The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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CHIANG KAI-SHEK'S POLITICAL DOMINANCE 131
forced the resignation of the Special Committee, and in January 1928
resumed the dominant positions in the army, party and government.
Chiang also in 1928 began employing Germans, such as Colonel Max
Bauer, as military advisers and instructors. The military training and
knowledge that Bauer and others imparted to Chiang's army (although still
generally rudimentary by Western standards), together with that army's
bonds of loyalty to Chiang, made it far-and-away more effective militarily
and dependable politically than were those of any of his rivals. Wang
Ching-wei in the summer of 1927, for example, headed the rival
Nationalist government at Wuhan, and his most powerful military
supporter was the warlord of Hunan, T'ang Sheng-chih. T'ang, however,
had political aspirations of
his
own. As a result, Wang in September 1927
was suddenly stripped of power and forced to seek a coalition with his
archrival, Chiang Kai-shek. Similarly, Hu Han-min after 1932 cast his
fortunes with the militarist of Kwangtung, Ch'en Chi-t'ang. Ch'en found
Hu useful, because Hu, the leading Kuomintang ideologue, lent an aura
of legitimacy to Ch'en's otherwise purely warlord administration. Never,
however, was Hu able to impose his will upon Ch'en Chi-t'ang or
significantly influence Cantonese policies.
A second advantage that Chiang enjoyed in his political struggles was
a superior financial base. During the Northern Expedition, some
revolutionary leaders had counselled Chiang to by-pass Shanghai, which
was then heavily defended, in order to occupy North China. Shanghai
would then drop, it was argued, into the hands of the revolutionaries
without a fight. Chiang, however, like Sun Yat-sen after 1913, regarded
the great city on the Yangtze as his primary military target.
More than most other Nationalist leaders, Chiang recognized the
financial importance of Shanghai, and knew that control of its revenues
would be worth more than the command of many army divisions. Between
1912 and 1922, he had spent much time in the city. He had close ties there
with leaders of the financial community and, allegedly, with bosses of the
Green Gang (Ch'ing-pang), a secret society that controlled the city's
underworld. The financial resources of Shanghai, of course, had to be
tapped. This initially would not be difficult, for the city's capitalists were
panic-stricken now in the spring of 1927 by the approaching spectre of
communism, and they appealed to Chiang to prevent the outbreak of
revolutionary excesses in the city. This precisely suited Chiang's wishes.
Although he had in the past sometimes voiced the radical rhetoric of the
left, he too was disturbed by the growing radicalism of the Communists.
He was disturbed even more, perhaps, by the political threat to his
leadership being mounted in Wuhan by Borodin and the Chinese leftists.
Chiang and the capitalists therefore needed each other. The capitalists
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
132 THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
of Shanghai agreed in late March to provide him with an initial advance
of Y3 million.
In
return,
he
promised
to put an
end
to the
labour
disturbances in the city and to eliminate Communist influences from the
revolutionary movement. In the predawn hours of 12 April 1927, Chiang
faithfully fulfilled his part of the bargain by launching
a
massacre of the
Communist-led labour unions
in the
city. Hundreds, perhaps several
thousands
of
Communists and workers were murdered
in
this bloody
purge. But the capitalists had attained their wish; the Communists
no
longer posed
a
threat to Shanghai.
The Shanghai businessmen and bankers, however, still had
to
pay
Chiang
for his
service.
On 25
April, they gave
him an
additional
Y7 million. But this merely whetted Chiang's financial appetite, for his
military expenses were running
at
about Y20 million every month. His
agents went from shop to shop and factory to factory demanding contri-
butions. The Nanyang Tobacco Company, for instance, was ordered
to
give
Y5
00,000;
the Nantao Electric and Gas Works, Y3oo,ooo; and the
Sincere Company Department Store
Y25 0,000.
When
the
capitalists
balked, Chiang's agents threatened, blackmailed, and even kidnapped.
'Wealthy Chinese would
be
arrested
in
their homes
or
mysteriously
disappear from the
streets...
Millionaires were arrested
as
" Communists "',
reported Owen Chapman. 'Under no previous regime
in
modern times
had Shanghai known such
a
reign of terror \
23
Chiang's minister of finance,
T. V. Soong, even admitted publicly after the Northern Expedition that
' in time of war, we have perhaps been forced to resort to extraordinary
means to raise funds'.
