A Research On Fu Min Ce Compiled By Missionary William E. Macklin

Since late Qing Dynasty, the role of missionaries has increasingly attracted theattention of scholars with Western Learning restarting. William E. Macklin, as the firstmissionary of Foreign Christian Missionary Society coming to China and havingworked in China more than40years, not only preached and practiced medicine, butalso kept writing. He has translated and published a large number of western politicaland economic works in collaboration with Chinese scholars, in which Fu Min Ce wasone of the representatives. Macklin selected Progress and Poverty, written byAmerican social activist Henry George, but named it Fu Min Ce in that he based it onthe needs of Chinese social reality between late Qing Dynasty and early Republic ofChina, and he was influenced by western people in China, other western political,economic translations and the translation press publishing organization The ChristianLiterature Society for China at that time. Meanwhile, it was the result of his trying tointroduce and apply the viewpoint of Single Tax on Land in the original to solving theproblem of Chinese social poverty at that time, which was agreed with by Macklin.Part of Fu Min Ce was first published in Wan Kwoh Kung Pao and Chung Si KiaoHwui Pao. Later its separate edition was published by the Society for the diffusion ofChristian and general Knowledge among the Chinese and Book Integration Bureau,reprinted respectively in1903and1911by the Commercial Press and ShanghaiPresbyterian Mission Press.There were differences only in the foreword and appendixamong these three versions, without any additions and deletions in content. Butbetween Fu Min Ce and the original there were significant differences in the discoursestructure and content, the appearance of which had a high correlation with the specificsocial reality, life experiences of Macklin and his collaborators, Macklin’s ideologyand the form of scholars both at home and abroad translating books cooperatively. FuMin Ce was not a literal translation of the original, but the re-creation even creative disobedience on the basis of the original. What Macklin and Chinese partners did, toa certain extent, demonstrated the complexity of modern Sino-western culturalexchange. Fu Min Ce was born and popular in the society between late Qing Dynastyand early Republic of China whose theme was salvation and reform. Equalization ofLandownership advocated by Sun Yat-sen had a close relationship with Fu Min Ce.While the socialist practice of Jiang Kanghu was directly influenced by Macklin andthe thought of Fu Min Ce.