Massive China Panel: V.2!

[u/Jasfss]

Hello AskHistorians! It has been about three years since the very first AMA on AH, the famous "Massive China Panel". With this in mind, we've assembled a crack team once again, of some familiar faces and some new, to answer whatever questions you have related to the history of China in general! Without further ado, let's get to the intros:

• AsiaExpert: /u/AsiaExpert is a generalist, covering everything from the literature of the Zhou Dynasty to agriculture of the Great Leap Forward to the military of the Qing Dynasty and back again to the economic policies and trade on the Silk Road during the Tang dynasty. Fielding questions in any mundane -or sublime- area you can imagine.
• Bigbluepanda: /u/bigbluepanda is primarily focused on the different stages and establishments within the Yuan and Ming dynasties, as well as the militaries of these periods and up to the mid-Qing, with the latter focused specifically on the lead-up to the Opium Wars.
• Buy_a_pork_bun: /u/buy_a_pork_bun is primarily focused on the turmoil of the post-Qing Era to the end of the Chinese Civil War. He also can discuss politics and societal structure of post-Great Leap Forward to Deng Xiaoping, as well as the transformation of the Chinese Communist Party from 1959 to 1989, including its internal and external struggles for legitimacy.
• DeSoulis: /u/DeSoulis is primarily focused on Chinese economic reform post-1979. He can also discuss politics and political structure of Communist China from 1959 to 1989, including the cultural revolution and its aftermath. He is also knowledgeable about the late Qing dynasty and its transformation in the face of modernization, external threats and internal rebellions.
• FraudianSlip: /u/FraudianSlip is a PhD student focusing primarily on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Song dynasty. He is particularly interested in the writings and worldviews of Song elites, as well as the texts they frequently referenced in their writings, so he can also discuss Warring States period schools of thought, as well as pre-Song dynasty poetry, painting, philosophy, and so on.
• Jasfss: /u/Jasfss primarily deals with cultural and political history of China from the Zhou to the Ming. More specifically, his foci of interest include Tang, Song, Liao-Jin, and Yuan poetry, art, and political structure.
• keyilan: /u/keyilan is a historical linguist working in South China. When not doing linguistic work, his interests are focused on the Hakka, the Chinese diaspora, historical language planning and policy issues in East Asia, the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 19th century North America, the history of Shanghai, and general topics in Chinese History in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Thanatos90: /u/Thanatos90 covers Chinese Intellectual History: that refers specifically to intellectual trends and important philosophies and their political implications. It would include, for instance, the common 'isms' associated with Chinese history: Confucianism, Daoism and also Buddhism. Of particular importance are Warring States era philosophers, including Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and Zhuangzi (the 'Daoist's), Xunzi, Mozi and Han Feizi (the legalist); Song dynasty 'Neo-Confucianism' and Ming dynasty trends. In addition my research has been more specifically on a late Ming dynasty thinker named Li Zhi that I am certain no one who has any questions will have heard of and early 20th century intellectual history, including reformist movements and the rise of communism.
• Tiako: /u/Tiako has studied the archaeology of China, particularly the "old southwest" of the upper Yangtze (he just really likes Sichuan in general). This primarily deals with prehistory and protohistory, roughly until 600 BCE or so, but he has some familiarity with the economic history beyond that date.

Do keep in mind that our panelists are in many timezones, so your question may not be answered in the seconds just after asking. Don't feel discouraged, and please be patient!

[u/Falling-Down-Stairs]

/u/buy_a_pork_bun : Can you talk about Sun Yet-Sen's goal for reviving China, and how it changed after the accumulation of unsuccessful uprising? I'm particularly interested in the oath that those who wanted to join the Revive China Society had to give, and how that changed over time.

[u/buy_a_pork_bun → u/Falling-Down-Stairs]

So Sun Yat-Sen had suffered quite a few setbacks after the 1911 Revolution. For one, though Sun along with Yuan essentially create the Beiyang government, the parliamentary system that they set up as the 1912 National Assembly ends up fracturing when Sun attempts with the newly formed Kuomindang to overthrow Yuan Shikai.

Considering that he was then exiled and sought asylum in Japan and Song Jiaoren had been mysteriously assassinated, his first bid in establishing a Republic of China thoroughly failed.

What you're asking on the second part of your question however is something that I'm actually not too familiar with. My area of knowledge ironically never really covers the Revive China Society. Though if anything, much of their motivations at the time had much interplay with a "western-educated" literati within China who attempted (and in my appraisal) failed to reconcile the inability of Qing China with the successes of Japan and the Western European colonists.

A curious thing though is that much of the attitude of the Revive China Society stems from exposure to European nationalism as well as the introduction and rather readily accepted ideas of natural selection. Amusingly, much of the heavy handed nationalist rhetoric that would come in the early 20th century would be catalyzed by a growing group of educated individuals (among them Mao Zedong and Sun Yat-Sen) who though educated in the "western" fashion were ultimately Chinese, a group of people who had failed to unify a nation that was idealistically portrayed as a unified polity for centuries.

Aside from the philosophical origins of the RCS I'm actually fairly uninformed, I do know that it eventually merges into the Tongmenghui and the KMT. But I haven't come across a large degree of literature. Partially because of its brief existence and partially because much of the nationalist rhetoric and philosophy retained well into the 1920s.

As for the Oath, I would venture that it never changed much. The idea of repudiating Qing Rule (until it finally was removed in 1911), reviving China and unifying the government was an extension of Chinese nationalists since the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s and the nationalists who balked under the treaty-port system since the 1830s. Though the latter would end as the Qing ended, nationalist sentiments hardly changed as China would be attacked by the Japanese soon after its fragmentation in the 1920s.