24
Although the Nationalists ceased to employ such tactics after mid-1928,
Shanghai and its environs continued to serve as the government's primary
source of revenue. During the Nanking decade, it derived approximately
85 per cent of its tax revenue from the trade and manufacturing sectors
of the economy
-
much of which was centred in the Shanghai area. The
government was also heavily dependent for its fiscal survival on loans.
Here again, it was the Shanghai capitalists who subscribed to most of the
government loans. Able to tap the wealth
of
China's largest and most
modern city, Chiang enjoyed an enviable advantage over his rivals. Feng
Yii-hsiang, for example, complained bitterly that he could not compete
with Chiang, because the Nationalist armies were invariably better paid,
fed, and armed than his own. Chiang also, he claimed, was sufficiently
wealthy that he could cripple his opponents by purchasing defections from
the rival armies.
25
23
H. Owen Chapman, The
Chinese
revolution,
1)16-1927,
232. M CYB, ryif-jo, 629.
25
Feng Yu-hsiang, Wo
so-jen-sbib-ti Chiang Cbieb-sbib
(The Chiang Kai-shek
I
know), 17-18.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHIANG KAI-SHEK S POLITICAL DOMINANCE
I
33
The third ingredient that contributed to Chiang's ascendancy in the
Nationalist movement was his mastery of the techniques of factional and
warlord politics. He seldom committed himself irreversibly to an
ideological position or factional policy. He easily accommodated himself
to - without becoming a part of - any faction if it was politically
advantageous to do so. In late 1927 and early 1928, for instance, he
associated himself with the Left Kuomintang and the
yiian-lao
(genro in
Japanese; a group of former anarchists and elder statesmen represented
by Chang Jen-chieh, Wu Chih-hui, Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, and Li Shih-tseng);
by August 1928, he was allied with the
yiian-lao
and the right against the
left; and by March 1929, he had allied with the right against both the
yiian-lao
and the left. Within a year and a
half,
therefore, he had associated
himself with groups at most points of the Kuomintang's political
spectrum. He also had a talent for holding the loyalties of factions that
were bitterly antagonistic to each other. In the mid-1930s, for example,
the CC clique and the Blue Shirts were ready to fight each other - yet
each revered him as their leader. And both the CC clique and the Blue
Shirts despised the Political Study clique - yet many of Chiang's most
intimate advisers and trusted officials were members of the Political Study
clique.
This skill in political manipulation was discernible also in Chiang's
relations with the provincial militarists. These quondam warlords were
jealous and distrustful of Chiang, and, at one time or another, nearly all
of them raised the flag of revolt against him. Invariably, the rebelling
militarists expected other provincial militarists to join forces with them,
and it is certain that, if Chiang's enemies had acted in concert, he could
have been crushed. Yet he isolated his opponents and eliminated them
one by one. He, more than any of the other militarists, was a master of
the use of' silver bullets', bribes used to induce defections from opposing
armies. And, when not employing silver bullets, he cajoled, promised,
and threatened in order to gain the support, or at least the neutrality, of
his provincial rivals
—
until he was ready to turn on them.
Although Chiang's ideology was flexible, his drive for power was
unswerving. But his ambition for power was fuelled not solely by the
desire for personal gratification, for he was deeply committed to the
welfare of the Chinese nation. He was, however, so deeply convinced of
his selflessness and moral rectitude that he perceived his power interests
as being identical to those of the nation. What was beneficial to Chiang,
therefore, was beneficial to the nation. And-in Chiang's view-one
who opposed him was thereby acting against the best interests of the
nation. Such persons, he claimed, were 'perverse', 'opportunistic', and
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
134 THE NANKING DECADE I927—1937
lacked 'innate goodness'.
26
There was no room
in
Chiang's world
for a
loyal opposition;
if
they opposed him they were, ipso facto, disloyal
to
the nation. This self-righteousness was one
of
Chiang's great strengths;
it gave him determination
in
the face
of
criticism and adversity.
It
was
also,
however,
the
tragic element
in his
character,
for it
pushed
him
ineluctably
to
his defeat in 1949.
