Introduction
By the late nineteenth century, China was facing the cumulative effects of internal decline and foreign encroachment. A series of unequal treatiesFootnote 1 had severely curtailed the Qing state’s control over tariffs, diplomacy, and territorial integrity, while successive military defeats and administrative corruption eroded the dynasty’s political authority and capacity to govern. These parallel crises undermined both the Qing regime’s domestic legitimacy and its international standing, prompting reformers and revolutionaries to seek new ideological frameworks for national survival.Footnote 2 Within this context, Asianism entered the Chinese political imagination. Originating in Japan, it functioned less as a coherent ideology than as an open-ended, transnational political language that emphasized Asian civilizational independence, racial solidarity, and regional cooperation against imperialism.Footnote 3 In China, Asianism quickly became entangled with discourses of racial survival, institutional reform, and civilizational identity. For many reform-minded thinkers, Asianism functioned both as an imported ideal and a strategic resource, providing a discursive framework for reimagining the nation and envisioning alternative political futures.Footnote 4
Tang Caichang 唐才常 (1867–1900) was a pivotal figure in the late Qing reformist and revolutionary milieu. Initially aligned with constitutional reform, he supported the Hundred Days’ Reform led by the Guangxu emperor 光緒 (1871–1908) in 1898.Footnote 5 After Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧 (1835–1908) staged a coup, which placed the emperor under house arrest and terminated the reform programme, Tang turned towards more radical strategies for national salvation.Footnote 6 At that time, Tang encountered Japanese Asianism and reinterpreted it through a racial-civilizational lens shaped by Social Darwinist anxieties.Footnote 7 For him, Asianism offered not simply a vision of regional solidarity, but a strategic language to address the existential crisis of the ‘yellow race’.Footnote 8 This ideological reframing directly informed his revolutionary thinking: Tang envisioned Sino-Japanese cooperation not merely as diplomatic engagement, but as an existential strategy for racial survival and national revival. Between 1898 and 1900, he actively sought to operationalize this vision by founding Asianist organizations and publishing organs across China and Japan.Footnote 9 His efforts culminated in the planned Zili Army Uprising (自立軍起義) of 1900, which aimed to overthrow the Qing court and restore the Guangxu emperor.Footnote 10 While the uprising retained monarchist elements common among reformers, its clandestine organization, militarized structure, and mobilizational rhetoric marked a decisive turn towards revolutionary practice. In this sense, Tang was among the first Chinese actors to embed Asianist discourse into the grammar of grassroots resistance.
Early scholarship on Asianism focused on its ideological genealogy in China and Japan. Rebecca Karl highlights how Chinese thinkers like Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) strategically redefined ‘Asia’ as a category of anti-imperial resistance and regional solidarity, recasting China’s global position while aligning nationalist aspirations with broader Asian struggles against empire.Footnote 11 Cemil Aydin traced how Japanese Asianism was deployed by Meiji elites not only as a critique of Western imperialism but also as a legitimizing ideology for Japan’s own imperial expansion.Footnote 12 Building on this, Torsten Weber showed how ‘Asia’ evolved into a politicized, self-referential concept shaped by competing Chinese and Japanese visions of regional leadership.Footnote 13 Most recently, Craig A. Smith’s Chinese Asianism systematically traced how Chinese thinkers adapted Asianist ideas in response to the nation-state construction of China and Sino-Japanese dynamics.Footnote 14 He highlights Asianism’s flexibility, which served both as a discourse of regional solidarity and a tool shaped by divergent political agendas.Footnote 15
Recent scholarship expands beyond China and Japan to explore how Asianism functioned in practice. Jeremy A. Yellen reconceptualizes it as a structure of political opportunity that enabled Southeast Asian actors to navigate Japanese imperialism while imagining post-colonial futures.Footnote 16 Nicole C. Aboitiz shows how Filipino revolutionaries leveraged Asian networks to mobilize material and political support of their anti-colonial cause.Footnote 17 Nile Green cautions against romanticizing ‘Asia’, instead emphasizing how its meanings were locally contested, distorted, and reconfigured.Footnote 18 Alongside these contributions, recent scholarship on the so-called ‘Other Bandungs’—that is, transregional conferences and networks that both preceded and followed the celebrated 1955 Bandung Conference—offers a valuable methodological lens for studying how transnational networks function in practice.Footnote 19 This line of research illuminates how non‑state and subnational actors—activists, intellectuals, trade‑unionists—actively shaped Afro‑Asian and Asian solidarities by adapting global frameworks of solidarity into locally rooted political strategies and networks.Footnote 20 Taken together, these works underscore the political plasticity of Asianism: it could underwrite imperial ambitions, legitimize anti‑colonial resistance, facilitate cross‑regional alliances, or express intra‑Asian hierarchies. Rather than treating Asianism as a static cultural discourse, this emerging body of research calls for a more dynamic and plural reading, one that foregrounds appropriation, translation, and contestation across diverse historical contexts.
Nonetheless, key gaps remain in the scholarship on Chinese Asianism. While scholars such as Craig A. Smith have traced its ideological contours, much of the literature remains focused on elite discourse and state-centred narratives. We still know little about how Asianist rhetoric was translated into organizational practice, particularly by non-state revolutionary actors. Moreover, in contrast to Southeast Asia, where Asianism served anti-colonial resistance, and Japan, where it legitimized imperial expansion, the Chinese case presents a dual struggle: Asianism was mobilized not only against Western imperialism but also against the Qing regime itself. In this context, it became entangled with Han-centred nationalism and revolutionary aspirations.Footnote 21 Yet few studies have examined how Asianist discourse was relocalized within these intersecting pressures. These gaps point to a larger, underexplored question: how was Asianism not only theorized but operationalized as a political practice by revolutionary actors in a context of dual struggle—against foreign domination and dynastic rule?
