The Kwangsi Way in Kuomintang China, 1931-1939, and: Student Nationalism in China, 1924-1949, and: The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism, and: Mobilizing the Masses: Building Revolution in Henan (review)

190 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 Eugene William Levich. The Kwangsi Way in Kuomintang China, 1931-1939. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. xx, 363 pp. Hardcover $55.00, isbn 156324 -200-1. Lincoln Li. Student Nationalism in China, 1924-1949. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1994. x, 209 pp. Hardcover $59.50, isbn 0-7914-1749-2. Paperback $19.95, 1SBN 0-7914-1750-6. Edward A. McCord. The Power ofthe Gun: The Emergence ofModern Chinese Warlordism. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993. vi, 436 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 0-520-08128-5. Odoric Y. K. Wou. Mobilizing the Masses: BuildingRevolution in Henan. Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1994. viii, 477 pp. Hardcover $42.50, isbn 08047 -2142-4. No figure better symbolizes China during the first halfof the twentieth century than the soldier. Military politicians and political generals crowded China's political stage, and the reverse side of every politician's zhongshan jacket doubled in effect as a military uniform. Given the chaos of the times, it could hardly have been otherwise. The centrality of the soldier in modern Chinese history is the common refrain in the assonant quartet ofhistorical studies under review. Ranging from the merely pedestrian to the truly superb, even the weakest of these makes a contribution to our steadily expanding knowledge of Republican China. Edward McCord's excellent study of the emergence ofmodern Chinese warlordism confronts the intersection between the military profession and society most directly. A revised University ofMichigan doctoral dissertation, his book engages its subject via a detailed analysis ofmilitary politics in Hubei and Hunan, neighboring provinces that played key political roles during the early Republic. McCord's core thesis is that warlordism emerged not from the general collapse of political authority at the end ofthe Qing dynasty, but rather from the specific circumstances surrounding Yuan Shikai's effort to establish his centralized personal dictatorship. That effort entailed Yuan's often violent suppression of the interests ofprovincial elites, who had enlarged their autonomy and increased their prerogatives upon the fall of the Qing. In the process of checkmating the usurper, the motiey coalition ofprovincial military leaders that came together to oppose© 1996 by University Yuan's monarchical ambitions tilted the political balance away from the center. ofHawai i PressTj16 members of this coalition seized control ofthe areas that their armies occupied , more often than not in provinces other than their native places. Reviews 191 McCord, dien, locates the emergence ofwarlordism less in the ambition and avarice ofmilitary leaders dian in the incapacity of civilian leaders to create unified and legitimate political aufhority. Wardlordism was a failure ofpolitics, not a praetorian assault on behalf of corporate military interests against well-functioning political institutions. McCord's subtie argument both narrows the temporal scope and expands the intellectual field ofour understanding of modern Chinese warlordism. Defining the triumph of the anti-Yuan coalition as the moment when immanent tendencies in post-Qing politics developed into warlordism, McCord locates the wellspring ofthese tendencies in the "willingness ofboth Yuan Shikai and the revolutionary party to use military force to resolve the political disputes between them" (p. 172) at the time of the Second Revolution in 1913. He rejects the notion that warlordism developed in a straight line from the late Qing to the anti-Yuan movement, arguing that at many points along the way men like Tan Yankai and Li Yuanhong, ostensibly military leaders, actually represented the interests ofdominant civilian provincial elites. Increasingly, however, the resort to military measures by civilian political leaders, unable or unwilling to resolve political disagreements via negotiation and compromise, enhanced the autonomy of die military in the unstable, illegitimate, and anarchic political universe ofthe early Republic. In a briefdiscussion oftriumphant warlordism, McCord reminds us of die extent to which military expenditures monopolized state resources at the expense of all other needs. Warlord rule was the metastasis ofmalignant military power, a condition that has not been fully excised even today from the Chinese body politic. Eugene Levich presents his warlords, the Kwangsi clique during die 1930s, as neglected and misunderstood good guys, veritable agents ofreform akin to such later figures as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser or South...