Chapter XIV: Introduction (3)

The total contribution of Christianity to Chinese politics cannot be assessed. The ways of Christian influence are frequently pervasive and incalculable. In the headquarters of the Chinese Red Army, Chinese Communist leaders have quietly gone away to pray. The Christians have breached the Confucian citadel and have weakened the ideological foundations of government. They have also torn the web of Chinese popular superstition and afforded a foothold for religion in a truer sense. There has been no genuine Christian party, no real Christian army, no government avowedly Christian in policy. Nevertheless, the first president of the Republic was a Christian, as was the outstanding founder of the National Government at Nanking, Chiang K'ai-shek. The Protestant Church counts among its members a large number of the highest government personnel; no other religion plays as active a part. Christianity, then, has been an indirect force, not a program or an immediate political challenge.

_Nationalism: Social-revolutionary Phase_

In 1912 the Nationalists had won their revolution, which was political in nature, but they found in the ensuing years that mere change in the form of government would not of itself bring about the needed regeneration of Chinese society. By 1922 Sun Yat-sen and his followers possessed a well-defined ideology and a definite new revolutionary program but they had neither a way of propagating the ideology nor a method of realizing the program. Sun himself thought in political and economic rather than agitational terms. He sought loans from abroad and schemed for power in the turbulent military politics of the time. His slogan was still that of the Confucians: "Hold office in order to teach." The Nationalists intended to gain a political rostrum from which to expound their teachings, since they no longer hoped to rule effectively without converting the masses to their way of thought. They had not yet realized that conversion scarcely required governing and that--given the appropriate technique--they might agitate more successfully as an opposition than as a government.

The means of systematically winning men's minds--wholesale and high-speed agitation--did not occur to the Nationalists because the Bolshevist revolution was the only successful demonstration of such methods, and Russia was not yet understood. China was just reaching that phase of revolution which the Communists had already traversed in Russia. Without the benefit of Russian advice, the Kuomintang might have become a political sect with long-range plans. Fortunately for their cause, the Kuomintang leaders were willing to learn and the Russians willing to teach. Mere physical contact served to inaugurate the process.

Contact was not afforded by way of the Communist Party of China, a small and largely academic group which developed after 1920, but through direct correspondence and negotiation between Sun Yat-sen and Moscow. Sun had communicated with persons of influence all over the world, trying to build up interest in the future of a united and powerful China. He had conceived a plan for the international development of China which envisaged the extension of Allied war budgets for one year after the war, and the lending of vast sums for the modernization of China. He believed that his project would appeal to imperialism and at the same time would serve to create in China a modern state-socialist industrialism. China would thereby become a customer for all the capitalist nations of the world and alleviate the depression which was bound to follow the war. Correspondence about other projects for ideological and political reconstruction elicited more replies from Russia than from anywhere else. Sun was not doctrinaire in the furtherance of immediate projects. He was willing to accept help from the Russians, just as he would have accepted help from the imperialist nations had they been prepared to risk their money. From 1920 onward he was in touch with the Bolsheviks.

In December, 1922, and January, 1923, the decisive turning point was reached. Adolf Joffe, the Soviet representative in China, had come to Shanghai and conferred with Sun Yat-sen. These two found that there were terms on which they could cooperate. The Communist ideology and that of the Nationalists coincided in their general opposition to imperialism. Resistance to the treaties which bound China[13] became more and more apparent to Sun as a necessity for further revolutionary progress. He had met polite regret or open ridicule in his solicitation of help for China from the imperialist powers, and his invitation to Western capital had not been taken seriously. The Communists seemed to have adequate idealistic and practical motives for joining the Chinese.

The Communists, moreover, conceded a point which they had not conceded to any other country up to that time. They willingly assumed a secondary position, agreed that the communist order of things was not suited to China, and in effect guaranteed their practical assistance to the Nationalists without demanding, as the price, the acceptance of Marxism. Sun and Joffe gave out a joint memorandum which made the issue perfectly plain. It was to be the constitutional compact between the Nationalists and the Communists for the period of their collaboration. The most significant paragraph read:

Dr. Sun Yat-sen holds that the communistic order, or even the Soviet
system, cannot actually be introduced into China because there do not
exist the conditions for the successful establishment of either
communism or Sovietism. This view is entirely shared by Mr. Joffe, who
is further of the opinion that China's paramount and most pressing
problem is to achieve national unification and attain full national
independence; and regarding this great task he has assured Dr. Sun
Yat-sen that China has the warmest sympathy of the Russian people and
can count on the support of Russia.[14]

In the autumn of 1923 Chiang K'ai-shek was sent by Sun to Russia to study the Soviet military system. This was the first step in the formation of a non-mercenary Nationalist army. About the same time Michael Borodin arrived in Canton, where Sun had come to power for the third time. The ensuing period was marked by an intensive reorganization of the Nationalist Party and of its technique of revolution, to the end that it might become a movement depending upon mass conversion, not upon mass apathy, for power. The military mission was followed by other and more important grants of aid. The Bolsheviks not only trained Chinese sent to Russia but also supplied military instructors who reorganized the Nationalist forces on the spot.[15]

The assistance rendered by the Soviets in the application of tested propaganda methods to a revolutionary situation resulted in vast changes. The Russians found that approximately the same devices could be used in China as in Russia without affecting the fundamentals of Nationalist philosophy. Integration and regularization of the party machinery, formulation of immediate programs to bring large groups into the Nationalist fold, development of large-scale propaganda techniques, and other improvements designed to enlarge and speed up the Nationalist advance were effected within the Kuomintang.

