Liang Qichao

Liang Qichao was a Chinese scholar, journalist and political reformer who became one of the most influential intellectuals of the late Qing and early republican periods. A disciple of Kang Youwei, he helped promote the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, fled to Japan after its failure and used journalism and political writing to popularise new ideas about citizenship, nationalism and constitutional government.

After the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform, Liang continued his political and intellectual work in exile and became a major advocate of institutional reform, citizenship and new forms of historical and journalistic writing.

In Jonathan D. Spence’s The Gate of Heavenly Peace, beginning with the crisis of the late Qing, it follows the intellectual search for national renewal through the fall of the dynasty, republican fragmentation, Communist victory and the upheavals of the People’s Republic. Liang Qichao, Lu Xun and other cultural figures appear alongside revolutionary leaders as Spence connects political action to fiction, journalism, philosophy and personal testimony.