Event category: Modern History

Imperial Legacies, Socialist Continuities, and Modernist Aspirations
Wednesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
Room 1

• Organised by Hans Steinmüller
• Alessandro Rippa, Chair
• Hans Steinmüller, “Maoist Connectivity: The Infrastructures of Transport and Communication in the Communist Party of Burma, 1969–89”
• C. Patterson Giersch, “Enclaves and Connectivity: Space and Chinese Economic Activity in the Sino-Southeast Asian Borderlands”
• Alessandro Rippa, “Imagined Borderlands: Terrain, Technology and Trade in the Making and Managing of the China-Myanmar Border”
• Panitda Saiyarod, “China’s Transnational Infrastructure: The History of Roads and Infrastructure Development in the Upper-Mekong Borderlands”

This panel examines China’s presence in Southeast Asia through an analysis of its infrastructure construction in the region. Unlike most recent literature on the subject, we do not limit our scope to the last two decades of investments as part of the “Going Out” strategy and the “Belt and Road Initiative.” Rather, we put these most recent developments in a broader historical perspective, investigating imperial legacies as well as socialist continuities. Contributors engage with infrastructure projects stretching from the late Qing dynasty to today and approach infrastructure as a development tool, a site of contention, and a mode of governance. Our focus on the long-term histories of Chinese infrastructure construction in the region provides new perspectives on the political, social, and material forces that are shaping the region today. 

Hans Steinmüller, “Maoist Connectivity: The Infrastructures of Transport and Communication in the Communist Party of Burma, 1969–89”

Following a radical turn of Chinese policy toward open support of Communist guerrillas across Southeast Asia, in 1969 the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) occupied large swaths of land along the Chinese border. The CPB ruled over these mountainous areas for the following 20 years and established the first local government structures. To do so, it relied on logistical, economic and military support from China. The CPB also soon levied taxes and forced labour, and got involved in the local opium trade. Based on archival research and oral history, this presentation deals with the contestations about the infrastructure of transport and communication in the CPB-controlled territories. In the mountains, transport relied mainly on the mule routes that provided periodical markets, the opium trade, and local armies. The CPB used the same routes, while also building new roads and investing in military infrastructure. Often, however, the army had to make ends meet by using more efficient roads and means of communication on the Chinese side of the border. Local foot soldiers, Chinese Red Guards, and Burmese leaders made different uses of the means of transport and communication. The contestations around such infrastructures were central to the governance established by the CPB, and the fault lines of infrastructure played an important role in the mutiny of 1989 that led to the demise of the party. What remained after 1989 were the new forms of Maoist connectivity the CPB had established, and this connectivity paved the way for state-building at the China-Myanmar border since.

C. Patterson Giersch, “Enclaves and Connectivity: Space and Chinese Economic Activity in the Sino-Southeast Asian Borderlands“

Recent work on the Southeast Asia borderlands highlights the contradictory spatial geography of Chinese-led investment and infrastructure development. While One Belt One Road and other projects are imagined through maps depicting transnational infrastructures of smooth connectivity, the actual implementation of investment is primarily directed to specific locations or nodes—Special Economic Zones and Free Trade Zones—where the Chinese state and profit-driven transnational elites configure governance to promote economic activity labelled as development for backwards or wild regions. The results produce patterns of connectivity to Chinese markets that rely on enclaved spaces where forms of Chinese governmental practices are implemented. While the technologies of governance and economic development are specific to the early twenty-first century, the nodal geography of Chinese investment in the Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands is a legacy of the past. This paper presents three case studies to explore the ways in which historical Chinese economic activity has clustered in enclaved spaces where Chinese institutions, both state and transfrontier elite, supported trading and extractive activities. The cases include Qing military garrisons and the southern Yunnan tea industry in the 1730s, Chinese merchant institutions and the Kengtung cotton trade in the 1830s, and Chinese business practices and the Mandalay silk trade in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These historical cases will help us explore the ways in which today’s Chinese presence in Southeast Asia has been shaped by and liberated from past practices.

Alessandro Rippa, “Imagined Borderlands: Terrain, Technology and Trade in the Making and Managing of the China-Myanmar Border”

Building on a “biographical” approach to national boundaries, this paper traces the history of the China-Myanmar/Burma border – its formations, disappearances, and rematerialisations. In doing so, it identifies three alternative imaginaries that have characterised and shaped these borderlands throughout the past one and a half centuries. These imaginaries—terrain, technology, and trade—sketch out some of the ways in which borderlands are seen, perceived, and therefore acted upon by state authorities and powerful outsiders. They are central to how the boundary was demarcated, and to how it is managed today. These imaginaries, then, are reflected into specific practices—and thus have a direct impact on everyday life along the China-Myanmar border. Drawing on both archival and long-term ethnographic research, this paper thus sheds light on the embedded processes of anticipation that underscore how the borderlands are envisioned today in dominant narratives centred around Belt and Road promises and fears. 

