Peking University: Chinese Scholarship and Intellectuals, 1898 1937 (review) Margherita Zanasi China Review International, Volume 15, Number 1, 2008, pp. 137-140 (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cri.0.0129 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/261584 No institutional affiliation (28 Jan 2019 19:28 GMT)
Reviews 137 Xiaoqing Diana Lin. Peking University: Chinese Scholarship and Intellectuals, 1898 1937. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. xi, 232 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 0-7914-6322-2. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 0-7914-6322-2. 2009 by University of Hawai i Press In her book on Peking University, Xiaoqing Diana Lin analyzes the early history (1898 1937) of the most famous academic institution in modern China. As her book demonstrates, since its establishment in 1898, Peking University has played an important role in China s intellectual life, struggling to define new relationships between education and the state as well as between Western and Chinese education. Established by the Qing government as part of the imperial bureaucracy in response to China s defeat in the Sino-Japanese war, Peking University was intended to strengthen the Chinese empire by introducing Western knowledge while reaffirming the empire s neo-confucian identity. In its early stages, therefore, Peking University embodied Zhang Zhidong s self-strengthening formula of zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong (Chinese learning as principle, and Western learning as application). Zhang Zhidong, in fact, was responsible for designing the university s first long-lasting curriculum in 1903, following a series of short-lived curricula drafted by Liang Qichao, Sun Jianai, and Zhang Baixi. As the university gradually gained its independence from the state due to the demise of the examination system, the fall of the Qing empire, and the political uncertainties of the early Republican period its relationship with state and politics became more complex. During his years as chancellor of Peking University (1917 1926), Cai Yuanpei resolutely affirmed the university s independence from the state. Cai s protection of the university s independence was not just a reaction against the marriage of Confucianism and politics that had characterized the imperial period, a connection most famously embodied by the examination system. It was also a product of Cai s vision of modern education. Influenced by the German model Cai had studied in Germany he viewed modern education as a core of moral and theoretical knowledge (p. 48) detached from immediate political and social utilitarian goals. Although Cai still wanted Peking University to be an important tool for the modernization and ultimate regeneration of the Chinese nation, he aimed at achieving these self-strengthening goals by developing a new form of knowledge, educating new citizens, and preparing them for self-government. As Lin explains, Instead of direct participation in the government, [Cai] actively sought to fashion nationalism from the realm of education, severing the traditional connection between education and politics (p. 48). The first steps of Peking University, therefore, exemplify two of the main issues that were to characterize most of its life in the Republican years: the complex relationship between the university on the one hand, and on the other the
138 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, 2008 state and China s political life at large. These early years also reveal a second important theme: the struggle to find a balance between the introduction of Western intellectual trends and what many perceived as the preservation of Chinese identity (an idea as controversial at the time as it is today). While Zhang Zidong s curriculum kept Western knowledge confined to what he perceived as practical sciences such as law and political science while leaving humanities as the exclusive realm of Chinese learning, Cai Yuanpei and his successors strove to integrate both forms of knowledge. From this point on, the faculty at Peking University attempted to incorporate traditional Chinese scholarship into a more universal discourse on learning (p. 65). The goal was to develop a new universal form of knowledge that combined both methodologies (Western and Chinese) while ultimately transcending both of them. Historicism and evolution theories became, for example, the main trends in the university s new historical studies and important tools for the integration of Chinese learning into the new universal intellectual discourse (see especially chap. 4). Lin s analysis of the thought of Peking University s faculty reveals the extent to which, in these years, Chinese intellectuals filtered Western ideas through familiar philosophical paradigms and used them to address very local (that is, culturally and historically contingent) concerns. For example, faculty such as Cai Yuanpei, Liang Shuming, and Xiong Shili debated the relationship of learning and morality, a central relationship in the now discredited neo-confucian discourse (chap. 4). In doing so these scholars, not only transcended the Chinese-Western dichotomy and situated Chinese learning in a more universal framework (pp. 86 87) by combining elements of Buddhist, Confucian, and Western evolutionary and historicist traditions, they also attempted a redefinition of notions such as humaneness that had been central to the imperial neo-confucian philosophical discourse. At the same time, such scholars as Yu Jiaxi and Meng Sen adopted a textual exegesis approach, reminiscent of Qing textual analysis, as a tool for reinterpreting evolutionary and historicist Western methodologies, thus creating a uniquely Chinese historical discourse, a development defined by Hu Shi as the most important contribution to modernizing Chinese historiography (p. 100). The strength of this book lies not just in the author s remarkable knowledge of the work of the main scholars who shaped intellectual life at Peking University, but also in her choice to focus on an educational institution rather than an individual scholar. By combining intellectual and institutional histories, Xiaoqing Diana Lin is able to achieve two main goals. She is able to create a landscape of intellectual trends, thus highlighting the variety and complexity of the Chinese response to Western social sciences and scholarship in general. Even within the main parameters that defined scholarship at Peking University characterized by historicism, evolution, and scientific methods, often in an eclectic combination with textual exegesis... and European metaphysics (p. 2) Peking University s faculty devised a wide range of solutions to the problem of integration of Western and Chinese learning.
