4
The racial categories developed by the reformers after 1895 divided humanity into four or five distinct ‘races’. The core of the ‘yellow race’ was to be found in the Middle Kingdom. But in the wake of the abortive Hundred Days Reform of 1898, which ended when the Empress Dowager rescinded all the reform decrees and executed several officials, a number of radical intellectuals began advocating the overthrow of the Manchus, who ruled the Qing dynasty. Not entirely dissimilar to the 1789 and 1848 political revolutions in Europe, the anti-Manchu revolutionaries represented the ruling elite as an inferior ‘race’ responsible for the disastrous policies which had led to the decline of the country. They contrasted the Manchus to the Han, or majority Chinese. In search of national unity, the revolutionaries viewed the Han not only as a culturally distinct people with their own language and shared history, but also as a pure ‘race’. This notion of a Han ‘race’ took shape in a political context of opposition both to foreign powers and to the ruling Manchus. To describe the Han, the revolutionaries used the term of minzu, combining the idea of a people (min) with the fiction of patrilineal descent (zu). The term first appeared in 1903 in an attempt to find a political rationale for a modern nation-state.1 ‘Minzu’, often translated as ‘nation’, designated a lineage that shared a territory and an ancestor: it was both a racial and a corporate unit and is more accurately translated as Volk.
This chapter draws on the periodical press and political pamphlets circulated by the revolutionaries. The reformers transformed the press from a vehicle for trade news into a powerful social and literary force; the revolutionaries expanded the scope of the periodical press even further to turn it into a means of propaganda. They were generally better funded and better organised than the reformers, some making use of extraterritorial arrangements for the pursuit of their journalistic activities. Moreover, whereas the older generation still wrote in a literary style that mainly addressed the educated public, the younger revolutionaries did so in various degrees of vernacular, aiming at the largest possible readership. Finally, it should be noted that despite official censorship and the imperial ban on revolutionary journals, the printed word continued to command a wide circulation in China as well as in Chinese communities abroad. Revolutionary ideas were disseminated within China mainly by two new social groups: the students who had returned from Japan, whose numbers dramatically increased from the turn of the century onwards, and the new officers in the reformed army, who often maintained close links with the revolutionaries. But before we turn to the revolutionaries, we need to understand how evolution was understood in China at the time.
Racial evolution
The racial categories that developed in China after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 were founded on new evolutionary ideas from Europe, yet all too often those ideas have been cursorily described as ‘social Darwinism’. Social Darwinism, strictly speaking, should be defined as the application of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to the evolution of human society. The term has been used uncritically to characterise a whole variety of evolutionary ideas that diverge significantly from Darwin’s original theory. The historian Peter Bowler has warned that ‘little will be gained if the term “social Darwinism” is extended to cover so many different ideas that it becomes virtually meaningless.’2
It is difficult to describe Darwin’s theory of evolution precisely, especially in view of the many modifications he introduced in subsequent editions of his On the Origin of Species (first published in 1859). Several aspects of his work, however, should be highlighted in order to compare it to that of different evolutionary thinkers.
First, Darwin never developed a systematic analogy between the natural world and human society. He insisted repeatedly that he was not competent to discuss the social application of his theory. He did, however, contribute to the rise of what would later be called social Darwinism by using highly metaphorical concepts in the theoretical exposition of natural selection. The adoption of metaphorical concepts, derived from Malthus and Spencer, reinforced the tendency to theorise in social rather than biological terms.3 The expression ‘survival of the fittest’ originated only in the 1860s as a synonym for natural selection, not in the early 1850s, before the publication of On the Origin of Species, as is sometimes assumed.4
Secondly, Darwin insisted on the individual basis of human evolution. He emphasised selection between individuals, as opposed to selection between groups. ‘Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.’5 The struggle for existence arose between individuals of the same species, with individuals of other species, or with the environment, but Darwin admitted that ‘the struggle almost invariably will be most severe between the individuals of the same species.’6 In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin maintained his individualistic approach to evolution but also pointed to intergroup competition. Competition between groups, however, was combined with cooperation within groups.
Thirdly, Darwin emphasised that development was a branching and adaptive process, as opposed to the neo-Lamarckian theory of linear ascent. Darwinism saw evolution as an open-ended process governed by natural selection, adaptation and random change. Growth and development represented a process of specialisation, leading to new branches on the evolutionary tree. Neo-Lamarckism viewed evolution as an inevitable ascent through a preordained hierarchy of developmental stages on a ladder. Design and progress guided the Lamarckian paradigm: from invertebrates to fish, reptiles, mammals and humans, the embryo developed in a purposeful way towards maturity.
