The Guomindang (GMD): PolIcies
OverviewIt is helpful to see Nationalist party policies over two distinct phases, and we will cover both below. The first of these is the period from 1923-1928 when the Nationalists regrouped with the aid of extensive help from the Russians, created the first United Front with the Communist Party and then led a military drive from the South of China to the North to reunify the country. This period of time can be seen as ending once the Nationalists captured Beijing.
The second period is the following (albeit slightly overlapping) decade when the Nationalists ruled China from their capital in Nanking 1927-37. We will look at each of these in turn, but it is of vital importance that for this second period from '27-37 you keep in mind that lurking in the background for the '30s were Japanese territorial ambitions towards China, and these had a definite impact on shaping and limiting the implementation of Nationalist policies once Chiang Kai Shek was in power. |
LinksThe Shanghai Massacre -from Alpha History
The Russian dimension explained by Rana Mitter"Sun was now totally disillusioned with the western powers who talked about peace and justice but seemed intent on carving China up yet further. Then, he was unable to persuade the Japanese to back him, though he made several attempts to get them to do so. So he turned to the new power on the world scene who seemed to promise a new and fairer world: Soviet Russia. Having instigated a revolution and won a bloody civil war, the Bolsheviks began to turn their attention to revolutions abroad." |
Reunifying China 1923-28ORGANISING 1923-26/Start of 1st United front
May 30th Incident
The Northern Expedition 1926-28
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NAtionalist Rule 1927-37Economic Problems
Relations with the Imperial Powers
Historiography: Changing interpretations of the Nanjing Decade with Dr J.A.G. Roberts"In the 1970s the assessment of the achievements in the Nanjing decade was distinctly unfavourable. Lloyd E. Eastman entitled his influential study of the years 1927 to 1937 The Abortive Revolution. James E. Sheridan’s equally influential review of the Republican era, China in Disintegration, reiterated that judgement. Recently that assessment has been challenged, however. For Robert E. Bedeski the republican government’s major contribution was the establishment of a new and sovereign Chinese state. Julia Strauss described Nationalist China as ‘a weak state operating in a hostile environment’. Nevertheless in the 1930s it was surprisingly successful in developing critical components of state-building, for example building up and resourcing an effective military establishment, and developing foreign relations to create a less precarious international environment. In Reappraising Republican China, Richard Edmonds remarked how researchers, who now had access to mainland Chinese records, were describing the Republican era as ‘part of a continuous transition during which China modified its traditional society and adapted to new roles in world affairs – sometimes with considerable success’."TASKS |
Historiography: REasons for the end of the 1st United front
Source a: Diana Lary"By the end of the first stage of the Northern Expedition the revolutionary armies had quadrupled in size, to about 250,000 soldiers, almost all of them armies of recently converted warlords. In the midst of success, the revolutionary zeal suddenly eroded, from the top down, the GMD was acquiring military allies, its politics were increasingly fractured. In the spring of 1927 a dramatic split took place. Chiang Kai-shek and his (largely military) supporters decided to get rid of key parts of the revolutionary movement, the Soviet advisors, the left wing of the GMD, and the Communists. They won the day, and China's revolution turned in a militarist, authoritarian direction. The Soviet advisors fled back to the Soviet Union, the CCP was decimated in a savage purge that started in April and continued for much of the year - the white terror. The great promise of radical revolution was dead." |
Source b: Jonathan Fenby"The attack on the united front by the KMT right was inevitable, given the competing ambitions on either side, transforming the ‘awakening’ of China into a bloody settling of scores in the latest upsurge of reaction and force. The repression in Shanghai on 12 April 1927 began a violent power struggle between left and right that would take millions of lives in twenty-two years of national dislocation." |