Imagined Civilization: Identity and Nation Building in Modern China

Ori Sela

Introduction

In recent years, discourse about the “civilizational state” has gained momentum in Asia, especially in China and India. Often displaying a nationalist agenda—ironically, as the “civilizational” is supposed to replace or overcome the “national”—this discourse is also tied to notions of geography, borders (physical or virtual alike), and space in general. Ironic, too, is the stated assumption that the “civilizational” represents an indigenous notion while the “national” represents a foreign concept, since the very term civilization is an imported one that did not exist as such prior to the influence of the West on Asia from the nineteenth century onwards.[1]

China’s president, Xi Jinping 习近平, recently announced the “Global Civilization Initiative” (quanqiu wenming changyi 全球文明倡议), thereby accentuating not only the significance attached to the concept of civilization, but also the ways in which it presents a competition, particularly towards the USA.[2] This usage, however, draws on a host of earlier discussions, some conducted over a century earlier, and at times, the terminology seems to have traveled to 2023 directly from the turn of the twentieth century. The introduction of “civilization” in Asia and particularly in China, along with the connotations it bears, and the dichotomies it brings to the fore (most predominantly that of East versus West), are therefore significant to understanding the identity and aspirations of the people of China, at individual and collective levels.

From the second half of the eighteenth century, the term “civilization” began to acquire new meanings in the West, and gradually became key in the self-understanding and self-portrayal of the West both internally and in relation to other parts of the world. The rise of the term was associated with new notions about development, progress, and modernity, as well as with increasing colonization that positioned Western civilization in opposition to the perceived “barbarism” of other cultures. As the distinction between civilization and barbarism consolidated in Europe, other cultures were judged accordingly, and as these terms (civilization, barbarism, etc.) quickly made their way to Asia, Asian intellectuals began using them for their own needs and from their own standpoints.[3]

In this paper, I discuss and analyze the use of the term “civilization” in China through the lens of conceptual and transcultural history. I begin with a short discussion of the use of the term in the early nineteenth century by Western thinkers, who were later read by Asian intellectuals.[4] I then briefly examine the history of the term in Meiji Japan (1868–1912) and how it was conceived by Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. I trace how and why such intellectuals came to use the term civilization and the consequences of their uses, through the prism of the need to construct a new, modern nation, state, and society proclaimed by the intellectuals, and the tensions as well as the accommodations between “old” and “new” (tradition and modernity) that influenced them at the time.

As a representative of such accommodations, I discuss Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 (1873–1929) views on these topics at the turn of the twentieth century, and the post-World War I reflections on Western and Eastern civilizations by Du Yaquan 杜亞泉 (1873–1933) and Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962). I argue that early twentieth-century Chinese ideas about civilization—themselves resulting from an imagined or idealized view of the West—were highly significant in shaping Chinese national identity and informing theories and scholarly practices. They were consequential in changing various practices and policies concerning daily life on the individual, national-political, and international levels. These ideas shaped the invented dichotomy between the “spiritual” Eastern and “materialistic” Western civilizations in the early twentieth century and can still be found in current intellectual, popular, and political landscapes. This paper therefore thematically addresses the ways of making sense of the other (the West in this case) with limited knowledge and degrees of idealization. It also elucidates how indigenous (real or invented) traditions were idealized as the antidote or supplement in imagining and constructing new identities. While the relationship between the imagined ideas and realities was often somewhat obscure, such imagined ideas were highly potent in serving their goals.

The penultimate section of this paper examines the ways in which the term traveled from the 1920s to the contemporary People’s Republic of China. It shows how and why the term lost appeal in the Maoist era, yet bounced back in the post-Mao years. I delve into current uses of civilization under the leadership of Xi Jinping and examine how the relationship between civilization and the nation changed dramatically and how civilization acquired new meanings within a vastly different global context. By highlighting the historical perspective and its links to the present, the essay also aims to serve as a corrective to presentist accounts, especially in the Anglophone milieu, that are oblivious to the plethora of views on which newer ideas develop, and thus overlook deeper contexts and alternative paths for understanding current developments.

As a whole, this paper is a case study that follows a concept through time and space, thus bringing conceptual history into the context of transcultural and transnational studies, rather than focusing on one culture or country. However, it goes beyond simply surveying the migration of a concept from one place to the other or within a certain culture across time. To borrow a framework from the history of science (yet another field in which civilization is abundantly used), I elucidate here the circulation of the concept.[5] As Kapil Raj explains, circulation is “not the ‘dissemination,’ ‘transmission,’ or ‘communication’ of ideas, but the processes of encounter, power and resistance, negotiation, and reconfiguration that occur in cross-cultural interaction.”[6] Raj therefore stresses the “transformative conception of circulation,”[7] and argues that “the circulatory perspective confers agency on all involved in the interactive processes of knowledge construction”[8] and circulation is in itself a “‘site’ of knowledge formation.”[9] In what follows, I propose an exercise in applying circulation as a framework for understanding the history of civilization as a concept in constant transformation.

Europe

The history of the term civilization in the West since the mid-eighteenth century, especially with regards to colonialism, has been studied extensively. One such use (and not just at that time) was to discredit or repudiate other cultures. The concept was often used in debates on issues internal to the West, such as those regarding the hierarchy of countries within the West, the state of cultures within a specific country, and the history of the West in general. Another application of the concept was in discussions of bringing (Western) civilization to cultures that were regarded as inferior, in order to raise them from their lowly position and purportedly help them to overcome their ascribed inferiority. The latter was later designated as the civilizing mission (or as the French put it, mission civilisatrice) of Western forces that, while accepting the possibility of other cultures rising above their alleged inferiority, assumed that the only way of ascent from their perceived lowly position was via Westernization. This direction had concrete spatial dimensions, embedded in colonial and imperialist agenda. As the term civilization became more widely used, thinkers tried to define it more precisely and to discuss its significance.[10]

One such thinker was François Guizot (1787–1874). Guizot was influential in the West and in India, Japan, and China. His lectures and writings on the subject of civilization suggest three different definitions of the concept during his time. First, it was used as a general and vague term designating specific societies in specific regions and time frames, such as, for example, “Greek civilization.” Second, it could refer to the larger process of formation of human organizations, thought, and achievement, often in a more universal way, such as “civilization of the whole human race.” Finally, it stood for the highest level of human progress, which qualified as “modern civilization” or, more specifically, as “modern European civilization.”[11]

The final definition is the one that became most significant as it traveled to Asia. At times, this definition made the other two almost irrelevant. In fact, the conceptualization of civilization as the highest level of human progress sometimes contradicted the first definitions, since civilization was in this sense considered to be a strictly European phenomenon, even if it could be exported to other places and societies. Guizot emphasized that “the idea of progress, of development, appears to me the fundamental idea contained in the word civilization.”[12] Guizot thought that progress was taking place in two arenas—that of society as a whole and that of the individual—and both were essential to his definition. This kind of progress, he believed, was an exclusively European phenomenon, exceptional in world history; civilization therefore in the works of Guizot designated modern Europe alone (indeed, modern and Europe are used interchangeably in Guizot’s writings) along with its putative superiority.[13]

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), in an 1836 essay titled “Civilization,” suggested that “the word Civilization … sometimes stands for human improvement in general, and sometimes for certain kinds of improvement in particular.”[14] Like Guizot, Mill thought that progress was the yardstick by which the level of advancement of a society or the hierarchy between civilizations should be measured and saw England as representing the highest civilization (Guizot, not surprisingly, thought it was France).[15] Mill further constructed an opposition between civilization and barbarism; he depicted a struggle between “the old barbarism and the new civilization,” and proclaimed “the triumph of new things over the old.”[16] Advancements in philosophy, particularly in the field of logic, were often seen as the most important elements of civilization, and, along with the dichotomy of old and new, continued to be relevant in discussions on civilizations and their hallmarks that were eventually conducted within Asia.[17]

While other voices bemoaning the evils of modern civilization could also be heard at the time, they were not as dominant as those of Guizot, Mill, and others. Nonetheless, even Mill had his reservations on civilization, which were albeit very different from those pointed out by the ones deploring the evils of modern civilization. In his essay “On Liberty,” published in 1859, Mill warned that as much as modern civilization had progressed, it could still become stagnant like all other previous civilizations and cited China as a prime example of such stagnation. Mill’s warning illustrates contemporary notions of civilization’s advantages and perils:

A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop: when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. … We continually make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against. … We have a warning example in China—a nation of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of having been provided at an early period with a particularly good set of customs, the work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most enlightened European must accord, under certain limitations, the title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable, too, in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as possible, the best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community, and securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honor and power. Surely the people who did this have discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and must have kept themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the world. On the contrary, they have become stationary—have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners. … The modern régime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China.[18]

This quote illustrates how, according to Mill, civilization was both a continual process and a level of advancement that a society could climb to and fall from, as was supposedly the case in China. Indeed, the notion that China had stagnated was already accepted by many—Hegel being perhaps the most famous, and influential, among them—in Europe by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.[19] Mill’s warning aimed to prevent a recurrence of the “China case” in Europe, which represented to him the highest, if not the only, form of civilization. Although Mill did not think that “any community has a right to force another to be civilized,”[20] others, such as Thomas Taylor Meadows (1815–1868), to whom Mill presumably responded, called for a “civilizade.” As Meadows put it: “Religion is the region of Belief: Civilization is the region of Knowledge. I preach no Crusades against presumed Irreligions: but I do distinctly preach a Civilizade against an ascertained Barbarization.”[21] Meadows wrote his “preaching” during a two-year leave in England from his long service in China, and although he did not mean that the West had to wage a civilizade on China (for various practical reasons) and was impressed with various aspects of China’s history and culture, the idea of the “high civilization” of the West can be clearly detected in his writings.[22] With this backdrop in mind, let us turn to the Japanese reception of this concept of civilization from the 1860s onward.[23]

Meiji Japan

As Japan strengthened its relations with the West from the 1850s, it also wanted to emulate the West in terms of wealth and power. To do so, the Tokugawa and, after 1868, the Meiji government sent missions and students to the West; individuals in their own capacity also took such initiatives, which were, at times, illegal. Those who went abroad, however, discovered that the Western path to wealth and power seemed to go through the realm of philosophy. Nishi Amane 西周 (1829–1897), who was one of the most influential intellectuals at the time, studied in Holland from 1862 to 1865.[24] He discredited older East Asian approaches, such as neo-Confucianism, and proclaimed the superiority of the West at large over Chinese and Japanese ways.[25]

Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉 (1834–1901), who visited America and Europe during the 1860s, was equally impressed with Western ways. He was also part of the Iwakura Mission of 1871–1872. Having returned to Japan, some members of the mission, together with other prominent intellectuals and officials, established the Meiji Six Society (Meirokusha 明六社) and the Meiji Six Journal (Meiroku zasshi 明六雑誌) in 1873. They circulated their views on modernity and their notion of civilization through the journal and various other institutions they created.

