ABSTRACT
The point is that in modern China the situation was very different. Citizenship and feminism were largely treated together as closely related problems. Rousseau focused on the individual’s achieving moral agency through citizenship. The sense of peoplehood was conceived as complementary to citizenship, or perhaps even the basis of citizenship. Unlike Liu Shipei, most Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing tried to build a sense of citizenship tied explicitly to the nation, itself conceived in terms of a historical narrative that essentialized ethnic and cultural identity. Liu Zehua and Liu Jianqing present an overview of the political and cultural attributes of citizenship between the 1890s and the 1920s, especially as seen in the fate of civic associations and political parties. Citizenship has proved to be a key concept in the rise of republicanism. If the republic belongs to its people—the citizens—the locus of sovereignty must shift away from the ruler.
