A RE-EVALUATION OF CHIANG KAISHEK’S BLUESHIRTS Chinese Fascism in the 1930s A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy DOOEUM CHUNG ProQuest Number: 11015717 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11015717 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 Abstract Abstract This thesis considers the Chinese Blueshirts organisation from 1932 to 1938 in the context of Chiang Kaishek's attempts to unify and modernise China. It sets out the terms of comparison between the Blueshirts and Fascist organisations in Europe and Japan, indicating where there were similarities and differences of ideology and practice, as well as establishing links between them. It then analyses the reasons for the appeal of Fascist organisations and methods to Chiang Kaishek. Following an examination of global factors, the emergence of the Blueshirts from an internal point of view is considered. As well as assuming many of the characteristics of a Fascist organisation, especially according to the Japanese model and to some extent to the European model, the Blueshirts were in many ways typical of the power-cliques which were already an integral part of Chinese politics. The influence of Chinese secret society traditions is also examined as an aspect that clearly distinguished them from their European Fascist counterparts. The second part of this study will turn to the ideological development of the organisation, and to the ultimately abortive attempt to build up a mass- based organisation through the New Life Movement. At the same time, connections between the Blueshirts and the Qing Bang are analysed. Finally, this thesis looks at the apparent disbandment of the Blueshirts in 1938. The conclusion arrived at, is that the Blueshirts may properly be described as Fascist - or an organisation with unmistakable links to Fascism. Like Fascist movements in many countries, the Blueshirts displayed the same unstable combination of adherence to highly conservative traditional values while simultaneously embracing modernism in technology, communications and new forms of social and political organisation. Not only does this study contribute specifically to the political history of China, it also examines the development of political and military movements in the Far East in the period preceding World War Two. 3 Acknowledgement Acknowledgements During the research and writing of this dissertation, I have acquired many debts. In particular, I am happy to acknowledge my debt to my supervisor, Dr. Rolf G. Tiedemann, whose insightful comments and invariable encouragement helped me to proceed with my work. Gratefully I acknowledge Professor Timothy H. Barrett for his advice, essential instructions, and generous support over the years. Thanks also are due to Professor David Arnold, who has inspired my research with his critical acuity. My gratitude goes to Professor Nomura Koichi and Kuboda Bunji, in Japan, who were so kind to offer me their attention to my research. I am also grateful to Dr. D. Skeel for his patience and motivation throughout the revision of this thesis. Thanks are also due the financial support that SO AS offered me during the year of my fieldwork, which was carried out in various archives in Europe, the Far East and in the USA. Most of all I want to acknowledge my debt to the memory of my ancestor Chung Mongju 1 of twenty one generations ago. Particularly I want to honour him as a scholar, he was a widely respected Confucianist. Furthermore, he was very pro-China, a preference my first generation grandfather also inherited from him. Although I share a similar preference towards research about China with my ancestors, due to the passage of time my ideas are necessarily different from theirs. January 1997 1 HP J^JnJ (1337-1392). In the late Koryo Dynastyiij J | he was a well known neo-Confucian scholar and also prime-minister. 4 Contents List of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 List o f Contents 5 List o f Illustrations and Appendices 7 Note on Romanisation 8 Introduction 9 Chapter One. Towards a Working Definition of Fascism: Methodology and Sources 12 1.1 Approaches to the Question of Fascism 1.2 Exposition of the Sources Cited 1.3 Conclusions Chapter Two. Chiang Kaishek's Espousal of Fascism: 65 Inspiration from Japan and Germany 2.1 The Nature of the Guomindang 2.2 Chiang Kaishek’s Bid for Fascism 2.3 Japanese Fascism and its Impact on the Guomindang 2.4 European Fascism and its Influence on Chiang Kaishek’s Drive for Power Chapter Three. The Emergence of the Blueshirts 113 3.1 Description of the Blueshirts 3.2 Guomindang Factions: Blueshirts