The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION: PERSPECTIVES ON
MODERN CHINA'S HISTORY
Words are blunt and slippery tools for carving up and dissecting the past.
The history
of
modern China cannot
be
characterized
in a few
words,
however well chosen. The much used term ' revolution' is sometimes less
useful than 'revival', while
the
term 'modern transformation' signifies
little more than ' change through recent time' and leaves us still ignorant
of what 'time'
is. At a
less simplistic level, however, each
of the
twenty-eight authors writing in volumes 10 to 13 of
this
series has offered
generalizations about events and trends
in
China within the century and
a half from 1800
to
1949. Making more inclusive generalizations about
less inclusive ones
is no
doubt the historian's chief activity, yet most
of
the writers in these four volumes would accept the notion that the broader
a generalization is, the farther it is likely to be removed from the concrete
reality
of
events.
In
this view
the
postulating
of
all-inclusive processes
(such
as
progress
or
modernization)
or of
inevitable stages (such
as
feudalism, capitalism, and socialism) generally belongs to metahistory, the
realm
of
faith. While we need not deny such terms
to
those who enjoy
them, we can still identify them as matters
of
belief,
beyond reason.
1
At
a
less general level, however, social science concepts help
us to
explain historical events. Though history is not itself a social science,
its
task
is to
narrate past happenings
and to
synthesize
and
integrate
our
present-day understanding of
them.
For this purpose, metaphor has long
been a principal literary device of narrative history. Cities fall, wars come
to an end, hopes soar, but conditions ripen for an uprising and prospects
for progress grow gloomy
-
on and on, we describe social events largely
in metaphoric terms derived from the senses. Social scientists, too, having
to
use
words, write
of
structures, levels, downswings, acceleration
or
equilibria. Increasingly, however, mid-level concepts derived from social
science analyses are used
to
explain how events occurred, relating one
to
another. Chapter
1
of volume 12 suggested, for example, that the concept
of 'Maritime China',
as an
area
of
different ecology, economy, politics
1
For helpful comments
on
this chapter
we are
indebted
to
Marianne Bastid-Bruguiere, Paul
A. Cohen, Michael Gasster, Philip A. Kuhn and Ramon Myers, among others.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
and culture from 'Continental China', might be used to describe the
channels by which foreign influences came into Chinese society. In this
framework, the present chapter is concerned primarily with Continental
China. Moreover, since volumes 10, n and 12 dealt mainly with political,
economic and intellectual history, the present chapter seeks to take
account of recent work in the rapidly developing area of social history.
The reader will note at once that the customary attempt to treat' China'
as a unitary entity is becoming attenuated by the great diversity of
circumstances disclosed by closer study. The old notion of 'China's
cultural differentness' from the outside world, though it still strikes the
traveller, is becoming fragmented by the variety of sub-cultures to be
found within China.' Chinese culture' as an identifiable style of configura-
tion (created by the interplay of China's distinctive economy, polity, social
structure, thought and values) becomes less distinctive and identifiable
as modern international contact proceeds. As our knowledge grows,
generalization becomes harder, not easier.
Nevertheless we venture to begin at a high level of generality by
asserting that the Chinese revolution of the twentieth century has differed
from all other national revolutions in two respects - the greater size of
the population and the greater comprehensiveness of the changes it has
confronted. China's size has tended to slow down the revolution, while
its comprehensiveness has also tended to prolong it.
Consider first the flow of events: China underwent in the nineteenth
century a series of
rebellions
(White Lotus, 1796—1804; Taiping, 1850—64;
Nien, 1853-68; Muslim, 1855-73)
anc
^
a
series of
foreign
wars (British,
1839-42; Anglo-French, 1856-60; French, 1883-5, Japanese, 1894-5; and
the Boxer international war of 1900). There followed in the twentieth
century a series of
revolutions:
the Republican Revolution of 1911 that
ended the ancient monarchy, the Nationalist Revolution of 1923-8 that
established the Kuomintang party dictatorship, the Communist Revolu-
tion that set up the People's Republic in 1949, and Mao Tse-tung's
Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.
These milestones suggest that China's old order under the Ch'ing
dynasty of the Manchus was so strongly structured and so skilled in
self-maintenance that it could survive a century of popular rebellions and
foreign attacks. Yet its very strength undid it. It was so slow to adapt
itself to modern movements of industrialism and nationalism, science and
democracy, that it ensured its eventual demise.
