By using prewar and early postwar archives and historical sources collected in Taiwan, Japan, the U.S.A. and Singapore, this paper reconstructs Japanese government’s relation with Taiwanese investment in Southeast Asia (SEA) during the period of 1895-1945 and obtains the following findings:

1. Taiwan’s investment in SEA is more important than the trade in between, by comparison with Taiwan’s economic relation with southern China and Manchuria.

2. The common dialect shared by the Taiwanese and the overseas Chinese in SEA paved the way for Taiwanese investment in SEA.

3. Such cultural affinity had not continually motivated Japanese government’s mobilization of Taiwanese to invest in SEA until 1935 when Japan’s southern advance policy started to be more vigorously pushed.

4. Matching with Japan’s total southern advance policy, which paced with the momentum of the second World War, institutions were established step by step to train Taiwanese, preparing them to serve as agents for Japanese companies in SEA selling Japanese goods to overseas Chinese.

5. Before political mobilization, both the holding of Japanese nationality by the Taiwanese and Japan’s international political-economic relations helped Taiwanese investment in SEA. Enjoying an equal status to that of the European colonizers in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Taiwanese merchants made the place to have shared more than half of Taiwanese migration in SEA. And, in comparison with small shops Taiwanese maintained in other places of the region, more Taiwanese investments in factories in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) could be attributed to the modern commercial law and more protection Japanese government gained for them there.

6. Those Taiwanese who benefited more from Japan’s international political-economic order or were more mobilized by Japanese government tended to have more of the Japanese identity. Such Japanese identity these Taiwanese had also resulted in their being attacked by those who were anti-Japanese.

7. The scale of traditional Chinese merchants in international trade tended to be of medium or small size. Mainly extending this traditional character, the enterprises Taiwanese owned in SEA also tended to be so, yet, there were some big Taiwanese enterprises showing a sort of discontinuity from the tradition. Besides, some Taiwanese went even further with their management of international enterprises.

8. When Taiwanese sale of Japanese products in SEA was described by Japan as indispensable, and when the international entrepreneurial experience was being considerably obtained by the Taiwanese, the previous assertion of historians that Taiwan's overseas economic activities under Japanese colonial rule had been so monopolized by Japan’s government and zaibatsu that the Taiwanese had no chance for such development has been found to be not well-grounded.

Between 1927 and 1937, the National Government’s strong promotion of athletic activities and athletic circles’ advocacy of the concept of “Saving the Nation through Sports” led to a significant increase in the number of athletic competitions. Ball game competitions among female athletes also reached unprecedented frequency. Because most of the ball game competitions were held in Eastern China, with the Shanghai women’s team showing the national best performance, this paper will cite the case of women athletes in Eastern China using relatively abundant data obtained from newspapers and journals of that period. Probes will be centered on two areas: Organization of female teams and the training of women athletes. This allows an understanding of how they became ball game players. Based on the various types of ball games, how these women athletes went about with their life in the ball court will be studied. Probes will be made on how ball games have affected these female athletes in their public and private life and what had been the public’s reaction to them. Finally, by studying the images of these female athletes in the minds of spectators, this paper will showcase the various facets of women athletes of that time. This paper will look into how women athletes were generated, and their development and orientation through a study of modern-period female athletic education. Stress will not be made on the relationship between women physical education and female athletes. Instead, emphasis will be on the effects of ball game competitions on the process of becoming a female ball game athlete and on those who were already accomplished athletes. The question of interaction between the general public and female athletes will also be raised, including their social and cultural connotations. Side issues like women’s image and gender relationship will also be touched upon. In summary, at a time of the rise of women’s rights, self-determination and liberation, as well as the ascent of the new urban women, female athletes were able to transcend the barriers of gender, thus sharing honors and competing with their male counterparts for ball courts. They at the same time reflected the trend of the times through their role as female ball game players. Although their performances showed both extremes, it is undeniable that through image shaping and trends, they were in a sense unique. In fact, they represented a new and important social group in that period of time.

