On Liang Qichao's National Ideology

To fight against imperialist powers' oppression that modern Chinese society has greatly suffered from, anti-imperialism and saving the nation became the theme of the times. Under such social background, Liang Qichao assimilates eastern and western national ideological theories and gradually forms his own national ideological system. During this process, with the in-depth understanding of the western concept of "nation", he forms his own systematic viewpoints. Simultaneously he distinguishes "nation" from "ethnics", "country" and "citizen", which to some extent avoid confusions in their usage. In his articles, the specific usage of "nationalities in China" and "Chinese nation" reflects his opinion on domestic nations, namely, when emphasizing on founding national state on the basis of various nationalities to unanimously fight against imperialism, he acknowledges that various minorities are part of Chinese nation and he assumes that they have been assimilated to the Han nationality. Although Liang Qichao strives to treat them equally, due to numerous limitations, he is unable to authentically adopt justicial attitude towards minorities. On treating nationalities home and abroad, he classifies the nationalities in the world as superior ones or inferior ones in terms of their developing degree of civilization. Furthermore, although encouraging self-support of nationalities and inferior nationalities' learning from superior ones, he assumes strong nationalities' aggression upon inferior ones as a matter of course. To some extent he looks on nations and nation issues from new angles, however, as far as the whole national ideological system is concerned, his viewpoints are restricted by unable to completely get rid of the influence of Chinese traditional national ideology. Liang Qichao's thinking on nations contains rich connotation and unique features, characterized by times, systematicness, variability as well as the big Han-nationalism . Despite the limitations that his ideas contain, it still exerts a great influence on the modern Chinese politics and the early ethnology of China. Even today, it still manifests its practical significance.