Chapter 12333 the Troubled Republic, 1912

Chapter 12333

The troubled republic, 1912 - 1949 Key ideas: This chapter discusses core themes in the confusing history of the republican period. Questions and contradictions addressed include the contrast of radically westernised modernity in the coastal cities and stagnation in the rural interior, the militarization of politics, coupled with a marked dependence of governments on foreign support and the growing domination of ideology in politics.

Introduction In the tempestuous history of modern China, the four decades of the Chinese Republic are the most tumultuous and confused period. In order to minimized our own confusion about this time, let us start with a very general orientation to put the extent of modernity and the limitations of the republican state into perspective. The pace of change From at least 1895 onwards, modernization was the generally accepted path to be taken. Efforts were made to rid China of “old” habits, customs and institutions; to establish “new” education, family relations, enterprises, communications, language and traditions; to acquire “new” knowledge, ideologies, dress and hairstyles, and even leisure activities. While the pace of change from the 19th to the 20th century was breathtaking enough in the West, in the modernizing world outside Europe it was much more so. It not only came later and more sudden, but involved the departure from or re-invention of the existing culture. As a result, few Chinese modernizers were able to keep up the pace set by the process they had set in motion. With few exceptions, persons at the forefront of modernization found themselves, their ideas and language having turned “old” in a matter of half a decade. It is useful to keep in mind, therefore, that the proliferation of labels such as reformist, conservative, progressive and reactionary is a relative terminology in a quickly shifting setting, and that even the worst “reactionaries” of the early 1900s were “modern” in their basic outlook. The acquisition of modernity from Japan Modernization was largely congruent with Westernization, but commonly obtained through Japanese mediation. Thus, the modern school system established in the last Qing decade, was based on the Japanese model, which again was based on the German one. Most importantly, the vast majority of translations, which introduced modern knowledge, terminology, concepts, and all that went with it, were from the Japanese. As a result, modern Chinese language and conceptions are permeated by Japanese terms and interpretations. This was fairly unproblematic, as Japanese neologisms usually were

333 For illustrations for chapters 12 and 13, see Shoppa (2004), Twentieth Century China. redefinitions or re-combinations of classical Chinese words. As a result of Japanese leadership in modernization, therefore, East Asia modernity can be described as shaped by Japan.334 Learning from the West was the goal, and sometimes the reality, but Japan was the interpreter with its own considerable creative force. The limited reach of modernity How far, however, did Westernising modernization really reach in China? Certainly, the coastal cities looked modern and the new intellectuals, often educated in mission schools or abroad, where as modern in appearance and expression as their Western counterparts. Furthermore, modern economic structures built by foreign and Chinese participants created small but noticeable modern classes of workers, entrepreneurs and office workers. When we look at Chinese society as a whole, however, modernity remains a fringe phenomenon. Some 80% of Chinese continued to live in villages, and most of them had no means, access or leisure for modernity much beyond the use of matches. They continued to cultivate their fields and apply their crafts in traditional ways, wore clothes produced with traditional technology, and participated in trade that used traditional means of transport and commercial organization. This does not mean that ordinary village dwellers in inland China were oblivious of change. They were observant of what happened around them and quick to use new materials and opportunities. Yet, the modernity of Shanghai would have been an alien world to them. More often, moreover, they were negatively impacted. It was villagers who were made to suffer under higher taxes to feed armies, who were forced to plant opium in order to maximise profits of warlords, who were driven off their land by warfare and natural disaster. It would be only after 1949 that modernity became more than a fringe phenomenon. The republican limitations The term Republican era for Chinese history from 1912 to 1949 in one of convenience rather than substance. From the outset, the republic that was proclaimed as the central government of China in early 1912 was severely limited as a state structure. Its political and financial control over the provinces and its reach into local society was weaker than that the slim and increasingly atrophied Qing state had exerted. Within a year, the frontier regions Outer Mongolia and Tibet had broken away, founding semi-independent states with Russian and British support respectively.335

334 In Korea, where classical Chinese had been the written language of the educated elite as well, a similar process took place in introducing modernity via Japan. 335 The independence of the Outer Mongolian state founded in 1911, was not recognized by a Chinese government until 1952, and then only under Soviet pressure. The independence of Tibet has never been recognized and was reversed by military force in 1959. These trends led to all but nominal disintegration during the warlord era (1916-27) and the reconstitution of state structures during the Nanjing decade (1927-37) of the Guomindang 国民党 (abbr. GMD, also frequently abbreviated KMT based on the Wade-Giles transcription) was limited. In 1931, Manchuria was occupied by Japanese troops and a de-facto colonial regime established. With the Japanese invasion of 1937, Chinese territory became divided between the Guomindang and the Communists. The two political forces clashed immediately after the Japanese surrender, plunging into a civil war of four years. In short, for much of the period, the republic was a no more than a formal framework that held most of the empire together but can hardly count as a as functioning state. The early Republic The revolution Map: The Treaty ports and foreign spheres of influence, 1910: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin1910.htm

