The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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CHINA'S NEW MOOD, 1936-7 161
A second reason for the new mood of the nation was that Chiang
Kai-shek now appeared to have aligned himself with the prevailing
anti-Japanese sentiment. Hitherto, he had consistently stressed that China
was too weak and divided to resist imperialist aggression, and he had
used all the resources at his command, including secret police and censors,
to repress the critics of his policy of appeasement. The anti-Japanese stance
of the Kwangtung-Kwangsi rebels had, however, forced Chiang on
13
July
1936 to declare that China, rather than agree to further territorial
concessions to the Japanese, was prepared to make '
the
ultimate sacrifice'
of an all-out war of resistance. Although Chiang had doubtless timed this
declaration so that it would defuse potential popular support for the rebels,
the declaration may in fact have resulted from a hardening of his
determination to resist further Japanese encroachments. When in Novem-
ber 1936 the Japanese attempted to establish a satellite state in Suiyuan
province, for
example,
a Nationalist army under General Fu Tso-i strongly
and successfully resisted. In November and December, too, the Chinese
foreign minister, Chang Ch'iin, unflinchingly rejected a set of Japanese
demands, displaying thereby
a
defiance of the Japanese that the Nationalists
had not shown throughout their entire tenure in Nanking. No doubt
Chiang Kai-shek still hoped to postpone what was felt to be the inevitable
war with Japan. Strong nationalistic sentiment, both among the people
and perhaps especially within his army, however, persuaded him now to
assume an unprecedentedly firm stance against the Japanese.
A third factor contributing to China's new national mood was its
emergence from the economic depression that had gripped the country
since the winter of 1931—2. In November 1935, with silver flooding out
of the country to foreign buyers
—
thereby badly eroding public confidence
in fa-pi
—
Nanking abandoned the silver standard and switched to a
managed currency. This enabled Nanking to meet its financial needs by
increasing the volume of note issues, and in just a year and a half the
volume oi fa-pi
in
circulation more than tripled. The effect was to stimulate
an inflationary trend that by mid-1937 had restored agricultural prices to
their 1931 level. Farm credit now also became more readily available and
interest rates fell. Thus, although the inflationary effects of the currency
reform had been unanticipated and actually unwanted by Nanking's fiscal
experts, that reform started the entire economy on the road to recovery.
Coinciding in 1936 and 1937 with the rising agricultural prices were
bumper harvests, the best in nearly twenty years. As a consequence of
this happy juxtaposition of excellent crops and high prices, the value of
China's harvest in 1936 was 45 per cent higher than the average for the
years 1933-5. With relative prosperity in the villages, peasants began
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l6z THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
buying the industrial commodities that they had denied themselves since
1931.
The result was a fresh stimulus also to the urban economy.
The upturn of the economy in the autumn
of
1936, together with the
enhanced unity of the nation and the government's new-found determina-
tion
to
resist the Japanese, had an extraordinary effect
on
the national
spirit.' At the moment,' reported Columbia University professor Nathaniel
Peffer
in
October 1936, 'Chinese are inclined
to a
mood
of
confidence
and impassioned patriotism.'
77
Likewise an editorial
in
China's leading
independent newspaper,
the
Ta-kung-pao ('L'Impartial'), declared
in
December,' In the period of the last few months, the people's confidence
seems as though
it
were revived from the dead.'
78
Chiang Kai-shek was the principal political beneficiary
of
this new
national mood. Earlier in the decade, he had been widely viewed as an
ill-educated militarist striving only for personal power. Now, however,
he was praised as a far-seeing leader who, so long as the nation had been
torn by internal struggles, had wisely avoided
a
confrontation with the
Japanese. Chiang for the first time had become a popular and seemingly
inexpendable leader.
At the crest of this new popularity, however, the Nanking regime was
suddenly plunged into a brief but unprecedented crisis when Chiang Kai-
shek was kidnapped
at
Sian. Despite
his
expressed determination
to
resist further Japanese encroachments, Chiang's bite
noire
was still
the
Communists. And he was convinced that, with just one further campaign,
the Communists
-
located since
the
completion
of the
Long March
in northern Shensi, and reduced
to
about 30,000 armed men-could be
finally annihilated. But the North-west Bandit-Suppression Force that
Chiang assigned
to
this operation had not responded
to
his marching
orders. This army, commanded
by
Chang Hsueh-liang and composed
largely
of
natives
of
Manchuria, felt little zeal
for
the anti-Communist
campaign. They were convinced that
the
real enemy
was not the
Communists, whom they had learned to respect as true patriots, but the
Japanese, who had invaded their homes.