To fill these gaps, this article uses Tang Caichang as a case study to examine how Asianism was reinterpreted not only as a language of anti-imperialist resistance but also as a vehicle for anti-Qing mobilization in late Qing China. It poses two interrelated questions: (1) How was Asianism reimagined as a political language of racial survival and revolutionary mobilization?, and (2) How did Tang operationalize Asianist ideas through concrete organizational forms aimed at revolutionary action? To address these questions, the article unfolds in three parts. The first traces Tang’s intellectual trajectory, showing how he racialized and politicized Asianism under the dual pressures of imperial encroachment and dynastic crisis. The second and third parts examine his organizational experiments, both abroad and at home, to analyse how Asianist discourse was embedded within distinct revolutionary infrastructures. These cases reveal a dual-track strategy: outwardly, Tang mobilized Asianist rhetoric to engage sympathetic Japanese allies and secure material and ideological support; inwardly, he recoded Asianism into Han nationalist terms to activate domestic networks of revolutionary students, secret societies, and grassroots literati. In this framework, Asianism did not function as a stable ideology, but as a tactical repertoire—adapted to different audiences, reinterpreted across borders, and deployed in service of a shared revolutionary goal.
The article argues that Chinese Asianism followed a distinct trajectory: unlike in Japan, where Asianism was state-driven, or in Southeast Asia, where it aligned with anti-colonial movements, Chinese Asianism took root in a dual crisis of foreign encroachment and dynastic decline. By foregrounding Tang Caichang’s dual orientation—anti-imperial and anti-Manchu—the article reveals how Asianism in late Qing China was not simply a discourse of regional unity, but a political language refracted through the crises of dynastic legitimacy and ethnic nationalism. It thus demonstrates that Chinese Asianism developed as a dual project of resistance and revolution: against both Western imperial encroachment and Manchu rule. In doing so, it offers a more grounded understanding of how transnational discourses were vernacularized and mobilized from below during China’s transition from empire to nation-state.
From racial survival to Asian solidarity: Tang Caichang’s intellectual trajectory
In the wake of China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), reformist intellectuals confronted a growing sense of national crisis, fuelled by imperialist encroachment and the global circulation of Social Darwinist thought.Footnote 22 Introduced via Japanese translations and missionary science texts, Social Darwinism framed world politics as a racial struggle governed by the survival of the fittest group.Footnote 23 Within this worldview, the looming extinction of the ‘yellow race’ (huangzhong, 黃種) at the hands of the ‘white race’ (baizhong, 白種) became an urgent concern.Footnote 24 Reformers responded by promoting a new language of self-strengthening centred on ‘preserving the race’ (baozhong, 保種) and ‘strengthening the race’ (qiangzhong, 強種), casting national survival as a biological and civilizational imperative.Footnote 25 In this intellectual climate, calls for regional unity, racial preservation, and national revitalization increasingly circulated together.
Tang Caichang (1867–1900) emerged as part of the first generation of Chinese reformers who internalized racialized crisis thinking as a framework for interpreting China’s peril. Born in Hengyang, Hunan, he was shaped by the Huxiang School’s (湖湘學派)Footnote 26 emphasis on practical statecraft, institutional reform, and national strengthening. In the 1890s, Tang became an active participant in the broader Qing reform movement, as Hunan developed into a vibrant hub of political and intellectual mobilization.Footnote 27 Seeking models for transformation, he travelled to Japan in 1896, where he was deeply impressed by the Meiji Restoration.Footnote 28 There, Tang engaged with Chinese reformist circles and encountered early Asianist discourse centred on Sino-Japanese solidarity.Footnote 29 This experience offered him not only concrete inspiration from Japan’s programme of institutional reform but also a new racialized vocabulary for diagnosing China’s crisis, catalysing his shift from domestic reform agendas to a systematic engagement with Asianism as a strategy for national survival.
Against this backdrop of racialized crisis thinking, Tang Caichang articulated a Social Darwinist understanding of racial hierarchy that shaped his later engagement with Asianist discourse. In his 1897 essay ‘Ge guo zhonglei kao’ (各國種類考, ‘An Examination of the Races of Various Countries’), published in Xiangxue bao 湘學報, Tang Caichang offered one of the earliest Chinese efforts to address national decline through the lens of racial science.Footnote 30 Drawing on Western racial classifications and Social Darwinist theory, especially the idea that history is driven by inter-racial struggle, he divided humanity into five races—yellow, white, red, black, and brown—and emphasized the principle that ‘the strong prey upon the weak’.Footnote 31 He asserted: ‘Yellow and White are intelligent, Red and Black are foolish; Yellow and White are masters, Red and Black are slaves; Yellow and White gather, Red and Black scatter’ (黃白智, 紅黑愚; 黃白主, 紅黑奴; 黃白萃, 紅黑散).Footnote 32 He further claimed that ‘To ascend from inferior races to superior races is to follow Heaven; to degenerate from stubborn races to non-races, and from non-races to extinct races is to go against Heaven’ (由賤種進良種之為順天, 由頑種淪非種、由非種至亡種之為逆天).Footnote 33 These formulations reflect how Tang internalized and reinterpreted contemporary racial theories, framing civilizational survival as a hierarchical one in which the so-called ‘superior races’, particularly the yellow and white, were positioned as historical agents of progress.
Building on his racial taxonomy, Tang Caichang proposed a two-part strategy for national survival, centred on tongzhong (通種, racial fusion) and qiangzhong (強種, racial strengthening). For Tang, tongzhong did not imply biological miscegenation alone, but a broader fusion of institutions and civilizational strengths.Footnote 34 Convinced that Western imperial expansion, driven by white racial superiority, was pushing the yellow race towards extinction, he argued that survival required ‘intermixing the yellow and white races’ (通黃白之種), a process encompassing intermarriage, educational exchange, and selective institutional borrowing from Japan and the West.Footnote 35 This was paired with his doctrine of qiangzhong, which diagnosed China’s weakness as the result of institutional decay and cultural stagnation.Footnote 36 Strengthening the race thus meant sweeping modernization: political reform, educational renewal, and moral transformation.Footnote 37 Taken together, tongzhong and qiangzhong formed a racialized blueprint for revitalization through integration and reform. In this formulation, racial survival was not conceived in isolation, but increasingly tied to cross-national alignment among ‘yellow races’. It was within this imagined solidarity—anchored in civilizational affinity and shared threat—that Tang began to articulate a vision of Asian unity as a strategic imperative.
