial governments to send students to study in the USA, Western Europe and Japan from 1872.

Having experienced defeat in several wars with the West and in order to build a new modern education system, the Chinese Government and scholars at the time planned to borrow and learn from Western countries’ experience (T.-C. Liu, 2005). Therefore, from the late nineteenth century, the process of disseminating knowledge can be found to have been transformed from one of mutual exchange to one of single learning means.

For a long period, China’s contemporary learning journey was mainly influenced by the USA, Western Europe and Japan. Chou (2014) and Wang (2013) have examined the academic interactions between modern Japan and China. Liou (2007a, 2007b, 2008) has analysed the process of how German pedagogy was introduced and transferred into wartime China. Most importantly, the USA has always played a significant role on the development of China’s modernisation since the twentieth century, as was stressed by Li (2000) and Liou (2013). As to the topic of the Eastward expansion of Western learning, Wu (2005, 2009) and Chen (2008) have pointed out how Western modern thought was disseminated through wartime China and how Chinese intellectuals dealt with Western challenges to Chinese traditional culture.

Regarding the contributions of Chinese students overseas to the academic interactions between China and the West, Li (1987, 2005, 2006, 2010) has published numerous studies, examining how these Chinese students’ study-abroad experience introduced Western knowledge and technologies to China and helped the Chinese Government to improve its nation’s power. Following Li’s studies, X.-Q. Liu (2005) focused on how Chinese students in Britain played significant roles in the process of China’s modernisation reforms by analysing the Chinese Government’s policies of overseas education.

Centred on the Chinese nineteenth-century context, this research aims to examine the history of China’s modern scholarly interaction with the USA, Western Europe and Japan, with special reference to Chinese intellectuals’ contributions to expand the Westernised movement of China’s modern educational system. Why and how China would like to learn from the West and Japan? Subsequently, the official study-abroad scholarship founded by Chinese Government, which assisted Chinese scholars to undertake their overseas studies and to disseminate Western modern thoughts and sciences in China, is a key factor. It means why the Chinese would like to found the overseas-study scholarship at that time and what contributions were supported by these Chinese overseas-study scholarship receivers? Finally, when Western knowledge was received in China, Chinese intellectuals began to debate the influence of these Westernised reforms on Chinese traditional culture and values. In other words, how Chinese intellectuals faced the dilemma between Chinese traditional culture and Western modernisation. This will be dealt with in the third section of this article.

China’s and Japan’s Modern Journey of Learning from the West

The academic exchange between China and Europe was initially processed by Western priests and traders in the sixteenth century. The Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, who lived in China between 1583 and 1610, is usually regarded as being the first contributor among these culture mediators. During his stay in China, he not only introduced the development of European science, mathematics and philosophy to China, which motivated Chinese scholars and officials to learn Western knowledge, but also simultaneously translated the Confucian classics into Latin, which encouraged Europeans to consider Chinese culture (Bernard, 1935; Fontana, 2011; Zhang, 2002). The cultural communication between China and Europe subsequently became a sort of ‘cultural fever’ in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Yan, 2002).

However, for many reasons, including the continual widespread conflict of religious cognition, the Qing Dynasty Government decided to implement a policy of isolationism from 1723. In fact, the Japanese Government had also implemented the same policy in Japan in 1633 for similar reasons. During this period, Western science and technology progressively advanced, while the Chinese and Japanese governments still refused to reopen the doors to their countries. In 1853, Japan was threatened by the US Navy, and was obliged to restart international trade with the United States, which stimulated the Japanese Government to reform and learn from the West from 1867. This was called the Meiji Restoration, when Japan witnessed the West’s advanced technology and weapons. After the claim of Departure from Asia in 1885, the Japanese Government strictly monitored the progress of Westernisation (Nitobe, 1931).

Therefore, Japan is considered to have been the first modernised country in Asia because of its Westernised movement. During this period, Japanese scholars adapted Western knowledge in a massive scale and translated numerous Western publications, which were gradually introduced and translated into Chinese by Chinese scholars to reflect the development of the West.

