Reexamining the Position of the Shenbao in the History of Modern Chinese Newspapers

주현호 원광대학교 인문학연구소 2023 열린정신 인문학연구 Vol.24 No.1

Established in 1872, the Shenbao (申報) was the leading Chinese-language daily newspaper in terms of its popularity and influence in China in the late nineteenth century. The newspaper had enormous historical value since it reported on diverse political, social, and cultural affairs of modern China, and it played a significant role as an open forum for political discussion. By examining the Shenbao’s nature, characteristics, and influence in the late nineteenth century, this study contributes to the recent academic achievements in the contributions of newspapers and journalists to promote the growth of modern Chinese journalism in pre-1900 late Qing Chinese society. I first examine the nature and characteristics of the Shenbao as a modern newspaper by comparing it to the Jingbao, the traditional court gazette. I then turn to an exploration of the Shenbao’s popularity and its efforts to expand its readership beyond the literati. Thereafter, I examine the rise of merchants who formed an integral part of the Shenbao’s readership and conclude with an emphasis on the significance of its editorials as an open forum for political discussion.

Rethinking Chinese Nationalism in Transnational Contexts

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2015 외국학연구 Vol.- No.33

The term and concept of nationalism is a modern invention that has many connotations, making it difficult to define clearly. However, nationalism can generally be categorized within two geographically, historically, and politically determined types: western imperialist nationalism and non-western anti-imperialist nationalism. Western imperialist nationalism played a crucial role in legitimizing Western imperialism, while non-western anti-imperialist nationalism functioned as an effective tool to inspire peoples to fight for their freedom and independence from western oppression and for their national survival in global Darwinist social competition. Although the differences between these two types of nationalism seem clear, the nationalism of oppressed countries has, to an extent, emulated and imitated its predecessor of imperialist nationalism. In the early twentieth century, reform- or revolution-minded Chinese intellectuals who adopted non-western anti-imperialist nationalism faced an inherent conflict: while trying to overcome the defects of western-style nationalism associated with imperialism, they exhibited western-centered nationalist attitudes in their pursuit of nation-building and transnational visions. Despite the weaknesses of anti-imperialist nationalism, we should be careful not to be too critical of the similarities of anti-imperialist nationalism with imperialist nationalism because they can never be equated. One is the nationalism of the oppressors, and the other is the nationalism of the oppressed.

Nationalism, Commercialism, and the Remapping of Chinese Borders: The Dianshizhai Pictorial’s Coverage of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2022 외국학연구 Vol.- No.62

The Dianshizhai Pictorial was a popular illustrated magazine published three times a month in Shanghai from 1884 to 1898. The Pictorial positioned itself as light reading material for pleasure and was enjoyed by an extensive readership that went beyond educated adults. Whereas existing scholarly works on the Pictorial have focused on the merits of the Pictorial as a cultural and historical source material for better understanding Shanghai residents’ and, more generally, Chinese people’s lifestyle, culture, custom, and view of the Western world, this paper focuses on the understudied topic of war by analyzing the Pictorial’s reports on the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. First, the paper examines the Pictorial’s tendency to distort facts in favor of China in its frontline war reporting. Second, it examines the ways in which nationalism and commercialism were closely linked to the Pictorial’s delivery of the war situation. Lastly, the paper investigates how the surge of anti-Japanese patriotism during the war led to the reimagination of Chinese imperial geography. This paper’s approach to the Pictorial broadens the scope of the Pictorial’s merits in studying late Qing Chinese culture, society, and history, and deepens our understanding of the emergence of incipient nationalist consciousness in late Qing Chinese society.

The Simultaneous Subversion and Reproduction of the Orientalist Fantasy: Focusing on Gallimard’s Death in the Film Version of M. Butterfly

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2022 외국학연구 Vol.- No.60

Whereas the existing scholarly works on the Butterfly story have centered either on Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly or on David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play M. Butterfly, this paper sheds light on David Cronenberg’s little-studied 1993 film M. Butterfly and critically approaches the issue of Western Orientalist fantasy revealed mostly through the character of René Gallimard. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the film reproduces and strengthens the Butterfly fantasy while trying to subvert it through an in-depth analysis of the ending scene of the film, in which Gallimard kills himself during his performance as the Butterfly of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. First, the paper shows how the film tries to deconstruct the polarization of and unequal power relationship between the West and the East, in which the West is usually associated with masculinity and the East with femininity. After that, it examines how the Butterfly stereotype is still sustained and is even strengthened in the process of deconstructing the binary opposition between the masculine West and the feminine East. A renewed analysis of the film can provide an opportunity to rethink the Orientalist view of the masculine West and the feminine East.

Searching for the Butterfly: Orientalism in John Luther Long’s “Madame Butterfly”

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2021 외국학연구 Vol.- No.57

Through an in-depth analysis of John Luther Long’s 1898 short story “Madame Butterfly,” this paper reexamines the Orientalist attitude that associates the West with masculinity and the East with femininity, which has been shaped importantly through the Butterfly stereotype. The paper first traces the shaping of the Butterfly stereotype in literary works in the late nineteenth century that envisions the so-called ideal Oriental woman as beautiful, exotic, obedient, submissive, and self-sacrificing. It also looks into the dissemination of the Butterfly stereotype over the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries through diverse cultural genres, as influenced by earlier Butterfly stories, including Long’s short story. After that, the paper analyzes the story and characters of Long’s “Madame Butterfly,” focusing on the two main characters, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and Cho-Cho-San, as representatives of the masculine West and the feminine East, respectively. Using Homi Bhabha’s idea of “colonial mimicry,” this paper also points out the destined failure of Cho-Cho-San’s Americanization due to the structure of the racial and gendered division between the West and the East.