IDEOLOGY,
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING OF THE NANKING
REGIME
The regime that took shape
in
Chiang Kai-shek's hands after 1927 was
neither totalitarian
nor
democratic,
but lay
uncertainly between those
points
on
the political spectrum.
Its
structure, which was preserved
in
its essential features even after 1949
on
Taiwan, had been erected
in a
governmental reorganization of October 1928. The blueprint for the new
government had been drafted by Sun Yat-sen in his lectures on the Three
People's Principles
and in his
Fundamentals
of
national reconstruction.
Underlying
the
whole structure
of
government was Sun's concept
of
political tutelage. Sun Yat-sen was committed
to the
goal
of
popular
sovereignty
but he
was also convinced that
the
Chinese people were
unprepared for the responsibilities of self-rule. He had therefore predicated
three stages of the Nationalist Revolution. First was the stage of military
rule,
during which the revolutionaries would rely
on
military force
to
consolidate their power. Following the capture of Peiping in June 1928,
the Nationalist government declared that this initial stage
of the
revolution was completed, and that
it
had now progressed to the second
stage, that of political tutelage. During this phase, the revolutionary party,
the Kuomintang, was to exercise the sovereignty of the nation on behalf
of the people.
At
the same time, the party was to train the people at the
local level
in
the exercise of self-government. Through elections of
hsien
(county) magistrates, the convening
of
hsien representative assemblies,
and the making of laws so that the hsien could become fully self-governing,
the people would be educated
in
preparation
for
the third stage
of
the
revolution, that
of
democratic, constitutional rule.
Political tutelage ostensibly meant that the Kuomintang was to exercise
' party rule'
(tang-chib)
on
behalf
of
the people. Party rule was expressed
institutionally
in
the authority invested
in
the party organs, the Central
Executive Committee and the Central Political Council. The former was
26
'Tzu-shu yen-chiu ko-ming che-hsueh ching-kuo
te
chieh-tuan' (Stages traversed
in
studying
revolutionary philosophy),
Chiang tsung-t'mgyen-lun
bui-pien,
10.50.
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IDEOLOGY, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING
I 3 5
the supreme organ of party power (except during the brief sessions of
the National Party Congress, only three of which were convened during
the Nanking decade). It and especially its Standing Committee were
charged with the formulation of the guiding principles of party rule and
with the overall direction of party administration.
The Central Political Council was a bridge between the party and the
governmental structure. Although it was merely a subcommittee of the
Central Executive Committee, it was, formally at least, the supreme
authority over the National government, combining both legislative and
executive functions. As a legislative body, it could initiate legislation or
transmit decisions of the Central Executive Committee to the government.
As an executive body, it was empowered to provide general direction to
and supervision of the government. Theoretically, then, the Political
Council wielded virtually unlimited powers over the civilian branch of
the government. In practice, too, the Political Council was the locus of
authority in the government, for the head of the council was Chiang
Kai-shek."
Under the Political Council, in accordance with Sun Yat-sen's specific
prescription, was established the five-juan (or five-branch) system of
government. This was similar to Montesquieu's threefold division
between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
In addition to these three branches of government, however, Sun had
added two branches that were derived explicitly from traditional institu-
tions.
These were the Examination Yuan (for determining the qualifica-
tions of government employees by means of civil-service examinations)
and the Control Yuan (an ombudsman of government, similar to the
imperial system of censors who supervised the policies and morals of
officials). Of these five branches, the Executive Yuan was preponderant.
The president of the Executive Yuan served as prime minister, directing
the work of the subordinate ministries of foreign affairs, finance,
education, commerce and so on.
It would be a mistake, however, to devote exclusive attention to the
structure of the Nationalist government or to the formal relationship
between, say, the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan. For,
regardless of the formal positions that Chiang Kai-shek held in the party,
government or army, he wielded ultimate authority over the regime as
27
Ch'ien Tuan-sheng,
Government and politics
of
China,
139-145. Because the government was
formally subordinate to the Kuomintang, and because the actual locus of authority frequently
lay in an indeterminate relationship between the party, government and military, it is frequently
appropriate in this chapter to employ the term Nationalist regime rather than Nationalist
government. No pejorative connotation is intended by use of the term regime.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
I36 THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
a whole.