Panitda Saiyarod, “China’s Transnational Infrastructure: The History of Roads and Infrastructure Development in the Upper-Mekong Borderlands“

Over the past several decades, and notably before the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, many enormous infrastructure projects have been built to connect China to the world. Southeast Asia, in particular, has been at the forefront of such efforts to connect. This paper aims to approach transnational infrastructure projects in the Upper Mekong Sub-region as a process to materialise political aspiration and political ideology. A site of power contestation emerges through the history of Chinese roads building and infrastructure development supported by the United States during the 1960s–1970s in the border towns in northern Thailand and north-western Laos. The research shows how these development projects have reformulated relationships among these communities and China. The paper thus argues that infrastructure projects are not just technical objects, but they have the capacity to generate insecurity, uncertainty and ambiguity in the region.

Transnational Dimensions of Professionalisation in the Late Qing and Republican Eras
Wednesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room 1

• Organised by Hailian Chen
• Christine Moll-Murata, Chair
• Hailian Chen, “The Birth of China’s Technical Intellectuals: From Missionaries to Polytechnics and Engineering Universities in the Late Qing Period”
• Po-ching Yu, “Translating and Spreading Western Navigation Instruments and Knowledge in the Late Qing. Case Study of Essential Technique and Navigation”
• Thorben Pelzer, “John Ripley Freeman (1855–1932) Goes to China & China Comes to Providence: Dynamics of the 1920s Sino-American Network of Hydraulic Engineers”
• Lin-chun Wu, “’Standardising’ China: Transnational Connections and China’s Industrial Standardisation in the Early 20th Century”
• Christine Moll-Murata, Discussant

Engineers have been significant agents in transforming the modern world since the nineteenth century. In China, the modern engineering professions emerged in the late Qing period and continually developed in the Republican era. Chinese engineers intimately connected with the global world, both through their education within and outside of China, as well as through their participation and cooperation with foreign partners in engineering practices. Their influences go far beyond the professional dimensions of designing and constructing and extend into the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres. This panel examines three different aspects of Chinese engineering professions from the late Qing to the Republican era. The first paper investigates the technical education reforms in the late Qing and analyses the role of missionaries and other foreign educators in the making of China’s new technical intellectuals. The second paper focuses on a case study of an informal network of Sino-American hydraulic engineers during the 1920s and traces the changing views of engineers towards hydraulic projects and governance. The third paper contributes to a rarely studied topic on the process of China’s industrial standardisation in the early twentieth century in the transnational and global contexts and addresses the influence of standardisation towards China’s industrialisation. Together, the three papers can advance our understanding of the role of engineers in shaping modern China.

Hailian Chen, “The Birth of China’s Technical Intellectuals: From Missionaries to Polytechnics and Engineering Universities in the Late Qing Period“

Engineers have become a dominant elite group in contemporary China. How did the epoch-making transition from traditional Confucian-trained literati-elites to modern technical intellectuals occur? The emerging technical education for training experts in the late Qing was a significant turning point. So far, no systematic research has connected the rise of contemporary technical elites with nineteenth-century Chinese education reforms. Based on an original survey of Qing archival documents and private writings, this paper examines the transformation of Chinese intellectuals by focusing on the aspect of foreign educators and supervisors in technical education. Previous studies about the educated Jesuit and Protestant missionaries have addressed the significance of Sino-Western cultural contacts, exchanges, and scientific transfers in many aspects. However, most of the existing work focused on the translations of science(s) and not on technical subjects. Late Qing missionaries such as John Fryer and Richard Timothy, together with their Chinese partners, played a crucial part in establishing polytechnics and engineering universities in China. What were their attitudes towards China’s modernisation regarding education? How did these foreigners change the methods of learning among Chinese intellectuals? How could they effectively communicate with the native students? The answers will help in moving away from the popularly studied themes on missionaries and translations and instead focus on their contributions to educational practices. As a result, this paper aims to shed new light on the role of language and hands-on practices in the intercultural transfer of knowledge, and in the shaping of Chinese technical intellectuals.

Po-ching Yu, “Translating and Spreading Western Navigation Instruments and Knowledge in the Late Qing. Case Study of Essential Technique and Navigation”

After the Second Opium War (1856–1860), the Qing government realized its lack, or insufficiency, of military power compared to the Western world and tried to catch up and close the gap through many ways, including translating various kinds of the western army and navy technical books. The article focuses on the book Essential Technique of Navigation (行海要術) translated by C. T. Kreyer in 1890. That book introduced basic operations of few fundamental navigation instruments, measurement methods on the sea, and maritime phenomenon, which were useful for navy cadets. This article provides an initial analysis of some aspects of that book. Firstly, it discusses the translation motivation and social network of the translator. Secondly, it examines the translated text and analyses such questions as: what is the difference between the original and translated text; how or why do the translated technical terms connect with Chinese traditional maritime or scientific concepts. Finally, it discusses the probable social and military influence of that book on spreading western knowledge, such as the audiences, number of prints or publisher place.

