Kang Youwei (19March 185831March 1927) was a Chinese political thinker and reformer in the late Qing dynasty. His increasing closeness to and influence over the young Guangxu Emperor sparked conflict between the emperor and his adoptive mother, the regent Empress Dowager Cixi. His ideas were influential in the abortive Hundred Days' Reform. Following the coup by Cixi that ended the reform, Kang was forced to flee. He continued to advocate for a Chinese constitutional monarchy after the founding of the Republic of China.
Early life Kang was born on 19March 1858 in Su Village, Danzao Town, Nanhai County, Guangdong province (now the Nanhai District of Foshan City). His family had produced scholars for thirteen consecutive generations. His great-great-grandfather, Kang Bingtang, was recognized as a master of Neo-Confucianism in Guangdong. His grandfather, Kang Zanxiu, served as an educational official in Lianzhou, and his father, Kang Dachu, was an acting magistrate in Jiangxi. Furthermore, his grand-uncle, Kang Guoqi, held the high-ranking position of acting governor of Guangxi. Kang was raised in an environment saturated with Confucian values and literary appreciation. His family home, "Yan Xiang Lao Wu," was built by his great-grandfather and filled with books and historical records. Kang took great pride in this heritage, later writing poems to commemorate his family's long history of scholarship.
According to his autobiography, his intellectual gifts were recognized in his childhood by his uncle. By the age of five, he was already able to recite hundreds of Tang Dynasty poems. At age six, he began formal study of the core Confucian classics. After his father passed away when Kang was eleven, his grandfather, Kang Zanxiu, took charge of his upbringing. He subjected Kang to a rigorous and traditional education. Under this guidance, Kang expanded his studies beyond the classics to include history and administrative records. The suppression of the Taiping Rebellion and the careers of prominent statesmen like Zeng Guofan, Luo Bingzhang, and Zuo Zongtang deeply inspired him. However, as a teenager, he was dissatisfied with the scholastic system of his time, especially its emphasis on preparing for the eight-legged essays, which were artificial literary exercises required as part of the examinations.
Studying for exams was an extraordinarily rigorous activity, so he engaged in Buddhist meditation as a form of relaxation, an unusual leisure activity for a Chinese scholar of his time. It was during one of these meditations that he had a mystical vision that became the theme for his intellectual pursuits throughout his life. Believing that it was possible to read every book and "become a sage", he embarked on a quasi-messianic pursuit to save humanity.
Biography
Kang called for an end to property and the family in the interest of an idealized future cosmopolitan utopia and cited Confucius as an example of a reformer and not as a reactionary, as many of his contemporaries did. In his work A Study of Confucius as a Reformer of Institutions, he discussed the latter point in great detail. He argued, to bolster his claims, that the rediscovered versions of the Confucian classics were forged; he expounded this idea in detail in A Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Period.
In 1879, he met Zhang Dinghua, a scholar-official from Beijing whose deep knowledge of contemporary affairs and "new books" exposed Kang to early reformist trends. In the same year, Kang traveled to Hong Kong and was shocked by the prosperity there, which started his interest in Western culture and thoughts. These observations also shattered his traditional view of Westerners as "barbarians," convincing him that Western nations possessed systematic methods of governance that were superior to the stagnant practices of the Qing dynasty. In 1882, Kang went to Beijing to take the imperial examination. While returning home, he stopped over in Shanghai and bought many Western books there, and started developing his ideology based on these writings. He was influenced by Protestant Christianity in his quest for reform.
In 1883, Kang founded the Anti-Footbinding Society near Canton. Following the outbreak of the Sino-French War in 1884, Kang returned to his hometown in Su Village to escape the unrest. Influenced by the national crisis and his burgeoning interest in Western natural sciences, he began drafting his earliest philosophical treatises.. In 1885, he started writing Renlei Gongli, a work that utilized geometric methods to argue for universal human equality. The text does not survive as a separate work, and most scholars identify it with the extant Shili gongfa quanshu 實理公法全書 ("Complete Book of True Principles and Public Laws"); see , at p. 180. Zhu Weizheng questioned whether Kang ever wrote a work under that title and dated the Shili gongfa quanshu to no earlier than the early 1890s; see Zhu Weizheng, "Cong Shili gongfa quanshu dao Datong shu", in Qiusuo zhen wenming: wan-Qing xueshu shi lun (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1997), pp. 235–236, cited in Fu (2017), p. 36 n. 12. By 1887, he had expanded these ideas into the Neiwai Pian (Inner and Outer Chapters), which envisioned an egalitarian society free from the constraints of absolute monarchy and gender inequality.. He also authored Jiaoxue Tongyi in 1886, which advocated for a practical educational system designed to serve statecraft rather than abstract academic debates..
