| Boycotts of foreign goods in modern China were not only an "anti-imperialist" manifestation, but also a mirror to changes in modern Chinese society.One problem is that there were also many China-invaded-by-great-powers incidents before 1900,but why they did not arouse widespread concern and national scale opposition from the Chinese public? However,people seemed to start concerning about the nation from the entry of 20th century,one manifestation was the rising of boycott foreign goods.It indicated that the Chinese society must have great changes at that time.Since the 1890s,quite a few intellectuals realized that "countries in the world were competing for survival and China was in peril",and they felt their duty to arouse the public and to save the nation.Therefore,they began the "new citizen creation" work.Printing technique revolution made books and newspapers can be printed in large quantities.Due to this,the translation,introduction, propaganda and spreading new ideas and thoughts were performed in an unprecedented breadth and depth.Modern nationalism began to rise in China,under which affairs involved foreign powers such as signing unequal treaties had everything to do with each citizen,including himself,rather than state affairs,which were thought to have nothing to do with himself in the past.Now that national affairs have close relation to each citizen,naturally,it requires everyone's concern.Modern communications,transportation can easily break through geographical restrictions and spread information of incidents to outside world.Mass media such as newspapers and periodicals are able to copy the information substantially and spread it to large areas in a short time.With the emergence of social network as well as the support of communication and media technology,the event gained public concern and was treated as a serious "problem" involving each individual and the whole nation.Having considered the event as a serious problem,based on historical experience and consideration of reality,people tended to select peaceful methods including boycott movement to resist.It's people's expression of their patriotic feeling,and also their helpless choice.Realized that the national military power and diplomacy were weak and the government was unreliable,folk groups had to rely on themselves and boycott that foreign country's goods voluntarily and spontaneously.The initiators expected that the persistence of boycott movement would give a heavy blow on that country's economy and made them recognize its stake,and then gave up invasion or oppression.Considering it's own benefit,the Chinese government used to acquiesce the movement, and sometimes even supported it.Ways of advocating boycott included assembly,speech, procession,newspapers,leaflets,swearing,petition,drama and many others and it soon received quite response.In order to avoid domestic and foreign authority interference,initiators selected folk society "voluntary " boycotts method,because people had the rights whether to purchase or not the goods from a specific country,other people including government has no rights to interfere.The history of boycott movements shows that businessmen,intellectuals,young students, party members at different times and places have served as initiators.However,businessmen(except Chinese goods merchants) generally responded reluctantly to the movements.But agitators such as young students,intellectuals,party members made the boycott advocacy receive considerable public support and participation through the agitators' propaganda and stimulate.Under such situation,the majority of businessmen also expressed their support voluntarily or reluctantly.The boycott movement then entered implementation stage.The first step of the formal implementation of boycott was to determine its scope,in which the main targets were commodity from the boycotted country and its finance,transportation and other service businesses in China.Under "economic severance",all that country's trade and other economic exchanges were even hoped to block.Then following basic work was performed.First, investigation on the resisted country's merchandise items was done,and investigation on its alternatives was simultaneously done,and the information was made known to the public.Second, registration and dealing with businessmen's stock and goods ordered from that country were done.In general,after stocks were sold out,purchase goods from that country was not permitted.Some stock were sold by auction or mothballed.As for the ordered goods,it was canceled as soon as possible,if it couldn't be canceled,it was permitted carried back with some punishment.After basic information on goods from the resisted county in Chinese businessmen had been obtained,inspections goods were followed.Its main purpose was to prevent "unscrupulous merchant" from transporting and selling that country's goods.Goods inspections were mainly promoted by students.Businessmen,in order to avoid external interference,always proposed that the inspection be performed by themselves. But they often shielded each other.Therefore,students requested to inspect goods together with businessmen,and sometimes the students even checked goods alone.During the goods checking process,one thing was to deal with the detained goods,methods mainly including destruction, confiscation,discarding and mothballing.Another