How does China learn from the West in culture? (New Democratic Revolution Period)

The Process of Modern China Learning from the West

Background: The emergence of national crisis and the deepening of feudal rule crisis, especially the stimulation of the Opium War, awakened some patriotic intellectuals from their dream of "de-China". They began to abandon the outdated concept of vanity and arrogance, pay attention to the world, explore new knowledge, care about the current situation, and seek ways for powerful countries to resist aggression.

China's thought of learning from the West in modern times was gradually formed and developed with the process of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in China. It is the advanced people of China, including part of the landlord class, peasant class and bourgeoisie, and it is the way to save the nation from extinction in the situation of class and nation in peril. In other words, from the very beginning, learning western ideas was closely linked with saving the nation from extinction. Moreover, with the deepening of the crisis of feudal rule and the corresponding deepening of understanding, the content of learning from the west has a development and change process from concrete to abstract, from economy to politics, from implements to systems.

The closed-door policy in the early years of the Qing Dynasty interrupted the spread of western learning in China, which had begun to rise in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. By the middle of the19th century, when the major capitalist countries in the west had completed the industrial revolution and gradually expanded overseas, our ancient big eastern country was still under the decadent feudal rule, and the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy was still the most important economic form, and the political and ideological imprisonment was far behind the times. In this case, the enlightened literati in the landlord class noticed the serious crisis of feudal rule, namely the increasingly sharp class contradiction and the threat of aggression from western capitalist countries. Proceeding from the desire to maintain feudal rule, they began to attack state affairs and advocate reform. Gong Zizhen, Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, feudal literati and intellectuals before and after the Opium War, were among them.

Recognizing the crisis of feudal rule is the premise of learning from the west. At this point, Gong Zizhen is at the forefront. The greatest feature of Gong Zizhen's thought is to expose and attack the social darkness of the Qing Dynasty. He thinks that China in the19th century is a society with "the sun is waning, and the prosperity of Thailand rises suddenly", and from this, he issued a call for change that "from ancient times to today, all laws have changed, all trends have accumulated, all conventions have changed, and the atmosphere has remained unchanged". Just as Liang Qichao pointed out in "An Introduction to Academic Studies in Qing Dynasty": "Ideological emancipation in the late Qing Dynasty made great contributions to self-protection", Gong Zizhen's thoughts directly influenced the later reformists and laid the foundation for the rise of the trend of learning from the West.

It is generally believed that Lin Zexu was the first China native to see the world from a broad perspective. While banning smoking, he organized manpower to translate the Encyclopedia of World Geography written by Englishman Murray and named it Shikoku. He also paid attention to studying the situation of various countries and translated many foreign newspapers and periodicals as materials. This has opened the eyes of China people who have been closed for a long time. On the basis of the Records of Four Continents, Wei Yuan completed the great work on the history and geography of the world in the Records of the Sea Countries, and put forward the anti-aggression thought of "learning from foreigners". He advocated adding a naval division in the Qing Dynasty. "Those who can build western warships, steamboats, flying guns, rockets, mines and strange devices are all Kejia people; People who can control hurricanes, be familiar with the sand line of storms and shoot accurately are all from the army, thus clearly putting forward the slogan of learning from the West for the first time. The early pioneers' achievement not only lies in that they opened a cultural window to see the West, but more importantly, they realized the gap between China and capitalist countries at that time and started the wind of learning from the West. Wei Yuan said: "Those who are good at learning from the Four Yi can control the Four Yi, while those who are not good at learning from the Four Yi can control the Four Yi. "However, it can also be seen that these pioneers witnessed the strength of western powers in the Opium War, so they started from an intuitive impression, combined the crisis of saving feudal rule with learning from the West, and advocated learning from advanced weapons and equipment in the West, which was also the most important content of learning from the West.

In the late 1950s [the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1859) was less than nine years old], Hong Rengan, who was in charge of the peasant regime of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the late prime minister period, put forward "Senior Minister New Chapter" to the heavenly king Hong Xiuquan, systematically expounding the idea of learning from the West and developing capitalism. Politically, it emphasizes centralization and unity, attaches importance to "communication from top to bottom", and advocates the establishment of a news library that is not controlled by ordinary officials and imitates the western democratic system; Economically, he advocated the establishment of a modern capitalist economy dominated by machine industry, the development of transportation, the development of mines, the establishment of financial postal services, the encouragement of inventions and the acceptance of employees. If the "learning from foreigners" in the 1940s only focused on building foreign ships and guns, Hong Ren advocated learning from western science and production technology while attaching importance to foreign military technology, which also involved some political systems in capitalist countries to some extent. This thought was in line with the objective requirements of social development in China at that time, so it was of progressive significance. The feudal peasant regime of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had no conditions and could not implement this bourgeois scheme.

