Reviving China: Urban Reconstruction in Nanchang and the Guomindang National Revival Movement, 1932–37

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Reviving China: Urban Reconstruction in Nanchang and the Guomindang National Revival Movement, 1932–37 Front. Hist. China 2012, 7(1): 106–135 DOI 10/3868/s020-001-012-0007-3 RESEARCH ARTICLE Guannan Li Reviving China: Urban Reconstruction in Nanchang and the Guomindang National Revival Movement, 1932–37 Abstract This paper, the first examination of the urban reconstruction of Nanchang, headquarters of the New Life Movement during a period of “National Revival” from 1932–37, presents a fresh understanding of the Guomindang (GMD) New Life Movement. By framing the Nanchang urban reconstruction as an integral program of the New Life Movement, it challenges the established wisdom of the Movement’s mere focus on disciplining Chinese population without any agenda to materially transform Chinese life. By examining GMD engineering efforts to construct public infrastructure, this essay testifies to the Movement’s concrete impact on urban residents. In doing so, it offers a new conceptualization of the New Life Movement as a distinctive moment of Chinese modernity during a process of constructing new urban space in China’s interior cities. This paper also brings to light the ignored connection between the New Life Movement and the historical and ideological context of the GMD National Revival Movement. As the GMD leaders believed, a “new Nanchang” would regenerate a stable national culture and identity as a critique of capitalist modernization. By calling attention to the logic of overcoming modernity, the paper resituates the New Life Movement into cultural revival movements worldwide. Keywords Nanchang, urban reconstruction, New Life Movement, National Revival, Guomindang (GMD) Preface In a short period of time from the establishment of Generalissimo’s Nanchang Traveling Headquarters of the Military Affairs Commission (Junshiweiyuanhui Guannan Li ( ) Department of History, Dowling College, Oakdale, NY 11769, USA E-mail: [email protected] Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:04AM via free access Reviving China: Urban Reconstruction in Nanchang 107 weiyuanzhang zhu Nanchang xingying) in 1932 to the eruption of the full-scale Sino-Japanese war in 1937,1 the city of Nanchang, a Chinese interior city located in Jiangxi province, was made into the political and cultural center of the Guomindang (GMD) National Revival Movement.2 By prioritizing the making of a new Chinese culture as the essential vehicle to initiate China’s sweeping political, social and cultural transformation, the National Revival Movement emphasized “the restoration of national spirit” as the key to the “revival of Chinese country and nation.”3 In Chiang Kai-shek’s own words, “psychological construction,” the concept Chiang borrowed from Sun Yat-sen to refer to the revolutionary process to “first change hearts and minds,” was the precondition for China’s material development.4 Under this guiding spirit, from 1934–36, the city of Nanchang witnessed the birth and the swift development of the New Life Movement, the most influential GMD-directed cultural movement that was launched under the general umbrella of the National Revival Movement to transform Chinese life. For the GMD national and local leaders, Nanchang’s newly installed modern infrastructure and its transformed urban landscape would generate modern urbanity and public spirit among Nanchang’s populace. A revived national spirit based on “a New Nanchang” would further ensure the successful elimination of the Communist rural strongholds. These tasks required to make Nanchang the model city of the attempted nation-wide urban revival and cultural renovation. Scholars of GMD ideology have paid great attention to the GMD culturalist strategy to motivate change and have conceptualized this process as a GMD vision of “cultural revolution.”5 However, none of them discusses the ideology 1 The organization was originally formed in December 1930 with the name of Nanchang Traveling Headquarters of the Generalissimo of Army, Navy and Air Force (Luhaikongjun zongsiling zhu nanchang xingying). A major reshuffle in 1932 gave the organization this new designation. 2 For a comprehensive discussion of the GMD National Revival Movement and its material implementation in the 1930s, see Guannan Li, “Culture, Revolution, and Modernity: The Guomindang’s Ideology and Enterprise of Reviving China, 1927–1937.” 3 Chiang Kai-shek, “Geming zhexue de zhongyao,” 583. 4 Chiang, “Guofu yijiao gaiyao,” 40. 