Chinese Politics - Nanjing Government in 1930-1950 - Essay Example

CHINESE POLITICS (NANJING GOVERNMENT) 1930-1950 The Republic of China was founded in January, 1912, following the Xinhai Revolution, whereby Dr. Sun Yat-sen was elected as the first provisional president and Nanjing was named its new capital. But due to political pressures and the demand of the revolutionaries , the capital was shifted to Beijing. However in 1927, the Kuomintang (KMT) re-established Nanjing as the capital of the Republic of China and the following decade came to be known as the Nanjing decade. INTRODUCTION: THE NANJING GOVERNMENT In 1937, after the Japanese invasion of the capital city of Nanjing, the Japanese collaborationist government known as the “Nanjing Regime” or more popularly known as the Nanjing Nationalist Government, led by Wang Jingwei was established and subsequent to the World War II, the KMT relocated its central government to Nanjing. However after April 23, 1949 Nanjing was conquered by the People’s Liberation Army which marked an end to the Republic of China’s rule over the mainland and immediately after the establishment of the People’s Liberation Army, Nanjing was declared as the provincial capital of Jiangsu. The Nanjing government adopted a provincial constitution, that granted two significant powers to the KMT; that of educating the people about the Four People’s Powers , viz a viz, voting, recall, initiative and referendum and the task of running five branches of the government, namely, executive, civil service, judicial, legislative and censorate. The government was again divided into five Yuan each of which consisted of a President as well as a Vice President. The office of Presidency was regarded as above the rest of the departments or Yuans and was held by Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalists were the nominal Government of China during the period 1928 to 1930. During this period, they had little opportunity to initiate any concrete steps for the development of their province as they were more concerned with maintaining law and order and defending their country which was in total chaos subsequent to the Japanese invasion in 1937. It not only had to deal with the rebellious politicians in the KMT, but also agitating new warlords. On the other hand, down south, the Communist party had begun threatening the KMT authority. The Japanese, too, in an aggressive new policy, began threatening the provinces of Manchuria, Beijing, and northern China. However the Nationalists did bring along financial and industrial reforms, to a certain extent but on the whole they put off the project of poverty elimination and stabilization of the economy. Such negligence on their part proved to be quite fatal and led to their subsequent downfall. THE NANJING GOVERNMENT AND THE NORTHERN CHINESE AREAS The administration of Beijing, East Yi Anti – communist Autonomous Administration was under the commander in chief of the Japanese North China Front while the same time the area from middle Zhejiang to the Canton region was under the South Chinese Front. As a result a common monopolistic economic policy was put into place in those areas with the permission of the Japanese Army. The Nanjing Nationalist Government of the Republic of China as well as Manchukuo had an Embassy in Yokohama. THE NANJING GOVERNMENT AND THE SUPPRESSION OF COMMUNISM In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, announced the Guomindang government in Nanjing but due to the subsequent war that broke out between Chiang Kai-shek and and Tang Shengzhi the power of the Nanjing Government was consolidated, after Tang was defeated. After coming to power in 1930, Chiang Kai-shek concentrated most of his military powers in destroying the Communists. He dedicated most of his political years in the destruction of the Communists as he intended to totally wipe them off, and this deviated him from his other political agendas. Chiang began his rebellion movement against the Communists in 1927 that was followed the bloody suppression of the workers strikes and demonstrations and finally ended with the defeat of Mao Zedong’s Autumn Harvest Uprisings in Jiangxi province. STATE BUILDING IN THE NANJING DECADE The Nanjing decade that lasted from 1928 – 1937, was seemingly a decade of consolidation and accomplishments by the Koumintang. The Nanjing regime followed two basic strategies for sustaining and increasing its powers. According to Julia Strauss the Nanjing government heavily relied on “partification, indoctrination and and militarization suggesting a vision of state building that relied on a combination of militarism and revolutionary heroism” While one of them stressed on hierarchical bureaucracies, division of responsibilities and legal routines the other stressed on indoctrination and mobilization techniques of the 1920s era. The first strategy which was designed with an intention to retain the powers and authority with the centre had several shortcomings. Firstly recruiting trained people and bureaucrats was a serious problem as there was a shortage of trained and skilled people for the job and those who were competent enough were more drawn towards the cities while the main problem lied in the countryside. On the other hand the second strategy was not only cheaper but was in tandem with the traditional methods of appointing good men at the helm of affairs. It too faced several problems one of them being, how to assure that those appointed in such trustworthy positions were virtuous enough, especially in times when the weak bureaucracy could not guarantee that the central government could curb local interests. The demobilization of soldiers was also one among the major concerns of the new government. In about a dozen armies, that