Wang Q.E. Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography

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discussion abruptly before the twentieth century when Chinese

culture was no longer a model but a target of criticism and ridicule.

Rather, he chose to close his study with a suggestion: Since West-

erners were fascinated with Chinese culture in the past, why should

the Chinese people belittle, rather foolhardily, their own culture?

What they should do is observe and research their own cultural

tradition.

He’s involvement in the “cultural construction” also led him to

a new career. Apparently, GMD leaders like Chen Lifu and others

noticed his role in the discussion. When they proposed to allow more

intellectuals to join the government, or the “open door” policy as it

was called, they selected He Bingsong. A few months after the pub-

lication of the Declaration, due to Chen’s recommendation, the GMD

government appointed He Bingsong president of the Jinan Univer-

sity in Shanghai, a private university originally established for

educating Chinese students living overseas.

While private, the

university administration was supervised by the government; the

latter also decided the appointments of its top administrators.

Because of this appointment, He Bingsong embarked on a new life.

His historical career was virtually ended. Despite some initial reluc-

tance, He, like many of his cohorts, chose to accept the offer. Their

choice reminds us of the mandarin tradition, which found its way

back amid the renewed interests in traditional cultural values.

Unlike his student Luo Jialun’s administration at Qinghua

University, however, He Bingsong remained committed to liberal

education in his presidency. He kept some distance from the GMD

party and promoted academic freedom on campus. For example, in

order to improve the academic level of the university and expose

students to various schools of thinking, He tried hard to recruit

scholars of different political backgrounds to the university, includ-

ing a few leftists. He also helped radical students to avoid the

harassment of the secret police on campus.

To some extent, his

administration at Jinan was inspired by Cai Yuanpei’s model at

Beida in the 1910s, which he eye-witnessed while teaching at Beida

during that period.

Yet He Bingsong faced a more difﬁcult situation. During his ten-

year tenure as the university president, the Jinan campus, like all

other campuses in the country, was extremely tumultuous and

turbulent.

Not only were the students more active and agitated

due to the national crisis, but both the CCP and the GMD were more

involved in student activities, turning the campus into a political

battleground. Worst of all, only two years after He took over the uni-

versity, the Japanese army entered the city of Shanghai. Although

158 SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY

the campus was located in the English Concession, it was still not

safe for both the faculty and students. In 1938, He made a decision

to move the university out of the city, refusing to collaborate with

the Japanese rule.

During the move, He’s tremendous courage and

endeavor kept the university together as a whole. Whenever He had

an opportunity, he appealed to the GMD government for any pos-

sible assistance. But most of the time, He and his faculty and

students were left unaided. Despite all the plight, in the early 1940s

when the university was situated temporarily in Fujian Province for

a few years, he even managed to resume classes and admit new

students. During the entire period of World War II in China, the

university was kept alive.

But the war also took its toll on He’s health. In 1945 when the

war was ﬁnally over, He returned to Shanghai with his students, in

an exhausted state and without a place to stay. His family had to

live with a friend-cum-student in an old dormitory, belonging to the

Chinese Association of Art and Scholarship. Despite these personal

setbacks, He continued his efforts to reopen the university. In the

following year, when he felt ready to start the new semester, he

received an appointment from the government to be the president

of the Yingshi University, a newly established provincial school in

his hometown, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. This was quite devastat-

ing. But despite his great reluctance, he accepted the appointment,

due to the pressure mounted on him from his friends, students, and

most of all, the government. After all, He explained, this new uni-

versity was established for the people of his hometown and home-

province.

However, before he was able to move physically to

Jinhua, He died of pneumonia and fatigue on May 25, 1946. At his

death, He and his family were still living in the same dormitory

found in their return to Shanghai after the war.

World War II not only tragically claimed He’s life at the age of

only ﬁfty-six, it also affected his scholarly accomplishment. The last

decade of his life was spent at Jinan University in which he could

not make substantial contributions to historical study. For many of

his students and friends, He’s love for his country and his dedica-

tion to education were their lasting memory. But there were still

some who pointed out that had He not been assigned the adminis-

trative duty, he could have achieved much more as a historian. To

account for the changes that occurred to He Bingsong, the Sino-

Japanese War was deﬁnitely an important factor.

But we should also consider his personality. It seems that He

often succumbed to pressure, rather than following his own inter-

ests.

Yet He Bingsong’s experience was not unusual at the time; it

SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY 159

was rather emblematic of his generation. Others with stronger per-

sonalities might have chosen to act differently. But whatever they

did, their actions undoubtedly bore the imprint of the war.