Reviews 139 Lin is also able to show how the intellectual trends of that period influenced higher education and attempted (unsuccessfully, in her view) to shape society through its educational curriculum. Cai Yuanpei, because of his refusal to set direct utilitarian goals for China s new higher education, downplayed the study of such disciplines as law and political sciences. In doing so, according to Lin, Cai failed to make the university a viable tool for the training of modern professions. Cai s approach was reversed by his successor, Jiang Menglin. Jiang had studied in the United States and was deeply influenced by this country s educational system. During his years as president of Peking University (1930 1937), Jiang pushed for academic specialization, departing from Cai s humanistic generalism. Jiang also brought a renewed attention to law, political sciences, and education. This attempt was, however, thwarted by the socioeconomic situation of the country that hindered the development of modern professions in society (chap. 7). In spite of its many merits, this book remains narrowly focused on Peking University and its faculty, leaving to the reader the task of connecting the ideas of the university s influential scholars, so lucidly introduced by Lin, to wider historical themes. For example, Lin never explains how the experience of Peking University contributes to our understanding of the derivative nature of Chinese intellectual and educational discourse, in spite of the glaring similarities with the efforts of Indian intellectuals to respond to Western intellectual trends described by Partha Chatterjee (Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993]). It is not obligatory for every book on Chinese intellectual history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to connect with the discourse on nationalism in the postcolonial world at large. The complete absence of reference to a wider discussion on nationalism and national identity, however, is especially puzzling in the light of Lin s remarks in the book s conclusion. Lin argues that the main failure of Peking University was the treatment of Western learning as an agent of change. The introduction of Western knowledge was always motivated by the desire for change, to bring about a new social, cultural and political reality in China (p. 181). For this reason [n]ationalistic causes... would affect university curricula and the research methodology of faculty members and generate wide swings of disciplinary rationales... when the desired social outcome was not achieved (p. 181). In her conclusion, therefore, Lin declares the central importance of nationalism on the development of Peking University; a theme that, while repeatedly touched upon throughout the book, is never explored in depth. While reading the book, other questions arise that remain unanswered. For example, what kind of interaction did Peking University faculty have with foreign scholars working in China at the time or with other emerging Chinese universities? How did the university s intellectual environment support the development of the May Fourth Movement? In spite of the admirable desire of the author to make this study of Peking University something more than a footnote to the movement, this momentous
140 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, 2008 connection deserved to be at least partially addressed. The failure to place Peking University into a wider historical discussion also leads to an almost perfunctory overview of the university under the Nanjing government (1927 1937). In this section we find hints of a return of government influence over the university, an issue that, however, Lin leaves unexplored. In general, although the author declares that the history of Peking University in the twentieth century both paralleled and shaped the development of Chinese intellectual culture (p. 179), she never explains the university s interaction with wider intellectual (political or social) trends. This shortcoming, however, is amply compensated for by the author's skillful presentation of the wide range of scholars and ideas represented at Peking University in late Qing and Republican China. Margherita Zanasi Margherita Zanasi is an associate professor of modern Chinese history at Louisiana State University. She specializes in the intellectual and economic history of the late Qing and Republican periods.