“Modernist Protestantism” Triumphs “Chinese Superstition”: How Blue China’s Sun Yat-sen Overthrew the Yellow Empire

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“MODERNIST” PROTESTANTISM TRIUMPHS CHINESE “SUPERSTITION”:
HOW BLUE CHINA’S SUN YAT-SEN OVERTHREW THE YELLOW EMPIRE
EACP - EAST ASIAN CULTURE IN PERSPECTIVE: IDENTITY, HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, MODERNITY
Jasper Roctus (Supervisor: prof. dr. Bart Dessein)
Blue China Yellow China
Coastal
(extending beyond China’s borders)
Continental
Progressive Conservative
Revolutionary Reformist/reactionary
Outward-focused Inward-focused
Major Blue China determinant:
Protestant Modernism
Factors of importance (Treadgold 1973),
❖A“social gospel” had risen in the West during the second half of the 1800s, which
starting to influence the teachings in the missions in (primarily Blue) China
❖Dominance of pietism slowly receded in Protestant missions
❖Catholic missions continued to “miss the boat,” papal ban on tolerating Chinese
traditions in Christian liturgy limited Catholic outreach
❖Creation of a“modernist elite” in Blue China that would hold considerable –or even,
disproportional –political sway over the coming decades
Introduction: Blue China and Yellow China
Marie-Claire Bergère coined the concept “Blue China” when elaborating the
background of Sun Yat-sen. By the turn of the 20th century, Blue China, Bergère
stated, consisted of the country’s coastal regions, treaty ports, and overseas
communities, was outward-focused, maritime, modernist, and revolutionary, and
stood in opposition to the “Yellow China” found in the country’s inward-focused,
conservative, traditional, continental hinterlands (Bergère 1998,20-23).
References
❖Bergre M. (1998). Sun Yat-sen. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford, Calif:
Stanford University Press.
❖Goossaert, V., and Palmer, D. (2011). The religious question in modern China.
Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
❖Schiffrin, H. Z. (1968). Sun Yat-sen and the origins of the Chinese revolution. 2nd
pr. Berkeley (Calif.): University of California press.
❖Treadgold, D. W. (1973). The West in Russia and China : religious and secular
thought in modern times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sun Yat-sen: A Representative of
Blue China?
Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 (1866-1925),
❖Hailed from Southern China’s coastal Guangdong province
❖Had experienced firsthand both the virtues and shortcomings of the West during his
schooling in Hawaii and Hong Kong
❖A fluent English-speaker, Sun maintained many contacts with overseas Chinese
(
Huaqiao
) and would visit the West on numerous occasions
❖Centered his revolutionary activities almost completely in Blue China
❖Overthrew the faltering Qing dynasty in 1911, became the Republic of China’s first
provisional president a year later
Research Aims
❖Zoomed-out: Systemizing and specifying Marie-Claire Bergère’s dichotomic
concept of Blue and Yellow China, by linking the Chinese revolutionary
movement in the former to the influence of Protestant Modernism –instead
of an often generalized “Western learning” or “Christianity.”
❖Zoomed-in: Connecting Sun Yat-sen’s religious faith and replication of
missionary credo in his discourse and ideology-construction to his background
in Blue China and Protestant formative influences.
Protestant “Window of Opportunity”
in Blue China
Temporal window of “Chinese susceptibility” to modernist Protestant
missionary teaching manifests itself in Blue China between the late 19th
century and the early 1920s,
❖Start: dominance of modernist message in Protestant missions achieved by the turn
of the 20th century in China (Treadgold 1973, 76-79).
•High demand for Western learning –despite occasional annoyance about the
religious zeal of mission teachers –amongst Chinese revolutionary youth
•Imperialist excesses in “Yellow China” (e.g., crackdown on Boxer rebellion) not
(yet) leading to major repugnance toward Christianity in Blue China
•Modernist Protestant gospel aligned with anti-superstitious sentiment in China
❖End:by the early 1920s anti-religious movements started taking aim at
all
religions,
instead of only “backward superstition”(Goosaert and Palmer 2011, 51)
•Humiliation at Versailles (1919) gave rise to anti-Western sentiment, with anti-
Christian sentiment in its wake
•Growing interest in Communism and the Soviet Union in China increasingly
clashed with sustained Western imperialism
•Christian missionaries and converts viewed as stooges of Western imperialism
Sun Yat-sen and Protestant Modernism
Sun Yat-sen, while pre-dating the “window of opportunity” during his education
abroad,
❖Got an Anglican Schooling in Hawaii and Hong Kong with focus on Western sciences
❖Was baptized a Protestant (Baptist) in Hong Kong
❖Was inspired during the “window of opportunity” with clear signs of the Protestant
“social gospel” in his “
minsheng
” (people’s livelihood) doctrine (e.g., by Henry George)
❖Strutted the revolutionary organizations led by him with Protestant Chinese from Blue
China; religion as only way to obtain modernist Western learning (Schiffrin 1967,89)
❖Maintained cordial contacts with Protestant Missionaries and the YMCA until the end of
the “window of opportunity” in the 1920s –and even beyond
Jasper Roctus
Contact
Jasper.roctus@ugent.be
https://research.flw.ugent.be/en/jasper.roctus
Funded by the Flanders Research Council