     This study probes into the issues relevant to Banner land using Ch’ing Dynasty contract documentation and records from the Imperial Household Bureau. After the Banners occupied China, administration of the Han Chinese and the Banners was separately done. For the Han Chinese, Ming Dynasty systems were retained, with the establishment of provincial, prefecture, region and district governments. For the administration of the Banners, institutions such as the staff administrator (佐領) and the regimental commander (參領) were created. Although the staff administrator functioned very much like the district government of the Han Chinese, taking charge of such affairs as domicile, farms and residences, soldier accreditation and court litigation, he didn’t exercise control over the buying and selling of Banner land properties. This was unlike the Han practice of paying contract dues to the district governments for land trading. By the reign of Emperor Chien-lung, it was found that, over two-thirds of the Banner land belonging to the Banners officials around the capital had already changed hands.

     Furthermore, the Banner language, horse-riding and archery received great emphasis among the Banners during the Ch’ing Dynasty. In contrast, the Banners’ adjustment to then prevalent social problems was given scant attention. Because the Banners were unskilled in administering farm properties, they depended much on servants, who took charge of land documentation, lease collection and farming. Farm management and production were assigned to various ranks of servants, who were familiar with trading practices and contract regulations adopted by the general populace, and were therefore efficient in trading land on behalf of their masters.

     Farmland and allowances were bestowed by the Ch’ing government on the Banners. But by the end of the 18th Century, almost all of the dispensed land had already been sold out. Dependent on meager allowance for a living, the Banners faced livelihood difficulties as a consequence.

     This article argues that the image of the sage and the ideal of learning presented by late-Ming Confucian scholars (li-hsueh scholars) employed ideals similar to those of the Bodhisattva. First, I explore three characteristics of the sage-ideal in late-Ming Confucian discourse. These characteristics show how the Confucian sage-ideal contains elements of the Bodhisattva-ideal. A Confucian sage will take a vow to redeem all human beings thus becoming responsible for their moral achievements, and thereby delaying his own. The motivation of a sage’s action stems from the ultimate ideal of humanity endowed in his nature (the heart-mind with humanity of the unity of myriad beings, wan-wu-i-t’i shih pen-hsin). Second, I point out that, in contrast to earlier Confucians, late-Ming Confucian scholars were particularly concerned with the subject of death. Their discussions and practices focused on how to transcend the fear and limitation of death. These types of discourse brought them closer to Buddhist-style discourse. Third, through analyzing biographies of late-Ming Confucian scholars, I argue how this literary and cultural phenomenon correlated with scholars’ concerns and how it reveals some characteristics of scholars’ moral cultivation in daily life.

     The concept of “rights” is the kernel and basis of modern liberalism and jurisprudence. It implies the legitimacy of the autonomy of the individual. This essay is aimed at exploring the process of the acceptance and the usage of this concept in the formation of modern Chinese culture. We know that in Chinese the word “quanli” means both power and interest. And it is no coincidence that Late-Qing Chinese intellectuals’ awareness of the legitimacy of the autonomy of the nation (the community) actually came from their efforts to strengthen the nation’s power and protect its interests. This is why “quanli” was used to translate “rights”. From 1900 to 1915, the scope of the concept of autonomy was being so expanded that it now covered both the concept of the nation (the community) and that of the individual. During this period, the meanings of “quanli” was closer to the meanings of “rights” in the West than it had been before. In Chinese culture, the concept of “legitimacy” is closely connected with morals while political culture is inseparable from moral judgment. Therefore, it is hard for the Chinese to accept any notion that legitimacy is not an equivalent of morality. New Culture Movement was the vital period that shaped the landscape of modern Chinese political culture. We choose La Jeunesse as the object of our case study in which the usage of the concept “quanli” was analyzed and categorized to provide necessary statistics. Then, a comparison was made of the usage of “quanli” in La Jeunesse with its usage in literature published in late Qing and the 1911 Revolution. The comparison shows that the concept “quanli” was getting more and more moralized and even became a new standard of morals. It was this evolution of meanings that caused some Chinese intellectuals as represented by the writers with La Jeunesse to accept Marxism and reject liberalism.

     The research methods we employed take the form of an analysis of both the meanings of the keyword “quanli” and its statistics. And we put the result of this analysis within the context of intellectual history for studying or the formation of modern Chinese political culture. In this study, we need to clarify the meanings of certain important concepts in different cultural value systems and explore their translations across cultures. The influence of significant historical events in modern Chinese history on the evolution of the meanings of these concepts is also a factor to be taken into account in the course of doing this study.