History and Public Sphere

During most of the 1930s, Hu Shi remained committed to his ideals

of liberalism and kept himself outside the government until 1938

when he became the ambassador to the United States. While an

outsider, he was equally concerned about China’s political and mil-

itary situation. In the wake of the loss of Manchuria, he and his

close friends founded a journal, entitled Independent Critique (Duli

pinglun), in 1932. Stating their goal, Hu Shi wrote, “Fire is already

burning and national disaster has befallen everybody. . . . Indepen-

dent Critique is a single thing that my friends and I thought we

could do for this country under such a situation.”

The title and the

statement manifested Hu Shi’s ideas of liberalism; he would rather

be an independent critic of the government than be a participant in

the government.

The journal did not receive ﬁnancial assistance from any party

or agency. Hu Shi and his friends supported the journal with their

own money and even declined advertisement.

In deﬁning this inde-

pendence, Hu said, “We do not expect that everyone agrees with

each other completely, we only hope that everyone can use his/her

own knowledge and adopt a balanced attitude to studying problems

in today’s China....We call this journal Independent Critique

because we all hope to always keep an independent spirit, which

means not to depend upon any political party, not to be capitulated

by any bias, but to use responsible words to express the results of

everyone’s thinking; this is the independent spirit.”

Hu Shi’s receptiveness to liberalism could be traced back to his

college years in the United States. In addition to his study and

reading of American democracy, he observed with great enthusiasm

the presidential election of 1912 and was excited about the process

of democratic operation, in spite of his disappointment with

Theodore Roosevelt’s defeat. Hu Shi was very proud that he had

such an experience.

In one of his Independent Critique articles that

argued for the possibility of establishing democracy in China, he

proudly stated that his “long belief in democracy and constitutional

government” was through his careful observation of American

democracy and his taking courses in political theory and govern-

ment during his seven-year sojourn in the United States.

160 SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY

Thus viewed, Hu Shi was never a mere academic. In the early

years of his career after returning from the United States, he strug-

gled to keep a balance between his political aspiration and his

dedication to scholarly pursuit. In the New Culture Movement, he

swore that he would “avoid talking politics” (bu tan zhengzhi) for

twenty years, in order to concentrate on creating a “cultural foun-

dation for Chinese political construction,” which inﬂuenced Fu

Sinian and his friends in the New Tide Society. But the political

reality soon forced him to break his promise. In 1919 when Hu’s

Beida colleague Chen Duxiu was arrested for his political radical-

ism, Hu Shi took over the editorship of the journal Weekly Critique

(Meizhou pinglun) and published a controversial article that

aroused a heated discussion on “isms and problems.”

To be sure,

at that time Hu Shi had not yet been ready to “talk politics” (tan

zhengzhi); consider his argument that what China needed was not

discussions on “isms,” but solutions to “problems.” He urged his

fellow scholars to study concrete social problems rather than to

indulge in theoretical discussions on what pathway China should

take to construct modernization.

Having befriended Ding Wenjiang, Hu Shi became more active

in political discussions. In the 1920s, he and Ding edited the

Endeavor Weekly (Nuli zhoubao) and advocated “good government”

(hao zhengfu). He became convinced that political reform was a

premise to the cultural and educational reform he had championed

in the New Culture Movement.

In order to launch such a political

reform, Hu Shi urged everyone to “do something” and wrote it into

the “Song of Endeavor,” the song for the Endeavor Society (nuli she).

Noticeably, Hu Shi admitted that what made him to take action then

was that he became disappointed with the discussions conducted in

the “new public opinion” (xin yulunjie). Apparently, Hu and his

friends intended to inﬂuence such a “new public opinion” by adding

their voices, hoping to ﬁnd a practical solution to the thrust of all

social problems. To Hu Shi and his friends, the origin of China’s

political problems was the lack of “good people” in government. By

asking “good people”—the elites who were well educated and liber-

als—to participate in government, they believed that China could

achieve its goal in political reform. In their deﬁnition, “good gov-

ernment” should be constitutional, open to public, and protective of

individual freedom, yet all these goals will not be achieved without

the active participation of the “good people.”

Naive as their proposal appeared, it was “the ﬁrst systematic

summary of opinions that can be identiﬁed as ‘liberal,’ ” as put by

Hu Shi’s biographer Jerome Grieder.