Thorben Pelzer, “John Ripley Freeman (1855–1932) Goes to China & China Comes to Providence: Dynamics of the 1920s Sino-American Network of Hydraulic Engineers”

During the late Qing era, the Grand Canal had become largely inoperable (Pomeranz 1993, Ye 2019). In 1918, the Chinese government organised a canal improvement project funded by the American International Corporation (Mazuzan 1974, Wu 2009). John Ripley Freeman (1855–1932) assumed the position of consulting engineer and recruited Chinese engineering students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to accompany him to Tianjin. There, they joined the young hydraulic engineer Yang Baoling (1887–1966), himself a returned former US student. The informal network of Sino-American hydraulic engineers disseminated professional ideals and fostered transnational friendships. This paper follows what I call the ‘Canal Board interpersonal network’ through a decade of letter exchange. Their communications took place in the time of three failed infrastructural projects: the aborted improvement of the Grand Canal (1917–1922), the rejected bidding on the Yellow River Bridge (1921), and the unanswered calls to tame the Huai River (1922, 1924, 1926, 1929). Focusing on the case study of the personal communication between Yang and Freeman, I argue that, through the decade, practical experiences of failure reshaped the engineers’ perception of their profession’s extent of power. Their experiences allowed them not only to rethink their societal role as professionals but also to reconstruct their ideal of technocratic governance. The hydraulic engineers, from the perspective of the professional engineer, evaluated different governments, including the Beiyang, Warlords, Nationalists, Communists, and Mussolini’s Italy, and came to sympathise or reject them to varying degrees.

Lin-chun Wu, “‘Standardising’ China: Transnational Connections and China’s Industrial Standardisation in the Early 20th Century”

After the Qin government created national standards for weights and measures, they became an indispensable economic institution for maintaining the economic system of the Chinese Empires in the following dynasties. However, the traditional Chinese standardisation of weights and measures was quite different from Western standards. The practice and ideas of industrial standardisation were first introduced into China by foreign engineering groups in the Shanghai International Settlement which promoted the electrical standardisation of Shanghai in the early 20th century. The First World War and its aftermath helped China’s standardisation. The Association of Chinese and American Engineers, founded in Beijing, aimed to promote engineering professionalism in China and played a leading role in China’s industrial standardisation. China also made great attempts to standardise the various railway systems. In the 1930s, the Chinese government established the “Industrial Standards Committee” and adopted the American scientific method and industrial standardisation as a model. After WWII, in 1946, China participated in the organisation of the International Federation of the National Standardising Associations, which marked a new chapter in China’s standardisation to the global system. Few scholars have studied the issue of China’s industrial standardisation and its transnational connections in the early 20th century. This paper fills the gap by examining how China adopted ideas and practices of industrial standardisation. I will also address the questions such as how significant the standardisation was in shaping modern China and what kind of role governance and its transnational factors have played in the process of modern China’s industrialisation.

Wednesday
11:00 am – 12:45 pm
Room 1

• Organised by Clemens Büttner and Edward A. McCord
• Chaired by Egas Moniz Bandeira
• Edward A. McCord, “Toward a Social History of Modern Chinese Warlordism”
• Vivienne Xiangwei Guo, “Achieving the ‘Good Government’ with the ‘Good People’: Wu Peifu and the May Fourth Intellectual in 1922”
• Harold Tanner, “From Shangdang to the Dabieshan: Liu Bocheng and the Challenges of Military Professionalism in the Chinese Civil War”
• Kwong Chi Man, Discussant

Military events provided the context for major turning points in the formation and conception of the modern Chinese nation-state. In China, wars shaped the borders of the state, led to the collapse of old and the establishment of new regimes, motivated a re-evaluation of the military profession, and provided the impetus and starting point for many discourses on the Chinese nation and its place in the world. By analyzing the effects of military conflicts, organizations, men, and ideas on Republican China, this panel aims to highlight the importance of the military as a driving force—and mirror—of modern Chinese history. Going beyond the political and military activities of warlords, Edward A. McCord aims to identify the main elements of a social history of modern Chinese warlordism. Focusing on Wu Peifu’s 1922 call for a “Good Government,” Vivienne Xiangwei Guo examines the intellectual, ideological and cultural aspects of warlord rule. Clemens Büttner recontextualises the “fascist turn” of the Guomindang regime in the 1930s by relating it to the often-overlooked militaristic strand of modern Chinese nationalist thinking. Harold Tanner traces the professionalization of Communist forces under the command of Liu Bocheng during the Chinese Civil War, which laid the foundation for Communist victory in the Huaihai Campaign and expedited the collapse of GMD rule on the mainland.

Edward A. McCord, “Toward a Social History of Modern Chinese Warlordism“

Since the assumption or seizure of political power was a defining feature of modern Chinese warlordism (and indeed for warlords in most contexts), it is not surprising that the main focus of scholarship on warlordism has been on their political or military activities. Nonetheless, warlordism emerged from a social context and once established also had a social impact. To date, however, there has been little effort to construct a social history of warlordism in any comprehensive way.  This article seeks to begin a process of identifying the main elements of a social history of modern Chinese warlordism, starting with possible contributions to this project by current scholarship.  The article will first look at the social background and status of commanders, officers, and soldiers in the warlord era.  For example, the article will examine the various ways in which the control of military force by warlord commanders was translated into elite power through social status, political influence, and financial wealth. Second the article will look at the broader impact of warlordism on development of Chinese society in the early 20th Century.

