The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 12: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part 1

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FROM ECONOMIC CRISIS TO POLITICAL ABDICATION 803

frugality to the gilded youth of the cities, or of Mu Ou-ch'u, who drew

lots in a Buddhist temple to resolve problems of administration, were

following ancient practices.

It is more surprising to see the bourgeoisie rallying to the idea of an

all powerful state as the guardian of unity and national prosperity. This

recourse to the state was contrary not only to recently imported and

incompletely assimilated liberalism, but above all was contrary to the

traditional autarchy of the merchant class. If the bourgeoisie had come to

view the establishment of a nationalist-unitary state as the final solution,

this was because (as most writers emphasized) it saw such a state as the

most effective protection against workers' demands and revolutionary

troubles. But it was also, and perhaps above all, because the bourgeoisie

saw that only a strong state was capable of regaining and preserving

national independence.

The Chinese bourgeoisie was not resigned to the arrival in power of

Chiang Kai-shek - as once it had been to that of Yuan Sbih-k'ai - merely

out of lassitude and fear. It hoped also he would rid them of their inherent

contradictions, thereby reconciling capitalism and nationalism. The

reconciliation of Chiang Kai-shek and the bourgeoisie was made easier

by the existence of old personal ties and the weakening of the merchant

community of Shanghai.

The personal ties seem to have been established in Shanghai at the

time of the Revolution of 1911, among the entourage of the military

governor Ch'en Ch'i-mei. After Ch'en's death, his old allies in the General

Chamber of Commerce and the Chekiang set, Yii Hsia-ch'ing and Chang

Jen-chieh (Ching-chiang), aided the career of his protege Chiang Kai-

shek. When in 1920, responding to Sun Yat-sen's demands for funds,

Yii Hsia-ch'ing created the Shanghai Stock and Commodity Exchange,

he brought Chiang into the enterprise. There were gathered together all

the people who later played an important role in the rise of Chiang -

Ch'en Kuo-fu, Ch'en Ch'i-mei's nephew, Tai Chi-t'ao, one of the most

brilliant Kuomintang theoreticians, Wen Lan-t'ing, friend of Yii Hsia-

ch'ing and director of the General Chamber of Commerce.

The importance of these personal ties also appeared in 1925 when

the death of Sun Yat-sen forced a realignment of forces at the centre of

the Kuomintang and the formation of a faction on the right. This Western

Hills group, which was against the presence of communists at the heart

of the Kuomintang, referred to the writings of Tai Chi-t'ao. From the

evidence one tends to think that Yii Hsia-ch'ing and Chang Jen-chieh

were not exactly strangers to the solid infiltration of the group into

Shanghai. In Canton the link between the Sun Yat-senism Study Society

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

804 THE CHINESE BOURGEOISIE

and the business elements is more difficult to establish. Up to their final

defeat in November 1925 the moderate merchants seemed to prefer to

turn to Sun's rival, Ch'en Chiung-ming. Moreover the radical orienta-

tion of the Kuomintang government up to Chiang's coup of 20 March

1926 hindered the regrouping of the right-wing forces. But the arrival

in Canton and the periodic participation in the government of Chang

Jen-chieh or Chien Chao-nan, head of the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco

Company, hint that contact had never ceased between the Kuomintang

right wing, Chiang Kai-shek and the business elements.

The connections between the Chinese bourgeoisie and the Kuomintang

extended beyond this alliance. In Canton, in particular, they reflected all

the political ambiguities of the years 1925-6. Up against a business com-

munity it had severely tested by the repression of the autumn of 1924,

the Kuomintang government tried in succession both seduction - the

obligatory doctrine of a united front - and caution. The objective was to

prevent the resurrection of an autonomous bourgeois political force.

The reconstitution of Merchant Volunteer Corps was forbidden and all

social aid and philanthropic activities were put under rigorous control."

At the same time the government sought to reach an understanding with

the merchants who were prepared to collaborate with it. It encouraged the

formation of new organizations to compete with the established bodies.

While waiting for the chambers of commerce to come around, it opposed

to them a Canton Merchants' Association."

It sought to substitute for

the Merchant Volunteers a Citizens' Corps whose expenses would be paid

by the firms but whose political and military structure would be controlled

by government authorities."

Any recalcitrants were listed as 'merchants

of comprador type' and would be placed under the direct authority of

the Kuomintang Department of Commerce."

