Kang Youwei was a prominent political thinker and reformer in China of the late Qing dynasty.
38 Facts About Kang Youwei
2.
Kang Youwei's increasing closeness to and influence over the young Guangxu Emperor sparked conflict between the emperor and his adoptive mother, the regent Empress Dowager Cixi.
3.
Kang Youwei's ideas were influential in the abortive Hundred Days' Reform.
4.
Kang Youwei continued to advocate for a Chinese constitutional monarchy after the founding of the Republic of China.
5.
Kang Youwei was born on 19March 1858 in Su Village, Danzao Town, Nanhai County, Guangdong province.
6.
Kang Youwei called for an end to property and the family in the interest of an idealized future cosmopolitan utopia and cited Confucius as an example of a reformer and not as a reactionary, as many of his contemporaries did.
7.
Kang Youwei argued, to bolster his claims that the rediscovered versions of the Confucian classics were forged, as he treated in detail in A Study of the Forged Classics of the Xin Period.
8.
In 1879, Kang Youwei traveled to Hong Kong and he was shocked by the prosperity there, which started his interest in Western culture and thoughts.
9.
In 1882, Kang Youwei went to Beijing to take the imperial examination.
10.
Kang Youwei was influenced by Protestant Christianity in his quest for reform.
11.
Kang Youwei launched the Society for the Study of National Strengthening in Beijing.
12.
Kang Youwei was a strong believer in constitutional monarchy and wanted to remodel the country after Meiji Japan.
13.
Kang Youwei fled the country but organized the Protect the Emperor Society which promoted the cause of the Guangxu Emperor, mainly in Chinese diaspora communities, and advocated the removal of Cixi.
14.
Kang Youwei relied on his principal American military advisor, General Homer Lea to head the military branch of the Protect the Emperor Society.
15.
Kang Youwei competed with the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen's Revive China Society and Revolutionary Alliance for funds and followers among overseas Chinese.
16.
Some advocated that a Han be installed as Emperor, either the descendant of Confucius, who was the Duke Yansheng, which Kang Youwei briefly endorsed before dropping the idea and returning to the idea of a Qing monarch, or the Ming dynasty Imperial family descendant, the Marquis of Extended Grace.
17.
Kang Youwei remained an advocate of constitutional monarchy and launched a failed coup d'etat in 1917.
18.
Kang Youwei became suspicious of Zhang's insincere constitutionalism and feared he was merely using the restoration to become the power behind the throne.
19.
Kang Youwei abandoned his mission and fled to the American legation.
20.
Kang Youwei's reputation serves as an important barometer for the political attitudes of his time.
21.
Chang asserted that Kang Youwei was a "master propagandist" who harbored an intention to become an emperor by claiming as the reincarnation of Confucius, although he later abandoned that plan.
22.
Kang Youwei proposed a utopian future world free of political boundaries and democratically ruled by one central government.
23.
Kang Youwei reasoned that the institution of the family practiced by society since the beginning of time was a great cause of strife.
24.
Kang Youwei considered the contemporary form of marriage, in which a woman was trapped for a lifetime, to be too oppressive.
25.
Kang Youwei believed in equality between men and women and that there should be no social barrier barring women from doing whatever men can do.
26.
Kang Youwei believed that government should establish socialist institutions to overlook the welfare of each individual.
27.
At one point, he even advocated that government should adopt the methods of "communism" although it is debated what Kang Youwei meant by this term.
28.
Kang Youwei's work is permeated with the Confucian ideal of ren, or humanity.
29.
Kang Youwei believed that Western technological progress had a central role in saving humanity.
30.
Kang Youwei believed that as a result of technological advances, each individual would only need to work three or four hours per day, a prediction that would be repeated by the most optimistic futurists later in the 20th century.
31.
Kang Youwei's support for the Guangxu Emperor was seen as reactionary by many Chinese intellectuals, who believed that Kang Youwei's book was an elaborate joke and that he was merely acting as an apologist for the emperor as to how a utopian paradise could have developed if the Qing dynasty had been maintained.
32.
Kang Youwei enumerated sources of human suffering in a way similar to that of Buddhism.
33.
Kang Youwei visualised a hierarchy of various religions, in which Christianity and Islam were considered the lowest, above them being Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.
34.
Kang Youwei predicted that the lower religions would eventually disappear in the future.
35.
Kang Youwei was an accomplished calligrapher, responsible for the creation of Kang Typeface.
36.
Kang Youwei reached Sweden in 1904 and was deeply attracted to the landscape.
37.
Kang Youwei bought an islet off Saltsjobaden and built a Chinese style garden and building named "Beihai Caotang".
38.
Kang Youwei died at his home in the city of Qingdao, Shandong in 1927.