The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS 88l
The period of turmoil, from the Twenty-one Demands to the Versailles
conference, has been treated by numerous writers, but mostly in terms of Chinese
politics and intellectual movements. The best treatment of the country's foreign
relations is still Madeleine Chi, China
diplomacy,
1914-1918.
For the Shantung
question that triggered the May Fourth movement, see Russell Fifield,
Woodrow
Wilson and the
Far 'East; Noel H. Pugach,
Paul
S.
Keinsch;
and Ian Nish, Alliance
in
decline.
The 1920s has been one of the best studied periods in Chinese foreign affairs.
One can start with Dorothy Borg, American
policy
and the
Chinese
revolution,
192)-1928,
whose pioneering contributions have been amplified by such other
works as Paul Varg,
Missionaries,
Chinese,
and
diplomats;
Warren I. Cohen, The
Chinese
connection:
Roger S.
Greene,
Thomas W. lutmont,
George
E. Sokolsky and
American-East Asian
relations;
and Robert Allbert Dayer,
Bankers and diplomats
in China,
1917-192}.
International relations in Asia following the Washington
Conference continue to be a subject of lively discussion. The best study of the
conference is Roger Dingman, Power in the
Pacific.
For a broad conceptual
presentation, see Akira Iriye, After
imperialism:
the
search for
a new order
in
the
Far
East, 1921—19}
1.
Japanese policy toward China during the 1920s is well studied
in a number of monographs, including Nobuya Bamba,
Japanese diplomacy
in a
dilemma;
William Morton, Tanaka
Giichi and
japan's
China
policy;
several essays
in Hosoya Chihiro and Saito Makoto,
Washington taisei
to
Nichi-Bei
kankei (The
Washington conference system and Japanese-American relations); and the articles
by Asada Sadao, Uno Shigeaki, and Ohata Tokushiro in Akira Iriye and Aruga
Tadashi,
Senkanki no Nihon gaiko
(Japanese diplomacy between the wars).
The collapse of the
'
Washington system' in the period of the world economic
crisis is well treated by Christopher Thome, The limits of
foreign
policy:
the West,
the League and the
Far
Eastern crisis
of
1931-1933.
The Far Eastern crisis itself has
been explored by Sadako Ogata,
Defiance
in
Manchuria;
Usui Katsumi, Manshu
jihen (The Manchurian incident); James B. Crowley, Japan's
quest
for
autonomy;
and Shimada Toshihiko, Manshu jihen (The Manchurian incident). See also James
C. Thomson, Jr.
While
China faced West:
American reformers
in Nationalist China,
1928-1937, for an excellent treatment of the turmoil which provided the
frustrating setting for American efforts to help China.
Japanese aggression in China during 1931-45 is given dramatic treatment by
Saburo Ienaga,
The Pacific
war,
in which a noted Japanese historian writes of the
events in a self-critical, remorseful mood. Many of his contemporaries, as well
as younger writers, have collaborated in publishing Tsunoda Jun, ed. Taiheiyo
senso e no michi
(The road to the Pacific war). This latter, a seven-volume collection
of articles by some of Japan's leading historians, was published in 1962-3 and
still retains a freshness produced by the uncovering of archival documents as well
as bold conceptualizations. Some of these volumes have been translated into
English, the most recent being James W. Morley, ed.
The China
quagmire:
Japan's
expansion on the Asian
continent,
1933—1941;
and
ibid.
Japan's road to the Pacific War:
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882 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
Japan erupts. The London Naval
Conference
and the Manchurian incident
The best English-language studies of the ideology of Japanese expansionism in
the 1930s are Mark Peattie,
Ishiwara
Kanji; and Miles Fletcher, The
search
for a
new order: intellectuals and fascism in prewar Japan.
There are authoritative studies of the response of the Western powers to the
Chinese-Japanese conflict. For the United States, see Dorothy Borg, The
United
States
and the
Far
Eastern crisis
of
1933-1938;
for Germany, John P. Fox,
Germany
and
the
Far Eastern
crisis,
1931-1938;
for Britain, Anne Trotter,
Britain
and East
Asia, 1 933-1937; Stephen Lyon Endicott,
Diplomacy
and
enterprise:
British
China
policy,
1933—1937,
and William Roger Louis, British
strategy
in the Far East,
1919—1939.
