(iPoster) Social Darwinism as Anti-Imperialism in Modern Chinese Political Thought

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Foundations of Political Theory III & Comparative Political Economy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory III

Abstract

Social Darwinism has often been characterized as a vibrant component of 19th-century Euro-American imperial ideology with an emphasis on inevitable competition and civilizational hierarchy. The current paper challenges this view by demonstrating how early-20th-century Chinese intellectuals received and rearticulated ideas of social Darwinism for anti-imperial enterprises. It examines how social Darwinian themes such as “natural selection”, “struggle for existence,” and progressive development entered Chinese political discourse via the translation of works of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Thomas Huxley in the late 19th century. In the transnational sphere of “traveling ideas,” this paper foregrounds how radical Chinese intellectuals such as Liang Qichao, Zou Rong, and Zhang Taiyan actively deployed social Darwinian ideas of “struggle” (竞), “survival”(存), and “evolution” (变) to reconfigure the distinct political situations of China confronting domestic and global imperialism simultaneously at the turn of the 20th century. On the one hand, Liang, Zou, and Zhang situated the military conquest and economic exploitation of Euro-American imperialism within an evolutionary world picture of struggle and competition where resistance for survival became imperative. On the other hand, they engaged the uneasy reality that Western imperialism intersected with the domestic Manchu Empire. These radical intellectuals took the domestic imperialism of the Manchus, which had subjugated the Han Chinese population for centuries, as the major obstacle to the survival of the nation in the global struggle for existence. By grappling with how radical Chinese intellectuals envisioned resistance and political uplift in this complicated trans-imperial topography with newly imported social Darwinian ideas, this paper not only focalizes the transnational circulation of intellectual resource but also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of anti-imperial politics in global contexts.

Author

• Yuanxin Wang, University of Florida