In everyday life, historians, especially those who reveal and expose problems that seem lost in the dust of time, are often unpopular, in part because they inevitably make people uneasy and shake their unquestioning faith in the legitimacy of the present order by attempting to change people's long-standing perceptions of the past. Moreover, this type of historian also constantly “dredges up” old matters, making people feel the historian wants to delay the good times that lie ahead and stymie the creation of a new history; for those people who do not want to hear about "history’s old accounts", "optimistically looking forward" is their favored idiom. Indeed, people are more concerned with judgments or predictions about the future based on the usual dissatisfaction with reality and a desire for a better world. They feel this is positive and constructive - the pain of the past is over.
However, people are also concerned about the extent to which predictions about future possibilities can be verified or "cashed in". As with prophecies, they ask: what percentage of events or facts can be actually "predicted"? Unsurprisingly, no one can provide a satisfactory answer to this question. Back in the 1980s, Alvin Toffler's Future Shock imbued many young Chinese with hope for the future, and most Chinese born in the 1950s spent unforgettable years gleaning optimistic knowledge from this particular futurologist, until moving on to the forecasts of other futurologists, or eventually losing faith in such predictions. As a historian, I have no intention of mocking the science of predicting the future. On the contrary, I do agree with Jorgen Randers's predictions based on his observation: “Without big changes, humanity would be in danger of growing beyond the physical limits of our planet”. I even take seriously the conclusions of Randers and his colleagues: “Once the overshoot has occurred, there are only two ways to return to the fertile soil of sustainable growth: either a 'controlled decline' (managed decline) - by the orderly introduction of new solutions (fish from fish farms) or by 'collapse' (You have to stop eating fish because there are no fish - the fishermen's livelihoods don't exist, as was the case in Newfoundland after 1992. ) Overshoot is not sustainable”【1】. However, according to the division of disciplines, these forecasts are not the work of historians unless we link these developed predictions to problems of the past we are studying, and the focus of our research is on historical issues. In this way, terms like "physical limits" and "collapse" are easily applied as they instantly evoke the China we see before us. Of course, we do not have a rigorous set of data to prove that China's "physical limits" will soon be reached, and so it is perhaps possible we will face either "managed decline" or "collapse", but we are reminded of the reports and scholarly warnings about China's environmental pollution, ecological destruction, and increasingly scarce resources that can be encountered almost daily in different media. For a humanist, even cursory observation reveals that the problem of "limits" extends far beyond the physical world and, in terms of morality, beliefs, and values, China already seems to be experiencing extreme levels of degradation, deficiency, and latent chaos that may well be all the more disturbing and anxiety-inducing.
In short, China's current problems are profound and, as a historian, I hope this book can serve as a timely reminder that today’s problems and phenomena derive from historical factors. it is in political, economic, military, cultural, religious, and ideological traditions that we should search for the sources of these problems and phenomena and apply historical analysis to them. The landscape we see today is, in fact, just one part of a historical landscape. The basic tasks I set myself in writing this book are, firstly, to find and examine the causes of the identifiable problems that plague China today through research into the history of the 20th century, and, secondly, through the description, analysis, interpretation, and judgments of history, to provide my readers a foundation for understanding history and facing the future. Indeed, people often analyze modern or contemporary Chinese history from the origins of Chinese history itself (variously estimated to go back to anything from three to five thousand years) and describe and explain the formation of Chinese history and its characteristics from its pre-Qin beginnings to clarify its ideological and cultural contexts. My approach at the beginning of this book will follow similar contours. In my “Introduction” (Xuyan) I provide a broad outline of pre-20th century China, encompassing the sweep of Chinese history from the Qin-Han dynasties to the Reform Movement of 1898 to clarify the relevance of earlier events and phenomena for China’s 20th century in as succinct and brief a manner as possible, in order to remind readers that even today it is impossible to shrink from thinking about historical issues, such as the issue of the unique formation of the Qin-Han polity that took shape more than two thousand years ago and persisted through different periods and in different contexts and discourses.
