December 22nd, Unirule Reading Circle (VI) on the latest book Year 13 of Qianlong Dynasty by Professor GAO Wangling was held at Unirule Institute of Economics. Present at the event were the author; Mr. HAN Jun, former deputy director of Service Center of the United Front Work Department of CPC Central Committee; Mr. LIU Yang from the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Professor SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule. Professor WANG Jun, Director of Unirule International Cooperation Center hosted this event. 
Professor GAO Wangling introduced the background of his topic, his research of the past years, and new thoughts. He then illustrated the inspiration for his research on the history of China’s early and modern times and the modernization of the 18th century from the perspectives of economics and politics. In the economic front, Professor GAO introduced the different points of views of various scholars, including Mr. HUANG Renyu’s perspective of productivity and production relations; Mr. ZHU Jiaming’s monetary and financial perspective; German scholar Andre Gunder Frank’s perspective of international trade. Professor GAO pointed out that China’s economy of the 18th century was not feudal economy at all, or the so-called self-sufficient farmer economy, but man-made economy. And it was well-developed with characteristics of exchanges. Without exchanges, it was impossible to take about the economy in Qing Dynasty. From the political point of view, Professor GAO proposed the problem of autocracy. He compared the difference of autocracy before and after the revolution and proposed his own proposition, i.e., the so-called autocracy was an accusation imposed by some people among whom there were many foreigners, especially some foreign missionaries. And the reason was to lower the self-esteem of Chinese people by accusing them of autocracy which was deemed less developed and poisonous for modern politics. At last, Professor GAO illustrated on the 18th century modernization of China. He attributed the modernization of the 18th century to two points, the simultaneous growth of population of the world, and the enhanced powerful governments of China and the European countries. 
Mr. HAN Jun thought Professor GAO’s book was very in-depth and relevant in understanding the society and history of Qing Dynasty as it connect the historic space with the different status of the society. He made a reference to the worm hole in physics. He also mentioned that this book was an attempt to discovery the true Chinese features. Mr. HAN celebrated Professor GAO’s efforts in undertaking this research. 
Mr. LIU Yang commented that this book proposed a very important question, that is, whether we should look at the political transition of Year 13 of Qianlong Dynasty from a strict sense or a loose sense, but to look at it with a perspective that limited the role of the government. Mr. LIU also thought it was a brilliant perspective to consider the 18th century as the teacher of the 20 century for China. He thought this book was labeled with Professor GAO’s personal marks with a unique perspective of political and economic history that integrated the events and concepts of politics of the Year 13 of Qianlong Dynasty. At last, Mr. LIU added that in many chapters of the book, problems like autocracy and science, including the problem of population, were discussed which were very inspirational. 
At last, Professor SHENG Hong commented on this book. He thought this book provided a very good starting point for research on China’s history of the early modern times starting from the 18th century. He concurred with Professor GAO when he referred to Jonathan D. Spence’s opinion of the distinction between China’s early modern and modern times which should not be 1840. Professor SHENG spoke highly of Professor GAO’s book, saying that it upthrew the traditional and dominant historic view. There were two ways to look at history, one was the Marxist historic view featuring the five historic stages and class conflicts. This historic view ran through history textbooks in China which misled everyone. The other historic view was the mainstream western historic view which considered the past of China economically less developed and politically autocratic. At last, Professor SHENG acknowledged the value of Professor GAO’s research. Professor WANG Jun also commented briefly on this book and Professor GAO’s speech. He thought it was very informative, and the reference to HUANG Renyu that we should look at history with a positive mind was very inspiring. |
