P. C. Chang and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hans Ingvar Roth

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СКАЧАТЬ selection test and received a scholarship from the American Boxer Indemnity Reparation Fund and a place at Clark University, a renowned university located in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1913, after three years’ study, Chang received his bachelor’s degree in pedagogy and philosophy.

      Founded in 1887, Clark University was one of the first graduate colleges in the United States to offer master’s degrees in pedagogy and psychology. In 1900, the university also started to confer doctoral degrees on both men and women. The university’s first president, G. Stanley Hall, was also a distinguished professor of psychology and pedagogy who established the American Psychological Association. Sigmund Freud’s only lecture series in the United States, at which he introduced psychoanalysis to the American public, was given at Clark University in 1909. The university was well known for having an ethnically diverse student body, including many students from Japan, as well as for its socially progressive profile.

      That Chang formed part of an extraordinary cohort of Chinese scholarship students was to become clear in hindsight. Perhaps the most famous of his pals in the group was Hu Shi. After completing his studies, Hu Shi went on to become one of China’s most liberal philosophers and literary historians; like Chang, he was powerfully inspired by the ideas of the American philosopher and educationalist John Dewey. A graduate of Cornell and Columbia, Hu Shi emerged as a leading spokesperson for China’s New Culture Movement, which sought in various ways to liberalize Chinese society and institute language reform.²⁹ Hu Shi and Peng Chun Chang were holders of scholarships from the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Programme, and they came to the United States on the same ship as young students. Both of them endorsed the proposal from the New Culture Movement to replace the difficult classical language (guwen) with a written form of the oral vernacular language (baihua).³⁰

      Other members of Chang’s cohort, which arrived in the United States in 1910 (on the second boat), were Zhu Kezhen, subsequently a Harvard-educated meteorologist, and Zhao Yuanren (Y. R. Chao), also a future Harvard alumnus. Y. R. Chao (1892–1982) was a pioneering linguist whose textbooks are still used in university courses today. He went on to become a professor of oriental languages at the University of California, Berkeley. Chao also composed music that became widely known in China. He became Chang’s best friend and was the only outsider to regularly visit him and his family during the last years of Chang’s life. According to Stanley, his father described Chao as a genius. (Stanley also said that Chao once surprised his audience during a lecture by speaking English backward without a “flaw.”) On the ranking list for scholarships to the United States, Chao was number two, and Chang, number seven. The scholarship program included many excellent scholars who went on to have successful careers, such as the Nobel laureate in physics Chen Ning Yang, the educator Kuo Ping-Wen, and the rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen. The educator Chen Heqin, who studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, through the Boxer Indemnity Fund between 1917 and 1918 would later be the first modern Chinese theoretician of early childhood education.³¹

      Chang was, as was said before, part of a unique cohort that had been schooled in both the old Confucian ways and the educational traditions of the West. Several members of this cohort became multilingual and viewed the preservation of the core defining features of Chinese culture as an urgent task even as they sought to convey valuable insights gleaned from their experiences in the West, especially the achievements of modern science and the liberal political worldview.³² This cohort formed a network in which most of the scholarship recipients were acquainted with each other.

      During his time at Clark University, Chang wrote prolifically, including for its newspaper the Chinese Student Monthly. There he published essays on Chinese nationalism and the effects of colonialism on the international legal system and China, essays that show him to have been deeply engaged with international politics and the political problems in China from an early stage.³³ These early works also reveal his close involvement in the problems of politics and national-identity formation in his native country. Later writings from Chang would show a pattern of connecting with important political problems of the day that specifically affected China and its identity in a volatile world.³⁴

      In “National Ideals,” Chang’s first published essay, which won second prize in a lecture competition in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he discussed what he understood by real patriotism and the prerequisites for a democratic republic. The essay was undoubtedly inspired by political events in China, which included the overthrow of the imperial order and the creation of a new republic in 1912. In the essay, Chang set out his national ideals and his vision of a “healthy republic” in terms of patriotism, an unswerving and productive life, and a public morality capable of counteracting the selfishness and political conflicts of society. As regards patriotism, Chang did not consider citizenship of the world—or a world state—as realistic options; the focus must instead be on a nationalism capable both of counteracting narrow local interests in China and of utilizing the Chinese people’s shared frames of cultural reference. A democratic republic, Chang argued, also presupposed an educated citizenry, a condition that was essential for being able to claim that the republic was government by, of, and for the people.³⁵ It is worth noting that by this point Chang was already meditating upon the meaning, potential, and desirability of a kind of global organization and global citizenship. As noted above, later in life Chang would play a part in defining the shape and direction of the UN and, with it, a way of thinking specific to citizens of the world.

      In another article by Chang from 1912, titled “China’s Real Situation” and also published in the Chinese Student Monthly, he reflected upon what he called the external and the internal problems of China. On the one hand, the Chinese Republic faced the challenge of confronting the colonial powers (Japan, France, Great Britain, Russia, Germany) and their ambitions to curtail China’s independence and freedom. According to Chang, China was bound by protocols, conventions, treaties, and contracts that had annulled her powers as a free agent. On the other hand, the internal problems consisted of severe poverty in many provinces. In addition to these internal problems, China also had to confront serious problems such as famine and flood. Chang also stressed that the Manchu dynasty had not left a well-organized department of administration. For example, there had not been any definite, uniform system of taxation in China. A common currency and a well-functioning educational system were also lacking, as well as a developed railroad system. Additionally, the country had no dialect in common, and its written language was so hard to learn that the common people were unable to read an ordinary newspaper. A simplification of the written language was urgently needed. At the end of the article, Chang stressed that the group to which he belonged—the chosen few who had been privileged to receive a university education overseas—had an important duty to help the self-sacrificing populace at home to modernize China and fulfill the goal of making China an independent, prosperous, and free country.³⁶ He was to follow this precedent himself when, after completing his studies in the United States, he returned to China and worked intensively to modernize Chinese society through education.

      In another early essay, published in 1913, “A Brief Survey of Extraterritoriality, or Consular Jurisdiction in Non-Christian Lands,” Chang discussed the phenomenon of having different laws for foreign citizens and natives. In this article, Chang presented a historical overview of how individual-based law emerged as an entity distinct from simple territorial legislation, focusing in particular on conditions in China and in Muslim countries. In the latter, such as Ottoman Turkey, extraterritoriality was based on custom and early treaties. These traditions, treaties, and practices would later on serve as “role models” for the treaties and extraterritorial laws that were established in the Far East.³⁷ Chang’s hope in this essay was that the advent of the new Chinese republic in 1912 would steadily eliminate the rights and influence of foreign powers in China. In the case of states in which religion and legislation were closely intertwined, as with Muslim states, Chang argued that there were grounds—from both perspectives—for having separate legislative codes.³⁸ From the perspective of the Western countries, there was also the concern that the citizens of their countries would not be treated in courts in a safe and fair manner according to their legal principles if no СКАЧАТЬ