The appearance of history provided by different historians often differs. This is not the point I am emphasizing but wish to focus instead on a particular question: when the history of a country and nation is limited to the information and single perspective provided by government authorities or political parties and is used over the long term in education and propaganda directed at an entire population, such history seems highly questionable. Like the implicit question that the historian, John King Fairbank, asked, when he returned to the Chinese mainland in 1972 after more than two decades away from the country, and saw the circumstances of his old friends: “In a country known for its etiquette and pursuit of education, China's 'egalitarians' vent their personal anger at these intellectuals, and where is Confucianism in all of this? This is a question that demands an answer". This question signified that the study of Confucian tradition alone was not enough to explain China after 1949. Fairbank, who traveled to China in the 1930s to study China-U.S. relations, later wrote: "If a person is not interested in China-U.S. relations, and is not surprised, annoyed, or alarmed by the subject, then his research on China will not long endure"【2】. In fact, the expression, "surprised, annoyed, or alarmed", encapsulates a predetermined historical attitude. Studying issues and providing a critical analysis and judgment of them are basic qualities underlying historical research; otherwise, historical texts imposed by the authorities or the Party's ideology will infringe upon the spiritual civilization of mankind. Unlike critics or thinkers, the criticality of historians is not expressed as straightforward opinions and bold conclusions about events, but in their careful selection of information and documents, their arrangement and utilization of value positions, and their presentation of their own views and judgments in the process of describing, analyzing, and interpreting what are considered to be historical facts. Among historians in mainland China , there are few achievements in writing general histories covering the period from the 19th to the 20th centuries, and research on this period by historians of the generation, or more, before me was clearly constrained by the influence of the political system and the ideology and culture in which they were located. It is not that different schools were subject to so many historical conditions of their own that we need to be careful with the contributions of earlier historians, but rather that the academic value of historical research had largely disappeared under the ideological pressure that historians need to avoid as much as possible.
This book, therefore, does have the purpose of trying, through its description and examination of a particular period of history, to remind readers to change or even abandon their long-standing attitudes and rethink the legitimacy of existing historical statements. Of course, my reiteration of matters past is intended to make people realize that impeding the creation of history will not delay the good times ahead of us; on the contrary, our creation of a new history needs a re-examination and analysis of the past that will enable us to adjust our plans and even strategies, as much as possible, in order to avoid "collapse" from occurring. This might disturb some people, but it is only by critically looking back and describing their views and positions in language based on historical facts that historical researchers can make a positive and constructive impact on the future. As someone born in the 1950s, I have been a witness to almost half of the history in this book. My personal experience of this past makes it easy to "revisit" that history. However, we are also outsiders and the voracious reading of the 1980s enabled some of our generation to think freely and freed us, as much as possible, from the intellectual dogma created by ideological control and established intellectual habits enabling us to critically understand the past. As a historical researcher, I can make a fresh selection of facts from that past and determine what are general facts and what are historical facts based on the questions I pose and the concerns I have about historical issues, and to freshly describe, analyze, and judge those facts.