The revolution of 1911 or Xinhai Revolution 辛亥革命 (after the cyclical signs of the year) was successful by accident. A military uprising in Wuchang 武昌 (now part of Wuhan city) was forced to start early when cigarette ash triggered an explosion. By coincidence, government forces were withdrawn to Sichuan, where the movement for the return of railway rights had led to violent clashes. Other cities joined the revolutionary uprising, the Qing court recalled Yuan Shikai 袁世凯 (1859-1916), the powerful general of the modern Northern Army, whom it had dismissed for getting too powerful three years earlier. Yuan, however, had not trust in a Manchu court formally headed by the child emperor Puyi 溥儀 (1906-1964, nominally reigned 1908-1912). He negotiated the abdication of the dynasty and himself became president of the Republic of China. The former imperial family was permitted to stay in the Forbidden City (until it was evicted by a local warlord in 1934).336 The revolutionaries Who were the revolutionaries who seemed to have carried the day in winter 1911? The central force of the loosely knit revolutionary movement was the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmeng hui 同盟会) founded in Japan in 1905. It consisted of publicists, activists and educators, backed by secret societies that were united in a fierce and racialist anti-Manchu stance. Sun Yat-sen Sun Yatsen (孙逸仙, called Sun Zhongshan 孙中山 in China, 1866- 1925),337 a medical doctor and able fundraiser, was the leader of the revolutionaries. He had spent his youth in Hawaii and spent much time on fundraising trips in expatriate Chinese communities. His ideological stance was fuzzy but comprehensive enough to make him the movement’s leader. Sun might be described as representative of coastal China, Westernized but deeply nationalist, outward-oriented and adaptable, with a keen business acumen and high-flying ideals. Though abroad at the time of the Wuchang uprising, Sun was nominated the first provisional president of the republic-to-be. Shortly afterwards, however, probably in order to avoid civil war, the revolutionaries ceded the presidency to Yuan Shikai and disbanded their quickly formed militias. Sun did not again play a prominent role in the early republic. Yet after his death in 1925, Sun was gradually raised to become the venerated founder of the republic, acclaimed as the father of the modern Chinese nation by both Guomindang and Communists.338 The failed republic Over the next years, an despite impressive performance flegeling democratic structures, such as local and provincial assemblies and a resounding victory of the revolutionaries (now renamed Guomindang) in general elections (by a franchised voters who made up 4-5% of the population), Yuan ruthlessly and successfully

336 It is worth noting that although fighting was limited to a few local confrontations, the revolution was not “bloodless.” In numerous places, anti-Manchu agitation led to massive persecutions and even massacres of the Manchu population. As in the case of the Chinese Muslims who had suffered ethnic repression during and following the late 19th century rebellions, Manchus often lived in sparate settlements and became easy targets once ethnic hatred was fanned. 337 Sun’s original name is Sun Wen 孙文 (this is commonly used by Japanese and Korean authers as the neutral name). Sun Yat-sen is the transliteration of the Cantonese pronunciation of his zi 字. As this was the name he used in his Hawaii and American years, he came to be known by this name in the West. Sun Zhongshan is the honorary hao 号 used by his comrades, by which he became known and venerated in Republican China. 338 For an analysis of the almost theatrical enshrining of Sun, see Wagner (2002). “Ritual, Politics and Publicity during the Republic: Enshrining Sun Yat-sen.” defeated the new institutions. Initially, he possessed neither a clear military advantage nor firm backing by the established elite. He first moved to dismantle provincial autonomy by military pressure. After the general election, he had Song Jiaoren, the architect of the new, much expanded revolutionary party, assassinated. Yuan then cowed the politically active class into flight or submission. While prominent revolutionaries fled the country, several 10 000 activists lost their lives. The republic had become an empty shell. Yuan Shikai’s regime By the outbreak of the First World War in Europe, Yuan Shikai moved towards a tightly controlled police state. The regime was, however, unable to expand its financial control. Burdened by the indemnities and loans inherited from the Qing, it remained financially weak and woefully weak vis-à-vis the imperialist powers. Thus, Yuan’s government put the salt administration under foreign control as a security for a British loan in 1913, and in 1915 accepted extensive demands by Japan, which had joined the war on the side of the Allied and occupied all of Shandong after ousting the Germans. By late 1915, Yuan moved to make himself emperor. It seems possible that he genuinely believed that dynastic rule was a means to hold the empire together, for his prime objective throughout his presidency had been the restoration of centralized rule and the curbing of regional autonomy. Whatever the case, he mounted the throne in December 1915, but had to step down less than three month later, amidst protests not only of revolutionaries and other opposition activists, but of his own military followers as well. He died soon afterwards. The warlords Map: The age of the warlords: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-cw1.htm

