THE REPUBLIC (1912-1948)
1 Social and intellectual position
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In order to understand the period that now folowed, let us first consider the social and intelectual position in China in the period between 1911 and 1927. The Manchu dynasty was no longer there, nor were there any
remaining real supporters of the old dynasty. The gentry, however, stil existed. Alongside it was a stil
numericaly smal middle class, with little political education or enlightenment.
The political interests of these two groups were obviously in conflict. But after 1912 there had been big changes.
The gentry were largely in a process of decomposition. They stil possessed the basis of their existence, their land, but the land was faling in value, as there were now other opportunities of capital investment, such as
export-import, shareholding in foreign enterprises, or industrial undertakings. It is important to note, however, that there was not much fluid capital at their disposal. In addition to this, cheaper rice and other foodstuffs were streaming from abroad into China, bringing the prices for Chinese foodstuffs down to the world market prices,
another painful business blow to the gentry. Silk had to meet the competition of Japanese silk and especialy of rayon; the Chinese silk was of very unequal quality and sold with difficulty. On the other hand, through the
influence of the Western capitalistic system, which was penetrating more and more into China, land itself became
"capital", an object of speculation for people with capital; its value no longer depended entirely on the rents it could yield but, under certain circumstances, on quite other things—the construction of railways or public
buildings, and so on. These changes impoverished and demoralized the gentry, who in the course of the past
century had grown fewer in number. The gentry were not in a position to take part fuly in the capitalist
manipulations, because they had never possessed much capital; their wealth had lain entirely in their land, and the income from their rents was consumed quite unproductively in luxurious living.
Moreover, the class solidarity of the gentry was dissolving. In the past, politics had been carried on by cliques of gentry families, with the emperor at their head as an unchangeable institution. This edifice had now lost its summit; the struggles between cliques stil went on, but entirely without the control which the emperor's power had after al exercised, as a sort of regulative element in the play of forces among the gentry. The arena for this competition had been the court. After the destruction of the arena, the field of play lost its boundaries: the struggles between cliques no longer had a definite objective; the only objective left was the maintenance or securing of any and every hold on power. Under the new conditions cliques or individuals among the gentry could only aly
themselves with the possessors of military power, the generals or governors. In this last stage the struggle
between rival groups turned into a rivalry between individuals. Family ties began to weaken and other ties, such as between school mates, or origin from the same vilage or town, became more important than they had been
before. For the securing of the aim in view any means were considered justifiable. Never was there such bribery and corruption among the officials as in the years after 1912. This period, until 1927, may therefore be described as a period of dissolution and destruction of the social system of the gentry.
Over against this dying class of the gentry stood, broadly speaking, a tripartite opposition. To begin with, there was the new middle class, divided and without clear political ideas; anti-dynastic of course, but undecided
especialy as to the attitude it should adopt towards the peasants who, to this day, form over 80 per cent of the Chinese population. The middle class consisted mainly of traders and bankers, whose aim was the introduction
of Western capitalism in association with foreign powers. There were also young students who were often the
sons of old gentry families and had been sent abroad for study with grants given them by their friends and
relatives in the government; or sons of businessmen sent away by their fathers. These students not always
accepted the ideas of their fathers; they were influenced by the ideologies of the West, Marxist or non-Marxist, and often created clubs or groups in the University cities of Europe or the United States. Such groups of people who had studied together or passed the exams together, had already begun to play a role in politics in the
nineteenth century. Now, the influence of such organizations of usualy informal character increased. Against the www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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returned students who often had difficulties in adjustment, stood the students at Chinese Universities, especialy the National University in Peking (Peita). They represented people of the same origin, but of the lower strata of the gentry or of business; they were more nationalistic and politicaly active and often less influenced by Western ideologies.
In the second place, there was a relatively very smal genuine proletariat, the product of the first activities of big capitalists in China, found mainly in Shanghai. Thirdly and finaly, there was a gigantic peasantry, uninterested in politics and uneducated, but ready to give unthinking alegiance to anyone who promised to make an end of the
intolerable conditions in the matter of rents and taxes, conditions that were growing steadily worse with the decay of the gentry. These peasants were thinking of popular risings on the pattern of al the risings in the history of China—attacks on the towns and the kiling of the hated landowners, officials, and moneylenders, that is to say of the gentry.