Vivienne Xiangwei Guo, “Achieving the ‘Good Government’ with the ‘Good People’: Wu Peifu and the May Fourth Intellectual in 1922“

In 1922, after Wu Peifu had secured his victory in the Zhili-Fengtian Clique War, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, and other prominent intellectual figures published a political statement, calling for the establishment of a Good Government. This intellectual-led movement was immediately echoed by Wu, who expressed his commitment to realising a government that is ‘constitutional,’ ‘open to all,’ and ‘with a plan.’ The exchange of ideas and political collaborations between Wu Peifu and China’s leading intellectual resulted in the birth of a remarkable, albeit short-lived, cabinet comprising mainly Wu’s amanuences and intellectual associates.
What were the political and cultural thoughts imbedded in the blueprint for the Good Government? What were the ideas into which Wu and the intellectuals were united and what set them against one another? How did they initiate and sustain their communication, and, indeed, how and why did their collaborations dwindle eventually? Most importantly, how should such collaborations between China’s military strongmen and the intellectual be understood in the shifting contexts of state-building?
Focusing on the intellectual, ideological, and cultural aspects of warlord rule while breaking the historiographical boundaries between the man of guns and the man of letters, this paper will initiate in-depth research into Wu Peifu’s political thought and persona, and, most importantly, into the communication and networking unfolded between him and the May Fourth intellectual during the crucial period of China’s cultural renewal and state-making.

Harold Tanner, “From Shangdang to the Dabieshan: Liu Bocheng and the Challenges of Military Professionalism in the Chinese Civil War“

When China’s War of Resistance against Japan drew to a close in early August 1945, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee ordered Communist forces in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan border region to occupy the key north-south railway lines and take control of all of North China (华北). At the time, Liu Bocheng, commander of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan forces and his political commissar Deng Xiaoping had around 125,000 poorly-equipped regular forces under their command. over the next two and a half years, Liu and Deng led their forces in a series of successful campaigns, from the Shangdang campaign in southeastern Shanxi province to the crossing of the Yellow River and reoccupation of the old Communist base area in the Dabie Mountains. In the planning and conduct of these operations, Liu Bocheng applied his wealth of experience and his Russian training to the task of transitioning his soldiers from guerrilla and warlord styles of combat to the conventional operations and centralised command style, thus laying the foundation for Communist victory in the Huai-Hai Campaign. This paper will analyse the process of military transformation and professionalisation of Liu’s forces as seen in operations from the Shangdang campaign through the Dabieshan campaign.

Wednesday
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Room 1

• Organised by Harrison Huang
• Harrison Huang, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Remembrance and Re-Appropriation of the Poet Cai Yan and the Conquest of Xinjiang”
• Yuan-ju Liu, “The Significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) Collection of Works”
• Wen-huei Cheng, “Cross-Cultural Flow and Subject Identity: A Study on the Visual Modernity of Cai Zhefu’s Quasi-Photographic and Natural History Drawings”
• Federica Casalin, “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s Instructions to the Members of Young Italy (1831)”
• Jianhua Chen, Discussant

This panel centres on cross-cultural intersections in the global flow of emergent technologies, knowledge regimes, and translations in the Qing and early Republican Periods of China. Emphasising intersectionality instead of influence, we frame the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures and institutions in terms of complex mediations, re-appropriations, and disjunctive formations. The first three papers focus on new pictorial and print technologies: Harrison Huang juxtaposes the Jesuit copper-plate prints celebrating the Qianlong emperor’s conquest of Xinjiang with his remembrance and re-purposing of the traditional paintings and centred on Cai Yan (3rd c.), a figure of resistance against foreign steppe peoples; Liu Yuan-ju investigates the paradox presented by the print collection of Ye Dehui (1864–1927), who, despite his reputation as culturally conservative and backwards-looking, had curated prints that exemplified new technologies in visual reproduction and print-making; Cheng Wen-huei examines Cai Zhefu, who innovated pictorial techniques to mimic photographs (xie sheying 攝影) and Western science illustrations, in order to fashion a modern epistemological regime that could act as mutually corroborating interface between Western scientific knowledge and Chinese classics of natural science. In these papers, the aim is not to entrench familiar dichotomies of Chinese and foreign, traditional, and modern, but to recognise the complex interventions and divergent re-appropriations that characterise cross-cultural flows. The fourth paper by Federica Casalin brings together the panel’s larger themes of radical change and global intersectionality by examining the contested meanings of “revolution,” analysed as a process of translingual practice involving key protagonists in the Italian Risorgimento and the new Chinese Republic. Casalin traces the process of textual transmission and cross-cultural translation by which Liang Qichao (1873–1929) engaged with Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), who, in his efforts to unify the Italian kingdoms, formulated concepts of revolution and insurrection that Chinese reformers adopted, contested, and re-purposed. By emphasising intermediary and interventional processes, Casalin shows that the epitome of modernity—revolution—was not a linear formation but a site of complex intersectionality and divergence within global flows of knowledge.