Unable to enforce his orders from Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek flew
to
the army headquarters in Sian on 4 December, where he exhorted Chang
to commence the attack. The Manchurians were adamant, however, that
they should,
in
concert with the Communists, fight the Japanese. And,
when their entreaties failed, they overpowered Chiang Kai-shek's body-
77
New
York Times,
4
Oct. 1936,
2;.
78
Ta-kimg-pao (L'Irapartial) (13 Dec. 1936), sec.
1, p. 2.
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ASSESSMENT OF NATIONALIST RULE 163
guard in the pre-dawn hours of
12
December and placed their commander-
in-chief under arrest.
For two weeks, Chiang Kai-shek was held prisoner in Sian. Radical
young Manchurian officers demanded that he be put to death. But the
calmer voice of Chang Hsueh-liang, who sought not to kill Chiang but
only to change his policy, prevailed. That Chang Hsueh-liang succeeded
in this purpose has never been officially admitted, although it is now clear
that Chiang Kai-shek did make a verbal promise to cease attacking the
Communists and to resist the Japanese. Finally, on 25 December, with
the concurrence of Communist representatives who were in constant
consultation with the mutineers, Chiang was released and flew back to
Nanking.
79
The Sian incident had been a traumatic episode for the Chinese. Public
response
—
marked by profound agony and concern during his captivity,
and by unrestrained relief and joy upon his release - confirmed Chiang's
widespread popularity and buttressed his increasingly autocratic powers
within the regime. Despite his asseverations that he had made no
concessions to his captors, there were no further attacks against the
Communists. Indeed, negotiations between Nanking and the Communists,
leading to the formation of
a
united front, were soon under way. For the
first time in
a
decade, the Chinese seemed to be putting aside their domestic
quarrels in order to resist the foreign aggressor.
AN ASSESSMENT OF NATIONALIST RULE DURING THE NANKING
DECADE
The Nationalists were granted only ten years from the establishment of
their government in Nanking until the nation was engulfed in a long and
devastating war. Ten years was too brief
a
time to establish a completely
new national administration and to turn back the tide of political
disintegration and national humiliation that for a century and a half had
assailed the nation. Even if conditions had been ideal, the new government
could have done little more than initiate political, social and economic
reforms.
Despite the adverse conditions afflicting the nation, there had been
progress during the decade. By mid-1937, the central government was
seemingly ensconced in power, so that there was greater political stability
than at any time since 1915. The economy was on the upturn; the
79
Tien-wei Wu, The Sian Incident: a pivotal point in modern
Chinese
history, 142—8 tad passim.
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164 THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
government was pushing ahead with various transportation and industrial
schemes; the currency was more unified than ever before. Many observers,
both Chinese and foreign, believed that the Nationalists had in just ten
years reversed
the
tide
of
disintegration. The American ambassador,
Nelson T. Johnson, for
example,
wrote in April 1937 that 'An observer...
cannot
but be
impressed
by the
energy with which
the
Chinese
government
is
pushing its program
of
economic reconstruction on
all
fronts,
agricultural, industrial and communications.'
80
The British com-
mercial counsellor at about the same time noted 'the increasing, justified
confidence which the Chinese themselves as well as the world at large have
in the future of this country, a confidence based on the remarkable growth
of stability achieved in recent years and the improved political, financial
and economic conduct of affairs
-
government and private'.
81
The conditions that had generated this swelling optimism, however,
were of such recent vintage
-
appearing less than
a
year before the war
began
-
that
it
would be folly for a historian to insist dogmatically that
those conditions necessarily portended long-term success and stability for
the regime. The improved economic situation, for example, was directly
related to the vagaries of China's weather and to the uncertainties inherent
in the inflationary trend set off by the creation of a managed currency.