Finally, Darwin did not believe that social progress could be transmitted through inheritance. The theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics was also part of the Lamarckian paradigm. Darwin emphasised random variation and selection. Lamarck assumed that phenotypical changes imposed by altered habits could be inherited by the next generation: the giraffe, for instance, stretches its neck to reach higher leaves. Structural modifications had gradually been accumulated over many generations, producing the long neck which characterises the species.
As soon as it appeared, Darwin’s theory of natural selection was raided by authors of the most divergent political convictions. Many searched to enshrine their preconceived opinions in an evolutionary framework. In France, for instance, right-wing politicians appropriated Darwinian slogans to equate economic competition with the struggle for survival. The dominant tendency, however, was to downplay the ‘struggle for life’ and to emphasise the progressive implications of evolution, such as social solidarity and cooperation.7
In the Arab world, some Christian intellectuals adopted popular slogans of struggle for survival.8 Generally, however, the theory of evolution was interpreted in terms of Quranic authority: most intellectuals rejected the evolutionist justification of war. A medical scholar born to a Christian family, Shibli Shumayyil translated Buchner’s commentary on Darwin into Arabic, replacing struggle and competition by cooperation and striving for the happiness of the whole.9 The Egyptian scholar Ismail Mazhar supported Kropotkin’s views of mutual aid, while Jurji Zaydan, a prolific Lebanese novelist, appealed to Henri Drummond’s idea of cooperation.10
The predominant evolutionary theories in China from the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century were non-Darwinian. Complete translations of Charles Darwin’s work were not even available until 1919.11 Chinese intellectuals interpreted the theory of evolution in a socio-political context very different from that of the West. They operated within a symbolic universe that led them to reinforce different aspects of the evolutionary paradigm. As Mary Rankin noted, ‘although the idea of struggle for survival could be used in almost any context, the 1911 revolutionaries tended to apply it particularly in racial terms.’12 The predominant interpretation of the theory of natural selection was one of racial competition (zhongzu jingzheng) and racial survival (baozhong). The main source of inspiration was the synthetic philosophy of Spencer and the linear model of Lamarck.
Yan Fu brought Herbert Spencer’s work to the attention of his readers in a series of short essays written in 1895. A few years later, in 1898, Zhang Binglin (1869–1936), together with Zeng Guangquan, the grandson of Zeng Guofan, published an introduction to the English philosopher in the reformist journal Changyanhao.13 The first sociology textbook published in Chinese was Zhang Binglin’s translation of a Japanese work inspired by Spencer.14 It appeared in 1902, the same year in which Yan Fu finished his influential translation of Spencer’s The Study of Sociology (1872).15 The following year, Ma Junwu’s A Guide to Sociology included a chapter of Spencer’s Principles of Sociology;16 Franklin H. Giddings’ compendium on Spencer was also made available in Chinese.17
An important feature of Spencer’s philosophy was his belief in the unity of evolution. All processes of change were explained as the manifestations of a global cosmic evolution. Spencer’s faith in the necessity of a universal principle appealed to Chinese intellectuals, who were emerging from a symbolic universe that stressed the interrelation of human and cosmic processes. The reformers attempted to insert their ideas about political change into a wider global framework of evolutionary cosmology. Analogous thinking correlated natural, spiritual and social phenomena as the manifestations of a single cosmic principle.
