In the late 1890s, political and ideological changes produced dramatic episodes of reform and revolution that in 191 1 ended the imperial system in China. Part of this process was the growth of a nationally conscious public opinion, which stimulated demands for redistribution of political power and led to new forms of group organization and action. A reexamination of the evolution of “pure discussion” (qingyi) in the metropolitan bureaucracy during the last quarter of the nineteenth century provides new perspectives on these still imperfectly understood developments and leaves us with a better understanding of why expanding political awareness led to alienation from existing authority.
Pure discussion means critical, but theoretically disinterested, expression of opinion. It had a long, albeit discontinuous, history throughout the many centuries of imperial rule (Eastman 1965: 597-98). Sometimes it took the form of broadly reformist public dissent from government policies, which might be associated with militant patriotism as during the Southern Song dynasty. At other times, qingyi appeared to focus on narrow issues of procedure or ritual or to deteriorate into a vehicle for petty, irresponsible careerism within the bureaucracy. In all instances, it was distinguished by a moralistic, sometimes intemperate rhetorical style that was repeatedly associated with the expression of opposition.
The intermittent history of qingyi was related to the autocratic nature of the Chinese bureaucratic monarchy. Strong rulers might encourage criticism to gain useful information or to check the power of high officials, but critical public expression was difficult to control and potentially corrosive to the autocratic system. Broadly based criticism was not likely to be long tolerated by vigorous monarchs, and no institutional basis for the expression of independent opinion existed during the late imperial period. Qingyi, therefore, tended to appear sporadically, especially during crises when anxiety among literati officials combined with weakness or uncertainty in the upper bureaucracy or at court.
Nonetheless, the idea of qingyi persisted in Chinese political thought and began to reappear in practice when problems confronting government escalated at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The notion of a common or public opinion (gonglun, yulun) within the bureaucracy was invoked in the early decades of the century (Polachek 1975:68, 450-5 1) and expressed in critical memorials during the Opium War and other crises. After the Taiping Rebellion, qingyi was used as a tool in bureaucratic struggles that included attacks on officials who first introduced Western-inspired innovations in the late 1860s and early 1870s (Hsu 1960: 199-206).
There was thus a considerable total volume of public criticism, but little indication that it might alter the Chinese political structure or significantly enlarge the number of people who affected decisions of state.
How, then, does one arrive at the situation twenty-five years later when officials were joining with men outside the government to form societies and found newspapers demanding sweeping institutional reforms? I would contend that from the late 1870s on qingyi underwent steady development that broke through the bounds heretofore circumscribing opinion expression within the government. By the mid- 1890s, this strain of critical opinion within the bureaucracy had become one aspect of a national political consciousness that could be called public opinion. For a time “pure discussion” and “public opinion” were used interchangeably, but eventually qingyi fell into disuse as the political and institutional situation in which it had arisen was transformed. It is, however, useful to retain that designation in discussing the 1880s and 1890s to refer specifically to the opinion of men in the lower and middle grades of the metropolitan bureutlcracy as distinguished from opinions expressed by officials in the provinces, by people outside the bureaucracy, or in the press.
This evolution can not be conveniently characterized as radicalism or conservatism, nor can it be neatly associated with a particular social class. Rather, one must look for more specific factors and map out complex interactions between smaller groups. Two major processes appear to have been at work: (1) the advancement of demands for restructuring and more broadly sharing political power by groups lacking political authority; and (2) the perception of a national crisis and the fear of foreign domination. The development of public opinion was accompanied by an increasing interest in collective political activity and in establishing institutions through which outside opinions could influence policy. Patriotic concerns provided frameworks that might bridge differences between people in varying situations holding diverse attitudes. Under these circumstances, political demands might evolve rapidly in originally unforeseen directions making use of foreign models.
In the late nineteenth century components of three environments appear to have produced frustrations or expectations particularly conducive to criticism: the lower and middle ranks of the metropolitan bureaucracy, the treaty ports, and elite managerial and scholarly circles outside the government. Here I will concentrate on describing how demands for change arising within the metropolitan bureaucracy were expressed through qingyi. However, it developed in conjunction with attitudes being formed outside the government. The complexity of this process can only be briefly indicated, but examples may encourage further research aimed at defining who the publics of the emerging public opinion were, where they were to be found in China, and through what mechanisms they were linked.
These examples provide perspectives different from those found in standard characterizations of late nineteenth century qingyi as ideologically conservative, xenophobic, and obstructionist. However, Hao Yen-ping (1962) pointed out long ago that after the 1870s members of qingyi groups were not uniformly opposed to using Western methods. The moralistic rhetoric in qingyi memorials sets forth ethical norms then widely shared by educated Chinese and does not appear to represent any peculiarly conservative defense of Confucian values. Accumulating evidence, in the work of Bastid (1974), Min (1971), Qi (1963), Schrecker (1976), and others, of the nationalist and reformist activities of members of qingyi groups suggests that it is time to reassess this persistent phenomenon in terms of its contribution to political change.
[The author reinterprets the phenomenon of qingyi (represented by members of the Qingliu and Emperor’s party) as passing through five phases from 1875 to 1898, in the course of which it enlarged its scope of demands by lower- and middle-grade metropolitan officials for a broader distribution of political power and contributed to the formation of public opinion. This evolution was attended by the rise of analogous demands for political restructuring by men in two other environments: extrabureaucratic managerial and scholarly circles and the treaty ports. Militant patriotism mobilized and eventually united different groups, stimulating nationally conscious opinion that was alienated from the political leadership. The failure of government leaders to accommodate new political initiatives redirected qingyi into provincial movements and set the stage for the competition between centralizing bureaucratic and societally based programs for change that led to the 1911 revolution.]