Organizer and Chair: Vivienne Shue, Cornell University
The State and the Armed Merchants: The Tianjin Merchant Militia, 1853-1924
Xiaobo Zhang, George Mason University
During the late Qing and early Republican periods there emerged in many Chinese cities various forms of quasi-military forces organized and funded by merchants. Sanctioned and often inspired by the state, merchant militias played an active role in protecting business interests, maintaining local order, and providing public services to the urban community.
This paper examines the extensive activities of the merchant militia in Tianjin. Between the 1850s and the 1920s, the Tianjin merchant militia evolved from a temporary band of mercenaries paid by local merchants to a permanent semi-military organization, fully equipped with modern weaponry and manned by well-trained shop assistants. Its function also expanded from assisting the government in defending the city to performing various community services such as fire fighting, epidemic prevention, and disaster relief.
As the merchant militia grew in power, its relationship with the state also underwent a gradual change. Unlike its late Qing predecessor, the early Republican Tianjin merchant militia tried hard to preserve and expand its organizational autonomy. The state, however, could hardly tolerate the existence of an independent merchant military force. After a series of measures in the early 1920s to restore official control, the warlord regime finally disbanded the Tianjin merchant militia in 1924.
This study will not only explore the driving force behind the merchant militarism but also illustrate an important yet less studied aspect of state-societal relationships in early twentieth-century China.
Secret Society in Eastern Sichuan (1911-1949): The Case of Pao Ge
Maochun Yu, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
The Robe Brothers, known in Southwest China as Pao Ge (in other areas, they are known as Ge Lao Hui, the Elderly Brothers Society), originated in 1661 when the leading anti-Manchu Chinese leader Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) founded a secret organization on the island of Taiwan, with the purpose of penetrating mainland China which had been conquered by the invading Manchus. During the Republican Period (1911-1949), the Robe Brothers was the largest secret society in Southwest China; its members permeated every major aspect of society and played a major role in the development of Sichuan power relations during these years.
This paper seeks to examine the role a secret society played during a period of tremendous moral, social, economic and political change in Chinese history. The research will focus on the Chungking area in eastern Sichuan, the most populous province of China. Issues to explore include: (1). the ambiguous identity of Robe Brothers-an organization emphasizing Confucian ethics and moral order as well as serving as an instrument of terror and corruption; (2). the symbiotic relationship between a secret society and local gentry; (3). the dilemma of the Nationalist Government in reforming and absorbing the Robe Brothers during the central authority's tenacious efforts of state-building.
I am overwhelmingly interested in the nature of Chinese political culture in the 20th century. This has been a leading issue in modern Chinese history among historians in the U.S. Key to the discussion is whether China historically had amicable, therefore workable, state-society relations.
Robe Brothers in Sichuan was often a paradox of good and evil combined, duty and right blurred. A Robe Brother might save a drowning woman's life just as easily as he might rape her daughter. Its historical roots of anti-Manchu ideals prompted it to support the central government (the new Nationalist Chinese regime) yet it vigorously carried on its own illicit activities regardless of governmental intervention. It was thus not unusual when the Robe Brothers became both the target of the government as well as the helper of the government. In this sense, civil power and state power intertwined.
In recent years, several historians have done excellent work in documenting the relationship between Chinese secret societies and the rise of the Chinese Nationalists. But there have been several shortcomings. First, the exclusive focus of such research has been on the relationship between the Green Gang in Shanghai and the rise of Chiang Kai-shek and Tai Li (Chiang's secret police chief). Thus the emphasis has been on the political aspect of the relationship. How a secret society actually shaped the social relationships in a genuinely Chinese hinterland metropolis remains unclear. Secondly, the manifestation of the power relationship between a government and a civil organization under its control has not been fully examined in the Nanjing/Green Gang interaction, because Shanghai was mainly controlled by Western powers. This government(state)/civil power play could best be demonstrated in Chungking, the wartime capital of China, where all other major secret societies in the China coastal area, including Shanghai, flocked to during the Japanese occupation. My paper is an attempt to fill this gap.
Collective Action, Democratization, and the State: Student Protest in China and
Taiwan
Teresa Wright, University of California, Berkeley
This paper examines the nature and development of student strategy and organization in the "Democracy Movement" of 1989 in China, and the "White Lily Movement" of l990 in Taiwan. First, the paper argues that three aspects of a group's "social location"-the macro-political environment, the micro-political environment, and the historical tradition of its placement in society-largely determine the process and outcome of collective action undertaken by that group. Next, this argument is buttressed by detailed accounts of the development of student organization and strategy in the movement of 1989 in China, and 1990 in Taiwan. These accounts derive from recent research conducted by the author, including forty interviews with prominent movement leaders, and the study of hundreds of primary documents produced during each movement. Finally, the paper discusses the implications that these findings hold for debate concerning the rise of "civil society" in China and Taiwan. Similarly, the paper considers how these findings contribute to current understandings of the nature of state-society relations in China and Taiwan. Moreover, the findings are used to more generally examine the relationship of collective action and political democratization in China and Taiwan. In conclusion, the paper argues that meaningful political change has occurred only from the top-down in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Consequently at present, peaceful protest is unlikely to affect substantive change in China.
Renegotiation of Private/Public Sphere: The Struggle for Professional Autonomy of
Private Education in Guangdong Province
Ka-ho Mok, City University of Hong Kong
This paper tries to examine how the flourishing of the market economy and the policy of decentralization adopted in China's educational realm have affected the educational development in Guangdong province. Specially, this paper is to examine the strategies employed by the local educationalists and professionals in order to provide more educational opportunities for the people, with particular attention to be focused on discussion of the newly established private higher educational institutions in the region. This paper is based on recent field visits to Guangdong province in investigating the processes and implications of the rise of private education. Through this study, the authors argue that local educationalists are very aware of the importance of professional autonomy and intellectual independence which can be clearly demonstrated by the ways in which they have adopted in developing private higher education. To expand and protect their professional autonomy, these educationalists have attempted to break the conventional boundary to define a new private/public distinction.