Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2014

 

The Geographical Researches of Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan

(Abstract)

 

Wang Penghui

 

Standing foremost in traditional China, Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan advocated realistic reforms on the basis of the Confucian New Text school of practical statesmanship and devoted themselves to studies of frontier geography. They proposed sending immigrants to consolidate the frontier and carry out national construction in response to the twin crises of society and the age. Among these proposals, that on fortifying the frontier was the key to the whole situation. Gong Zizhen's "Study of Heaven, Earth, North, South, East and West" covers the northwest frontier and the southeast coastal frontier. Wei Yuan went a step further, indicating that historically, the northwest land frontier extended over the northeast, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet and the southeast coastal frontiers comprised the coastal areas from Liaodong to Hainan Island. Wei Yuan laid equal stress on the historical space occupied by land frontier defenses in the northwest and maritime frontier defenses in the southeast, putting forward the defensive strategy of "learning the barbarians' superior techniques in order to control them." Against the background of the full scale frontier crisis triggered by the Opium Wars, the interaction between the axes of the northwest and southeast frontiers proposed by Gong and Wei opened up the field of geographical and historical research on Chinese frontiers in modern China.