20세기 초 중국지식인의 ‘國民性’ 인식 - 『中國人的性格』과 『中國人的精神』을 중심으로-

Abstract

This study aims to provide an academic inquiry of chinese intellectuals’ different perception of ‘national character’ in the early 20th century when China was about to enter the first stage of nation-state building. For a meaningful inquiry, this study compared two academically important books: one book was written by Arther H. Smith(1845~1932), 『Chinese Characteristics』which described Chinese national characteristics based on his life experience in China for 22 years, and the other written by Gu Hongming(1857~1928), 『The Spirit of the Chinese People』, which focused on Chinese cultural pride. This study also investigated Chinese enlightenment -intellectuals’ comments on the two polemical books. This study found that there were different perception of ‘national character’ among three different intellectuals, foreign investigators, Chinese intellectuals with European experience, and Chinese intellectuals without such experience. According to the results of comparative analysis, there was obvious meaningful difference regarding to the concept between ‘national character’ and ‘國民性-Guo min xing’. In particular, the meaning of ‘national character’ perceived by Chinese intellectuals seemed to have chronological aspect like historians’ evaluation of a certain generation. For the first time, the concept of ‘national character’ was used by Chinese intellectuals in the last period of Chin dynasty to provide a unique, but Chinese centered, theoretical tradition that would be helpful to transform China into a modern nation-state. In other words, a certain ethinic people’s national character could have a positive or negative tendency based on such peoples’ own perception of what kind of nation-state they wanted to build. In this context, Chinese intellectuals looked out for diverse ideal types of nation-state and uniqueness of Chinese national character. Therefore, the discourse of ‘national character’ as an academic concept seems not to be done in the 21th century.