5 Arif Dirlik conceptualizes the New Life Movement as the GMD “cultural revolution” which was a modern and counterrevolutionary response to the Chinese revolution after the Communist debacle in 1927. See Arif Dirlik, “The Ideological Foundations of the New Life Movement: A Study in Counterrevolution,” 945. In response to Benjamin Schwartz’s “cultural conservatism” which projected the GMD solutions based on the national heritage, William Kirby conceives the GMD culturalist strategy as “a method of change,” which, as the GMD leaders believed, was compatible with the German ideology. See William C. Kirby, Germany and Republican China, 45–47. In her recent dissertation on the intellectual content of the GMD fascism, Margaret Clinton borrows the concept of “cultural revolution” from Dirlik and argues that this fascist notion of “cultural revolution” deployed the concept of culture as the motivating vehicle to drive China into a fascist state. See Margaret Clinton, “Fascism, Cultural Revolution, and National Sovereignty in 1930s China.” Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:04AM via free access 108 Guannan Li of “national/cultural revival” and its guiding and defining roles to motivate and direct the GMD projects of modernization. The English-language historiography of the New Life Movement, being preoccupied with the GMD Confucianist impulse, pays little attention to the fact that the New Life Movement was only one significant part of the all-encompassing National Revival Movement.6 By contextualizing the New Life Movement under the general rubric of the National Revival Movement, this paper proposes to use “national revival” (in opposition to “cultural revolution”) to reflect its contemporary usage as both historical reference (used by the various GMD agents) and conceptual analysis of the GMD culturalist vision and strategy. Due to its semantic ambiguity and flexibility, “fuxing,” which means “revival, renewal, restoration, regeneration, revitalization, or renaissance” in Chinese, not only implied the GMD “revolutionary” vision of a progressive future, but also simultaneously revealed its “reactionary” (in the sense of opposing the radical social revolution) claims over the past. In this way, the slippery ideological implications of “national revival” supplied the divided GMD political factions with different concepts of “cultural revival,” “cultural revolution,” and “cultural construction” to actively interpret a contested notion of national revival.7 By 1934, national revival had become an all-encompassing goal of the GMD government as a means of improving China’s political and cultural status.8 This essay is the first examination of Nanchang’s urban reconstruction as an integral program of the New Life Movement. It challenges the established 6 In contrast, in Chinese historiography, historian Deng Yuanzhong first discusses the inauguration of the New Life Movement as an achievement for the Society for Vigorous Action (Lixingshe). As the son of Deng Wenyi, a major leader within the Lixingshe, Deng Yuanzhong’s agenda was to demonstrate that the Lixingshe was the major force behind the National Revival Movement. See Deng Yuanzhong, “Xinshenghuo yundong de tuixing,” 313–38. Deng’s contribution is also reflected in a recent Chinese study on the New Life Movement in Nanchang. See Wen Bo, Chongjian hefaxing, Nanchangshi xinshenghuo yundong yanjiu (1934–1935). 7 Within the divided GMD, “cultural revolution” was the concept first coined and primarily used by the Whampoa military officers from the Lixingshe. For the discussion of the concept of “cultural revolution,” see Clinton, “Fascism, Cultural Revolution, and National Sovereignty in 1930s China,” chapter 1. To compete with the Lixingshe’s influence within the party, the civilian CC Clique launched the Cultural Construction Movement which was centered on the concept of “cultural construction.” Although it is generally true that both concepts quickly developed out of the contour of the specific GMD political campaigns, it is historically significant to recognize that cultural revolution only remained as one interpretive usage of the ideology of national revival. As far as I am concerned, by overlooking the ideology of national revival, the concept of “cultural revolution” fails to capture the contradictions and the multiplicity contained within the GMD contested cultural notions of transforming China. For the discussion of the GMD different conceptions of culture and the competitions between the Lixingshe and the CC Clique, see Li, “Culture, Revolution, and Modernity,” chapter 2 and 4. 8 The National Revival Movement projected a comprehensive agenda and vision to radically transform the GMD economy, politics, society, and culture. See Li, “Culture, Revolution, and Modernity,” 4–8. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:04AM via free access Reviving China: Urban Reconstruction in Nanchang 109 wisdom that the New Life Movement focused only on disciplining the Chinese population and lacked an agenda to transform Chinese life in a specifically material way. 9 By recognizing the significant impact of the Nanchang reconstruction efforts on urban life, this paper helps to reconceptualize the New
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