Spencer also focussed on group selection. His holistic approach to the idea of evolution stands in contrast to the individualistic basis of Darwin’s theory. In Spencer’s view, the individual was embedded in a social aggregate that evolved organically. The object of sociology was to study these aggregates: ‘In every case its object is to interpret the growth, development, structure, and functions, of the social aggregate, as brought about by the mutual actions of individuals whose natures are partly like those of all men, partly like those of kindred races, partly distinctive.’18 Societies were aggregates of men, groups whose properties were determined by the properties of their parts. Correlative to this holistic approach was Spencer’s comparison of society to an organism. This analogy stood in opposition to the other main social theory of the nineteenth century, namely the mechanistic analogy, which viewed human intervention as independent from the social structure. Whereas the organismic view implied a collectivistic political theory, the mechanistic approach supported individualism and atomism.19 Contemporaries like Lester Ward were quick to point out the incompatibility of Spencer’s organismic view of society with his almost fanatical belief in laissez-faire. As the sociologist Stanislaw Andreski noted, ‘Rather than to fundamentalist liberalism, Spencer’s theory of society should have led him to espouse some form of authoritarian collectivism because the organisms regarded as higher display a greater centralization of the nervous system, and a greater subordination of the parts to the whole.’20
Scholars in China were not only attracted to Spencer’s notion of group. They were also inspired by the Ming loyalists, whose writings were revived by both reformers and revolutionaries. Wang Fuzhi’s concept of qun (group), used in association with zu (lineage) or lei (type), was particularly influential. Liang Qichao published a study on qun (also meaning ‘crowd’, ‘pack’ or ‘flock’) in 1897. His ‘Shuoqun’ (About groups) centred around the problem of the integration and organisation of the political community.21 For Liang, processes of change and evolution were directed by the cosmological principle of grouping. Huang Zunxian also perceived China’s lack of national cohesion as the country’s greatest weakness. He noted that in the West, individuals united in groups to cooperate. The ancient philosopher Xunzi’s idea of qun supported his views: ‘Heaven created men without the ability to fly like birds or run as fast as beasts. Nonetheless, men are superior in the world. The reason is that men can pool their strength, which beasts cannot do. In the world nothing is stronger than the power of unified force. It is like burning coal: if the pieces are scattered, even a child can kick and extinguish them; if they are put together in a stove, the heat is so intense that no one can even approach it.’22
Huang developed his ideas about national cohesion around the concept of qun by 1897. Yan Fu linked qun specifically to Spencer’s idea of group by translating sociology as qunxue, ‘the study of groups’, ‘for’, as he explained, ‘Xunzi said that man is superior to animals by his ability to group.’23 Yan Fu also briefly introduced Darwin to his readers, but focused exclusively on the theory of struggle for survival. Instead of taking on board Darwin’s emphasis on the individual, Yan pictured evolution as a constant struggle between groups defined as ‘races’:
By struggle of species, it is meant struggle for survival. By natural selection, it is meant the survival of the fittest race [zhong]. The idea is that people and living organisms appeared in the world and coexisted in all their variety, feeding together on the benefits of nature. When they came in contact with each other, they struggled for their own survival. In the beginning, races struggled with races [zhongzheng], then groups struggled with groups. The weak constantly became the prey of the strong, the stupid constantly became the slaves of the intelligent. Those who survived and perpetuated their species had to be resistant and valiant, agile and ingenious.24
Yan Fu shifted the emphasis from individual competition to racial struggle. Group cohesion, he argued, was the principle by which ‘the race is strong and the group can stand.’25
Zhang Binglin also associated the principle of qun with racial strength. In his article ‘On bacteria’ (1899), he explained that racial power was proportional to the ability to group (hequn): the inferior black, brown and red races, he believed, had become prostrate before the yellow race because they had failed to group. On the other hand, the yellow race was dominated by the whites. The whites had vanquished the yellows because of their greater ability to group.26
Spencer’s cosmological vision of evolution and his concept of group survival attracted Chinese intellectuals. Struggle between groups, however, was not a salient characteristic of his philosophy. Spencer deprecated struggle, abhorred the growth of militarism and disliked biological justifications for war. In his view, cooperation gained a clear preponderance over struggle in the industrial stage of society. Spencer was influenced by Lamarck long before the publication of Darwin’s work, and believed firmly in the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics. From a Lamarckian point of view, the development of altruism was central to the process of adaptation to the environment. Natural selection and struggle for survival were no more than a passing phase of evolution, gradually replaced by cooperation.27
In 1898 Yan Fu also translated T. H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics. In his lecture of 1893 on evolution and ethics, Huxley had vigorously attacked laissez-faire policies and had defended the need to curtail self-interest. Social cooperation was seen as superior to social competition: ‘I have termed this gradual strengthening of the social bond, which, though it arrests the struggle for existence inside society, up to a certain point improves the chances of society, as a corporate whole, in the cosmic struggle—the ethical process.’28 For Huxley, competition was paramount only in the primitive ‘state of nature’. Human intervention had led to the construction of a ‘state of art’, protecting humanity from the antagonism of the cosmic process.29 Yan Fu paraphrased Huxley: ‘The reason why those who want to form a group suppress competition within that group is so that they can withstand the natural forces without the group.’30 Even among the lower orders, Huxley detected the fundamental principle of group cohesion which exerted such a strong appeal on his Chinese interpreters: ‘Within it [the beehive], the struggle for existence is strictly limited. Queen, drones and workers have each their allotted sufficiency of food; each performs the function assigned to it in the economy of the hive, and all contribute to the success of the whole cooperative society in its competition with rival collectors of nectar and pollen and with other enemies, in the state of nature without.’31 The Huxleian dichotomy between ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ society was convergent with the nei-wai opposition, or inner-outer dualism, so characteristic of Chinese social philosophy. The writings of Yan Fu and other leading reformers represented an internal state of art opposed to an external state of nature. Spencer’s idea of inter-group competition was combined with Huxley’s concept of intra-group cooperation to form a social policy of group cohesion that adequately fitted the needs of the time.