Building on this racialized framework, Tang increasingly located China’s predicament within a wider ‘yellow race’ community, a move that drew his attention to Japan as the most viable partner in securing collective survival. It was in this context that he articulated, in ‘Riren shixin baohua lun’ (日人實心保華論, ‘On Japanese Sincere Efforts to Protect China’), a more explicitly regional vision of preservation and revitalization.Footnote 38 In this article, Tang Caichang redefined ‘preserving the yellow race’ not merely as a domestic task, but as an Asian regional imperative. He argued that China’s racial and civilizational revival hinged on cultivating modern talent through the systematic absorption of Western political and scientific knowledge—primarily via Japan, which he viewed as the leading branch of the yellow race. Tang envisioned a future Sino-Japanese union grounded in a shared racial destiny and mutual strategic interest. Crucially, he rejected sentimental appeals to Asian unity, framing Japan’s involvement in pragmatic terms: only a revitalized China, supported by Japan, could serve as a bulwark against Western imperialism in East Asia. As he put it, ‘This is precisely bringing about the future union of the two countries ordained by Heaven, and one great joint mechanism restraining the eastward advance of European power’ (斯乃天所以成將來二國合邦之局, 而杜歐勢東漸之一大關戾也).Footnote 39
Having framed Sino-Japanese cooperation as essential to the survival of the ‘yellow race’, Tang soon broadened his horizons beyond regional solidarity, extending his racial-modernization logic into the wider arena of great-power geopolitics. In ‘Lun Zhongguo yi yu Ying Ri lianmeng’ (論中國宜與英日聯盟, ‘On China’s Need for an Anglo-Japanese Alliance’), he developed this geopolitical vision more explicitly.Footnote 40 In the late 1890s, Russian expansion in East Asia, marked by the lease of Port Arthur and Dalian in 1898 and control of the South Manchurian Railway, threatened both Japanese and British interests, while undermining Britain’s ‘Open Door’ policy.Footnote 41 Against this backdrop, Tang warned that the collapse of China would destabilize the regional balance and jeopardize the security of both powers. He proposed a trilateral alliance of China, Japan, and Britain, grounded not just in mutual strategic interest, but in a hierarchical model of civilizational learning. For Tang, national survival depended on tongxue (通學, transmission of learning), which flowed first from Japan, then from Britain. This ‘educational pathway’ doubled as a diplomatic conduit: ‘To learn is to connect with Japan; to connect with Japan is to connect with Britain. United, the power of China, Japan, and Britain can command the seas. Even a cunning strong Russia would not dare extend its ambitions eastward’ (以通學者通日, 通日者通英, 合中、日、英之力, 縱橫海上, 強俄雖狡, 必不敢遽肆其東封之志).Footnote 42 In this formulation, Tang externalized his tongzhong–qiangzhong logic into a concrete alliance strategy, one that linked technological modernization with transnational defence.
Tang Caichang’s model of ‘racial fusion–racial strengthening–yellow race alliance’ articulated an early form of racial Asianism, rooted in the logic of Social Darwinism. At its core, his vision reframed regional solidarity as a matter of racial survival in the face of white imperial dominance. His thinking resonated with figures like Liang Qichao, who in his 1899 essay ‘Lun Zhongguo renzhong zhi jianglai’ (論中國人種之將來, ‘On the Future of the Chinese Race’) predicted that the Chinese would become ‘the most powerful race in the world in the coming century’ (中國人於來世紀必為世界上最有勢力之人種).Footnote 43 But Tang went further: he sought to embed racial ideas into organizational strategies of political action. His distinctive views become clearer when contrasted with Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi (福澤諭吉, 1835–1901), who, though also shaped by Social Darwinism, argued in Datsu-A ron (脱亞論, Good-bye Asia) that Japan should sever ties with its Asian neighbours and align with the West.Footnote 44 This stark divergence, born from the same racial-competitive worldview, highlights Tang’s distinctive intellectual path: an attempt to transform a vision of racial crisis into a political blueprint for Asian solidarity and civilizational renewal. As such, Tang occupies an important position in the early genealogy of Chinese Asianist thought, as one of the first to mobilize racial discourse as a basis for regional political imagining.
Taken together, these formulations reveal how Tang integrated his racial taxonomy, the tongzhong–qiangzhong programme, and an expanding vision of regional and global alignment into a coherent political framework. For Tang, Asianism functioned not as a cultural ideal but as a strategic vocabulary for converting racial crisis into actionable programmes of national strengthening and transnational cooperation. This conceptual synthesis formed the intellectual foundation of the organizational strategies he would later pursue. In this light, Tang Caichang’s racialized Asianism offers an alternative lens for understanding the localized practice of Asianist thought under conditions of ideological contestation and strategic mobilization. Though his vision had limited influence in his own time, it represents a radical and underexplored articulation of Asianism. It reveals how racial discourse intersected with emerging nationalist and revolutionary projects in late Qing China, and why such intersections warrant renewed attention in reconstructing the intellectual genealogy of modern Asianism.
Localizing Asianism: Tang Caichang’s networks and revolutionary infrastructure
Building on the transnational strand of his dual-track strategy, this section turns to Tang Caichang’s outward-facing efforts to embed Asianist discourse within international organizational infrastructures. By aligning with sympathetic Japanese networks, Tang sought not only material support but also ideological legitimacy for his revolutionary cause. Understanding this dimension of his activism requires situating Tang within the broader transnational Asianist networks that flourished in Meiji Japan. Beginning in the 1880s, a constellation of Japanese organizations, including the Kōakai (興亞會, Promoting Asia Association, founded in 1879), the Itsuwai Dōshikai (乙未同志會, 1886 Comrades’ Society, established in 1886), and culminating in the Tōa Dōbunkai (東亞同文會, East Asia Common Culture Association, established in 1900), advocated for regional solidarity under the banner of ‘same script, same race’ (Tongwen tongzhong, 同文同種), positioning Japan as the civilizational leader of Asia.Footnote 45 These groups did not merely advocate ideological unity; they actively provided institutional models, material support, and rhetorical resources for Tang Caichang’s political organizing. As shown in Table A1 in the Appendix, organizations such as the Itsuwai Dōshikai offered early platforms for Sino-Japanese youth collaboration and joint media ventures, which Tang later drew upon to launch his own publications.Footnote 46 The Tōa Dōbunkai, closely tied to Japan’s foreign ministry, extended financial assistance and logistical backing for Tang’s revolutionary infrastructure while offering diplomatic cover through the language of cultural exchange.Footnote 47 Most directly, Tang’s founding of the Shanghai Asia Association in 1898 marked a localized adaptation of Japanese precedents, especially the Kōakai and Dōbunkai, mobilizing Chinese reformers, merchants, and literati under a vision of Asianism grounded in equal partnership rather than Japanese leadership.Footnote 48 These transnational connections enabled Tang not only to borrow from Japanese Asianist frameworks but to strategically repurpose them for the Chinese context. In doing so, he began the process of localizing Asianism, translating its ideological tenets into organizational blueprints tailored for revolutionary goals. The following sections analyse this localization through two case studies: the Promoting Asia Righteousness Association 興亞義會and the Shanghai Asia Association 上海亞細亞協會.