Harrison Huang, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Remembrance and Re-Appropriation of the Poet Cai Yan and the Conquest of Xinjiang”

Harrison Huang’s paper analyses the cross-cultural intersectionality of The Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute 胡笳十八拍 (hereafter, Eighteen), a multi-media series of paintings and poems which the Qianlong emperor restored, inscribed by hand, and appended with a verse in 1742. Huang first traces the manifold frames of reference and complex cultural memory embodied in the Eighteen: the touchstone poems of the female martyr Cai Yan 蔡琰 (3rd c. CE), who represented “Chinese” resistance against the foreign Xiongnu; Tang dynasty imitations of these poems; the Song Emperor Gaozong’s (r. 1162–87) commissioning of paintings on Cai Yan, now appropriated to represent Song resistance against the steppe Jurchens; and finally the Qianlong emperor’s re-appropriation of the anti-foreign figure of Cai Yan to represent the Manchu court’s embodiment of Chinese civilisation, in contrast to steppe outsiders. The genealogy of the Eighteen shows how the dichotomy of “Chinese” vs. foreign culture acquires new and fluid, and even disjunctive, frames of reference over time. Huang also contextualises the Eighteen in the Qing conquest of Xinjiang, which Qianlong celebrated with copper-plate depictions painted by Jesuits at his court and engraved by plate makers in France. Situated in this larger geopolitical context and imperial pictorial regime, the Eighteen is examined as a site where the indigenous intersects with the alien, and the traditional Chinese arts of poetry and painting are deployed and refashioned alongside new print technologies from Europe.

Yuan-ju Liu, “The Significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) Collection of Works”

Liu Yuan-ju’s paper focuses on the significance of Ye Dehui’s 葉德輝 (1864–1927) collection of works that exemplify various breakthroughs in printmaking. From the late Qing to the early Republican period, photography was not the only reproductive technology: transformative innovations emerged, such as lithography, collotype, and the hand recarving of “shadow” plates—all of which are exemplified in Ye’s collection. Showcasing various reproductive paradigms, his collection includes his own recarving of the woodblock for Collection of Wonders from the Southern Marchmount 南嶽總勝集; a stone rubbing of Notecards in Regular-script from the Jin and Tang 晉唐楷帖; and a colotype print of the Real Vestiges from the Collection of Arts 藝苑留真. Ye’s collection presents a paradox: he was branded as a conservative who looked to the past, yet he was quick to adopt the latest techniques in printmaking. His collection encapsulates sudden technological changes and embodies his particular response to the intellectual and material conditions of his times.

Wen-huei Cheng, “Cross-Cultural Flow and Subject Identity: A Study on the Visual Modernity of Cai Zhefu’s Quasi-photographic and Natural History Drawings”

Cheng Wen-huei’s paper explores the revolutionary aesthetic practices and visual modernity of Cai Zhefu 蔡哲夫 (1879–1941), who made drawings that mimicked photographic processes, and conventions of Western scientific illustrations. To accentuate his own methods, Cai adopted new rhetorical strategies such as “quasi-photography” (ni sheying 擬攝影), “ copying photography” (chao sheying 抄攝影), and “tracing photography” (lin sheying 臨攝影), with which he created painting series such as “Sichuan Landscapes” (Suzhong shanshui) and the “Archaeopteryx.” Cheng argues that Cai’s methods were not simply acts of mimicry but represented a new regime of knowledge that enabled verification between Western scientific knowledge, such as visual inspection and authentication, and Chinese natural science classics; while, interfacing with English, German, French, and Japanese translations. This facilitated a deeper connection between the discourse of “technologized visuality” and modern sensory revolutions and ideological enlightenment. Cai’s series of realistic natural-history drawings conveyed a regional consciousness and subject identity, calling for social action that befits patriotism for the homeland. Cai exemplified the scientific truth-seeking spirit of modern rationality had become the new cultural logic governing the translingual practice of modern Chinese intellectuals as they participated in the flow of global knowledge.

Federica Casalin, “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s ‘Instructions to the Members of Young Italy’ (1831)”

Federica Casalin’s paper serves to cap the panel, as it reflects on how radical change was conceived during the transformative cross-cultural currents of early Chinese modernity. Entitled “Insurrection or Revolution? Some Considerations on the Chinese Translation (1902) of Mazzini’s ‘Instructions to the Members of Young Italy’ (1831),” the paper is a case study that analyses the complex meanings of “revolution” as a process of translingual practice in the early Republican period. The case study focuses on Liang Qichao (1873–1929), who was the first to translate into Chinese the “Instructions to the Members of Young Italy” by Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), one of the key protagonists in the unification of the kingdoms of Italy into a modern nation-state and independent republic; as such, Mazzini drew Liang’s attention in his own efforts to reform and modernise the Chinese polity. Casalin traces the textual transmission by which Liang came to engage this text, and compares the source and target texts to analyse the contestation and re-appropriation of “revolution” and “insurrection” in the project for political independence. Germane to the panel’s broad theme, this paper frames how radical upheaval was debated and conceived in the modernity of transformative cross-cultural interactions.

