If Japan had not launched a full scale invasion of China in 1937, would the Nanjing government have survived and brought its sta - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Historians have speculated how things would have been different for the Nanjing Government, had the Japanese not launched their onslaught in to the region. The substance of this prose will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the Nanjing government and whether or not it would have been successful in unifying and rebuilding China. From the year 1928 till 1937, the Kuomintang (KMT) was the dominant political party, but was readily losing their popularity amongst the people. They had come to power in China during a time when the country was embroiled political and social turmoil following the success of the northern expedition in the year 1927 by the same party. They unified China under one banner but failed to hold the nation together. This unification move signified a time during which the KMT had the greatest potential to rebuild China (Cochran, 1983). The KMT party started off with the noble purpose of establishing democracy in the country and wished to educate the people in order to make them capable of self-governing. They started off with a profound ideology and wished to instil nationalist feelings within the masses and slowly began expanding their control, first from the north and then they worked their way down to the southern region. The ideology of the KMT was established upon the beliefs of Sun Yat-Sen, but after his demise, Chiang Kai-Shek became the leader of the KMT and his policies later on decide the course of events that took place during the Nanjing decade and also indirectly led to the Japanese invasion of Nanjing (Sun Yat-Sen, 1953). The question whether or not the Nanjing government would have been successful in integrating the nation has a very straight forward answer to it, which will be discussed in the following parts of the prose. The greatest flaw of this entire expedition was the fact that it was done primarily by military force and the party lacked a strong ideology that would draw the diverse range of people living in the country and unite them on a single platform. KMT further did not introduce the relevant land reforms that would protect the interests of the peasants and farmers, which naturally caused them to drawn in by the communist faction of the society. Reconstruction became even difficult as the schism between communism and republicanism intensified. It was not just ideology that separated them, but the weakness of their political leader was also one of the crucial reasons that hindered the State Building project. The KMT did work to improve upon the financial and education system that had severely debilitated the country and were vastly successful in doing so. However, despite their many achievements, KMT lacked a certain amount of political acumen that left them in a major predicament. They failed to launch a full-fledged democratic rule in the country and they further did not take any steps to enlighten the people about the democratic system of government. The people remained completely ignorant regarding the procedures of self-government and it was further speculated that the KMT wanted maintain their iron-clad control over the land and were not interested in democracy (Musgrove, 2000). One prime instance that supports the aforementioned statement occurred, when the KMT party established a ‘tutelage government’ and extended it indefinitely beyond the 6 years that ...Download file to see next pagesRead More