The Promoting Asia Righteousness Association: Localizing Japanese Asianist models
Founded by Tang Caichang in April 1898, the Xingya Yihui (Promoting Asia Righteousness Association) marked one of the earliest attempts to translate Asianist ideals into China’s reformist and revolutionary setting.Footnote 49 Although modelled in part on Japan’s Kōakai, it did not simply replicate its institutional form or ideological stance. Instead, Tang selectively appropriated Japanese Asianist elements—adopting its slogans of ‘Asian solidarity’, ‘yellow race alliance’, and anti-imperialist resistance—while reinterpreting them through a Han nationalist lens.Footnote 50 Whereas the Kōakai envisioned regional unity under Japan’s civilizational leadership, Tang strategically redirected this discourse to serve China’s internal goals of ethnic revitalization and political reform. His stated mission—‘to promote the revitalization of East Asia and pursue its practical implementation’ (專主講求東亞之振興, 圖其實行)Footnote 51—referred not to a shared pan-Asian order, but to concrete programmes within China: political education, the mobilization of literati, and merchant support, and the dissemination of revolutionary ideals. In this sense, the Xingya Yihui functioned both as a transnational contact point and a localized vehicle for political experimentation. It forged alliances with Japanese Asianist intellectuals while embedding Asianist rhetoric into a domestic strategy of regime resistance and mass mobilization. As such, the association exemplifies Tang’s dual-track approach: outward-facing international solidarity and inward-focused political activation, transforming abstract regional ideas into concrete tactics for China’s national crisis.
Tang made this strategic reinterpretation explicit in his 1898 essay ‘Lun Xingya Yihui’ (論興亞義會, ‘On Promoting the Asia Righteousness Association’), where he linked China’s decline to the fate of the entire ‘yellow race’.Footnote 52 He praised Japanese reformers as ‘benevolent and chivalrous’, lamenting that ‘if China perishes, the yellow race will wither; and Japan will be in grave danger’.Footnote 53 Yet this deferential tone was deliberately crafted: by presenting China’s revival as a matter of existential concern for Japan, Tang reframed Asianist solidarity as both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity. This rhetorical move not only legitimized his revolutionary agenda in Chinese terms but also appealed to Japanese reformers’ sense of civilizational responsibility as he sought to mobilize their political sympathy, material support, and organizational assistance for China’s transformation. In doing so, Tang positioned the Xingya Yihui not simply as a domestic reform group, but as a node within a shared East Asian struggle against imperial subjugation.
The reclusive scholars of Japan—how benevolent and chivalrous they are! Every day, they grieve over the potential demise of China. If China perishes, then the yellow race will wither; if the yellow race withers, Japan will be in grave danger! Thus, from the highest ranks of government to the common people in the countryside, all those with a heart to save the age have [come together to] establish the Kōakai, hoping to uplift the yellow race and preserve East Asia, preventing it from being completely devoured by the mighty powers of Russia and Germany.Footnote 54
日本處士, 仁哉俠哉。日日以亡中國爲憂。中國亡則黃種瘠, 黃種而瘠, 日本危哉! 於是上自政府, 下逮草野, 群有心救世之人, 創立興亞會, 冀扶黃種, 保亞東, 毋儘爲俄、德諸雄蝕。
In ‘Lun Xingya Yihui’, Tang Caichang outlined a pragmatic blueprint for national revival by fusing Asianist ideals with concrete strategies in education, institutional reform, and elite mobilization. Central to this vision was education. He proposed that Chinese students be sent to Japan to acquire political and academic training, emphasizing that only a newly cultivated modern elite could carry China forward. As he put it, ‘The Southern Study SocietyFootnote 55 will send people to Japan to establish a new Asian Association. After one or two years, they will return home with political and academic knowledge to renew Our China’ (南學會派人至日本辦新亞會事, 一二年後, 挈其政學歸, 新吾中國).Footnote 56 To accelerate domestic reform, Tang advocated urgent institutional learning, not only from Japan’s Meiji reforms but also from Western constitutional models. He called for the establishment of translation bureaus—‘to quickly translate constitutions and related books from Eastern and Western languages’ (設東西文譯局速譯憲法諸書)Footnote 57—as a means to disseminate political knowledge and legal principles. He also urged the recruitment of foreign instructors to spearhead educational modernization at home: ‘Urgently hire Japanese experts to teach at military academies, current affairs schools, and classical academies in the Xiang region, or establish specialized schools for rapid results’ (急聘日本人來湘或武備學堂或時務學堂或校經書院或另開學堂專門教習以速效).Footnote 58 Taken together, these proposals reflect how Tang linked the abstract rhetoric of ‘yellow race solidarity’ with institutional designs for revolutionary preparedness. The Xingya Yihui was not merely a symbolic gesture of Asianist allegiance, but a vehicle for training reformist cadres, disseminating knowledge, and experimenting with localized modernization strategies.