While Yuan had weakened the republic by dismantling participatory structures and pawning sources of state income, his government had also implemented policies that continued late Qing reforms and showed greater coherence and efficiency of government activity than later republican regimes. Measures included thorough reforms of the judicial system, relatively effective bans on opium production and trade, and the expansion of the modern educational system. His unsuccessful attempt at restoring the monarchy and his death, however, fatally weakened central government. With his authority gone, the officers he had made governors of China’s provinces became military rulers of their territories, while other regions were taken over by military or bandit strongmen. The warlords era deepened exploitation and insecurity throughout the country. Some warlords were no better than robbers, others dedicated themselves to reform, many accepted foreign support, none were able to restore stability. The militarization of politics How could military force replace political structures in a matter of years? A simplified answer to a complex process would be that military and educational structures were the only functioning networks left after the collapse of the dynastic state. Consequently, the military and education (in a wide sense) were the only areas, that received attention and achieved notable advancements. Perhaps the most crucial measure, by which governments structures had become separated from society at large, was the abolition of the state examinations in 1905. This had severed the ties which, thinly but tenaciously, had tied state, local elites and the educational system together. With the basis of civil officialdom cut, the new military structures provided the only strong personal networks and power bases. This was the case in the career of Yuan Shikai, who, having returned to power was able to rely on his former officers. In the 1920s, the career of Chiang Kai-shek ( ) followed a similar pattern: His first power base was the Huangpu military academy, where he supervised the training of some 8000 young cadets. New intellectuals and power politics At the same time, the disassociation of the educated elite and the state robbed intellectuals of the most direct path towards fulfilling their Confucian mission, namely the official career, but freed them to critically distance themselves from the state and to pursue independent careers. The nation became their focus, and its guiding and education their mission. Apart from a handful of exceptions, 20th century intellectuals saw themselves as educators, either directly as teachers or indirectly as authors, journalists, artists, or administrators. Some returned to direct involvement in politics, and the few who grasped the importance of the military became leaders, such as Sun Yat-sen late in life and Mao Zedong early in his career. The May Fourth era339 Through all political vicissitudes of the early republic, government activities and private initiative, both foreign and Chinese, contributed to building a new educational system that, though still narrow- breasted, furthered the formation of an intensely politically and socially involved, diverse and lively intelligentsia. Despite government efforts to influence curricula and to prevent political activities, especially under Yuan’s presidency and the Nanjing regime, universities, colleges and middle schools became centres of political debate and opposition movements. The end of the First World War When the First World War ended in 1918, hopes for a more just world order ran high.340 In East Asia, Chinese hoped for the lessening of imperialist pressures and the return of Shandong, still occupied by Japan; Japanese hoped for true equality in their relations with the West, Koreans for liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The May Fourth movement The negotiations at Versailles were followed closely. By early 1919, it had become clear that the Western powers had no intention to change the colonial order. Japan’s claims to Korea, Shandong and Manchuria were recognized. Chinese students were stirred by the Russian revolution of 1917 and the March 1 movement in Korea, mass protests started by activists and students in Seoul that soon spread across the whole country.341 In Beijing protests started on 4 May. Student demonstrators attacked the Beijing government for acquiescing with the loss of Shandong. Protesters in Paris forced the Chinese delegation to refuse signing the treaty. Demonstrations and agitation spread to other urban centres and gained the support of workers and shopkeepers. The movement did not achieve its primary political goal: the return of Shandong. It did, however, loose the Beijing government so much face that it had to step down. Most importantly, it demonstrated that Chinese people had a voice, and greatly enhanced both national sentiment and the standing of the new intellectuals. Following the precedent of concerted political protests led by middle school and university students, student protests became an important feature in Republican politics. Whereas the authorities were wary about using violence against the student protestors, perhaps respecting them as a modern version of young scholars and

339 The standard works on the May Fourth movement are Chow (1960), The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China and Schwarcz (1986), The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. 340 The America president Woodrow Wilson’s statement on the right of self-determination, while implicitly directed at the situation in Europe, caused a great stir in the non-European colonized world. 341 The Korean movement swelled into a mass movement, involving about one in ten Koreans. It lasted into April but was gradually muted by massive military force. aspiring literati, later movements were met with increasingly violent suppression.342 New culture The May Fourth movement gave a great boost the new culture movement that had begun in 1915. New culture involved a new radical cultural modernization, involving language itself, literature and arts, as well as the re-invention of traditions and a veneration for science. It were the new culture activists who promoted the form of written Chinese we now learn as modern Chinese and who established what we now consider modern Chinese literature. The golden age of the Chinese bourgeoisie343 Parallel to the New Culture movement, coastal China experienced a period of marked economic development. As Marie-Claire Bergère has shown, this was an effect of the First World War in Europe. The weakening of Western enterprises and interests, coupled with increasing Western import needs in the years 1914-18, provided Chinese entrepreneurs with opportunities for expansion in textile production and for building up new industries that were quickly grasped. It was in the late 1910s and into the 1920s that modern industrial structures became established in the expanding industrial centers, particularly Shanghai and Wuhan. A new bourgeoisie too shape, which consisted of a small number of extremely rich tycoons but also an urban middle class of professionals and employees as well as a class of industrial workers. Communists and Nationalists In the wake of the political May Fourth movement, young intellectuals threw themselves into a frantic search for solutions for China. This led to a proliferation of “isms,” often wholesale ideological approaches, labels that quickly changed or were abandoned again. The founding of the Communist Party Communism was one of these ideologies scrutinized for potential answers for China.344 In 1921, members of a Communist study group started at Beida (Beijing University) who had moved to Shanghai, founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the junior members of the Beida study group was a young clerk by the name of Mao Zedong 毛泽东 (1893-1976). Although communists soon became active and worked to organize workers in Shanghai, for years to come, the party remained a very small club of a few dozen members.

