Liu Hung-Chang and China's Early Modernization

Samuel C. Chu, Kwang-Ching Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315484679
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

This is a study of Li Hung-chang which represents a collaboration of Li experts among Chinese and Western scholars. The biography examines the beginnings of China's modernisation; the Confucian as a patriot and pragmatist; his formative years, 1823-1866; and other aspects of his life.

Part I
Introduction

1
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The Beginnings of China’s Modernization

Kwang-Ching Liu

When did China’s modernization begin? The answer to this question depends, of course, on how modernization is defined. Different social sciences (e.g., political science and economics) have defined modernization in different ways. An important series of books on China’s modernization as seen in different provinces or groups of provinces has defined modernization as the process leading toward greater social equality, political democratization, and economic liberalization.¹ Such an optimistic and all-embracing definition of modernization is difficult to reject. Scholarship need not be an exercise in universal value judgments, however. In comparative history, it may perhaps be argued that what is essential to modernization is the process of transition from commerce to industry—in other words, industrialization. This essay begins by treating the historically specific concepts of “statecraft” (ching-shih) and “self-strengthening” (tzu-ch ’iang) in the history of nineteenth-century China. It then proceeds to a consideration of major enterprises of nineteenth-century China that introduced steam-driven machines. I believe that a historical survey in this sequence is helpful to understanding modern Chinese history.

Statecraft

In the context of late Ch’ing history, what is the meaning of ching-shih—a term many historians have employed and have translated as statecraft? In popular usage, the phrase ching-shih could simply mean being an official (tso-kuan), but in the Chinese intellectual tradition, the phrase means much more than mere bureaucratic experience. The term suggests the ideal of service—service to the state and the people. It implies an idealistic purpose and a concern for practical results as well—concrete and fruitful service to be rendered to state and society by the intellectual.²

Wei Yuan (1794–1857) and others of the late Ch’ing period believed that there was a branch of learning as important as the Sung scholarship on metaphysics or the Han learning of the textual study of the classics. This was the learning of statecraft (ching-shih chih hsüeh), which calls for facing squarely the practical needs of state and society. Wei Yuan wrote: “Since ancient times, wealth and strength (fu-ch ’iang) have been achieved without the Kingly Way (wang-tao), but the Kingly Way has never been achieved without wealth and strength.”³ Problems of production and finance cannot be avoided; utility and effectiveness must be stressed. Although the study of the classics must continue, the lessons so derived must meet the test of present needs. So must the institutions of government meet practical tests. Wei Yuan, while serving as advisor to Ho Ch’ang-ling (1785–1848)—judicial commissioner of Kiangsu (1824) as well as the financial commissioner there (1825–26)—and to T’ao Chu (1779–1839)—governor of Kiangsu (1825–30) and governor-general of Liangkiang (1830–39)—took part in making plans for shipments of tribute grain by the sea route (instead of relying on the Grand Canal alone) and for the reform of the salt monopoly, making licenses for the salt trade available to some two thousand traders or investors (instead of merely a dozen or so hereditary license-holders). These reforms were both practical and timely. The championing of reforms that were not only desirable but also feasible was the hallmark of the ching-shih approach to statecraft.

Pao Shih-ch’en (1775—1855), a statecraft scholar who was Wei Yuan’s contemporary, not only was interested in such questions as the tribute rice transport and the salt trade but was also an expert on the Yellow River and knew a great deal about the technical aspects of dredging and dike-building. He was also conversant with agricultural techniques and was the author of an agricultural handbook. As compared with Pao, Wei Yuan was more thoroughly committed to a policy favoring merchant enterprise. He would rely on the resources and the managerial capability of the merchants to help solve the government’s problems. “The strength of the officials has been exhausted,” he wrote, regarding the problem of transporting tribute grain to North China. “Without the merchants, results cannot be achieved.”⁴ Wei Yuan was by no means underestimating the role of government, but he felt that allowing merchant wealth to develop would redound to the wealth and power of the state. The state should be benevolent while it becomes wealthy and strong: “The Kingly Way has never been achieved without wealth and strength.” Wei Yuan also said: “The latter-day Confucians, because of the distinction made by Mencius between the ways of the King and the Hegemon, would thereafter allocate military and economic matters to the Five Hegemons and would not talk about them. Did they ever realize that to provide for the people and to regulate the taxes are the concerns of the sages, and that Mencius himself had spoken on agriculture, sericulture, forestry, and animal husbandry?”⁵

Given such utilitarian concerns, it was unlikely that scholars of statecraft would be entirely inhospitable to machine technology that would promote the wealth and strength of both the state and the people. In Wei Yuan’s case, it was only a small jump from his advocacy of the Kiangsu seagoing junks as carriers of the tribute grain in the 1820s to his interest in Western steamships in the 1840s. Because he believed in making licenses for the salt trade available to some two thousand investors, it was merely consistent that he favored private enterprise. Within two years of the outbreak of the Opium War, Wei published two voluminous works—Sheng-wu chi (Imperial military history) and Hai-kuo t’u-chih (Illustrated geography of maritime countries). In Sheng-wu chi, he presents not only a history of the Ch’ing military campaigns but also proposals regarding fiscal and economic policies that would benefit the people as well as the state. Among his proposals was the encouragement of private enterprise in gold and silver mining. Once “the people are not prohibited” from taking up such enterprise, the government need only establish a bureau and impose a flexible tax of “ten or twenty percent, and the amount of silver produced will be incalculable and tax revenue will be more than the state can spend.”⁶

Wei’s Hai-kuo t’u-chih is a geography of the world based partly on materials collected by Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü in Canton. In an introductory essay on coastal defense, Wei proposed to establish a navy and to build ships and manufacture guns by Western methods—“to learn from the especially strong techniques of the barbarians in order to control them.” Wei Yuan was aware of the value of Western technology as applied to production—“all the power of ears, eyes, and intelligence being devoted to usefulness to the people (min-yung).”⁷ He believed, however, that the Chinese could catch up with the West in this regard and that they were not inferior.

Wei had already drawn a profile of the self-strengthening movement that was to come. Later, in 1876, when Tso Tsung-t’ang (1812–85) wrote an epilogue to a new edition of Hai-kuo t’u-chih, he declared that Wei’s proposal “is feasible and its outline cannot be improved upon.”⁸ There was evidently a continuity between early nineteenth-century statecraft thought and the self-strengthening movement.

Self-strengthening

What was the meaning of “self-strengthening”? Whence was the concept derived? In I-ching (Book of Changes), there is this famous passage:

The movement of Heaven is full of power. Thus, the superior man makes himself strong and untiring (tzu-ch’iang).

In the biography of Tung Huai (chin-shih, 1213) in Sung-shih (History of the Sung dynasty), it is recorded that in response to imperial inquiry about frontier affairs, i.e., relations with the Jurchen state in north China, Tung said: “When there is an enemy state beyond [the frontier], the best policy is first to strengthen oneself (tzu-ch’iang). Those who have strengthened themselves will be feared by others and will not fear others.”⁹

It was in this context of Sino-barbarian relations that the Ch’ien-lung emperor (r. 1736–95), commenting on a passage in a historical work regarding the Sinobarbarian negotiations during the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25–220), wrote: “Those who are able to strengthen themselves, no foreign aggressor dare ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Map of Coastal China, Korea and Japan
• Part I. Introduction
• Part II. The Rise of Li Hung-chang
• Part III. Li in the Role of a National Official
• Part IV. Li as Diplomat
• Part V. Li as Modernizer
• Part VI. Conclusion and Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index