About two years after the Meirokusha was established, Fukuzawa put forth his ideas on civilization in an essay titled An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Bunmeiron no gairyaku 文明論之概略) that was distributed widely in Japan. In this essay, Fukuzawa vividly described Japan’s reaction to the West during their first confrontation in the 1850s: “If I were to describe the situation figuratively, it was as if the ears and eyes of the deaf and blind had suddenly opened, and for the first time, they could hear sounds and see colors.”[26]

Fukuzawa further expounded the view that there were three stages or levels of human societies: barbarism, semi-civilized, and civilized. According to Fukuzawa, whose views were based on what he had learned from the West, Africa and Australia were still in the barbarian stage, while the countries of Asia, such as Japan and China, were semi-civilized. The aim to be achieved—the ideal human society—was European; it was the Europeans who had developed civilization “for millennia” and they were the only ones who had fully attained it. Borrowing from Guizot, Mill, and others, Fukuzawa saw—perhaps imagined—civilization as a holistic organism that bore on every aspect of human life: physical and mental, individual and social, private and governmental.[27] This meant that if Japan were to transform into a civilization, “the externals of civilization,” that is, ships, guns, railways, etc., were not enough; just as Guizot suggested half a century earlier, Fukuzawa contended that material advancement was not sufficient as a marker of civilization.[28]

Fukuzawa, along with many other prominent officials and intellectuals of the Meiji government, called for “civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika 文明開化), which represented one of the major attempts by the early Meiji government and intellectuals to modernize. It is, in fact, hard to distinguish bunmei 文明 (civilization) from kaika 開化 (enlightenment): civilization as they explained it meant enlightenment by default, and even in the early 1880s, some Japanese intellectuals used kaika, which is usually taken to mean enlightenment, to translate the term civilization. The well-known 1881 Dictionary of Philosophy (Tetsugaku jii 哲学字彙) by Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1856–1944) provides an example of such terminological usage.[29]

But the final choice, that of bunmei, is of particular interest. The locus classicus of this expression not only lies in the Chinese classics such as the Book of Changes and the Book of Documents, but its semantic field, I argue, amplifies the imagined overtone. James Legge translates wenming, as it appears in the Book of Changes, as “adorned and brightened”; the traditional commentaries explain this highly auspicious combination that describes “all under Heaven” (tianxia 天下) once “the dragon appears in the field” (jian long zai tian 見龍在田, a cosmic reference) as an almost utopian state, characterized by the utmost flourishing of both humans and nature, depending on the commentators and context. Along with a passage from the Book of Documents and many other references to wenming throughout history, the two characters “adorned and brightened” (in Legge’s words), aimed concurrently at, or even connected, the realms of Heaven and Earth, individual and society, and ruler and subjects.[30] It seems safe to assume that the intellectuals—Japanese and Chinese alike—certainly had this broader connotation of the term in mind, when they sought to translate Western notions of civilization.[31] However, if the wenming of the Classics implied a return to or revival of some sort of golden age, the bunmei of Meiji Japan was all about the future and progress to a better era.

Whether it was bunmei or kaika, or both together, the direct implication of the slogan was a call to civilize—that is, to modernize or perhaps Westernize Japan in every aspect, ranging from women’s hairstyles to government institutions, political thought, and military equipment.[32] As Robert Eskildsen has demonstrated, this ideological drive was not confined to Japan. During the Meiji’s earliest military expeditions against Taiwan under Qing rule in 1874, notions of civilizing the savages were present both in government propaganda and military commands and in popular representations of the expedition, such as, for example, in newspaper illustrations. As one of those newspaper illustrations depicting the campaign wrote: “Thereafter the savage land became completely tranquil. It must be said that this expedition to punish the savages is the first stage in advancing civilization (kaika) of this island.”[33] Although Japan retreated from Taiwan during the 1870s, only to push ahead with greater force a couple of decades later, the 1874 expedition was the beginning of the civilizing mission, extending the spatial imagination of the new Japanese empire further into Asia.

Integral to the call for civilization was the imperative to westernize quickly: an imperative that caused many Japanese to fear that they were in danger of losing sight of their Japanese identity and led to a tension between modernization and Westernization. Thus, in the late 1880s and 1890s, as nationalistic pride surged with the Japanese defeating the Qing in the 1894–1895 war, the term civilization began to acquire new meanings, and the call for civilization and enlightenment became less potent.[34] These changes manifested in two related ways: One was to trace a kernel of modern civilization in Japan’s own past, especially in its philosophy, which often meant an engagement with Chinese and Indian pasts when forms of Confucianism and Buddhism had exerted major influence on Japanese thought respectively; another was to redefine modern civilization so that it would no longer refer to Western civilization exclusively, but rather signify that a modernized Japanese civilization could surmount the Western one and bring out Japan’s uniqueness.

These trends, it should be noted, were part of a growing Japanese interest in German thought that emphasized a nationalistic focus on Volk (People) and Kultur (Culture) instead of universal civilization. Indeed, from the late 1880s until well into the twentieth century, we find a host of publications on themes emphasizing national pride, such as histories of Japanese, Indian, and Chinese philosophies. At the same time, the popularity of Western notions of geographical and racial determinism, which attempted to explain why Japan had not yet attained the high level of civilization of the and how Japan might progress to or surpass it, rose sharply.

Several factors were therefore linked in Japanese notions of civilization. The first of these was geographical space, which was considered in order to determine the favorable and less favorable aspects of Japan’s geography in the development of its civilization; second was the question of the relationship and hierarchy between Japanese civilization and other cultures surrounding it or existing within its realm; third was the perceived need to project Japan’s enlightened civilization further into Asian geographical and political space. As Chinese scholars and former officials of the Qing rule came to Japan after the 1894–1895 war, either willingly or in exile, they were exposed to many of these ideas.

Late Qing China

Liang Qichao was one of the individuals who had to flee China after the failure of the Hundred-Days Reform in 1898 and was highly appreciative of his Japanese interlocutors. Liang thought highly of Fukuzawa, remarking that he was “the first at the vanguard of Japanese Western learning” (Riben xixue diyi zhi xianfeng 日本西學第一之先鋒).[35] Indeed, his views on civilization were often reiterations of Fukuzawa’s ideas.[36] He accepted the notion that civilization was composed of both body (xingzhi 形質) and spirit (jingshen 精神), the distinction between three levels of humans—savages or barbarians (manye 蠻野), semi-civilized (bankai 半開), and civilized (wenming 文明)—and the possibility of progress from one level to the other.[37] He too considered China and pre-Meiji Japan as semi-civilized.

Liang further observed that “from a current perspective, the civilizations of China and Europe are as far apart as heaven and earth,”[38] and added that:

Today, when [we] talk about those of outstanding talent who understand the times, who [among them] would not say that the [countries of the] far West are the civilized countries [wenming zhi guo 文明之國]. If we desire to advance our country, to make it an equal with each country of the far West, we must first demand to advance the civilization of our country [jin wuguo zhi wenming 進吾國之文明] in order to make it equal with Western civilization.[39]

However, why was China considered inferior to the West? As Ishikawa Yoshihiro has demonstrated, Japanese ideas of geographical determinism and race resounded in Liang’s writings: these ideas are significant while trying to understand his comparisons between China and the West in terms of civilization.[40] In 1899, soon after his arrival in Japan, Liang wrote the essay “A Discussion of the Similarities and Differences of the State System in China and Europe” (Lun Zhongguo yu Ouzhou guoti yitong 論中國與歐洲國體異同).[41] In this essay, he mentioned civilization several times, but did not delve into the concept. Still, the argument is important for our purposes, as it demonstrates the sort of “imagined China,” or rather, the imagined civilization that Liang constructed beyond the general notion with which he begins the essay: that Asia was the origin of civilization, and China its original apogee.

