The Historical Logic of the Ideological Changes of Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application of Modernization

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_12How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Chinese Learning as Substance; Western Learning for Application; Chinese Learning First; Western Learning End; Self-Strengthening Movement; Hundred Days Reform

Abstract

Since the late Qing Dynasty, the idea of “Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application” has had a great political and social impact, but the debate on this idea has never been interrupted. During the period of the Foreign Affairs Movement, “Western learning from the Chinese source” and “Chinese origin from the West” coexisted, and the officials of the Foreign Affairs School relied on the authority of their saintly ancestors to promote modernization and reform, and actively introduced advanced Western technology, which became a compromise accepted by all parties at that time. At the time of the Hundred Days Reform, the idea of “Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application” was divided into two paths: Westernization and Restoration which constituted two important poles that shaped the political fate of the late Qing Dynasty. By sorting out the historical changes of this ideology, we can clarify the influence of social trends in the late Qing Dynasty on the choice of modernization and its limitations.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Honglin Zhao
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/03/28
TI  - The Historical Logic of the Ideological Changes of Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application of Modernization
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Social Sciences and Educational Development (ICOSSED 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 102
EP  - 107
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_12
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_12
ID  - Zhao2025
ER  -