He
exercised that authority with minimal concern
for
formal
chains
of
command. 'The real authority
of
the government,' recalled
Franklin Ho, one-time adviser to Chiang, ' went wherever the Generalis-
simo went.
In
terms
of
authority, he was the head
of
everything.'
28
Or,
as an American foreign service officer observed in 1934, 'The shadow of
Chiang Kai-shek extends over this whole scene. [Before coming
to
Nanking,]
I
would have been unwilling to believe that he dominated the
Government set-up here
to
the extent that
is
now
so
apparent. Where
his interest touches, there you will find
a
certain governmental activity;
elsewhere,
if
not paralysis,
at
least
a
policy
of
drift.'
29
As
a
result of Chiang's overriding dominance of the regime and of his
predilection for ignoring formal chains of command, the government, as
a policy-formulating and administrative organization, languished.
The
bureaucracy
did
formulate numerous plans
for
social
and
economic
reconstruction, and the Legislative Yuan assiduously drafted new laws and
a draft constitution. Much
of
this governmental activity, however, had
little relation
to
political realities. For the civilian apparatus had neither
the money
to
finance its various projects
nor
the power
to
enforce
its
decisions. Only 8
to
13 per cent of the total budget during the 1930s, for
example, was allocated
for
the operations and maintenance
of
the civil
bureaucracy
—
as contrasted with
the
much larger expenditures
of
the
army.
30
T. V. Soong, minister
of
finance until 1933, endeavoured strenu-
ously to restrain Chiang's military spending so that the government could
proceed with the tasks of peacetime reconstruction, but Chiang ignored
him.
The
civil government thus always remained subordinate
to the
interests of Chiang and the military, and
it
never generated a momentum
of its own.
The party, the Kuomintang, atrophied even more than did the govern-
mental administration as a result
of
Chiang Kai-shek's transformation of
the revolutionary movement into
a
military-authoritarian regime. Where
Sun Yat-sen had regarded the party as the ultimate locus of authority and
as
the
trustee
of
the people's sovereignty during the pre-constitutional
phases
of
the revolution, Chiang Kai-shek emasculated the party. After
1929,
with the suppression of the left wing of the party, the Kuomintang
performed
no
independent role.
It
became merely
the
propagandist,
journalist and historian for the regime.
This emasculation
of
the party, together with the rise
to
prominence
in the regime of old-style bureaucrats and warlords, had a deadening effect
28
Franklin
L. Ho,
"The reminiscences
of
Ho Lien (Franklin
L.
Ho)',
160.
29
United States, State Dept. doc. 893.00/12842, Gauss to Johnson, 16 Sept. 1934, p.
1.
*° Lloyd
E.
Eastman,
Tie
abortive
revolution:
China under Nationalist rule, 1927-1937, 221.
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IDEOLOGY, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING I 37
on the morale of formerly idealistic party members. A former Kuomintang
member recalled that he 'like many.. .schoolmates, originally joined the
Kuomintang in the belief that it was the only agency in China capable
of destroying the powers so long held by provincial warlords'. As a result
of Chiang Kai-shek's deradicalization of the movement, however, he and
many like him 'were understandably disillusioned with the Kuomintang
and many of us virtually withdrew'.
31
Party membership continued to be a
prerequisite for government employment, but during the 1930s the party
became a hollow shell, its role
—
as Arthur N. Young remarked
—
becoming 'almost nominal'.
32
The Kuomintang continued in existence, however, because its com-
mittees and congresses provided a stamp of legitimacy for decisions
already made by Chiang Kai-shek. The party therefore provided some
substance, however transparent, to the regime's claim that it was not a
military and personal dictatorship but rather
—
in accordance with Sun
Yat-sen's instructions
—
a one-party dictatorship on behalf of the people
until they were prepared to undertake the responsibility of ruling
themselves.
The Nationalist regime was ambivalent in nature: at times it was
despotic and arbitrary; at other times it was compliant and feeble. In its
authoritarian guise, its power was derived largely from control of a
superior military force. Consequently, individuals or groups that chal-
lenged its power or criticized its policies were, if within the reach of the
Nationalists' army or police, often forcibly suppressed. Labour unions,
for example, had become powerful, well organized, and highly politicized
during the mid-1920s. After 1927, the leadership of these unions was
removed and replaced by agents of the regime. The guiding principle
of the unions now was not class conflict but cooperation with the
employers and with the government. Independent union activities were
proscribed, and the unions became weak, complaisant instruments of the
regime.
