Kang Youwei
(1858–1927), Chinese reformer. Born in 1858 in Hainan, Guangdong Province, China, Kang Youwei was a precocious scholar who was impressed both by British-run port cities and later by the Meiji Restoration in Japan. Kang wrote directly to the Guang Xu emperor (1871–1908) in 1888 asking for a comprehensive reform to enhance China's power. Kang then became famous as a key figure in a long-running and complex debate over the relative merits of new or old texts of Confucian classics. He rallied more than one thousand scholars who were participating in official examinations in Beijing in 1895 and petitioned the emperor to refuse the Shimonoseki Treaty that China signed with Japan after the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and to carry out more radical reforms. He received his degree that year despite conservative opposition.
He then had a forum for his ideas, and he bitterly attacked the old ways in China and called for dramatic changes in the Qing dynasty's (1644–1912) system of government, all within the context of reinterpreting the Confucian classics. For a brief time, during the socalled Hundred Days Reform, the impetuous young emperor listened to Kang, but when the conservatives counterattacked, Kang had to flee China, and the pace of change thereafter overtook his once-radical ideas. Kang Youwei died in 1927.
Further Reading
Hsiao, Kung-chuan. (1975) A Modern China and a New World: Kang Youwei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Lo, Jungpang, ed. (1967) Kang Youwei: A Biography and a Symposium. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
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