Sheer size contributed to this slowness. Before the building of telegraph
lines in the 1880s, for instance, communication between Peking and the
provincial capitals at Foochow and Canton by the official horse post
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 3
required at least a fortnight in each direction. The empire could not react
quickly. The imperialist wars of the nineteenth century were largely
decided by foreign naval power on the periphery of Chinese life. For
example, the 50 million people of Szechwan (now 100 million) were never
invaded even by the Japanese in 1937-45. China's '400 million' (now
i.ooo million) remained until recently unintegrated by widespread literacy,
a daily press, telecommunications or ease of travel by steamship, rail or
bus.
Change could come only slowly to peasant life on the land.
The comprehensiveness of change in modern China is a matter of
dispute between two schools of interpretation which posit linear and
cyclical patterns. The linear view stresses the influence of modern growth
not only in population and economy but especially in technology of
production, political nationalism and scientific thinking, which all con-
tribute to what some envision as ' modernization' and others are content
to call an overall revolution. The cyclical view sees
a
.repetition of phases:
decline of central power, civil war and foreign invasion, widespread
disruption and impoverishment, military revival of central power,
resumption of livelihood and growth. We incline to see these patterns
overlapping in various combinations. Innovation and revival are not
incompatible: modern China has borrowed from abroad but even more
from its own past.
From 1800 to 1949 China's cultural differentness strongly persisted even
though it was diminishing. Cocooned within the Chinese writing system
(which Japan, Korea and Vietnam broke out of by adding to it their own
phonetic systems), the bearers of China's great tradition preserved its
distinctive cultural identity as stubbornly and skilfully as the Ch'ing
dynasty preserved its power to rule. In fact, the symbiosis of China's
old state and culture was one secret of their longevity together.
If we look for
a
moment at the realm of thought and ideology, the tenets
of Confucianism had legitimized both imperial rule at Peking and family
patriarchy in the village. The dynastic monarchy collapsed only after
Confucianism had been disrupted by the tenets of evolution and Social
Darwinism.
2
The idea of the survival of
the
fittest among nations implied
that the Manchu rulers and indeed imperial Confucianism lacked the
capacity to lead the Chinese nation. It was as if the French Revolution,
instead of building upon ideas of the Enlightenment, had had to go
further back and begin by renouncing Plato, Aristotle and Descartes, as
well as the Virgin Mary. As one political scientist has remarked, 'Total
revolutions, such as the one in France that began in 1789 or the one that
2
Sec James Reeve Puscy, China and Charles Darwin; also The Cambridge history of China (CHOC)
12,
ch. 7 (Charlotte Furth).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
4 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
has transformed China during this century, aim at supplanting the entire
structure of values and at recasting the entire division of labor. In France
between 1789 and 1797 the people employed violence to change the
systems of landholding, taxation, choice of occupation, education,
prestige
symbols,
military organization, and virtually every other character-
istic of the social system.
>3
For China, this statement might go even further. The comprehensiveness
of the Chinese revolution was evident in its reappraisal of the whole
Chinese past. The fact that modern science and technology, leading on
into industrialization and modern armament, came from abroad, in fact
from the imperialist West, put China's revolutionary generation in a
greater dilemma than European revolutionaries (to say nothing of
Americans) had ever faced. America's political leaders could quote British
authorities in support of their revolutionary actions. French revolu-
tionaries could find support in their own European heritage. For the
Chinese leadership of the early twentieth century, in contrast, the
intellectual authorities legitimizing their revolution were largely from
outside the country
—
and this in a land famous for being self-sufficient
in all things! A revolution in such terms, whether those of Rousseau,
Locke, Mill, Marx or Kropotkin, was subversive of the old China in the
most complete sense. While realizing the claims of nationalism, it
questioned the worth of China's historical achievements. These intellectual
demands of the revolution were hard for many patriots to accept. In fact,
the twin claims of science and democracy had implications too radical even
for many of Sun Yat-sen's generation. The displacement from tradition
was too great. This made it easier for patriots nostalgic for China's wealth
and power to speak of revival, putting their new wine in old bottles,
as has happened in the later phases of other revolutions.
Our historical thinking today about China's revolution is inevitably
multi-track, using analytic concepts from economics, sociology, anthropo-
logy, politics, literature and so on. We find useful many mid-level concepts
in the respective disciplines, but patterns of analysis that seem supportable
on one track may have no exact counterparts on other tracks. Incon-
sistencies may even appear among them. Since each line of analysis is
marked by phases, we begin with periodization.