It was the Westernization Movement after 1960s that really put western learning into social, economic and cultural practice on a large scale. With the deepening of China's semi-colonialism, the feudal ruling class was divided, and there appeared the Westernization Movement of Yibo and Li Hongzhang under the banner of self-improvement and the New Deal. This movement started from the military industry and spread to the fields of science and technology, national industry, culture and education. It combines the pursuit of strength with the pursuit of wealth, and becomes an obvious symbol in the process of China's modernization. The establishment of Wentong Museum in the first year of Tongzhi started the spread of western learning to the east and the systematic study of western history by China people. However, with the development of the Westernization Movement in the past 30 years, the idea of "Chinese style and western use" as the purpose of the movement has been gradually questioned. Zhang Shusheng, a bureaucrat of the Westernization School, believed that the western "style" was "cultivating talents in schools and discussing state affairs at home", and the Qing court must also learn from it. Because of its strong feudal comprador nature, the movement eventually went bankrupt with the failure of the Sino-Japanese War.

It is not difficult to see that from the Opium War to the Westernization Movement, people's attention in this period mainly focused on western science and technology and natural science. They believe that the strength of western countries is only due to economy and technology. Compared with the west, China just lags behind in all kinds of acrobatics, while China's traditional ethics, knowledge, system and articles are above other countries. This is the limitation of his understanding, and it also has a direct impact on learning something from the West.

The West has taught modern China a brand-new ideology.

From the Opium War to the Westernization Movement, people's attention in this period mainly focused on western science and technology and natural science. They believe that the strength of western countries is only due to economy and technology. Compared with the west, China just lags behind all kinds of miscellaneous arts, while China's traditional ethics, knowledge, system and articles are above other countries. This is the limitation of his understanding, and it also has a direct impact on learning something from the West.

In the 1970s, the national bourgeoisie in China was initially formed, and political thoughts reflecting the will of the new class came into being. Wang Tao, Ma Jianzhong, Xue Fucheng and Zheng are the representatives of early bourgeois reform thoughts. They have more contacts with the capitalist world, so they criticized the Westernization School for learning only the superficial knowledge of the West, and tried to change the face of China from the political, economic and cultural aspects: (1) They inherited the patriotic tradition of pioneers and showed a strong desire to resist foreign aggression and defend sovereignty. (2) it is required to develop industry and commerce as a way to seek a rich country. Zheng put forward "commercial war", "on the basis of business, manufacturing is urgent, and the method of manufacturing takes machine as the first". He criticized the Qing government that "officials can't protect businessmen, but they can make them sick" and demanded that the status of industrialists and businessmen be improved to compete with the West. (3) Advocating political innovation. They believe that China's political situation is out of control, which is caused by a system that is impassable from top to bottom, while western countries are small and strong because they have parliaments as the foundation. Therefore, we should take this as the first step in learning from the West, and implement a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign power is enjoyed by the people. This thought has impacted the traditional concept of feudal autocracy, involving the reform of China's political system and becoming a breakthrough to learn from the West. (4) Advocating the reform of culture and education, developing modern culture and education, and cultivating scientific and technological talents. They criticized that Westernization School only paid attention to learning western technology, but not to training talents, so that "six parents denied it" and failed to really learn the advantages of the West.

Compared with predecessors, the early reformist thinkers further touched on western learning from the aspects of politics, economy and culture, but they did not draw a clear line with the Westernization School fundamentally, and generally relied on the Westernization School, especially the proposition that "middle school is the foundation, western learning is the purpose, middle school is the mainstay, and western learning is the supplement", which is exactly the same as the Westernization School.

