Book Review

Asia

This interesting and thought-provoking series of essays provides an intellectual history of the period from 1890 to 1920, focusing on a concept previously ignored in the literature: citizenship. Citizenship, it turns out, provides a profitable way of looking at the process of community and nation-building in China. As editor Peter G. Zarrow puts it: "It developed in China to meet certain needs: to define membership in the national community, to establish rights and duties or giving a certain protected status for these members, and to encourage some kind of participation in state and society" (p. 5).	1
The idea of citizenship took on importance early in this century, after it was realized that China lacked a unified and committed citizenry such as had created the strong and confident nations of the West. The issue of citizenship was discussed by various authors in confronting questions about the exact relationship between the new state they wished to create and the people it was supposed to serve. Citizens not only had membership in the nation but certain rights and obligations from it. The issue of citizenship thus raised questions about democracy and the rule of law. It further evoked inquiry about what kind of organizations and groups could be used to bring people together into a national entity.	2
Traditional Chinese philosophies had dealt with people as individuals and as groups, but they had not really considered how these groups could come together to create a cohesive, coherent nation. Citizens, they concluded, developed a national focus only after they first joined small civic groups, and these groups in turn bonded together for the greater good. Only by creating a union of smaller groups could there be a national forum in which all could participate. The question that then confronted Chinese thinkers was how to create these groups.	3
Naturally enough, reform-minded intellectuals first attempted to work with what they had on hand, endeavoring to transform traditional words and organizations to meet the needs of the modern state. Clan and family were the dominant elements in the Confucian structure of the old society. Many of the thinkers discussed in this volume first considered using family and clan as building blocks around which the new citizens could coalesce in their struggle to build a new society. But old words and organizations carried too much traditional baggage. In the end, most of the intellectuals under study concluded that these categories divided rather than united the nation. They were too deeply embedded in the old society to work in creating a new one. They kept the nation weak and divided, focused on its constituents, rather than strong and united. New groupings were needed to build a nation.	4
Gradually, most of the writers discussed by the authors of these essays began to understand they would have to make a radical break with Chinese tradition. Traditional modes needed to be discarded and new ones developed if China was to meet the challenge posed by the modern world. As they discussed citizenship, these writers began to realize that in order to create a new type of state, they needed a new kind of civil society.	5
Recently, some academics in both Asia and the West, as well as autocratic rulers in places like Singapore, have argued that Confucianism can provide the basis for a modern industrial society, one that may result in a special kind of "Asian democracy," a more elitist and group-centered form of democracy than that which exists in Europe and the United States. Almost a hundred years ago, many of the writers considered in this volume began with similar hopes but ended up concluding that such a task was impossible.	. . .