A Historical Examination of Westerners’ Pro-Confucianism in China During the Early Republican Years

During the early Republican years in China, through the publication of several prominent Western individuals’ view with respect to the Confucian religion in materials like Kong jiao lun 孔教论 (On the Confucian Religion) and 孔教会杂志 (The Confucian Association Monthly), Chen Huanchang, the director of the Confucian Association, appeared to have successfully enlisted the support for the Association from some renowned Western figures in China, including Timothy Richard, Gilbert Reid, Hermann Graf Keyserling, Hiram Stevens Maxim, and Reginald Fleming Johnston. Notwithstanding the Confucian Association’s propaganda, Timothy Richard and Gilbert Reid’s patronage of the Confucian Association in fact stemmed from their concept of “uniting all religions”. The praises heaped on Confucius by Hermann Graf Keyserling and Hiram Stevens Maxim were totally unrelated to the Confucian Association but were cleverly packaged by Chen Huanchang as an ideal resource through his ingenious translation. Reginald Fleming Johnston’s laudatory remarks with respect to the Confucian Association were inevitably motivated by his political speculation. The superficial respect for Confucius among Westerners in China belied more complex and nuanced attitudes towards making the Confucian religion the state religion of China. Such attitudes reveal the multiple facets of Confucianism in the early Republican era in response to some of the challenges posed by modernization.