Topical Talk II

History of Modern Chinese Series II:
The History of Modern China: China’s Response to Western Imperialistic Dominance – Science and Technology in the Self-strengthening Movement and the May Fourth Movement

Watch The Video

Prof. CHEUNG Hok Ming Fredrick delivered a talk entitled “The History of Modern China: China’s Response to Western Imperialistic Dominance – Science and Technology in the Self-strengthening Movement and the May Fourth Movement” on 6 December 2022.

Prof. CHEUNG received his PhD degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A. The title of his doctoral dissertation is “From Military Aristocracy to Royal Bureaucracy: Patterns of Consolidation in Medieval Empires”. He is fluent in ancient Greek, Latin, French, English, and Chinese. He has been studying history, translation (as his undergraduate minor), and etymology. He translated two history books into Chinese, namely, Hajo Holborn’s The Political Collapse of Europe, and C. Warren Hollister’s Medieval Europe. He has also published books such as Mythology: Chinese and Western, Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong, 1926-2000, Learning English through Etymology, Learning English through Idioms, Historical Figures in Western History, and Explaining Medical Terms through Etymology. He has also been teaching various courses including Western Civilization, Tradition and Transformation in Western History, Characteristics in Western Culture, Early English Constitutional History, General Chinese History, Spirits of New Asia College, Comparative Mythology, and History of Traditional Chinese Thought.

In this talk, Prof. CHEUNG began with China’s response to Western imperialistic dominance after the Opium Wars, namely the Self-strengthening and May Fourth movements.

Qing China had tried to modernize, especially in terms of military power, through the Self-strengthening Movement, but these efforts were in vain. The talk discussed the difficulties in modernizing late Qing China and addressed the limited reforms and accomplishments of the Tongzhi Restoration through some ministers’ efforts, such as Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong. The talk also touched upon Li Hongzhang’s “government supervision and merchant operations” (guan-du shang-ban 官督商辦) and Zhang Zhidong’s “Chinese learning for the essential principles, and Western learning for practical application” (中學為體，西學為用).

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 was another response by China to Western imperialist dominance. In addition to studying “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy,” the talk discussed significant figures of the time, such as Hu Shih, and comments by Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong on the May Fourth Movement.