Their concern for individu-

SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY 161

alism, their advocacy of political participation, and their opposition

to strong government reﬂected elements of modern liberalism. Yet

what is more signiﬁcant was the liberal approach this “good gov-

ernment group” then adopted in dealing with China’s political prob-

lems, which merits our attention. Although these liberals advocated

a “good government,” they did not think that this government could

be established overnight. Rather, they believed that it would be the

ultimate solution to China’s illnesses. Given the unstable political

circumstances, however, it could not be an immediate solution. They

were not as naive to believe that the warlords would listen to them

and give up their power in favor of the “good people.” What they

really promoted was an activism in the political process, which was

regarded as the “only way to initiate the work of political reform.”

“It is not,” Hu Shi wrote, “enough to be a good man—it is necessary

to be a good man who can ﬁght. Negative public opinion is not

enough—it is necessary to have a militant and decisive public

opinion.”

Thus their real and immediate goal was to create an

active public opinion that could inﬂuence politics and monitor the

operation of a government. In other words, Hu Shi and his liberal

friends intended to create a “public sphere” in China.

In his important work The Structural Transformation of the

Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas points out that along with the

establishment of bourgeois society in modern Europe, a liberal

public sphere was formed in which critical discourses on political

and social interest were exchanged among a reading public, con-

sisting mainly of scholars and journalists. In Europe such a public

sphere began to take shape in the decline of feudalism and experi-

enced subsequently a few fundamental changes that accompanied

the rise of state power and the growth of capitalism.

Needless to

say, China did not witness such a clear process as seen in Europe.

Hence whether or not this “public sphere” theory is applicable here

or in China, studies as a whole may still be debatable; some China

scholars, such as Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Philip Huang, have

raised questions regarding the application of this theory.

However,

if we exercise caution and notice the contextual differences, this

theory is useful for our discussion of the Independent Critique

journal here.

There are a few reasons for using the theory. First of all, the

journal contributors repeatedly used the term “public” (gong) in

their discussions on the need of the country. They consciously drew

the distinction between what was the “public sphere,” meaning the

will of the people, and what was the ofﬁcial sphere. As said earlier,

they published this journal so that it could become a strong voice

162 SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY

on behalf of the public. Whatever they accomplished, they were pur-

suing this independent position, hence the journal title.

If we also consider, drawing on Prasenjit Duara’s deﬁnition, the

public sphere as an associated commitment to the “discourse of

public issues and to the defense of its autonomy,”

the term becomes

very relevant and useful here. Not only were the discussions spon-

sored by the journal focused on public issues that reﬂect the com-

pelling needs of the country, these discussions were also conducted

in the associated manner and drew the attention from the entire

Chinese intellectual community.

Lastly, the use of the “public sphere” helps us understand

the relation between state and society in 1930s China, a pivotal

issue that can be highlighted by the theory. In 1930s China, the

tension between state and society was no less acute than

eighteenth-century Europe, which provided the basic foundation

and necessity for establishing a similar public sphere. This public

sphere was needed not only for restoring the political authority that

had collapsed with the Qing Dynasty in 1911, but also for founding

a uniﬁed modern state; the success of the GMD’s Northern Expedi-

tion had only uniﬁed the country by forming a tentative coalition

between Chiang Kai-shek and other warlords. In founding their

journal, Hu Shi and his friends hoped to make a conscious endeavor

to participate in the process of nation building by riding the wave

of public opinion.

This wave was pushed by the high tide of nationalism. The Inde-

pendent Critique was a huge success, attracting thousands of sub-

scribers. According to Hu Shi, the journal initially sold 2,000 copies

of its ﬁrst issue. It successfully reached 7,000 copies in its third year

and 13,000 copies in its fourth year.

Such a success made the

journal one of the most important vehicles in venting public opin-

ions on the role of government in the war and the governmental

policies toward Japan. Although the Independent Critique contrib-

utors tended to keep a moderate tone in their criticism of the GMD’s

nonresistance policy toward Japan, compared to left-wing criticisms

found in the Spring and Autumn and the much more popular

journal Life Weekly (Shenghuo zhoukan), they were very active in

launching controversial debates such as the one on democracy

versus dictatorship, while the other journals were ambiguous about

these issues.

To Hu Shi, democracy was not only suitable to China in peace-

time, it was also needed more in wartime such as then. He argues

that if China were to survive, it needed to develop a modern society

after the Western model with an articulate intelligentsia and an

SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY 163

established middle class.