Transnational
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room A

• Chaired by Elisabeth Kaske
• Yulia Khristolyubova, “Chinese, Russian, and British Views on the Structure of the Tea Business in China in the Second Half of the 19th Century”
• Ting Xu, “The Impact of International Law in Northeast Asia in the Middle and Late 19th Century—A Positive Study Based on the Chinese Translations of Tongwenguan”
• Olga Alexeeva, “In the Service of the French Empire: Chinese Labour Brokers in Indochina during the First World War”
• Wenchuan Huang, “Politics of Toponymy: The Historical Geography of the Streetscapes in Hong Kong”

Yulia Khristolyubova, “Chinese, Russian, and British Views on the Structure of the Tea Business in China in the Second Half of the 19th Century”

In the second half of the 19th century, after the victory of the European powers in the Second Opium War, foreign entrepreneurs began to organize firms directly in China. Hankou Port immediately becomes the main centre of the tea trade. The three main participants in the tea business: Chinese, Russian and British entrepreneurs, had different ideas about the emerging business structure and those business opportunities that opened up international agreements for foreigners. The protection of their entrepreneurial interests and the different understanding of their rights, superimposed on the national characteristics of conducting trade, often led to international trade conflicts. Although you can find cases of cooperation and mutual assistance between colonies of foreigners. Diplomatic correspondence, memoirs of participants in events often give a new vision of the events that have taken place, and most importantly, a new understanding of their positions and interpretation of actions. In this work, the author examines these different points of view of national diasporas of tea traders and their strategies of behaviour using the example of historical events and archival materials.

Ting Xu, “The Impact of International Law in Northeast Asia in the Middle and Late 19th Century—A Positive Study Based on the Chinese Translations of Tongwenguan”

Through analyzing the dissemination and acceptance of the Chinese translations of International Law by Tongwenguan in Northeast Asia and combining the change of regional international order in specific historical context, this article investigates the impact of International Law in this area in the middle and late 19th Century. Tongwenguan was the Chinese national translation agency that had translated various famous works about international law into Chinese and first systematically introduced international law into Chinese cultural circle. The translations fully realized the transplantation of the basic structure of the discipline and formed the system of international legal terms in Chinese translation. They were not only recognized by Qing Government but also spread to other countries within Chinese cultural circle and exerted much influence, especially upon Japan. During the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), China and Japan adopted international law to safeguard their respective rights. According to the original works of international law and their translations of Tongwenguan, the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean diplomatic archives of modern time, the existing Tongwenguan compilation documents as well as other source materials of letters and memoirs, it concludes that in Northeast Asia of the middle and late 19th Century, because of its authority and popularity, Tongwenguan translations became the most important source of international law knowledge in diplomatic practice and promoted the modern transformation of the traditional international relations in Northeast Asia, in which process, international law gradually entered the perspective of intellectuals of relevant countries and were criticized or misappropriated by them.

Olga Alexeeva, “In the Service of the French Empire: Chinese Labour Brokers in Indochina during the First World War”

At the turn of the 20th century, the French imperial network enabled the subsequent creation of multiple migration routes between different French colonies and dependencies in the Asia-Pacific, thus transforming mobility in the region. Although the French government generated migration by organizing and subsidizing travel and establishing indentured labour regimes, the recruitment operations were often carried by the coolie brokers who thus became important social and political agents of labour relations. Analysing and defining their contribution to the expansion of migrant networks within the French Empire remains an important issue for the colonial history and the for post-colonial studies as well as for the current labour migrations in the Asia-Pacific. During the First World War, France has recruited thousands of Chinese to replace labourers mobilized for the army and to perform all kinds of works related to the allied war effort. The major problem in administration of the labourers was the lack of Chinese-speaking interpreters. Using its imperial connexions, the French colonial administration decided to recruit the interpreters in Indochina among the local second-generation Chinese migrants. While focusing on the recruitment tactics used by the French authorities in Indochina, this paper will assess the role of the local Chinese community in spreading the information about the offered position and finding suitable candidates for the French. Based on the various materials from the French Archives nationales d’outre-mer, this paper will analyse different recruitment arrangements developed by the French in partnership with the local Chinese labour brokers.

Wenchuan Huang, “Politics of Toponymy: The Historical Geography of the Streetscapes in Hong Kong”

The critical study of toponymy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of streets following revolutionary political change since 1980s. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes. For example, after taking back the foreign concessions in 1943, the Wang Jingwei government eradicated all the streets of Shanghai named after foreign figures. The same case as post-colonial Singapore after 1965, where naming streets served to erase the colonial past and assert national independence. Nevertheless, the most of Colonial-Era Street Names still persisted in the city after Hong Kong’s reunification to China in 1997. This research seeks to advance the critical toponymical study through the history and spatial changes of Hong Kong’s street names to explore the street naming operations of Colonial governance with different block spaces in different periods. And further discusses about memory, local identity and the persistence of Colonial-Era street names after 1997.

