Hu Zhengzhi, a well-known political commentator of the Republic of China and general manager of the Ta Kung Pao, pointed out after reviewing the history of the Xinhai Revolution: "The Xinhai Revolution almost relied on articles to subvert the Qing court. (Hu Zhengzhi Anthology, vol. II, p. 1118) In this ideological war to overthrow the Qing Dynasty with articles, the contribution of Zhejiang intellectuals was decisive, but the greatest impact was undoubtedly Toi Zhang Taiyan.
Zhang Taiyan (1869-1936), courtesy name Binglin (炳麟), was a native of Qinhang County (present-day Yuhang District, Hangzhou). When he was a teenager, he had a strong sense of nationalism, and once said that "it is better to die in the Manchu Qing Than to die in Li Baicheng" and other shocking remarks. In 1900, he officially cut his braids and changed his clothes from a scholar to a professional revolutionary. He was deeply accomplished in scholarship, familiar with Chinese historical allusions, and deeply influenced by the nationalist ideas of Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu and other great Confucians in the Ming and Qing dynasties, he took a word from the names of Huang Zongxi (character Taichong) and Gu Yanwu, and combined the word "Taiyan" as his alias, which was parallel to the world.
Zhang Taiyan's treatises are based on profound knowledge of Chinese history and culture, based on patriotism and nationalism, and discuss the necessity of national democratic revolution from the perspective of history and race. In the spring of 1902, Zhang Taiyan went into exile in Japan and betrothed to Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese democratic revolution. On March 19 of the Summer Calendar, the death day of the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongfeng, in order to publicize the ideas of the anti-Qing revolution, Zhang Taiyan and Qin Lishan launched a 242nd anniversary commemorative meeting in Tokyo, Japan, and Zhang Taiyan drafted a declaration of the congress, calling on Chinese students studying in Japan to work hard to overthrow the Qing Dynasty.
At that time, the royalist leaders Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao also ran newspapers and wrote books in Japan, advocating constitutional monarchy, denigrating the revolution, and still having a certain influence among students studying in Japan. Kang Youwei published "Reply to the Overseas Chinese in North and South America on China's Only Feasible Constitution and Not Feasible Revolutionary Book," claiming that the revolution will lead to "a river of blood flowing, dead people like hemp," turmoil for a hundred years without stability, and tens of millions of people will lose their lives, thus frightening the revolutionaries. In response to Kang Youwei's intimidation, Zhang Renyan published the "Book of Refuting Kang Youwei's Revolution" in May 1903, refuting Kang Youwei's arguments article by article, and publicly denouncing the Guangxu Emperor as a "clown who did not distinguish the wheat". It is pointed out that the difficulty of constitution-making is far greater than that of revolution, which is a good medicine for both remedying and remedying, and that "the lack of axiom is made clear by revolution; the old custom is not gone by revolution." The article is circumstantial and sharp, and has become a rare and important document in the history of the Xinhai Revolution.
After Zou Rong's "Revolutionary Army" pamphlet was drafted, zhang Taiyan was asked to edit it. The Revolutionary Army affirms that the revolution is "a public example of heavenly performance" and "the axiom of the world", and the purpose of the revolution is to establish a completely independent, powerful, free and equal Republic of China. After reading it, Zhang Taiyan thought that in order to awaken forty million people, such a "thunderous voice" was needed, and he gladly wrote a preface to the book, praising it as "the first voice of the righteous teacher". Annoyed and angry, the Qing Dynasty created the "Su Report Case" for this purpose, arrested Zhang Taiyan and Zou Rong, and sentenced them to three years and two years in prison, respectively. In April 1905, Zou Rong died in prison. Zhang Taiyan's "Rebutting Kang Youwei's Book on Revolution," Zou Rong's "Revolutionary Army," and Chen Tianhua's "Alarm Clock" and "Turning Back" are the most influential anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda works in the history of the Xinhai Revolution.
In June 1906, Zhang Taiyan was released from prison and was welcomed to Tokyo by the revolutionaries, where he edited the Minbao newspaper, the organ of the League. At that time, the People's Daily was engaged in a great controversy with the royalist mouthpiece, the Xinmin Cong. The central issue of the controversy was whether to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, whether to implement the Republic of Minheng, and whether to change the feudal land ownership system. Zhang Taiyan swept his pen into battle and successively published a series of articles and commentaries, such as "The Theory of Evolution of Club Divisions," "The Morality of Revolution," "The Theory of Military Nobility," "TheOry of the State," "Questions and Answers on the Law of the Revolutionary Army," "The Theory of Representation and Denial," "Discussion on Manchuria," "The Solution of the Republic of China," and "Determining the Right and Wrong of Revenge." With a clear stand and profound knowledge, he joined other propagandists in the Qing League to attack the fallacies of the royalists and refuted them to the point of utter humility.
In the anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda, although there are also a few people who have flaws in Han chauvinism, the overall tone is healthy. Even Zhang Taiyan, who has always been regarded as having a strong Han nationalist ideology, also solemnly declared in the "Letter to the Students of Manchuria who Stayed in Japan": "The so-called national revolutionaries originally wanted to restore our sovereignty, and did not let others seize their ears!" He did not want to slaughter the Manchus and leave no widows, he wanted to emulate the ten days of Yangzhou in the past, nor did he want to enslave the Manchus and not to talk to the Qi people. ...... Your government has been overthrown for a while, and the Manchus, such as the Chinese, the business of agriculture and commerce, the right to do whatever they want, the right to vote, the equality of all things, and the pleasure of traveling to the republican form of government, how happy it is! My Han people are peaceful by nature, and the host said, there is no desire to slaughter people and races, nor does it have a system of dividing classes, and there are still Mongolians, Huibu, and Tibetans in the domain, and since they all look at each other, why should they meet manchus?" (Collected Letters of Zhang Taiyan, p. 292)
This clearly declares that after the overthrow of the feudal autocratic rule of the Manchu nobility, all ethnic minorities in China live together with the Han chinese under a republican democracy and enjoy the same rights and equality in everything. This kind of ideological understanding has reached a fairly high level. After the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising in Xinhai, there were basically no tragedies of national massacres that were common in history at the time of dynastic change, and the establishment of a republican system with minimal bloodshed and sacrifice had a lot to do with the correct understanding and propaganda of nationalism among the revolutionaries.
"Word Success Day, Global Revolution!" These are two poems by the late-love thinker Jiang Zhiyou. Under the influence of the powerful propaganda of the revolutionaries, more and more people believe that the root cause of all misfortunes in China lies in this decadent and traitorous Qing Dynasty government, and that it is necessary to overthrow the Qing Dynasty in order to save the country. As soon as the gunshots of the Xinhai Revolution rang out, the Qing Dynasty, which had completely lost its popularity, collapsed in an instant.
After the founding of the Republic of China, Zhang Taiyan had the following self-evaluation of his revolutionary propaganda in his letter to his friends: "Since Gengxin disturbed, there have been two ways for revolutionaries to speak: the weak are mixed with the constitutional monarchy, and the fierce ones are flowing into the fallacy of freedom and equality. As soon as the brother "The Book of Rebuttal Kang Youwei" came out, it was pure. After going to Prison, he went to Tokyo and welcomed 6,000 people. Later, in the "People's Daily", the world heard the wind, and the good official Su Ru also tended to be a good official. "Brother" is the first righteous, cutting off the flow of the crowd", "the work of preaching. Bi Xian Yu (Sun) Nakayama Yuanyi" (Oriental Magazine, No. 33, No. 1, January 1936).