Liang accepted a series of similarities between China and Europe, asserting that up until the Spring-and-Autumn period, they were very much alike, and even later, the Chinese feudal system and the European aristocracy resembled each other. However, Liang began the “differences” section with the following statement: “After Rome, Europe was made of different states, [yet] since the two Han dynasties, China was always united.”[42] Liang reduced the times of internal separation in China, such as the Three Kingdoms era or the Six Dynasties, to little consequence: rivalries within China notwithstanding, these states quickly ended up united again. His explanation for this curious situation—the reason for the unity of a state or its split into several states was twofold—religion (zongjiao 宗教) and race (zhongzu 种族). In Europe there had been diverse religions and races; in China the case was different. He credited the emperor Han Wudi 漢武帝 (156–87 BCE) as the one who dismantled “the Hundred Schools” (bai jia 百家), leaving only one religion—presumably Confucianism, even though he does not specify—intact for posterity. Buddhism came to China, Liang acknowledged, but since it did not engage with worldly matters, it could be left out of consideration. In addition, the issue of different races was negligible in China, Liang claimed, because although there had been different peoples and races in China, the ruling houses, since the Han dynasty, encouraged such practices as intermarriage, which also disseminated into the masses, so that the different races mixed into one. Therefore, while race and religion were big issues in Europe, they were inconsequential in China and thus unity lasted for two millennia.[43]

Liang added that Europe had rigid social classes, which meant that competition was fierce, and competition, he argued, was the key for advancing civilization. China, on the other hand, did not suffer from adversities like tyranny and clearly demarcated aristocratic boundaries, and hence there was less competition and little impetus for advancing its civilization. Although there was hardly any overt theorization on civilization in this 1899 essay, Liang’s imagined China (any historian today could easily find fault with his arguments, not least with their totality) served as an effective basis for his later ponderings on civilization and his construction of China as a nation state. The latter constituted his broader project in which he advocated that China’s relatively unified history, government, spatial boundaries, religion, and social cohesion created stable grounds for nationhood.[44]

In his 1902 essay on “The Relationship between Geography and Civilization” (Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi 地理與文明之關係), Liang engaged more deeply with the concept of civilization and drew heavily on Fukuzawa’s notions, which have been mentioned earlier.[45] Liang began the essay by emphasizing that “geography is the foundation of all sciences, and is something that the educational system cannot dismiss.”[46] After quoting an ode from the Classic of Poetry (Mao 260), he explains that while “the origins of world civilization are very complex” and hard to explain through other sciences, geography in fact explains it quite well.[47] Liang introduced his readers to the English philosopher John Locke’s (1632–1704) assertion that the relationship between geography and history is like that of flesh and spirit: “when there is sound flesh, vigorous spirit issues forth therein; when there is suitable geography, the history of civilization issues forth therein.”[48] Liang concluded that civilization cannot develop in cold or tropical zones because the extreme cold or heat prevents the human spirit from evolving, and therefore, “the history of civilization only rises in temperate zones.”[49]

To account for the purported fact that Asia did not develop modern civilization, Liang explained that despite Asia being located in a temperate zone, the lack of communication between different regions caused each region to develop its own separate “small world” (xiao tiandi 小天地) and “the civilizational competition did not arise” (wenming zhi jingzheng buqi yan 文明之競爭不起焉).[50] Liang derived the idea that for high civilization to evolve, competition was compulsory from social Darwinism. He therefore regarded geography—particularly the possibility of inter-regional communication—to be more important than race.[51]

Although Liang tried to advance the civilizing mission in China, he also had reservations about the ways in which “civilized countries” (wenming guo 文明國) encroached upon other countries, China in particular. He saw the competition between different civilizations as taking place in the economy of the market rather than in the battlefield. However, he also contended elsewhere that there was a distinction between the rise or birth of a civilization and its spread or propagation, which he attributed to racial proclivities:

Why is it that white people surpass people of other races? People of other races like stillness; people of the white race like movement. People of other races are tied to peace and harmony; people of the white race cannot help but compete. People of other races protect what they have, people of the white race forge ahead. That is why people of other races are only able to give rise to civilization, while people of the white race can spread civilization.[52]

For Liang, the creation of a civilization—wherein mind and nature are at the forefront—was one phase, but the task of spreading civilization required force and action. Despite the desire for the modern and new, some of Liang’s justifications for advancing modern civilization rested on the past, including various Classics and other ancient writings. The very concept of civilization, which could also be used to discuss ancient civilizations, allowed Liang to stress how Chinese civilization—one of the ancestors, if not the origin,[53] of world civilization at large—was the only civilization to remain intact through thousands of years, while all others died out over time.[54]

Other scholars at the turn of the twentieth century were less keen on modern Western civilization. Whether it was due to the appeal of tradition and/or the perceived threat from the outsider, they used the past—as tradition or as history (or both)—to manufacture the new identity of the nation, at times rejecting the hegemonic idea of civilization imported from a foreign culture. In around 1905, the new nationalist zeal was flowering and the search for China’s “national essence” (guocui 國粹), “national character” (guoxing 國性), “national soul” (guohun 國魂), and “racial character” (zhongxing 种性) was under way, so as to build the Chinese nation by means of “national learning” (guoxue 國學).[55] These intellectuals feared the loss of Chineseness—the dissolution of the nation while still in the process of being birthed—and hence tried to preserve the Chinese identity within a modern world.

The aphorism “Chinese substance and Western function” (Zhongti Xiyong 中體西用), which acquired popularity after the 1894–1895 war (but had deeper historical roots), was one of the means proposed to protect this identity.[56] However, even this formula faced resistance from scholars such as Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921) who were not only skeptical about the possibility of such a synthesis, but concerned about the risk of losing the advantages of both in the course of such an attempt.[57]

World War I as a watershed moment

These fears of losing the Chinese identity as the new western ideas—civilization at the forefront—take hold over the country joined other anxieties at the cusp of World War I, exposing aspects of the so-called civilized countries that had been hidden from view during the Meiji era in Japan or the latter years of Qing rule in China. Western civilization suddenly appeared to be more complex and grim due to the mass killings and destruction during the War. In this context, some scholars raised the need to refine the “Chinese substance and Western function” slogan. Du Yaquan, for example, a journalist, editor, and scientifically minded scholar, embraced many of the notions developed by Liang and his Japanese predecessors regarding geographical determinism and the evolution of civilization. However, Du drove these explanations in another direction. He proposed that due to natural circumstances, Chinese and Western civilizations emphasized different aspects of the human experience, but this made them complementary rather than opposites.

Du opened his 1916 essay “Static Civilization versus Dynamic Civilization” (Jing de wenming yu dong de wenming 靜的文明與動的文明) with a critique of the Chinese views of civilization that were prevalent in his day:

In recent years, the admiration of my fellow countrymen for Western civilization reaches everywhere; from the great affairs of the military to the subtleties of everyday life, nothing is not modeled on the West, while the civilization of our own country is practically ignored. However, since the European war has taken place, all the Western countries use their weapons invented through science daily and kill their own kind.[58]

Du suggested that this kind of situation was unheard of in Chinese history and that Chinese civilization could fix some of the problems of Western civilization: “The civilization of our country is correctly fitting to repair the harms of Western civilization, to relieve the excesses of Western civilization.”[59] Wang Hui convincingly argued that Du Yaquan’s search for mediation between the two civilizations was also motivated by a concern (shared by others alongside Du) over a possible clash of civilizations between Europe and Asia after the Europeans ended their internal war.[60] Du’s rationale for this concern arose from his historical perspective. As Edmund Fung recently summarized, Du argued that the difference in evolution of the two civilizations had resulted in the following situation:

Chinese society … viewed nature as good, sought peace with it and followed the will of Heaven, whereas Western society viewed nature as evil, sought to conquer it and emphasized the role of the human agent. Chinese society was internally oriented, self-contented and self-restrained; Western society was externally oriented and individualistic. Whereas Chinese society was pacifist and moralistic, Western society was aggressive and competitive, privileging self-interest above morality. And whereas Chinese society stressed self-cultivation, Western society placed a high premium on activities and individual rights. Du reduced these differences to a jing–dong (static–dynamic) dichotomy.[61]

The jing–dong 靜動 dichotomy, which could also be translated as a “passive–active” dichotomy, had appeared earlier, for example, in Liang’s 1902 essay (quoted above) in which he made a comparison between the rise and spread of civilization among the people of the “white” race and those of other races. There, the passive nature of “other races” was perceived as a problem vis-à-vis the active nature of the “white race.”[62] Du, however, stressed the advantages of the harmonious Chinese or Eastern side, which, for him, implied that a mixture of the two civilizations was possible and desirable and could result in an amalgam of sorts that would bring out the best of two equally important civilizations.[63] If at the turn of the century it seemed as though there was only one coveted civilization—modern Western civilization—after World War I, the civilizational hierarchy shifted. Liang himself professed such a new view after the war and suggested “bringing in western civilization to strengthen [his] civilization, while bringing out [his] civilization to assist western civilization, calling it an amalgamated new civilization.”[64]

Liang and Du hoped that the outcome of World War I would be the emergence of a new civilization, and they were not alone in this wish.[65] The prominent intellectual, and later one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1889–1927) was attracted to Du’s ideas. He imagined the Russian Revolution of 1917 to be the birth of this new civilization.[66]

Not everyone agreed, of course. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942), co-founder of the CCP, rejected Du’s ideas and adhered to the cause of Western civilization, even with the World War I in the background. For him, as for many others of the New Culture Movement, the Chinese past had to be discarded completely.[67] Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉 (1865–1953), for example, argued that the Chinese “national treasures … should all be thrown into the toilet.”[68] Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) chose his words carefully when he remarked in 1918 that “the Chinese national essence … amounts to a fart.”[69] And Qian Xuantong 錢玄同 (1887–1939) thought that “the destruction of Confucian learning and Daoist religion is the fundamental solution if China is not to perish and if the Chinese people are to become a civilized people of the twentieth century.”[70] These statements were not merely intellectual laments, they also had social and political impact.[71] In the background, were the attempts of Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 (1859–1916) to present himself as a custodian of Confucianism due to his own political interests,[72] and debates in socio-political circles over making Confucianism the state religion of the new Chinese nation during the 1910s.[73]