Tang’s strategy extended beyond intellectual cultivation to encompass economic mobilization and discursive influence. To fortify China’s material foundations, he called for actively drawing transnational capital, especially from Japan and Southeast Asia, into key industries. As he put it, one must ‘widely invite Japanese and Southeast Asian merchants to invest in coal, iron, and other mines, ensuring a steady flow of capital’ (煤鐵諸礦廣招日商或南洋大賈合辦籍通財源).Footnote 59 He also proposed ‘disclosing the status of machinery manufacturing to the Japanese’ (製造機器公之日人), signalling a pragmatic openness to foreign technical assistance and joint ventures. Equally crucial was the realm of the media and ideological dissemination.Footnote 60 Tang advocated establishing branches of the Xingya Yihui in both Hunan and Japan ‘to ensure timely communication and sharpen intellectual acumen’ (立新亞分會於湖南與日本, 時其消息靈其腦筋).Footnote 61 He also promoted cooperation between the Japanese Xingya Bao (興亞報, Promoting Asia Newspaper) and the Chinese Xiang Bao (湘报), with the aim of broadcasting Asianist narratives across reformist and commercial circles. Xingya Bao, officially titled Xingya Gongbao (興亞公報), served as the Kōakai’s platform for promoting Sino-Japanese cooperation and Asianist ideals during the Meiji era.Footnote 62 By associating with this publication, Tang positioned his movement within a wider transnational network that was already circulating regionalist visions of solidarity. In Tang’s vision, the press was not merely a tool of persuasion, but a battlefield for shaping political consciousness. Through this integrated programme of industrial engagement and transnational publicity, Tang reimagined Asianism as a concrete political instrument, one capable of attracting Japanese investment and moral support, cultivating domestic elites, and laying the groundwork for revolutionary transformation.
The Shanghai Asia Association: Indigenous organizational agency
After the failure of the 1898 Reform Movement, Tang Caichang left China and travelled through Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan to seek new political ideas and allies. He returned to Shanghai in early 1899 with renewed commitment to revolution. In that context, he co-founded the Shanghai Asia Association (上海亞細亞協會, Shanghai Yaxiya Xiehui), also known as the Xingya Conference (興亞大會, Xingya Dahui), as one of the first Asia-focused organizations initiated by Chinese actors.Footnote 63 Initially inspired by Japanese groups like the Kōakai and Dōbunkai (同文會), the Association adapted their pan-Asian ideals to fit China’s own revolutionary landscape.Footnote 64 Whereas Japanese Asianist organizations, as summarized in Table A1 in the Appendix, framed regional unity through Japan’s civilizational leadership, Tang refashioned Asianism as a tool for national revitalization and collective resistance to Western imperialism, emphasizing agency grounded in China’s domestic political needs.
Tang Caichang’s Shanghai Asia Association formalized this alternative vision through a charter that stressed equality among Asian nations and broad-based participation. It declared that ‘The association aims to promote the revitalization of Asia and enlighten the people, regardless of the size of the various Asian countries, all are permitted to join’ (會專為振興亞細亞洲開通民智, 發行地力無論亞洲大小各國皆準入會).Footnote 65 Rejecting imperial hierarchies, Tang urged members that ‘all must erase views of national boundaries and divisions, be intimate like brothers, with shared virtue and shared heart jointly assist the great gathering’ (皆須泯畛域之見, 親如兄弟同德同心共襄盛會).Footnote 66 Importantly, this inclusive ethos was not limited to national equality but extended to social inclusiveness across class divisions. In contrast to reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, who focused primarily on elite patronage, Tang welcomed gentry, merchants, scholars, farmers, artisans, and even members of secret societies. As the charter put it: ‘though people each have differences in nobility and baseness, wisdom and foolishness, they still ought to be treated with humanity and fairness’ (雖人各有貴賤賢愚之不等, 亦當一視同仁).Footnote 67 This broadened vision reflected Tang’s effort to root Asianism in local society, not merely as a diplomatic ideal, but as a mobilization tool with revolutionary potential.
Unlike the Xingya Yihui, which focused on elite cultivation and transnational exchange, the Shanghai Asia Association reoriented Asianism towards a domestically grounded, multi-class programme of civic education and practical training. Rather than treating Asianism as a purely moral or civilizational ideal, Tang used it as an instrument for broad social mobilization, linking self-cultivation, technical learning, and everyday discipline to China’s national revitalization. One clause in the association’s charter emphasized that, ‘The association takes establishing resolve and opening knowledge as its main purpose; all who join the association must regard being ridiculed and mocked as shame, strive earnestly for advancement as their intention, so that the customs and civilization of the same continent may daily progress and become elevated’ (會專以立志氣開智識為主, 凡入會之人須以受人侮笑為恥, 力求上達為心, 庶同洲風化日進高明).Footnote 68 Personal discipline here was reframed not as individual virtue alone, but as civic responsibility, linking moral cultivation with collective national progress. Tang’s vision extended further into the realm of applied knowledge. Another provision in the charter called for the pursuit of ‘practical learning’ (實學) in fields such as governance, diplomacy, military affairs, commerce, mining, and science, described as ‘the foundation for Asia’s prosperity and strength (以立亞洲富強之本)’.Footnote 69 Drawing simultaneously from Meiji Japan’s reform experience and China’s own Self-Strengthening Movement,Footnote 70 Tang recast Asianist discourse into a programme of concrete, technocratic reform. In this sense, Asianism became not only a legitimating language for Sino-Japanese cooperation, but also a strategic vocabulary for domestic mobilization.
The ideological agenda of the Shanghai Asia Association was further disseminated through the Yadong Shibao (亞東時報, Asia Eastern Times), a Chinese-Japanese bilingual semi-monthly newspaper launched in Shanghai in June 1898 by the Japanese Asianist group Itsuwai Dōshikai.Footnote 71 Aimed at promoting Sino-Japanese cooperation and intellectual exchange, the newspaper was initially edited by Yamane Ritsuan 山根立庵 (1861–1911).Footnote 72 Its pages featured political essays, military analysis, and commentary on law and education, combining Chinese reformist writings with Japanese perspectives on East Asian geopolitics, all under the rhetorical banner of ‘same script, same race’. From its sixth issue in May 1899, Tang Caichang assumed editorial leadership and oversaw the publication until shortly before his 1900 Zili Army Uprising. Under Tang’s leadership, however, the Yadong Shibao evolved beyond its original purpose. It became a vehicle for political reform and revolutionary mobilization, transforming Asianist discourse from a shared cultural ideal into a tool of nationalism.
