Chen, Huaiyu See all items with this value

2007

8

222-241

1530-4108 See all items with this value

Modern science was first introduced to China by the Jesuits as early as seventeenth century. However, since then over two hundred years, this introduction remained fragmentarily and selectively. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of treaties between the Qing Empire and the Western powers brought the second wave of introducing modern science into China, which was much more comprehensive and systematic. The theory of evolution, social Darwinism, and other social thoughts were also introduced along with modern science to China. The twentieth century was one of the most traumatic historical periods in Chinese history. Thousand millions of people died of the devastating wars, the fatal epidemic diseases, the radical social thoughts, and numerous natural disasters. In the early twentieth century, the invasion of the Western imperialist powers brought overwhelming challenge to Chinese society. In response to the political, economic, and social as well as spiritual crisis in this era, Chinese thinkers sought intellectual resources from both Chinese traditions and the newly-introduced Western modern sciences. Yet many intellectuals were skeptical toward Chinese intellectual traditions. Confucianism as the long-term state ideology of Chinese empire was widely criticized and therefore less resourceful. Buddhism experienced the enduring decline. Interestingly, compared to other Buddhist traditions, Yogācāra Buddhism particularly attracted many intellectuals who revived this tradition. Despite having various motivations and purposes, many modern intellectuals have made China become an experimental laboratory for the social thoughts they brought from Japan and the West. Among these social thoughts, in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, it seems those intellectuals preferred to Darwinism, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, and Nationalism over to Anarchism, Federalism, Republicanism, and Constitutionalism. However, with the rise of the Movement of New Culture around 1919, democracy and science became two rigorous voices among Chinese intellectuals, especially for those who were teaching and publishing in two of the biggest cities, Beijing and Nanjing. After the death of Yuan Shikai袁世凱 (1859-1916) in 1916, the Republican state was firmly established. Yet the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 did not bring China many benefits from the victory of the World War I. The diplomatic failure of Chinese government resulted in the students’ movement all over the country. Since then, Nationalism became the mainstream of social thoughts in modern China.