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Breaking with the Past: the Kuomintang Central Reform

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Breaking with the Past: the Kuomintang Central Reform BREAKING WITH THE PAST The Kuomintang Central Reform Committee on Taiwan, 1950–52 Ramon H. Myers and Hsiao-ting Lin BREAKING WITH THE PAST The Kuomintang Central Reform Committee on Taiwan, 1950–52 Ramon H. Myers Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Hsiao-ting Lin Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS Stanford University Stanford, California The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stan- ford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution. www.hoover.org Hoover Institution Press Publication Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Photos from the Modern China Archives and Special Collections, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. First printing, 2007 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Manufactured in the United States of America Design by Tobi Designs Contents About the Authors iv Foreword by Ramon H. Myers v Introduction 1 Reinventing a New Political Party 2 Building a Strong Party and Leadership 6 Expanding the Party’s Social Foundation 8 Local-level Political Reforms 13 Promoting a Grand Vision: Toward a Prosperous Economy with Equity 17 Concluding Remarks 21 B R E A K I N G W I T H T H E P A S T iv About the Authors RAMON H. MYERS is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the coauthor, with Linda Chao, of The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan and has written numerous articles about Taiwan’s political and economic history. His most recent work, with Jialin Zhang, is The Struggle Across the Taiwan Strait: The Divided China Problem published by Hoover Institution Press in 2006. HSIAO-TING LIN is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who received his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 2003. He is the author of Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–49, T. V. Soong in Modern Chinese History: A Look at His Role in Sino-American Relations in World War II (with Tai-chun Kuo), and more than 30 essays, journal articles and book reviews. His academic interests include ethnopolitics in greater China, the political history of modern China, and the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party) in post-1949 Taiwan. B R E A K I N G W I T H T H E P A S T Foreword v In March 2005 the Hoover Institution Archives announced a new initiative, the Modern China Archives and Special Collections, which includes archival and other special materials concerning the Republic of China from 1911 to 1949, Taiwan from 1949 to the present, and the evolution of mainland China from 1949 to the present. The Hoover Institution undertook this initiative because, for many decades, its archives has collected and preserved a rich collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Western documents—including the private papers of individuals as well as the personal documents and official records of leaders and statesmen, government officials, missionaries, and engineers—related to the above periods. In 2003 some of the rare materials describing the rise of the Communist and Nationalist Parties in mainland China and the rise of an opposition party in Taiwan were transferred from the Hoover Institution’s former East Asian Col- lection to the Hoover Institution Archives. Few, if any, copies of those materials exist in the public domain. Those materials have now been accessioned, placed on the Hoover website, and preserved for researchers to use in the Hoover Insti- tution Archives. In April 2004, the Hoover Institution opened the restricted nineteen boxes (from the original fifty-nine boxes received in 1976) of the personal papers of B R E A K I N G W I T H T H E P A S T T. V. Soong, a leading official in the Nationalist government from the late 1920s to 1949, along with two thousand documents donated by the Soong family. At the same time the Hoover Institution and the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) agreed to preserve those records and make them available for researchers. By late 2007, more than 900,000 microfilm frames of Kuomintang documents had been completed. In late 2005 Chiang Kai-shek’s family placed, on deposit, his diaries and those of his son Chiang Ching-kuo in the Hoover Archives. Hoover archivists have opened the Chiang Kai-shek diaries from 1917 to 1945 to read- ers. In August 2006, K’ung Hsiang-hsi family members donated his papers to the Hoover Institution. To encourage researchers to use these new materials, we have established a new essay series of which this is the third monograph (the first isThe Modern China Archives and Special Collections, and the second is T.V. Soong in Modern Chinese History). The series introduces new documents from our collections and suggests interpretations of events that may differ from those advanced ear- lier, especially as they relate to major turning points and significant historical changes in China’s recent history. (The essays reflect only the opinions of the vi authors.) The essays also identify and discuss special materials that users might find of interest and assistance and provide an impetus for researchers to consult the Hoover Institution’s expanding Chinese archives and special collections. Ramon H. Myers Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution B R E A K I N G W I T H T H E P A S T Introduction FEW DEFEATED POLITICAL PArtIES in wartime have the opportunity to 1 make a fresh start in a new location. Even fewer can leave their failures behind and go on to succeed. The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) was such an exception. In late 1949, having been almost destroyed by the Chinese Communists, the KMT relocated to Taiwan and reinvented itself. Not only did the KMT leadership build a new party that has endured for five decades, but it built a new polity on Taiwan that created economic prosperity and China’s first democracy. How did this defeated party reinvent itself? New microfilmed materials on the KMT Central Reform Committee—now in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University—shed new light on this unusual phenomenon. From August 1950 to October 1952, more than four hundred working meetings were held almost four times a week to discuss how to build a new political party and implement Nationalist government policies. Chiang Kai-shek began the reforms by establishing the Central Reform Committee (CRC) to replace the inept Central Standing Committee and Central Executive Committee, the party’s two most powerful agencies on the mainland. Unlike its predecessors, the CRC recruited young, highly educated party members, who, encouraged by Chiang Kai-shek, revitalized the KMT by introducing new institutions that would build a society based on the principles of Sun Yat-sen, one of the party’s founders. B R E A K I N G W I T H T H E P A S T Reinventing a New Political Party IN MID-1945, PArtY FACTIONAL StrUGGLES, corruption, and low morale were on the increase within the KMT. The Central Club faction (C.C. clique), headed by the Chen brothers (Guofu and Lifu) had become so powerful that it threatened to divide the Nationalist government, pitting the KMT party against the government bureaucracy and the military.1 Support for the KMT was on the decline, and KMT leaders were unable to mobilize either citizens or soldiers to support the party. Chiang tried but failed to strengthen the KMT with the back- ing of the Three Principles of the People Youth Corps, a powerful organization then dominated by the Chen brothers’ Central Club.2 In the summer of 1947, Chiang still hoped to reform the KMT, but he had no support. Moreover, remnants of the party and state were now confronted by the communist insurgency, the military forces of which had expanded and become stronger, in contrast to those of the Nationalist government, which had become corrupt and lacking in legitimate authority. Writing in his diary in January 1949, after retiring from the presidency of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek wrote: 2 The biggest reason for our defeat was that we never have been able to establish a new, solid organizational system. The old one had long deteriorated and collapsed. In the current, crucial phase between the old and the new, we have lost the basic means to rebuild and save our country. This is why we have been defeated.3 In early 1949, President Chiang stepped down when military support for his party and government collapsed. Vice President Li Zongren succeeded him but presided over a defeated Nationalist regime. Chiang, who retained his posi- tions as KMT chairman and commander in chief of the Nationalist armed force, still believed he could launch party reform. On July 18, 1949, Chiang revealed his plan to the remaining Central Standing Committee members, who had 1 See: Bruce J. Dickson, “The Lessons of Defeat: The Reorganization of the Kuomintang on Taiwan, 1950–52,” China Quarterly, no. 133 (1993): 58–59; Xu Fuming, Zhongguo Guomindang de Gaizao, 1950–1952 (The reform of the KMT, 1950–1952) (Taipei: Zhengzhong Shuju, 1986), pp.
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