RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g DEBATE ON NATIONAL SALVATION: HO KAI VERSUS TSENG CHI-TSE CHIU LING-YEONG* (A lecture delivered to the Branch on 22nd June, 1970) In July 1886, Tseng Chi-tse the retiring Chinese Minister to Russia and Great Britain wrote a most controversial article which appeared in the January 1887 issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review in London under the title 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening'. This was before he left London for China.1 It is believed that this article was written under the guidance of Sir Halliday Macartney, Tseng's interpreter and political adviser. 2 In his article, Tseng tried to explain that the weakness of China at that time was due to her sleepiness and had nothing to do with her old age or physical deficiency. Tseng began by quoting contemporary China Hands' opinion concerning the Ch'ing Empire: There are times in the life of nations when they would appear to have exhausted their forces by the magnitude of efforts they had made to maintain their position in the endless struggle for existence; and from this, some have endeavoured to deduce the law that nations, like men, have each of them its infancy, its manhood, decline, and death. Melancholy and discouraging would be this doctrine could it be shown to be founded on any natural or inevitable law. Fortunately, however, there is no reason to believe it is. Nations have fallen from their high estate, some of them to disappear suddenly and altogether from the list of political entities, others to vanish after a more or less prolonged existence of impaired and ever-lessening vitality. Among the latter, until lately, it has been customary with Europeans to include China. Pointing to her magnificent system of canals silted up, the splendid fragments of now forgotten arts, the disparity between * Dr. Chiu is Lecturer in the Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 38 CHIU LING-YEONG power. However, she lacks a capable general to command this gigantic military force. To rely upon a tremendous number of soldiers without a brilliant commander is, in fact, unreliable... + The most authoritative comment on Tseng's article was from Sir Rutherford Alcock, the former British Minister to China. He gave his opinion in the April issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review, that China was not already awake, as Tseng had described in his work. He emphasized that the army and navy built up by Li Hung-chang could hardly be the equal of those of European powers. Alcock suggested that China must launch immediate political and financial reforms before she could quickly build up a strong and efficient army or navy. After the publication of Tseng's article, Charles Denby, United States' Minister to China, in his dispatch to the State Secretary, Thomas F. Bayard, included a copy of Tseng's article together with his personal comments. Denby thought all the points listed in Tseng's article had to wait for quite a long time before they could be smoothly carried out. Denby believed that China had to work very hard for centuries before she could win a decisive battle against any of the European powers. As long as China could not build her own railways, it was beyond her ability to do anything further; for Denby thought that railways were the most important thing, if China wanted to carry out political, economical and military reforms. Of all the comments and criticisms, none were as constructive and concrete as Ho Kai's. After Ho Kai read Tseng's work, which appeared in the China Mail in Hong Kong on 8 February 1887, he immediately wrote a lengthy article and had it published in the same paper on 16 February 1887. In his letter addressed to the editor, he said: I read with great interest in your issue of the 8th instant, a remarkable article on ‘China — the Sleep and Awakening' purporting to have been written by the Marquis Tseng, which will (as was there stated) 'appear in the forthcoming number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review.' I do not intend to write exactly a critical review of this truly 'remarkable' article, but I am resolved to take this early opportunity to offer a few humble words in season to the noble Marquis ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 22 RICHARD J. SMITH 11 Comparative studies on selected aspects of modernizing change in these two time periods would be illuminating. One might compare, for example, the aims and accomplishments of the Peking Tung-wen kuan (established in 1862) and the Bansho Shirabesho (established in 1858). On the former, see Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862-1874 (New York, 1967), 241-248; on the latter, consult Marius Jansen, "New Materials for the Intellectual History of Nineteenth-Century Japan," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 20 (1957), 569-582. On the use of Westerners in military affairs in Japan from 1853-1868, see Presseisen, 1-23; H. J. Jones, "Bakumatsu Foreign Employees," Monumenta Serica, 29.3 (Autumn, 1974). 12 Presseisen, chapter 1; Smith, , chapter 4. 13 Albert Craig, Chôshu in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 131-136, 201-203, etc.; Richard J. Smith, "Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Fenghuang-shan, 1864-1873,” Modern Asian Studies, 10.2 (1976). 14 Presseisen, 22-23. 15 See notes 7 and 8; also Hyman Kublin, "The 'Modern' Army of Early Meiji Japan," Far Eastern Quarterly, 9.1 (November, 1949), 24-26; Meron Medzini, French Policy in Japan during the Closing Years of the Tokugawa Regime (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 125-133. 