Ma Xiangbo
Ma Xiangbo | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Ma Liang |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1870 |
| Rank | Priest |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 7 April 1840 |
| Died | 4 November 1939 (aged 99) |
| Buried | Lang Son 1939-1952, Shanghai 1952 |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Alma mater | Collège Saint-Ignace, Shanghai |
| Ma Xiangbo | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 馬相伯 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 马相伯 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Ma Xiangbo (traditional Chinese: 馬相伯; simplified Chinese: 马相伯; pinyin: Mǎ Xiàngbó; Wade–Giles: Ma3 Hsiang4-po2; April 7, 1840 – November 4, 1939) was a Chinese former Jesuit priest, scholar and educator in late-Qing and early-Republican China. He was one of the founders of Aurora University, Fu Jen Catholic University and Fudan University.[1][2]
Ma Xiangbo's original given name was Jianchang (建常) but was changed to Liang (良). "Xiangbo" was his courtesy name. He also adopted the Catholic name Joseph.
Biography
Ma Xiangbo was born in Dantu, Jiangsu province to a prominent Catholic family. At the age of 11, he enrolled in a French Jesuit school in Shanghai, Collège Saint-Ignace (now Xuhui High School),[3] where he remained first as student and later as teacher until 1870.
In 1870, he was ordained priest in the Jesuit order.[1] Ma left the order and priesthood because of its discrimination against Chinese clergy.[4]: 137 Ma remained active in Chinese Catholic circles.[4]: 137 After leaving the priesthood, he worked in civil service with his brother Ma Jianzhong.[4]: 137 Both brothers led significant political lives, with Jiangzhong working as a prominent official in the Qing government and Xiangbo serving as a diplomat from 1881 to 1897 in various postings in Asia including Japan (Tokyo 1881, Yokohama 1892), Korea (1882-1885?), Europe (Britain and France 1886–1887) and the United States.[5]
In 1886/87, he visited France and eventually devoted his life to higher education.[6]
Ma was a major proponent of Catholic education in China.[4]: 137 In 1903, Ma donated funds to found Aurora University (Zhendan Academy) under the auspices of French Jesuits.[4]: 138 Its focus was to train translators to improve dialogue between traditional Chinese ideas and language and the ideas of Western modernity.[4]: 138 Disagreements developed between Ma and the French Jesuits.[4]: 138 They contended that Ma's pedagogical method and the resulting school atmosphere was chaotic.[4]: 138 The vice director of the school sought to require top-down control of the curriculum and a French Université ethos.[4]: 138 During the 1904-1905 academic year, the vice director alleged that Ma harbored revolutionaries at the university and abolished the student's self-governing body; Ma resigned.[4]: 138
Between 1912 and 1917, Ma and Ying Lianzhi petitioned the Holy See to establish an officially Catholic university in the capital of China's new republic.[4]: 139 This helped bring about the founding of Catholic University of Peking, which was the only pontifical institution in China and the only Christian institution launched with an all-Chinese faculty.[4]: 139
Ma also founded the Fudan Public School (1905).
His idea of establishing a highest body of learning was eventually realized in 1928 by his close friend, the educator Cai Yuanpei, who established the Academia Sinica.
During the 1920s, Ma sought to mediate between the Catholic Church and its critics in the Anti-Christian Movement.[4]: 127
Views
During the last decades of the Qing dynasty, he was a proponent for constitutional reform.[4]: 137
In his 1908 essay The Need for Political Parties, Ma wrote that political parties develop our of a natural human desire to belong to a group or nation, and that political parties are multiple because different sub-groups in turn have different views and goals.[4]: 152 Ma wrote:[4]: 152–153
Even though we cannot force others in the nation to have exactly the same aspirations as our own, and it is inevitable that some people's views will be different, a group of us can express our aspirations and then various other groups will respond, seeking to pursue the aspirations they have in common and seeking to get rid of what they are opposed to.
In the early Republic of China, he was a major public voice in support of representative democracy.[4]: 137
References
- ^ a b Wiest, Jean-Paul (2010). "Ma Xiangbo: Pioneer of Educational Reform". In Carol Lee Hamrin (ed.). Salt and Light, Volume 2: More Lives of Faith That Shaped Modern China. Wipf and Stock Publishers. pp. 41–60. ISBN 978-1-60608-955-2.
- ^ Weist, Jean-Paul (1999). "Ma Xiangbo". In Gerald H. Anderson (ed.). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 443–444. ISBN 978-0-8028-4680-8.
- ^ Who's who in China; biographies of Chinese leaders. Publisher Shanghai China Weekly Review. 1936. p. 185.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Wong, Stephanie M. (2025). Making Catholicism Chinese: the Catholic Church in a Modernizing China. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-762369-5.
- ^ Lu Yongling (1996). "Statesman and Centenarian: Ma Xiangbo as Witness of China's Early Modernity". In Hayhoe, Ruth; Yongling Lu (eds.). Ma Xiangbo and the Mind of Modern China 1840-1939. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 143–203. ISBN 978-1-56324-831-3.
- ^ Zhu Weizheng (1996). "Standing Between Two Worlds: Ma Xiangbo's Educational Thought and Practice". In Hayhoe, Ruth; Yongling Lu (eds.). Ma Xiangbo and the Mind of Modern China 1840-1939. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. pp. 13–88. ISBN 978-1-56324-831-3.
Further reading
- Howard L. Boorman, ed. (1967). Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 470–472.
- Ruth Hayhoe; Yongling Lu, eds. (1996). Ma Xiangbo and the Mind of Modern China 1840-1939. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-1-56324-831-3.