In the comments Yan Fu intermingled with his translation of Huxley, the concern with the racial categorisation was evident.32 The terms ‘group’ and ‘race’ were interchanged, the simian origin of humans was expounded at length and the imminent racial extinction of the red and black races was announced.33 Yan Fu even perceived the power to colonise and open up new territories as indicative of the ‘inferiority or superiority of a people’s race’.34
The influence of these comments was considerable. One radical writer, for instance, used them to legitimise his own theory on the subhuman origins of the Manchus. The author, writing in the radical magazine Jiangsu, compared the difference that had existed between the first humans and the primates to the chasm separating civilised people from ‘inferior races of nomads’, and went on to urge the Chinese to distance themselves from these ‘inferior races’ and to join the ‘civilised nations’ in their advance towards the Pure Land (jile shijie, a translation of the Buddhist Sukhavati).35
The evolutionary theories that appeared during the last decades of the Qing were essentially non-Darwinian.36 The individual basis of evolution was replaced with the concept of qun. Darwin’s emphasis on the branching process of evolution was also discarded. Reformers and revolutionaries adopted a theory of linear evolution which closely resonated with the Lamarckian paradigm. This implied that evolution was seen to have two poles: progress and degeneration. ‘Evolution’ was translated as jinhua, or ‘transformation forwards’, its antipode ‘devolution’ as tuihua, meaning ‘transformation backwards’. Devolution faced evolution: both concepts rapidly became popular in the periodical press and beyond, particularly in the early twentieth century, an era marked by the dissolution of Confucianism and the disintegration of a millenarian imperial system. Anxiety over degeneration and racial extinction became the counterpoint of the cult of progress.37
Racial preservation
Within an evolutionary view of struggle for survival between different ‘races’, nationalism was seen to be a key to the future by many Chinese students in Japan during the first decade of the twentieth century.38 The number of students in that country increased steadily after 1900 to exceed 10,000 by 1906. Although most students initially grouped according to their province of origin, they were quick to develop a strong feeling of national belonging.39
The very term of ‘nationalism’ was borrowed from the Japanese: Minzuzhuyi, from the Japanese minzokushugi, exerted a lasting influence on the political terminology of the students.40 As we have seen, ‘race’ and ‘nation’ overlapped in the term minzu, whereas zhuyi meant ‘ism’.41 The constant juxtaposition of guo, ‘country’, to zhong, ‘race’, in set phrases like ‘love the race and love the country’ (aizhongaiguo), or ‘national boundaries and racial boundaries’ (guojiezhongjie) also contributed to portraying the ‘nation’ as something more than just a political arrangement: it was understood to be an organic entity based on fictive biological boundaries. The guo, as one nationalist explained, was not merely an expression of geography—it had a racial foundation.42 Even Yan Fu publicly declared that ‘the sentiment of patriotism is rooted in racial nature’.43
Racial survival lay at the root of the radical students’ concern with national cohesion. The first issue of the Tides of Zhejiang, a nationalist journal published in Japan by Chinese students, stated that ‘those who can assemble their own tribe into an organised body able to resist other groups will survive.’ In an era dominated by racial competition, the key to survival lay in the cohesive force of the group (qunli). Nationalism fostered unity, as it ‘erects borders against the outside and unites the group inside’.44 A contributor to the journal Yunnan attributed the decline of the ‘barbarian red and the savage black races’ to their ignorance of the racial principles of nationalism: a nation needed a ‘group strategy and group strength’ (quncequnli).45
World politics were expounded in terms of racial cohesion. India, it was explained, had been conquered by the ‘white race’ because its caste system inhibited racial homogeneity.46 Russians were a ‘crossbreed between Europeans and Asians and nothing else’, claimed another polemicist. A cranial analysis and a detailed racial investigation revealed that the Russians had Asian blood running in their veins. This racial mixture was responsible for Russia’s inability to cohere.47 The naval superiority of the United States, on the other hand, was ascribed to the racial quality of their people: were not the Americans an inch taller than the English?48
