Kang Youwei

Kang Youwei the Chinese scholar and reformer of the late Qing dynasty (1858-1927) who was the intellectual leader of the Hundred Days Reform of 1898. He reinterpreted the Confucian classics to justify sweeping institutional change and was the most prominent advocate of converting the empire into a constitutional monarchy.

Early Life and Intellectual Formation

Kang Youwei was born on 19 March 1858 in Nanhai, in Guangdong province, into a family of scholars and officials. He received a classical education but found the conventional examination learning unsatisfying and withdrew for a period of solitary study, during which he read widely in Buddhist, Daoist and Western texts and began to form his own philosophy.

A journey to Hong Kong and to the foreign concessions of Shanghai showed him something of the order and wealth the West had brought to the Chinese coast, and he began to collect translations of foreign books on science, government and history. He became convinced that China must reform its institutions if it were to avoid partition and decline.

The centre of his intellectual system was a radical reinterpretation of Confucius. He argued that Confucius had been a reformer who used the ancient texts to project an ideal of progress, and that his true doctrine had been obscured by later scholars. This reading gave Kang a way to invoke the authority of tradition for change rather than for resistance to it.

Scholar, Teacher and Reformer

Kang was an original and prolific scholar. In his study of the Confucian canon he set out a theory of historical progress in which society advanced through stages toward an age of universal peace, a vision of the future that combined Confucian ideals with evolutionary ideas drawn from the West. He wrote on philology, history and utopian thought, and his bold reconstructions provoked both admiration and hostility.

He also composed a remarkable vision of an ideal future in which nations, races and private property would give way to a world community of peace and equality. This utopian work, circulated privately and published only after his death, shows the speculative reach of his mind and his conviction that history was moving toward a higher unity.

As a teacher in Guangzhou he gathered a devoted group of students, among them Liang Qichao, who would become the leaders of the reform movement. He founded academies and societies dedicated to the study of reform and the diffusion of new ideas, and through his pupils and his writings he exercised a wide influence on the younger generation.

The Hundred Days Reform

In 1895, after China's defeat by Japan, Kang led a mass petition of examination candidates in Beijing calling for resistance to the peace terms and for fundamental reform. The gesture, known as the petition of the candidates, and the patriotic agitation that followed made him a national figure and identified him with the cause of saving the nation through change.

For three years he pressed his programme on the court, founding associations, writing memorials and appealing to the young emperor. In 1898 the Guangxu emperor, alarmed by the danger of foreign partition, summoned him and adopted many of his ideas. Decrees were issued to reform education, abolish outworn practices and introduce modern administration, and Kang was given a leading position.

The reform lasted barely a hundred days. The empress dowager Cixi and the conservative faction seized power, the emperor was confined, and Kang's allies were arrested and put to death. Kang himself was warned and escaped to Hong Kong and then to Japan, from which he would not return for many years.

Exile and Later Years

In exile Kang travelled widely, living in Japan, Canada, the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia, and he never ceased to agitate for the restoration of the young emperor and the renewal of China. He founded the Protect the Emperor Society and canvassed among overseas Chinese communities, raising funds and organising branches in many countries.

He continued to write on political theory and to defend the constitutional monarchy against the rising demand for revolution. He stood for a reformed empire and argued against the republicans, and when the dynasty fell in 1911 and a republic was proclaimed, his cause was overtaken by events. He returned to China in 1913 but found his programme out of fashion.

In his last years he remained an uncompromising monarchist and a cultural conservative, taking part in the abortive attempt to restore the Qing in 1917 and writing against the iconoclasm of the New Culture movement. He died on 31 March 1927 in Qingdao, by then a figure of the past, though his early influence had been immense.

Influence and Legacy

Kang Youwei was the first to give the Chinese reform movement a comprehensive philosophy and an interpretation of tradition on which political change could be founded. His idea of Confucius the reformer, though rejected by later scholarship, freed a generation from the assumption that the classical order could not be altered.

His programme of institutional reform, his utopian vision and his practice of organising petition, society and press set the patterns that later reformers and revolutionaries would follow. He showed that public opinion and organised movements could influence the fate of the state, and in doing so he helped to create modern Chinese politics.

He is remembered as a man of extraordinary energy and conviction whose intellectual daring opened the way for change even as his political judgment proved wanting. His long exile and his stubborn loyalty to the monarchy made him a tragic figure, but his early thought gave Chinese reform its founding language and its sense of historical possibility.

See also

• Hundred Days Reform
• Liang Qichao
• Confucian reformism
• Guangxu Emperor