Anglo-American diplomacy in Asia on the eve of Pearl Harbor has
been a subject of lively debate for a generation. A key issue has been the role
of China in causing the crisis and eventual war between Japan and the United
States. Recent monographs such as Peter Lowe, Great Britain and
the origins
of
the
Pacific
war; and David Reynolds, The
creation
of
the Anglo-American
alliance,
offer detailed analyses. Also worthy of mention in this connection are several
essays contained in two multinational collaborative volumes: Dorothy Borg and
Shumpei Okamoto, eds.
Pearl Harbor as
history;
and Ian Nish, ed.
Anglo-Japanese
alienation,
1919—19J2.
Unfortunately, there are few monographs dealing with China's own foreign
policy in the 1930s. This in part reflects the paucity of documentation, but also
the scholars' predominant interest in examining Chinese domestic politics, in
particular Nationalist-Communist relations. The anomaly of studying Chinese
foreign affairs mostly through Japanese and Western sources will someday be
rectified. In the meantime, one has to do with what few studies have been
published, such as Wu Tien-wei,
The
Sian
Incident;
and the essays by Susan Han
Marsh, Lloyd Eastman, and Akira Iriye in Iriye, ed. The
Chinese and the
Japanese.
For a listing of recent Japanese articles examining Chinese responses to Japan's
aggression, see Japan Association of International Affairs, ed.
Sengo
Nihon no
kokusai
seijigaku
(International studies in postwar Japan).
Wartime China's diplomatic affairs have again tended to be dealt with in terms
of the foreign policies of the major powers. Among the most recent are
Christopher Thorne, Allies
of a
kind:
the
United
States,
Britain,
and the war against
Japan,
1941-194J;
Michael Schaller, The US
crusade
in
China,
1938-194j;
and Akira
Iriye,
Power and
culture:
the Japanese-American
war,
1941—194/.
American-Chinese relations during and after the war constitute a special
category in itself in view of
the
growing importance of the United States in China's
politics and economy, and also because of the China controversy in postwar
American politics. The pioneering study of this subject, Tang Tsou's America's
failure in
China,
has now been supplemented, though not altogether superseded,
by others that have made use of archival documents not available to Tsou. See,
for instance, Russell D. Buhite, Patrick J. Hurley and American
foreign
policy;
Kenneth Chern, Dilemma in China: America's
policy
debate,
194j; Paul A. Varg,
The
closing
of the door: Sino-American relations, 1936-1946; Wilma Fairbank,
America's
cultural experiment in
China,
and Gary May,
China
scapegoat,
the diplomatic
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS 883
ordeal
of
John
Carter
Vincent.
Postwar American strategy toward China has been
fully explored by the essays in Dorothy Borg and Waldo Heinrichs, eds.
Uncertain
years: Chinese-American relations, 1947-19
jo;
Robert Blum, Drawing the line: the
origins of the American
containment
policy in East Asia; Nancy Bernkopf Tucker,
Patterns
in the
dust: Chinese-American relations and the recognition controversy,
1949—19
jo;
and William Whitney Stueck, Jr. The road to confrontation: American
policy toward China and Korea, 1947-19jo. All these studies need
to
be put in the
larger context of postwar Asian international affairs. Helpful in this regard are
such works as Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye, eds.
The origins
of
the cold war
in
Asia; Donald F. Lach and Edmund S. Wehrle, International
politics
in East Asia
since World
War II; Akira Iriye,
The cold war in
Asia; and Nakajima Mineo,
Chit-so
tairitsu to gendai
(The Sino-Soviet confrontation).
3.