The overlap between race and nation spread to most of the writings of the young radicals. Education, for instance, was seen unanimously as a means of ‘uniting the race’ in its struggle for survival.49 An article entitled ‘Iron-Blooded Education’ blamed the traditional education system for having lost its ‘racial nature’ (zhongxing): excessive assimilation of ‘alien races’ had led to the dilution of Han blood. A new iron-blooded education would have to develop a ‘racial ideology’ (zhongzu sixiang).50 Ye Xuesheng echoed the educator’s concern by deploring the excessively universalistic orientation of Confucianism, which had to be replaced by ‘racial thought’.51 Another utopian proclaimed that physical education would prevent the ‘withering of the race’,52 whereas an enthusiastic reviewer praised physical exercise as beneficial to ‘the strengthening of the race and the protection of the country’.53 Medicine was also viewed as instrumental in China’s racial renaissance.54 Even gender equality, a major blow against Confucian patriarchy, was envisaged as a means of struggling against the ‘white race’: had not the Ming loyalist Gu Yanwu written that ‘husband and wife both have a share of responsibility for the fate of the country’?55
Despite the mounting tide of anti-Manchuism, the student journals continued to focus on the ‘white race’.56 A characteristic biography of Koxinga, the famous warrior-general who opposed the Manchus in the seventeenth century, concluded with a panegyric to his racial achievements:
The whites are the proud sons of heaven [a title normally reserved for ‘the descendants of the Yellow Emperor’]. They press on the blacks, and the blacks decline; they push down the reds and the reds are destroyed; they erase the browns and the browns die out. Now they display their devilish tricks and lie in wait for us yellows; they are on the watch for us the yellow Han race. Some centuries ago, Genghis Khan was the only one who could resist them. I disdain to worship him: the Mongol race was the public enemy of the Han race. I disdain to worship him, and only adore Zheng Chenggong [Koxinga]. He was able to make the Dutch, who launched European power, hold back and give way. He was able to make the Manchus, after they enslaved the Han race, engage in battle.57
The racial imagery of the radical students was not fundamentally different from the categories that had been developed by the reformers. There was a distinct continuity between the discourse of race as lineage to that of race as nation. People were categorised according to a strict racial hierarchy; history became a battlefield for contending races; politics was an arena for struggling nations. Tales of the ‘white peril’ were counterbalanced by fantasies of yellow domination: one contributor assessed the possibility of a ‘yellow peril’,58 another presented a translation from the Japanese about the imminent extinction of the ‘white race’ and the advent of a ‘yellow age of One World’ (datong).59
A sense of racial pride distinguished the revolutionaries from the reformers. Student writings consistently reported the humiliating treatment and derogatory pronouncements to which the Chinese were subjected. Europeans, it was revealed, claimed that the Chinese would soon degenerate into animals.60 The Japanese called them an ‘ignoble race’ (jianzhong) and ‘inferior animals’ (liedeng dongwu).61 Westerners laughed at the Chinese ‘pigtail’; Japanese referred to the Chinese as chanchanbotsu (‘chink’).62
The most notable event reported in the press was perhaps the students’ successful opposition to an ‘Exhibition of the Races of Man’ at Osaka in 1903. The exhibition initially planned to group the ‘inferior races’ of China, Korea, the Ryukyu Islands, India, Hawaii, Taiwan and Java under the heading of ‘raw barbarian races’ (shengfanzhong). Student outrage culminated in an official protest against the inclusion of China in the exhibition. ‘Although we Chinese are inferior, why should we have to be classified together with these six races?’, lamented one protester.63
The theme of humiliation still pervades nationalist writings to this day. It was part of a conscious effort to instil a sense of outrage in readers in the hope that they would join the effort at nationalist revival. Humiliation, real or imagined, implied a sense of collective responsibility: the causes of failure could be attributed to the population’s lack of effort or ability, not to external factors independent of human will. It was voluntaristic and directly opposed fatalism. Self-accusation went hand in hand with the rallying cry of nationalism. The nation was guilty of failure: ‘We Chinese are less than black slaves’ was a common expression. Humiliation fostered outrage and created a sense of resentment that was favourable to the nationalist message.