In China, from 1949 to the 1980s, free thinking in the field of history was very limited. Now, after almost four decades of reform, albeit largely confined to the economic sphere, there has been some influence from unavoidable western ideas, but self-training and intergenerational education in history circles have not resulted in what might be called a shared body of historical knowledge in this country. Nor do we see a shared knowledge of theories, research ideas, and solutions, so thinking in the field of humanities is still limited by the political system and ideology, and the official monopoly on publishing has determined the scope and limits of what historians can achieve. It should be noted in particular that in the field of the study of modern Chinese history, the classification of approaches into what are called the revolutionary historical paradigm, the modernization paradigm, the West-centric paradigm, and the Sino-centric paradigm are only general formalistic conceptual groupings. Although the works of J. K. Fairbank, Jonathan Spence, Paul A. Cohen, and other Western historians of China have been translated into Chinese, this has not resulted in the emergence of unique "paradigms" in Chinese historical research. However, in mainland China, the emergence of the "revolutionary historical paradigm" was initially related to China's social reality, and some radical intellectuals took Marxism's theory on the basic contradictions of society as their starting point. Stimulated by Lenin’s theories on how Western imperialism influenced Chinese history, they sponsored a narrative expressing the contradictions between imperialism and the Chinese nation, and between feudalism and the Chinese masses, seeing these as the two basic contradictions in Chinese society since the Opium War, and for a long time this "paradigm" constituted the mainstream of historical research in mainland China. The success of the "revolutionary historical paradigm" was related to the violent political turmoil that engulfed China after the 1920s and, especially after October 1949, the confrontation with the West and the designation of class struggle as the main domestic contradictions China faced made the "revolutionary historical paradigm" occupy a dominant position in Chinese historical circles. In the history after 1949, we constantly see how such a paradigm participated in specific political struggles and dictated the lexicon of academic terminology. Constituting the basic historical structure of this "paradigm", the "two processes" (the combination of imperialism and Chinese feudalism, which was a process that transformed China into a semi-colonial and colonial country, a process that also resulted in the Chinese people resisting imperialism and those serving it as “running dogs”), "three high points" (Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, 1898 Reform & Boxer Movement, and 1911 Revolution), and "Eight Major Events" (Opium War, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Foreign Affairs Movement, Sino-French War, Sino-Japanese War, 1898 Reform, Boxer Movement, 1911 Revolution) together dictated a dogmatic writing pattern, which lacked rational judgment on the complexities of history and the causes of events and betrayed a lack of analysis of the internal factors in society, the economy, and culture. At the same time, under the guidance of partisan political aims and ideology, the selection, description, analysis, and judgment of historical facts precluded historians from adopting an independent position, and historical writing was often merely the tool of a political movement (or factional struggle within the Party).
In mainland China, the so-called "modernization paradigm", for a long time after 1949, did not form the mainstream in the field of Chinese history, in which it could barely survive given the domination of the methodology of class analysis. Only when the specific political period needed the support of scientific and economic materials did the "modernization paradigm" acquire some legitimacy. This was why the "modernization paradigm" gradually emerged in China after 1979. Writers in history circles had been familiar with a methodology close to the "modernization paradigm" adopted by Jiang Tingfu in writing Zhongguo Jindai Shi (A Modern History of China) back in 1938, in the Republican period. Jiang had posed the following questions: Can the Chinese modernize? Can they catch up with Westerners? Can they use science and machinery? Can they abolish the concept of family and hometown and organize a modern nation-state? If they can”, he concluded, “then the future of our nation is bright; if they cannot then this ethnic group has no future. This is because all countries in the world which can accept modern culture will definitely become rich and strong, but those that cannot will be defeated, without exception, and the sooner this fact is accepted the better”. Jiang was able to write in a way that reflected a global perspective back in 1938: "Modern history is the history of the Europeanization of the world, and the modern history of China is the history of the modernization of the Chinese nation, that is, the history of the Chinese nation's acceptance of modern European culture". (“General Theory”, A Modern History of China) The response of historical circles in mainland China to this research orientation could only be seen after the 1980s. In fact, the "modernization paradigm" also provided historical facts that went beyond political objectives and ideological requirements in serving a narrative of history in line with the discipline of history.
