Staatsdenken in China der Republikzeit (1912-1949): Die Instrumentalisierung philosophischer Ideen bei chinesischen Intellektuellen (review)

Chinese intellectuals and Chinese intellectual history of the Republican period are discussed in a number of excellent studies. We need only consider those by Joseph R. Levenson, Chow Tse-tsung, Jerome B. Grieder, Charlotte Furth, Chang Hao, or Philip C. Huang, to name but a few authors.¹ Yet many aspects of the subject still remain obscure from those turbulent years of the 1920s and 1930s, and the passage of time has led to new questions.

Thomas Fröhlich explains in his introduction that he does not present new materials in the present work. He proposes rather to illuminate the relationship between the academic and journalistic efforts of China's intellectuals and their preoccupation with China's national plight. And this, indeed, is the important contribution of the present volume: new perspectives are brought to bear on widely debated issues of that era, and new ways to understand them are suggested. The author's aim in this study is to subject to close scrutiny the political ideas of four major intellectuals: Ding Wenjiang (1887-1936), Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang, 1887-1969), Hu Shi (1891-1962), and Chen Duxiu (1879-1942).

The backgrounds and views of the four, as we have come to know them from previous studies, are very different. But Fröhlich finds, and rightly so, that where ideas of statehood and the functions of the state are concerned, their views often converged, and he proposes that the common goal of the four men was to establish the intellectual foundations of China's future political order. Their practical political activities and their efforts toward a cultural renewal were explicitly joined to this goal. Of major significance to them was to identify a central intellectual sphere of concern (geistiges Zentralgebiet) as the source from which China's political and cultural reconstruction would be determined. One of Fröhlich's major premises is precisely this: a new and changed central sphere characterizes a given historical period and is the point of departure for fashioning the entire cultural, social, or economic order of the state. In addition, Ding, Zhang, Hu, and Chen proposed, according to Fröhlich, an expertocracy (Expertokratie) as the guardians of this central sphere. By expertocracy the author refers not to a professional technocracy but to an intellectual elite with expertise in various fields of endeavor, including the sciences and humanities. It is they who will actively promote the common good of the entire society instead of pursuing partisan and self-serving politics. Because this elite is convinced that China as a unified and modern state can be constructed on the basis of a central intellectual sphere, they need not engage in contradictory power politics, and there is no conflict of interests among them. Thus, Fröhlich argues that the goal held in common by the four men was the establishment of a nonpolitical central sphere (Entpolitisiert), and from it the intellectual elite would draw its ideas for their activities on behalf of the state.

By means of these major themes, the author considers the 1923 science and metaphysics (kexue yu renshengguan) controversy the pivotal point in the evolution of the ideas of Ding, Zhang, Hu, and Chen, although the germination of their views goes back to the 1910s. The controversy and the flood of articles it gave rise to has been discussed by all authors on Chinese intellectual history and is well known. Fröhlich's sophisticated analysis, however, brings to light new perspectives as well as a new focus for understanding the importance of their political ideas in relation to the controversy.

The clarion call for the start of this controversy was Zhang Junmai's February 1923 lecture at...