Kang Youwei
The Man Who Tried to Reform the Qing
Kang Youwei is the famous or infamous reformer already mentioned during that discussion of the 100 Days of Reform and the plan to assassinate the Empress Dowager. Kang’s ideas were also discussed in Losing the Mandate of Heaven. Now let’s consider him, not as a foil to the Empress Dowager, but in his own right.
Kang was born in the Three Districts (Sam Yup) area in the Pearl River delta of Guangdong province in southeast China in 1858. He was bright and his uncle encouraged him in his studies. He was sent to learn to Confucian classics to prepare for the civil service examinations. Unusually, he also did Buddhist meditation. He had a mystical vision that believed that he could read every book and become a sage. He had a somewhat messianic complex after that.
By the time he was a teenager, he was unhappy with the classical method of education and in particular, the emphasis on eight legged essays. These essays were usually written about Confucian thought and knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics about governmental ideals. Skills of writing and basic logic were covered in this way. It had strict rules for length, format and rhyming. By the end of the Qing dynasty, creative poetry writing was generally excluded and this method of learning has since been criticized as contributing to cultural stagnation and backwardness. Eight legged essays were abolished as requirements for civil service employment in 1905, when foreign methods of learning were more highly prized.
Kang was successful in his studies and did pass all three stages of the examination system, a rare and prestigious accomplishment. He passed the final metropolitan exam in 1882 in Beijing, around the age of 24. Three years earlier, he had travelled to Hong Kong and been shocked by its prosperity. It piqued his interest in western culture and thoughts. On his way home from the examination in Beijing, he stopped in Shanghai and bought many Western books there.
Within a year, he had founded the Anti-Foot binding Society in Guangdong.
In 1887, Kang published his commentary on the Liyun, a dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Ziyou. He used it to discuss reform, progress, equality and autonomy. It has been described as putting new wine in old skins.
In 1891, he published A Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Period. He argued that certain versions of the Confucian classics were forgeries meant to legitimize the Xin dynasty. Many considered Kang’s work to be heretical and it was ordered destroyed at times during the Qing dynasty.
In 1895, following the Sino-Japanese war, Kang and 600 examination takers and graduates signed a petition to reject the peace treaty with Japan. It called the Chinese capital to be moved to Xian, to better resist invasion by moving inland, away from the Japanese. It also pushed for modernization of the imperial army and reforms. This was at the time of the metropolitan civil service examinations in Beijing. When the petition failed, then examination candidates, including Liang Qichao, who would be an important follower of Kang, participated in a form of protest in front of the Censorate in Beijing. It was a line a third of a mile long. This was an early form of political action by Chinese scholars.
It ended better than the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations by students. While the petition and march did not succeed in changing China’s policy towards Japan, it did engage reformers like Kang and Liang.
Three years later, Kang and his follower Liang, were at the centre of the 100 Days of Reform under the Guangxu Emperor, which ended because of the plans to assassinate the Empress Dowager and her successful counter maneuvers. She had supported many of Kang’s reforms, but not his call for an Advisory Board which would have placed Kang and his followers in positions of authority to the emperor. Once she learned her life was threatened, she moved quickly and put the emperor under house arrest and Kang and Liang fled to Japan. This was mentioned in episode 22.
Some of the reforms, like the abolition of the examination system and the start of a constitutional monarchy were delayed as a result, but ultimately acted on by the Empress Dowager. The examination system was abolished in 1905 and then a constitution drafted and assembly proclaimed.
Kang could not live in China while the Empress Dowager was still alive. He travelled and promoted his ideas. He first lived in Japan after the failed assassination and when he had overstayed his welcome there, he landed on Canada’s west coast in 1899. He hoped to enter the United States and seek President McKinley to field an army in China to restore the Emperor, with Kang as advisor. He made a number of successful speeches in front of large crowds in Victoria and Vancouver, two western Canadian cities with sizable Chinese populations. When he was unable to even enter the US, he travelled to London to make his case at the US embassy there, without success. He then returned to Canada and was a founder of the Society to Protect the Emperor, in the Chinatowns of Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1899. The Society to Protect the Emperor is a translation of its Chinese name and it was also known as the Chinese Reform Association in English. One of its buildings can still be seen on Government Street in Victoria, BC today.
Kang moved around the world’s Chinatowns, including in southeast Asia, promoting his ideas and fundraising. His first trip to British Columbia netted $7000 after expenses for a local party celebrating the Emperor’s birthday. That became an annual fundraising tradition. The Society was definitely more than a one man show and had many leading figures and organizers. Some of its members advocated and were involved in armed revolution. There was an unsuccessful armed attempt to restore the emperor and to depose the Empress Dowager.