Such was the picture of the middle class and those who were ready to support it, a group with widely divergent interests, held together only by its opposition to the gentry system and the monarchy. It could not but be
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve political success with such a group. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the "Father of the Republic", accordingly laid down three stages of progress in his many works, of which the best-known are San-min chu-i, ("The Three Principles of the People"), and Chien-kuo fang-lüeh ("Plans for the Building up of the Realm"). The three phases of development through which republican China was to pass were: the phase of struggle against the old system, the phase of educative rule, and the phase of truly democratic government. The phase of educative rule was to be a sort of authoritarian system with a democratic content,
under which the people should be familiarized with democracy and enabled to grow politicaly ripe for true
democracy.
Difficult as was the internal situation from the social point of view, it was no less difficult in economic respects.
China had recognized that she must at least adopt Western technical and industrial progress in order to continue to exist as an independent state. But the building up of industry demanded large sums of money. The existing
Chinese banks were quite incapable of providing the capital needed; but the acceptance of capital from abroad
led at once, every time, to further political capitulations. The gentry, who had no cash worth mention, were
violently opposed to the capitalization of their properties, and were in favour of continuing as far as possible to work the soil in the old style. Quite apart from al this, al over the country there were generals who had come from the ranks of the gentry, and who colected the whole of the financial resources of their region for the
support of their private armies. Investors had little confidence in the republican government so long as they could not tel whether the government would decide in favour of its right or of its left wing.
No less complicated was the intelectual situation at this time. Confucianism, and the whole of the old culture and morality bound up with it, was unacceptable to the middle-class element. In the first place, Confucianism rejected the principle, required at least in theory by the middle class, of the equality of al people; secondly, the Confucian great-family system was irreconcilable with middle-class individualism, quite apart from the fact that the
Confucian form of state could only be a monarchy. Every attempt to bolster up Confucianism in practice or
theory was bound to fail and did fail. Even the gentry could scarcely offer any real defence of the Confucian
system any longer. With Confucianism went the moral standards especialy of the upper classes of society.
Taoism was out of the question as a substitute, because of its anarchistic and egocentric character.
Consequently, in these years, part of the gentry turned to Buddhism and part to Christianity. Some of the middle class who had come under European influence also turned to Christianity, regarding it as a part of the European civilization they had to adopt. Others adhered to modern philosophic systems such as pragmatism and positivism.
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Marxist doctrines spread rapidly.
Education was secularized. Great efforts were made to develop modern schools, though the work of
development was continualy hindered by the incessant political unrest. Only at the universities, which became
foci of republican and progressive opinion, was any positive achievement possible. Many students and
professors were active in politics, organizing demonstrations and strikes. They pursued a strong national policy, often also socialistic. At the same time real scientific work was done; many young scholars of outstanding ability were trained at the Chinese universities, often better than the students who went abroad. There is a permanent disagreement between these two groups of young men with a modern education: the students who return from
abroad claim to be better educated, but in reality they often have only a very superficial knowledge of things modern and none at al of China, her history, and her special circumstances. The students of the Chinese
universities have been much better instructed in al the things that concern China, and most of them are in no way behind the returned students in the modern sciences. They are therefore a much more serviceable element.
The intelectual modernization of China goes under the name of the "Movement of May Fourth", because on May 4th, 1919, students of the National University in Peking demonstrated against the government and their pro-Japanese adherents. When the police attacked the students and jailed some, more demonstrations and student
strikes and finaly a general boycott of Japanese imports were the consequence. In these protest actions,
professors such as Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei, later president of the Academia Sinica (died 1940), took an active part. The forces which had now been mobilized, ralied around the journal "New Youth" ( Hsin Ch'ing-nien), created in 1915 by Ch'en Tu-hsiu. The journal was progressive, against the monarchy, Confucius, and the old traditions.
