Yin Hai-guang And The Development Of Liberalism In Modern China

China's liberalism prior to Yin Hai-guang had undergone two generations of development. As an imported doctrine, it constituted a direct citation of the related modern western mainstream ideology. But, being after all a reproduction of its western counterpart, China's liberalism presented strikingly different from those in its place of origin from the first day of its appearance in China: the final motive being to strive for national survival rather than to protect liberal rights; the main practising forces being the elite intellectuals rather than the broad masses; the driving forces being derived from moral enthusiasm rather than from reason; and the basic functions being social criticism rather than social reconstruction. Rejected by the political and social climate of China, the first generation of liberalists ended their mission in a pessimistically retreat, and the second one , though once made quite a hit ,was by no means able to last long. Yin Hai-guang's liberalism just made its appearance at a time when the second generation was routed.However, several defeated liberalists carried the seeds of liberalism to Taiwan, the last stronghold of the GMT, through co-operations with the GMT remnants. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. intervened in the security affairs on the Taiwan Strait, thus helping the tottering GMT remnants pull through and reconstruct the "Jiang Dynasty". And under such security protection, the liberalists were able to start a new endeavor to confront the authority from their original positions. The main forces this time were such fury figures as Yin Hai-guang,who had broken their way out of the GMT camp, and not the second generation liberalists. Yin's participation in the semimonthly of Liberal China was the realistic and historical starting-point of his becoming the pilot of Taiwan Island's liberalism. The role he thus play was relevanted to his characteristic "three original elements": his rebellious character and the strong will, his enthusiasm for social concern, and his thinking habit. These "three original elements" shaped respectively under the influence of his family, of traditional Chinese social environment, of the Western-style modern school education. These elements, which had once made him an ideal disciple of the Three People's Doctrine, now likewise prompted him to breakthrough the frame of the doctrine onto the rail of liberalism and to become a pilot of Taiwan Island's liberalism..It was around the year 1952 that Yin Hai-guang accomplished to shift in thought and became a pure liberalist, as the result of a combination of his intrinsic ideological route with the external resources. From then on, he embarked on a new thinking path. His carrier of enlightenment were magazines and classrooms, the banner he raised were "the May 4th spirit" and "Hu Shi Thought", the content of enlightenment referred to all the themes of the May 4th : democracy, science, and the toppling over of the Confucious School. Yin hai-guang's enlightenment constitutes an aggregate of the May 4th , but not a duplication of it. As a representative figure of the post-May 4th liberalwts, Yin Hai-guang can be compared with Yan Fu and Hu Shi ,the representative figures of the pre-May 4th and the May 4th liberalists.Viewed from the perspective of value-reasoning, Yan Fu, Hu Shi and Yin Hai-guang's Liberal theories presents respective advantages and shortcomings, with no obvious transcendence between them. Modem China's liberalist tradition virtually showed no signs of "having something handed down", just because liberalism never really took root in China, with every "generation" of liberalists' endeavour being effectedunder the pressure of China's temporal political situation. Striving for instant effect, they repeated imported the doctrine once and again and what they imported were not "the seeds", but "the flowers", which were to be repeated collected, and in no reasonable relation to China's traditional ideology. Never produced its classics, short of the native thought resources ac...