and the CC Clique 5 Contents Chapter Four. The Ideology and Implementation 159 of Blueshirt Fascism 4.1 The Ideology of Blueshirt Fascism 4.2 The Implementation of Blueshirt Fascism 4.3 The Attempt to Create a Mass Base: The New Life Movement Chapter Five. The Blueshirts' Dependence on 232 the Qing Bang 5.1 The Guomindang’s Dependence on the Qing Bang 5.2 The Period of Symbiosis: The Blueshirts and the Qing Bang Chapter Six. Metamorphosis of the Blueshirts into 278 the Youth Corps 6.1 Apparent Disbandment of the Blueshirts 6.2 The creation of the Sanminzhuyi Youth Corps Chapter Seven. Re-appraising the Blueshirts 316 as a Fascist Organisation Appendices 335 Abbreviations Used in the Notes 341 Bibliography o f Materials Cited 342 6 Illustrations & Appendices List of Illustrations and Appendices Figure 1. Chiang Kaishek and his foreign masters 315 Appendices 1. Chiang Kaishek and his Secret Societies 335 2. Death List 337 7 Note on Romanisation Note on Romanisation How China experts survive the tortured ways of rendering Chinese into English is a small miracle of modem scholarship. Mainland China, the United Nations, and the Western news media have adopted the Pinyin style, while Taiwan and many Overseas Chinese continue to use the Wade-Giles system or variations thereof. Furthermore, the Chinese characters used in the text are given in Fangsong fanti if ft (Imitation Song Dynasty style type of characters). For consistency, I have reluctantly used Pinyin for all publications sourced in this thesis. For mainland place names, I also have opted for Pinyin, with a few exceptions for the names of places known best by their earlier forms, such as Canton, Whampoa, Yangtze, Manchuria, and people’s names such as Chiang Kaishek, Sun Yatsen and so on. In addition, both Chinese and Japanese names are presented with the surname first. 8 Introduction Introduction Over the last decade there has been a considerable increase in examinations of Fascism by historians who are generally described as revisionist. While these revisionist historians may often take the initiative in re-examining and re-interpreting the history of Fascism in Europe, it is important not to allow revisionist interpretations of events in China to pass by default. This thesis is a contribution to the political history of China, and, particularly in the context of a new questioning of Japanese views about the Second World War, it is important to examine political movements and military organisations in the Far East. It is an addition to the study of Fascism by examining the Blueshirts in China, and by showing that they were indeed Fascist, albeit in a different form to their European counterparts. Those scholars who have written about the Blueshirts have all consolidated the viewpoint that Blueshirt Fascism emulated European Fascism in Hitler’s Germany and/or Mussolini’s Italy. The possibility that Chiang Kaishek and the founders of the Blueshirts were looking more to the Japanese example and were influenced by Fascist developments in Japan has not yet been explored. The two most prominent analysts of the Blueshirts in the West, Lloyd E. Eastman and Maria Hsia Chang (see discussion below), have gone to considerable lengths to arrive at definitive but opposite conclusions regarding the question of Blueshirt Fascism.1 Eastman concludes that Blueshirt Fascism copied in general the pattern of Nazism (National Socialism), whereas Maria Chang, although considering similarities with 1 Maria Hsia Chang, The Chinese Blue Shirt Society: Fascism and Developmental Nationalism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; and Lloyd E. Eastman, The Abortive Revolution; China under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990. 9 Introduction Italian Fascism, finally concludes that the Blueshirts, could not be described as Fascists. Despite the exhaustive nature of their work, the conclusions at which Eastman and Chang arrive may be considered flawed. In contrast, this study will adopt the standpoint that the Blueshirts through the strong historical and cultural connections that exist between China and Japan, especially at their founding in 1932, emulated a form of Japanese Fascism upon which had been superimposed the features and ideas of the Chinese as well as Japanese secret societies. After the First World War and in the wake of the October Revolution in Russia, the people in some European countries went on the barricades to defend themselves against an advancing Communism. Nationalist feelings ran high and Nationalism became the keyword. It was in this environment that anti-Marxism and anti-Communism were bom.