In the context of the debate on Confucianism and state religion, one could argue that the new notion of civilization (imagined as it was) also served as a proxy for religion, based on Liang’s early arguments that religion and race unifies a nation, and that religion had lost its appeal.[74] Civilization, a term associated with modernity, progress, and by the late 1910s, with core Chinese values, could serve the same purpose. The issue was how to make sure so-called Chinese values were intertwined with civilization. Since Yuan’s quest was abruptly cut short, and the state religion question was dismissed along with the possibility of making Confucianism the state religion (even if it could be debated from time to time), and the call for jettisoning of “national treasures” gained momentum, the threat to Chinese identity seemed clear. A solution, however, was found by those anxious to preserve such Chinese identity. The solution was to recast the past—the tradition—as history, and to use scientific history to legitimize the continued import of Western civilization by domesticating it. Hu Shi is among the foremost proponents of this solution. His liberal worldview, which stressed the universality of humankind rather than its unique ethnic characteristics, promoted the writing of a history by using the scientific method, in order to “reorder the nation’s past” (zhengli guogu 整理國故).[75] In 1933, Hu explained that when he began the reordering project almost two decades earlier, he, and China at large, faced

the problem of how to bring about a satisfactory adjustment in a situation where an ancient civilization has been forced against its own will into daily and intimate contact with the new civilization of the West; where the old civilization has clearly proved itself hopelessly inadequate in solving the pressing problems of national existence, economic pressure, social and political disorder, and intellectual confusion.[76]

Hu expressed the task as follows: “The [leaders of the] Renaissance movement of the last two decades … want to instill into the people a new outlook on life which shall free them from the shackles of tradition and make them feel at home in the new world and its new civilization.”[77] To “feel at home in the new world and its new civilization” was the aspiration, but “the conflict between the old civilization and the new”[78] had to be reconciled to that end.[79] Hu had addressed this problem in his doctoral dissertation, written in English at Columbia University in 1917:

How can we Chinese feel at ease in this new world which at first sight appears to be so much at variance with what we have long regarded as our own civilization? For it is perfectly natural and justifiable that a nation with a glorious past and with a distinctive civilization of its own making should never feel quite at home in a new civilization, if that new civilization is looked upon as part and parcel imported from alien lands and forced upon it by external necessities of national existence. And it would surely be a great loss to mankind at large if the acceptance of this new civilization should take the form of abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation, thereby causing the disappearance of the old civilization. The real problem, therefore, may be restated thus: How can we best assimilate
modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?[80]

He also tried to reconcile the old and the new by demonstrating how the new Western philosophy and science had older precursors in China, particularly in ancient non-Confucian philosophies.[81] Hu was very much influenced by Western notions of civilization and regarded it highly, hence his desire to find its precursors in China.

Hu was critical of those who, after the World War I, reduced Western civilization to mere “material civilization” (wuzhi de wenming 物質的文明) vis-à-vis the Eastern civilization, which was glorified as the “spiritual civilization” (jingshen de wenming 精神的文明).[82] This opposition to the material versus spiritual civilization stance was in fact a part of an ensuing debate: were the Chinese and Western civilizations categorically different or did the difference lie only in the degree to which each civilization had developed? Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895–1990), in his discussions with Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) in the early 1920s, framed this as a question of whether the difference was one of “degree” (dengji de chayi 等級的差異) or “kind” (zhonglei de chayi 種類的差異). Both men reached the conclusion that the two civilizations differed in kind rather than in degree. Western civilization was marked by “activity” (huodong 活動) and the Eastern one by “realization” (shixian 實現).[83] Such a categorization affirmed the notion of a material–spiritual divide, which Feng evoked again when discussing the difference between Chinese and Western philosophies. Feng, however, was not the first to link the categories of civilizational difference with their respective philosophies; in fact, he credited the writings of Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988) as the inspiring factor that prompted him to delve into the matter.[84]

Hu, however, did not approve of this difference in kind perspective.[85] Indeed, the “precursors” mentioned earlier served the purpose of demonstrating the compatibility of the two civilizations and how the Chinese civilization had some features identified with the contemporary West well before they appeared in the West. Moreover, in his essay “Our Attitude to Modern Western Civilization,” he tried to show that Western civilization—even those parts of it considered “material/materialistic”—had many spiritual sides, which were no less significant than ancient Eastern civilization.[86] Hu’s essay was translated into English shortly afterwards, in 1928, and published in Pacific Affairs with the title “Two Wings of One Bird,”[87] which suggested the necessity of collaboration between both the civilizations to achieve a greater civilization that embodied both material and spiritual aspirations and the needs of humankind.

The dichotomy between the material West and spiritual East remains prominent. However, the discussions and debates on civilization were, ironically, transnational in character: Feng Youlan and Tagore met in New York, Dewey traveled to China, and Japanese scholars were also part of the conversation. However, the East/West dichotomy allowed parts of the East to assume a shared Eastern civilization that could supersede Western civilization, thereby redeeming their place in the world at large. Related notions were propagated by Asian intellectuals, at times as Pan-Asianism, and different nations took different concrete steps according to their understanding of it. At the same time, nations that could claim a higher status in the civilizational hierarchy of Asia itself, embarked from the 1920s onwards, in the name of a civilizade, on forceful campaigns to assert their new-found “civilization.”[88]

The CCP and the trajectory of civilization in contemporary China

Despite the allure of the discourse of civilization in early twentieth century China, this discourse waned among young CCP members. References to civilization of any kind from CCP ideologues are rare, which seem to suggest that this term became almost inconsequential. The concept of civilization was in decline until the late 1970s. We might ask why the concept fell out of favor?

It is important to note the overall shift in the civilization discourse in China during Guomindang 國民黨 rule when the universalist aspects of civilization succumbed to the nationalist discourse, as is evident from the arguments of Prasenjit Duara. Thus, instead of following the lofty ideals of the Chinese intellectuals of the 1910s and 1920s who sought ways of connecting Asian civilization to Western civilization, either by infusing each with the strengths of the other or by assimilation, civilization was made auxiliary to the nation, and nation became the new focal point.[89]

Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866–1925), in his famous 1924 speech on Pan-Asianism in Kobe, envisioned that Western civilization, which he characterized as “the way of the hegemon” (badao 霸道), would accept the “kingly way” (wangdao 王道), which he believed to be the chief characteristic of Asian civilization, in order to transform into a global civilization. Sun’s notion of the Chinese (or Asian) kingly way stood “for humaneness, righteousness, and morality” (zhuzhang ren, yi, daode 主張仁義道德), while the Western way of the hegemon was marked by “standing for utility and power” (zhuzhang gongli qiangquan 主張功利強權).[90] Such a characterization was similar to the spiritual versus material discourse discussed above, but with a political twist.

Soon thereafter, the nationalist impetus subjugated the universalistic concept of civilization to the particularistic concept of the nation, perhaps even to a specific party agenda. The internal turmoil and war between the Guomindang and the CCP, shortly after Sun’s Kobe speech and death, meant external issues were of lesser importance: China had to be united. The Japanese invasion and occupation of parts of China, with early beginnings in 1931 and all the way to 1945, along with nation-building attempts by political parties in China, and the internal fighting in Asia jeopardized the transnational notion of civilization, and certainly undermined the idea of a shared peaceful and spiritual Asian civilization.[91] In sum, internal and external threats and contestations made the nation paramount, and the notion of civilization was to be deployed at its service.

For the CCP, there were ideological reasons to downplay the significance of civilization. In general, although Karl Marx had accepted the barbarism/civilization dichotomy, the possibility of linear progression from the former stage to the latter, and the notion that Western civilization was superior, civilization was not the main theme of his work. Marx considered civilization to be closely related to progress, but social and technical progress were secondary to revolution. Revolution, for Marx and for his Chinese followers such as Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976), was understood to be universal; that is, the mission was to bring about a global socialist revolution rather than reflect on the ways to create a global civilization, with or without Chinese and/or Asian elements. Although Mao prioritized the national revolution, his larger goal continued to be universal revolution.[92]

Taken together, these reasons made civilization far less relevant and attractive to CCP intellectuals who had other priorities in mind and had to deal with a different context from the 1930s onwards. Moreover, the idea of civilization, due to its association with the West and its progress, antagonized Mao. In a well-known remark, made in 1968 in course of the Cultural Revolution, Mao claimed that it was not the “intellectuals” (zhishifenzi 知識分子) but the uneducated who were the “most civilized.” Earlier, during the Great Leap Forward, he had said the same about uneducated factory workers.[93] It is also significant that the revolution was framed as a “cultural” (wenhua 文化) and not a “civilizational” (wenming 文明) one. Civilization had clearly lost traction during the Maoist era.

In the aftermath of Mao’s death in the late 1970s and 1980s, however, civilization again became significant. As revolution lost some of its attraction, civilization made a comeback, accompanied by familiar adjectives: spiritual civilization returned to the fore with material civilization as its logical counterpart. However, this time the concept of civilization was not evoked to discuss the difference between Chinese and Western civilizations, but to promote China’s new development ideology.

The concept of two civilizations was supposed to fulfil the need for both a material and economic agenda and a moral ideological framework as the strict Maoist agenda was somewhat minimized. Terms such as “grasping with two hands” (liangshou yiqi zhua 兩手一起抓) were used to promote the idea that material and moral (spiritual) gains had to go together and both were essential to ensure that a “balanced development” (pingheng de fazhan 平衡的發展) occurred. As Nicholas Dynon has argued, Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 (1904–1997) initially stressed material civilization, yet by Jiang Zemin’s 江澤民 (1926–2022) time, spiritual civilization seemed to have acquired the upper hand. Jiang also added “political civilization,” and soon thereafter, Hu Jintao 胡錦濤 added “social civilization” to this terminological landscape.[94] Significantly, the revival of the terms material and spiritual civilization had little to do with their early twentieth-century predecessors: both, in this new phase, dealt with aspects of China’s development rather than comparisons with the West, although the use of the term civilization, even when inscribed within the particular context of the Chinese nation, augmented a global and modern appeal.

Under Hu Jintao, yet another notion of civilization emerged— “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming 生态文明)—which gained much more significance during Xi Jinping’s years in office. Despite the fact that an internal audience was also targeted by the “ecological civilization” campaigns, especially as environmental problems in China grew, the global audience was just as if not more important, particularly from the 2010s onwards.[95] If Deng’s ideas were related to “balanced [economic] development,” this type of civilization aimed to address “sustainable development” (ke chixu fazhan 可持续发展). When the President of the USA, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, China utilized its newly developed notions of ecological civilization and sustainable development to claim global leadership in addressing climate change and global warming. Civilization was once again a winning card (to be sure, China has invested in actual remedies and is not relying on rhetoric alone) and this time, China could place itself in a winning position.