To boost the morale of the ‘race’, the radicals pointed to people who fared even less well than the Chinese. The Jews often compensated for the alleged humilation of the Han:
Alas! How could I falsely pity the Jew? I cannot but pity the Jew. I do not pity the Jew of the past, I pity the Jew of the future. Jew! Jew! Tiny reflection of the prospect of our own country. The old Jew goes, the new Jew comes, but the misery of the new Jew surpasses the misery of the old Jew. Alas, when I write these words, the tear stains want to father traces of blood [sic], the traces of blood want to dry up in black marks.64
Clearly, Chinese interest in the fate of the ‘stateless Jews’ was justified only if it could reflect the imaginary prospect of their own nation. In reality, students actually ‘warned themselves to refrain from looking down upon the Jews’.65 Contempt for Jews, and even a feeling of hatred towards them, remained vivid for decades. Wu Zelin, an outstanding anthropologist active in the 1930s, later recalled that he and his colleagues used to find the Jews ‘laughable, despicable, pitiable, admirable, enviable, and hateful’.66
The fact that racial ideas were more than just ‘a propaganda tactic’—as a leading expert on the revolutionary movement has maintained—becomes evident when one abandons the main body of political texts to venture into the short notes and anecdotes scattered throughout student publications.67 A qualitative analysis of such seemingly cursory material can provide invaluable insights into the revolutionaries’ ideas about ‘race’. An enduring interest in human evolution was reflected in short reports on new anthropological findings. A note entitled ‘A strange race of men’, for instance, described a tribe newly discovered in New Guinea. They were unable to walk, moved about by swinging from tree to tree, had atrophied feet and resembled apes.68 Another writer established statistics on the comparative height of different nationalities.69 One anecdote misinterpreted a traditional African rite of passage: ‘We know that if a black’s blood mixes with another race, his black colour will gradually diminish. They dislike the ugliness of blackness, and often smear their faces with white powder.’70 Many items briefly described how foreigners humiliated the Chinese. Westerners regarded the Chinese as an inferior and uneducated race of slaves. But even the ‘black slaves’ in the United States were educated: was this not a source of shame for the civilised Han?71
Racial ancestry
The myth of blood was sealed by elevating the figure of the Yellow Emperor to a national symbol. The Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) was a mythical figure thought to have reigned from 2697 to 2597 BC. He was hailed as the first ancestor (shizu) of the Han, and his portrait served as frontispiece in many nationalist publications.72 From mid-1903, the radical magazines started using dates based on the supposed year of birth of the Yellow Emperor. Liu Shipei’s (1884–1919) first published article advocated the introduction of a calendar in which year zero corresponded to the birth of the Yellow Emperor. ‘They [the reformers] see the preservation of religion [baojiao] as a handle, so they use the birth of Confucius as the starting date of the calendar; the purpose of our generation is the preservation of the race [baozhong], so we use the birth of the Yellow Emperor as a founding date.’73 Liu Shipei estimated that the Yellow Emperor had ascended the throne in his eleventh year. The Mongolian barbarians had destroyed the Song in 3993, the Manchus had captured Shanhaiguan in 4359, and the international expedition had entered Beijing in 4611: all were foreign races that had forcibly occupied the territory of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, the Han ‘race’. The Yellow Emperor remained a powerful figure for many decades. Despite the historian Gu Jiegang’s repeated criticism of the myth in the 1920s,74 he was still officially revered in 1941 as the founder of the nation and initiator of the ‘race’.75
Traditional ideas reinforced racial categories of analysis. Confucian values of filial piety and ancestor worship paved the way for the cult of the Yellow Emperor. Racial loyalty was perceived as an extension of lineage loyalty. The revolutionary Chen Tianhua (1875–1905) integrated these values in his influential pamphlets, read throughout the Yangzi valley:76 ‘As the saying goes, a man is not close to people of another family [xing, ‘surname’]. When two families fight each other, one surely assists one’s own family, one definitely does not help the foreign [wai, ‘exterior’] family. Common families all descend from one original family: the Han race is one big family. The Yellow Emperor is the great ancestor, all those who are not of the Han race are not the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, they are exterior families. One should definitely not assist them; if one assists them, one lacks a sense of ancestry.’77 Kinship terms were infused into a racial discourse that called forth emotional expressions usually reserved for close relatives: ‘Racial feelings begin at birth. For the members of one’s own race, there is surely mutual intimacy and love; for the members of a foreign race, there is surely mutual savagery and killing.’78
The young revolutionary Zou Rong also regretted the absence of a strong ‘racial consciousness’ (zhongxing) in China capable of uniting the population in their struggle against oppressors. Zou greeted the ‘peasants with weatherbeaten faces and mud-caked hands and feet’ as his genuine countrymen, the proud descendants of the Yellow Emperor.79 Race was the catalyst of national solidarity; it created clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders: ‘When men love their race, solidarity will arise internally, and what is outside will be repelled. Hence, to begin with, lineages were united and other lineages repelled; next, villages were united and other villages repelled; thereafter, tribes were united and other tribes were repelled; finally, the people of a country became united, and people of other countries were repelled. This is the general principle of the races of the world, and also a major reason why races engender history. I will demonstrate to my countrymen, to allow them to form their own impression, how our yellow race, the yellow race of which the Han race is part, and I refer you to the history of China, is able to unite itself and repel intruders.’80 It was the unchanging norm of race which distinguished ‘the kinsmen and fellow countrymen of our great Han race’ from ‘barbarians’,81 in particular the Manchus. The Manchus were to be excluded from the unsullied Han race: ‘What you, fellow countrymen, today call court, government or emperor are what we once called barbarians (of North, South, East or West), Hsiung-nu or Tartars. These tribes, living beyond the Shanhaikuan, were not by origin of the same race as the illustrious descendants of our Yellow Emperor. Their land is a foul land, they are of a furry race, their hearts are beasts’ hearts, their customs are the customs of the users of wool, their writing is different from ours, and their clothes are different from ours.’82
Classification further emphasised the original differences that existed between the Han and the Manchus. Zou divided the yellow race into two main branches, the ‘races of China’, including the Han, the Tibetan and the Cochinese races; and the ‘races of Siberia’, composed of the Mongolian, the Tungus and the Turkic peoples.83 The principal enemy was the ‘white race’:
The yellow and white races which are to be found on the globe have been endowed by nature with intelligence and fighting capacity. They are fundamentally incapable of giving way to each other. Hence, glowering and poised for the fight, they have engaged in battle in the world of evolution, the great arena where strength and intelligence have clashed since earliest times, the great theatre where for so long natural selection and progress have been played out.84
Racial origins
The revolutionaries differed in their interpretation of human origins. Liu Yazi, for instance, believed that each race had its own origin.85 Most, however, portrayed the Yellow Emperor as the progenitor of the Han.