thing was to give punishment to the "unscrupulous merchant",which included financial punishment,punishment of body and reputation, sometimes even depriving of their lives.In business sector,the major participants were Chambers of commerce,Reviving Chinese goods associations,guilds,commercial groups and other associations,through which hundreds of thousands scattered merchants joined in the movement.The major associations in intellectual circles were students Union,Education Association,the Staff Union,the Intellectual Circles Union.New political parties also joined in the movements after 1919,as well as Workers and women.In order to smooth the movements,various unions such as Association of Commerce, Workers-businessmen-intellectuals Union,Public Corporations Union as well as Union of All Circles and the National Assembly that claimed to represent "will of the people" had also emerged. After 1925,some radical youth even organized terrorist organizations such as Blood and Soul Traitor Extermination Corps and Iron Blood Group to threat and assassinate "unscrupulous merchant".Boycott movements inevitably affected the economic operation and people's daily life.Since people organized it spontaneously,various groups tried to implement the boycott within their own rules and did what they thought right.There's nearly no folk group that was able to integrate those various folk groups and make unified rules in boycott movement.The whole movement sank into disorder because of conflicts between various groups.This situation did not get better until Kuomintang ruled the country in 1928.Organized by party organizations of all levels and with the help of state power,folk groups were integrated into Anti-Japanese National Salvation Council,and unified boycott regulations were formulated.If people's patriotic enthusiasm can be considered as the power and energy of boycott movements,thus,it fundamentally confronted the internal power of labor exchange and trade——economic power,which determines people's participation and support in a short time,but it is almost impossible to implement in a long run."Economic power" is strong,because it involves each person's interests.Also,in its practice,there existed huge divergence between the pursuit and interest of people from all circles,bad organizational work and lack of mechanism to coordinate different benefits.All these made the cost-income distribution in the movement imbalanced.As time went by, inevitably there were fewer supporters but more opponents.Many factors such as the social order turmoil that was caused by the movement and was a threat to the stability of the regime,interference and pressure from foreign power's threats forced the authority to speed up the prohibition towards boycott movement.All these internal and external difficulties had contributed to the halt of the movement.Boycott Movement not only left imprint in history,but also affected Chinese society.Whenever China suffered the pressure of foreign invasion or unfair treatment,people tended to remember this kind of resistance mode—boycott movement.Although the movement was aimed directly to combat that foreign trade with China,most of the time the effect was not as good as people's anticipation, but sometimes they really gave heavy blows to that foreign trade with China.The "will of the people" showed by boycott movements sometimes could force Chinese authority to give up signing unfair treaties.In diplomacy,boycott movements were sometimes used as a symbol of "will of the people" to resist unreasonable demands from foreign countries.But at the same time,the hit that boycott movement gave to that foreign country's trade with China and the attacks on the body and property of that country's nationals in China had a certain pressure on both Chinese authority and the foreign authority.As a result,it sometimes forced that foreign country to make a concession,while sometimes they brought about military retaliation from that foreign country.After the occurrence of boycott movement,Chinese export-oriented cooperative enterprises were affected adversely more or less,while export-oriented competitive enterprises benefited more or less.During the boycott movement,the Chinese-goods Movement was up surging.To purchase domestic products and to boycott foreign goods were given a patriotic significance,nation concept was infiltrated into economic sphere.Moreover,some people even viewed advocating domestic products and boycott foreign goods from the viewpoint of saving China's economy,interest and rights,and publicized the thought of economic competition among countries.Rising from the public,boycott movement marked that people's cognition to the nation and civil right was different from those in the traditional society.It provided a theoretical foundation for people's participation in politics.The assembly, speech,procession,petition,burning of boycotted goods,and many other activities in the movement not only made people practise "civil rights",but also increased their ways of political participation and expanded the space of political activity in reality.Some special events in boycott movement (take Jianzhaonan's nationality problem in 1919 for example) indicated that precise definition of national identity was also an important aspect in modern nation-state construction. |
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