About this Event
$10 General Admission | $5 Student and Senior Admission | Free for MOCA Members
How did a reform movement championed by imperial China’s most famous reformer take root across North America, and what can it tell us about the birth of modern Chinese politics? Join authors and scholars Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson for an in-depth conversation on their new reference work, A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899 to 1911 (Brill, 2025; Open Access PDF and hardcover).
Drawing on five decades of scholarship and newly uncovered archives, Worden and Larson trace how Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association (Baohuanghui) built a transnational network of more than 160 chapters across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. These chapters founded schools, newspapers, women’s associations, and political pressure campaigns that advanced the goal of transforming China into a constitutional monarchy. The discussion will examine the Association’s on-the-ground organizing tactics, its role in pivotal moments such as the 1905 anti-American boycott and constitutional petition drives, and its enduring impact on Chinese diasporic civic life.
Moderated by Evans Chan, whose films Chinatopia and Datong: The Great Society and the opera Datong: The Chinese Utopia helped revive global interest in Kang Youwei, this program offers a rare, richly documented view of a pivotal moment when overseas Chinese reshaped the political imagination of a nation.
About Robert L. Worden
Robert L. Worden (b. 1945, Olean, NY) is a historian specializing in Chinese and Asian affairs. He earned his B.A. in History from St. Bonaventure University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian History from Georgetown University. From 1973 to 2007, he served in the Library of Congress’s Federal Research Division, producing over 100 analytical studies and co-authoring or editing eight volumes in the Country Studies Series. He later held leadership roles as Acting Chief of the Asian Division and Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Scholarly Programs. Worden is also the author and editor of several books and numerous articles, and remains active in community service and heritage work. He and his wife, Norma Chue, have three children, twelve grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
About Jane Leung Larson
Jane Leung Larson is an independent scholar based in Goshen, MA and New York, NY. A graduate of Reed College (B.A., Anthropology, 1967), she has worked in the China field since 1978, serving as the founding executive director of the Northwest China Council in Portland, Oregon (1980–95) and later as an editor with China Institute and the Committee of 100 in New York (2000–13). Since 1985, she has pursued independent research on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui, beginning with the papers of her grandfather, Tom Leung (Tan Zhangxiao), a student of Kang and Baohuanghui leader in Los Angeles. Her work explores the organization’s global evolution, its role in the 1905 anti-American boycott, and the constitutional petition movement. She has presented widely in the US, Canada, Singapore, and China, and in 2010 launched the blog Baohuanghui Scholarship to foster collaboration in the field.
About Evans Chan 陳耀成
A critic, librettist, and filmmaker, Evans Chan has directed 15 award-winning films, including Journey to Beijing (1998), Sorceress of the New Piano (2004), and Love and Death in Montmartre (2019). His works have been showcased at major film festivals, such as Berlin, Rotterdam, London, Moscow, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Taiwan's Golden Horse, among others. Time Out named Chan’s directorial debut, To Liv(e) (1991), one of the “100 Greatest Hong Kong Films.” Chan's two films about Kang Youwei —Chinatopia (2011) and Datong: The Great Society (2011) — as well as the opera Datong: The Chinese Utopia (2015), for which he wrote the libretto, have contributed to the revival of interest in the last reformer of imperial China.
About A Chinese Reformer in Exile
A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899–1911 (Leiden: Brill, 2025; Open Access PDF and Hardcover) is an encyclopedic reference work documenting the exile years of imperial China’s most famous reformer, Kang Youwei, and his political organization, in effect China’s first mass political party. With the goal of transforming China’s autocratic empire into a constitutional monarchy, the Chinese Empire Reform Association network spawned more than 230 chapters on five continents. North America was where Kang's organizational achievements were most fully realized. Kang, his disciples, and local leaders practiced retail politics by organizing 160 chapters in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and associated schools, newspapers, military academies, women’s associations, businesses, and political pressure campaigns. Kang's most potent contribution to the Chinese polity was his success in rousing Chinese at home and abroad to care about their country’s political future and to act together to further their goals in a constructive way. Based on Robert Worden’s 1972 Georgetown University Ph.D. dissertation, a multinational team of historians contribute new insights from 50 years of additional scholarship and previously unknown archival materials.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 10.00
