EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 12 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 137 Wang Jingwei's Re-organised National Government (RNG), which ruled parts of eastern China from 1940–1945, was unusual amongst twentieth-century Chinese regimes in terms of the limits of its irredentist claims, and the timidity of its revanchism. As much scholarship on this regime has already noted, the RNG did focus a good deal of attention on the question of sovereignty in the foreign concessions and treaty ports, eventually claiming success in regaining Chinese sovereignty over such areas. However, on many other issues -- Manchuria, the frontier regions in western China, Taiwan and even the British colony of Hong Kong -- it remained rhetorically aloof. The realities of foreign occupation meant that the RNG's 'collabora- tionist nationalism' (which stressed the connection between the RNG and the physical land of China itself, and especially those cities, such as Nanjing, Guangzhou and Wuhan, which had been central to the 1911 revolution) was always balanced with the shifting strategic needs of Japan -- even when such needs directly contradicted the RNG's ideological claims. Drawing on cartographic, photographic and artistic depictions of China's landscape produced by agents (or in support) of the RNG, and contrasting these with official RNG pronouncements on territorial integrity, this paper shall examine how a regime which accepted the reali- ties of occupation yet at the same time inherited many of the ideologies of the state it claimed to replace, developed an ultimately incoherent self-definition in terms of national space. It will also draw attention to competing notions of irredentism and revanchism in occupied China, as well as the notion of 'collaboration- ist nationalism' in the wider historiography of occupation (both in China and in other contemporary cases). Thøgersen Stig ( Aarhus University) The Tragedy of Zhang Zonglin: Competing Conceptions of Childhood in China from the May Fourth Movement to the Anti-rightist Campaign Key words: Zhang Zonglin, childhood, anti-rightist campaign, progressive education, Soviet pedagogy In this paper, the writings and life history of Zhang Zonglin ( 张宗麟 , 1899–1976) are used to illustrate the Chinese debate about the nature of children and childhood during the first half of the twentieth century. Zhang was known as “China's first male pre-school teacher” and worked with educational reformers such as Tao Xingzhi, Chen Heqin and Liang Shuming in the 1920s and 1930s. He was deeply influenced by progressive Western ideas about kindergartens (Fröbel, Montesorri, etc.) and vehemently criticized tradi- tional Chinese education. Zhang joined the CPC, and after the revolution he stayed in the mainland where he worked for the Ministry of Education until 1957 when he was condemned as a “rightist”. He was never allowed to teach again but was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978. The paper will first outline the visions for Chinese pre-school education that Zhang developed in the 1920s and 30s and the Rousseau-inspired conception of childhood on which they were based. The main focus of the paper, however, will be on the post-revolutionary fate of intellectuals that shared Zhang’s ideas and on how they tried to come to terms with the principles of Soviet pedagogy that came to dominate the CPC in the early 1950s. I will argue that the CPC’s break with Western “progressive education” led to a partial re-traditionalization of Chinese education, although it was presented as part of the socialist revolution of the school system. The exclusion of Zhang Zonglin and many like-minded intellectuals from the debate on childhood and pre-school education casts long shadows and can arguably even explain some of the dilemmas that are visible in the implementation of pre-school education reforms today. The paper will be based on Zhang Zonglin’s own writings as well as on documents from the successive political campaigns of the 1950s. Vul Nikita (National Research University Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg)) Sino-Soviet Clash over the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1925–1926: Political and Ethnical Roots of the Conflict Key words: Chinese Eastern Railway, prohibition, conflict, Karakhan Few issues in the history of modern diplomacy caused as many conflicts as Chinese Eastern Railway did. My presentation is dedicated to one of this conflicts, namely to the Sino-Soviet conflict on the CER