342 For an outstanding study of student protests, see Wasserstrom (1991). Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. 343 Bergère (1981). L’âge d’or de la bourgeoisie chinoise. 344 Marxism had attracted little attention in China prior to the end of the First World War. The Beida study group was started after the October Revolution. It would appear, however, that broader interest in China was triggered only in 1919, when the Bolsheviks announced that they would return all privileges obtained under the unequal treaties, including the Manchurian railway. The Comintern and the Guomindang reorganization By this time, the Bolshevik revolutionaries, faced with civil war in Russia and the suppression of communist rebellions in European countries, had founded the Comintern in order to further communist movements all over the world. Also at the same time, Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionaries, inconclusively shifting between Shanghai and Guangzhou as their luck changed, were looking for support wherever they could get it. When a Comintern agent met Sun, he showed great interest. The Bolsheviks, on their part, were concerned about the continued rise of Japan and its expansion into Manchuria. As a result, the Guomindang was reorganized in Guangzhou with considerable Comintern support. The reorganized Guomindang is usually referred to as the Nationalists. It was transformed into a tightly organized cadre organization with clear competencies, and strengthened militarily through the military academy, set up at Huangpu 黄埔 near Guangzhou in 1924 (often referred to as the Whampoa Academy, different from the Huangpu river 黄埔江 that passes through Shanghai!). Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi 蒋介石, 1887-1975)345, Sun Yat-sen’s long-standing military aide, was made commandant of the academy, while Zhou Enlai 周恩来 (1898-1976), a young communist returned from France, was appointed director of its political department. The Nationalist-Communist cooperation In a strange move that initially benefited both the small Communist Party and the much weightier but organizationally weak Guomindang, the two organizations were merged. Communists joined the Guomindang ranks and participated in the Guangzhou reorganization. The Nanjing Decade The goal of the Guomindang reorganization was the reunification of China. Sun Yat-sen had initiated the process, but did not live to see its results. He died on a trip to Beijing on 2 March 1925. For some time, it remained unclear who would take over the leadership in the Guomindang. Even in summer 1926, when the long-prepared military campaign to restore national unity was launched, the question had not been fully settled. The Northern Expedition The Northern expedition (Chinese: beifa 北伐) swiftly conquered the South until it reached the Yangzi region. The tripartite city of Hanyang 汉阳, Wuchang 武昌 and Hankou 汉口 (modern Wuhan) was taken only after heavy and destructive fighting. Momentum stalled and divisions within the Guomindang leadership led to the

345 Chiang Kai-shek was originally from a county town in Zhejiang province. The transliteration of his name that became common in the West is based on a dialect pronunciation. formation of inimical headquarters of the leftists in Wuhan and Chiang Kai-shek in Nanchang 南昌. Differences centred on whether the campaign should push on for Beijing or take Shanghai first. Chiang was resolved to take Shanghai first and asserted his decision against the Soviet advisors. Combined preparations involved the mobilization of organized workers and secret negotiations with the Shanghai underworld as well as the local and northern warlords. The purge of the communists In spring 1927, Shanghai was taken over from the inside by organized workers. Shortly after the first Guomindang troops had marched into the city, Chiang Kai-shek turned against the Communists. The Green Gang (Chinese. Qingbang 青帮), the powerful mafia of Shanghai, the entrepreneurs and bankers supported Chiang against the threat of a communist revolution. The mafia did the dirty work, breaking up the workers’ strike and suppressing their organization. Thousands of labour leaders, both communist and other, were slaughtered. (Zhou Enlai was one of the leading Communist labour organizers who managed to escape from the Shanghai massacre). In fierce fighting in Hunan and Jiangxi, the labour and peasant organizations were destroyed. Not only Communists but all Guomingdang members suspected of being “leftists” were purged. The character of Guomindang was changed to a nationalist movement with increasingly fascist leanings. Chiang Kai-shek’s ascension to power Over the following year, the Communists were driven out of the cites, the warlord regime at Beijing evicted with the support of two other northern warlords and the nationalist government installed at Nanjing. Chiang was able to establish his leadership despite being forced into retirement for several months following the failure of the 1927 campaign to take Beijing. His decisive asset was that due to personal connections he was able to raise the funds necessary to firmly establish Guomindang rule in the Yangzi region. His connections were twofold: He had recently married Song Meiling 宋美岭 (1898-2003), a member of one of the leading tycoon clans Song (usually transcribed Soong), whose older sisters had married Sun Yat-sen and H. H. Kung (Kong Xiangxi 孔祥熙, 1881-1967), the latter a scion of an equally influential banking clan. Perhaps equally important were Chiang’s connections to the Green Gang. With the help of the syndicate, Chiang was able to force Shanghai bankers and industrialists to “donate” huge sums and to put up with heavy taxation. In return for having the labour movement suppressed, East coast business found itself pressured to effectively finance the Nanjing regime, to the extent that industrial development was stunted. The Nanjing regime Map: The Guomindang regime: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/kmt-chin.htm