The Nanyang Company

which refused a loan to the government was accused of repressing the

unions and put under a boycott."'

These actions were not just political manipulation. T. V. Soong,

educated in the West, an advocate of economic modernization and the

expansion of democracy, became commercial commissar in the govern-

ment and director of the Central Bank established in 1925. He seems to

have been a sincere and conciliatory intermediary with the merchants.

The Kuomintang - even during its radical period - aimed at neither the

ruination nor destruction of the merchant community but rather sought

225

NCH,

Jan.

1925,

91;

Oct.

1925,

194.

226

CWK,

March

1925,

21;

21 Nov.

1925,

288.

227

CWK,

17 April

1926,

179.

228

CWK,

Feb.

1926,

516.

229

NCH,

June.

1925,

146.

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FROM ECONOMIC CRISIS TO POLITICAL ABDICATION 805

to place it under the tutelage of the party and in its service

{tang-hud).

After the coup of 20 March 1926, by which Chiang Kai-shek confirmed

his power, the principles of this policy were not changed. But the bour-

geoisie benefited from the repression of the workers' movement, which

was initiated as early as June and intensified after the departure of the

Northern Expedition in July. The Canton base served as a testing ground

for what was to become the strategy of the Nanking government. The

success of this policy in Canton had been helped by the defeat and eli-

mination of the city's merchant militia in October 1924; by the desertion

of the richest traders fleeing the 'Reds' and also by the relatively archaic

character of a bourgeoisie that was more tied to the landed classes than

to entrepreneurs.

The Canton bourgeoisie was thus subdued. That of Shanghai was

being won over. The classic interpretations of Harold Isaacs and Andr£

Malraux see this as the counter-revolutionary choice of a bourgeoisie

threatened by the insurrectionist strikes of November 1926, and of Jan-

uary 1927. The move towards Chiang Kai-shek, in fact, constituted the

triumph of the progressive elements at the core of the merchant com-

munity. Since the summer of 1926, after the victorious march of the

Northern Expedition and the uprisings which preceded and accompanied

it, the mass movement had put the Shanghai bourgeois community on

the defensive. There was no real alternative: support the mass movement

or resist it. The choice devolved exclusively on the means of resistance.

Some recommended an alliance with the local military embodied in

Chekiang by General Sun Ch'uan-fang. Others more subtle or better

informed as to Chiang Kai-shek's true objectives, sought to ally them-

selves with the non-communists of the Kuomintang.

The elections of June 1926 for the General Chamber of Commerce

clearly illuminated the political divisions in the merchant class. Sup-

ported by Sun Ch'uan-fang, the old pro-Japanese group who had been

brushed aside in 1919-20, reappeared in force. As a sign of protest against

these gerrymandered elections, the out-going president Yii Hsia-ch'ing

left for a voyage to Japan and 150 members of the Chamber refused to

take part in the election. Their abstention helped the accession to power

of a directory that was homogeneous but not vety representative. The

banker Fu Hsiao-an (Tsung-yao) had trouble taking up his functions and

his role remained disputed as was his suitability.

»°

The overthrow of the

majority at the core of the chamber of commerce, thus achieved, forced

it into a radical political reorientation. During his presidency (1924-6),

230 'Power and politics of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce', CWR, 24 July 1926, p. 190;

Cl^K, 17 July 1926, p. 176.

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806 THE CHINESE BOURGEOISIE

which had coincided with the start of the civil wars and the large mili-

tary concentrations in Chekiang and Kiangsu, Yii Hsia-ch'ing had em-

ployed many methods to establish the neutrality of Shanghai and its

surroundings, to ensure the evacuation of defeated soldiers who became

refugees in the city and the closure of the Kiangnan Arsenal. He had

pressed equally strongly for the establishment of

special zone, Shanghai-

Woosung, endowed with municipal autonomy, free from the authority

of the provincial administration.

Faithful to the ideology and practice

of local elites, Yii Hsia-ch'ing's actions had been received as favourably

by the Shanghai community as by the Peking government.

Anxious to reassert his control over Shanghai and its financial resources,

Sun Ch'uan-fang presented in 1926 his own particular plan for a Greater

Shanghai municipality. He gave its organization to a friend of Hu Shih,

the geologist Ting Wen-chiang, but at the outset he limited its jurisdiction

to keep it subordinate to the provincial administration.