Ch'en Tu-hsiu who put himself strongly behind the students, was more radical than other contributors but at first favoured Western democracy and Western science; he was influenced mainly by John Dewey who was guest
professor in Peking in 1919-20. Similarly tending towards liberalism in politics and Dewey's ideas in the field of philosophy were others, mainly Hu Shih. Finaly, some reformers criticized conservatism purely on the basis of
Chinese thought. Hu Shih (born 1892) gained greatest acclaim by his proposal for a "literary revolution", published in the "New Youth" in 1917. This revolution was the logicaly necessary application of the political revolution to the field of education. The new "vernacular" took place of the old "classical" literary language. The language of the classical works is so remote from the language of daily life that no uneducated person can
understand it. A command of it requires a ful knowledge of al the ancient literature, entailing decades of study.
The gentry had elaborated this style of speech for themselves and their dependants; it was their monopoly;
nobody who did not belong to the gentry and had not attended its schools could take part in literary or in
administrative life. The literary revolution introduced the language of daily life, the language of the people, into literature: newspapers, novels, scientific treatises, translations, appeared in the vernacular, and could thus be understood by anyone who could read and write, even if he had no Confucianist education.
It may be said that the literary revolution has achieved its main objects. As a consequence of it, a great quantity of new literature has been published. Not only is every important new book that appears in the West published in translation within a few months, but modern novels and short stories and poems have been written, some of them of high literary value.
At the same time as this revolution there took place another fundamental change in the language. It was
necessary to take over a vast number of new scientific and technical terms. As Chinese, owing to the character of its script, is unable to write foreign words accurately and can do no more than provide a rather rough
paraphrase, the practice was started of expressing new ideas by newly formed native words. Thus modern
Chinese has very few foreign words, and yet it has al the new ideas. For example, a telegram is a "lightning-www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan.
There had been several proposals in recent decades to do away with the Chinese characters and to introduce an
alphabet in their place. They have al proved to be unsatisfactory so far, because the character of the Chinese language, as it is at this moment, is unsuited to an alphabetical script. They would also destroy China's cultural unity: there are many dialects in China that differ so greatly from each other that, for instance, a man from Canton cannot understand a man from Shanghai. If Chinese were written with letters, the result would be a Canton
literature and another literature confined to Shanghai, and China would break up into a number of areas with
different languages. The old Chinese writing is independent of pronunciation. A Cantonese and a Pekinger can
read each other's newspapers without difficulty. They pronounce the words quite differently, but the meaning is unaltered. Even a Japanese can understand a Chinese newspaper without special study of Chinese, and a
Chinese with a little preparation can read a Japanese newspaper without understanding a single word of
Japanese.
The aim of modern education in China is to work towards the establishment of "High Chinese", the former official (Mandarin) language, throughout the country, and to set limits to the use of the various dialects. Once this has been done, it wil be possible to proceed to a radical reform of the script without running the risk of political separatist movements, which are always liable to spring up, and also without leading, through the adoption of
various dialects as the basis of separate literatures, to the break-up of China's cultural unity. In the last years, the unification of the spoken language has made great progress. Yet, alphabetic script is used only in cases in which iliterate adults have to be enabled in a short time to read very simple informations. More attention is given to a simplification of the script as it is; Japanese had started this some forty years earlier. Unfortunately, the new Chinese abbreviated forms of characters are not always identical with long-established Japanese forms, and are not developed in such a systematic form as would make learning of Chinese characters easier.
2 First period of the Republic: The warlords
The situation of the Republic after its foundation was far from hopeful. Republican feeling existed only among the very smal groups of students who had modern education, and a few traders, in other words, among the "middle class". And even in the revolutionary party to which these groups belonged there were the most various
conceptions of the form of republican state to be aimed at. The left wing of the party, mainly intelectuals and manual workers, had in view more or less vague socialistic institutions; the liberals, for instance the traders, thought of a liberal democracy, more or less on the American pattern; and the nationalists merely wanted the
removal of the alien Manchu rule. The three groups had come together for the practical reason that only so could they get rid of the dynasty. They gave unreserved alegiance to Sun Yat-sen as their leader. He succeeded in
mobilizing the enthusiasm of continualy widening circles for action, not only by the integrity of his aims but also because he was able to present the new socialistic ideology in an aluring form. The anti-republican gentry,
however, whose power was not yet entirely broken, took a stand against the party. The generals who had gone
over to the republicans had not the slightest intention of founding a republic, but only wanted to get rid of the rule of the Manchus and to step into their place. This was true also of Yüan Shih-k'ai, who in his heart was entirely on the side of the gentry, although the European press especialy had always energeticaly defended him. In
character and capacity he stood far above the other generals, but he was no republican.
