The leader of the late Qing Hundred Days' Reform and a pivotal figure in modern intellectual enlightenment. He authored the Book of Great Harmony, depicting a utopian world of Datong that abolished national borders, class, racial, and gender distinctions. He creatively employed the New Text Confucian strategy of "invoking antiquity for institutional reform," using Confucius as the banner for constitutional monarchy and leading the momentous 1898 Reform Movement.
Kang Youwei, courtesy name Guangxia, sobriquet Changsu, a native of Nanhai in Guangdong, known as "Kang Nanhai" or "Master Nanhai." From his youth he received rigorous Confucian education; as a young man he traveled to Hong Kong and Shanghai, witnessing the order and efficiency of Western governance, profoundly impacting his thought. In the fourteenth year of Guangxu, he first memorialized the Guangxu Emperor advocating reform, but the memorial did not reach the throne. In the twenty-first year of Guangxu, upon news of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Kang united over 1,300 juren candidates in the capital in the "Public Carriage Memorial," proposing to reject the treaty, move the capital, and institute reform, shocking the court. In the twenty-fourth year, he was summoned and given authority by the Guangxu Emperor to lead the "Hundred Days of Reform," issuing a flood of reform edicts. But the reform lasted only 103 days before Empress Dowager Cixi launched a coup; the Six Gentlemen were executed at Caishikou, and Kang fled into exile overseas for sixteen years. During his exile he traveled to over thirty countries and wrote the Book of Great Unity (Datong Shu). In his later years his thought turned conservative, opposing republican revolution and advocating constitutional monarchy. Yet the wave of reform and enlightenment he had launched was irreversible.
Kang Youwei fuses the Confucian Gongyang Three Ages theory with Western social evolutionism, constructing a grand historical philosophy: human society must pass through three developmental stages—"Age of Disorder" (ju luan), "Age of Approaching Peace" (sheng ping), and "Age of Universal Peace" (tai ping)—progressing sequentially without skipping. In the Book of Great Unity, he depicts an extraordinarily advanced ideal society: abolishing national boundaries, private property, class distinctions, and gender inequality; children raised communally; the elderly cared for communally; humanity achieves the "great unity" (tian xia wei gong) of universal peace. In his reform strategy, he uses "invoking antiquity to reform institutions" (tuo gu gai zhi) as his method, using Confucius as the banner for reform while implementing constitutional monarchy. His thought encompasses Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, and Western philosophies, seeking a path for China that preserves cultural subjectivity while achieving modern transformation.
"In the age of Great Unity, all under heaven is for all. Abolish national boundaries, abolish class boundaries; all people equal—this is the beauty of Great Unity. — Book of Great Unity (Datong Shu)"
How does Kang Youwei's Book of Great Harmony, depicting a breathtaking vision of a perfect human commune of peace, mirror the aspirations of modern Western utopian socialism and communist ideals?
Kang Youwei's "Great Unity" and More's "Utopia" both use the imagination of a perfect society as a mirror to critique the real; both express concern for humanity's ultimate destiny through literary-philosophical form.
Can utopian imagination genuinely transform real political institutions? Do the utopian visions of Kang Youwei and More represent parallel uses of the same literary-philosophical method, or fundamentally different projects?
Kang Youwei主张 gradual progression through constitutional monarchy to Great Unity; Rousseau主张 rebuilding the political community through social contract. Their paths of social change differ fundamentally between reform and revolution.
Can gradual reform and radical revolution lead to the same ideal of human equality? Do the different paths of Kang Youwei and Rousseau represent complementary visions or irreconcilable differences?
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