Hostile to this

policy, a large faction among the merchant community grouped around

Yia Hsia-ch'ing, and started to agitate in favour of autonomy. This cam-

paign was particularly strong in the autumn of 1926.

'' But henceforth

Sun Ch'uan-fang was able to count on the support of the chamber of

commerce. It made no attempt to oppose the re-opening of the Kiangnan

Arsenal and the president, Fu Hsiao-an, helped General Sun transport

his troops by putting at his disposal the ships of the China Merchants

Line,

of which he was director.

'* However, at the time of the insurrec-

tionist strike on 17 February 1927 the brutally effective repression imposed

in Shanghai by the police and troops of Sun Ch'uan-fang was not sufficient

to rally the bourgeoisie to a military whose defeat on the battlefield was

already accomplished.

The alliance which helped Chiang Kai-shek to establish his power in

Shanghai at the end of March and beginning of April 1927 was made,

then, not with the right wing of the bourgeoisie but with those elements

that were the most nationalist, modern and, to a certain extent, democratic.

As in Canton in 1924 the development of a revolutionary situation

in Shanghai in the spring of 1927 provoked a general realignment in the

structure of society. The old radical bourgeoisie of the beginning of the

1920s continued to fight for Chinese representation on the Municipal

231 NCH, 21 March 1925, p. 478; 25 April 1925, p. 140; 13 June 1925, p. 409. Chiang Shen-

wu,

'Shang-hai shih-cheng-chi-kuan pien-ch'ien shih-lueh' (Short history of the structural

changes in the municipal government of Shanghai), in

Shang-haiyen-chiu Izu-liao

(Research

material on Shanghai; 1st edn. 1926), 78-82.

232 NCH, 8 May 1926, p. 252.

233 HTCP, 177 (1926), p. 1832.

234 NCH, 20 Nov. 1926.

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FROM ECONOMIC CRISIS TO POLITICAL ABDICATION 807

Council, for the rendition of the Mixed Court and against the encroach-

ments of the military. But its place on the political chess board had

completely changed. Behind the cliche of

nationalist bourgeoisie betray-

ing the revolution under the influence of a group of compradors, lies

another reality: that of a bourgeoisie whose radicalism was transmuted to

conservatism by the simple fact of a general evolution of socio-political

tensions which changed the relations of the bourgeoisie with other poli-

tical groups and personalities. This brand of conservatism appears to be

much like that denned by Karl Mannheim: a dynamic movement existing

essentially as a conscious repudiation of progressivism.

This analysis finds confirmation in the study of the reorganization

and the groupings occurring in the institutions of the merchant com-

munity in the spring of 1927. The General Chamber of Commerce, as

constituted after the elections of 1926, lost its leading role to the Federa-

tion of Commerce and Industry (Shang-yeh lien-ho-hui), the brain-child

of Yii Hsia-ch'ing. It was this federation which made contact with Chiang

Kai-shek on his arrival in Shanghai on 26 March and immediately agreed

to advance a loan of three million dollars to him, his charge for re-estab-

lishing order: in other words, for him to smash the power of the com-

munist unions. The federation was the political mouthpiece of the main

commercial organizations in the city, which, from a firm base of corporate

solidarity, at the same time rejoined the Shanghai Merchant Collaborative

Association (Hu-shang hsieh-hui). As with all the Merchant Collabora-

tive Associations - either official or clandestine - set up during 1926, the

Shanghai Association was a Kuomintang organization under the control

of the Department of Merchants (Shang-min pu) created at the Second

Party Congress in January 1926. Little is known of the Shanghai Associa-

tion before it ceased being clandestine on 20 March 1927. But it seems to

have been closely linked with the Federation of Street Associations whose

branches were taken over in order to speed up the growth of the Mer-

chants' Collaborative Association during the events of April I927.

In this way one can see the amalgamation and intermingling of the Federa-

tion of Commerce and Industry, set up to help the rise of Chiang Kai-

shek, and the Federation of Street Associations which many historians

consider, from its appearance during the May Fourth movement, as the

voice of the progressive petit bourgeoisie.

Approved by the majority of the merchant community, the collabora-

235 Karl Mannheim, Essays

on sociology and

social

psychology,

ch. z.

