22 THE REFORM MOVEMENT IN CHINA colleague was an ultra-conservative and a talebearer,who sent home alarming reports of how New England education was ruining the Con- fucian morals of the young Chinese,and in 1881 all the students were II.THE "HUNDRED DAYS"OF REFORM recalled from the United States.They were viewed with some suspicion on their return and were not given official posts of any importance,but in It was China's disastrous and dramatic defeat by Japan in 1894 and time the prejudice against them wore off.The anti-foreign elements had 1895 which first aroused a considerable number of the educated class to terminated the mission,but they could not stamp out its influence.After the realization that China's very existence might depend on the acquisition spending the most impressionable years of their lives in the West,it was of the Occidental methods and institutions which Japan had studied to only to be expected that these returned students would be somewhat such good effect.The defeat at Pingyang,the disaster of the naval battle critical of China upon their return,especially in view of the treatment at the mouth of the Yalu,the northward retreat of the Chinese forces,the which was accorded them.They were thus a factor to be reckoned with in loss of the Liaotung Peninsula,and the surrender of Weihaiwei were the interpenetration of liberal ideas.Among the members of Yung Wing's grave shocks to those who believed that China had sufficiently modernized mission who subsequently attained prominence were Tang Shao-yi,who her army and navy.The news of the unfavorable terms of the peace of served the Manchus in many capacities and was premier of the Republic; Shimonoseki was the last drop of bitterness.Among the younger literati Liang Tun-yen,at one time president of the Waiwupu;and Jeme Tien- there were signs of unrest and of desire to rejuvenate China so that she yew,who won note as a railway engineer. might wipe out the great humiliation of her defeat by diminutive Japan. These evidences of reform,few as they were,seemed sufficient to Missionary literature was eagerly read.'Many memorials urging reform convince many Chinese and Westerners that China was on the way to were submitted to the Throne.Among the memorialists was Sun Yat-sen, renewed vitality.Anson Burlingame,when he served as China's repre- one of the group of Cantonese radicals who united to advocate the need of sentative to the Occident in 1868-1869,spoke glowingly of China's recep- constitutional government.This proposal having been denounced as trea- tivity to Western inventions,learning,trade,and religion.Marquis sonable,Sun took part in a foolhardy attempt to capture Canton and set Tseng declared in 1887 that "though China may not yet have attained a up a liberal regime there.When the venture failed,he fled from China position of perfect security,she is rapidly approaching it."4 It is true with a price on his head and in time became the leader of the revolutionary that in the years after the Taiping Rebellion a portion of the Chinese party.3 Far more conspicuous among the memorialists in 1895 and for literati began to take an interest in Western institutions,which formerly many years thereafter was Kang Yu-wei,the"Modern Sage." they had been inclined to view as the curious ways of a barbarian people, That both Sun and Kang were Cantonese is significant,for Kwangtung unworthy of imitation by the Middle Kingdom.But to all those who Province had long been the center of advanced thought in China.Its thought that the inauguration of a few railway lines,the formation of one people were traditionally anti-Manchu and resentful of control by Peking. modern army corps and a small navy,and a tentative interest on the part "Rebellion makers in ordinary to the Chinese people,"J.O.P.Bland has of the government in Western learning constituted an adequate reforma- called them.The fact that Canton had for generations been the only port tion of the Empire the Sino-Japanese War was a rude awakening. open to foreigners,the proximity of the Portuguese territory of Macao and the British holdings of Hong Kong and Kowloon,and the steady Bland,Recen:Events and Present Policies in China,p.81. 2Williams,Anson Burlingame,pp.138-139. stream of returning Chinese who from Kwangtung and Fukien had gone abroad as emigrants-all these factors made Western ideas more current 4a Marquis Tseng,"China,The Sleep and the Awakening,"in Asiatic Quarterly Review,January 1887. in Canton than in almost any other part of the empire.A typical product of this liberal milieu was Kang Yu-wei,born in Canton in 1858. He received a classical education of the approved variety,eventually Richard,Forty-five Years in China,pp.230-232. 2 Cantlie and Jones,Sun Yat Sen and the Awakening of China,pp.108-109; Kent,The Passing of the Manchus,p.11. a Bland,Recent Events and Present Policies in China,pp.196-197. [22] 【23] [23