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY: PERIODIZATION
Despite much continuity, China from 1800 to 1949 underwent tremendous
changes. The political system, especially the relationship between state
' Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary
change,
2nd ed., 126.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE
AND
CONTINUITY
HEILUNGKIANG
£ K
I
R
I
N
/
•»"
Tstngtao
KiaochcwBay
IANGSU
Yangchow
nkiang
•,
/ Ningpo'
TChingite-
chen
V
CHEKIA
anchang
V
KIA'NGSI
'
/
'
WANGSI
Wuchow".
r-KWANGTUNG
Waichow
Provinces of China under the Republic
—— Province boundaries
o Province capitals
• Other cities
A
Famous mountains
0 59O 1 1 1
1
I
6^
' ' ' '
ibo mile
MAP
2.
Provinces
of
China under
the
Republic
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
6 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
and society, changed decisively.
The old
Confucian social structure
weakened;
new
social classes emerged. Parts
of
the economy were drawn
into world trade; industrialization began
in
cities. Intellectual inquiry
broadened
in
scope;
it was
refocused through selection
and
adaptation
of foreign ideas. Rural life, although continuing
in the
same general
mould,
was
punctuated
by
natural disasters, riots, rebellions
and
wars,
culminating
in
revolution.
Efforts
to
find
a
simple progression
or a
single
key to the
dynamics
of
all
this change founder in
the
face
of
the size
and
geographical diversity
of
the
country, differences
of
local social organization,
and
unevenness
of development
in
different spheres. Nonetheless,
it is
possible
to
subdivide this century and
a
half into shorter periods so as
to
reveal certain
trends
or
themes
and
also important discontinuities.
To
begin modern
Chinese history from 1840,
on the
grounds that
the
Opium
War
began
a period
of
decisive Western impact, would overemphasize foreign
as
opposed
to
internal causes
of
change.
We
prefer
1800 as a
dividing line
between
the
prosperous, expansive, self-confident Chinese empire
of the
eighteenth century
and the
disruption
and
disorders
of the
nineteenth.
We discern four periods, each covered
by a
volume
in
this series:
1800—1864, 1865—1911, 1912—1930, 1931—1949.
1800-1864
The first period, until
the
major mid-century rebellions were brought
under control
in the
mid-1860s, displayed many phenomena interpreted
as traditional symptoms of dynastic decline:
for
example, systems of water
transport
and
control began
to
break down, partly through neglect
but
also ironically through over-expansion. Excessive dike building
in
central
Hunan during
the
eighteenth century
to
create more farmland
for the
growing population restricted waterways
and
blocked drainage channels,
leading
to a
protracted flooding
in
this rich agricultural area. Along
the
Yangtze, conflicting interests
of
officials
and
local elites inhibited dike
repair. Water control elsewhere suffered from similar conflicts
of
interest
and decay
of old
facilities.
The
greatest disaster
was the
shift
in 1853 of
the course
of the
Yellow River, never really
to be
brought back under
control.
4
Corruption
in the
metropolitan bureaucracy
had
reached
a
high point
in
the
late eighteenth century.
The
Ch 'ien-lung reign ended with popular
4
See Pierre-Iitienne
Will,
Bureaucratit
et
famine
en Chine
au
iS'
sie'cle;
and review article by R.
B.
Wong
and
P. C.
Perdue, 'Famine's foes
in
Ch'ing China',
Harvard
Journal
of
Asiatic
Studies
(HJAS),
43.1
(June 1983)
291-332.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY 7
unrest: riots, protests against taxes and rent, and rebellions inspired by
both heterodox millenarian sects and socio-economic dislocation. Invasion
of the imperial palace during an otherwise minor sectarian rising in 1813
shocked the court and metropolitan officials.
s
By the late 1850s rebellions
were seriously threatening to bring down the dynasty. Minority peoples
on the borders took advantage of disorder in the central provinces to
launch their own rebellions.
6
Pirates operated along the coast, and
Western nations began to attack the seaboard cities and exact political and
economic concessions.
In the face of these problems the government appeared weak. Its armies
were unable to suppress rebels, its taxes inadequate to pay the cost of doing
so.
Difficulties in grain transport along the Grand Canal threatened
Peking's food supply. The nineteenth-century emperors appeared timid
and incompetent in comparison with their brilliant and forceful predeces-
sors.