One particular line of thought associated the Yellow Emperor with Westerners. A group of scholars concerned with protecting the country’s heritage, often referred to as the National Essence circle from the name of the Journal of National Essence (Guocui xuebao) which they established in 1905, borrowed extensively from the historian Terrien de Lacouperie to corroborate the belief in a common origin between Europeans and Chinese. As noted in the preceding chapter, key sections of the Western Origins of the Early Chinese Civilisation were eventually translated by Jiang Zhiyou and published between October 1903 and January 1905 in Liang Qichao’s New People’s Journal.86
In his Western Origins of the Early Chinese Civilisation, Lacouperie had put forward a theory on the derivative nature of the ‘Chinese race’:87 a small number of families in possession of a comparatively advanced civilisation arrived in China around the twenty-third century BC. These immigrants were the Bak Sings, who had originated in the vicinity of Elam and Babylonia and were directly connected with the Sumero-Akkadians. The Bak Sings were headed by the Yellow Emperor, whose name was similar to Kudur Nakhunti, the generic title of the kings of Susiana. The Yellow Emperor led his people to the south-west of present-day Gansu, where he eventually founded the Chinese Kingdom. The Baks were initially hemmed in by native states inhabited by the limin, or black-headed people, but these were gradually forced into submission by conquest and intermarriage until the eventual establishment of a Chinese dominion on both sides of the Yellow River.
Terrien de Lacouperie’s hypothesis about the Western origins of the Chinese was introduced in the first issue of the Journal of National Essence. This periodical was dedicated to the preservation of the essence (guocui) of Chinese civilisation, which was thought to be threatened with extinction. For the National Essence group, the Yellow Emperor represented the Chinese race, but it was underlined that ‘the race did not start with the Yellow Emperor’.88 Huang Jie, a key figure of the National Essence group, introduced Lacouperie in his ‘Yellow History’ and identified the Yellow Emperor as the progenitor of the race, an offshoot of Western stock.89
Zhang Binglin was one of the more complex figures among the nationalists.90 His philosophical approach, inspired mainly by Yogacara Buddhism and Daoism, questioned Western notions such as progress and social evolution. As a politically engaged intellectual, one of his main contributions was a nationalist vision expressed in terms of blood and soil. It should be emphasised, however, that racial ideas were but one aspect in a very complex body of work, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this book. Until 1898, Zhang’s overriding concern was the confrontation between what he considered to be ‘superior races’, namely the ‘white race’ and the ‘yellow race’.91 Zhang interpreted Europe as another Middle Kingdom. The racial equivalence of Chinese and Western civilisation was supported by Terrien de Lacouperie’s theory of a common origin in the ancient Near East.92 In convergence with Lacouperie, Zhang argued that humanity had originated from one race, but he inverted the usual perspective by suggesting that the original ‘race’ had been yellow and had migrated to China under the Yellow Emperor. Zhang’s perspective underlined the organic continuity of the ‘yellow race’ and pointed to the derivative nature of the ‘white race’. The white race was as virtuous, intelligent and skilled as the yellow race: had not the ancients called Rome the Great Qin (Daqin)?93
Zhang’s concept of race was based on the traditional distinction between the civilised (wen) and the uncultured (ye). Both the white and the yellow races were surrounded by barbarian tribes. He compared the backward tribes within China to the degenerate ‘races’ beyond its borders.94 The contrast between civilised Han and untamed Rong, derived from the Spring and Autumn Annals, was woven into Zhang’s personal theory of evolution.95 Zhang opposed culturally evolved humans (ren) to biologically degenerated animals (shou). Racial science was blended with traditional imagery: ‘The size of blood vessels is big only in animals, whereas the facial angle is only high among raw barbarians; this is what civilised races have in common.’96 Barbarian tribes, unlike the civilised yellow and white races, were the biological descendants of lower species: the Di had been generated by dogs, and the Jiang could trace their ancestry back to sheep.97
Zhang’s strong interest in the Yogacara concept of man led him to adopt an evolutionary theory that emphasised the innate tendency of people to be morally good as well as evil. Refuting the unilinear approach of popular Lamarckism, he viewed evolution as a malleable phenomenon capable of both reversals and advances. Zhang admitted that all people had originally evolved from primates, but claimed that from the outset they had been unequal.