survived the 1920s there were more than 2 million soldiers. Such huge battalions consumed a large portion of resources and the amount spent of them could have well been used for better and more constructive purposes. Similarly although the village militias were a major concern for the new government they could be adapted to state building purposes, under the right circumstances. However when the Nanjing government was established the major question that awaited the new government was whether or not to abolish the militia and also whether they should be brought under bureaucratic control. The Nanjing government brought the local militia under its armies. However, during their regime, rural reforms were left out of their strategic plans. Bureaucratic corruption, lack of modern inputs and an out of date infrastructure were the main reasons behind rural crisis during the Nanjing decade. Chiang Kai-shek, during his rule, neglected his own laws by overlooking the upliftment of his own people living in the countryside. So at a time when the government should have focused on such issues as lowered rents, regulated agrarian relation and a stable credit policy these issues were conveniently ignored. Had they focused on such core issues, the Nanjing government would have been able to efficiently penetrate the countryside. [Source: Z Peter, China in War and Revolution, pp 251-252] State building in the post war era After 1937, when the Guomindang government found itself in a relatively weakened situation it resorted to partification and militarization to ensure loyalty and hence strengthen its foothold. They started off by targeting the military at first and then gradually made their way up to the civil bureaucracy. [source: Julia Strauss, SOAS,University of London] According to Elise A.DeVido, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, “The Communists in Shandong financed their statebuilding and war not only through taxation and apportioning, but by attempting to establish state-run trade and reliance on the commercial enterprises of danwei” During the Wang Jingwei Regime in Nanjing between 1940 – 1945, Wang continually claimed supremacy over Sun Yatsen to assert his government’s orthodoxy at a time when Pan Asianism and Sino Japanese collaborations were at its peak. Demonstrations were organized in large numbers to display popular support towards the government and campaigns such as the New Citizen’s Movement all proved to be inefficient and unsuccessful. The ideology propagated by the regime is perceived to be a desperate attempt at state building. Wang had the battered pre KMT state in his power but the Japanese interests denied him the autonomy necessary to restructure it. The Nanjing decade also saw considerable efforts in creating and unifying the structures of sub county administration. In this context the formation of grass-root system was seriously affected in the first stage (1927 – 1932) by the "Shanxi model", as by the start of the Nanking Decade the province of Shanxi had already practiced its neo-traditionalist "village system" (cunzhi) for already close to a decade.[source: Tanaka Tadao, National Revolution and the agrarian problem, Cun Zhi, Peiping 1930 -1932 vol 1- no.7 vol 2 – no.12] The "Shanxi model" represented the attempt of the aggressively expanding state power to penetrate the lower layers of rural society down to the level of each individual household [source : Kuhn Phillip, Development of Local Government. P 343] An interesting part of the administrative modernization efforts of this period was the movement of experimental counties. The idea of local experiments at several designated counties to test the most effective measures to achieve the aim of realization of self-government and modernization projects was put forward in several of Sun Yat-sens works.i Not all of these experiments were conducted under the direct control of the Nanking government. They were part of a broader movement of "rural reconstruction" representing a broad set of measures aimed at rescuing the Chinese countryside from its crisis conditions and in which private organizations and associations took part alongside government agencies and even local militarist authorities [source : Xiangcun jianshe shiyan, Experience of Rural Reconstruction,1934,p19] However irrespective of the innumerable weaknesses of the Nanjing government, it would have surely been able to complete its state building project, had the Japanese invasion not taken place, as it caused irreparable damage to life and property worth millions of dollars and the reigning government was left with no choice but to channelize their efforts and energy to other relevant areas. REFERENCES Mary Rankin, "State and Society in Early Republican Politics", in Wakeman and Edmonds, Reappraising Republican China (Oxford University Press, 2000) Hsi-sheng Chi, Warlord Politics in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976) John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Class, and Culture in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford, 1996) "The Chinese Communist Movement during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945". Ulrich Theobald,2000 ff, Chinese History – the Republic of China, 1911 -1949.Available at :< http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Rep/rep-event.html> Z. Peter, China in War and Revolution 1895 - 1949, pages 251 – 252. Elise A.DeVido, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Tanaka Tadao, National Revolution and the agrarian problem, Cun Zhi, Peiping 1930 -1932 vol 1- no.7 vol 2 – no.12, Kuhn Phillip, Development of Local Government p.346 Kuhn Phillip, Development of Local Government. P 343 Xiangcun jianshe shiyan, Experience of Rural Reconstruction, 1934, p19 Read More