Across the Pacific: American pragmatism in China, 1917-1937

This study looks at the process in which pragmatism arose from the American environment, traveled to the land of China, and made a difference in the regeneration of Chinese thought and culture. It tries to find out why pragmatism was brought to China, how it adapted itself to the recipient environment, and what modifications it went through. This study pays special attention to the innovative ways in which the Chinese intellectuals absorbed, applied, and modified pragmatic ideas in order to solve Chinese problems.;In the modern transformation of a traditional society, pragmatism as a system of thought served as an intellectual justification as well as a guide to various aspects of reform. With the rise of new language, new literature, new education, new values, new method, new politics, and new scholarship, the New Culture Movement turned out to be the initial phase of the Chinese Renaissance, as some leading advocates of pragmatism had anticipated.;While pragmatism played a significant role in bringing about cultural change in China, its piecemeal reform program on politics was largely crippled by the country's unfavorable social and political environment. As a product of American culture, political pragmatism presupposed a stable social and political condition in which it could effectively function. If reform programs based on pragmatism worked well in fundamentally stable and conservative Anglo-American nations, they were much less effective in China during the 1920s and the 1930s, where a process of deepening political disintegration and a truly radical social upheaval was underway. Internal strife and external encroachment prevented China from having a unified and stable central government. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).;The twenty years' presence of American pragmatism in China revealed that unless a foreign system of thought could adapt and link itself to the intellectual tradition of the recipient environment, there would hardly be a successful diffusion. While introducing pragmatic ideas, Chinese pragmatists made tremendous efforts to show that the American philosophy was not alien to China. The experience of American pragmatism in China also suggested that an effective diffusion depended upon reinterpretation and necessary modification of the transplanting thought according to the needs of local conditions.