Author ｜
Qi Liang
Abstract ｜
The term zizhi (自治) had three connotations during the Late Qing: Personal Cultivation, Provincial Independence, and Local Self-Government, with the last connotation referring to the governance of local gentry and merchants over local affairs. While the introduction of this concept had a profound connection with Europe and Japan, there were also distinctions between the West and China about the meaning of “urban autonomy”. These distinctions can be seen in the relay translations of W. B. Munro’s The Government of European Cities (1909) from English into Japanese and Chinese. The Chinese version inherited much of the word selection and expression from the Japanese translation. The ower-centralized self-governing institutions had spread from Absolutist Prussia to Meiji Japan and then to Late Qing China, forming an institutional chain that differed in its modes of implementation. This in turn indicates what was problematic when the theories of self-governance spread to China via Japan. Autonomy is defined as an automatic order related to self-experience and custom, which emphasizes the independence and exploration of individual, whereas the German Selbst Verwaltung refers to the rational restraint of self-management, which emphasizes an individual's obedience to the willpower of state and his or her role as a well-functioning gear. The Japanese-invented phrase with Chinese characters「自治( じち)」 used in the translation reflected the meaning of Selbst Verwaltung. As Munro’s The Government of European Cities was translated into Chinese via Japanese, the translation only demonstrated the centralized characteristics of Prussian-Japanese systems of self-governance, straying from Munro’s original meaning in English.
keywords ｜
Autonomy/Selbst Verwaltung, Munro, Knowledge Translation, Power-Centralized Institutions, Languages