How a vast country like China with a history dating back thousands of years became a modern state is a subject that has fascinated historians and scholars for a long time. Philip A. Kuhn, who teaches history at Harvard University, has written a short but comprehensive essay on the subject, first presented to the College de France in Paris in 1994, and eventually published as a book. For those who are not well-versed in the complex history of China, it is worth a trip back in time to the late 18th century, a period historians believe when China began its transformation into a modern state. This process of transformation lasted until the takeover of China by the Communist regime under Mao Tse-tung and his disputed land reform and agricultural programs. First, Kuhn takes us back to the 1790s when a crisis developed in China under the Qing dynasty. The country opened its doors to the West during the Opium War, an event that compelled the educated elite in China to think about modernization in constitutional terms.

Kuhn believes that China became a modern state because of internal struggles to survive rather than the influence of Western ideas. The elite promoted a constitutional agenda to create a modern state that would possess Chinese, rather than Western characteristics. Constitution here means a legitimate order of public life. An agenda equals the will to act on concerns for legitimacy. In 1795, the ailing emperor Qianlong, who was 84 years of age, decided to abdicate in favor of his fifteen-year-old son Jiaqing, who named his reign the “prosperous age” because at that time, the Chinese population had doubled to 300 million people. However, Qianlong abdicated only in name. He kept his power behind the throne, granting his Grand Councilor Heshen the authority to control the empire. Thus Jiaqing was under the control of both his father and the councilor.

Kuhn calls the period of 1790s a crisis because Qianlong’s reign produced a flourishing trade, a large population, an abundance of silver in the economy, which came from trade with foreign countries. But the local government became more costly to run, and the tax system to pay for salaries failed. Heshen had his own tax system and his power expanded in the government. The population increased in number while there was a shortage of land. Serious floods occurred during this time. Poor farmers migrated to border regions in Western China, provoking inter-ethnic conflict.

The elite, in its drive to modernize the country, had to confront the abuse of power under Qianlong - who was Manchurian - while the elite were of Han origin. The elite, described throughout the essay as literati, received cultural training from Confucian classics but were politically trained under the Qing dynasty.

Kuhn says Wei Yuan (1794-1857) was the most influential political thinker of his age, comparable to Liang Qichao in the 20th century. He states that Wei’s ideas have had “major consequences for China’s modern history” and are considered by Westerners as “progressive.” His numerous writings have helped scholars to understand China during the period before the Opium War. The impact of foreign intervention in China in the 1820s was disastrous, because China’s population had been expanding, causing damage to the environment. The Opium War brought a flow of silver into the country, causing currency disorder and corruption in the kingdom.

The Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 and the Peking Convention two years later opened China to Western powers and marked the entrance of British and French forces. The elite continued its constitutional struggle. Feng Guifen (1809-74) was another thinker admired by Western historians for his efforts to integrate Western technology into the Chinese culture.

“For both Wei Yuan and Feng Guifen, broader literati participation was to be the source of the heightened national energy needed to resist the West,” Kuhn writes.

When Mao Tse-tung declared the end of the “old regime” after taking over the country, China has inherited many innovations instituted by the Republican period that preceded the communist takeover. Under Mao, collectivization became a priority and land reform was completed by 1952. Collectivization lead to problems of supplying cities with grain, forcing prices to go up. Kuhn says the Mao regime transformed revenue problems in the ‘old regime” by adapting modern conditions. He says the rapid industrial development under Mao forced the regime to deal with issues of grain supplies and private ownership because the two cannot go together.

The constitutional agenda that began in 1790s is transformed in the 20th century when China enters the modern age as a unified nation.

“Unity, with its practical requirement of centralized leadership, has placed extraordinary demands upon China’s constitutional agenda,” Kuhn writes, adding that the agenda is addressed “on China’s terms, not on ours.”