16 For a discussion of Li's modernizing efforts, his extensive use of foreign assistance, and the obstacles he encountered, see S. Y. Teng and John K. Fairbank, China's Response to the West (New York, 1966), 111-112; K. C. Liu, “The Confucian as Patriot and Pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's Formative Years, 1823-1866,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30 (1970); Kenneth Folsom, Friends, Guests and Colleagues (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), 152-157; and K. C. Liu, “Li Hung-chang in Chihli,” in Albert Feuerwerker, et al., eds. Approaches to Modern Chinese History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967). 17 See, for example, Lord Charles Beresford, The Break-up of China (New York and London, 1899), 267-289, esp. 270-280; Major A. E. J. Cavendish, "The Armed Strength (?) of China," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 42 (June, 1898), 709-710, 713-714, 717; Richard J. Smith, "Chinese Military Institutions in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1850-1860," Journal of Asian History, 8.2 (1974), 127. 18 See Smith, "Foreign-Training," 212; Cavendish, 709-710, 713-714. 19 See, for example, Cavendish, esp. 720-723; Captain W. R. E. Gill, "The Chinese Army," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 24 (1881), 371-377; Chester Holcombe, China's Past and Future (London, 1904), 81-88; "The Chinese and Japanese Armies," reprinted from the Army and Navy Gazette in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, 15 (1894), 1258; James Scott, "The Chinese Brave," Asiatic Quarterly Review, 1 (1886), esp. 240; etc. 20 See Smith, , Chapters 8 and 9. 21 See Yang-wu yün-tung cited in Smith, "Foreign-Training," 218. On Chinese resistance to foreign instructors and officers, see ibid.; also Cavendish, 720-721. 22 See, for example, L. C. Arlington, Through the Dragon's Eyes (London, 1931), 18; Stanley Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, 1950), 478-481; John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839-1895 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 65-78, 93-94, 163; Holcombe, 80-85, esp. 83. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 217 he testified that there was hardly a house in Victoria except the brothels - where he had not repeatedly been and where he was not known as a friend. See James Legge. "The Colony of Hong Kong", The China Review, op. cit., pp. 168-169. Unfortunately, these remarks were edited out of the reprint of this talk found in The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), op. cit. See n. 26 M5 The impact and importance of Legge's life as a Non-Conformist academic has been summarized in my article in Ching Feng, “The 'Failures' of James Legge's Fruitful Life for China', op. cit. Another more general point about dissenting churches should be made: in late nineteenth century Great Britain, the academic circles of academics who were dissenters appear to have functioned as a contrapuntal voice in the mainstream of English society. The publication of The British Quarterly became an organ for dissenting viewpoints which illustrates this point. Another factor involved in the influence of dissenting believers was the fact that many of the children of these people married into major families within English society. A perfect example is one of Legge's daughters from his first marriage, Eliza, who married a gentleman who later became the first Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Horatio Nelson Lay. See Lindsay Ride, op. cit., p. 9. C See the case of Dr. Wong Foon, London Missionary Society Archives. Letters from South China, dated April 12, 1856. Further discussion occurs in letters of October 12, 1859, April 14, 1860, and November 28, 1860. 47 Legge's opposition to opium and coolie trades, among other problems, was stated publicly in his address at the Hong Kong City Hall in 1872. See "The Colony of Hong Kong", The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., pp. 190-191. In 1870, Legge had joined his Chinese pastoral colleague Ho Jinshan in promoting a petition which opposed the newly legalized gambling opened by the Hong Kong government primarily for the sake of revenue. Over one thousand two hundred names, most of whom were Chinese, signed the petitions presented to the government on February 21st and March 6th, 1871. See Hong Kong Government Office, Colonial Office Records, CO129/149, 5, pp. 188-197 and 8, pp. 208-234. 100 See the letter addressed to James Legge by Sir W. G. Liddell, the appointed representative of Oxford University, dated February 27, 1875 (Bodleian Library archives). Liddell makes it clear to Legge in the letter that his Non-Conformist background should not be a source of turmoil if he were admitted to the University. Although the letter also includes the qualification that Legge's credentials indicate a person of high standing, the doubt in Liddell's mind about the character of anyone from a dissenting tradition is explicit. It may be the case, as Mary Dominica Legge claimed, that James Legge was the first non-Anglican professor admitted to Oxford after 1871, but I have not yet found a way to verify this. 69 R. F. Horton commented, however, that Prof. Legge's involvement with the Non-Conformist Union was minimal. See his comments in his text, An Autobiography (London: 1918). *0 Among those with whom Prof. Legge had some direct spiritual interaction was the famous Hegelian philosopher, T. H. Green. In a letter dated April 29 (no year, but probably 1879, when both men were on the provisional committee of Somerville College), Green responds to a lengthy rejoinder Prof. Legge had given to a book Green had written. Green had sent the letter because, apparently, the professor had treated him like an orthodox believer," and Green felt there was a sort of hypocrisy in allowing you to continue under that impression". The letter ends with Green politely defending his philosophical position, but also mirroring some sense of challenge to alter his views which must have been expressed by Prof. Legge. This letter is found 4 IL Page 240 Page 241 ================================================================================