The "modernization paradigm" could, of course, easily veer towards the "West-centric paradigm". The historical view of John King Fairbank and Teng Ssu-yü seen in their China's Response to the West (1954) was easy to understand, because the history of China, following its encounter with the West, seemed to provide many examples that conformed to Fairbank's impact-response model or to Joseph Levenson’s tradition-modernity model, especially when Chinese intellectuals were anxiously proclaiming the slogan of "total westernization", which made such historical analysis more acceptable. We should also note that, compared with Fairbank, Levenson even stressed the absolute necessity of accepting Western transformation. As for the "Sino-centric paradigm" developed in the 1970s, it can be seen as a decisive correction to the "impact-reaction" paradigm or the "tradition-modernity" model in its emphasis on the internal causes of historical change, what Paul A. Cohen called "internal approach", a formulation which signaled that Chinese history should start with internal factors in Chinese society (a "Chinese perspective") rather than from external, so-called Western (or imperialist) factors, because China has a Chinese context. Cohen, of course, explained what he meant by a Sino-centric perspective: "As more and more scholars seek the 'story line' of Chinese history itself, they are wonderfully aware that this main line does exist, and in 1800 or 1840, the main line was completely uninterrupted, nor has it been preempted or replaced by the West, which remains one of the most important central clues throughout the 19th and even 20th centuries". In emphasizing "differentiation", Cohen rejected the existence of a single “paradigm" (Western paradigm), saying that the concept of the "West" could be subdivided, as in the confrontation between the United States and Europe and in the fact that the United States could further divide, and that the result of such a view could easily lead to the neglect of a historical methodology of “integration”. However, the basic historical fact that should be acknowledged is that the differences between Europe and the United States (political, economic, cultural, religious, customs, etc.) are much smaller than those between China and the United States, not to mention that conflict, competition, or stimulation often produces new commonalities. If we lose sight of integration and induction, and ignore some important historical facts, we will fall into the trap of amplifying the regional and the local and have no way of pursuing structured historical writing. In historical studies, the use of such dichotomous terminology as "Oriental"/"Western" or "Chinese"/"foreign" requires extreme caution. Moreover, since the 17th century, in historical research of any country or region the methodologies prompted by such terms as “trends”, “connections”, “differences”, and “synthesis” are all important. No one's history is stable and pure, and no one's history does not owned its special structure. Premised by such disciplinary cautions, historians need to acknowledge that the dichotomies of "progress"/"stagnation" or "continuity"/"development" are merely the final narrative process in historical research: they are comprehensive judgments made in a particular historical context.
In discussing the methodology of historical research, I prefer to use the term "research orientation" rather than "paradigm", and we know that the "research orientation" used by different generations of historians always related to their knowledge background and value orientation, and that the complexity of history itself cannot be summed up by the particular "paradigm" of historians. So, we need to understand that the "impact and response" of Fairbank and others might have a mechanistic characteristic, but as long as we go deeper into the study of "response" to the traditions of a civilization, specific contexts, and personal experiences, we will not simplify "response". Based on this, the research orientation of this book is broadly limited to the strategic interaction of "political systems" and the "clash of civilizations". This is because it can be readily appreciated that the persistence of the Qin-Han polity was not only the perfection of a structure of its own civilization, but it also featured persistence yet vulnerability in later dealing with Western civilization from the late-Ming to the late-Qing dynasty. If the land-based connection between faraway China and Europe prior to Marco Polo occurred simultaneously with the formation and growth of the Chinese order, the connection between Chinese civilization and Europe after the Great Age of Exploration began to expose obvious institutional differences and even conflicts, and by the 19th century, Chinese civilization, together with its political system, was not only strongly shaken by Western civilization, but also almost completely collapsed in the course of the accelerating impact. Confucianism was of course the basis of the ideas and concepts of Chinese civilization, but the principles of the Legalists were actually the secret and unspoken core of Chinese rule, although the rulers also borrowed from Buddhist and Taoist thought through the work of scholars over generations in using such ideas to retouch Confucianism with metaphysical features, but in the end Confucian dogma was used to explicate the legitimacy of rule by the Qin-Han polity. When the Manchus entered China, they inherited the political system of the Ming dynasty and a complete Confucian culture. These served to make the Han people more adaptable to their rule, and the Manchus moreover did not have a complete and mature political system and ideological culture of their own. However, the Qing court appointed Manchus to almost all important positions in the bureaucracy, prohibited marriage between Manchu and Han, initiated a "literary inquisition" to destroy Han writings expressing dissatisfaction with the Qing dynasty, and forced Han males to wear pigtails to remind the Han people of Manchu ethnic rule, all of which fueled anti-Manchu sentiment and resistance up to the time of the final anti-dynastic revolution.