Since the 2010s, the discourse of China as a civilizational state (wenming de guojia 文明的國家) has gained currency. Within China, the discourse is used to boost confidence, patriotic feelings, and pride among citizens, particularly since the late 2010s, at a time when the economy is in decline. Externally, it serves to downplay the global claims of the USA as a world leader as well as its soft power, by claiming a longer history and greater transnational significance and influence over the ages. The kingly way simultaneously returned to the fore. Reminiscent of Sun Yat-sen’s speech a century ago, also referred to as “the new kingly way” (xin wangdao 新王道) and associated with the “new era” (xin shidai 新時代), the new kingly way of the current CCP ideologues includes both moral aspects and features signaling power and might that were previously associated with the “way of the hegemon.”[96] However, the civilizational state discourse undercuts any presumptions of universal civilization that the early twentieth-century luminaries were trying to find; furthermore, it yet again subjugates civilization to the nation, even if the state itself is redefined as “civilizational.”

The new “Global Civilization Initiative” announced by Xi Jinping in 2023 is a fascinating example of this discursive shift. In Xi’s “Hand in Hand on the Road to Modernization,” in which he announced the initiative, Xi presented “Chinese-style modernization” (Zhongguo shi xiandaihua 中国式现代化) as a concept that exemplifies “harmony between material civilization and spiritual civilization”.[97] The terms go back a century, but their meaning has changed. No longer is the West material and the East spiritual, and a combination of the two is no longer intended to create one global civilization. Such a harmonious combination is considered to be distinctly Chinese, and Xi invites the world to learn from it. Moreover, Xi presented the initiative using the famous Chinese idiom “when only one flower blossoms, it is not spring; the blossoming of a hundred flowers fills the garden with spring.”[98] While this idiom is centuries old, one cannot help but recall Mao’s “Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom” (baihua qifang 百花齐放) policy from 1956, launched just before the Great Leap Forward. Xi used the idiom to accentuate that no single civilization should be sought after and that “each country” (geguo 各国) has its specific civilization, which should be respected and accepted.

The universal aspirations are gone, as are notions of universal values, since everything is relativized to a particular nation. Implicitly appealing to relativist discourse, intellectuals of the Communist party continued to denounce the USA as promoting a “clash of civilizations” (wenming chongtu 文明冲突),[99] arguing that the “pluralistic perspective” (duoyuan guan 多元观) of the Global Civilization Initiative allows the civilizations of each country to live side by side in peace and harmony.[100] Thus, even though seemingly similar century-old terms are being used in contemporary Chinese discourse, the agenda associated with them has changed dramatically. The resurgence of these terms related to civilization, nevertheless, shows their lingering significance.

The story, however, does not end on this pluralistic note, with China advocating an equal footing for all civilizations, be it western or Chinese. In recent years, Chinese scholars have emerged who equate western civilization with cultural hegemony, colonialism, and imperialism and suggest that the west’s discourse of universal values regarding civilization is two-faced and hypocritical.[101] The implication is that Chinese civilization has the moral high ground, since it lacks these negative features, and is therefore explicitly or implicitly superior to that of the west. Moreover, scholars such as Tian Feilong 田飞龙 go so far as to claim that western civilization should be regarded as barbarism, thereby resurrecting older debates of civilization versus barbarism that arose around World War I, which are, nevertheless, deployed in the present context from a sense of Chinese superiority: A superiority that is linked to “Chinese-style modernization,” and therefore, to a larger message, directed towards both the national audience and a global one.[102]

Conclusion

The imagination of civilization had many implications for almost every field of individual and national conduct in Asia from the late nineteenth century: Hairstyles, clothes and fashion, the culinary and medicine landscape, marriage, as well as structure of government, and large-scale invasions, all were linked to these notions. Imagining themselves as civilized, intellectuals changed their clothes, styles of writing, and even suggested a change of language and nations required subjects to change their names, as Japan did in Korea during its occupation; imagining a shared civilization, the Japanese invaded Korea and China and imagining a new civilization, the Chinese embraced Marxism. These are, of course, simplifications, but civilization had something to do with each case. As has been shown in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s research on civilization and globalization, the imagination of civilization could thrive across national boundaries, cultures, as well as the boundaries of time.[103] Leigh Jenco’s work, which juxtaposed the early twentieth-century debates on Eastern and Western civilizations with debates on “Asian values” and their (in-)compatibility with liberal democracy from the 1990s, highlights how such issues persisted.[104]

However, the complexity of the concept of civilization, in Europe and in Asia, and the transformations it underwent during the past century do not lend themselves to simple explanations about clear and seamless transmission. Here the notion of circulation grants a heuristic advantage. As we have seen, the construction of the concept of civilization in the Japanese and Chinese contexts was not limited to the borders of Meiji Japan or Qing (and later Republican and Communist) China. Rather, the concept took shape through interactions between historical actors of diverse cultures and nationalities in Asia, America, and Europe. And indeed, as Raj has suggested, the concept also changed its meaning or significance in the process of interaction with political power struggles, both at “home” and “abroad.”[105] Therefore, the interplay between civilization and the nation or the multifaceted relations between the concepts of civilization and culture cannot simply be understood through the framework of transmission; all of these were constantly made and re-made through exchange, interaction, and negotiation between historical actors of diverse origins and points of view. Circulation as framework allows us to stop searching for a monolithic concept that was somehow transported from Europe and implanted in China or elsewhere in Asia. It also opens a different question, which is beyond the scope of this article: did the Asian concepts of civilization circulate back to Europe and/or America and if they did, what was the nature of these new interactions?

One can see how the newer imaginations, based on older discourses on global civilization, civilizational states, or what might be called imagined super-powers within which the term civilization surfaces time and again, mobilizes nations to concrete acts, be they peacekeeping missions, the repair of old aircraft carriers, or attempts at global leadership. Likewise, in China, the notion of “spiritual civilization” has, especially in recent decades, surpassed the domain of slogan or discourse and come to be concretely embodied in government offices such as the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization (Zhongyang jingshen wenming jianshe zhidao weiyuanhui 中央精神文明建设指导委员会).[106] This new spiritual civilization is vastly different from that conceived by early twentieth-century intellectuals, but its relation to notions of Chinese identity, Chinese politics, and the geo-political space of the Chinese nation is not dissimilar.

On the popular level, wenming is abundantly present. When a “toilet revolution” (cesuo geming 厕所革命) was announced some years ago, it was described as a “yardstick” (chidu 尺度) of civilization.[107] Cities in China compete to receive the title of “National Civilized City” (quanguo wenming chengshi 全国文明城市); when ecology is on the line, a campaign for “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming 生态文明) is issued. There is even an “internet civilization” (wangluo wenming 网络文明) campaign, alongside other civilizing campaigns (wenming huodong 文明活動).[108] Of course, assuming that every reference to wenming evokes the lofty ideals and connotations associated with the term in the early twentieth century would be a gross mistake; the meaning and semantic fields related to the term transformed in many ways over time. Still, the domestication of the term and the inclination to use it so profusely speak volumes to its significance, irrespective of the CCP agenda.

We may also wonder to what extent the ideas associated with civilization over the past century had ancestors within the Chinese world that stressed segregation and hierarchy among people, the supremacy of specific cultures, and its relation to space and time, just like some of the contemporary discourses concerning civilization. Ancient terms such as tianxia 天下 (“all-under-heaven”) or jiaohua 教化 (sometimes understood as “to civilize”) seem to convey such ideas and they have been used extensively in modern China as well.[109] However, unlike the modern notion of civilization that emerged at turn of the twentieth century in China, these older concepts did not imply a clear nexus between civilization and progress. They also lacked the national dimension, which seems to have overshadowed the universal aspects of civilization during the past century. In fact, one could argue that the ancient tianxia concept was closer to what early twentieth-century intellectuals in China imagined when they thought about civilization as a universal possibility; the use of tianxia by today’s CCP leadership is very different, and much more nationalistic.

Thus, contemplating the meandering travels of the concept of civilization over the past century or so, we can see that the current uses of civilization in China are far from just another piece in the Sino-American struggle over global narratives, which simplistic and presentist examination might lead us to think. The concept, in its transculturation and the changing political priorities imbued in it, has been in constant transformation, and the national and cultural baggage it carries, from the early twentieth century onwards, presents therefore a much more nuanced vision. The story of civilization’s travels in China over the past century is also the story of China’s changing relationships, both its relationship with its own history, and its relationship with the world at large.

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[1] The term “West” is, of course, problematic, concealing diversity and complexity. Nonetheless, I use it in this article because the perspective under scrutiny is mainly that of “China” (yet another complex term), and the Chinese historical protagonists whom I deal with in this essay have used the term “West” on multiple occasions.

[2] Xi Jinping 习近平, “Xieshou tongxing xiandaihua zhi lu: zai Zhongguo Gongchandang yu shijie zhengdang gaoceng duihuahui shang de zhuzhi jianghua” 携手同行现代化之路——在中国共产党与世界政党高层对话会上的主旨讲话 [Hand in hand on the road to modernization: Keynote speech at the high-level dialogue between the Communist Party of China and world political parties], Beijing, March 15, 2023, accessed on May 16, 2023, http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2023/content_5748638.htm.

[3] See Margrit Pernau, Helge Jordheim, Orit Bashkin, Christian Bailey, Oleg Benesch, Jan Ifversen, Mana Kia, Rochona Majumdar, Angelika C. Messner, Myoung-kyu Park, Emmanuelle Saada, Mohinder Singh, and Einar Wigen, ed., Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Asia and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Douglas R. Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 33–43; and Emma Mawdsley, “Introduction: India as a ‘Civilizational State’,” International Affairs 99, no. 2 (March 2023): 427–432, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad053.