Although the regime installed at Nanjing restored a superficial unity of China proper. Power remained shared with warlords in the North and the Southwest, while actual rule remained city-based and only occasionally penetrated into the countryside. Grand modernization projects were launched but seldom got off the ground. The Nanjing government remained a military regime with most of its budget directly or indirectly financing the military. Foreign pressures and internal dissent could account for this military focus. However, Chiang Kai-shek’s regime became obsessed with annihilating communism and quelling all tendencies for social revolution. Chiang maintained that without domestic peace, foreign threats could not be confronted. Efforts of the Guomindang army went into massive campaigns against communists in remote rural areas. As a result, the Nanjing government failed to address China’s pressing problems of widespread poverty and social injustice. Taxation remained as biased a it had been before, with most levied from the countryside in a highly unjust system, topped up by customs and industrial taxation while income tax practically did not exist. Few very rich were able to effectively defend their interests, while the majority lived in uncertainly and poverty, and the slender middle class in deep anxiety. From the early 1930s, The so-called Blueshirts (Chinese: lanyishe 蓝衣社, named after the shirts made of coarse, traditional cotton cloth) were a para-military organization spearheaded by former Huangpu cadets modeled on Italian fascism and fiercely loyal to Chiang. They were supposed to head the New Life movement of rectifying Chinese culture along nationalist and fascist lines in the mid-1930s. They largely succeeded in intimidating students into acquiescence, assassinated dissidents and gathered information on labour organizations and peasant unrest. As China was hit by the economic depression from 1929 onwards and none of the underlying problems were addressed, the regime remained a military dictatorship. The arrested economic development The momentum of economic development was halted when the civil war reached the lower Yangzi in late 1926. In the subsequent years, both the Nanjing regime’s politics and the global economic crises caused increasing economic difficulties. Even before the Great Depression hit markets worldwide, instable financial politics and a taxation that burdened Chinese enterprises far more than their foreign competitors burdened Chinese enterprises. While classified as “bourgeois” in leftist ideological terminology, the Nanjing regime’s rule was not conducive to the modern economic sector. Achievements in international relations While the political and economic records of the Nanjing government are problematic, its achievements in foreign relations were remarkable. Due also to the diplomatic abilities to Song Meiling and the Kong brothers, the new government quickly achieved international recognition and was able to establish itself as the only viable Chinese government in the relations with Soviets, Americans and Europeans of all political couleur. The rural Communist base areas When Chiang Kai-shek turned against the Communists and Guomindang Leftists in 1927, the Comintern lamely and self- righteously asserted that the Guomindang had shown its real, bourgeois face. With the power-struggle between Stalin and Trotzky dominating the USSR and fascism rising in Europe, interest in Far Eastern Communist movements was low. The Chinese communists adopted a strategy of survival that combined rural revolution based on thorough investigations of grassroot conditions with the age-old traditions of Chinese outlaws. They chose rural regions far from major cities where infrastructure was difficult and government presence was weak. Here they set up often quite extensive base areas. Taking care to win popular support, they became firmly established and built up forces of several ten thousands again. Although much smaller and poorly equipped when compared to the several hundred-thousand strong Guomindang armies, Communist base areas were able to hold out against military pressure by adopting mobile strategies of guerilla warfare. The Jiangxi rural soviet (also the Jinggangshan base area: Jinggangshan jidi 井冈山基地) is the best-known of these base areas, in part because it was one of the largest, but mainly because Mao Zedong was one of its leading organizers. The Mukden Incident and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria In the meantime, by 1930, the great depression and the weighty but underused army created a volatile situation in Japan. The Japanese presence in Manchuria was run by the state-like infrastructural and industrial development and exploitation organization modestly called the South-Manchurian Railway Company. It was powerful, yet thwarted in expanding its control, both due to Chinese resistance and to cautious Japanese politics. Already in 1928, Japanese army officers in Manchuria had attempted to generate a situation that would give Japan an opportunity for military intervention by assassinating Zhang Zuolin 张作霖 (1873- 1928), the powerful warlord of the Northeast. Unexpectedly to all, Zhang’s son Zhang Xueliang 张学良 (1898-2001) not only succeeded in consolidating his hold over the Northeast, but soon turned markedly anti-Japanese. With the Guomindang also organizing a boycott against Japan, voices in the Japanese military and in the general public in favour of military expansion into China increased. In September 1931, the Japanese government gave unmistakable orders to the commanding Japanese officer in Manchuria to restrain his troops. Forewarned of the imminent order that would make military action a mutiny, the Japanese officers in Manchuria decided to strike first. They set of explosive near Chinese barracks in the vicinity of Shenyang (commonly referred to as Mukden in Western documents of the period). The incident provided the pretext for military intervention and force the hand of the government in Tokyo. Forces in Manchuria, with support by the Japanese governor-general of Korea, swiftly occupied Northeastern China. Chiang Kai-shek, embroiled in another internal leadership conflict ordered Zhang Xueliang to withdraw. Manchukuo The Japanese colonial armies quickly set up a nominally independent state with the last Qing emperor Puyi as a figurehead.346 Despite intensive diplomatic lobbying by Japan in the League of Nations, Manchukuo (Chinese pronunciation: Manzhouguo 满洲国), literally the “Manchu state,” was to be recognized by Japan only. The bombing of Shanghai

346 Puyi had been living in the Japanese Concession of Tianjin since 1924. He was apparently lured by Japanese promises to restore him to the Qing homeland. Some former Qing officials joined his puppet-government in Shenyang. With the South-Manchurian Railway already possessing the structures necessary for industrial development and administration, under de-facto Japanese colonial rule Manchuria was quickly industrialized and transformed into a supplier of raw material for Japan. Although Chinese military resistance was muted on Chiang Kai-shek’s orders, popular anti-Japanese sentiment ran high. The boycott movement in Shanghai appeared so threatening to foreign interest, that the Municipal Council of the International Settlement declared a state of emergency on 28 January 1932. The same night, Japanese marines clashed with Guomindang troops in the poor Zhabei district. Japanese warships reacted by bombing Zhabei, killing uncounted numbers of civilians. The incident entered Chinese history as the January 28 incident (Chinese: Yi-erba shijian 一二八事件). It unleashed a small but fierce war over Shanghai – with both sides carefully avoiding the foreign settlements. Courageous fighting by Guomindang troops and clear disregard for the League of Nations and international law on the part of Japan contributed to changing Western perceptions of China and of the Nanjing regime. An uneasy armistice was reached in May 1932. The Long March The Long March: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/changzheng/176174.htm