NATIONALIST CHINA DURING THE NANKING DECADE, I927-I937
Until the mid-1960s, the history of the Nanking decade was little studied. Since
then, however,
it
has become one of the most popular and exciting periods of
historical inquiry, partly because interpretations of the period have been highly
controversial. In 1970, Paul K. T. Sih edited a symposium on
The strenuous
decade:
China's nation-building efforts 1927—19)7, written mainly
by
persons with pro-
Kuomintang sympathies. The general import
of
that work, which examined
political, economic and educational aspects of the Nanking decade, was that the
Nationalist government created
a
firm foundation for national strength.
If
the
war with Japan had not broken out in 1937, Sih and his fellow authors suggest,
China would have become a modern and prosperous nation. Jiirgen Domes, in
his massive Vertagte Revolution: die Politik der Kuomintang
in
China, 192)-19)7,
published in
1969,
generally shared the optimism of the Sih interpretation. Domes
nonetheless also candidly noted that
the
Nationalists quickly lost their
revolutionary momentum after gaining power, failed to win mass support, and
lacked the capacity to carry out land reform. These seemingly self-contradictory
interpretations aside, Domes's work is the most encyclopaedic study available
of the institutions and policies of the Kuomintang during the Nanking decade.
The favourable assessments of the Nationalists by Sih and Domes were soon
challenged by two books that stressed the shortcomings in the institutions and
programmes
of
the Nationalists. The first
of
these was Hung-mao Tien's
Government and politics
in
Kuomintang China, 1927—19)7. Tien examined
the
institutional and administrative structures of the Nationalists and concluded that,
at least by 1937, they were organizationally too weak to create
a
strong and
integrated nation. Lloyd E. Eastman,
in
The
abortive
revolution:
China under
Nationalist
rule,
1927—19)7,
particularly stressed that the Nationalists lost their
revolutionary drive after coming to power in 1927; he sought to provide evidence
for that thesis by examining a series of political and economic phenomena during
the ensuing ten years.
Other works focus more narrowly on particular aspects of
the
Nanking decade.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
Ch'ien Tuan-sheng examined the political institutions of the period as part of
his two magisterial books: Min-kuo
cheng-chih shih
(The history of governmental
institutions under the republic), and The
government andpolitics
ofChjna.
The most
detailed examination of the history of the Nationalist Party during this period
is that of Chang Ch'i-yun's
5
-volume
Tang-shih kai-yao
(Survey of party history),
although allowances must be made for the author's pro-Kuomintang bias. There
is still no biography of Chiang Kai-shek dealing with this period that can be
recommended unqualifiedly, although the following may prove of interest:
Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-shek, and Brian Crozier, The man who lost China:
the first full
biography
of
Chiang
Kai-shek.
The first in the spate of books that have been published since the mid-1960s
on the Nanking decade was John Israel's Student
nationalism
in China, which
examined the patriotic response of China's students to Japanese aggression
throughout the 1930s. Japan's aggression, per se, is described in T. A. Bisson's
still useful Japan in China; in Chou K'ai-ch'ing,
ICang-chan
i-ch'ien chih Chung-Jih
kuan-hsi (Sino-Japanese relations before the war of resistance); and in Hata
Ikuhiko, Nitchii
senso
shi (History of the Japanese-Chinese War). Japan's policy
toward China, as perceived through the Japanese political process, is the subject
of James B. Crowley, Japan's quest for autonomy: national
security
and foreign policy,
19)0-19)8 and The China quagmire: Japan's expansion on the Asian continent,
I9))—I94i edited by James William Morley. This latter work consists of
translations from a major, 8-volume Japanese study,
Taiheiyo senso e no
michi: kaisen
gaiko shi (The road to the Pacific war: a diplomatic history of the prewar years).
The Sian incident, which was important in the events leading up to the outbreak
of war with Japan in 1937, has recently been re-examined in Tien-wei Wu, The
Sian Incident: a pivotal point in modern
Chinese
history.
Military aspects of the period are usefully adumbrated in F. F. Liu's A
military
history
of
modern
China. The Nationalists relied heavily upon Germany in their
efforts to modernize the army, and William C. Kirby has analysed this important
link in Germany and Republican China.