     There are not a few people in Taiwan’s academic circle who tend to adopt a negative attitude in the evaluation of nationalism, due partly to such political factors as their hatred of China’s nationalism or their scare of Taiwan’s nationalism; there are also other very probable reasons arising from a rigid perception of nationalism, taking it as necessarily to be in conflict with such values as freedom, human rights, constitutional politics and democracy. The fact has been quite the contrary. Besides such precedents of liberal nationalism as shown either in the Englishman J.S. Mill or in the Italian Giuseppe Mazzini, this paper contends that during the 1930s in China, and represented by Hu Shih, the fellow writers with Independent Critic did reveal characteristics of thought quite in line with liberal nationalism. During the period from the September-Eighteenth Event of 1931 to the July-Seventh Incident of 1937 when the all-out war against Japan broke out, these writers were devoted to appealing to the League of Nations for mediation with a view to achieving a peaceful settlement of Sino-Japanese issues; they were also opposed to resorting to barbarous means both for extracting money, and for forcefully enlisting people to serve the armed forces even for the sake of expulsing Japan. On the other hand, they actually called for an all-out “resistance” in those territories not yet lost to Japan——as an attempt to halt Japan’s further encroachment onto China’s territories besides the already lost North-East China (Manchukuo).

     Like the liberal nationalism as described by Yael Tamir, the fellow writers for Independent Critic seemed to have succeeded to a vary degree in placing national thinking within the boundaries of liberalism without losing sight of either. They also renounced the ultimate pursuit of just one value at the expense of the other. For them, reflection and choice are as important as history and fate. In other words, the fellow writers for Independent Critic were of course totally different from Hsu Bing-chang and Dong Shih-jin, who were just outrageous agitators against the Japanese; they also differed from radicals, who simply stirred up student movements and then instigated them to boycott classes; they were also not in the same category of people as the local powers or the Communists, both of whom constantly linked “repulsing Japan” with “anti-Chiang Kai-shek” without cause and discrimination; nor were they in the same boat with those in power in the Nanking government, who repeatedly put off the practice of constitutional democracy while holding fast to the dream of fascism. What then is the difference between these writers and them? For me, this ultimately lies in the fact that their stand on nationalism is defined, delineated and informed by their liberalism.

     This paper holds the view that the characteristics of nationalism of the Hu Shih type can be clarified through an investigation of the very concept of liberal nationalism, and this will further enhance our capacity for make distinctions and strengthen our faith in nationalism.

     Past study by the scholars of this topic has generally taken the view that during the warlord period, and as a result of the declining power of the central government of the time, the strength of local merchants reached an unprecedented level, enjoying a high degree of autonomy. Scholars holding such view include the famous French scholar on Chinese bourgeoisie Prof. Marie-Chaire Bergere, and Mainland Chinese scholars such as Hsu Ting-hsin（徐鼎新）, Chu Ying（朱英）, Yu Ho-ping（虞和平）and many others. This paper takes as instances the Shanghai-area merchants’ Popular Government Movement in the 1920s, their participation in the self-rule movement for abdication of governor-generals and disbandment of troops, their holding of Eight Organizations’ National Convention, their formation of the Popular Government Committee, as well their initiatives in the attempt to stop the internecine armed conflicts and in the peace movement, for an analysis of a whole range of complicated factors behind these merchants’ taking part in these movements and activities and the actual effects, with a view to re-evaluating the political power these local merchants had during the period of warlordism. The conclusion is found to be that with respect to either thinking or practice, the Popular Government Movement as promoted by the merchants during this period was guided or supervised by intellectuals and foreigners and other social forces, so these merchants did not have a high degree of independence and autonomy. Moreover, there were conflicting opinions among them, in addition to infightings. All these resulted in reducing the effectiveness of their capacity. Exactly because of their lack of invincible faith in the practice of the Popular Government Movement, their lack of profound thinking and concrete plan with respect to methods and approaches for carrying out the movement, these merchants actually turned out to be disorganized and powerless, achieving no actual results, regardless of various superficial and grand fashions the movement generated. It can be seen from the Popular Government Movement as promoted by the merchants that they were not only powerless over national political issues, they were also helpless in local peace, and they were actually political weaklings during the period of warlordism.