Abstract
China, a country of ancient civilization, possessing vast territory, abundant resources, a large population, thriving economy and trade, and intelligent culture and institutions, has long demonstrated a sense of superiority. The nation was vainly convinced that it was the center of the world, which justified its being an excellent model for neighboring barbarian countries to follow. The meaning of “China” in Chinese characters (Zhongguo) suggests a sense of pride and narcissism. When Western explorers, merchants, and missionaries first flooded into China during and after the Age of Discovery, they were amazed with the alien culture they found and wrote abundantly of their expectations and longings. Those texts, which lavished praise and adoration on China, infused Western people with an immensely romantic notion of the Orient. However, when attacked by an advanced fleet with sophisticated weapons, and defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 specifically, China bid farewell to prosperity, wealth, balance, and confidence that it had once enjoyed and moved gradually towards the humiliation of the colonial and semicolonial era. When the situation worsened, China, a country that claims a 5,000-year civilization and that took the lead among the countries in the world for most of the time, was permeated with the degrading image of “the Sick Man of East Asia,” a characteristic expression of prejudice, contempt, and even insult.
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Notes
- 1.
“Zhongguo is in the center of the world, and the four Yi are in the remote areas.” Yi includes Nanman (in the south of China), Beirong (in the north of China), Dongyi (in the east of China), and Xidi (in the west of China). In historical literature, Zhongguo means a country in the central position, not only in geography but also in civilization.
- 2.
Examples are numerous; Voltaire and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz are both familiar ones showing faddish cult for Chinese culture. Now I will add one or two more for illustration. (1) Archibald Ross Colquhoun wrote in China in Transformation that the Chinese people enjoyed unparalleled freedom…the Chinese people have total freedom in industry and commerce, migration, entertainment, and belief. The limitations and protections are offered not by a council but by legislature (Roberts 1999). (2) British novelist W. Somerset Maugham said that “the feeling that the carriere ouverte aux talents and the lack of hereditary privilege gave the Chinese a kind of equality greater than that in America and Europe. Status and wealth made occasional privilege over others does not constitute barrier to their social activities” (Dawson 1999).
- 3.
Things changed dramatically during the years. When Emperor Qianlong refused George McCartney’s request to conduct trade between Britain and China in 1793, he said, “Our kingdom’s virtue is known to the remotest country, and every country comes to call me king. We have all kinds of treasures and everything you can think of.” What was permeated here was a sense of pride that “the world needs China more, and China needs the world less.” It was only to show the kingdom’s kindness and to allow the foreigners a livelihood that the Qing government opened 13 places in Canton for people to engage in foreign commerce. In 1900, however, when Beijing fell into the hands of Eight-Power Allied Forces, the empress dowager Cixi did her best to show her humbleness, begged to be forgiven and said that “we shall leave no stone unturned to cater to the needs of your countries.” This dramatic change was, undoubtedly, the symbol of the arrival of the era when China was subjected to humiliation.
- 4.
Andre Gunder Frank did not agree on Euro-centralism widely accepted in modern society and in world history. He maintained that until 1800, “if any regions were predominant in the world economy before 1800, they were in Asia. If any economy had a ‘central’ position and role in the world economy and its possible hierarchy of “centers,” it was China.” (Frank 2005) At the Thirteenth International Economic History Forum held in Argentine in 2004, consensus had been reached among the roughly 3,000 participants of the forum: before the Industrialization Revolution of the nineteenth century, it was not Britain but the Netherlands and China that enjoyed the highest productivity (see Yang Nianqun et al. 2004).
- 5.
There has been no monograph about the detailed textual research about the words “the Sick Man of East Asia” (Dongya Bingfu). Zheng Zhilin’s research in his article “The Earliest Historical Record of ‘the Sick Man of East Asia’” [in Zhejiang PE Science, 1999 (4)] could be said to be systematic. Zheng holds that “Dongya Bingfu” first appeared as “Bingfu,” and then as “Dongfang Bingfu” (the sick man of the orient) and was mentioned side by side with “Dongya Bingfu.” The words first appeared in the magazines around the time of the Reform Movement of 1898 (Wuxu Reform Movement): (1) In March 1895, in his article “On Strength” in Zhi Bao (a newspaper published in Tianjin), Yan Fu wrote that “the affairs of a state are just like the affairs of a person…. Today’s China is like a sick person.” For the first time, Yan proposed the resemblance to “a sick person.”(2) On October 17, 1896, North China Daily News published an article “Facts of China” in which it said, “China is the sick man of the Orient, and the Chinese people are indeed numb. It was once said that China bettered the other countries; it is no longer held to be true now.” (3) An article published in a newspaper in Japan in 1901 was entitled “Dongfang Bingfu.” (4) In 1903, Zeng Pu, a well-known novelist, used the penname Dongya Bingfu for his book A Flower in the Sea of Evils. From then on, “Dongfang Bingfu” or “Dongya Bingfu” was used everywhere in newspapers home and abroad.
- 6.
On May 6, 1906, L’Impartial.
- 7.
What John Fitzgerald tried to illustrate in the book Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution is a kind of “awakening politics” that connects an individual’s destiny with that of a nation. In fact, the Chinese people were, to a more significant extent, woken up by the heavy blow of the Western powers. What is more substantial, however, was how to connect an individual’s destiny with that of a nation after they woke up for being beaten. For this, I would prefer to interpret it as a process of mobilization, discipline, and integration. Fitzgerald’s another contribution was an in-depth research to the author of the coinage “sleeping lion,” which he believed came from a remark passed by an anonymous missionary rather than from Napoleon, as we have long believed.
- 8.
Professor Chow Tse-tsung held that after China was defeated by the Japanese in 1895, the Chinese, especially intellectuals, realized the danger, faced by China of not being able to survive in the modern world. So they raised the slogan of uniting the people and “saving the nation.” Before that, the Chinese people believed it was their mission to “strengthen the nation and the army,” unaware of the danger brought about by the imperialist countries. See Chow Tse-tsung (2005).
- 9.
Han Yuhai, Biopolitics—Capitalism and Diseases, Sannong China, http://www.snzg.net 2005–2–8 19:00:56.
- 10.
Disease politics is the political scene constructed on the basis of diseases. On the one hand, it employs the basic principles of politics to examine and analyze diseases and what is attached to diseases (e.g., a metaphor); on the other hand, diseases can also serve as an approach in the discourse and in the analysis so that relevant political phenomena can be reflected upon and be interpreted.
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Hu, Y. (2013). The Double Meaning of “the Sick Man of East Asia” and China’s Politics. In: Rural Health Care Delivery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39982-4_1
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