Liang Qichao

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Liang Qichao was both a traditional Confucian scholar and a reformist. Liang Qichao contributed to the reform in late Qing by writing various articles interpreting non-Chinese ideas of history and government, with the intent of stimulating Chinese citizens' minds to build a new China. In his writings, he argued that China should protect the ancient teachings of Confucianism, but also learn from the successes of Western political life and not just Western technology. Therefore, he was regarded as the pioneer of political fiction.

Liang shaped the ideas of democracy in China, using his writings as a medium to combine Western scientific methods with traditional Chinese historical studies. Liang's works were strongly influenced by the Japanese political scholar Katō Hiroyuki, who used methods of social Darwinism to promote the statist ideology in Japanese society. Liang drew from much of his work and subsequently influenced Korean nationalists in the 1900s.

Liang Qichao's historiographical thought represents the beginning of modern Chinese historiography and reveals some important directions of Chinese historiography in the twentieth century.

For Liang, the major flaw of "old historians" (舊史家) was their failure to foster the national awareness necessary for a strong and modern nation. Liang's call for new history not only pointed to a new orientation for historical writing in China, but also indicated the rise of modern historical consciousness among Chinese intellectuals. He advocated the Great Man theory in his 1899 piece, "Heroes and the Times" (英雄與時勢, Yīngxióng yǔ Shíshì), and he also wrote biographies of European state-builders such as Otto von Bismarck, Horatio Nelson, Oliver Cromwell, Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour; as well as Chinese men including Zheng He, Tan Sitong, and Wang Anshi.

During this period of Japan's challenge in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Liang was involved in protests in Beijing pushing for an increased participation in the governance by the Chinese people. It was the first protest of its kind in modern Chinese history. This changing outlook on tradition was shown in the historiographical revolution (史學革命) launched by Liang Qichao in the early twentieth century. Frustrated by his failure at political reform, Liang embarked upon cultural reform. In 1902, while in exile in Japan, Liang wrote "The New Historiography" (新史學), which called on Chinese to study world history to understand China rather than just Chinese history. The article also attacked old historiographical methods, which he lamented focused on dynasty over state; the individual over the group; the past but not the present; and facts, rather than ideals.

Liang was head of the Translation Bureau and oversaw the training of students who were learning to translate Western works into Chinese. He believed that this task was "the most essential of all essential undertakings to accomplish" because he believed Westerners were successful - politically, technologically and economically.

Philosophical Works: After escaping Beijing and the government crackdown on anti-Qing protesters, Liang studied the works of Western philosophers of the Enlightenment period, namely Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Hume and Bentham, translating them and introducing his own interpretation of their works. His essays were published in a number of journals, drawing interest among Chinese intellectuals who had been taken aback by the dismemberment of China's formidable empire at the hands of foreign powers.

Western Social and Political Theories: In the early 20th century, Liang Qichao played a significant role in introducing Western social and political theories into Korea such as Social Darwinism and international law. Liang wrote in his well-known manifesto, New People (新民說):

Liang advocated reform in both the genres of poem and novel. The Collected Works from the Ice-Drinker's Studio (飲冰室合集) is his representative works in literature compiled into 148 volumes.

Liang gained his idea of calling his work as Collected Works of Yinbingshi from a passage of Zhuangzi (《莊子•人間世》). It states that "Every morning, I receive the mandate [for action], every evening I drink the ice [of disillusion], but I remain ardent in my inner mind" (吾朝受命而夕飲冰，我其內熱與). As a result, Liang called his workplace as "The Ice-drinker's studio" (Yinbingshi), and addressed himself as Yinbingshi Zhuren (飲冰室主人), literally Host of the Ice-drinker's studio, in order to present his idea that he was worrying about all the political matters, so he would still try his best to reform the society by the effort of writings.

Liang also wrote fiction and scholarly essays on fiction, which included Fleeing to Japan after failure of Hundred Days' Reform (1898) and the essay On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People (論小說與群治之關係, 1902). These novels emphasized modernization in the West and the call for reform.

In the early 1920s, Liang retired from politics and taught at the Tung-nan University in Shanghai and Tsinghua University Research Institute in Peking. He founded the Jiangxue she (Chinese Lecture Association) and brought important intellectual figures to China, including Driesch and Rabindranath Tagore. Academically he was a renowned scholar of his time, introducing Western learning and ideology, and making extensive studies of ancient Chinese culture. He was impacted by a social-Darwinian perspective to researched approaches to combine the western thought and Chinese learning.

As an educator, Liang Qichao thought children were the future of the development of China, and he thought the education was significant for children's growth, and the traditional education approaches needed to be changed, and the educational reformation was important in Modern China. He thought children needed to cultivate creative thinking and improve the ability of understanding, and the new school became important to instruct children in the new approaches in the education.

During this last decade of his life, published studies of Chinese cultural history, Chinese literary history and historiography. Liang reexamined the works of Mozi, and authored, amongst other works, The Political Thought of the Pre-Qing Period, and Intellectual Trends in the Qing Period. He also had a strong interest in Buddhism and wrote historical and political articles on its influence in China. Liang influenced many of his students in producing their own literary works. They included Xu Zhimo, renowned modern poet, and Wang Li, an accomplished poet and founder of Chinese linguistics as a modern discipline.

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