The new century

Xin Shiji ( Chinese 新世纪 , also Nouveau Siècle, New Era) was an anarchist magazine founded in 1906 by Li Yuying together with Wu Zhihui and Zhang Jingjiang and published regularly from mid-1907 until 1910 . It was published in Chinese in the style of the well-known French anarchist newspaper Les Temps Nouveaux . Thus, in the time before the Chinese revolution , with which the Qing dynasty was superseded in 1911 , she was the mouthpiece of the Chinese exiled students in France.

history

Between June 1907 and May 1910 121 issues appeared. In addition to attacks on the backwardness and corruption of the Qing monarchy and the condemnation of traditional institutions such as the family (Li Shizeng even proposed to forbid marriages in 1909), the journal provided translations of contributions by western anarchists from Les Nouveaux Temps . Including articles by Pyotr Alexejewitsch Kropotkin , Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Élisée Reclus (it is recorded that Li Yuying personally translated Kropotkin's Mutual Aid for People and Animals ). The publication of the New Century decisively shaped the direction of this Chinese anarchist group, the so-called Francophile lobby , which clearly set it apart from the Chinese anarchist group in Tokyo formed at the same time. The paper did not propagate a return to an idealized peasant utopia that could not be corrupted by the comforts of modern life, but spoke out clearly in favor of the blessings of education and science - in the spirit of Kropotkin and Reclus. In the eyes of its editors, France was a republic par excellence - free from the, in their opinion, disastrous influences of monarchy and church and therefore with ideal environmental conditions for working and learning.

In 1912 , after being appointed the first minister of education in the new Chinese republic , Cai Yuanpei showed his spiritual alignment with the New Century by practically combining the ideals of the French Revolution , liberty, equality and fraternity with Confucian values such as Ren (仁 - to translate something like kindness or humanity ) equated.

literature

Jean Maitron: Le mouvement anarchiste en France . Paris 1975

René Bianco: Repertoire des périodiques anarchistes de langue française - Un siècle de presse anarchiste d'expression française, 1880–1983 . Aix-Marseille, 1987.

Wang Peili: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Cai Yuanpei - A comparative analysis of two classic educational concepts in the German Enlightenment and in the First Chinese Republic . Waxmann, Münster and New York, 1996.

Lü'Ou zazhi ( Chinese 旅欧杂志 ) (Journal of Chinese Students in Europe), 8 (December 1, 1916), 9 (December 15, 1916), 10 (January 1, 1917), 12 (February 1, 1917).

Web links

Notes and individual references

↑ This group around the admirer of French culture , Li Yuying, included the later prominent members of the Guomindang , Cai Yuanpei , Wu Zhihui and Zhang Jingjiang in France

↑ Peili Wang: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Cay Yuanpei - a comparative analysis of two classical education concepts in the German Enlightenment and the first Chinese Republic , p 119ff. Waxmann, Münster and New York, 1996.

[1] This group around the admirer of French culture , Li Yuying, included the later prominent members of the Guomindang , Cai Yuanpei , Wu Zhihui and Zhang Jingjiang in France

[2] Peili Wang: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Cay Yuanpei - a comparative analysis of two classical education concepts in the German Enlightenment and the first Chinese Republic , p 119ff. Waxmann, Münster and New York, 1996.