In my understanding of the discipline of history, I do not think that an abstract historical ontology exists. With the purpose of providing readers with a "brief history", I want to construct the basic skeleton of Chinese history in the 20th century from the perspectives of the "political system" and the "clash of civilizations"; a "brief history" is after all general history, and it does not allow too much detail. Of course, in describing the history of this century, I will still have recourse to the study of cultural differences. Historical studies concerned with cultural differences have been questioned by some historians, who argue that such an approach can easily lead to "cultural essentialism", but it is an indisputable fact that cultural differences and even the resulting emotional differences have triggered a large number of historical events and affected historical trends. The “Four Books and Five Classics” and “Marxism” have served different historical functions in different historical periods, and I am aware of the need to be alert to the different characteristics of the same culture or its expression at different times. Fortunately, historians with Chinese experience at any time in the 20th century, especially after 1949, have long known that basically there is no static culture or stable ideological system and, in their view, the study of the cultural differences in a particular context or the characteristics of the same kind of thought in different periods is what has determined the nature of Chinese historical research today.
In terms of historical periodization, the 20th century is not simply a temporal concept. It initially might seem difficult to see 1900 as the beginning of the history of China in the 20th century, just as some historians believe that the 20th century of world history should begin with the First World War in 1914 or that the 20th century should end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The 1911-1912 Revolution might have served as a starting point for the history of China in the 20th century, yet it would be difficult to answer a perplexed reader who wants to know about this history and reads an account that begins with the sound of gunfire coming from Wuhan, and asks: Why was history so precipitate? Why was the Qing government in Beijing so vulnerable? It might also seem appropriate to put the historical starting point of 20th century China in 1840, because after the Opium War, China began to show signs of a complete collapse from politics to the economy, society, and culture and many of the factors that led to the 1911 Revolution can be found during this period. Historians who adopt a Marxist historical position are more inclined to use the Opium War as a historical node associated with modern times, which they maintain reveals how China's semi-colonial and semi-feudal society was formed【3】. However, before 1793, didn’t the Qianlong Emperor's attitude towards the British mission signal the imminent decline of the Qing dynasty? In fact, the continuation of dynasties has revealed a state of exhaustion. In the "Introduction" I encapsulate the history from the Qin-Han dynasties to the dynastic reforms of 1898 to deduce a thread of development with the intention of providing readers with a basic historical background to 20th century Chinese history since 1900. I do not subscribe to the view that either the late-Ming or the Opium War can serve as markers for 20th century Chinese history. It means that I stress that history changed over time, although the pace of change in the 19th century accelerated significantly【4】.
As a result of my research, I regard the Qing dynasty’s efforts to devise a constitution as the beginning of Chinese history in the 20th century, because the constitutional movement that began shortly after the signing of the Boxer Protocol in fact started a core enterprise in China throughout the 20th century. The implementation of a constitution remained a goal, regardless of the initial motives for devising a constitution and the reasons for its original de facto failure. Driving political, economic, cultural, ideological, and social changes in China for more than a hundred years, constitutional government, as a great political undertaking of the Chinese people, has not been realized even today - in the 21st century. however, the constitutional ideology and early steps towards its implementation completely rescinded the legitimacy of the Qin-Han polity; it is the "constitutional" problems that have arisen at different times in the 20th century in China that constitute the most basic historical problems of this century. Prior to the 1911 Revolution, the term "century" was not used in the chronicles of Chinese history, and if we use the variant Chinese words for "modern" (jindai or xiandai), it is difficult to relate them to the name of dynasties (chaodai) and their rise and fall. As the author of a brief history, I regard the richness of history as the result of a number of basic factors. Moreover, although traditional ideas and culture do always have an impact on history, and Chinese intellectuals have never stopped discussing Confucianism and its cultural traditions, among the extremely complex historical elements, historical events triggered by the conflict between the political system and civilization have shaped the basic historical contours of China for more than a hundred years. For example, to the present day, the Communist Party, which controls the regime ruling the Chinese mainland, remains hostile to the universal values of the West. The richness of history is certainly not an embellishment but a fact, yet any historical writing can only take into account a particular subject. We cannot describe how in 1839 Lin Zexu wrote to Queen Victoria to demand an end to the terrible opium trade while describing life on the streets of Guangzhou at this time to show the details of the continuity of history. Here I would like to reiterate that, in terms of historiography, this book is intended to focus mainly on historical materials related to the themes of the "political system" and "the clash of civilizations", which include ideological movements within the intellectual field and many historical "patterns" attached to the skeleton provided by these two themes. It is clear that the interweaving of these two themes began when the missionaries first came to China and continued until the late-Ming and early-Qing period gradually exposed the complex and deadly clash of civilizations.