Four processes of increased differentiation determined the degree of evolution: ‘Environmental differentiation made the skin colour change, sexual differentiation made the skeleton change, social differentiation made the customs change, contractual differentiation made the language change.’ Race and culture were seen as mutually dependent in this process of transformation. ‘Differences between tribes exist as a result of the time of civilisation, differences between civilised people and barbarians exist as a result of a cultured or uncouth nature.’ Cultural degeneracy would have its biological consequences: ‘People who are indolent in the use of their intelligence will waste away and become macaques and long-tailed monkeys.’98
Racial nationalism
The leading group of nationalists was the Tongmenghui, founded by Sun Yatsen in 1905.99 Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) was considered the leader of the revolution in 1911. He was the first head of the Guomindang, a political party established in Hawaii in 1894, and is known to this day as the ‘father of the nation’. His ideas would have a lasting influence on Chinese politics, and this section will briefly consider his principle of racial nationalism (minzuzhuyi), since it was adopted as official policy under the Guomindang. Racial nationalism was one of the ‘Three Principles of the People’ (sanminzhuyi) that Sun elaborated throughout his life. The Three Principles embodied the programme of the national government after 1911, and their importance is reflected in the fact that they were even adopted as the title of the national anthem of the Republic of China.
As one historian of the Three Principles has argued, ‘Sun Yat-sen made his appeal to an emerging national consciousness, strongest in its racial form of prejudice against foreigners; he appealed also to fear.’100 In line with other revolutionaries both at home and abroad, Sun claimed that only nationalism could forestall racial destruction. This idea was shared, for instance, with the Italian fascists. As A. James Gregor has shown, nationalists in China and in Italy used a standard biological conception of ‘race’, promoted mass mobilisation of the national community and were hostile to both individualism and cosmopolitanism.101
Sun Yatsen, in common with most reformers and radical students in China, portrayed the Han as a pure biological entity:
Considering the law of survival of ancient and modern races, if we want to save China and to preserve the Chinese race, we must certainly promote Nationalism. To make this principle luminous for China’s salvation, we must first understand it clearly. The Chinese race totals four hundred million people; of mingled races there are only a few million Mongolians, a million or so Manchus, a few million Tibetans, and over a million Mohammedan Turks. These alien races do not number altogether more than ten million, so that, for the most part, the Chinese people are of the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common language, common religion, and common customs—a single, pure race.102
Sun’s worldview—one shared by many political activists in China—was dominated by the idea of a confrontation between the yellow and the white races.103 In unison with the reformers, Sun declared that:
Mankind is divided first into the five main races—white, black, red, yellow, brown. Dividing further, we have many sub-races, as the Asiatic races—Mongolian, Malay, Japanese, Manchurian and Chinese. The forces which developed these races were, in general, natural forces, but when we try to analyse them we find they are very complex. The greatest force is common blood. Chinese belong to the yellow race because they come from the blood stock of the yellow race. The blood of ancestors is transmitted by heredity down through the race, making blood kinship a powerful force.104
Sun Yatsen’s writings were not particularly original, but they had a lasting political influence. His principle of racial nationalism expressed in simple terms the racial theories prevalent among the revolutionaries and embodied the main strains of thought described in the last two chapters.
In contrast to the reformers, who expressed their ideas of social and political change in a framework still dominated by references to the past, the nationalists successfully broke away from the Confucian tradition. They elaborated a racial theory that focused narrowly on the Han, who were pictured as a perennial biological unit engendered by a mythological ancestor. Until 1915, however, the nationalist vision of blood and soil remained confined to the political arena. With the New Culture Movement, racial theories would reach a much wider audience, as we see in the next two chapters.