Liang Qichao and the Conceptualization of ＂Race＂ in Late Qing China

Racial knowledge was a kind of ＂applied knowledge＂ that enabled late Qing intellectuals to pursue political modernization. The creation of modem Chinese identity depended on the science of biological race. Critical to this process was Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929). Liang sought to situate the Chinese in a world of races and make it stronger. Much the same was true of late Qing revolutionaries, whose anti-Manchu nationalism was based on racial knowledge. Liang's role was two-fold. First, he was pivotal to the introduction of racial knowledge to China. And second, in conversation with the revolutionaries, he was critical in establishing a deeply anti-hegemonic vision of the relationship between the races. By the late nineteenth century, the concept of race was based on Western science. ＂Race＂ formed a building block of imperialism, but Liang and other intellectuals used racial knowledge to challenge the hegemony of Western justifications of imperialism. For the most part, Liang insisted on the mutability of races, while he simultaneously proclaimed the ＂Yellow＂ race to be the equal of the ＂White＂ race. Liang was hardly immune from racialist attitudes, but his opposition to anti-Manchuism foreshadowed the multi-ethnic state that would emerge from the Revolution of 1911. Liang used racial knowledge to rewrite Chinese history and to position China in the world. Liang was not the only intellectual to do this, nor did he speak for all Chinese intellectuals. Yet by focusing on Liang, we can highlight how late Qing intellectuals could adopt new cultural and symbolic resources that were first wielded by the imperialist powers to their [the late Qing intellectuals'] own purposes.