The “Xueheng” School in the Global Cultural Context

The journal “Xueheng” took it as its guiding line to “propagate the national highlights and absorb the new learning”. To “propagate the national highlights”, the journal disagreed with the slogan to “abondan the old and seek the new” raised by the liberal school or with the call to “break the old and set up the new” cried out by the radical school. Instead, it accepted such neo-humanist ideas as “preserving the old and establishing the new”, “weeding through the old and putting forward the new” or “transforming steadily to develop the new”. To “absord the new learning”, the Xueheng school opposed to “submitting totally to the reality” and “running after nothing but what is prevailing”. They emphatically advocated discarding the part of Western civilization which was adopted to solve the current problems with regard to its distinctive historical and social context and absorbing only the perminent and universal part. Therefore, from a historical and broad perspective, the Xueheng school didn’t accept revolutionism or evolutionism on the one hand, and on the other rivalled with the liberal and the radical school. Moreover, they stressed transformation and development, which made them superior to old conservativism. In their practice, this school made complete investigations and explored the origin before taking what they needed of Western learning, establishing a totally distinctive tradition by getting rid of the traditional practice of “adaptability”. Hence playing an important role in the movement of cultural enlightenment in China in the early 20th century.