The political and military unity of the nation was also extremely fragile,
as would become grievously apparent later
in
the war years. And the
popularity of Chiang Kai-shek was attributable to his avowed determina-
tion to resist the Japanese rather than to any fundamental reforms in the
regime
itself.
The new mood of the nation, in other words, had been generated largely
by superficial and possibly transient phenomena. Peering beneath those
surface features, one discerns that the regime continued
to
be, even
at
the end
of
the Nanking decade,
a
clumsy and uncertain instrument of
national renewal. The civil bureaucracy remained inefficient and corrupt.
Government offices were filled with nepotistic appointees who had few
if any qualifications for office, but filled the government bureaus with
superfluous and self-serving personnel. Wages of these employees were
low, and corruption was consequently rife in the administration. As late
as September 1936, Chiang Kai-shek bemoaned the ineptitude
of
the
bureaucracy, asserting that
'If
we
do
not weed the present body
of
corruption, bribery, perfunctoriness, and ignorance, and establish instead
a clean and efficient administration, the day will soon come when the
revolution will be started against us as we did against the Manchus.'
82
80
Quoted in Young,
Nation-building,
419.
8l
Quoted in
ibid.
420.
82
North
China
Herald,
16 Sept. 1936, 482.
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ASSESSMENT OF NATIONALIST RULE 165
Some
of
the civilian leaders
in
the bureaucracy were educated, modern-
minded men. Since 1935,
in
particular, Chiang Kai-shek had brought into
government service
a
number
of
respected bankers, journalists
and
intellectuals, such
as
Chang Kai-ngau, Weng Wen-hao,
Wu
Ting-ch'ang
and Tsiang T'ing-fu,
who
were generally highly capable
and
relatively
progressive. These new men, however, exerted minimal influence on basic
government policy.
The men who in
fact controlled
the
regime seldom
comprehended
how to
cope with
the
tasks
of
social
and
economic
regeneration. Franklin
Ho, who
became
a
close political
and
economic
adviser
to
Chiang Kai-shek
in 1936,
recalled that
'One can
only
be
surprised
to
know just how unaware people
at the top
were
of
what was
going
on, how
little they knew
of
actual conditions
in the
country,
and
how they were even less aware
of the
theoretical basis
of
those
conditions.'
83
Some
of
these people
at the top
were skilled technicians,
but they tended
to be
almost exclusively oriented
to the
urban,
modernized sectors
of
society. They therefore had little understanding
of
the problems
or of
the potentialities
of
the rural areas, which constituted
the soul
of
the nation.
T. V.
Soong
and H. H.
Kung,
for
example, were
skilled financiers
and
budget managers,
but
they never confronted
the
problem
of how to
mobilize
the
resources
of the
agricultural sector
-
which provided two-thirds
of the
national product
- if
China were
to
develop
any
momentum
in its
programmes
of
transport
and
industrial development.
The military continued to hold ultimate power in the Nationalist regime
and
to
establish
the
regime's priorities. However enlightened
the
civilian
administrators might have been, therefore, they were little more than tools
of
the
military.
And the
military
men
tended
to be
considerably less
worldly than
the
civilians,
and
were much less oriented
to the
problems
of social
and
economic reconstruction. They found solutions
to the
national problems chiefly in authoritarianism and political repression.' All
too often,' remarked Arthur Young, these militarists ' were incompetent,
reactionary, and/or corrupt.'
84
With this kind
of
men dominant
in the
upper reaches
of
the regime, the prospects
of
the government responding
creatively to the nation's exigent problems were exceedingly unpromising.
One
of
the problems
for
which the Nationalist leadership provided
no
solutions, for
example,
was that, as Arthur Young put it,' The government
failed
to
identify with
the
people,
but
rather stood above them.'
85
The
regime was
a
dictatorship built
on
and maintained
by
military power.
Its
leaders were jealous
of
their power, disinclined
to
share that power
and
83
Franklin
L.
Ho, 'The
reminiscences
of
Ho
Lien',
144.
84
Young,
Nation-building,
423.
85 n,jj ^
2
j
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l66 THE NANKING DECADE I927-I937
its perquisites with others, and repressive
of
political rivals and critics.