Listening to Wartime and Cold-War China (1935–1958)
Tuesday
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
Room 1

• Jonathan Stock, Chair
• Odila Schroeder: “Disconcerting Assets: Musical Institutions and Concert Repertoire in Japanese-Occupied Beijing”
• Andreas Steen, “Shifting Soundscapes: Records, Technology, and the Politics of Sound in China (1935–­1955)”
• Dayton Lekner, “Echolocating the Social: Listening and Being Heard in the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns, 1956–1958”
• Laura De Giorgi, Discussant

This panel brings together scholars from Europe and Canada, whose work focuses on the politics of music, sound, and listening in mid-twentieth century China. The three papers are deeply rooted in archival research and the analysis of auditory culture, but bridge conventional disciplinary boundaries to achieve a better understanding of the role of sound and listening in the context of violent conflict and political campaigns.
Focusing on wartime Beijing, Odila Schroeder introduces musical institutions and repertoires built and appropriated under Japanese occupation, argues for the agency of the collaboration regimes, and lifts the veil of moral judgement to achieve a more nuanced understanding of wartime musicking. Andreas Steen reviews the contentious politics of international record production in late Republican Period Shanghai and its transformation into a national propaganda enterprise during the early PRC. By introducing selected records, he highlights the materiality of sound and the difficulties to create a new national soundscape. Shifting our perspective to the perception of sound, Dayton Lekner traces the effect of mass campaigns of the 1950s on hearing and listening practices. He calls us to recognise listening as a performative practice and to notice the affective and social dynamics of sonic propaganda. Jonathan Stock (University College Cork) and Laura De Giorgi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), serving as chair and discussant, will share their expertise on musical performance, records, and radio in late republican China and the early PRC, and contribute to our discussion of sound and violence, and historical sound studies in the Chinese context.

Odila Schroeder, “Disconcerting Assets: Musical Institutions and Concert Repertoire in Japanese-Occupied Beijing“

While resistance songs are recognized as an integral part of the Communist propaganda effort and Chongqing as the home of the Chinese wartime musical elite, Japanese-occupied territories are still reduced to the “seductive” voices of Li Xianglan and Zhou Xuan. This paper is part of a larger project focusing on the auditory culture of the occupation-regimes in wartime Beijing, specifically concert life organized by the collaborationist New Citizen’s Society (xinmin hui). It focuses on the Beijing Symphony Orchestra (1940–1944) and Beijing City Music Hall. The significance of both institutions as propaganda assets and manifestations of transnational cultural politics has hitherto not been recognized in scholarship on music in the Republican Period. The paper traces the history of these institutions and their activities based on a collection of concert programs kept at the Beijing Capital Normal University Museum, documents found at the Beijing Municipal Archives, and concert reviews published in the occupation regime’s main news outlets, including the Xinminbao, Huabei xinbao, and Guomin zazhi. Analysis of the repertoires performed by the orchestra throughout its brief existence and for the opening of the Music Hall in November 1942 reveals how the occupation regimes not only co-opted and built musical institutions to serve their propagandistic aims but generated new repertoires and distinct forms of auditory propaganda. I argue that the occupation regimes leveraged private concert life, carefully designed concert programs, and attempted to attach new meaning to both new and pre-existing repertoire.

Andreas Steen, “Shifting Soundscapes: Records, Technology, and the Politics of Sound in China (1935–1955)“

In the Republican Period, Shanghai was China’s centre of record production, which by the early 1930s was dominated by British EMI-China and American RCA-Victor. Largely controlled by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), attempts to revitalise this industry after the war had to cope with the unstable situation during the Civil War and finally came to a halt when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. Record production had changed from international to national, and the foreign factories laid the foundation for the newly established People’s Record Factory.
The presentation covers twenty years of recording history in China. Based on archival documents, record catalogues, and other historical sources, it first outlines the struggle over record production in times of war and nation-building. The year 1949 divides two production periods and marks the beginning of radical initiatives to create a new socialist soundscape. In a second step, the paper highlights specific records and engages with larger questions regarding the materiality of sound as well as sonic continuities and discontinuities.
The cultural and political importance of music records during those decades can hardly be overestimated and, although heavily discussed at its time, has been mostly neglected in scholarly research. Integrated into a larger research project, this paper fills the gap, while also engaging with the fact that sound and music, once recorded, do not easily disappear but may return at any time.

Dayton Lekner, “Echolocating the Social: Listening and Being Heard in the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns, 1956–1958”

What role did sound and listening play in the mass campaigns of the Mao era? Recent research has shed light on the material and aspirational aspects of the CCP sonic propaganda effort, but how did such propaganda interact with pre-existing attitudes toward sound, silence, and noise? Were loudspeakers a direct line to the consciousness of the masses or a sonic intrusion into daily life? This research explores the reception of CCP sonic propaganda through a case study of the Hundred-Flowers and Anti-Rightist campaigns of 1956 to 1958. Analysing contemporary diaries and letters, as well as memoirs of the period, I explore how attitudes towards hearing as well as making sound shifted through the mass campaigns. I argue that the most effective form of sonic propaganda (defined here as the reshaping of society through sonic impulse and reception) took place not through the elaborate network of wired and wireless broadcast and amplification, but at the social level as peers, colleagues, and classmates, collectively reshaped society through acute auditory perception and the performance of both sound and silence.