In view of the generally retarded development of Chinese economic history,
it is surprising that the economy of the Nanking decade has received more
attention than most aspects of the period. Two classic accounts written in the
1930s provide an overall background: John Lossing Buck, Land
utilisation in China
and R. H. Tawney, Land and labour in China. Valuable statistical analyses
are in Liu Ta-chung, China's national income, 19)1—19)6: an exploratory
study, and (in collaboration with Kung-chia Yeh) The economy of the Chinese
mainland: national income and
economic
development, i9))-i9J9- Arthur N. Young,
who served as financial adviser to the Nationalist government from 1929 to 1947,
concentrates on monetary questions, but also provides sharp insights into the
economy generally, in China's nation-building effort, 1927—19)7: The financial and
economic
record.
Banking and money markets are examined in Frank M. Tamagna,
'Ranking and
finance
in China. Also useful regarding the development of the modern
sectors are Yu-Kwei Cheng, Foreign trade and industrial
development
in China; and
John K. Chang, Industrial
development
inpre-Communist China: a quantitative
analysis.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS 8»5
The increasing sophistication
of
studies on the period
is
evidenced
in
the
growing number
of
works, several still unpublished, that focus on local and
regional aspects of China under Nationalist rule. The first of these was Parks
M. Coble's The Shanghai capitalists and the Nationalist government, 1927-1937, which
stresses the tension between the Nationalists and the entrepreneurial strata in
Shanghai. Coble's interpretation
is
challenged
in
Richard Clarence Bush, The
politics
of
cotton textiles
in
Kuomintang China. The Nationalists' relations with
provincial elites are examined
in
two doctoral dissertations: Noel Ray Miner,
'Chekiang:
the
Nationalists' effort
in
agrarian reform
and
construction,
1927—1937'; and Bradley Kent Geisert, 'Power and society: the Kuomintang and
local elites in Kiangsu province, China, 1924—1937'. In
a
similar study with
a
provincial focus, William Wei has assessed Nationalist political, economic and
military efforts
in
'The Kuomintang
in
Kiangsi:
the
suppression
of the
Communist bases, 1930-1934'. Several comparable studies of
the
Nanking decade
are currently in advanced stages of preparation.
Primary sources pertaining to the Nanking decade tend to be diffuse and widely
dispersed. Readers will find further references in the bibliographies of Domes,
Hung-mao Tien, Eastman, and other works mentioned above, as well as in other
essays in this volume.
4.
THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT I927-I937
Since basic works
on
the early CCP are noted
in
CHOC 12.850-2, we
try
to avoid repetition here. On the early period the most important single source
of archival materials is the Ch'en Ch'eng Documents on microfilm which are easily
available to scholars in this field outside the People's Republic of China. They
contain not only mimeographed government decrees and party resolutions, but
also many periodicals, e.g.
Hung-se Chung-hua
(Red China), the official organ of
the Soviet government,
Hung-hsing
(Red star) of the army,
Hung-ch'i
(Red flag),
Tou-cheng
(Struggle),
Pu-erh-sai-wei-k'e
(The Bolshevik), and
Shih-hua
(Honest
words) of the party and youth corps
—
all being necessary reading for researchers.
The CI official organ,
International Press
Correspondence,
1925—1935, continues to
be essential.
Chronologically, this period opened with the Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai leadership from
summer 1927 to summer 1928. In English the only monograph on Ch'ii's policies
and their implementation is Hsiao Tso-liang,
Chinese communism
in
1927:
city vs.
countryside,
whereas in Chinese the story is far more complex, touching all the
issues
of
the history
of
the party.
In
the famous resolutions on party history
adopted on 20 April 1945, although Ch'ii's leadership was not called
a
'line'
(lu-hsieti),
it was nevertheless described as 'leftist', 'adventuristic','commandistic'
and 'factionalistic', and
in
the same breath also 'extremely democratic'. This
confused assessment evolved into an unambiguous condemnation in the Cultural
Revolution period and finally into further uncertainty in 1980. Up to now, no
serious attempt has been made to write a monograph on his leadership. The Li
Li-san period is dealt with competently in R. C. Thornton, The
Comintern and the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
886 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
Chinese Communists, 1928-1931. Li also was severely criticized in the 1945
resolutions, yet scholarly monographs in Chinese on both Ch'ii and Li are still
lacking.
