The Language of Nation-State Building in Late Qing China

In The Language of Nation-State Building in Late Qing China, Qing Cao presents a fresh perspective on the intellectual foundation of modern China through an analysis of the epic debate between two influential periodicals in 1905–7. Through corpus-based discourse analysis of the debate, Cao examines the emergence, promotion, and internal tensions of key concepts such as “people,” “state,” and “revolution” in late Qing society. This analysis highlights the adaptation and appropriation of European post-Enlightenment values to the sociopolitical conditions of late Qing China, a transformation that reverberated throughout the twentieth century. This book is particularly valuable for scholars in Chinese studies and those interested in the role of language in shaping modern intellectual history and nation-building.The main character of this study is Liang Qichao, a prominent nineteenth-century intellectual who advocated for reform and a new Chinese national identity. Cao portrays Liang as a powerful modernizer who tirelessly pursued his vision of utopia in China. The book's main contribution is the analysis of the “epic debate” from 1905 to 1907 between the Xinmin Congbao and the Minbao. To quote Cao: “The XMCB under Liang Qichao advocated an ‘enlightened absolutism 开明专制’ as a transition to a constitutional politics through a reformed monarchy. The Minbao, under Sun Yat-sen's leadership, argued for an immediate revolution to remove Manchu rulers to establish a modern republic. As the most significant intellectual event in the final decade of the Qing Dynasty, the debate articulated rationales, objectives, and strategies of two distinctive approaches to modernising China” (47).Chapter 1 sets the stage by exploring the rivalry between the Xinmin Congbao and the Minbao, emphasizing the quest for new ideals and the destabilization of the traditional utopian vision. Many intellectuals of the late Qing empire looked to Europe and modernization for inspiration, as they believed it would lead to China's metamorphosis into a modern republic. This quest for new ideals entailed the translation of foreign words, such as minzu 民族 (nation), quanli 權力 (rights), and guojia 國家 (state), many of which were imported through Japan, where Liang and other intellectuals were in exile. Liang is presented by Cao as the father of the cultural revolution, complementing Sun Yat-sen's role as the father of China's political revolution in early nineteenth-century China.Chapter 2 focuses on the discourse surrounding the term Xinmin 新民 (New People). This term was part of a broader campaign to create a unified Chinese national identity, transcending (according to the intellectuals at the time) isolated and backward communities. Cao explains how Xinmin was instrumental in cultivating reactive nationalism, leveraging European Enlightenment values like liberty and civil rights within the context of Chinese society, where allegiance to the state held central importance.From chapter 3 onward, we enter what I believe to be the most exciting part of the book, where Cao discusses issues of translating foreign terms into a new context amid the battle of ideologies at the heart of China's future that still play a significant role in Chinese nationalism today. Revealing in this approach are the “semantic clusters” of the two periodicals, which clearly show the use of different words and concepts to argue for a new China. This is where the mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis is at its best as Cao moves between a close reading of the articles and a statistical overview of key terms to reveal the “epistemic structure” of the debate.Chapters 4 and 5 each focus on a single concept: the discourse of guomin (national people) and the translation of nation, respectively. As Cao writes, “The idea of ‘nation’ helped transform China from a cultural to a political entity, from a face-to-face local community to an enormous community of minzu and from a universalist dynasty to a particularistic nation-state” (93). The final chapter explores the development of nationalism since the press debate, albeit with limited engagement with other source materials. Nevertheless, it underscores the enduring significance of the press debate in shaping policymaking and contemporary debates on Chinese nationalism in the People's Republic today.The book's use of sources is noteworthy, drawing extensively on theories from the first half of the nineteenth century while neglecting contemporary debates. The lack of engagement is evident in the framing of the study, which claims that certain areas have been overlooked despite evidence to the contrary, such as Lydia H. Liu's Clash of Empires or Leigh Jenco's Changing Referents; both books deal with the matter of translation in late Qing, the latter discussing Liang Qichao in detail.1 Additionally, the “working” definition of nation provided in the introduction (“A nation is a manufactured notion designed to maximise resources for the modern economy. . . . One of the defining features of a nation is its hard-hearted material interest concealed within its emotionally charged rhetoric” [5]) does not adequately align with Liang's and other Chinese intellectuals’ understanding at the time, which focused less on resource maximization and more on creating a people for national salvation, as Cao shows. Were these attempts by Liang and other intellectuals merely cynical attempts at resource maximalization of an upcoming Chinese nation? The absence of recent debates on Tianxia in the Chinese sphere (e.g., the work of Zhao Tinyang and Jiang Shigong), particularly in the final chapter, further highlights the book's limited engagement with contemporary sources. The limited sample size (nine articles for Xinmin Congbao and sixteen for Minbao) of the corpus-based discourse analysis makes me wonder how this compares with the entire journal. Furthermore, the appendix demonstrates that the keyword list has not been thoroughly cleaned of common nouns, possibly detracting from its reliability.Despite these points of critique, Cao's work offers valuable insights through its use of source material and contextualization of the press debate. It underscores the importance of translation and the context-specific nature of terms in the study of (Chinese) nationalism. As discussions on Chinese nationalism become increasingly relevant, this book serves as a key resource for understanding how familiar terms such as nation and people were translated during the late nineteenth century and how the intellectual work of that era continues to shape contemporary discourse on the People's Republic of China, nationalism, and (our conception of) the Chinese people

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