Roads Not Taken: The Struggle of Opposition Parties in Twentieth-Century China, and: One Culture, Many Systems: Politics in the Reunification of China (review)

482 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 NOTES1. Stephen Owen, The Poetry oftheEarly Tang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). 2.Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 49. All the Chinese texts I discuss have been conveniently gathered together in Owen's book, so rather than send the reader to different sources, I have given the page numbers for the Chinese texts in Owen's work. The translations, however, are my own. 3.Owen, Readings, p. 44. 4.Ibid., p. 46. In his commentary, Owen has an analysis ofthe various connotations ofthe wordfeng. 5.Ibid., p. 43. 6.Owen, Poetry, p. 155. ssg Roger B. Jeans, editor. Roads Not Taken: The Struggle ofOpposition Parties in Twentieth-Century China. Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1992. xi, 385 pp. Hardcover $58.00. Donald H. McMillen and Michael E. DeGolyer, editors. One Culture, Many Systems: Politics in the Reunification ofChina. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1993. xix, 314 pp. Paperback $48.50. Despite the best efforts ofboth historical and contemporary Chinese autocrats to crush the advocacy ofliberal democracy, buds of democracy continue to sprout in Chinese soil. The two edited collections under review consider important facets of this huge and important topic. Roads Not Taken examines the leaders, programs , and actions of the minor opposition parties which both opposed and worked with the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the 1920s to the present. One Culture, Many Systems concentrates on aspects of a liberal—ifnot democratic—Hong Kong as it faces imminent incorporation within the illiberal People's Republic of China. Despite dealing with the political margins of modern China, Roads Not Taken is an important book. Unusually cohesive for an edited collection, the papers in Roads Not Taken both complement and engage each other. In his excellent introduction , Roger B. Jeans argues that the minor party leaders by and large combined Western influence and Chinese tradition, often operated overseas, were highly educated, and believed in the transformative power of education. Almost all were suspicious of the Chinese Communists and all were repressed by either the Chinese Nationalists or Chinese Communists or both. Their movements were generally small, with limited numbers of educated, urban followers. They lacked ofHawai'i Press Reviews 483 adequate funds and they tended to organize loosely on the basis ofparticularistic ties (guanxi). The various organizations often factionalized and did not coalesce to combat the Nationalists or Communists. Five of the sixteen papers in Roads Not Taken deal with individual leaders. Roger Jeans discusses the difficulties of Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang) (1887— 1969) during the first halfofthe Nanjing Decade (1927-1931). A disciple ofLiang Qichao as early as 1906, Zhang had long opposed the Chinese Nationalists owing to the "historical, mutual hostility between the Liang group and the GMD" (p. 38). Furthermore, Zhang's school in Shanghai had received support from the warlord Sun Chuanfang. After the Nationalists occupied Shanghai, Zhang continued to oppose the Nationalists (and the Communists), activities which led to his politically inspired kidnapping in June 1929. Ransomed, Zhang went to Germany where he had earlier studied, only returning to China in mid-1931 to accept a position at Yanjing University (where the Nationalists had less influence). Unusually among the oppositionists, Luo Longji, the subject of a paper by Fredric J. Spar, "unwaveringly placed the individual, not the state, at the center of his deliberations" (p. 61). Thus, Luo "emerged as a preeminent advocate of a liberal political alternative in China" (p. 61). Very outspoken and abrasive, Luo angered Chiang Kai-shek during the Second World War and Mao Zedong during the Hundred Flowers period in 1957. The only leader ofthe Democratic League "really qualified for hard-nosed practical politics" (p. 75), Luo unfortunately had character and behavior flaws which "compromised his ability to have a greater impact on Chinese politics" (pp. 75-76). (One wishes that Spar had elucidated these flaws more fully.) Thomas D. Curran writes about Huang Yanpei (1878-1965), a professional educator who stressed the importance ofvocational education. Curran concludes: "Led as it was by intellectuals like Huang, who consciously avoided direct political action...