To support his argument, Hu referred not

only to his own experience in the United States, but also to Western

history. When the historian Jiang Tingfu, then chair of the History

Department at Qinghua, rebutted that a period of absolute monar-

chy, as shown in European history, seemed necessary in building

a modern nation, Hu expressed his strong objection: “The precon-

dition to the establishment of a modern country was a uniﬁed

government rather than an absolute monarchy. Such an uniﬁed gov-

ernment was not necessarily an absolute monarchy.” He pointed out

that the English national state was based on several factors besides

the absolute rule of the Tudor monarchy, such as the birth of ver-

nacular literature, the English translation of the Bible, the use of

the Book of the English Prayer, the development of textile indus-

tries, and so forth.

Although Hu Shi and Jiang Tingfu both agreed that China at

the time had to put an end to warlordism and unify, they disagreed

with each other on how to reach such a goal. To Jiang, only through

a military campaign under a strong leadership, or a strong dictator,

could the goal be realized. The current problem in China, said Jiang,

was the existence of several minor dictators, or warlords; a strong

dictator could and had to eliminate them because otherwise there

would be no dictatorship. In the process, national uniﬁcation was

established.

But such a uniﬁcation was the last thing Hu Shi wanted. He

advocated a “political uniﬁcation” instead of “military uniﬁcation,”

which meant establishing a national congress and provincial assem-

blies. He believed that these “democratic apparatus” (minyi jigou)

would show the will of the people and generate a legitimate politi-

cal potency that could check and even control warlordism.

When

his opponents laughed at his democratic approach to political uni-

ﬁcation as naive, premature, and even utopian, Hu insisted that

democracy was not a sophisticated system that required much

preparation. “I have a bold opinion,” he wrote, “based on my obser-

vation of the world politics in the past few decades. I feel that con-

stitutional democracy is a sort of kindergarten political system. It

is most suitable to train a nation that lacks political experience.

Democracy is government by common sense, whereas enlightened

monarchy is government by elites. Elites are hard to ﬁnd whereas

common sense is easy to develop. Our country lacks elites, therefore

the best political training is constitutional democracy that can

politically empower people in a gradual manner.”

But Hu’s “bold opinion” aroused even more criticisms, one of

which was from his friend and cofounder of the journal Ding Wen-

164 SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY

jiang. Ding also referred to Western history to make his argument

that China then needed a strong dictatorship in order to reach

national uniﬁcation and bring about an effective national defense.

“In fact,” Ding wrote, “countries that succeeded in practicing con-

stitutional democracy are those nations with rich political experi-

ence. By contrast, such countries as Russia, Italy, and Germany that

relatively lacked political experience all have given up democracy

and have established dictatorship. This shows that constitutional

democracy is not a kindergarten system as Mr. Hu Shi believed.”

Ding’s criticism put Hu in a defensive position. But he never

entirely gave up his belief in democracy. He insisted that democracy

was the best system for empowering people and giving them polit-

ical rights. This was best shown in English history. Although the

English enjoyed some political rights in the past, universal suffrage

was quite recent. It suggested that democratic constitutionalism

could gradually broaden its power base in the people.

To be sure, with regard to the use of historical facts, Hu’s oppo-

nents seem to do a better job. Early modern European history

indeed showed that monarchy, absolute and enlightened alike, pre-

ceded the establishment of democracy. But Hu’s argument seems

constructive at the time, when he suggested that democracy can

politically empower people and temper their political experience.

This is indeed what he attempted to achieve in publishing the

journal. Although the Independent Critique writers expressed dif-

ferent opinions, their debates amounted to an attempt to promote

an activism in political participation in public, hence leading to the

establishment of the public sphere. Hu’s insistence on political unity

through democratic apparatus reﬂected his unfailing belief in the

political effect of public opinion. To him, public opinion (minyi) rep-

resented in the political arena a “public loyalty” (gongzhong) and it

should replace the “private loyalty” (sizhong) that prevailed at the

time in warlord separatism.

It was through this “public loyalty”

that national uniﬁcation could be realized.

Although different from Hu in regard to China’s uniﬁcation and

political future, Hu’s opponents, too, were committed to such an

effort to foster an independent public opinion, despite their advo-

cacy of a strong leadership in the central government. They placed

their hope on the GMD government in order to make an effective

defense against the Japanese invasion. Yet they never believed,

it seems to me, that a dictatorial government was the ultimate

solution to China’s political problems. On the contrary, they only

thought that they were living in a transitional period of history

in which a strong leadership was necessary to end warlordism,

SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY 165

promote economic development, and prepare for the future devel-

opment of democracy. Their support of strong leadership notwith-

standing, they were not hesitant to criticize the government. Both

Ding Wenjiang and Jiang Tingfu, for instance, were critical of the

GMD policies such as the “ﬁrst internal paciﬁcation, then external

resistance” (Rangwai bixian an’nei) and Chiang Kai-shek’s military

operation against the Communist force. Ding wrote a series of arti-

cles in 1932 and 1933 opposing Chiang’s campaign. He argued that

since Japan escalated its military action against China, the GMD

government should concentrate on national defense and maintain

regional independence. His suggestion to Chiang Kai-shek was that

Chiang should “make a truce immediately with the Communists.

