Kang Yu-wei
Template:K'ang Youwei table
K'ang Youwei (Chinese: 康有為; March 19, 1858–March 31, 1927), born in Foshan, Guangdong, was a Chinese scholar and political reformist. He called for an end to property and the family in the interest of Chinese nationalism (though in the far future). Due to his desire to end the traditional Chinese family structure, he is regarded as an advocate for women's rights in China. [1]
K'ang portrayed Confucius as a reformer and not a reactionary. K'ang even argued that the rediscovered versions of the Confucian classics were a forgery, in order to bolster his claims. K'ang was a strong believer in constitutional monarchy and wanted to remodel the country after Meiji Japan. These ideas angered his colleagues in the scholarly class who regarded him as a heretic.
He was a mentor of Liang Qichao, and the two of them participated in the Hundred Days' Reform. Both fled abroad after Cixi's palace coup.
The Dowager Empress ordered him executed by the method of ling chi or "death by a thousand cuts", and he fled to Japan. K'ang and Liang, who together organized the Protect the Emperor Society, travelled throughout the Chinese diaspora promoting constitutional monarchy and competing against Sun Yat-sen's Revive China Society and Revolutionary Alliance for funds and converts.
After China became a republic in 1912, he remained an advocate of constitutional monarchy and, for this aim, he launched a failed coup d'état in 1917. General Zhang Xun and his queue-wearing soldiers occupied Beijing and declared the restoration of Puyi on July 1. The affair was a huge miscalculation as the nation was very anti-monarchist. Kang became suspicious that Zhang did not care for constitutionalism and was merely using the restoration to become the power behind the throne. He abandoned the mission and fled to the US legation. On July 12, Duan Qirui easily took the city.
K'ang's reputation serves as an important barometer for political attitudes of his time. In the span of less than twenty years, he went from being regarded as an iconoclastic radical to an anachronistic pariah without significantly modifying his ideology.
K'ang was poisoned in the city of Qingdao, Shandong in 1927. He was 69.
K'ang's daughter, Kang Tongbi (康同壁) was a student at Barnard College.
Da Tong Shu
The most well-known, and probably controversial, work of K'ang Youwei was the Da Tong Shu (大同書). (It's difficult to translate the title from the original Chinese. The title of this book derives from the name of a utopian society imagined by Confucius, although it literally means "The Book of Great Unity.") The ideas of this books appeared in his lecture notes since 1884, and encouraged by his students he worked on this book for the next two decades but it wasn't until his exile in India that he finished the first draft. The first two chapters of the book was published in Japan in the 1910's but it wasn't published in its entirety until 1935, about seven years after his death. In it, K'ang propose a utopain future world that will be free of political boundaries, ruled by one central government but under democratic rule. In his scheme, the world will be split into rectangular administrative districts which will be self-governing under a direct democracy (although oddly enough still loyal to a central world government).
Looking from the point that the institution of the family, in the form that has been practiced by society since the beginning of time, is a great cause of strife, Kang hoped it will be affectively abolished. Replacing the family will be state-run institutions, such as womb-teaching institutions, nurseries and schools. Marriage will be replaced by by one-year contracts between a woman and a man, as Kang saw the current form of marriage in which a woman is trapped in marriage for a lifetime to be too oppressive. Kang believed in the equality between man and women and saw that there should be no social barrier barring women from doing whatever men can do. Looking from this point of view, Kang also advocated the idea that homosexuality should be permitted, as presumably there are no differences between love between man and woman and between man and man.
