HICCS 2025

This panel explores pivotal moments and strategies in Chinese political and diplomatic history, from the 1911 “Luanzhou Armed Remonstrance” to ancient tributary systems and evolving China-U.S. relations through historical and future lenses.

Yi Luo
Northwest University, Associate Professor

Title:
Abortive Military Dictatorship: A New Explanation for the 1911 “Luanzhou Armed Remonstrance”

Abstract:
During the 1911 Revolution, some northern army officers used force to request the Qing dynasty to adopt constitutional reforms, an event known as the “Luanzhou Armed Remonstrance”. The key figures leading this mutiny were Zhang Shaozeng, Wu Luzhen, and Lan Tianwei, all graduates of the Japanese Military Academy and renowned as the “Three Military Stars”. Faced with imminent military pressure, the Qing dynasty had to immediately implement constitutional reforms and set up a British-style constitutional monarchy. However, the “Three Military Stars” did not withdraw their troops. Instead, they actively planned a military advance on Beijing, but ultimately met with failure. Unlike previous interpretations, the “Luanzhou Armed Remonstrance” was neither a constitutionalist armed petition nor an anti-Manchu revolutionary uprising disguised as “loyalty to the emperor”, but rather an unsuccessful attempt by a group of modern military personnel with nationalist ideas to establish a military dictatorship through force.

Xiaoyu Meng
Shanghai International Studies University, Ph.D Candidate

Title:
Threat cognition, aim for order and maintenance strategy of ancient Chinese tributary order

Abstract:
The tributary order formed in ancient East Asia, although spanning thousands of years, was often disrupted and challenged. In ancient China, as a suzerain state, there were motives to adopt appropriate strategies to maintain the tributary order in terms of moral responsibility and interest protection. However, history shows that under the same situation, rulers would adopt different maintaining strategies, like war, compellence, sanction, huai-jou (to cherish and to soften), and appeasement. So this paper focuses on exploring what factors affect the choice of maintaining strategies and what is the logic behind it, hoping to enrich the theoretical content of traditional Chinese foreign policy, further clarify the behavior logic of ancient China in foreign relations and its impact on contemporary Chinese diplomacy. Most of the existing studies on the maintenance of tributary order explain why the tributary order can continue for thousands of years, and why actors were willing to join the tributary order. Some studies related to specific maintaining strategies are also faced with many problems such as vague concepts and not detailed classification of types, so that the explanatory power is insufficient. Through the sorting and comparative analysis of cases of order maintenance between the Ming and Qing dynasties and typical tributary states, this article finds that the threat perception faced by ancient Chinese rulers towards the tributary order and their aim of the tributary order influenced the choice of maintenance strategies. Under the guidance of the principle of ritual(li) , they worked hard to balance the costs and benefits of order, achieving a balance between compliance with ritual and pragmatism.

Leigh-Wai Doo
Foundations for Islands of Harmony, Chair of Board of Directors

Title:
China – US: Different Perspectives in the Context of the Times. SUN Yat-Sen and Hawaii’s Sen Yet YOUNG in 3 phases: 100 years past, today, and 25 years forward.

Abstract:
Hawaii’s Sen Yet YOUNG is an American celebrated in China. He or the Rosamond Biplane which he designed and built a century ago is pictured in over 30 locations across China, including Taiwan, but there is no recognition of him in America. Why? (Photo of Honolulu star bulletin article of that caption). Might Hawaii’s Sen Yet YOUNG be a new channel building world peace between America and China? What does the context of the changing times tell us in three phases?