Chinese proposals for reform: In the face of Western encroachment, many Chinese called for reform.  The question was how, specifically, how to maintain a degree of equality between China and the West while adopting Western knowledge and practices.  Singling out culture, many decided that despite a vast disparity between China and the West militarily and economically, culture wise, China was an equal, if not superior to the West.  As you may guess, many Chinese continued to share Emperor Chien Lung's China centered view of the world, and reform to them was something forced upon them.  Hence many agreed to a scheme of Western learning borrowing, called the ti (essence)/yong (application) formula: maintaining Chinese culture as the essence, and applying Western learning to solving the practical problems of the world.

1. The Chinese "ti" (essence)--defining core Chinese culture to be preserved.

The Confucian idea of ren (benevolence, humaneness) Just as love is central to Christianity, so ren (translated variously as benevolence or humaneness) was central to Confucian learning. It was the benchmark for a human being, hence its translation into "humaneness." Ren referred to a system of proper behavior toward different people. Ren and its implications To practice ren, one is loyal to the emperor, obedient to one’s father, respects the elderly and one’s senior, loves and cares for those who are junior, and proves trustworthy to one’s friends and peers. It is a system of interpersonal relationships. To achieve ren one has to rid oneself of the tendency of free will and selfishness, and practice self-cultivation, such as through painting, music, and calligraphy. Definition of the essence of Chinese culture The essence of Chinese culture was defined to primarily consist of four branches of learning related to the study of Confucian learning: history, literature, philosophy, and philology.  Basic Confucian tenets of human behavior were upheld.

Q: When you adopt practices different from that of your family or region/ethnicity, do you distinguish practices from an essential/practical point of view? What are some alternatives to this view?

2. Historical definitions of Ti (essence) and yong (application)

Historical definitions: ti and yong were treated as two indispensable dimensions of the same thing: ti was the essence of the thing while yong was its application, just as in Western philosophy, there was the division between the substance and the appearance of something, and according to Aristotle, you cannot have one without the other. In modern Chinese usage, ti and yong were separated, Chinese learning (Confucian learning) could be the ti while Western learning became its application. This change signified a lack of a trans-cultural framework to approach Western learning.

3. Debates over the degree of Westernization in China.

This ti/yong dichotomy as an approach to cultural borrowing continued on and off throughout much of the 20th century.  The initial decision to learn from the West in the late 19th century led to vast changes in Chinese society, from the establishment of a modern school system in 1905, to the overthrow of the imperial government in 1911 and the ushering in of a republic, from the introduction of modern Western medicine, science, to that of Western politics, philosophy, history, literature and many other subjects that had initially been deemed not relevant to the building of Chinese strength and prosperity.  By 1935, there was a formal declaration that equated Westernization with modernization, although that did not silence the debate over what aspects of Western culture was to be introduced into China either.  The debate seemed to come to a stop in 1949, when the Chinese Communists took over the country, and declared that a particular branch of Western learning, Marxism, would be upheld in China because it emphasized paying attention to the particular issues of each society.  But in the 1980s, China again opened up to the outside world, and the debate over Westernization continues to this day.