Chinese Political and Cultural Elites: Twentieth Century Transformations

The Chinese experienced dynamic changes in the twentieth century and few groups were as transitional as Chinese intellectuals. Grappling with new roles within the world of education and politics, there was an explosion of creative and diverse responses. This study will utilize a dataset of 197 Chinese students who matriculated at four European universities, the Institut Franco-Chinois de Lyon, Université du Travail Charleroi, Université de Paris, and the Universität zu Berlin. The article will profile these students through a narrative of common experiences; statistical analyses of birth and death years, birthplace, geospatial analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis; followed by network analyses (cohesion, centrality, triad) and visualizations. The data clearly show characteristic subgroups in both cluster analyses and network analysis that align with known historical data. For example, the dispersion among these four institutions of students from Guangdong, Hunan, and Sichuan have discernable configurations, as do the selection of institution, and the participation in European branches of Chinese political parties by these Chinese students. The study also raises comparative generational questions, particularly about the life trajectories of Cai Yuanpei and Wang Jingwei and their relationship to these European institutions and Chinese higher education. Finally, the article illustrates how an historical integrative approach provides both new insights about how the Chinese political intellectuals had adapted individually and grouped together into political parties and political factions, while pursuing academic careers. In terms of the three layers - The narrative account is focused on the trajectories of Chinese students in four institutions in France, Germany, and Belgium, and covers the Work-Study Movement (1919-21) and the formation of five political parties and other historical dimensions that created intellectual activists. The hermeneutic layer is understanding these students through an "integrative" discourse including their statistical profiles, microhistories and interconnections with four European higher education institutions. The data layer is the CSE (Chinese Students in Europe) dataset with 187 students and 215 attributes. The dataset is the foundation of the analyses enumerated above.