Weston, Timothy B. The Power of Position: Beijing University, intellectuals, and Chinese Political Culture, 1898-1929. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2004.
I. Introduction:
a. Four major contentions:
i. Beijing U. early history is a perfect space in which to study the way in which humanistic intellectuals
repositioned themselves in chaos, change, etc… (p. 8)
ii. “the complexity of Beida’s early history has been obscured by the historiography on the
May 4th Movement.” (8)
iii. Better to study Chinese intellectuals in a broad context, including not only ideas, but social
and institutional history as well.
iv. Local cultural and social characteristics need to be understood and worked into the history
of intellectuals.
II. Schools, Politics, and Reform in the Nineteenth Century
a. Beida has existed since 1898 as a point of contact between state and society. (As Jingshi daxuetang)
b. The choice to follow Meiji Japan’s example in establishing Beida was a clear choice of modernity.
i. linking the new U. with wealth and prosperity encouraged conservatives
ii. In the Qing, access to power was gained through educational achievements. (14)
iii. For intellectuals in the late Qing/early republic, the chaos, penetration of upper class by merchants,
etc., led to an idealized vision of a China “in which “true” men of learning possessed the highest
social status” (p. 23)
iv. Huan Zongxi – revitalize politics by revitalizing education, as schools were centers of community
and state activities (p.24)
v. Reformers still thought that reform could only work best in a completely new institution. (26) & were
heavily influenced by the establishment of Todai in Japan (25). This blend of conservative thought
and radical action is interesting.
vi. The First head of the University, Sun Jai’tai, as also in effect “minister of education” for the entire
empire. (34)
vii. The Jingshi daxuetang survived the 1898 coup by Cixi, but taught only the five classics, and then
was closed down.
III.
IV. Conclusions
a. This was a study of how intellectuals in China repositioned themselves after the collapse of the Qing in order to maintain their elite social status and to lead China into modernity.
i. This began well before the May 4th movement, because of traditional attitudes that intellectuals were
the proper leaders of society. Thus, informing the May 4th movement, some of the roots of that
movement were conservative rather than radical.
ii. So, not just motivated by Westernized modernism, the May 4th ideas were “dialectically related” to
the Chinese intellectual past. (p.250)
iii. Beida became a platform for national leadership because it was both familiar in a traditional sense,
and yet new enough that it was able to continue to evolve with the changes of the times.
iv. The dialectic is real people acting in relation to events that overshadow the university.(251-2)