As to the land revolution and the creation of Soviets, Hsiao Tso-liang's two
early compilations
—
Power relations within the Chinese communist movement,
1930-1934 and The land revolution in China,
1930—1934
- remain unsurpassed. In
the late 1960s and early 1970s, scholarly interest in political institutions and issues
resulted in three well-researched works-J. Rue, Mao Tse-tung in
opposition,
1927—193?,
I. J. Kim, The politics of
Chinese
Communism, and T. Lotviet, Chinese
communism,
1931-1934.
For a fuller treatment of the Kiangsi soviet see Ts'ao Po-i,
Chiang-hsi Su-wei-ai chih chien-li chi cb'i peng-k'uei
(The establishment and collapse
of the Kiangsi soviet). The role of
the
Soviet Union in these and succeeding years
is surveyed in Charles B. McLane, Soviet policy and the
Chinese
communists,
1931—1946.
Yet another perspective, very critical of Mao Tse-tung, is provided
by the last of the Comintern advisers to serve in China: Otto Braun, A
Comintern
agent in China
1932—1939.
Documentary compilations on this period include
Kung-fei
chung-yao tv>u-liao hui-pien
(Essential materials concerning the Communist bandits)
by the Sixth Section of the KMT Central Committee, in two volumes, and Liu
P'ei-shan, Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an-tang tsai Chiang-hsi ti-ch'u ling-tao ko-ming
tou-cheng
ti
li-shih
t^u-liao (Historical materials on the revolutionary struggles led by the
CCP in Kiangsi).
The Long March immediately followed the destruction of the central China
Soviets. Here Dick Wilson has given his readers The Long March, 193} and
G. Walter and C. H. Hu, Us etaient cent mille (la Longue Marche, 1934—193}).
Accounts of the Long March in Chinese, too numerous to mention here,
unfortunately are mostly reminiscences spiced with anecdotes, not serious history.
The world knows very little of the strategic and tactical decisions, the
organization, the logistics and supplies of
this
epic event. Likewise, it knows very
little of the organization and training, logistics and supplies, rewards and
punishments, and many other aspects of the Red Army. J. Gittings, The
role
of
the Chinese
Red Army and S. B. Griffith,
The Chinese People's Liberation
Army should
be read together with two Chinese works,
Chiao-fei chan-shih
(History of the war
to suppress the bandits) compiled by the History Bureau of the Ministry of
Defence, Taipei, in six volumes; and General Hsueh Yueh,
Chiao-fei chi-sbih
(A
factual account of the campaigns against the bandits), which are far more detailed.
S. B. Griffith's Mao
Tse-tung on guerrilla warfare
may be read in conjunction with
W. Laqueur,
Guerrilla,
a
historical and critical study
(notably chapter 6).
Works and biographies of Mao Tse-tung are surveyed in the last essay below.
Biographical materials on CCP leaders are voluminous but scattered in Chinese
sources, while biographic works in English still suffer from superficiality. The
life history of Chu Te is told by A. Smedley in The
great road
and those of several
other CCP leaders by Nym Wales in sketches in her Red
dust.
In recent years, Western scholars have been paying deeper attention to the
socio-economic roots of the Chinese Communist movement. Jean Chesneaux's
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS 887
The
Chinese labor
movement,
1919-1927
is a monumental pioneer work, followed
by Peter Schran,
Guerrilla economy
and A. McDonald, The
urban origins
of
rural
revolution.
More recent are P. C. Huang et al.,
Chinese communists and rural
society,
1927—19)4
and J. M. Polachek, 'The moral economy of the Kiangsi soviet
(1928—1934)', which represent a new trend in the study of China's social unrest.
Three series of articles in
Kuo-wen chou-pao
in 1933, 1934 and 1935 by Ch'eng
Ch'ang-sheng, Ch'i Ch'i-sheng and Hsiin-shih, respectively, are all concerned with
socio-economic aspects of the Communist movement.
