THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MODERN STATE IN CHINA

After the staggering defeat suffered in the Sino-Japanese War, it became increasingly difficult to deny the need for modernization and political transformation in China. Between the end of the war and China’s retaking of Taiwan in 1945, there were three periods of fundamental reform in China. Although they were ideologically and functionally different, each was staggering in scope.

While increasing numbers of Chinese leaders were embracing the notion of transformation, Confucianism presented an obstacle to dramatic reform. Historically interpreted as obstinately opposed to revolutionary change, Confucianism remained at the heart of Chinese political thought, and Western ideas and culture had long been eschewed as incompatible with Chinese society.

Remarkably, the works of some Western philosophers did find their way into Chinese political thinking. Particularly reasonable to Chinese thinkers was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer’s notion that humans (and social institutions) could evolve “organically” toward higher states of being.³⁰ Spencer had also been influential in Meiji Japan, in large part because his theories, unlike those of many Western philosophers, could be worked into a loosely Confucian framework. The influence of Spencer and others slowly led the Chinese to embrace political transformation.

The first period of reform after the Sino-Japanese War was the so-called 100 Days Reform that took place in 1898. Inspired and led by the Chinese radical Kang Yu-wei, the reformers advocated a staggeringly ambitious agenda for China that included the creation of a parliament, the notion of “people’s rights,” the translation and acceptance of Western works of science and philosophy, compulsory education, widespread privatization, market reforms, and many other progressive proposals.³¹ It would be hard to overstate just how radical-and how threatening to some-these proposals were. Kang won remarkable support from the Emperor Guangxu, but eventually pressed too hard, too fast. Guangxu was deposed and Kang was run out of Beijing.

In 1911, the Qing dynasty would breathe its last breath. A group of revolutionaries, led by Sun Yat-sen and rallying behind his “Three Principles” (nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood), overthrew the Qings. On January 1, 1912, Sun was inaugurated as the president of a new Chinese republic, but Yuan Shikai, a powerful army commander, rose to challenge Sun, and assumed the presidency just two months later. Yuan’s rule was dictatorial, and would lead to the birth of an opposition party, the Kuomintang.

Song Jiaoren founded the KMT in opposition to Yuan’s rule, and was promptly assassinated. However, the KMT itself grew in support, and Yuan’s power shrank. The country soon descended into anarchic warlordism. Ideological fissures deepened among intellectuals, who were often as divided as the warlords. The KMT and the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) emerged as the leading political forces by the end of the 1910s. Chiang Kai-shek, a former aide to Sun and a military leader in his own right, slowly rose to prominence within the Kuomintang in the 1920s and effectively consolidated his power so that, by the end of the decade, the CCP had been scattered and the KMT was relatively stable. The Kuomintang made marked advances in infrastructure, social, and legal reforms.

However, by the mid-1930s, the CCP had regrouped and was growing in both ideological appeal and numbers. Though the KMT and CCP had cooperated to fight against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the ideological and personal conflicts were too great to reconcile. Even during the fighting there was tension between the KMT and CCP, with intra-Chinese skirmishes becoming common by 1940. Although both sides suffered heavy losses during the anti-Japanese war, the CCP emerged relatively stronger and would rout the KMT from the mainland entirely in 1949, effectively establishing the People’s Republic of
China.

NOTES:

30. See, for example, Spencer’s two-volume Principles of Biology (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2002 [1864-67]) and Robert L. Carneiro, ed., The Evolution of Society: Selections from Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

31. For a thorough analysis of the 100 Days Reform, see Young-Tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898,” Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 3 (August 1992): 513-544.

SOURCE: Ted Galen Carpenter, “America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course Over Taiwan“, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.