{"id":538,"date":"2020-10-18T19:35:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T19:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=538"},"modified":"2021-07-18T11:57:42","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T11:57:42","slug":"the-tonghak-and-the-chinese-communist-party-parallels-in-tactics-and-historiography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2020\/10\/the-tonghak-and-the-chinese-communist-party-parallels-in-tactics-and-historiography\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tonghak and the Chinese Communist Party: Parallels in Tactics and Historiography"},"content":{"rendered":"

A comparison can be drawn between the evolution of the Tonghak movement from 1894 to 1910 in Korea and developments in the family reform debate in China from 1915 to 1953, particularly in reference to the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s (CCP) role in this debate. Although these two historical developments might appear unrelated, in both of the periods examined a radical reformulation of important precedents takes place. The Tonghak religion \u201cpresented itself as incarcerating the best of Korean and Eastern tradition in a new and accessible way to regenerate both individuals and society.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> In China, the CCP propagated a new version of the <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i> ideal which has been introduced decades earlier by New Culture intellectuals. While the specific policies of the Tonghak and the CCP differed, both groups sought societal regeneration, largely in the form of modernization, as their final goal. Key to both Tonghaks and the CCP was the importance of individual change and societal change. What differentiated the CCP, however, is their linking of these two factors in a casual relationship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In both cases, the strategy employed to achieve this goal was ideological manipulation according to what the historical moment made available to that group. In the Tonghak’s case, an ideological repositioning took place under the leadership of the third patriarch, Son Pyong-hui, in which the group abandoned it\u2019s former anti-foreign stance in favor of Japanese intervention in Korea. Carl Young points out that the activities of the Chinbohoe, an offspring of the Tonghak which merged with the Ilchinhoe in 1905, \u201csaw the war between Russia and Japan as an opportunity to advance their agenda by using Japanese support to overthrow the conservative government surrounding Emperor Kojong and take over government\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> The anti-foreign sentiment of the Tonghak gives way to a policy of supporting Japanese rule due to a desire to realize its goal of preserving Korean sovereignty. Just like the Tonghak reformulate their policy in order to best position themselves for success, the <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i> ideal is adapted by the CCP to serve their political and social goals. While the Tonghak engaged in ideological repositioning, the CCP re-imagined the ideological underpinnings of an existing ideal in order to subsume the activities of individuals under the interest of the state: \u201cthe state became the beginning and the end, the mode of social organization, and the object of all energies and loyalties.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> This allowed the CCP to exert control in every aspect of its citizen\u2019s lives under the guise of family reform. <\/span>The ideological manipulation pursued by the Tonghaks and the CCP allowed both groups to formulate policies which were most beneficial to them at the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to similar ideological tactics employed by the Tonghak and the CCP, what this discussion reveals is a tendency to disregard specific historical trends in order to preserve an all-encompassing narrative. In his work on the split in the Tonghak religion, Young observes, <\/span>\u201cthe fact that there were some elements of Tonghak that actively cooperated with the Japanese is disturbing and is often not discussed because it does not fit with the simple structure of history that has often been framed by Korean political ideologies.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> In relation to Chinese visions of family and state in the early 20th century, Susan Glosser points out that there has been a lack of scholarship which connects the New Cultural intellectual\u2019s linking of the individual and the state in their propagation of the <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i> ideal in the early twentieth century, with the CCPs subsequent policy. Glosser argues that this provides the basis for CCP policy, <\/span>\u201calthough the CCP was most effective in lengthening the reach of the state, the invasive potential of the state was not peculiar to the CCP.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> Despite similarities discussed above, the Tonghak and the CCP are very different organizations which existed in distinct contexts. However, a close analysis reveals a connection between the ideological distortions pursued by each group and the treatment of these in historical writing on the topic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. Carl Young, \u2018Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak\u2019, in Emily Anderson (ed.), <\/span>Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea<\/span><\/i> (Springer, 2016), p. 80. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Young, \u2018Eastern Learning Divided\u2019, p. 83. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Susan Glosser, <\/span>Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953<\/span><\/i> (University of California Press, 2003), p. 186 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Young, \u2018Eastern Learning Divided\u2019, p. 80. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. <\/span>Glosser, <\/span>Chinese Visions of Family and State,<\/span><\/i> p. <\/span>200. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A comparison can be drawn between the evolution of the Tonghak movement from 1894 to 1910 in Korea and developments in the family reform debate in China from 1915 to 1953, particularly in reference to the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s (CCP) role in this debate. Although these two historical developments might appear unrelated, in both of … Continue reading “The Tonghak and the Chinese Communist Party: Parallels in Tactics and Historiography”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,64,65,63],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-20th-century","tag-chinese-communist-party","tag-family-reform-debate","tag-tonghak"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}