Official corruption and negligence seemed widespread. Suppression
of the major rebellions by newly organized, regionally based armies
suggested a decentralization of power was under way, while deflation
contributed to governmental fiscal problems and more general economic
retrenchment.
However, the traditional downswing of the dynastic cycle did not cover
two major aspects of this period. First, the population grew to truly
unprecedented
levels.
Whereas there were
200—250
million people in China
in 1750, there were 410—430 million in 1850.
7
The economic, social,
political, and administrative repercussions of this growth could not be
simply cyclical in character. Second, the imperialist West, powered by the
industrial technology and economic expansiveness of Western capitalism,
posed a more fundamental challenge than China's previous nomadic
invaders. These two factors alone meant that changes would transcend
cyclical patterns. The wave of rebellions threatening the old order in the
mid-nineteenth century failed. Reorganized government armies with
superior fire power would limit the scope of popular upheaval for the
rest of the century. Impetus for change was not thereby cut off, but
reappeared in other channels.
186J-1911
In the second period growth and innovation became more prominent than
decline and decay. The latter did not, of course, disappear. For example,
5
Susan Naquin,
Millenarian rebellion
in
China:
the
Eight
Trigrami uprising
of iSij.
6
See S. M. Jones and P. A. Kuhn, 'Dynastic decline and the toots of rebellion', CHOC to,
especially 152-44.
7
Dwight Perkins,
Agricultural development in China
ijfS-fffy, 207-14.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
famines were caused
by
floods
on the
North China plain
in the
late 1870s
and
in the
Yangtze
and
Huai River valleys
in the
1900s. Rural unrest,
which
had
diminished after
the end of the
mid-century rebellions,
increased again after 1890, along with
the
growth
of
anti-dynastic secret
societies.
Such manifestations
of
decline were, however, accompanied
by new
developments that would continue into
the
twentieth century.
The
startling military threat
of
imperialism roused
an
effort
at
self-defence
through Western-style industralization
and
modern army building.
New
types
of
official-entrepreneurs
and
educated army officers emerged.
Foreign trade
and
industry
in
treaty ports produced compradors,
merchant-capitalists, professional people
and
factory workers. While these
new urban social classes were coming into being,
a
genuine public
opinion, roused
by
patriotism
and
spread through
the
treaty-port press,
became
a
political factor
in the
1880s. Activist political organization
among
the
scholar elite began
in the
reform movement
of the
1890s.
Various elite elements then clashed with
and
became alienated from
the
existing political authority. Some turned
to
foreign examples
and
ideas
for ways both
to
strengthen the country and
to
further political
or
personal
goals.
The
result
was a
vast expansion
in the
range
and
nature
of
intellectual inquiry, which brought into question
the
fundamental tenets
of
the
Confucian world view
and
social order.
8
Major rebellions
of the
mid-nineteenth century
had
originated
in
peripheral
or
impoverished areas:
the
Kwangsi hills populated
by
Hakka,
the flood-plagued plains
of
Huai-pei,
the
homelands
of the
Miao tribes
in south-west China and the Muslim areas of the south-west and north-west.
In
the
late nineteenth
and
early twentieth centuries, however, major
political activity arose
in the
wealthy economic cores:
the
Canton delta,
the urbanized Lower Yangtze, the middle Yangtze with its rich agricultural
lands
and
emerging industrial centres.
The
major actors,
too, now
included
the new
social groups within
the
fragmented elite.
During
the
last decade
of the
Ch'ing,
the
competition between
bureaucratic leaders of the central government and
a
variety of provincially
based social elites attained
a new
height
in
Chinese politics. Reform
and
change were
in the air,
accepted
on
both sides.
The
issue
was
whether
the
new and
greater political
and
economic potential
of the
state should
continue, like
the old, to be
centralized
in the
bureaucratic monarchy,
or
should
be
diffused
so
that policies could reflect initiatives
of
elite groups
outside
the
government. This question forecast
a
significant shift
in the
relationship of the state
to
the society.
It
ensured that
the
1911 Revolution
would
not be
just another dynastic change.
8
See M.
Bastid-Bruguiere, 'Currents
of
social change', CHOC
11.535-602.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
Many claim that the 1911 Revolution did little to alter rural social
relationships; some even question whether it was a revolution at
all.