Wang Fan-hsi,
Chinese
revolutionary:
memoirs
1919-1949,
throws light on the
political socialization of a Chinese Communist (a Trotskyist) and on party life
in general. It serves as a companion volume to Sheng Yueh,
Sun Yat-sen University
in
Moscow
and the Chinese Revolution: a personal
account.
Since 1977, Chinese historians' revisions of party history have stressed
verification of facts, along with political events and personalities, putting their
main effort into compilation and description. An interpretive essay like Tang
Pao-lin, 'Shih-lun Ch'en Tu-hsiu yii T'o-p'ai ti kuan-hsi' (Exploring Ch'en
Tu-hsiu's relations with the Trotskyists),
L.i-shih
yen-chiu,
1981, no. 6, is rare.
One new trend is to divert attention during the land revolution period from the
central soviet in Kiangsi to the other Soviets, as in O-Yii-Wan
su-ch'ii ko-ming-shih
t^u-liao
hsuan-pien
(Selected documents of the revolutionary history of the
O-Yii-Wan soviet), vol. 1, compiled by the party historians of the Central China
Teachers' College; and Ch'uan-Shan ko-ming ken-cbii-ti li-shih
rven-hsien
hsuan-pien
(Selected historical documents of the Szechwan-Shensi revolutionary base area)
in two volumes. There is also a spate of books on Chou En-lai, Ho Lung and
others, even including a hitherto little-known founder of the CCP, Pao Hui-seng.
Both these trends help to redress an imbalance in party historiography - people
other than Mao, or the Kiangsi soviet, or the First Front Army also contributed
to the Communist movement. Here Hu Hua's multi-volume biographies,
Chung-kung
tang-sbih
jen-wu-chuan
(Biographies of eminent members of the CCP),
which began to appear in Sian in 1981 are particularly noteworthy. Hu Hua has
revised his
Chung-kuo ko-ming-shih chiang-i
(Lectures on the history of the Chinese
revolution) in two volumes; no other general history of the period of the new
democratic revolution has emerged to replace it. The problem is surveyed by
Arif Dirlik,
Revolution
and history:
origins
of Marxist
historiography
in China,
'9'9~'937-
5. THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM
In the 1920s and 1930s many wrote about China's deteriorating agrarian
circumstances. A review of
some
of
this
literature and an attempt to classify much
of it under various paradigms can be found in Ramon H. Myers, The
Chinese
peasant
economy:
agricultural
development
in Hopei and Shantung,
1890—1949,
chapter
2.
This study also contains an extensive bibliography related to North China
agriculture in the twentieth century. Amano Motonosuke,
Chugoku nogyo
no
sho
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
888 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
mondai (Problems of Chinese agriculture) contains the most comprehensive
bibliography of pre-1952 studies of Chinese agrarian conditions. The best recent
survey of Japanese scholarship for this period is by Masatoshi Tanaka in Ajia
Kei^ai (Asian economics), 19.1—2 (Jan.-Feb. 1978)
41-51.
Post-1953 Japanese
studies can be found in Noriko Kamachi, John K. Fairbank and Chuzo Ichiko,
eds.
Japanese studies
of
modern China since
19}), 368-93. And of course consult the
three volumes of
G.
William Skinner
et
al.,
eds.
Modern Chinese
society:
an analytical
bibliography.
The two major sources for reliable crop statistics for the Republican years are
J. L. Buck, Land
utilisation
in
China,
and Chang Hsin-i's crop statistical survey
made in
1929—31.
The former was based on a sample of 16,786 farms located
in 168 counties of 22 provinces. The latter was reported in various issues of the
government journal
T'ung-cbiyueh-pao
(Statistical monthly); note especially the
summary report in the Jan.-Feb. 1932 issue.
The best survey of land tenure was undertaken by the Nanking government's
Land Commission (T'u-ti wei-yuan-hui) set up on 2 August 1934. It employed
over 3,000 persons from government departments and universities to carry out
its research and survey work in 22 provinces. The survey selected at least 20 per
cent of the counties in each province, from which 20 per cent of the rural
households were surveyed according to household land, income, expenditures
etc.
