The Abortive Revolution: China Under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937

421 Pages·1990·8.145 MB·English

by  Lloyd E. Eastman

The Abortive Revolution
Harvard East Asian Series 78
The East Asian Research Center at Harvard University administers
research projects designed to further scholarly understanding of
China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Inner Asia, and adjacent areas.

The Abortive Revolution
China under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937
LLOYD E. EASTMAN
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1974
© Copyright 1974 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Preparation of this volume has been aided by a grant from
the Ford Foundation.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-75639
SBN 674-00175-3
Printed in the United States of America
For “a great guy ” our son, MICHAEL ERIC EASTMAN

Preface
China has been undergoing a continuous process of revolution
throughout the twentieth century. This fact is obfuscated by
the outbreak of three distinct political upheavals : the Repub­
lican Revolution of 1911, the Nationalist Revolution of 1927,
and the Communist Revolution of 1949. Underlying these
discrete episodes, however, has been the continuing quest for a
new political system that would bring prosperity, stability,
and strength to the Chinese nation.
The revolution of 1911 did more than remove a royal family
from power and more than topple the structures of a govern­
mental administration. More significant, the revolution ex­
posed the pervasive decay of the traditional political system.
The state had become corrupt and ineffective. The always
precarious balance between central government and the prov­
inces had shifted decisively away from Peking. Ravaged by
domestic rebellions, beset by foreign imperialists, and bur­
dened by the payments of indemnities and debts, the dynasty
was financially, intellectually, and politically bankrupt.
If this had been 1644 rather than 1911, the dynastic struc­
ture might have withstood the storm and been patched up by a
new set of dynastic rulers. In the twentieth century, however,
Preface
there existed new forces, and the old structures could not
resist the added pressures. The growth of population from
about 125 million at the beginning of the dynasty to 430
million in 1912 had imposed enormous strains on the adminis­
trative apparatus and had threatened to outstrip the economic
resources of the country. And the presence of the Westerners
constituted a new kind of challenge—even more perhaps be­
cause they offered social and political alternatives than be­
cause of their military and economic power.
The development of nationalism among the lettered elite
also generated forces that were wholly new. Sensing a power
vacuum as the dynasty weakened, and motivated by concern
for the nation, the gentry were no longer content to have the
officials mediate for them in the political process. Instead, the
gentry began asserting their influence and control directly in
the military and financial administration at the local level and
actively demanded to participate in the political process even
at the level of the central government. The Manchu response
to this demand lagged behind the spread of political mobiliza­
tion. And it was therefore the so-called reformers and consti­
tutionalists who were even more responsible for bringing
down the dynasty in 1912 than were the revolutionaries.
As the sentiment of nationalism intensified, the Ch’ing gov­
ernment was forced to undertake new tasks that had con­
fronted no previous dynastic administration. It attempted to
create a new army, to institute a national system of education,
to suppress opium, to develop a modern economy, and to
create a national system of transportation. It sought also to
reestablish central control over the provinces. These reforms,
essential if the Manchus were to satisfy the waxing expecta­
tions of nationalistic Chinese, generated new forces that ulti­
mately contributed to the Manchu downfall. The fiscal
requirements of these reforms, for example, could only be met
by reasserting political controls at the local levels and in­
creasing tax burdens, or by relying on loans from the impe­
rialists. The Ch’ing tried both alternatives. And both so
aggravated the political discontents of the Chinese non-official
Preface
elite that they embraced the revolution that had been begun by
persons more radical than themselves. Or, citing another
example, the Manchus abolished the Confucian-oriented civil
service examinations in 1905. This measure was long overdue
and was crucial to the technological and administrative mod­
ernization to which the government leaders aspired. Yet it is
probable that no other single measure was more destructive of
the elite ’s loyalty to the dynasty, of commitment to the estab­
lished social order, or, in the long-run, of the traditional value
system.
Even at the local level, the foundations of the traditional
system had crumbled. When the system had functioned at its
best, local power interests and the state bureaucracy had
worked hand-in-glove to tax and police the population at the
village level. During late imperial times, however, real power
had devolved into the hands of local elites. And, indeed, during
the years before the revolution, even the lower gentry—the
sheng-yüan-chien-sheng stratum, whose activities in the gov­
ernance of the local areas had earlier been informal and often
illegal—were displacing the upper gentry and were acquiring
real and formal powers of government at the hsien and sub-
hsien levels. This had resulted in a persistent and often sordid
battle for power, with the bureaucracy being at least partially
displaced by new elements which were only minimally respon­
sive to the wishes of the state. The dimensions of this disinte­
gration of the traditional political system at the local level
have been trenchantly described by Philip Kuhn: “ By the
twentieth century . . . the problem had swollen disastrously.
The disintegration of control mechanisms in the countryside
had led to virtual anarchy in some areas, a collapse of local
security, and rampant banditry. From the standpoint of the
bureaucracy on all levels, an equally serious problem was
sequestering the rural economic surplus for state purposes,
because so much of it was being siphoned off by local sub­
county functionaries, local elite long out of control.m
After the Kevolution of 1911, the situation worsened. So
badly had the administrative mechanisms broken down that
Preface
Yüan Shih-k’ai complained privately that he wielded less
power as president of the republic than he had as governor-
general under the dynasty.2 Central authority over the prov­
inces withered ; sources of revenue fell into the control of local
elites; the military authority of Peking was challenged by
increasingly recalcitrant and independent-minded com­
manders. In this environment of political decay, even the
moderately progressive reforms that had been initiated by the
Manchus now faltered under Yüan. The weakness of the
government also invited increased foreign intervention. Both
Tibet and Outer Mongolia fell from Chinese suzerainty. And
Japan, like a jackal scenting rotting flesh, laid extravagant
claims to a dominant position in China by presenting the
Twenty-one Demands in 1915. After 1916, the entire political
structure progressively collapsed, and the nation sank into the
depths of warlordism.
Even more corrosive of the political system, taken in its
broadest sense, than administrative disintegration was cul­
tural disintegration. Talcott Parsons has remarked that “ a
relatively established ‘ politically organized society ’ is clearly
a ‘moral community’ to some degree, its members sharing
common norms, values, and culture.”3 The strength of the
traditional Chinese political system had been precisely this
sense of moral community—the remarkable consensus both
among the elite and masses regarding personal and societal
values. This consensus had, however, become fragile during
the latter years of the Ch’ing as China was assailed by both
Western might and ideas. And, when the examination system
had been abolished in 1905, and then even the emperorship
was overthrown in 1912, the institutional underpinnings of the
entire structure were jerked away, leading, as Lin Yü-sheng
has put it, “ to the final and complete breakdown of both the
traditional political order and the traditional cultural order. ’ ’4
Actually, the full extent of the cultural breakdown has still
to be measured. Thus far, scholars have remarked mostly
about the cultural iconoclasm of the May Fourth radicals.
Important though the total rejection of China’s ethical and