Throughout, Sun Yat-sen worked in close collaboration with Borodin. The details of Nationalist party reforms and of Nationalist participation in local politics are now part of the history of the modern Far East. These details, while significant, tend to blur the cardinal change: the transformation of the Nationalist party from a revolutionary elite with long-range effectiveness into a mass organization designed for propaganda and immediate general measures. The Russian Communists made it possible for the Kuomintang to perform in weeks what had been planned for the decades, or at least to reach the equivalent of the contemplated performance.

A new era had begun. At first the Nationalists had proposed to develop a parliamentary government which would gradually foster a modernized ideology, and to govern China well in the meanwhile; when this hope vanished with the rise of Yüan Shih-k'ai's military power, in 1913, they had to reroute the revolution. Had they relied upon the experience of the liberal nations, they might have resigned themselves to a policy of gradualism. The Communist process of conversion was different from the Confucian. The Confucians had gradually built up a body of the most public-spirited men and permeated the ruling intellectual class with Confucian ideas. Their slow process of persuasion triumphed with the elevation of their main texts to the status of bibles in China and with their monopoly of advanced education. The Communists proposed to take a few simple, obvious issues, to present them dramatically, to win as many people as possible to the support of immediate policies and to reach power through such support. Once political and military authority had been established, they expected to go further in the "education" of the masses of the people.

To obtain tangible results quickly the Nationalists had to make extensive promises. On the advice of the Communists, they led vigorous anti-imperialist movements which embittered both Chinese and foreigners and provided the whole country with issues more real than the personalities of war lords or the machinations of cliques. Communist-trained propagandists took the reforms which the Nationalists had proposed among themselves and carried them into the people. Sun's principle of _min shêng_ appeared in practical programs as an immediate call for socio-economic revolution. Mass organizations grew, swelling their ranks by promises to all subordinate economic groups. These organizations were bound to cause difficulty as soon as it became apparent that the Nationalist-Communist promises could not be realized immediately and in full.

In the meantime, the Communists maintained their separate party organization within the Kuomintang. The Russians found China a fertile field for conversion, and while they assisted the Nationalists they fostered the growth of a Chinese Communist Party. From an academic group which meant nothing in 1921, the Communist Party grew in 1925-1926 to comprise the radical vanguard of the revolution. The Communists assumed the vanguard position because they were less bound by loyalty to the existing groups in Chinese society than were the Nationalists. The working alliance, in which the Nationalists received Communist help in money, technical political services, and arms, made the seizure of political power a reality. Sun Yat-sen died in March, 1925, before the great surge of the revolution came, but in 1926 and 1927 the Nationalist-Communist forces proceeded north, brushing the militarists aside as they went. The combination of a patriotic, foreign-trained, professionalized army, a powerful agitation department, and a party organization able to govern after conquest, came to prevail everywhere. Half of China was now under Kuomintang dominion, which operated through a council form of government.[16] Then came the schism. Conflict was inevitable between Communists and Nationalists when the Communists proved unwilling to look forward to the establishment of a republic according to Sun's principles, pushing on with the revolution as soon as the Nationalists slowed down or stopped.

Communist training helped the Nationalists to power, but under circumstances which made necessary either the institution of terror or the partial inhibition of the Nationalist programs. The Nationalists had promised almost anything to almost everyone in order to secure power; this was a part of the propaganda methods which Communists taught. After seizing power in 1926-1927 the Nationalists could resort only to military dictatorship and party terrorism in order to achieve the fulfillment of their extravagant promises. But the Nationalists were Chinese, and as such cherished the old notions of moderation and humanity in government. They were not the master of any legalism or dialectic which would justify the slaughter of millions for the good of a system. Millions have died in China, but the Chinese never acknowledged the massacre. They could not face the program of class war which their promises inevitably implied. The Communists kept pressing forward, now giving pledges in their own name and in the name of the Nationalists, redeemable only by class warfare or involving the discredit of the Nationalists. The situation came to a head when the Communists began taking independent action. Indiscreet Communists informed Nationalist leaders that the Kuomintang was to be discarded so that the revolution could continue--along Communist lines. The breaks, first with the Kuomintang Right and then with the Kuomintang Left, occurred in 1927. The Russians went back to Russia. The Chinese Communists faced their future alone.

The Canton-Moscow Entente--as the Nationalist-Communist coalition has been called--changed the Nationalist movement profoundly in 1923-1927. It found the movement a small elite of opposition and left it a swollen party with a government and an army under its control, a vast schedule of promises to fulfill, a second revolution to vindicate.[17]

NOTES

[1] Sun Yat-sen, _How China Was Made a Republic_ (unpublished manuscript written in Shanghai in 1919, now in possession of the present author), p. 4.

[2] On the Manchu reforms see H. M. Vinacke, _Modern Constitutional Development in China_, Princeton, 1920, and Meribeth E. Cameron, _The Reform Movement in China_, 1898-1912, Stanford, 1931. On the revolutionary group see T'ang Leang-li, _The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution_, New York, 1930.

[3] See below, pp. 41 ff.

[4] See below, pp. 145 ff.

[5] See below, pp. 149 ff.

[6] See below, p. 60. A description of other plans for democracy in China is given in M. J. Bau, _Modern Democracy in China_, Shanghai, 1923.

[7] See below, pp. 102 ff.

[8] See below, pp. 139 ff.

[9] See below, pp. 185 ff.

[10] See, among others, Tyler Dennett, _The Democratic Movement in Asia_, New York, 1918; R. Y. Lo, _China's Revolution from the Inside_, New York, 1930. The author wishes to thank J. J. Holmes, School of Religion, Duke University, for suggestions concerning this section.