The Nanjing regime returned to its anti-Communist campaigns. By mid-1934, the long-term strategy of encircling the Communist base areas and continuously extending roads and sturdy brick houses into the region had made the situation in the Jiangxi base area extremely difficult. In October 1934, 80 000 communist combatants broke out of the Nationalist encirclement. All the sick and wounded as well as all women and children (with the exception of some 35 women, the wives of leading communists) were left behind, facing great suffering during the Guomindang recapture of the area. No more than a quarter of those who set out from Jiangxi reached northern Shaanxi over a year and a march of almost 10 000 km later. They set up their base in the poorest region of China, with headquarters in Yan’an 延安 (today still a centre of political pilgrimage but little more). Feats of great bravery and endurance made the Communist defeat at the hands of the Nationalists the focal event of CCP identity, and the Long March (Changzheng 长征) as a victory of heroism. Despite the fact that the Guomindang and its allied warlords had prevailed militarily and succeeded in shattering Communists bases and structures throughout most of the country, the communists in inhospitable, poor Northern Shaanxi became the only credible alternative for many concerned Chinese. The Communists profited by widespread disenchantment with the Nanjing regime while presenting themselves as the only true patriots committed to fighting the Japanese. Some of their movement may have been symbolic rather than of real effect, but they were certainly winning the propaganda war. Already in 1932, the Jiangxi soviet had declared war on Japan. During the Long March, while hunted by the forces of the Sichuan warlord, they had repeated that a united front was necessary to defend China. The Xi’an incident Chiang Kai-shek, meanwhile, insisted on his “inner pacification” against mounting resistance among his own rank and file. When Japan moved to extend its influence further into Hebei and over Inner Mongolia, Zhang Xueliang, the former warlord of Manchuria, in the service of Chiang since 1934 and positioned in Xi’an in order to coordinate attacks on the Communist bases in Northern Shaanxi, took the initiative. Through 1936, he stalled the suppression of Communists and anti-Japanese activists, entered into negotiations with Communist emissaries - becoming deeply impressed with Zhou Enlai in the process - and gaining acquiescence of the Shanxi warlord. When Manchukuo and Mongolian forces attacked the region of Hohot (Chinese: Huhe haote 呼和浩特, then Suiyuan 綏遠 province) and Japanese mariners landed in Qingdao to suppress Chinese strikers, and Chiang Kai-shek still attempted to force the troops around Xi’an to launch an extermination campaign into Northern Shaanxi, Zhang Xueliang had Chiang kidnapped in his Xi’an headquarters. After two weeks of high tension and intense negotiation, nothing much happened: Military confrontation between the forces of Zhang Xueliang and the Nanjing government was avoided; Zhang Xueliang released Chiang Kai-shek, and even accompanied him to Nanjing, with no more than a verbal confirmation from Chiang that he would “review matters.” Zhang was tried and spent the next half-century under house arrest (he was taken to Taiwan when the Guomindang fled in 1949). The united front was not realized, but the civil war of ten years had at least come to a standstill. Yet, strangely enough, the incident proved a great boon to both Chiang and the CCP. Chiang had regained a degree of genuine popularity through his steadfastness while being held in Xi’an. The Communists in their Yan’an base had won a major propaganda victory and a chance for survival. The Second World War in East Asia Respite was short. On 7 July 1937, the Lugouqiao incident 卢沟桥 (referred to as Marco-Polo Bridge in the West) triggered the Second World War in East Asia. Despite panicked negotiations between Tokyo and Nanjing, a bloodless clash between exercising Japanese and Chinese troops at the strategically important bridge south of Beijing quickly spiralled into full-blown, though undeclared war. The Japanese conquest of Eastern China As it was impossible to strike back in Hebei province, which had fallen under Japanese influence from the early 1930s onwards, Chiang Kai-shek decided to open a second front at Shanghai. Vastly superior numbers of the Chinese forces were ineffectual despite heroic fighting, because of absolute Japanese superiority in the air and with heavy artillery. Guomindang troops suffered disastrous losses, the prepared strongholds Wuxi, Nanjing and Wuhan had to be given up one after the other. Within a year, Japanese troops had occupied the whole of Eastern China and the Guangzhou region. By late 1937, the united front of Guomindang and CCP was finally revived, but cooperation remained troubled. The Nanjing massacre When Japanese troops took Nanjing in December 1937, they submitted the civilian population, vastly swelled by refugees to six weeks of wanton killing, rape and violence.347 Figures of victims, naturally impossible to assess with any precision, are commonly ranged between 100 000 and 300 000. As an outbreak of violence during which all “ordinary” human feeling seemed to have vanished, before the Second World War in Europe and in the presence of a small number of Westerners, the Nanjing massacre has stayed prominent in memories of the Second World War in Asia. It still forms a focal point of contentious interpretations in China and Japan. The breaking of the Huanghe dikes, burnt earth and concentration camps Although it is difficult to consider even more war atrocities while confronted with the Nanjing massacre, we have to add that such atrocities occurred, albeit further away from international observation and therefore less remembered. In mid-1938, when Chiang Kai-shek was preparing the defense of Wuhan and the Japanese armies from the North were approaching Kaifeng, which would have meant control over the strategic railway line down to Wuhan, he ordered the Huanghe dikes to be blasted. The Japanese advance was halted