In 1888, alarmed by the foreign encroachment on China's southwestern frontier that followed the Sino-French War, Kang used a trip to the capital for the Shuntian provincial examination to submit his First Memorial to Emperor Guangxu. In this document, Kang proposed three major reforms: "Changing Ancestral Laws" to modernize the state, "Communicating the People's Feelings" to bridge the gap between the ruler and the ruled, and "Prudence in Choosing Advisors". However, the memorial was blocked by conservative officials, such as Xu Tong, and never reached the Emperor’s hands.
Kang realized that to convince the scholar-official class of the need for reform, he required a more powerful theoretical framework based on the Confucian classics themselves. He subsequently abandoned his lifelong devotion to the "Old Text" scholarship, such as the Zhou Li, which he began to view as stagnant and irrelevant to the national crisis. He turned instead to the New Text (Jinwen) school, specifically the Gongyang commentary. To vent his political frustrations during this time, he also authored Guang Yizhou Shuangji (, a highly influential work on calligraphy and stele inscriptions.
In the spring of 1890, Kang moved to Guangzhou. His growing reputation for innovative scholarship attracted Chen Qianqiu (also known as Chen Tongfu), a student from the Xuehai Academy, who visited Kang and was immediately won over by his ideas. In the autumn of that year, Chen introduced his friend Liang Qichao to Kang. Liang, who had achieved the juren degree at a young age, arrived with a "sense of pride" in his mastery of traditional philology and literature. However, during the encounter, Kang systematically dismantled and criticized the traditional academic styles that Liang had been pursuing. Liang Qichao later described the experience as feeling like "cold water being poured down his back". The very next day, Liang formally requested to become Kang’s student and was accepted.
At the request of his students, Kang opened the Wanmu Caotang academy, which served as a training ground for the "backbone" of the future reform movement. To provide a theoretical justification for radical change, Kang published Xinxue Weijing Kao (Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Period) in 1891 and began drafting Kongzi Gaizhi Kao (Study of Confucius as a Reformer). These works argued that the conservative "Old Text" classics were forgeries and that Confucius himself was a reformer who mended ancient traditions to improve the present.
Kang Youwei launched the Qiangxue hui ("Society for the Study of National Strengthening") in Beijing. It was the first political group established by reformists in China. Through it, Kang became acquainted with Governor-General Zhang Zhidong and received his financial support to inaugurate the Qiangxue bao ("Journal of the Society for the Study of the National Strengthening") in January 1896. In the same month, the society was dissolved and the journal had to cease publication.
Kang was a strong believer in constitutional monarchy and wanted to remodel the country after Meiji Japan. These ideas angered his colleagues in the scholarly class who regarded him as a heretic.
In 1895, China was defeated by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. In protest against the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and over 600 civil examination candidates signed a petition to the Guangxu Emperor, known to history as the Gongche Shangshu movement. This movement is taken as the sign of the appearance of reformists and the start of Chinese mass political movements. In Kang's view, China "would not have been willing to reform some wholeheartedly if it had not experienced the 1895 war, which hurt it so badly and caused such nerve-wracking pain."
Kang and his noted student, Liang Qichao, were important participants in a 1898 campaign to modernize China now known as the Hundred Days' Reform. The reforms introduced radical change into the Chinese government. In July 1898, Kang Youwei persuaded the Emperor to issue an edict confiscating folk religion temples which were not performing state sacrifices and turn them into schools. The temple confiscations were shortly reversed. The policy set a precedent for future campaigns in China.
Empress Dowager Cixi staged a coup that put an end to the Hundred Days' Reforms, put the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest, and ordered Kang's arrest and execution on the basis that he had tried to have her assassinated. Kang fled the country, but also organized the Protect the Emperor Society which promoted the cause of the Guangxu Emperor, mainly in Chinese diaspora communities, and advocated the removal of Cixi. Kang relied on his principal American military advisor, General Homer Lea, to head the military branch of the Protect the Emperor Society. Kang traveled throughout the world to promote his ideas. He competed with the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen's Revive China Society and Revolutionary Alliance for funds and followers among overseas Chinese.
Kang visited India twice, first in 1901–1903 and then again in October 1909, in part to study India, which he regarded as comparable to China. Although his information about Indian history was derived from English authors, he observed that India's plight as a colonised country was due to the disunity among the different regions of India. Kang Youwei’s Journey to India: Chinese Discourse on India During the Late Qing and Republican Periods, Liu Xi, CHINA REPORT 48 : 1&2 (2012): 171–185
The Xinhai Revolution led to the abdication of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a republic under Sun Yat-sen in 1912. Kang opposed the creation of a republic.
Some advocated that a Han be installed as Emperor: either the current Duke Yansheng (the recognized descendant of Confucius) – which Kang briefly endorsed before dropping the idea and returning to the idea of a Qing monarch; or the Marquis of Extended Grace (the recognized Ming dynasty descendant).
Kang remained an advocate of constitutional monarchy and launched a failed coup d'état in 1917. General Zhang Xun and his queue-wearing soldiers occupied Beijing, declaring a restoration of Emperor Puyi on 1 July.