[11] Hampden C. DuBose, _The Dragon, Image, and Demon ..._, pp. 48-49, New York, 1887.

[12] Paul Hutchinson, _China's Real Revolution_, p. 155, New York, 1924.

[13] See the literature cited above, p. 30, n. 1.

[14] Lyon Sharman, _Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning_, p. 248, New York, 1934. This is the most critical of the biographies of Sun Yat-sen. The one which Sun himself authorized and on which he collaborated to some extent is Paul M. W. Linebarger, _Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic_, New York, 1924.

[15] For the military development of this period see below, pp. 105 ff.

[16] See below, pp. 163 ff.

[17] For some of the ideological developments involved in the Moscow-Canton Entente see Tsui Shu-chin, "The Influence of the Canton-Moscow Entente upon Sun Yat-sen's Political Philosophy," _The Chinese Social and Political Science Review_ (Peiping), vol. 18, pp. 177 ff., 1934. On the role of nationalism in education see Victor Purcell, _Problems of Chinese Education_, London, 1936.

_Chapter_ III

BATTLING CREEDS

The right-wing Nationalists, establishing the National Government of China at Nanking in 1927, found themselves in the position of revolutionaries sitting at roll-top desks. After more than forty years of criticism and opposition, the movement had assumed the responsibilities of government. In breaking with the Communists the Nationalists lost the doctrinal edge of the extreme Left; thenceforth there were to be groups more radical than themselves. This disheartened some of the revolutionaries, who either lost interest in politics or continued revolutionary opposition to the regime their colleagues had formed.

_Nationalism: Governing Phase_

The Kuomintang was confronted with the issues of national unification, development toward democracy, and realization of the economic reforms and programs postulated by Sun's principle, of _min shêng_. The instrument for their task was a brand-new form of government, fresh from the pages of Sun Yat-sen, which at its birth was beset with difficult military, administrative, economic, and diplomatic problems. But the Nationalists had one particular advantage which they shared only with the Communists--that of possessing a well-integrated ideology. It was possible for them to couch intra-Party struggles in a reasonably consistent set of terms. Even when respect for one of Sun Yat-sen's theories had been reduced to mere lip service another from the same source took its place. The intellectual outlook inherited from the humanistic political training of Confucianism kept the Chinese from a dogmatic political pseudo-theology, while the wide circulation of Sun's principles provided a moral and programmatic foundation for governmental routine.

The break with the Communists and the development of a Red military problem were continuing forces driving the Nationalists to the Right, where opportunists and reactionaries of all categories welcomed them. They were also drawn to the Left--by the social revolution which had carried them to power and by the need of agrarian and labor reform. Central to the very continuance of the government, however, was the military power of the Nationalist armies led by Chiang K'ai-shek. Without the armed force to implement their decisions the Nationalists would have been compelled to let their endeavors subside into subterranean defeat. To the considerations of Right, Left, and armed force were added responsibilities incident to government. The Kuomintang in its governing phase, therefore, plotted its course with reference to three points: doctrinal consistency, military necessity, governmental responsibility.[1] As an ideologically constituent movement, how did Nationalism use its power?

The Nationalists in power had to find their way through class alignments, inert and meaningless oppositions, the rancor of the Left, the contempt of the established monarchist Right. Personalities in conflict, cliques forming and disbanding, factions denied overt expression--these lay behind the pressure politics of the intra-Party contest for the control of policy conducted on a thin and novel constitutional plane. The written formulas guiding the struggle for power were supplemented by the bodies of unwritten practice which had developed in the years of the Republic. There were appropriate forms for extraconstitutional action, just as for constitutional. It was the outstanding contribution of the Kuomintang to modern Chinese government that it kept its internal conflicts within its own constitutional framework, and did so more successfully than any other movement in modern China.

The meandering and difficult course of Kuomintang policy flowed within the valley rather than the river bed of Sun Yat-sen's doctrine. The planning power of Sun's intellect bound the movement long after his death. In his plans for the regeneration of China are to be found the ideal requirements for the growth of modern government under the tutelage of a patriotic elite of overseas men, revolutionary veterans, and scholars. The Nanking government of the Kuomintang had to meet all the problems of government while keeping within the broad boundaries of Sun's demands. The movement as a whole, however, displayed certain broad shifts which are readily traceable.[2] Sun Yat-sen envisaged the establishment of authentic democracy by a course of action including three steps: (1) the military period, in which the movement should acquire power over the nation through the use of force; (2) the period of tutelage, in which the members of the movement should exercise a benevolent party dictatorship over the nation, while training the populace for democracy; (3) the period of constitutional democracy, in which the people should exercise actual self-government.

Shortly after its establishment, the National Government announced the ending of the period of military conquest and the opening of the period of tutelage, which was set for 1930-1935. The Japanese invasions caused the establishment of constitutional government to be postponed indefinitely, and it is to be feared that even if constitutional government were installed it would fall far short of Sun's programs, which called for truly effective training in the arts of democracy before Chinese government could be entrusted to the broad masses of the electorate. In the meantime, the arbitrariness, the political composition, and the outlook of the transitional Party dictatorship became subjects of hot controversy among the Kuomintang leaders.

The Party dictatorship demanded a rigor of discipline and a deflation of revolutionary enthusiasm which soon drove the militant Left out of the Kuomintang. Even Sun Yat-sen's brilliant young second wife remained outside the Party--a permanent and indefatigable opposition. Within the Party personalities came to dominate--Hu Han-min, the chief Rightist disciple and interpreter of Sun Yat-sen; Chiang K'ai-shek, Sun's outstanding military protege; and Wang Ch'ing-wei, the chief Leftist disciple of the Leader. There were also Sun Fo (Sun K'ê), the only son of Sun Yat-sen, and other ranking Party members whose opinions ranged from philosophic anarchism (as in the case of Wu Chih-hui) to a progressive business outlook not unlike Mr. Hoover's (as in the instance of T. V. Soong).

