Zheng's views on education appeared privately, in Sun Yatsen's letter to Li Hongzhang in 1894, and publicly, in the Gongju petition of
1895. (I do not mean that these proposals were exclusive to Zheng. But until the emergence of Liang Qichao as a propagandist, Zheng was their most influential and coherent exponent.) Sun and Zheng came from the same county in Guangdong, and Zheng's literary influence was complemented by personal acquaintance. Sun had lived under British administration in Hong Kong, and like Zheng in Vietnam was impressed by the orderliness and prosperity
30
of colonial rule. In a letter to Li Hongzhang, Sun reiterated Zheng's points, adducing both the West and the Three Dynasties as evidence of the benefits of widespread schooling, and pointed out the need for more schools to avoid the present wastage of talent and for more specialization to pro vide training for civil, military, agricultural, technical and commercial
29. See Snow, Red Star over China, p. 156>Richard, Forty-five Years in China, p. 257.
30. See Key Ray Chong, 'Cheng Kuan-ying (1841-1920)', for the relationship between the two men.
occupations. The only hint of Sun’s revolutionary fervour is his eulogy of the heroic temper, which, though in a commoner's breast, takes the charge of the empire on itself, and finds a way to achievement with or without
31
government recognition. Li did not heed Sun's plea that talents of this
type should be encouraged, and a few months later, the Xin Zhong Hui was set up in Honolulu.
Arguments for change were given added force by China's humiliating losses in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, which made plain the inadequacy
of previous attempts at self-strengthening. Hitherto, spokesmen for funda
mental change had come mainly from the fringes of Chinese society, from new
occupations - journalist, compradore, diplomat. The defeat brought on to
the political stage a body of disaffected scholars who disregarded the pro hibition on private discussion of government affairs and sought to replace the present unsatisfactory policies and office-holders with their own men
and plans. Looked at in one way, their actions were those of an outside
group - scholars out of office - seeking a voice in policy matters controlled
by insiders - high metropolitan and regional officials. From another
perspective, however, they can be seen as acting for the self-preservation of the scholar-gentry as a whole in claiming as part of their rightful com petence all expertise in government, including those skills and policies
at present monopolized by Western-oriented Chinese in the treaty-ports. The
reformers did not regard the emerging bourgeoisie as natural allies against
die-hard officials on the opposite side; Liang Qichao expressed consider
able scorn for those Westernized Chinese without a background in Chinese 32
learning who mixed with foreigners and picked up their habits.
The Gongju petition was presented to the throne by candidates gathered from all over the country to take the metropolitan examination of 1895.
It was drafted by the iconoclastic Cantonese scholar Kang Youwei and signed
by several hundred other candidates. The petition asked for changes in the
31. Sun Yat-sen, Letter to Li Hongzhang, in Shu (ed.),
Ziliao
, pp. 1014-15.32. Liang Qichao, 'Lun xuexiao: keju',
Shiwu
bao, VIII (Taibei, 1967C1896□, L483□. See also Chen Chi-yun, 'Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's "Missionary
Education"; a Case Study of Missionary Influence on the Reformers',
method of selecting talent for office and for extension of learning to peasants, craftsmen, and merchants ('talent' had by now lost its original exclusive connection with Confucian scholarship and government service.) These arguments are a simpler, more pointed version of those found in the Shcngshi weiijan. Kang’s concrete proposals are conservative, even anach
ronistic. He presumably hoped to propitiate the court and unite his fellow
scholars with a moderate programme, although in his unpublished
Da tong shu
he had envisaged a far more radically altered society. The Gongju petition
maintained the existing structure of state examinations fed by students from academies who received their basic education under private auspices.
Universal education was an optimistic afterthought: 'if large sums can
be raised by the government and solicited from the people, every village should set up schools, so that the children of the common people can all go to school and study the meaning of words for common objects and their derivations, painting, mathematics, Chinese and foreign geography, and ancient and modern history, and there will be a superabundance of talent'. The main part of the proposals concentrated on the replacement of the military examination system with examinations in technical subjects, to be prepared for in technical academies parallel to but separate from those teaching the classics.
The petition combines the structure of Western school systems with that of the three levels of the state examinations in the proposal that different grades of technical schools should be set up at the county, pro
vincial, and metropolitan levels. The curriculum was likewise a hybrid:
each student had to be as competent in one of the classics as he was in
his specialized field of study. The influence of Western schooling was
most evident in Kang's insistence that each stage should occupy a specified period of time, that quotas should be abolished (unlike Wang Tao, he felt
that the present examinations selected too few scholars, though he deplored the inappropriateness of the current criteria), and that degrees should be
given on the basis of examinations held in the schools. Reforms directed to
broadening the literary examinations and doing away with their empty 33
formalism were also suggested.
Over the next three years Kang's followers and their sympathizers propagated their reform programme in newly established journals, chief among which were the Shiwu bao ( ^ & ifl ) set up in Shanghai in 1896 with the assistance of Huang Zunxian, the
X
iangxue bao( Jfß (f ifk )
published from Changsha, and the isolated but hardy Zhixin bao ( ** &f\ ) in Macao, the only one of the three to survive the debacle of 1898. The Zhixin bao and Shiwu bao were similar in format and staffing, both being run by dis ciples of Kang's. Xu Qin, editor of the Zhixin b a o, published his most famous article, Zhongguo chuhai yi ( f $ lx ) in the Shiwu b a o . Both papers gave considerable space to translated articles on current affairs from the British and Japanese press. TheX
iangxue b a o, published in the interior, was less Western-oriented. Treading warily among the entrenched prejudices of Hunan scholars, it was at once more practical and more pedantic than its brothers, having a penchant for precedent and administration. It ran a question-and-answer section designed to put the new learning in a manageable perspective, preferably in a form suitable for essay competition. Some examples relating to education are: 'Q. The West has normal schools, and Japan took them as crucial to her reforms. Are
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