347 In Western literature, the rather ??? circumscription “rape of Nanjing” used to be common. In Japan, the neutral and even more ??? term “Nanjing Incident” is used to the present day. for three months – at the cost of 4000 inundated villages and uncounted Chinese civilian deaths. In the later stages of war and occupation, the Japanese military resorted to a strategy of burnt earth, that wreaked terrible destruction in large rural areas of Northern China. In another move to intimidate resistance and to extract material from China for the Japanese war effort, large concentration camps were set up in Manchuria. Neither of these war atrocities has been really addressed after the war. China in the war From 1938 to 1945, the long-feared breakup of China became reality. Wartime China consisted of the zones under Japanese occupation, with all lowland Northern and Eastern China, as well as the areas surrounding Guangzhou and Nanning in Guangzhou added to older regions under Japanese control, namely Taiwan and Manchuria, Sichuan with Chongqing as wartime capital under Guomindang rule, with Yunnan under an allied warlord and more tenuous control over the unoccupied upland South, and the Shaanxi plateaus and adjacent Northwestern areas under the Communists, with another warlord maintaining control over Shanxi. Most generally speaking, the region most sheltered from the war was Taiwan, which was a firmly integrated colonial territory of Japan. Furthermore, Manchuria and mountainous Southern areas from the Southwest to the Southeast were least affected by direct war destruction. As the war dragged on, the situation in the Guomindang areas deteriorated as did both the war effort and the political situation of the government. By contrast, the Communists areas expanded, while control, popular support and war results all improved. Throughout the war, the power relations between the three main zones, the occupied East, the Guomindang and the Communists areas, changed little. The war ended with the Japanese defeat in the Pacific War. China’s contribution to this were nine years of war in China, that tied down some two fifths of the Japanese military - at terrible costs and sufferings of the Chinese population. In the following, we will briefly outline the situation in the three main zones. The Occupied zones Following the occupation, Japan moved quickly to install copies of the Manchurian system to the three occupied zones of eastern Inner Mongolia, North and Central-Eastern China. In each zone, a development company focused on infrastructure and the development of resources after the model of the South Manchurian Railway Company and a puppet regime were set up. The strategy of garnering the economy of the most productive regions of China for Japan while keeping troops stationed in China under the limit of 250 000 did not work. Throughout the war, at least two fifths of the Japanese military forces were tied down in China. None of the puppet regimes gained popular recognition, while Japanese control beyond the cities and main transport lines evaporated quickly. Intellectuals, activists, and other patriots who had the means to flee, left the cities in the occupied zones for the Southwest or for Yannan. The trek to the South, with the move of large parts of the universities of Beijing to Kunming, where a temporary United university was set up, became a new focus of national, anti-Japanese identity, apart from constituting a brain-drain to the occupied zones. The Guomindang in the war Unoccupied China was the landlocked interior, poor before and now cut off from the coast. The flight of the Guomindang to Chongqing created a highly unstable situation, caused by vested but uprooted interests of the Guomindang elite, and the massive influx of fugitives into a relatively poor region. Unlike the Communist areas, however, the Nationalists were still able to receive shipments via the road from Yunnan to British Burma and continued to receive some, albeit dwindling foreign support. Up to late 1938, Russian airfighters had supported the Guomindang War effort. Although all Soviet and German support ended with the outbreak of war in Europe, the Nationalists were able to convince the United States to send planes and pilots in an unofficial cooperation in 1940. Imports of war materials and petrol by the Burma road were crucial for the war effort and the war economy.348 It seems, however, that the difficulties of the mountain road, coupled with organizational weakness in the military and political leadership, prevented the Guomindang government to profit from this last provisioning line to rebuild some measure of military and economic strength. The CCP in the war Meanwhile, the Communists in Yan’an, though completely isolated by the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviet recognition of the Manchukuo territory in 1941, and an economic blockade set up by Chiang Kai- shek, proved more able to manage dearth. Drawing on experiences from the rural soviets and the Long March, they concentrated on in grassroots presence, a moderate version of land reform, and guerilla tactics taken to enemy zones. Success in mobilizing locals in the occupied North into armed resistance could have terrible consequences for the local population. Repression by Japanese troops was brutal, the directive to “kill all, burn all, destroy all” becoming horrible reality. The widening war By 1941, the outlook of protracted war in China was bleak. Heroic attempts to keep up pressure on Japanese forces seemed to achieve

348 As early as 1938, two years before the invasion of Indochina, Japanese power in Southeast Asia was strong enough to force French colonial authorities in Vietnam to close its harbours and the railway line to Kunming to Chinese imports. In 1940, Britain gave in to Japanese pressure and closed the Burma road for three months. little more than increasing the misery of the Chinese population. With the entry of the United States into the Pacific War after the bombing of Pearl Harbour on 17 December 1941, the value of China in the international perspective was greatly enhanced. The Guomindang in Chongqing received expanded financial and military support. By 1944, new, larger bombers made Chinese airfields in the Southwest an important asset: direct attacks on the Japanese islands, on Taiwan and Manchuria were flown from Guizhou and Hunan bases. The Japanese response was swift. In a concerted campaign, corridors from Hunan to Guizhou were occupied and the airfields destroyed. All this happened in a situation of famine, economic breakdown and forced tax collection in kind. The Guomindang fought back, but its troops by this time consisted mostly of forcibly conscripted, hardly trained, and half-starved men. Military action further ravaged the areas affected by transit and fighting, while military gains were minimal. 349 By the end of the war, economic collapse in the Guomindang region had led to famine and spiralling inflation. At the same time, the Communists were growing in influence and in military stature. Economic problems aggravated poverty, but mismanagement was on a much smaller scale than in the Guomindang areas. Continuing their grassroots activities and propaganda campaign, the CCP became firmly installed in wide rural areas in the North that were nominally under Japanese control. CCP troops in the main Eighth Route Army (Balu jun 八路军) and the smaller New Fourth Army numbered 900 000, with morale and efficiency clearly superior to the Guomindang troops (which still were much larger, at 2.7 mio troops). CCP membership increased to over 1 mio. Inside the party, rectification campaigns that forced “intellectual workers” to follow strict ideological lines and purged rival leaders of Mao had consolidated the party structure into a disciplined, authoritarian body. The end of the Second World War in Asia While negotiations for a postwar order in Europe had been going on for years by the time of the German capitulation on 8 Mai 1945, the end of the war in East Asia came suddenly and with no more than vague and sometimes contradictory arrangements.350 Here, the war continued into August. Soviet troops moved intro Manchuria. The

