Modern Dilemmas

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Chinese social and political concepts began to change, partly as a result of exposure to ideas and policies imported from Western countries. One example of this was the attitude toward beggary, a regrettable yet legitimate pursuit in late imperial times, which was now considered by states as a “problem,” a threat to social order, an antimodern eyesore, a hazard to national pride and the reputation of the Han race, and an outright illegitimate activity. This changed attitude was clearly apparent in Nanjing, the capital ofthe new Nationalist-led Republic of China, where a municipal government was established for the first time in 1927. At the beginning, municipal politicians wished to simply remove beggars from the streets, preferably into Western-style institutions, so as to protect the capital’s—and thus the nation’s—image. Several years later, when the numbers of mendicants drastically mounted as a result of disasters, adding an anxiety over the future of the national economy to the existing concern for “face,” officials began promoting vocational training as the main solution for mendicants’ problem, wishing to turn them from “useless beings” into “useful members of society.”