The Importance of the Emerging Middle Class02

作者：admin  点击次数：29  发布时间：2025-02-14

This examination of late Qing Chinese culture and politics was inspired by the new cultural history, especially the study of print culture. The most typical work in this field is the research of Roger Chartier, who attempted to "rethink the relationship between social space traditionally considered self-evident... and the representations it reflects or distorts", and tried to construct "a new and explicit expression of the relationship between 'cultural structure' and 'social structure'". Specifically, Chartier analyzed how "the increasing circulation of printed publications changed patterns of sociability, created new perspectives, (and) changed relations with the authorities" under the existing social system. Michael Warner, although not a cultural historian, also adopted a similar approach in his book The Cultural Significance of Print on 18th-century America. He tried to explain social changes by examining the interactive determination between the media and its politics, and tried to get a cultural explanation from it.
While many European and American cultural studies scholars have turned their attention to publishing in recent years and have attempted to analyze "middle history," this is the first study of late Qing China to do so. Using a cultural historical approach to examine early Chinese political publishing raises different questions and seeks new conclusions from previous studies of this period. However, the political narrative of late Qing China is largely constructed by the revolutionary events of 1911, and this book is reluctant to be another reading of "the harbinger of revolution." The book ends in 1911 not because of the revolution itself, but because the environment created by the revolution indirectly led to the end of the most original and influential historical period of the Times. Therefore, the examination of the early history of the Times is not simply an analysis of the events leading to the decline of the late Qing Dynasty, but more importantly, it is to examine how these events were constructed on newsprint and how these representations in turn produced new political and social ways, whose influence may have contributed to the revolution but ultimately transcended it.
This cultural historical approach also differs from the elitist narrative model of late Qing China because it no longer emphasizes the role of "big men". Of course, some prolific writers, influential thinkers, and activists with unique visions in late Qing society appear in this book, but they are not the protagonists. Instead, the story here is about how their thoughts were integrated into a broader social context under the promotion of new publishers. Between the macro-ideological field and practical political concerns, between the overall macro-politics and the regional micro-politics, between the desire to learn from the West and the long-standing family beliefs, the newspaper people lived in the middle and constituted the middle class in late Qing China in theory and practice. As emerging cultural entrepreneurs and political activists, they often took on multiple roles - editors, female mentors, translators, novelists, etc. - and worked hard to spread new knowledge.
Previous studies on the late Qing Dynasty often fall into a dichotomy: tradition and modernity, Western influence and local response, reform and revolution. The exploration of the middle class is also based on some recent studies, which have enriched the previous dichotomy research. This exploration method reveals the integration of Chinese traditional customs and Western thoughts, and the new political inspiration has given rise to a new comprehensive dynamic. They are neither uniform reformers nor absolute revolutionaries. The editors of the Times have infused new elements into traditional family thought, transforming Western thought into a cultural structure familiar to the world. Tension and rupture gradually arise, and new social and political possibilities are opened up. It is this interactive process that defines the connotation of the middle class in the late Qing Dynasty and sets China on a unique historical trajectory in the early 20th century.