349 By the end of the year, bombing of Japan was resumed, not from China but from the Mariana islands. American Guomindang advisers became so dispirited with the Guomindang military that they tried to pressure Chian Kai-shek to accept various programs for training and supporting Communist troops in order to keep up pressure on the Japanese in China. 350 At the Cairo Conference of 1943 and at Yalta 1944 some postwar regulations for Asia had been agreed upon. These regarded the borders of Japan after the war, not the political restructuring within the states. While Cairo stipulated the return of all occupied territories outside the Japanese islands, in Yalta the basic restoration of Russian privileges in Manchuria was agreed upon in return to Russian entry into the Pacific War. united States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August. Five days later, Japan capitulated. East and Southeast Asia were liberated. Korea, China and Vietnam quickly spiralled into civil wars with massive foreign involvement. The Civil War By the end of the war, Communists movements in the three countries had become the only remaining option for a post-colonial order that carried conviction. While it is strange that Communism took root so effectively despite Stalin’s abandoning of Asian Communists, the outline of Chinese history of the Republican period goes some way in explaining their success. In Korea and Vietnam, non-communist national movement display deficiencies comparable to the Chinese Nationalists, remaining urban and with a very narrow base, while suspect of being overly dependent on foreign support. Foreign influence in Asia Nevertheless, the division of societies into pro-communist and anti- communist camps was not the inevitable outcome of the period of rapid modernization, Western colonial world domination, and war. In all three countries there still existed considerable openness and the shared common goal of nation building. Rather, close inspection of the developments (not possible here) shows that in the months immediately following the war, radicalization into hostile camps was often tragically intensified by inept and ideological foreign interference defined by Cold War antagonisms. The sliding into civil war Map: The Civil War: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/chin-cw2.htm At the end of the Second World War, the United States were the only Western power present, while Soviet Russia was able only to make limited but speedy moves to secure its interests in Siberia and Manchuria. The United States entered the scene with hasty arrangements intended to stave off Communist power. In China, these included massive air transfer of Guomindang troops into the centres of Eastern China and measures to make sure that Japanese troops surrendered to Guomindang rather than to Communist troops. As these measures involved the confirmation of widely hated puppet administration and the sudden “occupation” of northern cities by southern troops, they did much to exacerbate the underlying conflict. The Communist countermeasure consisted in the takeover huge stocks of arms from Manchuria, and the reorganization of their forces as the People’s Liberation Army (Jiefang jun 解放軍, PLA). Within weeks of the Japanese surrender, Nationalists and Communists had outlined their zones of domination. And stakes had become to high to back down. While armed clashes intensified and political assassinations again became common, financial mismanagement caused a return to galloping inflation. The United States now made continued support for Chiang Kai-shek dependent on compliance with maintaining domestic peace. By the end of 1946 civil war had broken out. While the Guomindang held the South and virtually all cities, as well as and army outnumbering the Communists almost 3 to 1, the Communists were expanding in the countryside and building up military strength in Manchuria.351 Revolution taking over Communist reorganization of rural society had now become openly revolutionary. Often based on careful land registration carried out earlier, communist land reform was implemented in areas under CCP control. Based upon the categorization of households, landowners and rich peasants (defined as those who earned over half or half their income from hired labour) were expropriated and the land redistributed. Mostly locally organized land reform gave those formerly at the bottom of their communities the opportunity of meting out vengeance on hated landowners, and sometimes on others as well. Reprisals were terrible when Communist areas were recaptured by Nationalists or recaptured Nationalist areas retaken again by Communists. In 1947, Communist areas were still mostly rural. In the course of 1948, most important northern cities had fallen to the PLA. By early 1949, the evacuation was prepared, including a reorganization of the suppressive administration, the massive stationing of troops, and the shipping of much of the imperial collections held in the Forbidden City to Taiwan. After a several months’ lull in the war, the Communists resumed fighting in April 1949. By fall, Communist victory was clear. While military campaigns continued in the South, Mao Zedong prepared for a new national government in Beijing. H assembled a new Political Consultative Conference in Beijing, that consisted of a majority of Communist as well as fourteen other, much smaller parties. In the new central government, Mao became chairman and Zhu De 朱德 (1886-1976),352 the most prominent Communist general senior vice- chairman. On 1 October 1949, Mao formally announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China, standing atop the Gate of

351 In the Manchukuo era, Communists had been all but eliminated in Manchuria. Remaining organised Communists were mostly Koreans who led the guerilla resistance in the border areas of the northern tip of Korea and adjoining Chinese and Soviet areas. This area had been largely empty throughout the Qing dynasty and settled by Koreans from the late 19th century onwards. In the Chinese civil war, Korean Communists fought alongside Chinese and became part of the PLA. Many of the Korean and mixed troops were dispatched to Korea in the Korean War. 352 Zhu De is considered the main organizer of the PLA. Originally from northern Sichuan province, he started off as a student at an early military academy and served with a Yunnan warlord until 1922, when he went to Shanghai in order to cure his opium addiction. He spent the critical years 1922-26 in Germany and the Soviet Union and secretly entered the CCP, while retaining his position as Guomindang officer. The career that made him famous began in 1927, when he fled to the Jiangxi Communist area, escaping the Guomindang crackdown in Shanghai. He is considered the key figure in building up Communists troops in Jianxi, leading them through the Long March, and rebuilding Communist military strength in Yan’an. Revered for his personal courage and integrity, he became an important figure in the early Communist period, but shrank to a figurehead in his old age. Heavenly Peace. By this time, Guomindang officers and many others, who had grounds to fear reprisals after the Communist takeover, were leaving the mainland for Taiwan or overseas destinations.