Study On Guo Songtao’s Views Of Foreign Affairs

Westernization Movement, which arose from the replica of the Western guns and warships in the process of fighting between the Xiang Army and the Taiping Troops, is in fact a self-improvement with the introduction of the Western natural science and technology. When most scholars held the idea that the civilized Chinese people were superior to the foreign people in ceremony, Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao and others who did a deep research of Confucian thoughts as leaders of Xiang Army considered foreign affairs as an emergency for they knew it was beneficial to rule the country and make peace to the world. Zeng Guofan and Guo Songtao gave a full play of "moral principles and feats" stressed by Hu and Xiang School and put civil and military affairs into the category of science and practice. Zeng Guofan died earlier, so his theory of foreign affairs was poor. However, Guo Songtao witnessed the Westernization Movement in the latter half of his life, and in addition Guo was good at theoretical thinking. In the late Qing dynasty, Guo devoted a lot and did a lot in foreign affairs including politics, economy, culture, diplomacy and so on, which in essence is a theoretical system of self-improvement.Guo’s views of foreign affairs were closely related with his academic learning of the Xiang School. With an innovative spirit he combined the historical and philosophical idea of valuing talents and changing with the times by Wang Fuzhi, a great thinker in the Qing dynasty, with the actual situation in the late Qing dynasty so that he may come up with the view of "the way changing with heaven". He used his views not only to criticize the decline phenomena superficially but also give an anatomy of the distorted education, economy, politics in Chinese system of dictatorship that brought about persecution to China’s education, economy and politics. As the first China’s ambassador to Britain and France, he carefully investigated the Western education, economy, the party system, science, technology, custom, morality with an open mind in order to solve the difficult problem of self-improvement. After his comparison, Guo finished his first stage of theoretical exploration of how China went towards modernization with a long history of dictatorship. He had his own plan of self-improvement, namely, improvement of morality, custom, industry, commerce, politics and education. In each area, he proposed the integration of Chinese and Western programs. In education, he combined the traditional classics with the Western science and technology so as to change the idea of reading for wealth and nobility. Reading must be combined with being an able man, moral principles and feats to make preparations for morality and custom. In economy, he criticized the policy of stressing the agriculture and restraining the trade and at the same time pointed out its hypocrisy. On the basis of his investigation in the Western countries, he proposed the idea of free economy and measures of developing economy gradually. In addition, he also refuted the economic mode of merchant management supervised by government by Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong. In political system, he appreciated the British political parties and parliamentary system with constitutional monarchy and admired the British law that all men were equal. And at the same time he doubted the idea of ruling a country with morality trumpeted by Chinese system of dictatorship because he thought that this idea was unreliable. He hoped to learn from the Western countries, but he didn’t advocate the parliamentary system in China urgently. What he wanted was to give full play of excellent Chinese traditions and cultivate Chinese morality and custom in the next three hundred years. In diplomacy, he held the peaceful thought of maintaining a country’s sovereignty, showing that he gave up the idea of dynasty and strongly advocated that every country was equal. And diplomatic policies of sincerity, equality and peace should be established. In addition, good tradition of treating foreigners better should be inherited, and so should the friendly attitude in dealing with better relationship between countries be stressed. In the debate between the Westernization School and Old School, he denounced intransigence of the Old School and also criticized the superstitious policy of guns and. warships. He thought that political education was the root and making guns and warships was the branch. His ideal of making people rich, free economy and political reform had great influence on the early reformers, so he should be looked upon as a pioneer of them. He accepted some Western learning and reflected on the Chinese learning and his influence on the early making of new learning in recent China was irreplaceable.