Public Opinion Propagation Of Late Ming Dynasty And Donglin Party Movement

Public opinion always played an import role in the historical progress throughout ancient China. As the flowing information, public opinion was spread rather slowly and exerted limited influence upon the political and social life before the Mid-Ming Dynasty when the community was relatively closed and lack of population mobility. Towards the Late Ming Dynasty, however, public opinion became fairly active with the development of commerce, acceleration of population mobility, declining censorship, many a free proletarian moving into the city to take part in the commercial activities, enlarging the number of citizens and enriching the subject and the audience of the public opinion. The rapid increase of cities and non-agriculture population expanded the space for the dissemination of public opinion. The interaction between and among the political, economic, and cultural elements in the process of the dissemination then carried the development of public opinion into a new historical phase.The Late Ming Dynasty was an extremely active time for public opinion, whose favorable social environment for and distinct character of public opinion dissemination provided a most important social condition for the emergence of the Donglin Movement, which was to a large extent a movement of public opinion. Donglin Party members firmly claimed that "public opinion is national affair", suggesting that the emperor’s personal interest should be kept within the bounds of the public opinion. Such public opinion, on the one hand, was the court opinion held by the political bureaucracy; on the other hand, extended to the commonalty, centering upon the political and ethical consensus, with the scholar-bureaucrats represented by the Donglin Party members as the spokesmen of the "innocent man and wife" who were the ultimate source of the public opinion. Due to this relationship, public opinion now as the standard to judge the right and wrong of the national affairs fell to the hand of the Donglin Party. The concrete strategy employed by the Donglin Party was to start from the efforts to get the permission to utter their opinion:they would choose issues of great significance for the scholar-bureaucrats and civilians to launch the political discussion, and then they would find the mouthpiece in the court. Meanwhile, the Donglin Party made constant efforts to enhance their academic leadership, taking the lead of the social opinion and forming the political criticism from the perspective of the scholar, turning themselves into the non-official political force that might confront and dialog with the court.On a deeper level, the Donglin Movement characterized by its apparent relationship with public opinion showed the critical spirit of the traditional Chinese intellectuals whose aim was to maintain the feudal ethics. The Donglin Movement spread three kinds of public opinions via three groups of people:academic opinion by the Donglin School, political opinion by the Donglin Party, and social opinion by the pro-Donglin scholar-bureaucrats. In feudal China, these three groups of people were actually different social roles performed by the same literati and officialdom, who always possessed the critical spirit. Later, the rulers of Qing Dynasty learned a lesson from the declining of Late Ming Dynasty by suppressing the public opinion. Even the bravest scholar-bureaucrats in Qing Dynasty who dared to present political criticism could not go beyond the surface level, whose political opinions were more than often persuasion and begging. It was not easy for non-official political opinions by the scholars to form a restricting force against the monarchy. In feudal China, the climax of the interaction between the public opinion dissemination and the social development took place in Late Ming Dynasty. The call for the republic during the1911Revolution and the appeal to democracy of the May4th Movement undoubtedly bore the heritage of this political criticism by means of public opinion. The great strength manifested by the Donglin Movement brought about much enlightenment and inspiration to modern and contemporary China.