In fact, Japanese culture originated in China and Japan was also deeply influenced by Confucianism. Therefore, when the Japanese Government and scholars transformed their learning to Western philosophies and civilisation, they also faced the problem of accommodating them (Nitobe, 1931; Yamasaki, 2010). In other words, learning to think and behave like Westerners became an important task for the Japanese at that time.

Although more and more Japanese scholars have reflected on the influence of Westernisation and Americanisation currents on the development of educational studies in Japan for the past several decades (Horio, 1988; Inatomi, 1973; Yoshida, 1931), Western educational studies are still highly regarded and borrowed by the Japanese educational academic community, as well as Chinese educationalists.

In China, the Qing Dynasty Government decided to learn from the West after experiencing defeat in two wars, namely, the Opium War against the Victorian United Kingdom (UK) in 1840 and the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895. At that time, the main interest of the Chinese Government and scholars was Western technology and military force rather than Western educational knowledge (Chung, 2000; Fairbank, 1978; Fairbank & Liu, 1980; Hillemann, 2009). In terms of the current research, only five of the foreign scholarly books translated and introduced to China by European priests before 1895 were related to European education systems and ideas, including the British educationalist, Herbert Spencer’s What Knowledge is of Most Worth, which was translated into Chinese in 1882, whereas the subjects of most other books appeared to be Western science and technology (Zhou, 1996).

From 1897, the Qing Dynasty attempted to establish a modern schooling system in China, a teacher education system and a study of education by borrowing experiences from the West (Ayers, 1971; T.-C. Liu, 2005). At that time, the dominant foreign educational knowledge disseminated in China came from the USA and Germany (Wu, 2005). Figure 1 illustrates that there were two main routes for China to learn from the West before and after the 1920s.

In the beginning, based on the fact that Japan had succeeded in learning from the West since 1867 and numerous Western books had been translated into Japanese, the Chinese Government and scholars regarded Japan as being a successful westernised example and considered that learning from Japan would be the approach that would bring them faster results (Wei, 1998; Xiao, 2002).

Therefore, the books that had been translated into Japanese were retranslated into Chinese, published as books and journal articles. In addition, from a geographical perspective, since Japan is closer to China than the USA or Europe, the Chinese Government could send numerous Chinese students to Japan to learn Western knowledge on a lower budget. Language was another factor to consider. Unlike the alphabet used in English, French, German or Italian, Japanese characters were originally based on Chinese characters. So, Japanese was arguably the easiest of all foreign languages for Chinese students to learn and understand. Lastly, China and Japan had a similar culture, and simultaneously faced the tide of Western culture and force.

Figure 1: The main routes of the dissemination of Western knowledge into China pre- and post-1910 (Lin, 2014, p. 81).

However, Japan had been westernised earlier than China, and the Japanese had selected the Western advanced knowledge they needed. Therefore, Chinese scholars believed that they could save much time by learning what they needed from Japan rather than directly from the West (Chou, 2011; Zhou, 1996). In other words, the Chinese Government and scholars believed that the knowledge Japan had selected from the West would also be what China needed, as illustrated by Figure 1.

It was inevitable that some problems would arise when the Chinese tried to understand the Western culture only from Japanese translations. Firstly, Western books were translated into Japanese and then translated again from Japanese into Chinese and the content of the Chinese translated version may not have completely equalled what the original author had intended to express. Secondly, during the process of translation, some translators may have deliberately selected only the information they needed or provided their own explanations of the content of the translated books to use in China, content that had never been written by the original Western authors (Liou, 2007b).

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Kaleidoscopic View of Chinese Philosophy of Education
• 1. Eastward Expansion of Western Learning: A study of Westernisation of China’s modern education by Chinese government overseas-study scholarships
• 2. Learning from the Barbarians? Reflections on Chinese Identity and ‘Race’ in the Educational Context
• 3. Confucius: Philosopher of twenty-first century skills
• 4. Problem-Centered Design and Personal Teaching Style: An exploratory study of Youguang Tu’s course on philosophy of education
• 5. Towards Self-Realisation: Exploring the ecological self for education
• 6. Contextualising Postmodernity in Daoist Symbolism: Toward a mindful education embracing eastern wisdom
• 7. Translation, the Knowledge Economy, and Crossing Boundaries in Contemporary Education
• Index