Yung Wing's Ideas: European Influence On China

The wake of the century of humiliation brought along different ideologies that leaders proposed to improve China to better counteract European influence on China. Yung Wing’s ideas are based on his western education from Yale University which included significant changes to the military, political, and economic aspects of China. Yung’s ideas are best represented with his Policy Proposals to the Taiping and his interview with Zeng Guofan in 1863. (Cheng, Letz, and Spence 1999, 151) Zhang Zhidong of the conservative Confucians proposed that change in China should be controlled and limited. Western ideas should be applied to traditional Chinese beliefs to improve the state. (Cheng, Letz, and Spence 1999, 181) Zhang’s ideas are reflected in his
Western-educated individuals like Yung believed that change should be rapid in all sectors of society in order to reestablish China as a great power, while the conservative perspective proposed by Zhang believed that change should only occur in the military and economic sectors of China leaving the social and political sector intact, and radical leaders like Sun Yat-sen believed that the social sector of China should be transformed rapidly to change China for the better.
Western-oriented change was meant to revitalize China, but ultimately failed to hit the mark. Yung Wing was a young, American-educated Chinese man who favored Westernization at a rapid pace for many portions of Chinese society and proposed these ideas in 1959 and 1963 to the Heavenly Kingdom and Zeng Guofan. Yung Wing’s ideas would bring change at a rapid pace, but this would abandon traditional Chinese beliefs like Confucianism and its belief in a role in society, filial piety, etc. Yung’s ideas are best demonstrated in his proposals to the Taiping stating: “1. To organize an army of scientific principles… 6. to establish an education system
As Peter Zarrow notes in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China, “Small and disparate revolutionary groups were brought together... the National Alliance… unite revolutionary students around the principles of anti-Manchuism, republicanism, and the equalization of land rights.” (Zarrow 2016, 100) Patriotic sentiment ran high due to the inability of the Manchu government to help the Han people. Their beliefs were fueled by education and believed that the conservative Qing dynasty was ruining China due to the lack of social and scientific progress. Under Sun Yat-sen, parliamentary elections were held, the right to vote was expanded to adult males with properly and education, and political parties were formed. (Zarrow 2016, 108) These advancements are significant because it destroys the century-long tradition of China’s history of imperial rule. Power was vested into the people while the old order was abandoned and abolished. The dynasty’s reluctance to accept progress forced the radicals to take action as they were nationalists who loved China. Their sentiments for national unity and social equality echoed the same beliefs of Chinese communists a few decades later and the socialist sentiment was just as fervent as the previous Taiping rebellion in rural China. Reform forced by uprisings from the population help