The National Government settled down with Chiang and Hu Han-min (military and Right) holding the leadership, which Wang Ch'ing-wei decried as reactionary. In 1931 Chiang ousted Hu, in the course of a conflict over a proposed American silver loan and over constitutional questions. Shortly thereafter Wang Ch'ing-wei assumed a place in the government, after participating in an unsuccessful armed rebellion (the "Nationalist Government" in Peking, 1930-1931).

This might seem to indicate a swing from the Right to the Left within the Party. Actually it was indicative of the growing practicality of the Nationalist movement and its preoccupation with problems of installing the form of government planned by Sun.[3] With the passage of time, the Nationalists adopted three main lines of endeavor: (1) the suppression of the Communists at all cost, even that of temporary nonresistance to Japan; (2) the tendency to abandon revolutionary fervor for administrative zeal, and to become governmental in spirit as well as form--a tendency illustrated most notably in the promotion of industry under H. H. Kung, railways under Sun Fo, and finance under T. V. Soong; (3) a policy of emphasizing military power, which meant the rise to effective personal leadership of Chiang K'ai-shek. The development of a United Front policy in 1937 and the war with Japan led to the reversal of the first two policies and an enormous emphasis on the third. The Nationalists again turned to patriotism on the mass level rather than government action in a patriotically bureaucratic sphere. This latter policy, although it may seem strangely nonrevolutionary, was actually a part of Sun's programs to which the Nationalists were bound.

The class theory held by Sun was based upon a distinction between power and competence. The people should have _power_ to determine the range of government policy; they obviously did not have the _competence_. Competence was confined to the intellectual leaders and the thinking people of society (who were to form two classes) and could not be found in the vast majority of people untrained to contemplate political problems. Accordingly, Sun's scheme of government assumed the continuity of a bureaucracy made up of men of competence, but subject to the periodic check of the populace, which possessed the power.

Another of Sun's programs relates to the question: How can democracy be reconciled with ideological control? The Chinese had lived in a society so completely under the rule of common ideas that independent individual thinking had to be moderate, careful, and orthodox in appearance before it met with any welcome. The individual was not free to think freely; but since most did not think freely, sensing no need for it, they were unconscious of control. A problem larger than that of individual freedom is raised by the question of ideological control, since the controlled individual himself transmits control to his neighbors and his dependents. The ideology must be filtered, as it were, at some point. Sun believed that democracy would effectuate the filtering, allowing long-range revision from outside the bureaucracy. He expected that the bureaucracy of democratic China would rule well but would be subject to control from a people not completely under its thumb. The ideology was to be officially fostered, but it was to be subject to the check of the electorate. The Chinese were still to use orthodoxy as a tool of control and social pressure as the major instrument of constraint, but they were not to be allowed to fall into a blind traditionalism which would isolate them.

The old ideology was to be adjusted and supplemented with Western science, so that the new would be compounded of three things: old Chinese social and political experience, old Chinese ethical knowledge, and modern scientific truth. With respect to Western science, the Nationalists had to present few startling governmental innovations, since the need for a knowledge of the physical and technical sciences was widely recognized in China--not only by the Nationalists. That the Western technology should serve to build the new China was obvious; trade schools needed encouragement rather than initiation. As to the old Chinese social and political experience, the Kuomintang stressed study of China's past. They attempted to mend the gap between the generation born in the 1880's and that born in the 1910's by encouraging concentration on the classical texts, reverently, but critically as well. Archaeology has heightened interest of the Chinese in their past. As a consequence, their sense of national value has deepened.

For the restoration of the old Chinese moral and ethical system the New Life movement, which has been fostered personally by Generalissimo Chiang K'ai-shek, is of great importance. Its principles consist of a simple restatement of the cardinal Confucian personal virtues, interpreted to suit modern conditions. It has presumably been influenced by Protestant Christianity, and may be said to be a form of puritanism. Although the Nationalist movement has not been as successful in ten years as was the Confucian in two hundred, it has at least created a state pattern. A state in the full sense would require a type of organization so clear in its ideology that people would personify it willingly, would accord it existence whether leaders and governments fell or not, and would be loyal to it and to those who claimed to wield its power.

Among negative influences running against the Nationalist ideology, the Nationalist neo-militarism has stood forth. As in the other ideologically integrated states of the world (Russia, Germany, Italy), the army assumed especial importance because its type of law and order required no common understanding higher than the assent of idiots. An army is the one institution where complete harmony of thought is a luxury and not a necessity, where simple agreement on rewards, punishments, and organization morale will hold the structure together. The Nationalist armies, however, rose to a new position. Ideological control was introduced; the literate armies fought best. But despite the civilian and intellectual factors from outside, the mere force concentrated in weapons was so great as to amount to a constant temptation. Whenever the day's fortunes were inclement, the men in command tended to settle things with guns. In contrast with sheer ideals, the Nationalists were strongly military; in contrast with their predecessors, the Nationalist generals showed respect for civilian authority. The charge of Nationalist neo-militarism focused upon the personal popularity of army leaders, especially that of Chiang K'ai-shek. It can be adjudicated only by history.