The student movement, which since the May Fourth Movement (1919)
had been a potent factor in national politics, was also suppressed - albeit
less effectively and permanently than were the unions.
33
In 1930, for
example, the Kuomintang's Ministry of Training proscribed all non-
academic student organizations except those that were stringently
regulated by the party. Students were simultaneously directed to concen-
31
Wang Cheng, "The Kuomintang:
a
sociological study
of
demoralization' (Stanford University,
Ph.D.
dissertation, 1953), 150.
32
Young, Nation-building, 4*4.
13
John Israel, Student nationalism
in
China, 1927-1
fj?.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
138 THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
trate upon their studies and to avoid political activities. The students were,
however, among the most passionately nationalistic groups in the country.
And in 1931-2, and again in 1935-6, when Japanese imperialist pressures
mounted and the Nanking authorities seemingly took refuge behind
a
policy of appeasement, the students' patriotism erupted into demonstra-
tions,
boycotts, and even physical attacks
on
government officials.
To
these student protests the regime invariably responded, ultimately, with
force. Distrustful
of
any political movement that
it
had
not
initiated
and did not control, and immoderately sensitive
to
the fact that
a
few
Communists were among the student agitators, Nanking threw
at
least
one thousand,
and
perhaps several thousand, students into prison.
Students were terrorized by the presence of government informers in their
classes, surprise searches
of
their rooms, and sudden disappearance
of
fellow students. The regime was thus largely successful in controlling the
student movement as
a
political force.
In
accomplishing this, however,
it alienated the students and pushed them politically leftward, many of
them eventually becoming members of the Communist Party.
Political repression became
a
primary instrument
of
Nationalist rule.
As early as 1929 and 1930, by which time the corruption, factionalism,
and maladministration could no longer be varnished over, the regime was
no longer sustained by popular support. ' Contrasted with the enthusiasm
of less than eighteen months ago,' wrote the North
China Herald
in May
1930,
'the sense of hopelessness.. .among all Chinese today is perhaps the
worst feature
of
all.'
34
Three years later, the much respected
Kuo-wen
chou-pao
(National news weekly) observed that' the masses unconcealedly
dislike and detest the Kuomintang'.
35
Determined to quash this rising tide of discontent, the regime tightened
controls over its critics. Political opponents were assassinated; captious
newsmen were arrested; newspapers and journals were censored. Because
the territorial control of the government was still limited, its critics could
find refuge and relative safety
in the
foreign-administered treaty-port
concessions
or in
the provinces controlled by Chiang Kai-shek's oppo-
nents,
such
as in
Hupei province under Chang Hsueh-liang
or in
Kwangtung under Ch'en Chi-t'ang. During the Nanking
decade,
therefore,
China enjoyed a considerable intellectual and political vitality. In the areas
of Central China controlled by Nanking, however, opposition to Chiang
Kai-shek's policies was muted. Organizations and groups that might have
imposed restrictions
on the
regime's power
or
policies were either
34
North China Herald, 20 May 1930, 297.
35
Liu Chen-tung,
*
Chung-kuo ch'u-lu wen-t'i
*
(The question of China's way out),
Kuo-tven chou-pao
(National news weekly), 10.24 ('9
)
une
'953).
2
-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
IDEOLOGY, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING 139
dissolved or rendered harmless through the imposition of controls by the
regime.
Like the relationship betweenyin andyang, however, the authoritarian
character of the regime was balanced by its essential
weakness.
Factionalism
and corruption eroded the movement's early revolutionary commitment,
and rampant bureaucratism stifled its policy initiatives. Even within
itself,
therefore, the regime lacked the drive, dedication and efficiency that might
have enabled it to realize the programmatic goals of Sun Yat-sen. But
the regime was also weak, because it lacked a firm footing in society. A
characteristic of strong, modern nation-states is that significant segments
of the population are mobilized in support of those governments' political
goals.
But the Nationalists, placing a premium on political control and
social order, distrusted mass movements and private initiative; they
therefore failed to create the kinds of broadly based popular support that,
in the twentieth century, generate true political power.