The failure of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 strongly proved that it is impossible to strive for self-improvement only by setting up industries. With the deepening of the post-war national crisis and the development of national capitalism, bourgeois reformists have stepped onto the historical stage. The reformist thinkers represented by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao first realized that "Westerners used to be Qiang Bing, so Qiang Bing was not a soldier". China's weakness lies not only in military strength and industry and commerce, but also in politics. By this time, they have grasped something deeper in learning from the west. Around the realization of constitutional monarchy, they put forward the idea of learning from the West to improve China in the political, economic, ideological and cultural fields: (1) refute the die-hards' idea of "the sky remains unchanged and the Tao remains unchanged" with the theory of evolution, and publicize the necessity and rationality of political reform and innovation. (2) Politically, further criticizing the feudal autocratic monarchy requires certain democratic politics and constitutional monarchy. Tan Sitong put forward "breaking the monarch's net", which fundamentally denied the concept of loyalty to the monarch. (3) Economically, it puts forward a systematic program for developing capitalism, requiring the government to advocate and encourage the development of industry and commerce. Kang Youwei believes that the reason why western countries develop relatively fast is because "the source lies in agriculture and industry". Therefore, if China wants to be rich and strong, it must learn from the West, develop industry and commerce as soon as possible on the basis of developing agriculture, and the state should "serve and protect the people". (4) In terms of ideology and culture, they developed the idea of abolishing stereotyped writing and changing the imperial examination, and advocated the implementation of a new education system. Yan Fu advocated that "apart from stereotyped writing, western learning should be emphasized". His translations, such as Evolution, have brought China people into direct contact with the contents of western cultural thoughts for the first time. The freedom, equality and natural human rights of the western bourgeoisie advocated by him had a far-reaching impact on China's ideological circle. Liang Qichao advocated new learning, saying that "the wind of new learning is advocated, and people's wisdom is gradually opening up."

/kloc-at the end of 0/9, these bourgeois reformers advocated political reform and innovation to save the nation from peril and make the country rich and strong, and the goal of political reform was to realize constitutional monarchy, advocate civil rights and develop capitalism. They widely publicized new learning from all aspects, so that the reform thought covered the middle and lower classes of the ruling class, even some upper classes and the whole intellectual class, and formed the first ideological emancipation trend in modern China. Compared with the pioneers who put forward the proposition of learning from the west in the early days, Kang Liang and other new Uyghur schools lashed out at the die-hards and openly advocated western learning. They don't just stay in the propaganda of words, but write letters, petition, run publications, set up societies, run around and constantly expand their influence. Thanks to the support of Emperor Guangxu, they finally auditioned a series of reform plans designed by themselves in 1898. In this way, China learned from western culture, from learning from foreigners at first to controlling foreigners, to serving western countries and then to transforming the country. This is a great progress for China's modern thinkers and politicians to understand western culture.

Almost at the same time as the bourgeois reform trend of the Reform Movement of 1898, the bourgeois revolutionary trend of thought with the Three People's Principles as its content appeared. Represented by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, he advocated overthrowing the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty by force and establishing a * * * and state based on the principle that western capitalist sovereignty belongs to the people. The failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, to a certain extent, promoted the surge of revolutionary thoughts, led to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911, and quickly overthrew the feudal monarchy that lasted for more than 2,000 years. However, the revolution in 19 1 1 failed irretrievably. No substantial changes have taken place in China society, and the decadent rule of the Beiyang warlord government is even worse than that of the Qing Dynasty.

The failure of the Revolution of 1911 brought great pain to China's ideological and cultural circles, and they deeply reflected on learning western ideas. This is the New Culture Movement with democracy and science as its banner around the May 4th Movement. On the one hand, it is the slogan of "Down with Kongjiadian" and the discussion of transforming the national character, aiming at cultivating the group consciousness of all citizens' science and democracy, and even advocating anti-tradition and total westernization. It is believed that otherwise, real * * * and citizens cannot be created, and there can be no victory and consolidation of * * * and revolution. On the other hand, some people think that China is not a western country after all, and China people are not westerners after all. History has proved that learning from the West can not save China society, but will lead to endless civil strife and even the decline of the country. So they turned to explore the "quintessence of Chinese culture" and began to find a way out from China's traditional culture. Anti-tradition learning from the West and returning to traditional nationalism have become two major ideological trends from the Revolution of 1911 to the May 4th Movement. Corresponding to the anti-traditional trend of thought, various western trends of thought spread widely in China during this period, including Marxism. In the end, history chose Marxism, a weapon of scientific thought and theory, and China's * * * production party; In addition, the combination of Marxism and China's national conditions led to the final victory of the China Revolution. This is an ideological change brought by the West to modern China. As a result, China bid farewell to the way of governing the country with Confucianism and embarked on the fast track of developing into a world power.

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