UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title From Administrative Science to Chinese Statecraft: The Local Governance of Central Politics School and Its Political Modernity, 1927-1945 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mr1365r Author Wang, Chen-cheng Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE From Administrative Science to Chinese Statecraft: The Local Governance of Central Politics School and Its Political Modernity, 1927‐1945 DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History by Chen‐cheng Wang Dissertation Committee: Professor Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Chair Professor Kenneth L. Pomeranz Professor Qitao Guo 2015 © 2015 Chen‐cheng Wang DEDICATION To My mother Shuxia and wife Hualing Their love, wisdom, and sacrifice make my life wonderful and meaningful. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi INTRODUCTION 1 Rethinking the Nationalist Party and its Failure in Modern China 2 A Modern Conceptual Framework of Politics 11 Techno‐scientific Political Imagination in Modern Chinese Politics Studies 20 Re‐evaluating Modern Chinese Politics and Its Fate 44 CHAPTER 1: The Adoption and Adaptation of Public Administration in 1930s China 60 The Birth of American Public Administration and Its Chinese Counterpart 61 The Jiangning Experiment and the Orthodox Public Administrative Approach 113 The Lanxi Experimental County and Its Heterodox Public Administration 136 Beyond Public Administration 171 Conclusion 179 CHAPTER 2: The Rationality Project beyond Modern Administration 183 An Unexpected Breakthrough: The Youth‐Save‐Nation Narrative 191 Administrative Rationalization Based on Human Impreciseness 228 A Regime of Fiscal leverage or Humanistic Politics 252 Conclusion 280 CHAPTER 3: From Administrative Science to Modern Chinese Statecraft 284 The Promise land for Public Administration 288 The “Noble Savage” in the Administrative World 310 The Retreat of Public Administration from East Guizhou 336 Conclusion 364 CONCLUSION 371 BIBLIOGRAPHY 402 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to give my advisors Professor Kenneth Pomeranz and Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom my deepest thanks. Their scholarship and their characters are models for me in my academic pursuits and in my life. The erudition and profundity of Professor Pomeranz has opened new historical horizons for me, inspiring me to take small steps into the huge intellectual frontiers that he has just reclaimed. Professor Wasserstrom, with his incisive understanding of the latest theories and contemporary debates, always appeared at the moments when I needed more intellectual “supplies.” I am grateful also to my other committee member, Professor Guo Qitao. His knowledge of late imperial China has been important for me, in part due to making me aware of the limitations imposed by a modern conceptual framework. Professor Anne Walthall is the strictest teacher I have ever met. However, she has turned out to be as well one of the most helpful and openminded. Studying with her was an enjoyable challenge, one that I will never forget. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Rachel O’Toole as well. She showed me how interesting and important world history could be, which stimulated me to bring the problem of alternative modernities into my dissertation. Being her TA in her well-prepared class was a very fruitful experience, too. My lifetime mentor Professor Chen Yong-fa and congenial scholarly brother Professor Wu Zhe in the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, have shared with me many insightful ideas from which I greatly benefited. Their generosity is engraved on my mind. I also want to thank Olivia Humphrey. Without her excellent editing, my dissertation would be much less readable. Many kind people at the Zhejiang and Guizhou Provincial Archives provided me with necessary help; this is greatly appreciated. In addition, research for this dissertation in China was partially financed by a pre-dissertation grant from Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies, and a Fellowship for Doctoral Candidates from the Institute of Modern History at the Academia Sinica support the writing of this thesis. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Chen­cheng Wang Fields of Study First field: East Asian history, modern Chinese history, political history Second field: World history Academic Research Interests The characteristics of the GMD and CCP political cultures and their influences on the two parties’ political capacities Education Ph.D. in History, University of California, Irvine, 2015 M.A. in History, National Taiwan University, 2006 B.A. in History, National Taiwan University, 2002 Publications Journal article, “Intellectuals and the One-party State in Nationalist China: The Case of the Central Politics School (1927-1947),” In Modern Asian Studies. 48 (2014): 1769- 1807. doi:10.1017/S0026749X12000893. Book review, “Ho-fung Hung, Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty,” In Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History Academia Sinica. 76 (2012): 135-142. Book, Promoting Domestic Affairs Through Military Directives: The Role of Conscription in the KMT’s Strategies for and Praxis of State Building (1928-1945), Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2007. (297 pages) v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION From Administrative Science to Chinese Statecraft: The Local Governance of Central Politics School and Its Political Modernity, 1927‐1945 BY Chen‐cheng Wang Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Irvine, 2015 Professor Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Chair The present dissertation deals with how a specific kind of modern political discourse and practice, which was associated with an American style approach to public administration, was introduced, experienced, and then adapted during the 1930s and 1940s in China. The research focuses on local officials who graduated from the Central Politics School, an institution established by the Nationalist Party to train professional public administrators. These individuals were supposed to modernize the entire system of Chinese local governance, making it more rational by bringing it inline with the precepts of scientific knowledge and the scientific method. The actions of the school’s graduates in various counties expose the failure of orthodox public administration methods to deal effectively with Chinese political reality, due to a tendency to underestimate the importance of variable human factors. It was, ironically, only when some of the school’s best former students broke with the precepts of their training and use innovative strategies, which took local realities into account and made use of ideas derived from China’s own statecraft traditions, that they achieved success. This dissertation thus suggests that researchers need to pay more attention in future to Chinese statecraft and its assumptions vi regarding the importance of sensitivity to human nature and variability, as well as imported ideas concerning rationality and scientific methods, when trying to understand trends in Chinese politics and governance. Moreover, the historical meaning of the rise and deviation of public administration is by no means a story only of frustrated modernization or periodic revivals of “tradition.” Rather, it represents an important case study of how non-scientific indigenous resources are deployed in the face of drives in settings outside the West to impose a form of political modernity, which has the potential to overcome the problems insurmountable in the current political conceptual framework. vii Introduction The present dissertation deals with the following issue: how were understandings and practices of politics modernized, problematized and then indigenized during the 1930s and 1940s in China where the young American discipline of public administration was first vehemently adopted and then seriously adapted? What kind of political modernity was formed and reformed in the process of drastic change? Guided by these issues, this thesis will focus on a special group of young local officials who graudated from the Central Politics School, which was established by the Nationalsit Party precisely for cultivating modern public administrators. The failure, innovation, success, and discourse of these professional officials in their efforts to reform local governance according to hegemonic and alternative concetputal frameworks of politics offer critical clues and facts that can help us better understand and answer aforementioned questions about the nature of political modernity in the China and world. The first section of this introduction provides basic historical background about the Central Politics School and the local administrative experience of its graduates during the Nationalist period (1927-1949) in Republican China. It explains why the school, and the local officials who graduated from it, is a case worth researching in modern Chinese political history. This topic stands at a crux, connecting the break between “revolutionary” and “modernizing” historical narratives that has, in the past, prevented us from forming a comprehensive perspective of the overall track of modern Chinese political development. Furthering the explanation as to how and why the current scholarship on modern Chinese politics prevents researchers from