Kang Youwei biography from “Qing shi gao”

Abstract

The article, for informational purposes, contains a fragment of juan 473 (juan 260 of the “Biographies” section) of the “Draft History of Qing” (Qing shi gao), published in 1928. The creation of this trait was authorized by Yuan Shikai in 1914 under the leadership of the retired Qing bureaucrat Zhao Erxiong (1844–1927). Kang Youwei’s biography was missing from the original Qing shi gao text and was added in the woodcut edition edited by Jinliang (1878–1962). The biography does not contain distortions of the events of 1898, the ideas of the Reform Movement are reduced to the formula “how to make our country powerful,” and the reason for the failure of the reforms is that “the new era came suddenly.” From a monarchical perspective, Kang Youwei is praised for his constitutional-monarchist ideals and protests against the abolition of the monarchy in 1911. Intellectually, Kang Youwei is characterized as “a great ideological innovator who laid the foundation for a new tradition.”