Kang saw capitalism as an inherently evil system and believed that government should establish socialist institutions to overlook the welfare of each individual. At one point he even advocated that government adopt the methods of "communism," and although it is debated what Kang meant by this term, he was probably one of the first advocates of Western communism in China. In this spirit, in addition to establishing government nurseries and schools to replace the institution of the family, he also saw government-run retirement homes for the elderly. It is debated whether or not Kang's socialist ideas were inspired more than Western thought or traditional Confucian ideals. Lawrence G. Thompsom believes that his socialism was based on more traditional Eastern ideals, as his work is permeated with the Confucian ideal of ren, or humanity. However, he also pointed out a reference by Kang to Fourier, and certain Chinese scholars believed that Kang's socialist ideals were influenced by Western intellectuals after his exile in 1898.
Notable in Kang's Da Tong Shu was his enthusiasm and belief in bettering humanity by the use of technology. He was unusual for a Confucian scholar during his time in that he believed that Western technological progress have a central role in saving humanity. While many scholars of his time continued to hang on to the belief that Western technology should only be adopted to defend China against the West, he seemed to full-heartedly embrace the modern idea that technology is integral in advancing mankind. Before anything of this scale has been built, he foresaw a global telegraphic and telephone network which connected everyone to everyone else. He also believed that technology will reduce human labor, to the point where each individual will only need to work 3 to 4 hours each day, a prediction that will be repeated by the most optimistic futurists later in the century.
When the book was first published it was received with mixed reactions. Because of Kang's support for the Gaungxu Emperor, he is seen as a reactionary by many by Chinese intellectuals. People of this camp believed that Kang's book was an elaborate joke, and was merely acting as an apologist for the emperor as to what utopian paradise could have developed if the Qing dynasty as not overthrown. Others believe that Kang was a bold and daring proto-Communist who advocated modern Western socialism and communism. Amongst those in the second school was Mao Zedong, who adored Kang Youwei and admired his socialist ideals in the Da Tong Shu. Modern Chinese scholars nowadays more often take the view that Kang was an important advocate for Chinese socialism, and despite the controversy Da Tong Shu still remained popular. A Beijing publisher even put it in a list of the "100 Most Influential Book in Chinese History."
Reference
- Jung-pang Lo. K'ang Yu-wei: A Biography and a Symposium. Library of Congress number 66-20911.
See M. E. Cameron, The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (1931, repr. 1963); biography ed. and tr. by Lo Jung-pang (1967).
- CHANG HAO: Intellectual change and the reform movement, 1890-1898, in: Twitchett, Denis and Fairbanks, John (ed.): The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 11, Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, Part 2 (1980). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 274-338, esp. 283-300, 318-338.
- FRANKE, WOLFGANG: Die staatspolitischen Reformversuche K’ang Yu-weis und seiner Schule (1935). (Ph.D.).
- HOWARD, RICHARD C., “K’ang Yu-wei (1858-1927): His Intellectual Background and Early Thought”, in A.F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (eds.): Confucian Personalities. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962, pp. 294-316 and 382-386 (notes).
- HOWARD, RICHARD C.: The early life and thought of K’ang Yu-wei, 1858-1927 (1972). Ph.D. Columbia University.
- HSIAO, KUNG-CHUAN: A Modern China and a New World – K`ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927 (1975). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
- KARL, REBECCA and ZARROW, PETER (Hg.): Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period – Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China (2002). Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, esp. pp. 24-33.
- TENG, SSU-YÜ and FAIRBANK, JOHN K.: China’s response to the West – a documentary survey 1839-1923 (1954, 1979). Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 147-164 (chapter about Kang Youwei).
- THOMPSON, LAURENCE G.: Ta t´ung shu: the one-world philosophy of K`ang Yu-wei (1958). London: George Allen and Unwin, esp. pp. 37-57.
- ZARROW, PETER: “The rise of Confucian radicalism”, in Zarrow, Peter: China in war and revolution, 1895-1949 (New York: Routledge), 2005, 12-29.
Kang youwei Grandson : Kang Ta siang (Live in Indonesia)
See Also
- Gongche Shangshu movement
External links
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de:Kang Youwei fr:Kang Youwei it:Kang Youwei lt:Kang Youwei ja:康有為 zh:康有为
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