[4] This work engages neither with the entirety of views and arguments on civilization in Europe nor with the longer history of the term, except for those aspects relevant to the concept’s eventual transmission to China.

[5] Kapil Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism … and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science,” Isis 104, no. 2 (June 2013): 337–347, https://doi.org/10.1086/670951. See also Kapil Raj, “Networks of Knowledge, or Spaces of Circulation? The Birth of British Cartography in Colonial South Asia in the late Eighteenth Century,” Global Intellectual History 2, no. 1 (2017): 49–66, https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2017.1332883; and Fan Fa-ti, “Modernity, Region, and Technoscience: One Small Cheer for Asia as Method,” Cultural Sociology 10, no. 3 (2016): 352–368, https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639084.

[6] Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 343.

[7] Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 343. Italics in original.

[8] Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 344.

[9] Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 345.

[10] See Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Zed Books, 2002); Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann, ed., Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India (London: Anthem Press, 2004); and Prasenjit Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” Journal of World History 12, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 99–130, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2001.0009.

[11] François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, General History of Civilization in Europe, trans. and ed. George Wells Knight (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900), 4, 376.

[12] Quoted in Brett Bowden, “Civilization and Its Consequences,” Oxford Handbook Topics in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.013.30.

[13] Guizot, General History of Civilization.

[14] John Stuart Mill, “Civilization,” London and Westminster Review (April 1836). Reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, Vol. 1 (London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1859), 160–205; 160. Emphasis in the original.

[15] Mill, “Civilization,” 160.

[16] Mill, “Civilization,” 160. See Michael Levin, J. S. Mill on Civilization and Barbarism (London: Routledge, 2004), 62–79; and Peter Ira Haupt, “J. S. Mill, Logic, and the Authority of Poetry” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1999), 74.

[17] Ori Sela, “From Theology’s Handmaid to the Science of Sciences: Western Philosophy’s Transformations on its Way to China,” The Journal of Transcultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): 7–44, https://doi.org/10.11588/ts.2013.2.10950.

[18] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 2nd American edition (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863), 137–139.

[19] Paul A. Cohen, “Nineteenth-Century China: The Evolution of American Historical Approaches,” in A Companion to Chinese History, ed. Michael Szonyi (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 154–167; 157; and Jack Barbalet, Confucianism and the Chinese Self: Re-Examining Max Weber’s China (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 11–27.

[20] Mill, On Liberty, 179.

[21] Thomas Taylor Meadows, The Chinese and their Rebellions, viewed in connection with their national Philosophy, Ethics, Legislation, and Administration, to which is added, an Essay on Civilization and its Present State in the East and West (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1856), 543.

[22] Meadows, The Chinese and their Rebellions, 40, 543–545. For a more general account of the term “civilization” in the west and its relations to colonialism and imperialism, see Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

[23] One may argue that the Japanese and the Chinese had their own conceptions of “civilization” and “barbarism” but these changed by the end of the Tokugawa rule. See, for example, David L. Howell, “Territoriality and Collective Identity in Tokugawa Japan,” Daedalus 127, no. 3, “Early Modernities” (Summer 1998): 105–132, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027509. See also Joshua A. Fogel, “Issues in the Evolution of Modern China in East Asian Comparative Perspective,” The History Teacher 29, no. 4 (August 1996): 425–448, https://doi.org/10.2307/494792.

[24] Ō Shuka 王守華 [Wang Shouhua], “Nishi Amane,” in Kindai Nihon no tetsugaku 近代日本の哲学 [Modern Japanese Philosophy], ed. Suzuki Tadashi 鈴木正, Bian Chongdao 卞崇道, and Ō Shuka (Tokyo: Hokuju shuppan, 1990), 14–51.

[25] Nishi Amane 西周, Nishi Amane zenshū 西周全集 [The complete works of Nishi Amane] (Tokyo: Munetaka shobō, 1960–1966), vol. 1, 7–10.

[26] “其事情ヲ形容シテ云ヘバ頓ニ聾盲ノ耳目ヲ開テ始テ声色ノ聞見ス.” Author’s own translation. Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉, Bunmeiron no gairyaku 文明論之概略 [An outline of a theory of civilization] (Tokyo: n.p., 1875), 138. For an English version of this essay, see G. Cameron Hurst, David A. Dilworth, and Yukichi Fukuzawa, Outline of a Theory of Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

[27] Douglas R. Howland, Personal Liberty and Public Good: The Introduction of John Stuart Mill to Japan and China (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).

[28] See Albert M. Craig, Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); David G. Wittner, Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan (London: Routledge, 2008), 99–124; Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan,” The American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (April 2002): 388–418, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.2.388; Hansun Hsiung, “Woman, Man, Abacus: A Tale of Enlightenment,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 72, no. 1 (June 2012): 1–42, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23214358; and Takahiro Nakajima, “The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East Asia: Fukuzawa Yukichi and Different Forms of Enlightenment,” in Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949, ed. Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 75–99.

[29] Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 and Ariga Nagao 有賀長雄, Kaitei zohō tetsugaku jii 改訂増補哲学字彙 [Dictionary of philosophy, revised and enlarged] (Tokyo: Tōyōkan, 1884).

[30] For the Book of Changes sources for the term wenming see Li Xueqin 李学勤, ed., Zhouyi zhengyi 周易正義 [The correct meaning of the Book of Changes] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999), 20; James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, Vol. 2, The Yi King (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1970), 414. See also Fang Weigui 方维规, “Lun jinxiandai Zhongguo ‘wenming’, ‘wenhua’ guan de shanbian” 论近现代中国“文明”、“文化”观的嬗变 [Discussion of the modern evolution of “civilization” and “culture” in China], Shilin 史林, no. 4 (1999): 2–16; Fang Weigui, Modern Notions of Civilization and Culture in China (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 101–113; and Huang Xingtao, “The Formation of Modern Concepts of ‘Civilization’ and ‘Culture’ and their Application during the Late Qing and Early Republican Times,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 5, no. 1 (2011): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/17535654.2011.578400.

[31] In China, wenming can be found in many texts before the late nineteenth century, but not with the overarching meanings that “civilization” acquired later on. For further discussion of wen in ancient times, see Martin Kern, “Ritual, Text, and the Formation of the Canon: Historical Transitions of Wen in Early China,” T’oung Pao 87, no. 1/3 (2001): 43–91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4528866. For an in-depth study of the related concept of wenxue 文學, which eventually came to stand for “literature,” see Theodore Huters, “Wenxue and New Practices of Writing in post-1840 China,” in Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History, ed. Ori Sela, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, and Joshua A. Fogel (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2023), 93–117.

[32] Suzanne G. O’Brien, “Splitting Hairs: History and the Politics of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” The Journal of Asian Studies 67, no. 4 (November 2008): 1309–1339, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911808001794.

[33] Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages,” 412.

[34] Donald H. Shively, “The Japanization of the Middle Meiji,” in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 77–120.

[35] Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji 梁啟超全集 (The complete works of Liang Qichao) (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999), vol. 1, 359.

[36] Nakajima, “The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East Asia,” 75–77, 96–97.

[37] Mats Norvenius demonstrates that such notions also circulated through textbooks in China, especially those dealing with geography. Some of these textbooks were published by one of the first modern publishers in China, Wenming shuju 文明书局 [Civilization Publishing House]. See Mats Norvenius, “Images of an Empire: Chinese Geography Textbooks of the early 20th Century” (PhD diss., Stockholm University, 2012), 91–92.

[38] “Yi jinri lunzhi, Zhongguo yu Ouzhou zhi wenming, xiangqu buchi xiaorang” 以今日論之，中國与歐洲之文明，相去不啻霄壤.

[39] “Jin suocheng shishiwu zhi junjie, shu bu yue taixi zhe wenming zhi guo ye, yu jin wuguo, shi yu taixi geguo xiangdeng, bi xian qiu jin wuguo zhi wenming, shi yu taixi wenming xiangdeng” 今所稱識時務之俊杰，孰不曰泰西者文明之國也，欲進吾國，使与泰西各國相等，必先求進吾國之文明，使与泰西文明相等.” Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 1, 267.

[40] Ishikawa Yoshihiro, “Liang Qichao, the Field of Geography in Meiji Japan, and Geographical Determinism,” trans. Lori Watt, in The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao’s Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China, ed. Joshua A. Fogel (Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 2004), 156–176.

[41] Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Lun Zhongguo yu Ouzhou guoti yitong” 論中國與歐洲國體異同 [A discussion of the similarities and differences of the state system in China and Europe], in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 1, 312–315.

[42] “Ouzhou zi Luoma yihou reng wei lieguo, Zhongguo zi lianghan yihou yong wei yitong” 歐洲自羅馬以後仍為列國，中國自兩漢以後永為一統. Liang Qichao, “Lun Zhongguo yu Ouzhou guoti yitong,” 312–313.

[43] For a different perspective on how race was indeed a part of the turn-of-the-century discussions, see Gotelind Müller-Saini, “Are We ‘Yellow’ and Who is ‘Us’?” Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung 32 (2008): 153–180, https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00015414.

[44] Language—its possible unity and the problems of diversity—would also receive significant attention by nationalist thinkers throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and even after. See Janet Y. Chen, The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023).

[45] Liang Qichao, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi” 地理與文明之關係 [The relationship between geography and civilization], Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 943–948.

[46] “Dilixue zhe, zhu xueke zhi jichu, er xuexiao suo buke que zhe ye” 地理學者,諸學科之基礎，而學校所不可缺者也. Liang Qichao, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 943.

[47] “Shijie wenming zhi yuanyin, qisuo youlai shen fuza” 世界文明之原因,其所由來甚复雜. Liang, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 943.