Since December 1978, a large number of historical documents have come to light and been published, which have facilitated our re-consideration of history, especially the period since 1900, so that this book can avoid examination and argumentation of existing documents, and focus on the different issues and their relationship, as raised by the new documentation. The new documents allow us to reorganize this stretch of history in order to clarify its true face, or at least one that was once difficult to see. My aim is not to add a new account to the field of modern and contemporary Chinese history, but to alert people to the need to understand history anew and discover the problems that have always existed in the field of history in order to promote "timely decisions and changes", at least in the realm of thought. To be clear, this book will provide readers with a college education today with a 20th-century Chinese history that has the contours I understand, and if readers develop a skeptical attitude and critically reflect on and gain a fresh understanding of the appearance of history, this book will have achieved its goal: for young readers, in particular.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013, on a flight from Chengdu to Hangzhou
Saturday, 4 February 2017, revised on a flight from Luang Prabang to Chengdu
Wednesday, 18 April 2018, revised on flight from Milan to Beijing
Notes：
【1】Jorgen Randers, 2052: A Global Forecast for Next Forty Years, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012. Chinese edition: Qin Xuezheng and Tan Jing trs., “Foreword”, 2052 Welai Sishi Nian de Zhongguo yu Shijie (2052 China and the world for the next forty years), Shanghai: Yilin Chubanshe, 2013, p.005. Jorgen Randers was one of the co-authors of the Club of Rome’s The Limits of Growth (1972).
【2】John King Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir, New York and London: Harper Colophon, 1983; New York: Harper Collins, 1982. Chinese editions: Lu Huiqin and Zhang Kesheng tr., Fei Zhengqing dui Hua Huiyi Lu, Shanghai: Zhishi Chubanshe, 1991; Fei Zhengqing Zhongguo Huiyi Lu, Beijing: Zhongxin Chubanshe, 2013, p.447.
【3】See: Liu Danian, “Several issues in the study of modern Chinese history”, Historical Research, 1959:10. Before the 20th century, Chinese historical works were largely confined to traditional chronicles, and dynasties were the important basis for presenting history. The use of a different calendar also precluded Chinese contemporaries chronicling the history of the late-Ming or late-Qing from using the words "17th century" or "19th century", respectively. It was mainly in the second half of the 19th century, under the influence of Western history and with the emergence of Liang Qichao's New History that Chinese historians began to pay special attention to more recent historical issues. Before 1949, academic and political positions determined historians’ periodization schemata, judgments, and characterization. Early in the 20th century, Chinese scholars had sought to find terms corresponding to the English term “modern times”, and their understanding of the English term determined the temporal range of their writing, many works using the vague coinage “jinshi shi” 近世史for the idea of "recent [i.e., modern] history". What was meant by "jinshi” (recent/modern)? Chinese historians had two main designations of the demarcation point signaling the advent of "recent/modern" history: the late-Ming and the Opium War. The earliest works that treated the Opium War as the beginning of "modern history" include Meng Shijie's Zhongguo Zuijinshi Shi (The recent history of China, Tianjin, 1926), Li Dingsheng's Zhongguo Jindai Shi (The modern history of China, Shanghai, 1933), Huagang's Zhongguo Minzu Jiefang Yundong Shi (The history of China's national liberation movement, 1940), Zhang Jianfu's Zhongguo Jin Bainian Shi Jiaocheng (Course on the history of China's last hundred years, Guilin, 1940), and Fan Wenlan's Zhongguo Jindai Shi (The modern history of China, 1947), First Section, Volume 1. The first histories that commenced modern Chinese history with the late-Ming were Guo Tingyi's Jindai Zhongguo Shi (Modern Chinese history, Chongqing, 1941) and Zheng Hesheng's Zhongguo Jinshi Shi (The recent history of China, Chongqing, 1944). There seemed to be adequate reason for this division or periodization, as Zheng Hesheng explained: “Since the discovery of new maritime routes, world communications underwent great changes, and human life and international relations, when compared to ancient times, saw obvious differences, and this is why we demarcate medieval history from recent (modern) history. The changes in recent history comprise trends towards ‘opening’, and all its manifestations exemplify ancient achievements that are carried forward. The new emerges from the past, and in turn contains the seeds of future trends. Each nation's thought is the driving force behind its evolution. Therefore, the category of ‘recent history’ encompasses nearly three or four hundred years of history, whether we consider the history of China or the West”. Ref: Zheng Hesheng, “Introductory Points”, Zhongguo Jinshi Shi (The recent history of China), Chongqing: Nanfang Yinshuguan, 1944. Here quoted from Zhang Haipeng, Zhongguo Jindai Tongshi Diyi Juan: Jindai Zhongguo Lishi Jincheng Gaishuo (Comprehensive modern history of China, volume 1: An overview of the processes of modern Chinese history), Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chubanshe, 2009, p.11. )