236 Joseph Fewsmith, 'Merchant associations and the establishment of Nationalist rule in

Shanghai' (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies

Chicago, 31 March-2 April 1978).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

808 THE CHINESE BOURGEOISIE

tion of the bourgeoisie was vital to Chiang Kai-shek. By refusing to sit

on the Provisional Municipal Government, created on 29 March under

the auspices of the communist trade unions, the merchants effectively

paralysed the political initiative of the workers' organizations.

The

money lent to Chiang Kai-shek allowed him to recruit and pay body-

guards, for the most part members of the Green Gang (Ch'ing-pang),

who at dawn of 12 April attacked and disarmed the workers' militia.

Almost immediately the relationship that was originally based on

cooperation gave way to one based on subordination and exploitation.

Once the coup of 12 April was over, Chiang Kai-shek exacted a new

payment of seven million dollars, imposed a loan of 30 million dollars,

blackmailed, and extorted money at every opportunity; he caused terror

to reign among the merchants.

The Shanghai bourgeoisie were as

powerless as the notables of any provincial Chamber of Commerce held

to ransom by a passing

condottiere.

In this case, its congenital weakness,

that of shopkeepers and financiers faced by men of arms, was exacerbated

by dissension arising out of internal divisions. The Chamber of Com-

merce had lost the political authority it had possessed in earlier years.

Chiang Kai-shek negotiated one by one with the organizations, which

were unable to set up any resistance against their assimilation into the

Kuomintang apparatus. On the other hand, the repression directed against

the bourgeoisie by Chiang Kai-shek from the second half of April 1927,

appeared as a continuation of the internecine faction-fighting amongst

the bourgeoisie. The arrest warrant against Fu Hsiao-an; the confiscation

of a large part of his goods; the annulment of his election to the presidency

of the General Chamber of Commerce and the latter being put under

tutelage; all this gave a great deal of satisfaction to Yii Hsia-ch'ing and

his friends. Ousted from the direction of the Chamber of Commerce in

1926,

they regained control at the end of April 1927, when three of this

group (Yii Hsia-ch'ing, Wang Chen (I-t'ing) and Feng Hsiao-shan (P'ei-

hsi)) were called to sit on the government committee charged with the

supervision of the Chamber's activities.

The bourgeoisie did not rebel against abuses of power that at other

times and in other places they had vigorously condemned and fought

against: in this case they served the direct interests of the largest faction.

The betrayal of 1927 was not only that of the proletariat by the bour-

geoisie; it was also the bourgeoisie betraying

itself.

By abdicating all

237 Harold Isaacs, The

tragedy

the Chinese

revolution,

rev. edn. 2nd printing, 166.

238 Parks Coble, Jr. 'The Kuomintang regime and the Shanghai capitalists, 1927—29', CQ,

77 (March 1979) 1-24.

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THE RETURN OF BUREAUCRACY, 1927-37 809

political autonomy the bourgeoisie subjected itself to the blows of the

very state power that it had helped to restore.

THE RETURN OF BUREAUCRACY AND DECLINE OF THE

BOURGEOISIE, 1927-37

For a long time the Nanking decade (1927-37) seemed to coincide with

the apogee of the Chinese bourgeoisie. Accepted by observers and

journalists of the 1930s, this thesis has been taken up by most historians

who have studied the period. As late as 1975 Jean Chesneaux wrote:

'its power [of the Kuomintang] was founded on the coalition of the con-

servative managerial classes and the pro-Western business classes.'

According to this interpretation, the merchant bourgeoisie and, more

particularly, the Shanghai capitalists, along with the landowners, were

the principal supporters and beneficiaries of the regime.

Chinese communist historians generally adopt a similar interpretation.

240

With rhetorical caution they are content to denounce the compradors

and capitalist-bureaucrats, but it is in fact quite clear that the whole of

the bourgeoisie is implicated in an assumed support of the Chiang Kai-

shek regime. Indeed it is this support of the regime which, in the eyes of

communist historians, confers on this or that entrepreneur his character

as either comprador or bureaucrat. Meanwhile no one knows what hap-

pened to the old nationalist bourgeoisie, who are strangely absent from

the political and economic scene.

Recent studies

241

have begun to look again at the difficult question of

relations between the Kuomintang and the bourgeoisie. In its most ex-

treme form, this revised thesis contends that the 'urban economic interest

did not control or significantly influence the Nanking regime' and that

Chiang Kai-shek's government was only concerned 'to emasculate poli-

tically the urban elite and to milk the modern sector of the economy.'