The only condition to such a truce is not to attack each other during

the anti-Japanese war.” To Ding, Communism was not agreeable to

China’s social and economic condition; China was too backward

to wage a socialist revolution. But he did not want the Communists

to give up their belief either. “I only hope,” Ding wrote, “that they

take a practical political approach, sever the tie with the Comintern,

give up revolution, change from a secret party to a public party, and

request the freedom to discuss openly their belief.”

Likewise, Jiang Tingfu criticized the GMD government for the

lack of open discussions on national defense. He suggested that the

GMD lessen its control and separate military and civilian govern-

ment in order to rally the people to its cause. Jiang attributed the

problem to the want of a responsible parliamentary system in

China.

Such “democratic” means, he strongly believed, were of

importance for the GMD leadership in dealing with China’s current

situation.

As Jiang Tingfu and Ding Wenjiang urged the GMD to take a

more liberal approach to its opposition party or opinion, Hu Shi

went further. He suggested that the GMD allow opposition parties

to participate in the government and believed that the competition

could only improve the GMD leadership and rally people behind

the constitution.

Yet they all showed interest in democratizing the

GMD government. As Hu pointed out, the difference between the

two sides in the debate on “democracy versus dictatorship” was not

that they disagreed on whether China should establish democracy,

but when it should. That his opponents objected to his proposal was

simply because they idealized democracy too much to believe that

it could be adopted immediately by China. This debate, he hoped,

could establish a common political belief that democracy was not

only good but also feasible.

To Hu Shi, democracy was feasible

because it related to individual freedom, which was longed for by

166 SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY

everyone. Individualism, he stated, was a major theme in the May

Fourth Movement of 1919; the movement promoted free and inde-

pendent individuality, which provided the genuine foundation of

political democracy.

Fu Sinian, another founder of the Independent Critique, echoed

Hu’s opinion about the May Fourth Movement. He urged the GMD

government to sanction individual freedom. Among Fu’s many pub-

lications in the journal, one deserved special attention, which was

about Chen Duxiu’s arrest. After being arrested in the English Con-

cession in Shanghai, Chen was later turned over to the GMD gov-

ernment in Nanjing. Fu wrote an article requesting a fair trial for

Chen, his former Beida teacher, despite the facts that Chen had

become a Communist leader and Fu had decided to support the

GMD. To give a just assessment of Chen’s position, Fu divided

Chen’s career in three periods and stated that Chen made a great

contribution to the “literary revolution” in the New Culture Move-

ment that fostered reform on social morality. Chen’s activity during

the New Culture Movement was inspired, Fu emphasizes, by his

“radical and thorough liberalism,” exempliﬁed in the French Revo-

lution. Although Chen became a Communist leader in the third

period, his liberalism did not allow him to follow subserviently the

Comintern orders. Fu noticed that Chen had been expelled from the

Chinese Communist Party at the time when he was apprehended.

Hence Fu asked the GMD government to give Chen an open trial

in order to “best accord to the law, best reveal the opinion of the

people, consider the history of the Chinese revolution in the last

twenty years, and show the revolutionary standpoint of the GMD

government.”

Although Fu praised Chen’s liberalism and his leadership role

in the social reform—he called it “ethical reform”—during the

1920s, he was conspicuously silent in the “democracy versus dicta-

torship” discussion, lending no support to his mentor Hu Shi. Wang

Fansen explains that “this [Fu’s] unusual apathy indicates that

Fu did not feel at ease with either of the two positions. He did not

support absolutism, but he also perceived that, at that time, calls

for democracy were naive.”

But elsewhere, Fu did indicate his pref-

erence. He called for strong leadership from Chiang Kai-shek and

believed that without a uniﬁed leadership, China would certainly

be subjugated by Japan. Because of this, he urged other GMD party

leaders not to compete with Chiang for power.

Thus viewed, his

silence was not without a reason. He was sympathetic with Hu Shi’s

opponents. But because of his relationship with Hu, he chose not to

say anything.

SEEKING CHINA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY 167