There
were indeed many continuities running through 1911. Industrial growth
continued in urban centres
—
for example, around Tientsin and in
southern Manchuria as well as in the mid- and Lower Yangtze and the
southern coast. Despite the disintegration of central power and military
competition between warlords, some provinces like Chekiang were
relatively stable and free of war. Even in places like Kwangsi, where there
was considerable fighting, it often avoided disrupting the agricultural
schedule. Political activity and organization remained centred in the cities.
As the new trends continued, however, differences in degree became
differences in kind. The modern economic sector developed more rapidly
than the rural sector. The new social classes, aided by the emancipation
of youth and women, continued to reshape the old social structure.
Meanwhile vernacular literature and the popular press, intellectual debate
and the idea of mass mobilization, became increasingly significant. The
disappearance of the emperor and the old political structure changed the
sources of legitimacy and profoundly altered the nature of politics. Han
Chinese nationalism, an overt concern for China, replaced loyalty to an
imperial dynasty.
Second, in the absence of the imperial institution, military power
became a more important political factor than it had been since the end
of the Taiping Rebellion, and operated with a freedom from civil control
impossible under the Ch'ing. But since military power was too fragmented
to win control of the country, a third major change of this period was
the effort by out-of-power urban elites to mobilize the lower '" sses in
politics. This extension of participation was attempted by new, more-
than-factional party organizations that tried to encourage and control such
mobilization. It was accompanied by new political ideologies of Marxism-
Leninism and Sun Yat-sen
's
Three People's Principles.
The goals of revolution and the nature of radicalism changed. The 1911
Revolution had been largely an elite rebellion against the centralized
bureaucratic monarchy. Political radicalism began by espousing national-
istic and racial themes against the Ch'ing political structure. A social
radicalism also arose against the authoritarian Confucian familial bonds.
This strain culminated in the individualism, demands for further liberation
of youth and women, and enthusiasm for science and democracy of the
New Culture movement. Subsequently during the May Fourth movement
radicalism was redefined in class terms to further the needs of workers
and peasants against warlords, capitalists and landlords. Revolution now
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
io
INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
meant both national liberation from 'imperialism'
and
class struggle
against
'
feudalism'
-
goals which radicals sought
to
combine, while
conservatives sought
to
keep them apart.
In
the
mid-1920s
the
revolution expanded
by
combining military
and
party organization with anti-imperialist patriotism
and a
mobilization
of
workers
and
peasants under
the
leadership
of
urban intellectuals.
The
Communist-Nationalist alliance
and
Northern Expedition were logical
culminations
of
this period.
The
break
in
1927
between
the
Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) plus their left-wing Kuomintang
(KMT)
allies
and
the
right-wing
of the KMT
revealed
the
contradiction
in
aims that
had been temporarily obscured
by
shared nationalism
and
opposition
to
warlords. Establishment
of the
Nanking government, controlling
at the
outset only about
two
provinces, left undecided
the
question whether
changes would
be
brought about
by a
new bureaucratic modernizing state
or
by
continued efforts
to
mobilize broader participation
on a
more
egalitarian
and
less centralized basis.
9
Three events
at
the
beginning
of
the
1930s decade profoundly affected
the course
of
Chinese history. First,
in
1931
the
world economic
depression
hit
China. Abandonment
of the
gold standard
by
Britain
and
Japan forced
a
dramatic devaluation
of
the Chinese silver-based currency,
while
US
government purchases drained silver from China. Foreign
markets
for
silk
and
other exports collapsed,
and
Japanese dumping
damaged
the
staggering cotton textile industry. Agricultural prices
in
commercialized core areas dropped faster than prices generally,
to
about
half their 1929-31 levels, hurting both farmers
and
landlords.
10
Capital
was scarce, interest rates were
up,
urban workers unemployed, govern-
ments
had
problems collecting revenues. Severe floods
in
the
Yangtze
basin
in
1931 and an
equally disastrous drought
in 1934
made matters
worse
for the
Nationalists. Despite some evidence
of
recovery
in 1936,
economic improvement
was
forestalled
by the
Japanese attack.
In
the
1940s run-away inflation wrecked
the
livelihood
of
the
urban middle
classes,
and
played havoc with Nationalist government finances. Rural
areas tended
to
economic autarky.
Second,
the
Japanese seized Mukden
in
September 1931, conquered
Manchuria, established
a
puppet government, took control
of
Hopei
and
5
See
C.
M.
Wilbur,
"The
Nationalist Revolution: from Canton
to
Nanking,
1923-28',
CHOC
12.527-720.
'•
See
CHOC
12.71-2.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008