241

If, as we believe, this revised theory is well-founded, why has the idea

of a bourgeois Kuomintang regime prevailed for so long

The difficulty

of interpretation bears striking witness to the very real ambiguities in a

regime that is difficult to analyse and describe. In a moment of discourage-

2J9 Jean Chesneaux and Francoise LeBarbier,

China

from the 1911

revolution

liberation,

188.

240 Ch'en Po-ta,

Chung-kuo ssu-ta-chia-tsu

(China's four great families). Hsu Ti-hsin,

Ktum-liao

tzu-pen

lun

(On the subject of bureaucratic capitalism).

241 Lloyd E. Eastman, The abortive

revolution:

China under Nationalist rule 1927-19)7. Parks

M. Coble, Jr. 'The Shanghai capitalists and the Nationalist government 1927-1957' (Uni-

versity of Illinois, Ph.D. dissertation, 1975). M. C. Bergere,' "The other

China":

Shanghai

from 1919 to 1949' in C. Howe, ed.

Shanghai:

revolution and development

in an Asian metrop-

olis.

242 Coble, 'The Kuomintang regime', 1-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8lO THE CHINESE BOURGEOISIE

ment a historian may well ask himself

he is indeed dealing with

regime

without

class basis.

But the

misapprehension seems

have been

knowingly fostered by the Chinese themselves. Chinese theoreticians who

are anxious

present

the

development

China

conforming with

Marxist inevitability, have sought

establish

the

existence

of a

bour-

geois stage,

be it

comprador, bureaucratic

semi-feudal.

On the

other

hand

the

Chiang Kai-shek government skilfully created

the

image most

advantageous

to its

own interests,

image likely

attract

the

sympa-

thies

and

financial

aid of the

West. Just

as the

China

Mao Tse-tung

sought

dazzle

the

eyes

leftists

radicals

the West, exuding

fru-

gality

and

fraternity,

so the

China

Chiang Kai-shek

was

keen

to con-

vince

and win

over

the

democracies

Europe

and

America

unduly

highlighting

its

urban, modernized

and

liberal character

- in a

word,

its

bourgeois character.

both cases,

the

success

these projected images

marked

the

measure

of our

ignorance about China. Because foreigners

have only limited access

China, they

are

usually forced

to use an

intermediary

interpreter

whom they remain dependent.

For Kuo-

mintang China T. V. Soong was best known for this role. He was educated

at Harvard

and had a

perfect command

English.

held press

con-

ferences, received businessmen

and

foreign advisers.

'It

was easy

for me

to deal with

T. V.

Soong whose culture

was

European', said Jean

Monnet.

144

was doubtless

far

more difficult

for

him, as indeed

for

others

like him,

to see

that the solicitude

Soong

for the

Chinese capi-

talists

was not

shared

by the

Nanking government. Behind

the

myth

created

by T. V.

Soong

for the

consumption

his foreign contacts,

one

begins today

to see a

totally different picture: that

of a

bourgeoisie

subordinated and integrated into the apparatus

the state;

bureaucracy

in a state

change,

unsure

its objectives

as of

its

methods; and

modern economic sector always dominated

by the

risks

of the

interna-

tional scene.

The alienation of the bourgeoisie

Reconstituted

its prerogatives and authority after 1927 the government

captured from the bourgeoisie the political initiative which

had enjoyed

since

the

Revolution

1911

and

even more after the May Fourth move-

ment

1919.

bureaucracy which was

far

more ambitious

its objec-

tives than was

its

counterpart under

the old

dynasty succeeded

taking

away

part

the social autonomy that

had

benefited the merchant class

24}

Eastman,

Chinese Republican

Studies Newsletter,

i. I (Oct.

1975),

14.

244 Jean Monnet, Mtmoiret,

134.

THE RETURN OF BUREAUCRACY, 1927-37 8ll

in the preceding century. Against these encroachments by the public

authorities, the foreign concessions offered only an increasingly fragile

and illusory refuge. The bourgeoisie had no choice but to allow itself to

be sucked into the state apparatus for better or worse.

Subordination of

bourgeois

organizations to the Kuomintang

regime

The Nanking government's offensive to subordinate the merchant

organizations developed from 1927 to 1932 by means of diverse and

complementary strategies: establishment of parallel bodies, reorganiza-

tion or eradication of old institutions, progressive reduction of the

bourgeoisie's political and social activity. Shanghai, the stronghold of

capitalism and headquarters of the Kuomintang, provides the best example

of the unfolding of this offensive and its success.