In
a
modernizing and increasingly nationalistic polity, where the citizens
are inevitably becoming more politically alert, this kind
of
exclusivist
wielding
of
power
is
generally self-destructive. Certainly this
is
not
to
suggest that China needed
to
adopt Anglo-American institutions
of
democracy,
for
assuredly those were not suitable
to
China
at
the time.
The Nationalists should, however, have allowed and even encouraged the
politically mobilized elements
to
become involved
in
the processes
of
government. It might, for example, have permitted trade unions, student
and professional associations, and local self-government assemblies
to
become vehicles of political mobilization. Or
it
might have injected life
into the Kuomintang by making
it
an instrument for the supervision of
government rather than being an atrophied limb of the regime.
During periods of extreme political crisis, the regime did go through
the motions
of
expanding political participation.
In
1932,
for
instance,
when public opinion
had
turned strongly against
the
regime
for its
unmilitant response to the Japanese attacks on Manchuria and Shanghai,
the government convoked
a
National Emergency Conference designed
to allow prominent persons outside the regime to advise the authorities.
Whenever such crises passed, however,
the
regime returned
to its
accustomedly authoritarian
and
exclusivist methods
of
rule.
In
some
regimes, such as Franco's Spain or Salazar's Portugal, such authoritarian
solutions have been remarkably stable. China, however, was many times
larger and therefore incomparably more difficult
to
control than were
those European states.
Exacerbating the inherent instability of the Nationalist regime were the
unresolved'"problems in China's villages. Scholars are currently debating
whether thje peasants' standard
of
living
was
declining during
the
Republican period
or
remaining
at
about the same level. There
is
little
dispute, however, that the life of the peasants generally was impoverished
and occasionally even brutish.
As a
consequence, peasant rebellions,
banditry, and other forms of social pathology had become endemic in the
rural areas. These dissident activities had, however, lacked the political
awareness and the organization needed to transform them into politically
revolutionary movements. By the 1930s, however, both the aspirations
and the organization were being brought to the peasants. As
a
result of
the increasingly rapid process
of
modernization
in
China, the peasants
were learning of
ways
of life different from their own mundane existence.
Largely through the flow
of
commerce, they learned of worlds beyond
their villages, and commerce had expanded dramatically by the 1930s.
In
1935,
for instance, about
54
per cent of China's families bought kerosene;
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ASSESSMENT OF NATIONALIST RULE 167
cigarettes and cigarette advertising penetrated even to the farthest
provinces. Rural youths, moreover, who were being recruited to work
in urban factories, vastly broadened their intellectual horizons by exposure
to the cities and to workers from other provinces - and, returning home
periodically, they communicated what they had learned to their fellow
villagers.
86
Radio and newspapers were also making inroads into the
hinterlands, conveying information about alternative modes of existence.
'Nothing,' Samuel Huntington has observed, 'is more revolutionary than
this awareness.'
87
Although little research has yet been attempted on this
question of changing peasant attitudes and outlooks in modern China,
the probability that peasants were becoming aware not only that they were
suffering, but that those sufferings were not inevitable, suggests the
presence of a potentially powerful destabilizing factor in the countryside.
The Communists, moreover, had begun providing the organization that
could transmute peasant discontents into political power. The Nationalists
. might, in the absence of a Japanese invasion, have continued employing
repressive measures against the Communists. But the facts that the
Nationalists assigned such a low priority to the elimination of the
socio-economic causes of peasant discontent, and that the Communists
had already demonstrated their tenacious capacity to survive, also suggest
that the rural
areas
of Nationalist China were destined to remain
a
tinder-box
even if there had been no war with Japan.
These several factors
—
the ineffectual administration of the Nationalists,
their incomprehension of the tasks of national reconstruction, their failure
to accommodate into the political process the broadening strata of the
population that were becoming politically alert, and the persistence of the
rural problem
—
did not mean that the Nationalist regime was fated to
be overthrown. They did, however, portend continuing instability.
84
Dwight H. Perkins, Agricultural
development
in China, 1)68-196!, m-12, 126-7; Jean Chesneaux,
The Chinese labor
movement,
1919-1927, 48-9, 66-70; Cochran, 18—22; Albert Feuerwerker, 'The
foreign presence in China', CHOC 12.196; Martin M. C. Yang,
Chinese
social structure: a historical
study, 339.