[48] “You jianquan zhi routi, ranhou huopo zhi jingshen sheng yan; you shiyi zhi dili, ranhou wenming zhi lishi chu yan” 有健全之肉體﹐然後活潑之精神生焉﹔有適宜之地理﹐然後文明之歷史出焉. Liang, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 943.

[49] “Wenming zhi lishi, du qi yu wendai” 文明之歷史，獨起于溫帶. Liang, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 943.

[50] Liang, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 948.

[51] Liang, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi,” 943–948.

[52] “Bairen zhi you yu tazhongren zhe he ye? Tazhongren hao jing, baizhongren niu yu heping, baizhongren buci jingzheng. Tazhongren baoshou, baizhongren jinqu. Yi gu tazhongren zhi neng fasheng wenming, baizhongren ze neng chuangbo wenming” 白人之優於他種人者何也？他種人好靜，白種人好動。他種人狃於和平，白種人不辭競爭。他種人保守，白種人進取。以故他種人只能發生文明，白種人則能傳播文明. Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Xinmin shuo” 新民說 [On the renewal of the people], in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 1, 655–735; 659.

[53] In 1903, Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919) identified the mythic ancient figure of the Yellow Emperor as “the first to create civilization” (zhizao wenming zhi diyi ren 製造文明之第一人). Whether or not Liu meant that the Yellow Emperor had created all the civilizations or just China’s is debatable. See Liu Shipei [Wu Wei 無畏], “Huangdi jinian lun” 黃帝紀念論 [The Yellow Emperor chronology] (1903), in Guomin riri bao huibian [Collection of The National Daily] (Taipei: Dangshi shiliao bianzuan weiyuanhui, 1968), 1: 275–279; and Alvin P. Cohen, “Brief Note: The Origin of the Yellow Emperor Era Chronology,” Asia Major 25, no. 2 (2012): 1–13, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43486143.

[54] Liang, “Xinmin shuo,” 655.

[55] See Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885–1895 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 66–71; Barbara Teters, “The Genrō In and the National Essence Movement,” Pacific Historical Review 31, no. 4 (1962): 359–378, https://doi.org/10.2307/3636263; Theodore Huters, “A New Way of Writing: The Possibilities for Literature in Late Qing China, 1895–1908,” Modern China 14, no. 3 (July 1988): 243–276; 255, https://doi.org/10.1177/009770048801400301; and Charlotte Furth, “Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Movement, 1895–1920,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett, vol. 12, Republican China 1912–1949, part 1, ed. John K. Fairbank (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 322–405; 352–353. For more on the development of these terms and the ways in which they were imported or borrowed from Japan and the West, see Zheng Shiqu 鄭師渠, Guocui, guoxue, guohun: wan Qing guocuipai wenhua sixiang yanjiu 國粹，國學，國魂：晚清國粹派文化思想研究 [National essence, national learning, national soul: Research of the cultural thought of the late Qing National Essence school] (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1992), 115–125.

[56] Zhang Zhidong’s 張之洞 (1837–1909) attitude towards Western knowledge serves as a good example of those who maintained the substance and function dichotomy. See Sun Guangde 孫廣德, Wan Qing chuantong yu xihua de zhenglun 晚清傳統與西化的爭論 [The late Qing debate about tradition versus Westernization] (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yin shuguan, 1982), 160–175; Xie Fang 謝放, Zhongti Xiyong zhi meng: Zhang Zhidong zhuan 中体西用之夢：張之洞傳 [The dream of Chinese substance and Western function: A biography of Zhang Zhidong] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1995), 352–379.

[57] Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 49, 287–288.

[58] “Jinnian yilai, wu guoren zhi xianmu xiyang wenming, wusuo buzhi, zi jun guo dashi yi zhi riyong xiwei, wu bu xiaofa xiyang, er yu ziguo guyou zhi wenming, ji bufu zhiyi. Ranzi Ouzhan fasheng yilai, xiyang zhu guo, ri yi qi kexue suo faming zhi liqi, qiangsha qi tonglei” 近年以来，吾国人之羡慕西洋文明，无所不至，自军国大事以至日用细微，无不效法西洋，而于自国固有之文明，几不复置意。然自欧战发生以来，西洋诸国，日以其科学所发明之利器，戕杀其同类. Du Yaquan, Du Yaquan wencun 杜亞泉文存 [The writings of Du Yaquan] (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 338–344.

[59] “Wu guo guyou zhi wenming, zheng zu yiqiu xiyang wenming zhi bi, ji Xiyang wenming zhi qiong zhe” 吾国固有之文明，正足以救西洋文明之弊，济西洋文明之穷者. Du Yaquan, Du Yaquan wencun, 338.

[60] Wang Hui, “The Transformation of Culture and Politics: War, Revolution, and the ‘Thought Warfare’ of the 1910s,” Twentieth-Century China 38, no. 1 (2013): 5–33, https://doi.org/10.1179/1521538512Z.00000000016.

[61] Edmund S. K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 35.

[62] Liang Qichao, “Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi.”

[63] Du Yaquan, Du Yaquan wencun, 338-344.

[64] “Na Xiyang de wenming lai kuocong wo de wenming, you na wo de wenming qu buzhu xiyang de wenming, jiao ta huahe qilai cheng yizhong xin wenming” 拿西洋的文明来扩充我的文明, 又拿我 的文明去补助西洋的文明, 叫他化合起来成一种新文明. Liang Qichao, “Ouyou xinying lu”
欧游心影录 [Impressions from [my] travels in Europe], in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 5, 2968–2987; 2986.

[65] Huters, Bringing the World Home, 203–228.

[66] See Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity, 36. For further discussion on this theme and on the debate that ensued on the sources of nationhood, the importance of culture, and the significance of science, see Wang Hui, “The Transformation of Culture and Politics.”

[67] See Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Incomplete Modernity: Rethinking the May Fourth Intellectual Project,” in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, ed. Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldřich Král (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 31–65; 39–43; and Peter Zarrow, “An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890–1940,” in Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949, ed. Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 165–205.

[68] Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 55.

[69] “Zhongguo guocui … deng yu fangpi” 中國國粹 … 等於放屁. See Lu Xun 魯迅, Lu Xun shuxin ji 魯迅書信集 [The collected letters of Lu Xun] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1976), 17. Presumably, Lu Xun was referring mostly to Confucian teachings and the Classics, as elsewhere he seems much more positive towards more popular traits of Chinese culture, including Buddhism and other religious-mythical literature. See, for example, Wang Hui, “The Voices of Good and Evil: What Is Enlightenment? Rereading Lu Xun’s ‘Toward a Refutation of Malevolent Voices’,” Boundary 2 38, no. 2 (May 2011): 67–123, https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-1301276.

[70] Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 (London: Routledge, 2005), 137.

[71] See Vincent Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?,” The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 2 (2006): 307–335, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25076034; Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010); and Huang Ko-wu, “The Origin and Evolution of the Concept of mixin (Superstition): A Review of May Fourth Scientific Views,” Chinese Studies in History 49, no. 2 (2016): 54–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094633.2015.1132922.

[72] Yuan was a renowned, or rather infamous, general of the late Qing, who, after the Qing’s collapse in late 1911, took on the role of President of the new Republic, and, in late 1915 declared himself Emperor, yet died a few months later, in March 1916. See Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “To ‘Turn the Historical Clock Back’: Past, Text, and the Politics of Yuan Shikai’s Monarchy,” in Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History, 69–92.

[73] Reginald F. Johnston, Confucianism and Modern China: The Lewis Fry Memorial Lectures, 1933–34, delivered at Bristol University (London: V. Gallancz, 1934).

[74] Liang Qichao, “Lun Zhongguo yu Ouzhou guoti yitong,” 312–315.

[75] See Xu Yanping 徐雁平, Hu Shi yu zhengli guogu kaolun 胡适與整理國故考論 [An examination of Hu Shi and the reordering of the nation’s past] (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003). See also Ori Sela, “‘To Feel at Home in the Wonderful World of Modern Science’: New Chinese Historiography and Qing Intellectual History,” Science in Context 30, no. 3 (September 2017): 325–358, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889717000199.

[76] Hu Shih [Hu Shi], The Chinese Renaissance: The Haskell Lectures, 1933 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 1. See also Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

[77] Hu, The Chinese Renaissance, 46-47.

[78] Hu Shih [Hu Shi], The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (Shanghai: The Oriental Book Company, 1922), 7.

[79] This resembles Yan Fu’s stance, although Yan was much more hesitant. As Theodore Huters has argued convincingly, what motivated Yan’s stance was “the need to find ways for the elements of each tradition to communicate seriously with one another.” Theodore Huters, Taking China to the World: The Cultural Production of Modernity (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2023), 128. See also Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, “The Dawn of Science as Cultural Authority in China: Tianyanlun (On Heavenly Evolution) in the post–1895 Debate over the Engagement with Western Civilization,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 16, no. 3 (2022): 408–432, https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2022.2095102.

[80] Hu Shih, The Development of the Logical Method, 6–7.

[81] Hu Shih, The Development of the Logical Method, 7–9.

[82] Hu Shi, “Women duiyu Xiyang jindai wenming de taidu” 我們對於西洋近代文明的態度 [Our attitude to modern Western civilization], in Hu Shi wenji 胡适文集 [The collected writings of Hu Shi] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998), 4: 3–14.

[83] Lee Yu-Ting, “‘Tagore and China’ Reconsidered: Starting from a Conversation with Feng Youlan,” in Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s–1960s, ed. Tansen Sen and Brian Tsui (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021), 209–235; 214–215.

