Did Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Play an Important Role in the Westernization of China?

Did Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Play an Important Role in the Westernization of China?

Mao Zedong (1949) has ever said in On the People Democratic Dictatorship that, “From the time of China's defeat in the Opium War of 1840, Chinese progressives went through untold hardships in their quest for truth from the Western countries. Hong Xiuquan, Kang Youwei, Yan Fu and Sun Yat-sen were representative of those who had looked to the West for truth before the Communist Party of China was born.” However, whether one person can be regarded as the representative of who learned from the west cannot be judged simply by whether he or the movement hold by him was affected by western culture. In my view, we should judge that by exploring whether western thought infiltrated the movement substantially, and whether western culture had a far-reaching influence on the movement actually. Based on that criteria, I don’t think Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can be viewed as such an important role in the way of learning western culture in Chinese history, neither Hong Xiuquan can be lifted to such high level. Western culture on Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is more like clothes wore out of the feudal rule.

Firstly, let’s look back the origin of Taiping Rebellion. Historians usually regard the influence of Good Words for Exhorting the Age (Quanshi liangyan) as the main reason for this rebellion. Good Words for Exhorting the Age is a brochure about some simple tracts in Chinese outlining the basic elements of Christian doctrine (Spence, 1999), written by Liang Fa, a Chinese Christian convert. However, in the beginning, “Hong Xiuquan neither studied the tracts nor threw them away. Instead he seems to have glanced at them quickly and then kept them at home” (Spence, 1999). Hong didn’t notice them until he failed a fourth time in the Guangzhou examinations of 1943. After that, Hong exploded in rage at the Manchu domination of China and then started reading this brochure again (Fairbank & Goldman, 2006). He connected his unfortunate experience and the bad situation of Chinese society with the content of this brochure naturally, and made up the Dreams of 1837. In other words, Hong’s acceptation of the concept “god” didn’t result from the true religious belief initially. Hong cannot read the completed translated version of the Holy Bible until 1847. That is to say, before that, what he knew about Christian doctrine was just tip of the iceberg. How could he have a deep understanding about this new religion, even could push him to start an uprising? One more thing should be mentioned is that, by then, Hong didn’t touch anything about the western political and economic system, how could he even establish a blueprint about a new kind of social formation? We can say that, Hong’s initial acceptation of God aimed to make use of it to resist the ideology of the mandate of heaven, which is the traditional royal ideology in China. Hong’s original promotion of Christianity was based on political purpose (Liu, 2003).
Although the form of Hong’s God Worshippers was similar to Christianity, its meaning cannot live without traditional Chinese culture.

Secondly, Hong did some distortion and disguised replacement of Christian concept, which made the Christian doctrine become far away from its original meaning. For example, Hong (as cited in China Society of History, 1957) said in Instructions on the Original Way to Make the World Realize that, “According to Chinese historical records, dating back to Pan Gu epoch, everyone should worship the Emperor God (Huang Shang Di).” The thought of “God” in Christianity was equivalent to the concept of “the Son of Heaven” in traditional Chinese culture. For Hong, “a God whose purity and presence had existed in China until the forces of Confucian belief swayed the Chinese away from the true path of righteousness”(Spence, 1999). Combining these two ideas together, Hong called himself “God’s Chinese Son”, which means another person who can centralize the power and resist the emperor of Qing, even can replace him. Also, Hong (as cited in China Society of History, 1957) claims in Instructions on the Original Way to Save the World that, “all people in the world are brothers”, “God see all of us as newborn babies”. By saying that, Hong “preached the brotherhood and sisterhood of all mankind under the fatherhood of the one true and only God” (Fairbank & Goldman, 2006). This idea is similar to the traditional Chinese idea that view heaven and earth (Qian Kun) as parents, and citizens should show their respect to the mandate of heaven. Meanwhile, according to the Christian definition, the word “Worship” means the behavior that Christians going to the church on Sunday, and they worship God by praying, chorusing, or studying bible. After visiting the American pastor Issachar Jacox Roberts in Guangzhou in 1847, Hong learned this system and “regularize” it. In fact, apart from burning joss sticks, the rites of worship of Taiping were all Chinese-style, especially the requirement that the worshipper should prepare livestock for worshiping (Fang, 2003). Hong’s propaganda of new religious had some apparent effect in fact. By 1849, he had attracted nearly 10,000 followers. Obviously, Hong tried to use this “new form” to promote his “new doctrine”, even though they were all in old Chinese style. Hong just made some superficial change on traditional Chinese thought, which was known as Confucianism, and gave it a nice name, which was Western Thoughts. Moreover, he wanted to use this “new” culture to beat Confucianism, and “to inculcate an ardent faith in each individual and ensure his or her performance in its service” (Fairbank & Goldman, 2006). Finally, established his own feudal kingdom. That is the biggest difference between he and other revolutionaries, such as Kang, Yan and Sun, who aimed at establishing democratic political system in China.