The Changing Meaning of Vegetarianism in Modern China
Tuesday
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
Room 1

• Organised by Nikolas Broy and Matthias Schumann
• Chaired by Vincent Goossaert
• Matthias Schumann, “Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China”
• Nikolas Broy, “Care of the Self or Pursuit of a Better World? Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, and Global Concerns in Contemporary Yiguandao Discourses and Practices”
• Shuk-wah Poon, “Vegetarianism and ‘Protecting Life’: The Buddhist Magazine Husheng bao in 1930s China”

This panel explores the evolution of religiously motivated vegetarianism in Chinese societies during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Vegetarianism as the deliberate abstention from consuming meat and related food products was introduced to China in tandem with Mahayana Buddhism and took hold as a defining marker of Buddhist identity already in the fifth and sixth centuries. As a particular powerful form of moral self-cultivation, it also became widespread in many other religious contexts, including Daoism, popular religion, and popular sects. In addition, it was related to temporary practices of meat-abstention, such as fasting in imperial and Confucian ritual. Hence, vegetarianism in imperial China can be considered a religiously induced practice related to notions of morality, self-cultivation, karma and retribution, and ritual purity. Since the early twentieth century, this tradition was subtly transformed through the impact of an increasing internationalization, new ideas and changing food practices—from an engagement with a global animal protection movement in the wake of WWI to contemporary attempts to integrate concerns about global warming, food safety and environmentalism into the discourse. By looking at Buddhist activists in Republican China and the religious movement Yiguandao in contemporary Taiwan and among overseas Chinese, the panel traces the transformation of traditional vegetarian beliefs and practices in modern society. The panel thereby aims to contribute to the growing literature on food practices in modern China in general, but also shed light on the transformation of an important traditional religious practice.

Matthias Schumann, “Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China”

During the Republican period (1912–1949), Buddhist vegetarian practices took on new meanings as they were integrated into a spreading global movement of vegetarianism and animal protection. Chinese Buddhists adopted international models to establish new institutions that were dedicated to vegetarianism and animal protection, most importantly the China Society for the Protection of Animals (Zhongguo baohu dongwu hui 中國保護動物會) that was founded in 1934. Yet, at the same time, they also criticized foreigners for many of whom vegetarianism retained a streak of the radical and the unorthodox. In this context, vegetarianism could be presented as both inherent to Chinese religious traditions and radically progressive within a global animal protection movement. It thereby served to bolster a sense of Chinese cultural identity and to subvert the unequal power relations in a semi-colonial context. This paper will explore this dynamic by looking at the interactions and debates between Chinese and foreign activists in an increasingly internationalized context. During the Republican period, Chinese Buddhist activists travelled to international congresses in Europe to propagate their views, while foreign residents set up societies for animal protection in Shanghai and other cities. These interactions provided an opportunity for Chinese activists to renegotiate Chinese identity in light of a reinvented tradition of vegetarianism and kindness to animals.

Nikolas Broy, “Care of the Self or Pursuit of a Better World? Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, and Global Concerns in Contemporary Yiguandao Discourses and Practices”

This paper seeks to explore how practitioners of the Taiwanese religious movement Yiguandao 一貫道 (“Way of Pervading Unity,” emic transcription is “I-Kuan Tao”) aim to merge traditional vegetarian beliefs and practices with contemporary concerns about global warming, environmental protection, and the care for living beings. While religiously motivated vegetarianism in late imperial China focused very much on the idea of abstaining from killing living beings and consuming their meat as a means to purify the self and to attain salvation through individual moral cultivation, there is also a growing trend among contemporary practitioners to integrate novel discourses about global warming, environmental protection, and the care for animals into their everyday practices. Drawing on published Yiguandao materials, online resources, and intensive fieldwork among Yiguandao congregations in Taiwan, Austria, South Africa, the United States, and Japan conducted from 2016 to 2018, this paper investigates how these modern ideas and concepts are being integrated, reworked, or even dismissed. It thereby looks at the meaning of vegetarian practices in practitioners’ social and religious lives.

Shuk-wah Poon, “Vegetarianism and ‘Protecting Life’: The Buddhist Magazine Husheng bao in 1930s China”

Founded in Shanghai by lay Buddhist Han Shizi 寒世子 in 1932, the Buddhist magazine Husheng bao 護生報 proclaimed itself as the first magazine in East Asia that was specifically devoted to advocating the ideas of animal protection and vegetarianism. While messages of kindness to animals and abstinence from meat were by no means new in Chinese Buddhist teachings, Husheng bao distinguished itself from traditional Buddhist beliefs and practices relating to animals in the following ways: First, the magazine explained the evils of meat-consumption not only by linking consuming meat to the accumulation of bad karma but also by giving detailed illustrations of the sufferings inflicted on animals during the process of slaughtering. Second, references were occasionally made to the animal protection movement in the Western world, thus adding a sense of internationalism to the otherwise outdated Buddhist religion. Third, the use of modern printing technology and the publication of contributions from the Chinese Buddhists in and outside of China helped foster an imagined global community of animal-loving Buddhists. This paper will examine the role of Husheng bao in the creation and dissemination of the new sensibility towards animals in Republican China.