Organizer: R. Keith Schoppa, Valparaiso University
Chair and Discussant: Ernest P. Young, University of Michigan
With the devolution of state power to localities in the last years of the Qing dynasty, the abolition of the civil service examination, the rise of a modern military and new educational opportunities, and the political turbulence of surging nationalism and revolution, a crucial task of local elites during the years of the Republic was the reconstruction of viable identities in new political and social contexts. This reconstruction centered both on their self-identities and their public identities. This back-to-back panel explores questions about the redefinition of local elite status, elite understandings of their roles, significant elite social structures and patterns, and the relationships between local and national elites. Each panel part probes different aspects of these social developments, the first, the interplay between elites and changing contexts; and the second, the interplay between local elites and those at higher levels of the polity. In doing so, both shed new light on questions of state and society during this critical time.
This part of the panel focuses on the reconstruction of identities in a variety of changing political, social, and cultural contexts that helped to shape those identities. Elites redefined themselves on the basis of past roles and history, because of particular existential circumstances and contingencies, and in the midst of debate, contention, and the action of revolution. Some aspects of identity-reconstruction probed in these papers are elites' understanding of their roles under new circumstances, the blurring of distinctions between traditional identities, and consequent new concepts of social relationships.
To provide a range of analytical arenas, these papers focus on elites in different geographical settings (Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Zhejiang), in different elite spheres (socio-economic, cultural-political, and socio-political), and from the beginning of the Republic to the Sino-Japanese War. Averill's paper discusses the import of the identities of "new" and "old" local Jiangxi educational cliques for political, organizational, and ideological developments in the revolution. Stapleton surveys the changing contexts for occupational identity in Sichuan, patterns of career choice, and consequent changes in elite conceptions of these identities from 1901 to 1935. Schoppa studies the social identities of Shaoxing collaborators with the Japanese, the meaning and significance in the Shaoxing context of their new identity as collaborators, and the consequent relationships of collaborators with resisters, whether supporters of Jiang Jieshi or the Communists.
Education, Politics, and Local Elite Society in Early Twentieth-Century China
Stephen C. Averill, Michigan State University
In Republican China, "educational circles" were important arenas of cultural and political conflict for rural local elites. This paper uses information about Jiangxi Province to discuss the roles of educational circles in three interrelated aspects of these conflicts.
(1) As centers of "cultural politics." Here this term refers to the processes whereby generations of educated elites struggled to define, dominate, and deploy the conceptual, symbolic, and material resources of a new but ambiguously "modern" educational system. Such cultural conflicts spurred politicization, energized organization, and defined issues among elites. The paper examines the role of educational circles in the transmission of political and cultural information, and as sites of complex contention between simplistically labeled "old cliques" and "new cliques."
(2) As organizational nodes. In an institutional sense, schools marshalled and processed people, jobs, and other resources. Informally, educational circles were focal points for the localized, volatile groups generically labeled "study societies." The paper studies the diverse manifestations of these groups as vehicles for conflict between "new" and "old" elite cliques, and for the genesis and propagation of political parties and programs.
(3) As sites introducing ideological politics. Rural elites sojourning in urban schools diffused party activities as they returned to assume educational jobs in the hinterland. Early, "pre-party" organizations (study societies, etc.) served as cover and scaffolding for construction of more radical organizations. Radical societies-groups with the structure, appearance, and habits of old elite organs-served as transitional forrns introducing revolution to a conservative countryside.
Occupational Horizons in Republican Sichuan: Shifts in Elite Career Choices
Kristin Stapleton, University of Kentucky
The changing nature of educational and employment opportunities in Chinese cities in the first few decades of the twentieth century opened new paths for social mobility. Rather than producing a stable replacement for the Imperial "ladder of success," however, the late Qing and early Republic presented ambitious youth with a rapidly shifting series of employment options. In non-industrialized Sichuan, new administrative positions in the police and court systems attracted hundreds of applicants in the last years of the Qing. The numbers of these positions declined and their allure faded in the early Republic, however, as careers in the provincial armies, newspaper publishing, and banking beckoned.
My study charts the growth and decline in popularity of different elite occupations in Sichuan between 1901 and 1935, linking these shifts both to changing social conditions such as the insecurity of landed income in the militarist era and to changing perceptions of desirable career characteristics in light of such phenomena as the rise of nationalistic sentiment. My analysis of the trends in elite employment seeks in particular to illuminate the extent to which a distinction was made between working for the government and working in a "private sector." In Sichuan it would appear that this distinction became less meaningful over the years, as the boundary between "official" and other types of employment blurred. More significant was the distinction between civilian and military. I conclude by comparing these two different groups of elites on the eve of the war with Japan.
Patterns and Dynamics of Elite Collaboration with the Japanese in Occupied
Shaoxing County
R. Keith Schoppa, Valparaiso University
The little-studied phenomenon of local elite wartime collaboration with the Japanese is the subject of this paper. Such a study is significant for our understanding of the dynamics of the war era and of the civil war that followed and of the ethos and the patterns of functioning of Chinese society under stress in the fourth decade of the Republican era.
The paper studies the social identities of local elites who chose the identity of collaborators with the Japanese military stationed in Shaoxing city. Chamber of Commerce elites, who emerged as key political leaders in the county puppet government, were joined by local Guomindang cadres and military officers, educators, journalists, and powerful local toughs. The study probes the socio-political dynamics among these elites and the patterns of their horizontal social networks and vertical hierarchies.
Considerations of space and place are significant aspects of this analysis. The strength of collaboration varied in different spatial arenas, and the patterns of linkages between county towns and the county seat were important in the dynamics of collaboration. The choice of the sites of collaborative institutions serve as significant indicators of the ethos of the collaborators.
The paper suggests that the elite response of collaboration was based as much on particular circumstance and contingency as on principle or social and political past. Underscoring the complexity of the socio-political situation, it reveals the blurred lines between the local Guomindang organizations of Jiang Jieshi and Wang Jingwei and the struggles for power among the collaborationists themselves.