The Nationalist movement neared its most drastic ordeal in 1936. The predetermined period of tutelage as decreed was passing, while the inauguration of constitutional government had to be deferred. With the approaching abolition of the Party dictatorship the Nationalist leaders were to demonstrate their consistency with their own ideals and programs. The programs of Sun Yat-sen called for the abdication of the patriotic elite, and the requirement--coupled as it had been with the proclamation of definite time limits--placed the issue squarely before the Kuomintang leadership. Were they to attempt the democratic experiment in a nation patently unripe for it, or were they to disavow the commands of their deceased and sainted Leader, and continue in power?

_Independent Marxism in China_

The proponents of Marxism were welcomed into China as trusted friends. In 1926 it was obvious to the whole world that China was definitely within the orbit of Marxism; in 1935 it was just as apparent that the Marxists faced a military doom, and that their forcible suppression might mean the end of their political effectiveness. Never ruined beyond all hope of recovery and triumph, never successful beyond all danger of disaster, the Marxists and their doctrines are the greatest uncertainty facing China.

Sinologues, judging from past experience and impressed with the deep continuities and repetitions of Chinese history, may well argue that Marxism is another religious distributive cult such as periods of turmoil always produce in China. They can point to the rise and fall of the Yellow Turbans in the third century A. D., when the two leaders--the Duke of Heaven and the Duke of Humanity--shook the great Han dynasty down into everlasting ruin. Or they can refer to the T'ai-p'ing rebellion, which held a territory infinitely greater than that ever occupied by the Marxists, which impressed a fantastic but politically operative Christianity upon its followers, and which promised to do in South China what Brigham Young and the Mormons had done with the United Order in Utah; but the T'ai-p'ing went down to an extinction so complete that no living advocate of the cult practiced by millions seventy years ago can be found today. Thus it would be no violation of the set patterns of Chinese history if the movement of Marxism were to rise to world-dazzling splendor and then pass into utter oblivion. Yet Chinese history is no longer the only kind of history which holds weight for precedent in China, and if the T'ai-p'ing rebellion is one example, the Russian Revolution is another. Bolshevism certainly has better chances of succeeding in China than it could have seemed to have--to anyone but a fanatic--in the Russia of 1915.

The Marxian doctrines had already eaten well into Chinese territory before entering upon the Chinese scene proper. One of the less savory bequests which the tsarist regime left the Communists was the question of Outer Mongolia, a vast stretch of land under the admitted suzerainty but beyond the real control of the Chinese. The area was used by White Russians as a base for operations, and--whether or not it accorded with their principles--the Red forces had to cross the frontier to pacify Siberia. Once in, they could not get out. It was essentially the sort of absent-minded conquest which has contributed so much to the British Empire: a strategic occupation leading inevitably to political domination. The Russians compromised as well as they might, setting up an Outer Mongolian People's Republic and administering the area in the way which the world was to observe on a much grander scale in the case of the Japanese in Manchuria--through advisers.

Marxism became a force in China through men and literature and money and arms reaching China by the sea route, as have most Western things. Its position reflected, however, the facts that Russia is China's greatest neighbor and that the Russo-Chinese land frontier is one of the longest in the world. China is much nearer to San Francisco, in terms of shipping costs and speed of connections, than it is to Leningrad, but the appearance of closer proximity to the latter played a considerable role. The Nationalist-Communist coalition[4] was the result of the impact of Marxism from Russia upon China proper. The Communists entered as allies, not as leaders. The period of Nationalist-Communist cooperation lasted because the practical projects of the two revolutionary parties lay in a common direction. The gradual shift in the role of the Communists from advisers and allies to teachers and masters led to the break between the two organizations.

How did this shift develop? From the Marxian standpoint it was the move of a party leadership which was bound by a true ideology, that of dialectic materialism. Whatever the ethics of broken individual pledges, there is no question that the Communists were justified according to their own beliefs in abandoning the Nationalists when the Nationalists ceased positive revolutionary action and began a Nationalist reconstitution. The Communists felt themselves bound to take up the standards of the revolution and proceed against Nationalists as against others. There was no room in the Marxian ideology for anything but the officially approved Communist Party; there was no ground for conceding that the Nationalists might be wise in calling a breathing spell.

The Kuomintang leaders, on the other hand, had every reason to feel aggrieved at the Communists. The Communists had come to help the Chinese revolutionaries in their struggle for national liberation and to bring about a common front against imperialism in the Far East. When the revolution of national liberation was more than half accomplished, the Communists had increased their following to such an extent that they regarded the Nationalist alliance as a mere episode in the growth of Marxian power in China. Marxists had come to help the cause of Sun Yat-sen; Marxism was spread to fight and undo it. The sobering shock of a grasp on power sent the Nationalists into relative conservatism. An eminent Chinese writer has suggested the change of mood:

Our imagination was fired, our enthusiasm was kindled; thousands of
young men have fled from home and school from the outermost provinces
to join the Nationalist forces; they have toiled and they have
sweated, and thousands have gladly laid down their lives on the altar
of Nationalism that their dream of a regenerated and redeemed China
might come true. But, alas!... The war has ended--so has all
idealism.[5]

The Soviet Communists, deprived of their opportunity to broadcast propaganda on a large scale, and unable to ride the back of the Nationalist tiger any longer, found themselves on a defensive which seemed to be permanent. At the same time, the Marxists in China encountered difficulties in adjusting their ideology to the fact that their strength lay in elements which official Marxism discredited. They owed their existence to agrarian discontent and to their excellent army--the shock troops, in many cases, of the former coalition. The leader of Chinese Marxism, Ch'en Tu-hsiu, broke the party wide open with a schism; he believed in modernizing effort rather than orthodox Marxist symbols. Other schisms from the Left produced Marxisms intent on applying the European technique to China's small proletariat, indifferent to the land question and eager to make an Asiatic revolution from the textbooks of European labor conflict. Such deviations were as unrealistic and sterile as Blanquism, against which the nineteenth century Marxists inveighed so heavily. Even so the official Communist Party withstood nine years of savage attack and persecution because necessity forced the Reds to pursue a simple line of policy--survival. Out of the test of deadly experience the Chinese Communists evolved means of allying themselves with the discontented peasantry, and found the point at which further social reform yielded diminishing returns in popular support. In relying on the people for practical help, instead of invoking theoretically popular appeals, the Chinese Communists attained a defensive strength which could easily be turned into an offensive.