Zheng Hesheng’s view looks quite similar to today's position of writing Chinese history from the perspective of global history. In the search for a more effective Chinese terminology, some writers began to use the now familiar words jindai and xiandai for "modern", so that there are titles such as Fan Wenlan’s Zhongguo Jindai Shi (1947) and Cao Bohan’s Zhongguo Xiandai Shi (Modern History of China, 1947), in which the historians do not seem to discriminate between jinshi (recent), jindai, and xiandai. If we understand the changing social environment and ideological motivations in the field of history at the turn of the century, we realize that this is obviously the result of the rapid changes in the world that required historians to find more effective methods for rewriting history, especially the writing of recent (or modern) history, so it was natural to emphasize their contemporary stance as historians. This is how Luo Jialun, for example, explained this development in his introductory remarks for Guo Tingyi’s Jindai Zhongguo Shi (Modern Chinese history, Chongqing, 1941):
“To know the past history and evolution of the human race or nations, their present status and environment, and their future survival and development, all require the study of modern history. This is not to say that we should not study the distant past, or that such research is not important, but rather that the more recent should be studied more and is especially important. Therefore, to be a modern person, we must study modern history, and to be a modern Chinese, we must study the modern history of China”. Ref: Luo Jialun, “Introductory remarks”, Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo Shi (Modern Chinese history, Chongqing, 1941; Taipei: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1963). Quoted here from Zhang Haipeng, Zhongguo Jindai Tongshi Diyi Juan: Jindai Zhongguo Lishi Jincheng Gaishuo (Comprehensive modern history of China, volume 1: An overview of the processes of modern Chinese history), Nanjing: Jiangsu Renmin Chubanshe, 2009, p.7.
Historians (such as Fan Wenlan and Hu Sheng) did a great deal of work on historical periodization and dating, but their historical views largely accepted official ideological positions, which made the narrative of modern history naturally and completely veer towards political history or revolutionary history, especially the political and revolutionary history of the Communist Party. The writing of modern history before 1949 had almost ignored the existence of the Communist Party, but after 1949 the KMT's image in history books produced on the mainland was, in turn, close to that of simplistic political caricature. Until the end of the 1970s, the history books produced in the PRC almost all used "class analysis" to examine the historical process, with the "semi-colonial and semi-feudal" concept used to characterize Chinese society, and "anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism" seen as basic historical tasks from the Opium War onwards. Such historical writing still continued until the publication of Ershi Shiji Zhongguo Shigang (Outline history of 20th century China) in 2009! Even though its author Jin Chongji presented a confused account of simple class analysis in this four-volume work, this did not change the fact that this book adhered to all the Communist Party’s ideological norms for writing history. Until the 1980s, modern history writing in the PRC was largely limited to writing within the framework of the "two processes", "three high points", and "Eight Major Events". Indeed, there was nothing more harmful to the development of new history in China than such a framework.
【4】As far as research in Chinese history is concerned, the traditional historical phases and periodization schemes of the dynasties are certainly not the basis of my study. Although I emphasize the importance of the Opium War of 1842 in my “Introduction”, it does not serve as a node in my periodization or treatment of time. Moreover, neither "late imperial" nor "early modern" are terms I care for and use.
* This article is the preface of the "A History of China in the 20th Century".