In the first stage, the Shanghai Merchants' Alliance (Shang-min hsieh-

hui),

established in March 1927, multiplied its subsidiary organizations

(fen-hui):

this occasioned a certain unification among traditional corporate

bodies. The guilds encompassing the same type of professional activity -

silk manufacture and raising cocoons, for example, or the trade in beans

arid rice - were called on to regroup. The adoption of unitary organiza-

tional structures generally coincided with a profound change in the

governing bodies. Discredited by charges of elitism and compradorism,

the old office-holders were forced to give way to successors who were

deemed suitable above all for their subservience to the Kuomintang.

Once they had established their control over the organizations at the

bottom, the authorities attacked the chambers of commerce, whose

suppression was claimed, without success, at the Third National Congress

of the Kuomintang (March 1929). In Shanghai the General Chamber

of Commerce was reorganized from May 1929 until June 1930 by a

committee presided over by Yu Hsia-ch'ing. Under the pretext of unifying

the representation of commercial interests, the General Chamber was

merged with the branch chambers of Nantao and Chapei and one third

of the seats were reserved for delegates of the Merchants' Alliance. Most

of the leading figures in the International Settlement were removed:

they were the men who had made the Chamber a prestigious and influen-

tial institution earlier in the 1920s. In future the Chamber was controlled

by the small entrepreneurs from the Chinese districts and by the Mer-

chants' Alliance, who were not capable or willing to challenge the regime

in power. The new Chamber of Commerce of the Municipality of Greater

Shanghai was no more than a simple cog of local government.

245 Shirley Garrett, 'Chambers of Commerce' in Elvin and Skinner (eds.), The

Chinese

City

between

two

worlds.

227-8. Coble, 'The Kuomintang regime', 23.

8l2 THE CHINESE BOURGEOISIE

the

laws

July 1927

and

May 1930,

the

municipality

Shanghai

was granted very large, important powers

and

jurisdiction which were

be used under tight control

by the

central government.

Its

Bureau

for

Social Affairs

was to

supervise

all the

commercial organizations.

The

development, which since

the

nineteenth century

had

enabled these

organizations

assume control

of the

management

of the

urban

com-

munities,

was

savagely reversed. Henceforth

it was the

municipal

au-

thorities who, encroaching

areas that hitherto

had

been

the

preserve

the

chambers

commerce

and the

guilds, were called

settle

pro-

fessional disputes, collect economic statistics

and

carry

philanthropic

works.

Deprived

autonomous representative institutions, ousted from

local management,

and

from their most traditional activities,

the

bour-

geoisie equally lost control

of a

certain type

anti-foreign movement

which

for

two decades

had developed while often using

it for

profit.

The Chinese Ratepayers' Association which continued

protest

against

the

taxes imposed

by the

Municipal Council

the International

Settlement,

was no

longer

to ask for

directives from

the

dignitaries

the Chamber

Commerce but from the Kuomintang Merchants' Depart-

ment

Shanghai.

The government finally sought

institutionalize the

boycott, which

had

been the means

merchant protest,

autonomous

social resistance against foreign ascendancy.

The

government

last

had

two-edged weapon, directed against imperialism

and the

bour-

geoisie

at the

same time.

The

initiative

in the

movement

June

1927,

triggered

Japanese troop landings

Tsingtao, escaped

the

students

as well

as the

merchants.

It was at the

Shanghai headquarters

of the

Kuomintang that

the

mass organizations gathered, where regulations

were published and where sanctions against offenders were decreed. Even

the

cages intended

hold fraudulent merchants seem often

not to

have been used,

the

boycott still gave

the

authorities

the

opportunity

reassert their control over

the

business community. This institutionaliza-

tion

the boycott became more precise during

the

course

later move-

ments. Organized

to a

new Japanese troop landing

Shantung,

the 1928 boycott was controlled and directed

the government from

the

outset. 'Universal wrath against

the

sending

Japanese troops.

Con-

centrate power under party leadership' was the

Central Daily

News

{Chung-

yangjih-pao) headline

at the

beginning

May.

247

At the end of

July

national anti-Japanese conference determined

the

correct procedures

for

246 Feetham, Report,

1. 243.

247

Shen

Pao,

June 1927,

p. 13; jo

June 1927,

13;

July 1927,

p. 13.