The reorientation in attitude--the splitting off of both extremes, the iron necessity for an immediate and effectual popularization of the Party among the peasantry, and the lessons derived from responding to actual conditions--enabled the Communists to establish a state in Kiangsi in 1931: the Chinese Soviet Republic.[6] In 1935 and 1936 Chiang K'ai-shek began the most vigorous of his attacks, which led to the removal of the Chinese Red Army some two thousand miles from South Central to Northwest China--one of the most astonishing military feats of modern times. Some observers have suggested that Chiang had no intention of allowing the Communists to disappear altogether from the scene, as they provided his military power with a _raison d'être_ in the eyes of the Japanese. Had he run them utterly to ground, the Japanese might have dispensed with him. Later events have made such an explanation seem less persuasive, after the _coup d'état_ at Sian in December, 1936.

The personal factors and political events in this extraordinary drama are not yet known in their entirety, and it may be decades before the whole story is pieced together from the accounts of eyewitnesses and interpreters. Chiang K'ai-shek in his published diary mentions no formal agreement for the institution of a United Front policy, but the rumors from the Left persist in affirming the existence of a truce between the Nationalists and the Communists, the fruits of which were to be action against Japan. Certainly the military and political effects of Chiang's kidnaping were substantial,[7] and the ideological scarcely less. In brief, the kidnaping arose from action on the part of Chinese National Army troops under the command of Chang Hsüeh-liang, the ex-_tuchün_ of Manchuria. His forces were mostly from the Manchurian provinces and had no stomach for fighting the Communists in the far west of China while the Japanese remained in undisturbed occupation of their homelands. They had inaugurated an informal understanding with the Communists, and fraternization had begun between the opposing armies. When Chiang came up to investigate conditions, he was promptly kidnaped (December, 1936). His bodyguard was slaughtered and he himself was injured in the spine. The kidnaping was nominally the act of the _Tungpei_ (ex-Manchurian) troops. Even the Communist forces worked for the release of Chiang, since they felt that his death would mean national disaster. The release of Chiang was finally procured through the mediation of an Australian editor with a long experience in Chinese politics.[8]

The effect on popular thinking was twofold. In the first place, Chiang's popularity was made fully apparent by the vigor of the demonstrations in his favor all over China. It had long been asserted that even the most momentary relaxation of Chiang's despotism, as its opponents termed it, would be followed either by anarchy or a new revolutionary regime. Neither appeared. The strength of the National Government as a government was apparent, despite a strong odor of treason in widely separated quarters, and the people as a whole kept quiet. Students, workers, capitalists, officials, military men--all groups sought Chiang's release. Their anxiety for his personal safety was in some cases qualified by a hearty dislike of the man himself, but almost everyone admitted to an admiration, either grudging or whole-hearted, for the effectiveness of his work. The National Government and its chief military leader were indeed strongly entrenched in popular sympathy and thought--more so than even the most optimistic observers had dared to hope.

The second consequence of the _coup d'état_ at Sian was even more important. The mere physical juxtaposition of the two leaderships, Marxian and Nationalist, and the probability that forced arbitration would be the result of the kidnaping, led to a wild stimulation of hopes. At the same time it was generally realized that failure to come to terms might end in the murder of Chiang and in fateful results for all groups in China. The kidnapers demanded a United Front; the Communists had issued a manifesto in behalf of it several months earlier (August 1, 1936). The problem was: could Chiang accede without ruining his prestige or impairing the ideological position he had so laboriously built up for himself?

A compromise was found, which amounted to a paper victory for Chiang, nominal punishment of Chang and the other perpetrators of the kidnaping, ceremonial apology to the nation by Chiang for having been kidnaped, and a series of formally unrelated but probably linked events--all of which brought the two ideologies and their adherents to a common ground. Throughout the following spring, progress was made in the negotiation of a truce, which broadened into an armistice and ended as an alliance. On April 30, 1937, for instance, the Young Communist Congress, composed of men whose brains Chiang would have cheerfully blown out a few months before, elected Chiang and other Nationalist leaders to honorary membership. On occasion, the Communists and the Nationalists exchanged classical Chinese poems; each side sought to excel in sincere courtesy. The armistice lasted through the period of the Japanese invasion in the summer of 1937; formal union was achieved in September.[9]

On the political surface, the course of Marxism in China has been one of the most startling developments in modern history. Alliance between Hitler and Stalin would seem more plausible than the reunion of Nationalist and Communist groups in China. To those in the service of the Nanking regime in 1936, such an eventuality was the one thing certain not to happen. The break between the Marxist and Nationalist leaderships and their subsequent reconciliation appeared, however, less improbable in consideration of the course steered by the Communist world movement during the decade 1927-1937. The United Front in China made it possible for the Chinese Communists to concede more than they would otherwise have dared to except at the suggestion of the Russian and international Communists.

