Zhang Shizhao's ability to advance dispassionate and logical argument in the pages of The Tiger belies the personal and political crises that motivated the journal's establishment. In the aftermath of the “Second Revolution” – a failed attempt by Zhang and some of his colleagues, including Sun Yat-sen, to oust Yuan Shikai from power – Zhang and his family fled to Tokyo in 1914 to begin a self-imposed exile. This political failure was only the latest faced by Zhang and those of his contemporaries sympathetic to republican and democratic government. The theoretical explorations that I examine in this book are Zhang's responses to these failures, even if they incorporate reflection on far more than the immediate political events of Zhang's time. In order to give some sense of the wider dilemmas Zhang confronted in this era of unprecedented upheaval in China, this chapter briefly surveys the major historical and intellectual developments that preceded and followed Zhang's work on The Tiger. Situating Zhang in his historical context underscores his own contribution to twentieth-century Chinese political discourse, and gives a sharper sense of the urgency with which his thoughts on founding were formulated.

China at the turn of the twentieth century

The revolution of 1911 that ended China's dynastic system was only one event in a transitional period that, as is true with many historical stages, has no clear starting point.