Organizer: Joyce A. Madancy, Union College
Chair and Discussant: Roger Thompson, Cambridge University
This panel explores the contributions of voluntary associations and public institutions to new and evolving conceptions of nationalism and public life among urban elites in late Qing/early Republican China. The papers address this common theme by analyzing the functions, impact and constituencies of particular elite organizations in the cities of Fuzhou and Harbin.
More specifically, Ryan Dunch discusses the evolution of notions of citizenship by closely analyzing the popularity and the surprisingly diverse membership of Fuzhou's YMCA from its founding in 1907 to 1922. Joyce Madancy's paper seeks to expand current definitions of the public sphere by detailing the close relationship of the elite-led Anti-Opium Society in Fuzhou with the central Chinese state, the British government, and various official bureaucracies in the province of Fujian. Focusing on the founding and development of the East China School, the first private school in the city, James Carter rounds out the panel by demonstrating the close relationship between educational activism and the assertion of national identity in the contested setting of Harbin.
By examining specific public associations and institutions in the cities of Harbin and Fuzhou before and after the 1911 Revolution, the papers recognize the significance of that political upheaval, but also emphasize the importance of scholarly attention to the continued development of elite activism and nationalistic sentiment across the revolutionary divide.
Citizenship and Service in the Early Republican City: The YMCA in Fuzhou,
1907-1922
Ryan Dunch, Calvin College
The YMCA in China has usually been examined as a national movement and associated with its social reform efforts in the 1920s and later. This paper instead examines the role of the YMCA in one city, Fuzhou, from its founding in 1907 to the height of its early popularity in 1922. While it was a Protestant organization, membership in the YMCA was not confined to Protestants, and the great majority of its members were not Christian. The local YMCA associations across China were comparable to other voluntary associations in Chinese cities in that each was managed by an all-Chinese elected Board of Directors, and each raised the funds for its operating expenses and activities locally.
In Fuzhou before 1922, the YMCA was unique both in the social spectrum represented in its membership and in the physical facilities it offered. It enjoyed a high level of support from local society. Extant issues of the Chinese-language periodical of the Fuzhou YMCA reveal that its members included not only men with links to Protestant institutions, such as church workers, physicians trained in mission hospitals, and mission school graduates, but also prominent citizens from non-Protestant backgrounds, including scholars and educators, politicians, veteran revolutionaries, bureaucrats, and leading bankers and industrialists. This paper examines the popularity of the YMCA in Fuzhou society, placing its growth in the context of the development of new forms of public life and new concepts of public responsibility in the early years of the Chinese republic.
Permeable Boundaries: The Fuzhou Anti-Opium Society and China's Public Sphere,
1906-1921
Joyce A. Madancy, Union College
Although the chronological and operational contours of China's late Qing/early Republican opium suppression campaign were determined by China's central authorities in conjunction with the British government, the success of the campaign depended in large part on elite-led reform groups headquartered in provincial urban centers. This paper discusses the evolution of one such reform group-the Fuzhou Anti-Opium Society-from 1906 to 1921.
The Society was organized by influential elites in spring 1906, and assumed extraordinary powers of investigation, arrest, and search and seizure. The Fuzhou Anti-Opium Society was one of the few opium reform societies which appeared before the official inauguration of China's nationwide opium prohibition movement in September 1906. But despite its early establishment and considerable autonomy, the Society's history and activities indicate the inadequacy of current definitions of the public sphere. It is my contention that the apparent independence of this elite-led voluntary organization did not represent the existence of an autonomous urban public sphere, but instead reflected the considerable moral and legal authority of the Chinese state.
Beijing encouraged elite activism and endorsed the formation of parallel bureaucracies-official and non-official-to handle this campaign. Suppression continued after the 1911 Revolution, and the diminished role of the Fuzhou Society in the early Republic reflected a change in central state and provincial priorities from the gradual prohibition of opium consumption to the immediate elimination of poppy cultivation.
Building Modern China, Claiming Modern Harbin
James H. Carter, Yale University
The 1910s in Harbin were shaped by two revolutions: the 1911 Revolution. which overthrew China's Qing Dynasty, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The influence of these two events on the city's Chinese community was profound. While the first seemed to point to the creation of a modern Chinese nation, the second heralded the demise of Russian dominion over this northernmost city in China.
The Chinese elites of the city responded to these changes by creating civil, governmental, educational, military, and religious institutions that were designed to develop and strengthen Chinese national identity in Harbin. This emerging national identity was to be put to immediate use as these Chinese elites attempted to assert Harbin as a Chinese city, as opposed to a Russian one.
Exemplary of these institutions is the East China School (Donghua Xuexiao). Established in 1918 by a former Qing bureaucrat, the school was the first private school to be founded in post-revolutionary Harbin. Deng Jiemin, the school's founder, had been educated at Nankai School in Tianjin and at Tokyo's Waseda University; and his modern curriculum included mathematics, science, English, and emphasized Chinese nationalism. The school sponsored weekly patriotic speeches presented in a local public park.
By looking at the contributions, supporters, and curriculum of the East China School, this paper will examine the mechanics by which Chinese elites in a city with a large foreign presence set about to strengthen Chinese identity there and to claim the city as part of China.