ABSTRACT
“The people” was not a new ontological or epistemological category among Chinese intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century. “The people” had been part of classical Chinese discourse since antiquity, when conceptions of kingship were forged within the Confucian school with the idea that the people formed the basis of the ruler’s legitimacy. There were many reasons different intellectuals saw this as a necessity, from the need to buttress opposition to the dynasty to the need to stand up to the West, to the need later for China to produce something resembling a coherent fabric of society without which, many believed, China itself might cease to exist. The meaning of citizenship for late Qing and early Republican intellectuals forms the prism through which we have approached their perceptions of the common people.
