Wu Guozhen's pen-and-ink lawsuit

The year after he arrived at Armstrong University to teach, Wu Guozhen was involved in a protracted lawsuit with the journal Asian Studies, the former Far Eastern Quarterly founded by Fei Zhengqing and others.

The Journal of Asian Studies is the journal of the Asiatic Society of America, formerly known as the Far Eastern Quarterly, which was founded by Fei Zhengqing and others, and is an authoritative publication on Asian and Chinese issues.

When Wu Guozhen was reading books published in the U.S. about local government in the Qing Dynasty, he found that the content of these books was not sufficiently informative and often contained errors. In order to clarify the nature, composition, functions and personnel system of local governments in the Qing Dynasty, Wu Guozhen wrote an article entitled "Local Governments in Imperial China" in English and sent it to Asian Studies.

Wu himself had been a senior local official for more than twenty years, and had accumulated a lot of information on the issue of local government. In this article, he focuses on the personnel system of local governments at the county level, the duties of county officials, and the local political situation during the Qing Dynasty, correcting the fallacies of some American publications.

Keren, the managing editor of Asian Studies, invited two scholars to review the article. One of them argued that Wu had not read the major works on local government in China's imperial era, such as the book Local Government in the Qing Dynasty by Qu Tongzu, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1962, and pointed out that Wu's scholarly paper did not list the cited sources in detail in the form of notes or bibliographic references; the other scholar argued that, although Wu's paper proposed different interpretations of the issues, this was was based on personal observation and understanding rather than on research materials. Accordingly, Kron returned the paper with the reviewer's comments.

But Wu was not convinced of the reasoning behind the return, stating that it was necessary to clarify the issue in order to preserve the high status of scholarship and to enable American academics to acquire a correct knowledge of Chinese history. In the following two years, Wu sent letters to the editor-in-chief of Asian Studies, Mr. Crane, pointing out that Qu Tongzu's book on local government in the Qing dynasty contained contradictions in its content. He suggested that the relevant parts of Qu Tongzu's book, together with Wu's criticisms of Qu's book, be included as endnotes to his article "Local Government in Imperial China".

With Wu pressing the issue, Keren asked his female secretary to get in touch with Wu. And Wu Guozhen remained relentless, determined to get to the bottom of the issue. After many letters were exchanged, arguing about the review of the article, Keren wrote a letter to Wu Guozhen, stating that Wu's article would not be discussed or answered in the future.

Later, Wu Guozhen went back to the university, but the letter was returned unopened. For this article, the two sides exchanged as many as 40 letters, which took two years and cost a lot of money in postage and electricity. In fact, even if the article was published, there was no remuneration for the article, but only to let the individual's research experience be given due attention. At the end of his patience, Wu Guozhen was ready to sue the Asia Society in court, but due to the expensive lawyer's fees, Wu's financial situation was not affordable. In the end, Wu had to publish a booklet of his correspondence with the Asia Society, together with the article, at his own expense, entitled Why Doesn't America Understand Asian Affairs? .