1. Early years -- 2. Local official in Kiangsi, 1856-1859 -- 3. Governor of Kiangsi, 1862-1865 -- 4. First encounters with foreigners -- 5. Director-general of the Foochow Navy Yard -- 6. The Foochow Navy Yard: early developments, 1866-1867 -- 7. The Foochow Navy Yard: administration and personnel -- 8. The Foochow Navy Yard: building and training programmes -- 9. The Foochow Navy Yard: financial crises -- 10. The next steps in defence modernization: Ma-wei and beyond -- 11. Towards a plan for self-strengthening.

This is a study of China's attempt to meet the challenges of the nineteenth century. Using the career of Shen Pao-chen as a looking glass, Professor Pong examines the political awakening of a small coterie of Ching dynasty officials as they responded to dynastic decline and the ever-growing threat of Western encroachment on China. Driven by a deep sense of crisis, they dedicated themselves to "self-strengthening," a two-pronged effort to restore the vitality of the Ching dynasty and to protect it from further foreign inroads by adopting Western technology, especially military technology.

What is remarkable about Shen Pao-chen is that, despite his strong Confucian background, he devoted himself to developing China's first modern naval dockyard and academy - the Foochow Navy Yard. No other Ching official of a comparable stature sacrificed his career for a job considered fit only for lowly officials. Shen's successes and failures articulate the complex relationship between Confucianism and modernization. This study, while acknowledging the inhibiting effects of certain aspects of Confucian ideology and culture on modernization, demonstrates that Confucianism, as understood by practical and reform-minded officials like Shen, was a powerful motivating force for change.

The author thus searches broadly for an answer to the perennial question, why did China fail to reach its goal as it struggled to modernize? The result is a study of modernization that sheds new light on the role of provincial and central government politics, the problem of public finance, the function of the gentry as managers of a modernizing enterprise, the issue of transfer of technology, and the Western presence in China. Many of these topics acquire new meaning and significance as China engages in a new phase of economic and industrial modernization in the post-Mao era.--OCLC record note.

Local access dig.pdf. [Pong-Shen Pao-chen.pdf]
Physical copy at Gleeson Library.