The Social Transformation Of China And Missionaries In The Late Qing Dynasty And The Early Republican China

Through studying the religious and social practice of Timothy Richard, a British Baptist Church missionary in China, this paper investigates the relationship between Chinese social transformation and missionaries, in the late Qing dynasty and early Republic.Timothy Richard has been in China for 45 years. He affects the social transformation of China in four aspects:local society, middle society, upper society and the international community. In the early period, Timothy Richard had some religious and social practice in Shandong and Shanxi provinces to access to the structure of local society. By the relief activities, he promoted the development of social activities across the region and adjusted the allocation of resources. Then he speeded up the longitudinal and lateral social mobility. When he found that middle class is the key of the whole Chinese social structure, in conjunction with other missionaries, by means of culture he firstly attempted to change the faith of middle class and hope they guided the grassroots. Secondly with the middle class, through political means, he impacted the upper class elite. Thus they affect the social change in China from top to bottom. In addition, Timothy Richard also through international activity connected Chinese internal social affairs and international political cultural to strengthen the influence from the pattern of the world to internal social change in China. In these activities, Timothy Richard and other missionaries transfer some proper socio-cultural elements from Western society to China according the structure characteristics of recently Chinese society. And then they reinterpreted the elements to link up China with Western socio-culture, so as to promote Chinese social change.The social transformation of China is neither a passive response to the missionaries and the overall acceptance of Western things, nor completely isolated from the outside world. For the influence of Timothy Richard and other missionaries the changes in Chinese society had different response in the four levels which mentioned earlier. The response is highlighted through the behavior of social groups. By recognizing, rejecting or using missionary, the local society people maintained or changed the living conditions. When they made the revolution demands, the missionaries did not see through the nature of Chinese society thus refused to lead them directly to change society, which made Chinese society lost the most fundamental transformation force in Late Qing dynasty and the Early Republican China. The middle class wanted to increase the cultural and political growth and got rid of the shackles of the existing system. So in specific areas, they warmly responded to the political reform advice of Timothy Richard and the other missionary. Then with the missionary, they became the head men who tried to promote the upper class to change the society together. Political elites of upper class accepted the recommendations and programs from middle class and the missionaries to safeguard the interests of dominance hierarchy and had the limited social reforms which ultimately failed, but Chinese social change gained the necessary conditions in which the society generated new elements to break the shackles. Furthermore, as the international activities of missionaries, the internal transformation of Chinese society also became an important factor in shaping the world pattern.This history in which Timothy Richard and Chinese society met each other is written by the joint force of the missionary and the social transformation. This article referred it as ’Co-written History’. As a missionary, on one hand Timothy Richard constantly brought external factors into Chinese society, to combine them with the internal elements of Chinese social transformation; on the other hand, he indeed was an inner strength of Chinese social transformation. Through the impact of the two aspects, Timothy Richard and other missionaries converted external power of Chinese social transformation into internal motive force to promote the process of social transformation. Therefore, the missionaries who originally were external other played the role as ’Internal Other’ of Chinese social transformation to influence China’s social change in late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China. On this basis, the study concluded the mechanism and characteristics of Chinese social change in late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China with Western cultural influence, in which external factors got involved in the Chinese life world according to the structure and order of Chinese society, then were absorbed and tolerated by Chinese society and culture, after the mutual integration stimulated the new social forces for the great changes in Chinese society.