The future role of Marxism in China is still undecided. Nothing can be regarded as beyond the limit of probability, except the immediate establishment of a permanent and unalterable regime. The challenges the Marxists raise are too important to be ignored--land and labor reform and the devising of workable techniques for distributive justice. If they do not take control of the country themselves, they will at least be a formidable factor for whoever does control the government. In the event of foreign conquest the Marxians could provide an underground resistance of spectacular value. If the Chinese, applying terror and espionage against the Marxians then regarded as traitors, were not able to root them out in ten years of ferocious warfare, what will aliens do--against Communists who have become patriots in the eyes of all the people and who are assured help from all sides?

_Japanese Efforts to Participate in Creating a New China_

China is Japan's greatest outside problem; she is only a secondary problem in the foreign policies of the other great powers. Japan owes much to China in the way of borrowed ideas and institutions. Japan and Siam are the only free nations in the modern world which share with China the background of a Chinese-dominated world society in the Far East.[10] The Japanese resisted the extension of Chinese suzerainty to their islands, and on only one occasion did they concede formally that the Chinese emperor was the head of all civilized society; this they bitterly regret. While the Siamese have maintained their independence, they are in no position to take an active part in the creation of a new Far East, and the issue is between China and Japan, with the other Pacific powers largely as spectators. The construction of a way of thinking to accommodate the men and territories no longer guided by the old order is a problem shared by Japan and China; the competition for imposing a feasible system is sharp. Japan wishes to create a new Far East in which the Japanese shall constitute the most cultured core; the Chinese take their ancient position for granted.

In addition to the ideational conflict for prestige between Chinese and Japanese, there is another realm wherein the two nations compete, using ideas not as ends but as means. The extension of Western industry and trade to the East produced acute dislocations both in China and in Japan, and in the case of Japan involved transforming the Japanese autarchy into a most dangerous dependence upon a share of the world economy. Japan is truly a commercial and capitalist power; hers is no mere affectation of modernity. It is conceivable, should the West go down to its Armageddon, that the Chinese might swing back to the ways of their past. The Japanese could not; their economic and political system has expanded too far. They are inextricably bound up with the rest of the industrial, capitalist modern world. In China the stock exchanges have a mere toehold on the country; in Japan they have become the spine of national life. The Japanese must either pay the price of modernization by accepting the lowly place of the latecomer or make up their tardiness in entering the imperialist scene by a veritable frenzy of expansion. Apart from the future of capitalism, there remains the question: Will Japan collapse before reaching imperial success in the world economy?

China and the unpredictable but colossal Chinese markets are Japan's goal, formulated after contact with the West. China and her unquestioned cultural prestige are the targets of the Japanese drive for the acquisition of standing, a campaign couched in indigenous Far Eastern terms. The conflict between the two countries weaves its way back and forth through elaborate and self-contradictory sets of terms. The Japanese have toyed with a multitude of policies for China. Some of these are: (1) simple conquest; (2) the establishment of a peculiar Far Eastern order under Japanese leadership--either in terms harmonious with Western concepts of international affairs (the "Japanese Monroe Doctrine") or in terms derived from a modification of the past ("Pan-Asia"); (3) a common cause of Japanese and Chinese against the white peril, without any special emphasis on the relative positions of the two countries; (4) a divine Japanese mission, not merely to save the yellow race but to rescue the whole world and put all nations under the protecting benevolence of Japanese overlordship; (5) a strict policy of day-to-day opportunism--binding those parts of China accessible for such procedure with treaties and agreements, and catching the Chinese as they come forth into the arena of modern economic life; (6) expediency couched in military terms, looking to absolute Japanese gains on the map, regardless of the erection of a social system to perpetuate the immediate military advances; (7) a pro-Chinese policy, to assure the Japanese a close ally (but in such a case a strong independent China would inevitably excel Japan, and the Japanese would have to yield to Chinese hegemony--however friendly--or else retreat from it into the isolation from which they emerged in the 1850's).

Direct military conquest has a considerable appeal to the Japanese, except for its limitations. All the armies of the modern world would not be enough to garrison and patrol a China desperately hostile through and through. The Chinese would not stop at suicide to embarrass their enemies, if there were complete ideological antagonism. The Japanese would have to persuade the Chinese whom they conquered to remain alive, to keep working, to grow wealthy so that the conquest might not be without value. It is not possible to consider a policy involving the outright murder of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred million persons; short of such extermination, there is no way for the Japanese to clear the field for colonization in Chinese territories. If the Japanese cannot replace the Chinese, they must make use of them; to make use of them, they must teach them to think in a way which will permit exploitation, for even the most inequitable exploitation involves some cooperation.

Ever since their peculiar Far Eastern order had been partially recognized the Japanese began building up theories of a zone of influence to be based not upon law but upon geographic and racial fact. The doctrines of Pan-Asia fitted their purpose. Writers in the different Asiatic countries had pointed out the desirability of a union of those Asiatic peoples which were not yet under colonial rule to prevent further occidental advance and to rescue their conquered neighbors. Sun Yat-sen himself thought well of the Pan-Asia idea and stressed it, along with the recommendation that all economically exploited powers confront the exploiting powers--a class war between nations. As soon as the Japanese began turning to Pan-Asia for furtherance of their own peculiar ends, these arguments lost much of their realism. The Japanese policies generated more disturbance in Asia than did the Western. Their call to prevent Western aggression, at a time when the Western powers were in retreat, sounded artificial. Nevertheless, the Pan-Asian movement forms a link between ideology-conscious leaders in China and Japan; Japan's ultra-patriotic Toyama had been friendly and helpful to Sun at the time when the former led the _Genyosha_ and the latter the _Hsing Chung Hui_.[11] It was natural, however, that the Pan-Asian doctrine, although it never disappeared altogether in China, should be strongest in Japan. Pan-Asia or its restricted form--Far-Easternism (_Toa-shugi_)--played a significant part in the military indoctrination in Japan, even though attempts to propagate it in China ended in almost complete failure.

