The Importance of the Emerging Middle Class01

作者：admin  点击次数：25  发布时间：2025-02-13

In April 1904, a series of secret meetings were held in the Shanghai Concession. Among the three participants, one was Liang Qichao, whose head was offered a reward of 100,000 taels of silver by the Qing government; the other was Di Baoxian, who played an important role in the 1900 incident against the Qing government. In the spring of that year, they were not plotting to overthrow the Qing government or the current ruling system, but intended to counter the political opposition by publishing a newspaper.
The new daily newspaper "Shibao" founded by Liang Qichao, Di Baoxian and other newspapermen closely linked printing and politics: by establishing a political media, a new way of media consultation was developed, and thus a new political model, namely constitutional reform, was promoted. They also regarded themselves as members of the "middle society" who communicated between the upper dynasty aristocracy and the lower class. From this middle position, they, as publishers and political activists, tried to transfer the power core of the ruling class downwards on the one hand, and tried to make the power of ordinary people flow upwards on the other. This middle position includes both the metaphorical space occupied by their news writing and the real space constituted by their social and political initiatives, which together constitute the middle class (the middle realm) of the late Qing Dynasty.
The middle class of the late Qing Dynasty is the result of multiple interactions of discourse, practice, and culture, between the printed text and its political and institutional context and the cultural assumptions based on both. Therefore, while analyzing the intentions of the new publishers who tried to reform the late Qing society, this book also examines how the political, social and cultural environment directly or indirectly impacts and influences these intentions. This book reads the articles in the Times as political texts and cultural works, focusing on the language used by the journalists, the cultural background of their arguments, and the authoritative sources they pay attention to in order to further explain their reform proposals.