From Imperial Gardens to Public Parks: The Transformation of Urban Space in Early Twentieth-Century Beijing
Author(s)
Shi, Mingzheng
Abstract
Historians of modern China have recently discovered the expansion of a public sphere in late imperial and early republican Chinese society. The works of Mary Rankin (1986) and William Rowe (1984, 1989), for example, focusing on late imperial Zhejiang and Hankou, respectively, point to community-centered, extra-bureaucratic elite activism as the major force behind China’s modern political transformation. The work of David Strand (1989) on early republican Beijing further demonstrates how new organizations, such as the police, political parties, chambers of commerce, and labor unions, developed in parallel with old institutions, such as guilds, volunteer firefighting brigades and militias, charities, labor gangs, and elite mediation. Together, these works suggest that the public sphere expanded rapidly, taking advantage of the state’s inability to extend itself aggressively into new areas of social life.