Crucially, the Yadong Shibao operated through a transnational Asianist network that bridged Chinese reformers and Japanese activists. On the Chinese side, frequent visitors to the editorial office included Bi Yongnian (畢永年, 1869–1902), Wang Kangnian (汪康年, 1860–1911), and Zhang Taiyan (章太炎, 1869–1936), whose active engagement reveals that Tang’s ideas were not merely rhetorical but were circulated among—and often co-produced with—a network of sympathetic gentry, merchants, and students who formed the core of reformist activism.Footnote 73 Tang also used the newspaper as a platform to engage with jianghu ‘men of prowess’ (江湖豪士), aiming to redirect their energies towards national salvation.Footnote 74 As noted by contemporaries, the newspaper’s stated mission was ‘to open the people’s intelligence, clarify moral principles, reform outdated customs, and stir loyalty to the ruler and patriotism’ (開拓民智、闡明公理、革改舊習, 亦激發其忠君愛國之志氣為宗旨).Footnote 75 This domestic outreach was reinforced by Tang’s close collaboration with Japanese Asianist circles. Funded by the semi-official Tōa Dōbunkai, the Yadong Shibao also brought Tang into close contact with its intellectual members, including Ryūhei Shiraiwa (白岩龍平, 1870–1942), Munakata Kotarō (宗方小太郎, 1857–1910), and Andō Yōshū (安藤陽州, 1873–1940).Footnote 76 Tang praised Japanese journalist Andō Yōshū for his cross-national solidarity, urging him to ‘unite the men of resolve and virtue of the two nations, and earnestly take the preservation of East Asia as the guiding principle’ (合兩國志士仁人, 殷殷以保全亞東為主義).Footnote 77 Through this dual network, Yadong Shibao became more than a newspaper—it anchored Tang’s ‘dual-track’ strategy of seeking Japanese support abroad while mobilizing reformist energies at home, laying critical groundwork for his later revolutionary initiatives.
Compared to the earlier Xingya Yihui, whose activities remained closely entangled with Japanese Asianist organizations, the Shanghai Asia Association marked a conceptual and organizational shift in Tang Caichang’s political practice. It transformed Asianism from a framework shaped largely through Sino-Japanese intellectual exchange into a platform rooted in China’s own reformist networks and social constituencies. Rather than functioning as an auxiliary to Japanese initiatives, the Association articulated a locally grounded vision of Asianism that aligned with China’s domestic imperatives of political education, social mobilization, and national strengthening. In this respect, the Shanghai Asia Association occupied a transitional position in Tang’s evolving strategy: it bridged his earlier, outward-oriented engagements with Japanese Asianist circles and his subsequent turn towards more explicitly nationalist and revolutionary forms of organization.
The Zhengqi Society 正氣會 and the Zili Army Uprising: Asianism as revolutionary strategy
The Zhengqi Society: Covert nationalism under the banner of Asianism
Between 1899 and 1900, Tang Caichang established the Zhengqi Society as a covert revolutionary organization dedicated to toppling the Qing dynasty.Footnote 78 The Zhengqi Society’s ideological orientation is most clearly articulated in its founding documents, which layered Han nationalist sentiment beneath the rhetorical veneer of Asianist solidarity. Ideologically, the Society reflected the contradictions and fluidity of the late Qing political landscape. Article 1 of the Zhengqi Hui zhangcheng (正氣會章程, Constitution of the Zhengqi Society) frames the group’s creation as a response to national crisis. On the one hand, it invoked Han nationalist rhetoric such as the preservation of the ‘Central Land’ (中土) and opposition to ‘external evils’ (外邪), terms that ambiguously targeted both Western imperialism and Manchu rule.Footnote 79 On the other hand, it also reaffirmed loyalty to the Qing monarch, expressing the aim to restore imperial authority through armed ‘loyalty to the sovereign’ (忠君).Footnote 80 This internal tension—between anti-Manchu sentiment and monarchist restoration—mirrored Tang Caichang’s own transitional politics: as a figure straddling reformist constitutionalism and emergent revolutionary nationalism, he envisioned rebellion not as a rejection of monarchy, but as a moral act of dynastic renewal.
Article One: This society takes ‘Righteousness’ (zhengqi) as its name. The reason is: within the Central Land (China), people’s hearts are scattered, righteous energy is not concentrated, external evils thereby enter. Therefore, this society is specially established, with the purpose of uniting benevolent and aspiring men within the four seas, to together discuss the practice of patriotism and loyalty to the sovereign, in order to relieve the present difficulties.Footnote 81
第一條本會以正氣命名, 原因中土人心渙散, 正氣不萃, 外邪因之而入, 故特創此會, 務合海內仁人志士, 共講愛國忠君之實, 以濟時艱。
To broaden the Zhengqi Society’s reach, Tang strategically embedded the group within existing secret societies, most notably the Gelaohui 哥老會 and Sanhehui 三合會, which had long operated as underground networks across China.Footnote 82 Though traditionally lacking political coherence, these societies offered a vast infrastructure of local chapters, ritualized loyalty systems, and armed manpower rooted in anti-Qing sentiment.Footnote 83 Historically organized along clan or occupational lines, these groups often invoked the slogan ‘Expel the Manchus, Restore the Ming’ (反清復明),Footnote 84 but had no clear reform agenda. Tang sought to transform them from fragmented brotherhoods into a unified national force. By fusing Han nationalist discourse with Asianist rhetoric, the Zhengqi Society provided a new ideological centre that legitimized rebellion as patriotic duty and positioned local uprisings within a broader transnational narrative. This ideological reframing not only strengthened the Society’s internal cohesion but also attracted a wider range of revolutionary sympathizers, including reform-minded elites and grassroots activists. Within months, the organization expanded rapidly across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Guangxi.Footnote 85 This expansion required a vocabulary capable of mobilizing disparate local networks under a shared political identity.
The mobilization of these secret society networks was accompanied by a more explicit ethnonationalist vocabulary in the Zhengqi Hui xu (正氣會序, ‘Preface to the Zhengqi Society’).Footnote 86 The line ‘Those who are not of our race will inevitably have hearts that differ from ours’ (非我種類, 其心必異) drew a hard boundary of political belonging along racial lines.Footnote 87 Though ‘our race’ could refer to the broader ‘yellow race’, its meaning in the immediate political context was more specific. Late-Qing secret societies routinely used similar phrases in anti-Manchu rhetoric, and the Zhengqi Society drew on this linguistic repertoire.Footnote 88 In this setting, the phrase was more likely understood as referring to the Han. Such wording resonated strongly with grassroots mobilizers, far more than abstract appeals to Asian unity.