To the ideological conquest of China the Japanese have contributed very little. Their theories, summed up, amount to but a drop in the sea of doctrines. Only as the spokesman of China's ultra-reactionary monarchists--who flourished twenty-five years ago--has Japan presented an ideological program which is other than derisible. Rich in the ceremonial trappings of government, and in the personal elegance of its powerless ministers, the Great Manchou Empire makes a strong appeal to literary persons with archaic tastes. Even there, the blunt modernism of the Japanese military machine destroys the illusion.

_Patriotism: The United Front_

1937 was one of the most critical years of modern China. It marked a swift and startling grouping of the three active forces in China: Nationalism, Communism, and Japanese compulsion. For ten years the Nationalists and the Communists had waged a war of terror against each other; for six years a Chinese Soviet Republic had defied the National Government of China established at Nanking. Six years had passed since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, five since the establishment of a Manchoukuo government. The Nationalists had hated the Japanese, but they hated the Communists more; at the humiliating price of non-resistance to Japan, Chiang K'ai-shek had brought the full military and agitational power of Nationalism to the suppression of the Marxians. The Japanese had no great attachment to Chiang and the Nationalists and regarded Nationalism itself as a force subversive to Japanese order in the Far East. But they had tolerated the Kuomintang because it seemed a buffer between themselves and the Communists, and because they did not have the power or the immediate inclination to destroy the Nationalist regime.

This triangular deadlock was first broken by the kidnaping at Sian. Nationalist and Communist leaderships were brought face to face, and preliminary terms were agreed upon. With each step toward a termination of the Nationalist-Communist wars the danger of a powerful China became more striking to Japan, while simultaneously the Nanking regime became less valuable to the Japanese as a bulwark against Communism. The spring of 1937 marked the settlement with the Communists in the Northwest, the continuance of a general armistice, and the sharp improvement of Nationalist prestige throughout the country. Circles which had been Rightist recognized the increased military and financial power of the Nationalists, now that the long and wasteful struggle with the Communists was ended, releasing men, weapons, and money for application in other quarters. Leftist groups again found the Nanking state philosophy palatable, and discovered in the official tenets of the Nationalist Party enough common principles to justify the re-coalition of revolutionary forces. The radical intellectuals and students, who had swung sharply to the Left as a result of continued Nationalist yielding to Japan, turned again to Nationalist leadership.

As practical solutions to the Nationalist-Communist conflict were found, the people in the larger cities were released from the governmental restrictions which the Nationalists--upon Japanese insistence and threat of force--had placed on the expression of patriotic sentiments. A vast and vigorous patriotic feeling came suddenly to life, having grown more intense under the cramping inhibitions of police prohibition. The patriotism was revolutionary in mood but not wholly different from Chinese patriotism of the past. The slogans all centered on national defense. Release of political prisoners, cessation of internal war, and democratization of the government were regarded as steps to union and defense.

When the Japanese decided to push forward in earnest and began fighting in North China in the summer of 1937, the patriotic movement became so powerful that for the time it supplanted all other separate movements. Only a number of aged or cynical opportunists remained outside. It was now possible, under the slogan of a United Front of all China against Japan, to disregard the fundamental differences between the Nationalists and the Communists. A Chinese Communist wrote:

While we declare ourselves, despite the differences in principle that
exist between communism and Sun-Yat-sen-ism, advocates of the basic
revolutionary slogans of Sun Yat-sen, of the best revolutionary
traditions of the Chinese people, we Communists never for an instant
under any circumstances cease to be true followers of the
Marxist-Leninist teachings.[12]

Such utterances were matched by similar ones from the Nationalist side.

In their haste the Japanese utilized an ideology which they had practiced in Manchuria--literary Confucianism colored by notions adopted from the Japanese cult of the emperor. They also appealed to the practical and immediate needs of the Chinese living in the areas which they conquered, setting up governments[13] to govern for them. But this was hardly more than an expedient. Of far greater importance than even the war itself is its long-range impact upon the Chinese mind.

The formulation of the present Chinese patriotic movement into a definite drive for the establishment of a new Chinese way of life may emerge as one of the lasting facts of the century. The various movements of the Republican era failed to disturb and arouse the masses sufficiently to make possible a replacement of the decrepit remnants of the old Chinese social and intellectual world, or a reinterpretation adding the ingredients needed in a modern civilization. If patriotism unites the Chinese permanently, Japanese invasion may have provoked what twenty-five years of Chinese effort could not bring about.

Furthermore, the Chinese have reacted to the emergencies of war in a manner almost unprecedented among modern nations. War has not meant the creation of a temporary despotism; it has brought democracy instead. The ideological concord, the supremacy of a common national purpose, which could not be achieved in a quarter century of peacetime agony, was brought forth in the ordeal of national resistance. Democracy and not tyranny was the unifying force. The Kuomintang Party Congress, meeting in Hankow from March 29 to April 2, 1938, reaffirmed the primacy of the _San Min Chu I_, but at the same time guaranteed the sanctity of private rights, even in wartime, of groups who had been liable to official suppression for years. The Communist press was flourishing openly in Hankow, a testimony to the curious tolerance with which the Chinese united for national defense. The governmental structure was increasingly democratized. Japan had provided a body of common assumptions strong enough to sustain democracy, despite the burden of mutually tolerated disagreements.

NOTES