Organizer: Julia C. Strauss, SOAS, University of London
Chair: Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley
Discussants: Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence N. Shyu,
University of New Brunswick
This panel takes an explicitly integrative approach to the question of the mid-century Chinese state. It considers the Guomindang, Communist and collaborationist regimes during the Sino-Japanese War as fiercely competitive proto-states, each of which was struggling to consolidate and expand its operations in accordance with its particular range pre-existing ideological repertoires and current organizational constraints.
The Strauss paper, "Wartime Stress and Guomindang Response: Xunlian as a Means to State-Building, 1938-45," discusses how, once weakened and resource poor, the Guomindang proto-state turned to a "heroic" and ever expanding program of indoctrination and militarization of the Party, military and government bureaucracies in order to shore up its base. The DeVido paper, "State-Building and War in the Shandong Communist Base Area, 1940-46," focuses on the "nuts and bolts" of state-building under extremely adverse conditions by analyzing how the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party "unified leadership" and implemented policy in such crucial arenas as Party rectification, fiscal administration, and materials' apportionment. The Barrett paper, "State Creation in an Ideological Vacuum: The Wang Jingwei Regime in Nanjing, 1940-45," considers the ideological ineffectiveness of a collaborationist regime that could neither tap into urban nationalism nor distinguish itself from its immediate predecessor by offering a new vision of the state.
In bringing together scholars whose work is typically segmented by sub-field, this panel hopes to offer a preliminary re-evaluation of some of different methods and models of state-building in mid-century China as a whole.
Wartime Stress and Guomindang Response: Xunlian as a Means to State-building,
1938-45
Julia C. Strauss, SOAS, University of London
During the Nanjing Decade (1927-37), the Guomindang simultaneously pursued two very different strategies of state-building, both of which were, ironically, captured by the term xunlian(training). In the context of Party or military organizations, xunlian referred to partification, indoctrination and militarization, suggesting a vision of state building that relied on a combination of militarism and revolutionary heroism: when used in state organizations, xunlian referred to the acquisition of skills necessary for a technocratically grounded Weberian state.
After 1937, when the Guomindang Party-government found itself in a much weakened position vis-à-vis its competitors, it turned to an expanded program of xunlian-cum-partification and militarization to ensure loyalty and strengthen its base. Wartime xunlian at first directly targeted the military, from which it rapidly spread to encompass much of the upper civil bureaucracy. Xunlian was carried out directly by a Central Training Corps (Zhongxuntuan), as well as by units elsewhere in the government.
While government units replicated the form of wartime xunlian , in practice they typically subverted its spirit by quietly retaining as much technical training as they felt that they could get away with. Nevertheless, the war years saw a perceptible merging of the two previously distinct types of xunlian. Unfortunately for the Guomindang, the institutional weaknesses that prompted the drastic expansion of xunlian in the first place ultimately proved to be the movement's undoing. Once xunlian moved beyond its natural constituency in strongly pro-GMD Party and military units, quality control lapsed, and in most organizations xunlian showed scant results.
State-building and War in the Shandong Communist Base Area, 1940-46
Elise A. DeVido, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
The Shandong Communist base area was established in a province with a wide variety of geographical and socio-economic conditions. Based upon recent archival sources, this paper argues that the process of centralization and unification of the Communist Party-state did not begin in a vacuum from 1949, but had its origins in the necessity to unify and concentrate materials, labor and organization in order to wage war.
This paper hopes to revise the idealized characterization of the "Yan'an era" base areas as autarkic and "self-reliant," arguing that while Mao and the Central Committee intended to "sinicize" Soviet Communism during and after the "rectification movement," many of the ideas of Lenin and Stalin continued to shape Chinese Communism throughout the 1940s.
The clearest example of this is the consistent call by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party for yiyuanhua-the systematized implementation of the party's policies under the unified leadership of the central party. This paper evaluates the implementation of yiyuanhua in three areas: the "rectification movement" itself; establishing fiscal and economic administration; and systematization of civilian labor service and materials' apportioning.
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. While "1949" is a turning point in many ways, statebuilding and centralization under the CCP in Shandong began well before final military victory, and both the process and its problems would continue after.
State Creation in an Ideological Vacuum: The Wang Jingwei Regime in Nanjing,
1940-45
David P. Barrett, McMaster University
A central paradox of the Wang Jingwei regime was the exceptional effort expended to deliver an unconvincing ideological message. To assert his government's orthodoxy, Wang claimed continued primacy of Sun Yatsen's sanminzhuyi; added to this was Pan-Asianism, with Sino-Japanese collaboration at its core. Demonstrations of popular support for the regime were organized, and campaigns such as the New Citizens' Movement were directed towards the intelligentsia, but all proved in the end of be formalistic and ineffectual.
The ideology propagated by the regime may be seen as a desperate attempt at state-building. Wang had inherited the shattered pre-1937 KMT state, but Japanese interests denied him the autonomy necessary to build an effective new structure. He made progress only when Sino-Japanese goals coincided, as in the rural pacification campaigns in the Lower Yangtse. Japanese mistrust of Wang's ultimate reliability, and Japanese pursuit of a deal with the Chongqing KMT, ensured meager successes for the new Nanjing state.
Wang reached out to the same social constituency as the pre-1937 KMT. Unlike the Vichy regime in France, Wang's did not appeal to social classes hostile to the previous government. Wang did not see himself as a creator: his goal was to continue the state-building interrupted in 1937, but with the proviso that the interests of Japan be accorded prime consideration. Commitment to reconstructing the status quo opened Wang's government to challenge by the Communists, while accommodation to Japan denied him the urban nationalism the Chiang Kaishek's KMT was able to draw upon.