As
a
result of these inherent weaknesses, the regime had to accommodate
itself,
at times grudgingly, to the leaders of the existing social order, most
notably the landlords and capitalists. Indeed, this accommodation has
caused many
—
perhaps most
—
non-Kuomintang writers to infer that the
Nationalist regime was a class instrument of those classes.
36
And, in fact,
the interests of the capitalists and landlords did sometimes correspond
closely to the interests of the ruling regime. Nanking avoided, for
example, implementing even a moderate rent-reduction law as a result of
landlord opposition, and the Nanking leaders sometimes went to
extraordinary lengths to maintain the landlord system. It was customary,
for example, for the Nationalists, after recovering areas where the
Communists had carried out their policy of land redistribution, to
dispossess the tillers and restore the lands to the original landlords. This
policy was sometimes exceedingly difficult to implement, because the
Communists had in some areas held these lands for over six years and
the boundary-markers and deeds of ownership had in many cases been
destroyed.
The regime also formed an intimate relationship with the nation's more
powerful bankers. Having surrendered collection of the important land
tax to the provinces, the central government never contrived a means of
supporting itself financially from taxes or state-operated enterprises. It
consequently borrowed, approximately one-fifth of the government's
revenues being derived through the sale of government bonds or through
36
See, e.g. Ho Kan-chih,
Cbung-kuo
bsien-tai ko-ming sbib (History of the modem Chinese revolution),
vol. i, 119-25; Barrington Moore, Jr. Social origins of dictatorship and
democracy:
land and peasant
in the making of
the modern
world, 187-201.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
14° THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
bank loans and overdrafts. For
a
time, therefore, the regime was heavily
dependent on the banks and bankers. The banks, for their part, profited
hugely from the relationship, especially because the government custom-
arily sold its bonds to them at less than
—
often only
60—75
P
er
cent of
—
face
value. The banks in this way could often realize an effective annual return
on their loans to the government of
12—2
5
per cent.
37
Many contemporaries,
as a result, concluded that the regime represented capitalist class interests.
Assuredly, the interests of the capitalist and landlord classes did overlap
with those
of
the regime. Each was opposed
to
social revolution; each
feared the Communists; each was distrustful
of
the mobilization
of
the
peasants
and
workers.
But
sometimes their interests conflicted.
The
capitalists had first been apprised of this truth in 1927-8 when the regime
resorted
to
threats, blackmail and kidnapping
to
finance the last phase
of the Northern Expedition. In
193 5,
too, the government broke whatever
political power
the
bankers
had
wielded.
By
simply issuing
new
government bonds, and forcing the privately owned Bank of China and
the Bank of Communications to accept these bonds as capital, H. H. Kung
with
a
single blow made the government the banks' major stockholder.
Using similar tactics, Kung quickly gained control of several lesser private
banking corporations, and by 1937 the Nanking government controlled
about 70 per cent
of
the nation's total banking assets.
38
These banking
coups effectively ended the bankers' role as
a
political pressure group,
and demonstrated beyond doubt that
it
was the regime that controlled
the capitalists rather than vice versa.
The long-term interests
of
landlords were also frequently
in
conflict
with those of the regime. These landlords generally wished to maintain,
or even increase, their dominance
of
their local areas. They organized
militia, operated schools, managed construction and other local pro-
grammes. They also collected taxes, ostensibly to support these projects,
although indeterminately large portions of these revenues were siphoned
into the pockets of the local elite. The regime, by contrast, endeavoured
to maximize its control, constandy pushing its administrative,
fiscal
and
military authority downward into the villages. Proposed reforms
of
the
tax system, for instance, threatened to restore to the tax rolls landlord-held
lands that for years and decades had escaped the tax-collectors' grasp. The
government's attempts to install its own cadres in local government posts
37
Young, Nation-building, 98, 507-8.
38
Parks
M.
Coble, Jr.
Tie
Shanghai capitalists and the Nationalist government, 1927-19)7, 161—207.
A
recent study shows in detail that cotton-mill-owners
in
the Shanghai area were by no means
powerless vis-a-vis the National government, but neither did they control the government. See
Richard Bush III,' Industry and politics in Kuomintang China: the Nationalist regime and Lower
Yangtze Chinese cotton mill owners, 1927-1957'.
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