On Citizen Consciousness In The Ideological Evolution During The First Ten Years Of The 20～(th) Century

There were many important "words" in the ideological and cultural evolution in early China. Most of them were manifested in varying degrees during the first ten years of the 20th Century(1901-1911), and developed in the Xinhai Revolution and the May 4th new culture movement. In 1901-1911 the words such as "citizen", "republic" and "civil rights" had been widely recognized and used by contemporary people. The newspapers such as Min Bao, Xin Min Cong Bao were directly named after "citizen", and very few ideas and views had no close relation to the "citizen". "Citizen" became the central topic of thoughts and discussions. This phenomenon has attracted the attention of academic circles. More and more progress has been made, many problems settled or commonly understood, while the study is still unsatisfactory.In this thesis, the author stresses on the contemporary people's idea itself, to reconstruct the sequence of ideas on "citizen" during the first ten years of the 20th Century. This thesis focuses on repercussions of citizen consciousness on the political design, social life and human relation. And focuses on the change of the ideological idea, the deepening of cognition on Chinese issues and the new thoughts about the transformation of Chinese society caused by citizen consciousness. The author hopes to grasp the contemporary people's idea in more wide and dynamic field of vision.To avoid the unconsciously generalized misunderstanding, the author studies the ideas of this period from "citizen consciousness" rather than simply differentiates these ideas from the humanism and democracy, and regards "citizen consciousness" as the interactive result between Chinese traditional humanism ideas and western democratic ideas in special historic conditions. By regarding the ideological change on "citizen" during the first ten years of the 20th Century as the "citizen consciousness" rather than the overture of "democracy" in May 4th new culture movement, We may not only could deepen the understanding to this "important era", but also could produce some new visual angles to grasp the evolution of 20th century democratic idea.It is an important view angle of this thesis to make a difference between the name and reality, the ideal and reality. This difference existed in the developing process of citizen consciousness in 1901-1911. On one hand, influenced by the western ideology and Chinese traditional humanism ideas, citizens were regarded as the foundation and lord of a state, as the power to decide the rise and fall of a state, and as the major power to promote the social revolution. Contemporary people supposed that by ways of system design, social initiative, and adjusting relations between government and citizen, individual and masses, upper and lower classes of society, it is possible to bring most people and their rights and powers into saving the nation. Almost every idea and view of this era found its stress point in this way. But on the other hand, the status quo of contemporary China and Chinese citizen was worrisome and disappointing, that discounted the enthusiastic hopes of contemporary people. The huge words power of "citizen" in 1901-1911 was chiefly manifested in hopes of ideal citizen, rather than practical citizen. The difference between ideal and practical "citizen" was a very important characteristic in the idea of contemporary people. Making a difference between these two sides is helpful to reveal the fictitious composition in contemporary people's idea.The rise of citizen consciousness in 1901-1911 brought new field of vision in the transformation of Chinese society. But the difference between ideal and practical citizen made the "citizen" itself a new unsolved problem, which had been given great expectations as the means to solve the problems and the "ultimate" power to transform the society. It touched off hot debate in contemporary people whether the Chinese citizen could bear the responsibility of transforming society and saving the nation. For a long time, the revolutionist and constitutionalist were the two sides of debate. The difference of two sides influenced by many factors and many considerations included the emphasis on ideal or reality. The attention to the status quo of Chinese citizen, shifted contemporary people from new citizen to renew culture, and caused initially dissecting of nationality.Because of the emphasis on ideal or practical citizen, and the urgency to reform China society under external pressure, the way to reform China was very uncertain. One way was renewing citizen firstly, another way was renewing politics firstly. The former ascribed the solution of system problems to citizen. The latter ascribed the solution of citizen problems to political system, and thought there would be no changes without change in politics. These two views were manifested in different persons, also two thought sides of one person. They were reciprocal causations and rising one after another along with the change of attention and times.Equally noticeable, the deep disappointment in the status quo of practical Chinese citizen caused challenge to the huge words power of "citizen" at least in form. Because the deep feelings for unreliable practical Chinese citizen, though autocracy had been attacked fiercely as a form of government, but it not been abandoned immediately as a means. In many cases "autocratic politics and education", "military politics" and "might" had been praised by contemporary people. It was a paradox that democracy as a target but autocracy as a means, either the relations between geniuses and masses. Under the word power of "citizen", not only the shadow of geniuses could be seen, but also it could do nothing without geniuses. It demonstrated that many views to save the nation proposed by contemporary people from different cares were connected, conditioned, concealed and shirked each other.Another important part is to discuss the concerns on both nation and citizen from the vision of equality. The equality included both equality in rights and equalization of wealthy. The former emphasizes the nation and the latter emphasize the individual more. And this difference reflected the inherent tension between strengthening nation and equality. That is to say, after the rising of Citizen Consciousness, due to different concerns, there were two different inclines: nation was paramount or citizen was paramount. To balance the tension between strengthening nation and equality, the Contemporary people took the realization of equality as the task of times and accepted it into the vision of strengthening nation. Then as civil rights, equality became an inherent idea of concern on nation.This thesis is composed of preface and six chapters. The preface introduces the main issues of this thesis based on past studies. The first chapter is "the rise of citizen consciousness". It analyses three aspects: minority and majority, government and citizen, upper classes and lower classes. The second chapter is "consciousness of civil rights and concerns on the nation". It discusses the influence to political design caused by the consciousness of civil rights and masses. The third chapter is "equality consciousness and concerns on the citizen". It discusses the equality consciousness, which became the core idea of social life. The fourth chapter is "citizen qualification and ideological debates". It compares the different attitudes to Chinese citizen qualification held by revolutionist and constitutionalist, and analyses the influence to political choice caused by this difference. The fifth chapter is "the efforts to shape the citizen)". It discusses the shift from ideal citizen to practical citizen, and the initial dissection of nationality prompted by this shift. The sixth chapter is "the relation between citizen and politics and the hardness of Chinese reform. It summarized the whole idea of the thesis, and experimentally analyses the choice between renewing citizen firstly and renewing politics firstly.