New Insights Into the Nature of the Nationalist Regime

NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE NATURE OF THE NATIONALIST REGIME by Lloyd E. Eastman Until the mid- and late-1960s, the Nanking decade was one of the unexplored realms of modern Chinese history. In 1966, however, John Israel published his Student Nationalism in China, a fine pioneering work but one that was really more interested in the students than in the nature of Nationalist rule. Soon thereafter, however, several works were published in quick succession, each shedding light on and sparking controversy about Nationalist achievements during the Nanking period: the works by Jurgen Domes (1969), Patrick Cavendish (1969), Paul Sih (1970), and Hung-mao Tien (1972), followed by my own Abortive Revolution in 1974. [1] Since the publication of these works, the study of the Nanking decade has flourished; ·the number of scholars working on the period has swelled considerably, producing new data, new points of view, and, inevitably, new controversy. My own research has not concentrated on the Nanking decade since I completed the Abortive Revolution -- I have recently been examining the Nationalists during the 1940s -- but I have watched the new scholarship on the 1930s with continuing interest. In the following pages I should like to discuss some of the insights that I have gained to the Nationalist regime in the Nanking decade as a result of this new scholarship and my own research and reflection. I First, it is far more'apparent to me now than eight years ago that the suppression of the left-wing of the Kuomintang by the Chiang Kai-shek faction during 1928-1931 fundamentally altered the character of the Nationalist regime. Perhaps I should have realized on the basis of Cavendish's article, that the suppression of the left wing destroyed democratic impulses within the Kuomintang, abolished Kuomintang supervision of the National Government, and eviscerated the peasant asspciations and other mass organizations. Yet the polemics on these issues between the left and the right wings of the party somehow did not impress me as being related to matters of substance; I dismissed them as no more than manifestations of the power struggle between such factional leaders as Wang Ching-wei and Chiang Kai-shek. 1t is now clear, however, from the studies of Noel Miner and Bradley Geisert, and from the invaluable memoirs of Hsiao Cheng, [2] that the non-Communist left wing was a potent force at the local and provincial levels in 1927 and 1928, and that the political advocacies of the left wing represented a real alternative for the Nationalist revolution. The rejection of this leftist alternative had profound consequences for the future of the regime and of China. 8 It is now clear that the purge of the Communists in 1927 did not completely strip the Nationalist movement of its revolutionary drive. In the lower echelons of the party -- particularly among its more youthful members -- and fully a third of the party members in 1929 were under 25 years of age there was a substantial commitment to the social and economic, as well as the political, goals of the revolution. Even after the purge of the Communists, therefore, these idealistic leftists agitated to build up the mass movement, attacked the traditional rural elites, and attempted to implement Sun Yatsen 's policy of party rule. In both Chekiang and Kiangsu, for instance, they promoted rent-reduction campaigns, placed •counterrevolutionaries • on trial in special revolutionary tribunals, and led mass demonstrations against imperialism and religious superstition. In some cases, these party radicals created, for the wealthy and powerful of the old society, a virtual reign of terror. A correspondent for the North China Herald reporting from north Kiangsu re1narked on the •tyranny• of the party headquarters and •government by children,• and observed that most of the rural elite had fled for safety. [3] Although this correspondent, who was a foreigner with an pbvious bias toward the propertied classes, makes the actions of the Kuomintang radicals sound like a prelude to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, it is clear that the Kuomintang leftists were truly promoting social revolution, for better or for worse. Following Chiang Kai-shek's return from •retirement• in January 1928, this leftist movement was vigorously suppressed. Youth were...