Thus the first period of the Republic, until 1927, was marked by incessant attempts by individual generals to
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make themselves independent. The Government could not depend on its soldiers, and so was impotent. The first
risings of military units began at the outset of 1912. The governors and generals who wanted to make themselves independent sabotaged every decree of the central government; especialy they sent it no money from the
provinces and also refused to give their assent to foreign loans. The province of Canton, the actual birthplace of the republican movement and the focus of radicalism, declared itself in 1912 an independent republic.
Within the Peking government matters soon came to a climax. Yüan Shih-k'ai and his supporters represented the
conservative view, with the unexpressed but obvious aim of setting up a new imperial house and continuing the
old gentry system. Most of the members of the parliament came, however, from the middle class and were
opposed to any reaction of this sort. One of their leaders was murdered, and the blame was thrown upon Yüan
Shih-k'ai; there then came, in the middle of 1912, a new revolution, in which the radicals made themselves
independent and tried to gain control of South China. But Yüan Shih-k'ai commanded better troops and won the
day. At the end of October 1912 he was elected, against the opposition, as president of China, and the new
state was recognized by foreign countries.
China's internal difficulties reacted on the border states, in which the European powers were keenly interested.
The powers considered that the time had come to begin the definitive partition of China. Thus there were long
negotiations and also hostilities between China and Tibet, which was supported by Great Britain. The British
demanded the complete separation of Tibet from China, but the Chinese rejected this (1912); the rejection was
supported by a boycott of British goods. In the end the Tibet question was left undecided. Tibet remained until recent years a Chinese dependency with a good deal of internal freedom. The Second World War and the
Chinese retreat into the interior brought many Chinese settlers into Eastern Tibet which was then separated from Tibet proper and made a Chinese province (Hsi-k'ang) in which the native Khamba wil soon be a minority. The
communist regime soon after its establishment conquered Tibet (1950) and has tried to change the character of
its society and its system of government which lead to the unsuccessful attempt of the Tibetans to throw off
Chinese rule (1959) and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. The construction of highways, air and missile bases and military occupation have thus tied Tibet closer to China than ever since early Manchu times.
In Outer Mongolia Russian interests predominated. In 1911 there were diplomatic incidents in connection with
the Mongolian question. At the end of 1911 the Hutuktu of Urga declared himself independent, and the Chinese
were expeled from the country. A secret treaty was concluded in 1912 with Russia, under which Russia
recognized the independence of Outer Mongolia, but was accorded an important part as adviser and helper in
the development of the country. In 1913 a Russo-Chinese treaty was concluded, under which the autonomy of
Outer Mongolia was recognized, but Mongolia became a part of the Chinese realm. After the Russian revolution
had begun, revolution was carried also into Mongolia. The country suffered al the horrors of the struggles
between White Russians (General Ungern-Sternberg) and the Reds; there were also Chinese attempts at
intervention, though without success, until in the end Mongolia became a Soviet Republic. As such she is closely associated with Soviet Russia. China, however, did not quickly recognize Mongolia's independence, and in his
work China's Destiny (1944) Chiang Kai-shek insisted that China's aim remained the recovery of the frontiers of 1840, which means among other things the recovery of Outer Mongolia. In spite of this, after the Second
World War Chiang Kai-shek had to renounce de jure al rights in Outer Mongolia. Inner Mongolia was always united to China much more closely; only for a time during the war with Japan did the Japanese maintain there a puppet government. The disappearance of this government went almost unnoticed.
