From racial survival to revolutionary strategy: The localization of Asianism in the political practice of Tang Caichang

Abstract

This article examines how Asianism was locally reconfigured and politically mobilized in late Qing China through the activities of Tang Caichang (1867–1900). Rather than treating Asianism as a coherent ideology of regional unity, it shows how Tang transformed it into a flexible political language that linked racial survival, Sino-Japanese cooperation, and revolutionary action. Drawing on the concepts of tongzhong (racial fusion) and qiangzhong (racial strengthening), Tang recast Asianism as a Han-centred project of national revitalization and articulated a ‘Yellow Race Alliance’ as both an anti-Western and anti-Qing strategy. Through his leadership in the Promoting Asia Righteousness Association, the Shanghai Asia Association, the Zhengqi Society, and, ultimately, the Zili Army Uprising, Asianist discourse was progressively embedded in organizational and military structures that enabled its translation into transnational outreach, on the one hand, and domestic revolutionary mobilization, on the other. Unlike Japan’s state-led deployments of Asianism or Southeast Asia’s anti-colonial appropriations, Chinese Asianism was shaped by a dual imperative: resisting Western imperialism while simultaneously challenging the Qing dynasty’s legitimacy. By tracing this process of ideological vernacularization, the article demonstrates how Asianism acquired political life only when rewritten to fit China’s fractured institutional landscape. It thereby situates Tang’s practice within the broader history of Asian regionalism, highlighting how transnational ideas gained mobilizational force when recalibrated into locally resonant forms during China’s transition from empire to nation-state.