87
Samuel P. Huntington, Political order in
changing
societies,
298.
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CHAPTER 4
THE COMMUNIST
MOVEMENT 1927-1937
The decade between the
first
and second united fronts, from the KMT-CCP
break-up
in
mid-1927
to
mid-1937,
was a
time
of
disaster, trial
and
tribulation
for the
Communist movement that brought
it
close
to
extinction.
Yet
from this period emerged
an
experienced
and
tested
leadership with
a
capacity
not
only
to
survive
but to win
power.
The
severity
of
the problems met and surmounted by the CCP
in
these years
can
be
best understood
by
looking first
at its
crisis
of
membership
and
organization.
RECONSTITUTION
AND
LEADERSHIP
OF THE
PARTY
In
brief,
the
CCP from
its
Second Congress
in
1922
had
been
a
branch
of the Communist International (CI) which,
in
spite
of
differing views
occasionally expressed
by
Chinese leaders,
had its
way throughout
the
period
of the
first united front
of
1923-7. After 1927, however,
the
prestige
of
the CI plummeted and vigorous efforts were needed
to
restore
it. This meant
the
deposition
and
criticism
of
Ch'en Tu-hsiu,
the
recall
and rebuke
of
Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai,
the
trial
of
Li Li-san; more significantly,
this also meant
the
convocation
of
the Sixth Congress
in
Moscow
and
the reconstruction
of
the party presided over
by
Pavel
Mif.
From
the
autumn
of
1927
to
January 1931 the CI's interference
in
the affairs
of
the
CCP virtually reduced the Chinese party
to
the status
of
a 'colony'. After
the fourth plenum
of
January 1931, however, the CI's influence over the
CCP declined,
due to
complex factors, including Stalin's increasing
preoccupation with Russian and European affairs, the destruction
of
the
liaison organization
in
Shanghai
by the
KMT police
in the
summer
of
1934,
and
Stalin's bloody purges that
by
1937
had
rendered
the CI an
unreliable vehicle
for
transmitting his policies.
Meanwhile, Ch'en Tu-hsiu's leadership
of the CCP had
ended
in
mid-1927.
His
successors were younger men-Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai
in the
second half
of
1927,
Li
Li-san from summer 1928
to
summer 1930,
and
the International Faction
(or the 28
Bolsheviks,
erb-shib-pa
shu) from
168
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RECONSTITUTION AND LEADERSHIP 169
January 1931 to January 1935. Under the guidance of the CI they
undertook to rebuild the shattered party and develop a new, feasible
revolutionary strategy. The membership of the party dropped from its
peak of nearly 60,000 in April 1927 to probably less than 10,000 by the
end of the year. It was perhaps to Ch'en's credit that the CCP had not
been entirely destroyed in the debacle of 1927. Some attribute this
resilience to the inculcation of '
a
common state of mind', or, in other
words, the strength of the ideology that had been disseminated through
the party organs, chiefly
The Guide Weekly
and the theoretical journal, New
Youth.
1
As the intellectuals were the people in whose minds the ideology
had taken firmest root, it was they who remained firm in the face of the
anti-Communist upsurge, to carry on the torch of revolution. In the words
of one such survivor of the persecution of 1927, 'to lose contact with
the party or the [Communist Youth] Corps was like losing one's loving
mother'.
2
It was this sentiment that turned the politically alienated to
brotherly comradeship with each other and gave them a ruthless
determination against their foes within and without the party.
When the storm broke in 1927, the attention of the party had shifted
to a young man, only twenty-eight years of age, perhaps not nearly as
resolute in action as Ch'en, but certainly more Leninist and adventurist
and with considerable theoretical sophistication. Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai had been
opposing Ch'en's leadership on several issues for some time before Ch'en's
retirement from his commanding position. A prolific polemicist in the
party organs he edited, he was fluent in Russian and thus gained access
to Lenin's writings on party organization and strategy, such as What is
to be
done
?and
Two
tactics.