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occupied the former German-leased territory of Tsingtao, at the extremity of the province of Shantung, and from that point she occupied the railways of the province. Her plan was to make the whole province a protectorate;
Shantung is rich in coal and especialy in metals. Japan's plans were revealed in the notorious "Twenty-one Demands" (1915). Against the furious opposition especialy of the students of Peking, Yüan Shih-k'ai's
government accepted the greater part of these demands. In negotiations with Great Britain, in which Japan took advantage of the British commitments in Europe, Japan had to be conceded the predominant position in the Far
East.
Meanwhile Yüan Shih-k'ai had made al preparations for turning the Republic once more into an empire, in which
he would be emperor; the empire was to be based once more on the gentry group. In 1914 he secured an
amendment of the Constitution under which the governing power was to be entirely in the hands of the president; at the end of 1914 he secured his appointment as president for life, and at the end of 1915 he induced the
parliament to resolve that he should become emperor.
This naturaly aroused the resentment of the republicans, but it also annoyed the generals belonging to the gentry, who had the same ambition. Thus there were disturbances, especialy in the south, where Sun Yat-sen with his
folowers agitated for a democratic republic. The foreign powers recognized that a divided China would be much
easier to penetrate and annex than a united China, and accordingly opposed Yüan Shih-k'ai. Before he could
ascend the throne, he died suddenly—and this terminated the first attempt to re-establish monarchy.
Yüan was succeeded as president by Li Yüan-hung. Meanwhile five provinces had declared themselves
independent. Foreign pressure on China steadily grew. She was forced to declare war on Germany, and though
this made no practical difference to the war, it enabled the European powers to penetrate further into China.
Difficulties grew to such an extent in 1917 that a dictatorship was set up and soon after came an interlude, the recal of the Manchus and the reinstatement of the deposed emperor (July 1st-8th, 1917).
This led to various risings of generals, each aiming simply at the satisfaction of his thirst for personal power.
Ultimately the victorious group of generals, headed by Tuan Ch'i-jui, secured the election of Fêng Kuo-chang in place of the retiring president. Fêng was succeeded at the end of 1918 by Hsü Shih-ch'ang, who held office until 1922. Hsü, as a former ward of the emperor, was a typical representative of the gentry, and was opposed to al
republican reforms.
The south held aloof from these northern governments. In Canton an opposition government was set up, formed
mainly of folowers of Sun Yat-sen; the Peking government was unable to remove the Canton government. But
the Peking government and its president scarcely counted any longer even in the north. Al that counted were the generals, the most prominent of whom were: (1) Chang Tso-lin, who had control of Manchuria and had made
certain terms with Japan, but who was ultimately murdered by the Japanese (1928); (2) Wu P'ei-fu, who held
North China; (3) the so-caled "Christian general", Fêng Yü-hsiang, and (4) Ts'ao K'un, who became president in 1923.
At the end of the first world war Japan had a hold over China amounting almost to military control of the country.
China did not sign the Treaty of Versailes, because she considered that she had been duped by Japan, since
Japan had driven the Germans out of China but had not returned the liberated territory to the Chinese. In 1921
peace was concluded with Germany, the German privileges being abolished. The same applied to Austria.
Russia, immediately after the setting up of the Soviet government, had renounced al her rights under the
Capitulations. This was the first step in the gradual rescinding of the Capitulations; the last of them went only in 1943, as a consequence of the difficult situation of the Europeans and Americans in the Pacific produced by the www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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Second World War.
At the end of the first world war the foreign powers revised their attitude towards China. The idea of territorial partitioning of the country was replaced by an attempt at financial exploitation; military friction between the Western powers and Japan was in this way to be minimized. Financial control was to be exercised by an
international banking consortium (1920). It was necessary for political reasons that this committee should be
joined by Japan. After her Twenty-one Demands, however, Japan was hated throughout China. During the
world war she had given loans to the various governments and rebels, and in this way had secured one privilege after another. Consequently China declined the banking consortium. She tried to secure capital from her own
resources; but in the existing political situation and the acute economic depression internal loans had no success.
In an agreement between the United States and Japan in 1917, the United States, in consequence of the war,
had to give their assent to special rights for Japan in China. After the war the international conferen