The full particulars of the survey, except summary tables of general findings,
were never published because of the outbreak of war with Japan. The preliminary
report published in Nanking in 1937 is
Ch'iian-kuo tiao-ch'apao-kao
(Draft report
of the land survey of China).
The South Manchurian Railway Company's Research Department (Chosabu)
had branches in different cities of China where its officials launched hundreds
of village surveys and travel trips for collecting information on Chinese rural
economic, social and political conditions. Many of these reports can be found
in John Young, The
research activities
of
the
South
Manchurian
Railway
Company,
1907-194J. Mantetsu
chSsa
geppo,
2. journal issued by the South Manchurian
Railway Company from 1919 until late 1944, contains a remarkable number of
original and unique surveys of villages and countryside conditions during those
decades, and is one of the best sources on the agrarian society of the Republican
era.
Chosa geppo
is another Japanese journal that began in 1939 and continued
until late 1944.
For the still little-known wartime period (1937-45) consult the valuable
collection of primary data gathered and published in the journal
"Economic
Facts
by the Department of Agricultural Economics of the University, of Nanking,
Chengtu, September 1936 to January 1946, nos. 1-53. This monthly journal of
economic statistics issued by the Chungking wartime government provides a
wealth of information virtually untapped by researchers studying the rural
economy of China and its society under wartime conditions. It includes surveys
on such topics as grain marketing, crop-production costs, allocation of labour
and capital by farm size, land-use patterns, transportation costs, and living
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
standards of various social classes, as well as many otherwise unobtainable articles
by John Lossing Buck.
The contractual aspect of Chinese rural society has been examined by Fu-mei
Chang Chen and Ramon H. Myers in a series of articles published in
Cb'ing-sbih
wen-fi, 3.5 (Nov. 1976) and 3.10 (Nov. 1978). Roughly fifty contracts were
translated by these authors to show the great variety of resource exchange
between households over the course of their life cycle. Robert Ash's Land
tenure
in
pre-revolutionary
China: Kiangsuprovince in the 1920s and 1930s is a useful sketch
of land tenure and rural income changes in the 1930s. This study paints the
deteriorating rural conditions in this province when world depression and
domestic monetary deflation had struck hard at the fabric of the rural economy.
By an imaginative analysis of the National Land Commission 1937 survey
report, Charles Robert Roll, Jr. estimated income distribution for 1.7 million
households in 16 provinces
(The distribution
of
rural incomes
in
China:
a
comparison
of
the 19JOS and
19jos).
He also estimated income distribution in 1952 and found
that the inequality in the income structure was about one-third lower than that
of 1937 as a result of Communist land-distribution programmes. Among the
factors to which Roll attributed the very unequal income distribution in the 1930s
were unequal landholdings and the flexibility of labour allocation between
farming and other income-earning pursuits. In regions where households could
allocate more labour to non-farming activities, however, income was more evenly
distributed.
Pre-1949 agriculture considered by region is studied in the last major work
by Japan's leading scholar of China's agriculture: Amano Motonosuke,
Chiigoku
nogyo no chiiki
teki
tenkai
(Regional development of Chinese agriculture). For rural
Manchuria consult Nakagane Katsugi, Kyu
Mansbii noson
shakai kei^ai
ko%p
no
bunseki (Analysis of the socio-economic structure of villages in traditional
Manchuria). And North China is depicted in great detail, based on surveys made
in 1944, by Imahori Seiji,
Chiigoku hoken shakai no
ko^p-
sono
rekishi to kakumei
^enya nogenjitsu
(The structure of China's feudal society - its history and condition
on the eve of the Communist revolution).
