CHINA AND INNER ASIA SESSION 16

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Born in a late nineteenth-century universe of Neo-Confucian learning and civil service examinations, China’s transitional intellectuals lived as adults in a world transformed by global capitalism, mechanized industry, cosmopolitan knowledge cultures, and nationalist and revolutionary politics. This panel explores how these men used strategies of professionalization, commercialization, and cultural production to negotiate this transition and how their choices shaped the social and cultural landscape of the early twentieth century.

Our papers focus on education and commercial publishing, two longstanding preserves of literati activity that were transformed in the early twentieth century by nation building and industrialization. These fields allowed intellectuals to make a living with their minds and influence public culture, as had previous generations of literati. But intensified market competition and state rationality encouraged new forms of specialization and professionalization. Market forces and nationalist mobilization also meant education and publishing were increasingly geared toward the mass public. Each paper illustrates how distinct groups of transitional intellectuals confronted these pressures and opportunities.

These papers also capture key dynamics of the late Qing and early Republican social landscape. Elites moved fluidly among and operated simultaneously within academic, commercial, and publishing sectors in order to maximize their prestige, authority, influence, and resources. These movements suggest that the boundaries, hierarchies, and norms of these fields were still under negotiation. The papers capture their processes of change and consolidation during the early twentieth century.

Our discussant, Rebecca Karl, will present opening comments to set the panel’s context and problematic and will consider in her critical response the socio-economic, political, and cultural-intellectual dimensions of these historical changes.

From Old Literati to Modern Educators: Teachers’ Schools and Professionalization of Education in Early 20th-Century China
Xiaoping Cong, University of Houston
The 1904 education reform was the first effort to transform the enormous imperial educational system into a Western-style school system. Among the problems faced by the reformers in the late Qing court was what to do with dynastic schools’ educational officials, who had been marginalized in the bureaucracy, and the hundreds of thousands of students and degree-holders who had been molded by the old imperial system.
This paper argues that the establishment of teachers’ schools (shifan xuetang) in 1904 was in fact a continuing professionalization of Chinese literati, a process that spanned from the late Ming through the Qing. The introduction of Western-style teachers’ schools institutionalized this process and escalated the transformation of the old literati into modern professionals, providing them with new credentials and a new identity. Through studying the case of the Liang Guang Advanced Teachers’ College, analyzing its programs, course design, and the origin of the students, their ages, and social status, this paper shows how in a period of dramatic change teachers’ schools rapidly transformed a group of old literati, including lower level officials, into modern professional teachers and educational administrators.

The Emergence of New Professional Intellectuals: A Social Study of Journal of National Essence
Tze Ki Hon, State University of New York, Geneseo
Since the publication of Laurence Schneider’s seminal article in 1976, Journal of National Essence (Guocui xuebao, 1905-11) has been a symbol of Chinese cultural conservatism. It represents the relentless efforts of the traditionalists to preserve the Chinese national essence and to restore ancient systems. However, similar to many journals and newspapers of 1900s China, Journal of National Essence was closely tied to the hub of commerce and communication in the foreign concessions that, in turn, was linked to global capitalism. More importantly, the journal was founded when the Qing government abolished the civil service examination system. Aimed at educated elites, the journal was intended for tens of thousands of examination candidates who lost their “ladder of success” to officialdom.
In this paper, I discuss how Journal of National Essence was part of the urban, capitalistic, and global setting of coastal China. To prove my point, I focus on the Association for the Preservation of National Learning (Guoxue baocunhui), which published the journal as well as rare books, art works, literary writings, and history textbooks. Located in Shanghai’s International Settlement, the association was joined by many retail outlets, trade associations, stationers, calligraphers, painters, printing enterprises, and shops. Because of its location, the association was part of the public realm of professionals that was developing in Chinese cities. The continuing publication of the journal for six years was, I argue, the result of the emergence of new professional intellectuals who worked in publishing, academic, and education circles.

Publishing Circles and Elite Professionalization in Late Qing and Republican China
Robert M. Culp, Bard College
With the end of the examination system, displacement of Confucian learning, and fall of the imperial state, late Qing and Republican elites sought new ways to generate cultural influence and sustain their social status. This paper explores how the editing departments of China’s mechanized, modern publishing companies served both functions for two distinct strata of early twentieth century intellectuals.
China’s leading commercial publishing companies—Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company, and World Book Company—competed to reach a mass reading public with diverse and ever-changing publications. To sustain this high volume of print commodities, they filled large editing departments with examination system refugees and recent graduates of the new modern school system. Editing work allowed these men to make a living with their brushes and have some degree of cultural influence. It also fostered a modern professional identity, as staff editors became core members of China’s “publishing circles”.
Modern presses also courted leading intellectuals to work on contract for short periods as editors or authors. Such arrangements provided elite thinkers with income and a lifestyle similar to those of late imperial literati as well as access to the growing mass readership. Consequently, many intellectuals found publishing work just as attractive as academic positions, moving fluidly between the university and the publishing company, leveraging each environment for their own ends.
Thus, this paper suggests that the most competitive and capitalist of China’s modern industries at once generated new forms of professional identity and public influence and also facilitated reproduction of the class privilege and cultural authority of literate men.

Straddling Worlds: Newspaper Magnates as Intellectuals and Businessmen
Timothy B. Weston, University of Colorado, Boulder
In this paper, I focus on owners and managers of influential commercial newspapers based in Shanghai and Beijing in the early Republican period, such as Shi Liangcai of Shenbao; Wang Hanxi of Xinwenbao; Cheng Shewo, who was associated with several newspapers; and Shao Piaoping of Jingbao. These men represented an interesting hybrid breed, combining as they did the roles of intellectual and businessman. They have received scant attention from intellectual historians because most work on intellectuals focuses on more traditional types—people who were based in universities or in the literary sphere. Neither have they received much attention from economic or business historians, since newspapers—to the extent that they have been studied at all as entities unto themselves—have not been treated as businesses. However, in the early Republican period divisions between the world of commerce and intellectual life were already quite blurred and there are compelling reasons to learn more about key people who straddled the two worlds. Such people blended business careers with involvement in the cultural and political spheres, serving as brokers between the broad reading public and more rarified academic intellectualism. They helped bring the worlds of money and political connectedness to bear on the cultural realm in direct and meaningful ways. I examine the cultural, political, and financial resources such individuals relied upon to position themselves to play influential and multi-faceted roles in Republican society.