Soon a larger worry than the Western powers emerged for China: its neighbor to the east, Japan. The contrast was especially vivid between two leaders in the process of modernizing their countries, Li Hongzhang and Itō Hirobumi. These contrasts “revealed a widening gulf between the two powers–one rising steadily and rapidly, the other struggling to… Read more »
Like so many other leaders of his generation–Liang Qichao, Chen Duxiu, Chiang Kai-shek–Sun fled arrest in China for sixteen years of exile in Japan. Sun severed his Qing queue, donned Western dress, and began studying Japan’s successful response to the West. During these sixteen years, Sun traveled broadly raising funds and awareness for his revolutionary… Read more »
Liang spent 14 years in Japan all told, finding his calling as a journalist among the Chinese expats in Yokohama. He first attempted to promote his views on Chinese reform through a journal he created, Remonstrance. When a fire destroyed Remonstrance’s printing house in 1901, he founded his most famous journal, New Citizen. Liang was widely read… Read more »