Last but not least, I’d like to talk about the book A New Treatise on Aids to Administration. For a long time, this book has been regarded as the highlight in the history of westernization of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. We cannot deny that it plays an important role in cultural history of the process of “the west culture communication to China (Xi Xue Dong Jian)”. However, from the political perspective, it cannot be lifted to the height of “the capitalist political programme”. The author of this book was Hong Ren'gan, a younger relation of Hong Xiuquan who had studied with missionaries in Canton. During the early years of the Taiping rebellion, Hong Ren'gan lived and worked in Hong Kong, and became familiar with Brit- ain's colonial government there (Spence, 1999). After coming to Nanjing, he was appointed prime minister, and people all call him “nine thousand years old (Jiu Qian Sui)”, being responsible for administration of the country. For Hong Xiuquan, he would be suspected of being partial to his relatives. Meanwhile, for Hong Ren’gan, it was inevitable to feel guilty to the old saying “no gain without pain”, so he wanted to “try my best and pay back a debt of gratitude for brother’s recognition and appreciation”(Wang, 2003). For making some contributions to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he wrote the book A New Treatise on Aids to Administration to show his goal of “strengthening the country in capitalistic way”. Hong Ren’gan(1859) asked in this book that, “Looking around the world, it belongs to whose clan?” What he asked shows that Hong Ren’gan didn’t get rid of the “Family-Governed Monarchic Country (Jia Tianxia)” thought, and the concept “country” he mentioned here still represented for the Hong’s feudal kingdom, rather than a capitalistic country like western world.

In terms of the content, A New Treatise on Aids to Administration is still not like a set of law. Politically, this book just introduced some political system of western countries, such as the separation of powers and the cabinet system. However, it didn’t show any personal orientation of Hong Ren’gan, and didn’t require or recommend Hong Xiuquan take it into real use. Economically, the way Hong Ren’gan promoted was using the capitalistic pattern to develop the feudal economy. It was something like Self-strengthening Movement, which was just changing the developing way, rather than touching the polity. In my view, the book A New Treatise on Aids to Administration just can be seen as a literature work of introduction western culture, which is far away from a regular political programme.

When talking about the social influence of this book, professor Wang Kaixi(2003) describes that like “the lighting flashing in a flash, from the feudal dark clouds”. In fact, limited by numerous conditions, the content of A New Treatise on Aids to Administration didn’t be taken into real use. After being captured, when asked the reasons leading to Taiping’s failure, Hong Ren’gan said, “Taiping’s mishap was originated from the Western”(Wang, 2003). Also, Li Xiucheng, the later leader of Taiping Heavenly Country didn’t say anything about the positive influence of this book in his autobiography, and he just mentioned that, “It achieved nothing in two months” (Wang, 2003). Moreover, when interrogated by Qing army, Li commented on Hong Ren’gan that, “I disdained reading what he edited”. Obviously, the leaders of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom paid little attention to A New Treatise on Aids to Administration, and didn’t get much recognition in the political field either. Therefore, in essence, A New Treatise on Aids to Administration belongs to the field of feudal cultural thought. The advanced capitalistic highlight of this book can be viewed as the product of Hong’s personal experience, also can be regarded as a kind of tool with feudal body, wearing capitalistic clothes as well.

Looking back the history of reform, there were a large numbers of examples of using advanced culture to achieve political purpose, and it had even become the typical way that reformers used to put forward the process of revolutions. However, the difference between Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and other successful revolutions is that the cultural tool Taiping used couldn’t match the political purpose Taiping longed. In addition, due to long-term influence of traditional Chinese culture and the limitation of the peasantry, leaders of Taiping made the contradiction between these two become much deeper. With the development of revolution, the utilitarian ambition of leaders was exposed gradually, resulted in the color of western culture become lighter and lighter. Finally, the western culture just played a “clothes” role, and not only didn’t put into real use, but also didn’t get recognition from leaders themselves. We cannot deny the illuminating effect of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom made on the westernization of China, however, we shouldn’t overstate it as such an important role of “representative of those who had looked to the West for truth” in that period, which was said by Mao.

Reference
China Society of History (1957). Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (太平天国). Shanghai People Press.
Fairbank, J. K., & Goldman, M. (2006). China: A new history (2nd enl. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Kaixi, W. (2003). The tangle, conflict and alienation between Chinese and Western culture: from Heavenly Land System to A New Treatise on Aids to Administration (中西文化的扭结、冲突与疏离—从《天朝田亩制度》到《资政新篇》). Hebei Journal, 23(3), 168-173.
Rizhi, L. (2003). Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Chinese and Western culture: symposium of 150-year commemoration for Taiping Rebellion (太平天国与中西文化: 纪念太平天国起义150周年论文集). Guangdong People Press.
Spence, J. D. (1999). The search for modern China (2nd ed.). New York: Norton.
Zedong, M. (1950). On the people's democratic dictatorship. Selected Works of Mao Zedong, 4, 411-423.