[84] See Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, “Yu Yindu Taigu’er tanhua (Dong-Xi wenming zhi bijiao guan)” 與印度泰谷爾談話(東西文明之比較觀) [A conversation with Tagore from India: A comparative view of Eastern and Western civilizations], Xinchao 新潮 3, no. 1 (1921):143–147; Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, preface to Zhongguo zhexue shi 中國哲學史 [History of Chinese philosophy] (Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguangshe, 1931), 1. For Liang Shuming’s publications related to this topic, see Liang Shuming, Yindu zhexue gailun 印度哲學概論 [Outline of Indian philosophy (1919)], reprinted in Liang Shuming quanji 梁漱溟全集 [The complete works of Liang Shuming] (Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1989), vol. 1, 23–250; Liang Shuming, Dong-Xi wenhua ji qi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學 [Eastern and Western cultures and their philosophies (1922)], reprinted in Liang Shuming quanji, vol. 1, 395–421. Liang’s comparison of the three “philosophies” (Western, Chinese, and Indian) is especially revealing in this regard. See also Zheng Dahua 郑大华, Liang Shuming yu Hu Shi: wenhua baoshouzhuyi yu xihua sichao de bijiao 梁漱溟与胡適:文化保守主義與西化思潮的比較 [Liang Shuming and Hu Shi: A comparison of cultural conservatism and the intellectual trend of Westernization] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994).

[85] For Hu Shi’s reaction to Liang Shuming’s Dong-Xi wenhua ji qi zhexue, as well as ensuing correspondence between the two, see Hu Shi, “Du Liang Shuming xiansheng de Dong-Xi wenhua ji qi zhexue” 讀梁漱溟先生的《東西文化及其哲學》[Reading Liang Shuming’s Eastern and Western Civilizations and their Philosophies], in Hu Shi wenji, vol. 3: 182–199.

[86] Hu Shi, “Women duiyu Xiyang jindai wenming de taidu,” 3–14.

[87] Hu Shih [Hu Shi], “Two Wings of One Bird: A Chinese Attitude Toward Eastern and Western Civilizations,” Pacific Affairs 1, no. 1 (1928): 1–8.

[88] Among related debates in the early twentieth century, the one focusing on the origin of “Chinese civilization” also demonstrates the force of the term. However, participants in that debate, ranging from those accepting a “Western origin,” those thinking of multiple origins, to those maintaining the notion of a single “Han” origin, were less focused on the “degree versus kind” question or that of the spiritual–material divide. The historians, philologists, and archeologists such as Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893–1980) or Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896–1950), were working on ancient Chinese sources and debating them instead of expounding overarching comparisons with the West. See Hon Tze-ki, “From a Hierarchy in Time to a Hierarchy in Space: the Meanings of Sino-Babylonianism in Early Twentieth-century China,” Modern China 36, no. 2 (2010): 139–169, https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700409345126; Ge Zhaoguang, “Absorbing the ‘Four Borderlands’ into ‘China’: Chinese Academic Discussions of ‘China’ in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Chinese Studies in History 48, no. 4 (2015): 331–365, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094633.2015.1063932; Leigh K. Jenco, “Can the Chinese Nation be One? Gu Jiegang, Chinese Muslims, and the Reworking of Culturalism,” Modern China 45, no. 6 (2019): 595–628, https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700419828017; and Wang Fan-sen, Fu Ssu-nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 98–125.

[89] Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism.”

[90] Sun Yat-sen, “Da Yazhouzhuyi” 大亞洲主義 (Great Asianism), in Sun Yat-sen quanji 孙中山全集 [The complete works of Sun Yat-sen] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), vol. 11, 401–409.

[91] Duara demonstrates how the Japanese enabled various attempts to keep the discourse of transnational civilization alive to some extent, especially by religious groups. Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” 117–126.

[92] Arif Dirlik, Marxism in the Chinese Revolution (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 75–104.

[93] Alessandro Russo, “The Conclusive Scene: Mao and the Red Guards in July 1968,” positions: East Asia cultures critique 13, no. 3 (Winter 2005): 535–574, https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-13-3-535. See also Tina Mai Chen, “Proletarian White and Working Bodies in Mao’s China,” positions: East Asia cultures critique 11, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 361–393; 361–362 and 376–377, https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-11-2-361.

[94] Nicholas Dynon, “‘Four Civilizations’ and the Evolution of post-Mao Chinese Socialist Ideology,” The China Journal, no. 60 (July 2008): 83–109, https://doi.org/10.1086/tcj.60.20647989.

[95] Sam Geall and Adrian Ely, “Narratives and Pathways towards an Ecological Civilization in Contemporary China,” The China Quarterly 236 (December 2018): 1175–1196, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741018001315.

[96] Chen Xiangyang 陈向阳, “Xi Jinping waijiao sixiang dui Zhonghua chuantong zhanlüe wenhua de fanben kaixin” 习近平外交思想对中华传统战略文化的返本开新 [Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thought returns to the roots and creates new things for Chinese traditional strategic culture], Zhongguo Xi guan 中国习观 [Xi’s perspectives on China], January 24, 2019, accessed September 3, 2024.

[97] “Wuzhi wenming he jingshen wenming xiang xietiao” 物质文明和精神文明相协调. See Xi, “Xieshou tongxing xiandaihua zhi lu.”

[98] “yihua du fang bushi chun, baihua qifang chun man yuan” 一花独放不是春，百花齐放春满园.

[99] Indeed, when Samuel P. Huntington’s notion of “clash of civilizations” made global headlines in the 1990s, it prompted much criticism in China. See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22–49; and Yijie Tang, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity and Chinese Culture (Heidelberg: Springer, 2015), 291–307.

[100] Gu Jie 顾洁, “Quanqiu wenming changyi de shidai yihan yu guoji chuanbo” 全球文明倡议的时代意涵与国际传播 [The epochal implications and the international dissemination of the Global Civilization Initiative], Dangdai shijie 当代世界, July 11 2024, accessed September 4 2024, http://cn.chinadiplomacy.org.cn/gci/2024-07/11/content_117302098.shtml. From the 1990s onwards, a debate on “the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” (Zhongguo zhexue hefaxing 中国哲学合法性, also involving the notion of civilization, was brewing in China and beyond. See Yu Wujin, “A False But Meaningful Issue: A Reading of the ‘Legitimacy Issue in Chinese Philosophy,’” Contemporary Chinese Thought 37, no. 3 (2006): 20–33, https://doi.org/10.2753/CSP1097-1467370302.

[101] See, for instance, Xue Li 薛力 and Miao Beilei 苗蓓蕾, “Renlei wenming xin xingtai yu Zhongguo tese daguo waijiao” 人类文明新形态与中国特色大国外交 [The new form of human civilization and great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics], Eluosi Dong’ou Zhongya yanjiu 俄罗斯东欧中亚研究 6 (2023): 1–19; and Chen Jianhong 陈建洪, “Lun Meiguo baquan zhixu lilun de liangzhong banben” 论美国霸权秩序理论的两种版本 [On the two types of American hegemonic order theories], Dangdai zhonguo yu shijie 当代中国与世界 3, no. 7 (2022): 99–107.

[102] Zhang Yaoming 张耀铭, “‘Wenming yu yeman’ xushi de jiangou ji diaogui” “文明与野蛮”叙事的建构及吊诡 [The construction and paradox of the “civilization and barbarism” discourse], Xueshu tansuo 8, no. 297 (2024): 18–32; Tian Feilong 田飞龙, “Ba-Yi chongtu huoshengsheng shangyan liao yi chu wenming yu yeman de daocuo” 巴以冲突活生生上演了一出文明与野蛮的倒错 [The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a vivid example of the inversion of civilization and barbarism], Guancha 观察, September 20, 2024, accessed September 22, 2024, https://m.guancha.cn/TianFeilong/2024_09_20_749140.shtml.

[103] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Dipesh Chakrabarty, “From Civilization to Globalization: The ‘West’ as a shifting Signifier in Indian Modernity,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (2012): 138–152, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2012.636877.

[104] Leigh K. Jenco, “Revisiting Asian Values,” Journal of the History of Ideas 74, no. 2 (April 2013): 237–258, http://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2013.0014.

[105] Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 343–345.

[106] The Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization is a high-level party organ related to propaganda. Until recently, the person who headed this Commission was a top member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, Wang Huning 王沪宁, which highlights its importance as an institution.

[107] Shen Yaxin 申亞欣, Song Zijie 宋子節, and Zhu Hong 朱虹, “Zhongguo weishenme yao jinxing ‘cesuo geming’?” 中国为什么要进行“厕所革命” [Why is China carrying out a “toilet revolution”?], Renminwang 人民网, September 19, 2019, accessed on August 7, 2024, http://politics.people.com.cn/BIG5/n1/2019/0919/c429373-31362516.html; Yu Chimin 余池明, “Renlei wenming de yanjin yu sici cesuo geming” 人类文明的演进与四次厕所革命 [The evolution of human civilization and the Four Toilet Revolutions], Zhongguo chengshi bao 中国城市报, July 16, 2018, accessed August 7, 2024, http://paper.people.com.cn/zgcsb/html/2018-07/16/content_1868229.htm.

[108] Many of these tasks are part of the activities of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization. For “civilizing campaigns” organized locally, see Thao Nguyen, “Governing through Shequ / Community: The Shanghai Example,” International Journal of China Studies 4, no. 2 (August 2013): 213–231.

[109] See Chih-yu Shih, “Assigning Role Characteristics to China: The Role State Versus the Ego State,” Foreign Policy Analysis 8, no. 1 (January 2012): 71–91, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00158.x; Baik Youngseo, “Implications of Chinese Empire Discourses in East Asia: Critical Studies on China,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2015): 206–226, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2015.1037074; Ban Wang, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Ya-pei Kuo, “‘Christian Civilization’ and the Confucian Church: The Origin of Secularist Politics in Modern China,” Past & Present 218, no. 1 (February 2013): 235–264, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gts030; and Erica Fox Brindley, “The Concept of ‘Educational Transformation’ and its Relationship to Civilizing Missions in Early China,” Journal of Chinese History 5, no. 1 (January 2021): 1–21, https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2020.41.