Upon taking over the secretaryship in July-August
1927,
Ch'ii proceeded to bolshevize the CCP. Then, as later in 1928, he
regarded the party as an elite organization clearly different from any mass
organization under its leadership. Its vanguard status came from its
capability of exposing and learning from its own mistakes through
intra-party struggles.
3
Here he echoed not only Lenin but also Stalin's
1925 definition of bolshevization.
4
Putsches attempted at Swatow in
1
This chapter is a continuation of the same author's 'The Chinese Communist movement to 1927'
in CHOC 12.505—26. See also
ibid.
430-3, 'Introduction of Marxism-Leninism' (B. Schwartz);
and 566-73, 'The Russian role by early 1926' (C. M. Wilbur). For a survey narrative, see James
P. Harrison, The long march to power: a history of
the
Chinese Communist Party,
1921—72.
The other
major account is Jacques Guillermaz, A history of
the
Chinese Communist Party
1921—194).
1
Hung-ch'ip'iao-p'iao (Red flags flying), hereafter HCPP, 6.15.
3
Previously no intra-party differences had reached this dimension. See ' Letter to all the members',
Hung-se
wen-bsien
(Red documents), 96. On Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai's background and literary interests
see Jonathan Spence, The Gate of
Heavenly
Peace: the
Chinese
and their
revolution
189J—19S0,
145-8
and passim; Tsi-an Hsia, The gate of
darkness:
Studies on the leftist literary
movement
in China, 3-54;
and ch. 9 below.
4
Published in Pravda, 3 February 1925 and included in Boyd Compton, Mao's China: party reform
documents,
1942—44,
269-71.
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170 THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT I927-I937
September and at Canton (the ' Canton commune') in December 1927 both
failed. The CCP leadership was decimated. At
a
time when the existing
structure of the party was fractured by blows from without and rent by
factionalism within, Ch'ii could do only
as
much
as
the circumstances
allowed. His attempt to introduce the democratic process of consultation
at least at the top level, when often a quorum of the Politburo was scarcely
possible, only aggravated
the
sectarian wrangles.
5
However, through
Ch'ii's emphasis on the land revolution, the party branched out from the
urban underground
to
the embryonic rural base areas, some fifteen
of
which were now taking shape.
Class
composition
After
a
series
of
disastrous adventures known
as
the Autumn Harvest
uprisings,
in
April 1928 Ch'ii vacated the party secretaryship
in
favour
of Hsiang Chung-fa,
a
colourless proletarian. Under persecution and
in
war conditions, along with
the
omnipresent concern with safety and
defections, the party centre faced a host of organizational problems. First,
the class composition of the membership had changed from urban workers
and intellectuals
to a
rural predominance.
6
The change threatened
to
transform the class base, the style of work and the policies of the party.
Therefore both the resolutions
of
the Sixth Congress
of
July 1928 and
the letter
to the
CCP from
the
ECCI (Executive Committee
of
the
Communist International) on 8 February 1929 urged an increase in urban
membership. Second, in order to consolidate the proletarian base of the
party, the centre had to re-establish contact with those members who had
lost touch with their party cell.
It
had to find jobs for and to plant back
among the non-party masses those activists who had exposed themselves
during the period
of
open work before June 1927 but were now living
on the slender resources of the party. Above all it had to unify its control
over radical labour unions which were
in
the hands
of
the ' real work'
group under such union leaders as Ho Meng-hsiung and Lo Chang-lung.
Third, the rural branches were for a long period of time completely cut
off from any connection with their provincial committees and the centre.
The Ching-kang-shan Front Committee
in the
mountain fastness
far
5
Mao Tse-tung,
Hsuan-cbi
(Selected works), hereafter Mao, HC 3.980 and Harrison,
Long
march,
124.
6
None of the sets of figures of the CCP membership can be taken without question.
I
am using
the official statistics as
a
rough guide. See for example, Mao Tse-tung,
Selected
works,
hereafter
Mao,
SW
4.270.
It is
generally held that the size
of
urban membership
in
all these reports
is
exaggerated. But, on the other hand, the exodus of members of the CCP to the countryside may
have also inflated the size
of
the rural membership. Many
of
the people working
in
the rural
Soviets were obviously of urban origins.
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