Kung Tian Cheng: From Confucian Scholar in Singapore to Reformer in the Chinese Republic

Abstract:Kung Tian Cheng (孔天增) (1879–1915), who was born in Malacca and educated at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore, began his career at the age of 16 as a junior clerk at Singapore’s Raffles Library, where he helped assemble a comprehensive catalogue of the library’s entire English-language collection. At the time of his death just 20 years later, he was living in Beijing, where he had served as a secretary and translator for Yuan Shikai, the first president of the Chinese Republic, and as Chief Librarian for the Presidential Library. The Confucian Revival movement in Malaya in the late nineteenth century deeply affected him, and reformist ideas influenced his writings and led him on a journey through the Straits Settlements, India, and ultimately to China.