If the Society’s ethnonationalist language mobilized supporters internally, its outward-facing posture was articulated most clearly in Article 17 of the constitution: ‘China and Japan are states of the same script and same race. If Japanese men of aspiration wish to enter this society, they shall all, without exception, be registered as members’ (第十七條中日兩國, 系同文同種之邦, 如日本志士願入本會者, 一律列名會籍).Footnote 89 At first glance, the clause affirms an Asian vision of civilizational commonality. Yet in practice, it functioned less as a genuine ideological commitment than as a calculated diplomatic signal. By invoking shared race and script, the Society sought to legitimize its revolutionary activity abroad, gain the protection of sympathetic Japanese actors, and present its anti-Qing movement in terms acceptable to regional allies. In specific practical activities, to evade Qing surveillance, Tang Caichang operated under the cover of the Tōbun Translation Society (東文譯社), a nominal cultural association headed by the Japanese activist Tanaka Kitsuji (田野橘次, 1887–1904).Footnote 90 Tanaka’s Tongwen Hubao (同文沪报)Footnote 91 in Shanghai served as a discreet mouthpiece, while the Society itself coordinated recruitment and fundraising across China and Japan.Footnote 92 What appeared as literary exchange thus functioned as revolutionary infrastructure, linking the Zhengqi Society to Japanese Asianist networks.
In the Zhengqi Society, Asianism functioned not as an ideological foundation but as a strategic language. It enabled Tang Caichang to frame anti-Qing revolution in terms of regional solidarity for external audiences, even as the movement’s internal mobilization rested on Han ethnonationalist premises. This differentiation of audiences—Asianist outwardly, Han nationalist inwardly—illustrates what Rebecca Karl has described as the vernacularization of global ideologies: rather than adopting Asianism wholesale, Tang selectively appropriated it to serve the political imperatives of late Qing revolutionary activism.Footnote 93 The Society’s Japanese connections further underscore this instrumental logic. Japanese actors were not simply transmitters of an imperial Asianist project; they were incorporated into the organizational framework of a Han-led revolution. In this respect, the case invites comparison with Jun Uchida’s ‘brokers of empire’, though here intermediary roles did not reinforce imperial domination but were reconfigured within an anti-dynastic struggle.Footnote 94 Asianism thus emerges neither as a coherent regional doctrine nor as a direct projection of state power, but as a flexible repertoire reshaped within specific political contexts.
The Zili Society 自立會: Building a revolutionary platform
Building on the organizational experience of the Zhengqi Society, Tang Caichang launched the Zili Society in early 1900 as a more explicitly action-oriented revolutionary platform. With Shanghai as its political hub and Hankou as the centre of military operations, the Society coordinated secret society networks across north and south China, rapidly expanding into the Yangtze and Yellow River regions.Footnote 95 Its core members included reformist gentry, overseas students, academy-trained intellectuals, and secret society leaders.Footnote 96 This diverse base not only supplied manpower and intelligence for the uprising but also underpinned Tang’s domestic mobilization strategy. Tang also sought cross-factional collaboration: reformist leaders like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao helped raise funds in the early stages, while Sun Yat-sen’s party dispatched envoys to coordinate southern and northern actions.Footnote 97 Tang’s follower Zhang Huangxi (張篁溪, 1877–1946) later recalled that although Tang’s goals differed from those of Kang and Liang, they ultimately chose cooperation over isolation.Footnote 98 These interactions underscore the Zili Society’s role as a pivotal force with integrative capacity in the late Qing political landscape.
Within this broad coalition, the Zili Society articulated a twofold platform: ‘eliminating feudal autocracy’ (掃除封建專制) and ‘escaping colonial bondage’ (擺脫殖民枷鎖).Footnote 99 While ‘feudal autocracy’ might seem abstract, in Tang’s context it targeted both the conservative Manchu elite and the Qing court’s entrenched reactionary forces. This framing allowed for tactical flexibility, uniting constitutional monarchists with more radical revolutionaries under a common critique of autocratic inertia. Meanwhile, the call to ‘escape colonial bondage’ evoked a transnational language of racial solidarity. By framing China’s crisis as part of Asian resistance to Western imperialism, Tang invoked the rhetoric of ‘same script and same race’ to link domestic revolution with regional alliance. Asianism, in his hands, became a language of self-determination for ‘yellow races’, reinterpreted through China’s national and social transformation.
In July 1900, Tang Caichang launched the Zili Army Uprising with support from the Zhengqi Society and Asianist sympathizers, aiming to overthrow the conservative faction at court and restore Emperor Guangxu’s authority.Footnote 100 Although Guangxu was a Manchu, Tang and other late Qing reformists regarded him as a potential constitutional monarch who could lead China towards modernization. In this sense, Tang’s position embodied a transitional ideology—advocating loyalty to the emperor while simultaneously opposing the Manchu ruling clique. To this end, Tang devised a dual-track strategy for the uprising: domestically, he mobilized grassroots networks and paramilitary resources from secret societies such as the Zhengqi Society, which provided both manpower and anti-Qing fervour; transnationally, he sought to secure diplomatic cover and material support from Japanese Asianist organizations, especially the Tōa Dōbunkai.Footnote 101 At its height, the uprising reportedly involved over 100,000 participants and centred on plans to seize Wuhan as a revolutionary base.Footnote 102 However, Qing authorities pre-emptively suppressed the movement and Tang was arrested and executed the following month, bringing his campaign to an abrupt end.Footnote 103 Although short-lived, the Zhengqi Society marked Tang Caichang’s most radical appropriation of Asianist discourse, reframing it not as a civilizational ideal but as tactical rhetoric in the service of Han nationalist insurgency. More than a language of regional unity, Asianism became a vehicle for revolutionary mobilization—outwardly appealing to Japanese sympathizers, while inwardly galvanizing anti-Manchu resistance. This fusion of transnational ideology and ethnonational ambition exemplifies how Asianism was vernacularized and repurposed within China’s revolutionary underground.