A newly available primary source for China's agrarian situation is the
200-volume set of essays (including field notes) at the Central Political Institute
in Nanking, written during the 1930s by master's degree students who conducted
field work on a variety of rural administration and village problems. Edited by
Hsiao Cheng, these were published in Taiwan by Ch'eng-wen Publishers in 1977
in a series titled Min-kuo
erh-shib
nien-tai
Chung-kuo
ta-lu fu-ti wen-fi
tv^u-liao
(Materials on the land question on the China mainland during the 1930s). See
also the valuable index compiled by the Land Management Institute in Taipei,
Min-kuo
JO—jo
nien-tai Chung-kuo ching-cbi nung-yeh fu-ti sbui-li wen-fi tvyi-liao
(Materials on China's economic, agrarian, land and water control problems in
the 1930s and 1940s), based on newspaper clippings.
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890 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
6. PEASANT MOVEMENTS
Although Ssu-yii Teng, Protest and crime in China: a
bibliography
of
secret
associations,
popular
uprisings,
peasant rebellions
covers all periods of Chinese history, a sizeable
proportion of its nearly 4,000 entries deals with events in the first half of the
twentieth century. The PRC's Second Historical Archives in Nanking contain
a few files relating to local peasant struggles, besides those footnoted in chapter
6(n. I2and23).
See
especially
files
1/2/999:'
Chiang-su An-hui Hu-nan teng-sheng
nung-min k'ang-tsu tou-cheng' (Peasant resistance to rents in Kiangsu, Anhwei
and Hunan provinces, 1929-1941) and
1/2/1000:
'Su Wan Hsiang teng sheng
nung-min k'ang-tsu tou-cheng' (Peasant resistance to rents in Kiangsu, Anhwei
and Hunan provinces, November 1929 - January 1930). While much more
voluminous than
1/2/1000,
file
1/2/999
contains almost no information on riots
or other violent collective actions. It is, however, very informative on disputes,
complaints or requests (such as tenants asking officials to prevent landlords from
raising the land rent, or complaining that the military has taken back land rented
out to them). The United States Archives offer less detailed reports, but rather
more numerous mentions of peasant disturbances, especially in the vicinity of
consular posts. Particularly rewarding are the monthly consular reports (Depart-
ment of State: 893.00 PR), as well as headings 893.43 (Secret Societies), 893.48
(Calamities, Famine conditions), 893.108 (Crime, Banditry). Precious bits of
information are also scattered among the vast body of materials under 893.00
(Political Affairs) and 893.00B (Bolshevism).
Extracts of otherwise not easily available reports by Chinese newspapers and
periodicals can be found in the two compilations by Chang Yu-i,
Chung-kuo chin-tai
nung-yeh shih
t^u-liao,
ti-san chi
(Materials on China's modern agricultural history,
third collection, 1927-1937) (see pp. 1012-1033)
afl
d Feng Ho-fa,
Chung-kuo
nung-ts'un ching-chi tv^u-liao
(Materials on the Chinese rural economy), as well as
in Ti-i-t^'u kuo-nei ko-ming
chan-cheng
shih-ch'i ti
nung-min
yun-tung (The peasant
movement during the first revolutionary civil war period). Somewhat more
detailed accounts of peasant riots occasionally appear in
Chung-kuo nung-ts'un
(The
Chinese village), a Shanghai monthly which shares with the three above
compilations a left-wing bias, as well as in
Tung-fang tsa-chih
(Eastern miscellany).
Two useful surveys are: Ts'ai Shu-pang,' Chin shih-nien lai Chung-kuo tien-nung
feng-ch'ao ti yen-chiu' (Research on tenant riots in China during the past ten
years) and Tzu-ming, ' I-chiu-san-ssu nien Chung-kuo nung-ts'un chung ti
ko-chung sao-tung feng-ch'ao i-lan-piao' (List of the various categories of
disturbances stirred up in Chinese villages in 1934). Most of these materials are
in the nature of newspaper reporting. They usually provide very crude data, if
any, on the number of participants in every incident recorded, almost none
concerning the social status and positions of the leaders, or the social composition
of the rank and file. Access to provincial or hsien-level archives including police
reports or judiciary records would, one hopes, allow the research to proceed much
further. One file in the Nanking archives (2/2/1130) records lawsuits brought
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