Gender, Nation, and Nationalism: Late Qing China’s Discourse on Women

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2021 외국학연구 Vol.- No.55

After China’s defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, discourse on women’s sexuality, particularly on women’s bodies, emerged prominently in China. The discourse was influenced by Social Darwinism and was closely connected to issues of the Chinese nation and nationalism. Representative late Qing reformers, such as Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao, thought that enhancing women’s position socially and in the home was important to strengthen the Chinese nation. Their advocacy of women’s rights was not only for women’s sake, but rather for the sake of the nation, with a focus on the idea of healthy mothers giving birth to healthy offspring for the nation. Dissatisfied with this narrow view of women’s roles, a growing number of educated young women began to raise their opinions on gender issues through women’s journals. Although these women’s views of gender issues were still heavily influenced by political issues, their perspective opened a possibility for a renewed understanding of the relationship between gender and nation, related to women’s own self-searching, awakening, and empowerment.

Revisiting the State–Society Relationship over Chinese History

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2020 외국학연구 Vol.- No.52

After the success of democracy movements in Eastern European countries around the end of the 1980s, the concept of civil society conspicuously reemerged, as the existence of a strong civil society was regarded as one of the key reasons for their success. The concept of civil society then spread beyond the Western world, and scholars in the field started to apply the concept to the analysis of Chinese society. This paper looks into the history of the state–society relationship in China. It first briefly examines the notions and characteristics of civil society and the public sphere. After that, it moves to Confucian political culture in Chinese tradition. Next, it turns to the first half of the twentieth century, which covers the late Qing and Republican periods, and introduces academic debates on how to apply the notion of civil society to better comprehend these periods and on whether one can find in China an equivalent to the elements of the Western-born civil society. Lastly, this paper turns to the PRC and rethinks the 1989 Tiananmen Movement in line with the traditional Chinese state–society relationship and the roles of intellectuals in the relationship.

The Interplay of Chinese and Western Worldviews Liang Qichao’s View of Japan and Korea in the 1900s

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2016 외국학연구 Vol.- No.35

The majority of scholarly studies have suggested that the intellectual landscape of late Qing China at the point when the Qing dynasty was on the verge of collapse was marked by numerous reform- and revolution-minded intellectuals who experienced a drastic ontological and epistemological shift from the long-standing Sino-centric, Confucian, and tributary worldview to the Western-introduced ideas and values of nationalism, nation-state, treaty system, and modernization. These studies have pointed out that the full-scale contact and confrontation with the West severely damaged the traditional Chinese worldview of Confucian universalism and culturalism, which regarded China not as one of numerous nations in the world but as a world or as the center of the world, causing it to lose its intellectual significance and contemporary relevance to many Chinese intellectuals. Having lived as an intellectual in exile in Japan between 1898 and 1912, Liang Qichao is often introduced as a representative example of those Chinese intellectuals who underwent a shift from traditional to Western ideas and values. However, this paper sheds new light on Liang Qichao’s intellectual trajectory during those years by focusing on his view of Japan and Korea, which shows that his age-old Sino-centric, tributary mindset was integrated with his Western-adopted nationalist worldview.

Rethinking Traditional and Western Values in Late Qing China: Focusing on Zhang Binglin’s View of the Manchus and the West

주현호 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2019 외국학연구 Vol.- No.47

By focusing on the years between 1895 and 1911 – namely, from the end of the Sino-Japanese War to the end of the Qing dynasty – this paper aims to challenge scholarly opinions that understand late Qing China as a period of transition from tradition to modernity or, more specifically, from a traditional tianxia and culturalist worldview to a Western-imported nationalist worldview. This study investigates the complicated relationship between traditional and modern ideas by looking closely at the worldview of Zhang Binglin, a representative anti-Manchu and pro-Han revolutionary, in comparison with that of Liang Qichao, a representative late Qing reformer. First, the paper examines Liang Qichao’s Western-influenced ideas and his view of the Qing dynasty to examine the ways in which his worldview was linked to the tianxia and culturalist worldview of Chinese tradition. Then, the paper considers Zhang Binglin’s tradition-oriented view of the Manchus and the West. By focusing in particular on his anti-Manchu political stance, his support for traditional Han Chinese values, and his way of coping with Western threats, the paper analyzes how Zhang Binglin’s worldview was connected to culturalism.

Conflicting Images of Korea: The Shenbao’s Changing Pan-Asian Envisioning

주현호 영남대학교 민족문화연구소 2016 민족문화논총 Vol.62 No.-

This article examines the complicated and even conflicting images of Korea represented by the Shenbao 申報 (Shanghai Newspaper) between the 1870s and the 1890s, when the relationship between Qing China and Joseon Korea was being fundamentally transformed as the Qing court changed its Korean policy from the tributary laissez-faire policy into an interventionist policy beginning in the early 1880s. In particular, I investigate the ways in which the Shenbao invoked, redefined, and used the age-old Confucian and tributary ideas for the purpose of justifying the Qing’s non-Confucian and non-tributary actions toward Korea. For example, the Confucian ideal of familism was enthusiastically invoked by the Shenbao when the very familistic Sino-Korean relationship was broken by the Qing’s pursuit of non-familistic interests. In addition, the Shenbao eagerly reproduced the long-standing metaphor of the lips and teeth in order to defend the Qing’s interventions toward Korea. The fact that the traditional ideas were relentlessly called upon and served the Shenbao’s defense of the Qing’s pursuit of practical interests clearly shows that the traditional way of thinking neither disappeared nor was passively replaced by the present reality; rather, it constantly interplayed and was intertwined with the non-traditional values of the present time.