The organizations and movements associated with Tang—the Xingya Yihui, the Shanghai Asia Association, the Zhengqi Society, and ultimately the Zili Army Uprising—represent successive stages in the adaptation of Asianism in late Qing China. They also form a structural contrast to contemporaneous Japanese associations such as the Kōakai and Tōa Dōbunkai. As summarized in Table A1 in the Appendix, Japanese Asianist groups were typically directed by state-aligned intellectuals or policy elites, and operated as semi-official institutions with defined geopolitical goals, while their Chinese counterparts emerged from outside the state, organized by revolutionaries, gentry, and secret society leaders and relying on local networks and grassroots mobilization.Footnote 104 This contrast reveals deeper asymmetries in state formation. By the turn of the twentieth century, Japan had begun projecting Asianist discourse as part of a national imperial strategy. In China, by contrast, the weakening Qing state lacked the institutional capacity and ideological authority to act as a transnational agent. As a result, Asianism in China was a flexible language appropriated by unofficial actors, serving both international outreach and nationalist rebellion. As scholarship on the Bandung moment has shown, Asianism was sustained through overlapping networks of activists and institutions rather than confined to formal state diplomacy.Footnote 105 This insight complicates the conventional binary between state-led initiatives and grassroots movements.
Engaging with existing scholarship further highlights the distinctiveness of Tang Caichang’s Asianist mobilization. At the level of ideological purpose, Chinese and Japanese deployments of Asianism diverged sharply. As Louise Young’s study of Manchukuo demonstrates, the Japanese colonial state likewise invoked the language of ‘anti-imperialism’ and ‘Asian liberation’, yet such rhetoric was repackaged within a colonial framework as an ideological instrument that legitimized imperial expansion—an outward-facing, hegemonic mode of Asianism.Footnote 106 Its central function was to confer moral authority upon Japan’s regional dominance, rendering imperial rule intelligible as a project of ‘yellow-race revolution’ or ‘Asian revival.’ In contrast, Tang Caichang’s localization of Asianism moved in an entirely different direction. Externally, he drew on the transnational idiom of ‘same script, same race’ to solicit Japanese assistance and resist Western encroachment; internally, he reinterpreted Asianism as a political language of anti-Manchu and anti-autocratic critique, capable of uniting reformist gentry, secret society networks, and grassroots actors in support of institutional reform and national liberation. In other words, whereas Japan deployed Asianism to underwrite colonial rule, Tang employed it to furnish ideological legitimacy for revolutionary mobilization. This contrast demonstrates the high malleability of Asianism as a transnational framework: in late Qing China, its localization emerged as a liberatory, grassroots-oriented mode of political mobilization rather than an extension of imperial ideological engineering. As Nile Green has noted, Asianism did not operate through abstract proclamations of unity, but through concrete, cross-regional interactions marked by negotiation, friction, and selective appropriation.Footnote 107
Conclusion: Asianism reframed through Han-centred revolutionary politics
This article has shown that the significance of Asianism in late Qing China lay in the specific ways it was vernacularized through a Han-centred racial politics that generated a dual orientation: anti-Western, on the one hand, and anti-Manchu autocracy, on the other. Tang Caichang’s deployment of Asianism illustrates how this racial framing transformed a discourse of regional solidarity into a language that simultaneously targeted foreign imperialism and Manchu autocracy. The idioms of tongzhong and qiangzhong did more than invoke cultural affinity; they recast Asianism as a civilizational struggle in which the survival of the Han became the hinge linking external resistance and internal revolution. Equally crucial is the institutional pathway through which this reframing took effect. From the Xingya Yihui and the Shanghai Asia Association to the Zhengqi Society and ultimately the Zili Army Uprising, Asianism was progressively embedded in organizational and military forms that translated rhetoric into action. These initiatives did not merely borrow Japanese models; they reworked Asianist ideas into a grammar suited to China’s fractured political landscape, capable of mediating between Reformists and Revolutionaries, of linking transnational outreach with secret society networks, and of legitimating armed resistance under the banner of racial revival. Through this organizational labour, Asianism acquired a durability and political reach it would not otherwise have possessed.
At a broader conceptual level, Tang Caichang’s practice highlights how the political life of Asianism in late Qing China was shaped not by the ideology’s universal claims but by the processes through which it was repeatedly recoded to meet local demands. Asianism became intelligible and actionable only when translated into the idioms of racial survival, institutional reform, and dynastic crisis. Yet it retained its transnational valence, enabling Chinese actors to articulate external resistance against Western imperial encroachment while mobilizing internal revolution against Manchu rule. It was this dual recoding that allowed ‘Asia’ to function as an intermediary concept, one that linked global narratives of civilizational struggle with domestic projects of national regeneration. In this sense, the late Qing localization of Asianism did more than reshape a foreign discourse; it produced a hybrid political language that operated simultaneously across imperial and dynastic registers. By tracing this early episode of ideological translation, this article underscores how broad regional frameworks are made politically consequential only through their local rearticulation, and it situates Tang’s Asianism within the longer, uneven history of Asian regionalism as it moved between anti-imperial aspirations and ethnonational revolution.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Professor Bart Dessin for his guidance, encouragement, and unwavering support throughout the development of this article; it would not have taken its present shape without his mentorship. I also thank Sue Allerton, Professor Johan Elverskog, and the editorial team at Modern Asian Studies for their assistance during the review process. My sincere appreciation goes to the anonymous reviewer, whose thoughtful and incisive comments greatly strengthened the arguments of this article and pushed me to reflect more deeply on the complexities of Asianism.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
Appendix
Key Asia societies connected to Tang Caichang (1890s–1900s)Footnote 108
Table A1: Long description
The table lists five Asia-focused organizations connected to Tang Caichang, giving each group’s founding year, location, founders, objectives, sphere of influence, links to other groups, and specific ties to Tang. The organizations span 1879 to 1900 and are centered mainly in Tokyo, with cross-border activity in Shanghai and Hankou and one Shanghai-based association founded by Tang. Early Japanese groups such as Kōakai promoted Asianism and Japan’s moral leadership and later influenced Chinese reformist circles, including Tang’s thinking. Itsuwai Dōshikai and later Dōbunkai provided organizational and media pathways, including the newspaper Yadong Shibao, which Tang later directed, and funding support from members such as Shiraiwa Ryūhei. Tōa Dōbunkai, formed in 1900, is described as closely tied to Japanese policy circles and as offering financial, rhetorical, and diplomatic support that helped Tang’s associations operate. Tang’s own Shanghai Asia Association, founded in 1898 with Chinese reformers and merchants, is presented as adapting Asianist ideas toward more equal partnership and localized reform mobilization. Interpretive note: the “sphere of influence” and “connections” fields summarize reported influence and relationships rather than measuring their strength or outcomes.
