From War to Nationalism: China's Turning Point, 1924-1925 (review)

552 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 island's political reform process, examine its political symbolism, and discuss its election politics. Wachman's conclusion, albeit interesting, is rather disappointing. After all, few will quarrel with the assertion that Taiwan has metamorphosed into a democracy . Although Wachman is able to show readers how and why Taiwan democratized without a consensus on national identity (he claims that the alternative is "certain chaos"), he stops short ofattempting to apply the island's experience to other societies. He seems satisfied to suggest that the Taiwan case is something of an anomaly and appears content to leave it at that. Despite these shortcomings, this is a book that both East Asian specialists and students ofnationalism and democratization should find worth reading and discussing . It is an especially helpful volume for those who seek to gain an understanding ofpolitics in Asia's noisiest and most spirited democracy. On this level, the book is an unqualified success. Dennis Van Vranken Hickey Southwest Missouri State University Dennis Van Vranken Hickey is an Associate Professor ofPolitical Science specializing in Taiwan, China and the international relations ofEast Asia. Arthur Waldron. From War to Nationalism: China's TurningPoint, 19241925 . Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xix, 280 pp. Hardcover $39.95, isbn 0-521-47238-5. It was once axiomatic to European militarists that war was the mother ofculture and the father of national construction—militarism was the number one "ism." In any case, no one who seeks to understand China's twentieth-century experience can ignore the relationship between war, culture, and nation-building. Even for those who rightly hate it, war has been a reality: a common denominator to which virtually everything of significance can be reduced. As this important new book ably demonstrates, war has created the very environment that produced the new China. " ' From the Opium War, which first gave, die impetus to talk ofmilitary modofHawai 'i Press ermzation, to the Communist victory m 1949, the Chinese have been preoccupied with martial concerns. As intellectuals one after another pondered why their country was so weak, their thinking underwent a gradual transformation that al- Reviews 553 lowed for the creation ofa regimented state and society. Galvanized by Social Darwinism, by the importance ofarmed force on a worldwide scale, and by Qing China's inability to compete with other countries on an equal footing, writers at the turn ofthe century became captivated by the relationship between military strength and national cohesion. In Japan, surrounded by students many ofwhom were military cadets, Liang Qichao frequentìy described soldiers as if they were the saviors ofnations.1 As he, through his writing, came more under the spell of Katö Hiroyuki, Japan's leading Social Darwinist, Liang observed that "a warlike spirit is the original creative force of any national people. It is that upon which civilization relies."2 Jiang Baili, who would become the country's leading military theorist in the 1920s and 1930s, put it bluntly when he argued that China needed to embrace militarism (junguo zhuyx)? Likewise revealing the influence of Social Darwinism, Sun Yat-sen wrote that "in the present-day world, those who are able to wage war survive and those who do not perish"—a sentiment he repeated later, in the first year ofthe new republic . Sun had also read English translations ofthe great German military strategists, as evidenced by his statement that "A state is established by military power. Military power is the way ofmight [badao]; the organization for its implementation is the state." Writing in 1924, after he himselfhad been photographed in a field marshal's uniform, he would observe, somewhat hypocritically, that "The roots of China's present calamitous condition are the warlords, and imperialists who aid and abet these warlords."4 The rest is history. Yet, as Arthur Waldron, a professor ofstrategy at the Naval War College, reminds us: neither the Northern Expedition under a resurgent Kuomintang, nor the eventual Communistvictory, were in anyway inevitable. Only one thing seemed certain to Sun and his contemporaries, and that was China's continuing militarization. While everyone would agree that the warlord period set the stage for modern Chinese...