For the first 10 years, The Society to Protect the Emperor and its efforts were more popular than Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary movement. The revolutionary Sun Yat-sen also travelled among the Chinese overseas, but with less success than Kang’s initial support. Sun will be discussed more soon and separately. It should be noted that the Society to Protect the Emperor was so successful that for a time Sun Yat-sen’s older brother in Honolulu, Hawaii, was a member as were perhaps 90% of the Chinese in Hawaii.
Kang had the benefit of higher social status as a top degree holder, published author and because of his association with the emperor. Kang’s society, at its peak, was active in 150 cities worldwide and had over 200 chapters. Its agenda including calls for improving the condition of Chinese workers overseas as well as selling investment opportunities. It encouraged schools for Chinese abroad, including women. Kang sent his daughter to college in the United States. In 1905, Kang spoke in favour of a boycott of US goods when new anti-Chinese exclusion laws were enacted by the US Congress. That boycott fizzled when Americans responded with a boycott of Chinese goods. Kang also met with US President Theodore Roosevelt and took credit for Roosevelt’s promise to improve administration of the Act where he could.
Kang spent time in India multiple times, residing in Darjeeling, visiting Buddhist sites with his daughter, meeting nationalists and taking interest in that populous country under British domination. Kang met and talked with Mahatma Gandhi when he was in India in 1901 from South Africa. Kang was critical of India’s caste system, but expressed admiration for the religious devotion of the Indian people.
Kang at least for a time contemplated ruling as king or emperor and claimed to be the reincarnation of Confucius. But he also had enough sense to hide those beliefs most of the time and to appeal to a wider audience. He was a propagandist and published many lies about the Empress Dowager to boost his and the emperor’s popularity. Those included the claims that she had killed the other Empress Dowager Cian, as well as her own son.
Kang was also willing to compromise his beliefs for followers. When reaching out to Chinese Christians in America, Reverend Wu demanded that Kang abandon a proposed Revere Confucius article in a society newspaper and Kang agreed. But tensions remained and Kang had not really abandoned Confucianism. Most Chinese Christians who were members of the Society left between 1904 and 1907.
At times, Kang fundraised to pay for the Empress Dowager’s assassination. At least some of the society’s members knew that was a goal of his.
Kang received plenty of travelling funds. The extent that he profited from the Society is not entirely clear. Kang did not provide an accounting for the funds he received.
One way or another, in 1904, Kang bought an island off Sweden.
He continued to write and publish books during his exile.
Once the Qing Empire modernized further following the Boxer Rebellion, the Society became more aligned with the court. A constitutional monarchy was proposed by the Empress Dowager and Kang pushed for the changes to be sped up, for the Empress Dowager to step down and for the capital to be moved south of Beijing.
But Kang and the Society’s stars were already falling. The Commercial Corporation stumbled. Revolution was gaining appeal among both the Chinese overseas and among the gentry in China.
In 1910, the society reorganized itself into the Empire Unity Party, later renamed Friends of the Constitution Association. After the 1911 Revolution, it evolved further into the Democratic Party and then merged into the Progressive Party in 1913.
Kang returned to China in 1913. He preferred to live in Shanghai.
During the early years of the Republic of China, Kang was involved in an unsuccessful coup to restore Pu Yi as emperor. That was the infant who had abdicated during the revolution and by the time of the coup he was older, but still a child and would have needed a regency or guidance. By then, Kang’s reputation had faded considerably.
In his later years, he earned money through calligraphy. In 1927, when Chiang Kai-Shek sent forces into Shanghai, Kang left the city for Qingdao. At his birthday party, shortly before his departure, he received numerous gifts including calligraphy from Pu Yi, who was then 24 years old. Kang died in 1927 in Shandong, Republic of China, aged 69.
In 1935, after Kang’s death, The Book of Great Unity was published posthumously. He had drafted it by 1902 and some of it was written when he was in India, but it was not published in full until the 1930’s. Great unity was a concept discussed by Confucius. Kang makes it a utopian vision of a world without nations, rulers, races, family relations, private property, disorder or suffering. Marriage was abolished. Men and women could enter into renewable one year contracts. Abortion is illegal. Women give birth in birthing centres, with nice music playing in the background. Since families are abolished, babies are taking away and institutionalized. Races had mixed through interbreeding. He says that there will be no black and brown people. It might be that Kang became more of a utopian internationalist because of his travels in India.
Today Kang is mostly known as a scholar and a reformer. Some wonder what might have been had he been able to continue the reforms in the name of the Guangxu Emperor. When those reforms did come about 8 years later under the Empress Dowager, they did not prevent revolution three years after her death.
