TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0001
[nation-building, nationhood, Nationalist government, Jiang Jieshi, Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, minzu, Cotton Control Commission]
This book provides an image of a Nationalist government deeply divided, debunking the prevalent interpretation that it was a monolithic political entity, firmly under the leadership of Jiang Jieshi and representing a unified view of nationhood. It concentrates on the intellectual foundation of the nation-building project initiated by Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo. It also shows how notions of modern nationhood and nation building shaped the institutions of the Nationalist state and the reforms launched by the Nanjing government. Next, it investigates how the idea of minzu economy was translated into actual reforms, abandoning the intellectual realm and coming to terms with the economic and social realities of the day. It is mostly concerned with the reforms carried out by the Cotton Control Commission (CCC). The collaborationist period is then considered. An overview of the chapters included in this book is given. (pages 1 - 22)
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PART I. Envisioning Modern China
China's Minzu Economy - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0002
[Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, China, minzu economy, political platform, economic reform plan, Jiang Jieshi, autarky]
This chapter examines the understanding of Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo in China's crisis, their notion of economic modernity, and their development of the idea of minzu economy as the foundation of the nation. It also reviews the link between Wang's and Chen's political platform and worldwide fascist trends. The economic reform plan promoted by the Wang group was entrusted with the revolutionary (and evolutionary) task of changing the Chinese economic structure. Wang, Chen, and Jiang Jieshi agreed on autarky and were all equally responsible for the government's abandonment of the mercantilist policies that had inspired the Self-Strengthening reforms. Although the formula for economic nation building promulgated by Chen and Wang appeared, at first glance, rather simplistic and highly rhetorical, its realization actually required important choices for the new cabinet. (pages 25 - 52)
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The Rural Question: Identity, Modernity, and Peasants in China's Industrial Development - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0003
[rural policies, GMD, Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, modern nationhood, autarky, national unity, rural crisis, agriculture, China]
This chapter explores the productivist policies of the GMD and how they affected its rural policies. Rural recovery was crucial for Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's vision of modern nationhood with its very specific objectives (autarky and national unity). They recognized the significance and urgency of the rural crisis and placed its solution at the center of their reform plans. A successful solution to the rural crisis would be reached only by stimulating agriculture and focusing on technological innovation. Wang's and Chen's plan for rural recovery and their idea of the role of the village in the nation appear to contain one major contradiction. The autarkic China they were trying to build was to rely on the country's most cosmopolitan groups and on the areas that had based their modernization on contact with the outside world. (pages 53 - 78)
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PART II. Building the Corporativist State
The Politics of Reconstruction: Song Ziwen and the National Economic Council - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0004
[Song Ziwen, Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, nation building, Nanjing government, National Economic Council, minzu economy, China]
This chapter describes Song Ziwen's ideas of economic modernization and shows that Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's ideas of nation building had wide resonance among most of the Nationalist civilian leaders. It explores how the political disunity of the Nanjing government and the uncertainty caused by the struggle for its leadership prevented the modernization of the state undermining their reform effort. Song adopted a new strategy to pursue reform goals and began focusing on the creation of a special economic organization. He seized the new opportunity presented by the formation of the Wang-Jiang coalition. The new National Economic Council (NEC) reflected the main ideas on which the alliance between Song and the Wang group rested. It is noted that Song's reform attempts in the years before the inauguration of the Wang-Jiang coalition testify to the wide appeal of Wang's and Chen's plan for the development of China's minzu economy. (pages 81 - 102)
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The Cotton Control Commission and the Corporativist Organization of the Nation - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0005
[Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, minzu economy, National Economic Council, corporativism, corporativist organization, Cotton Control Commission, cotton industry, Chinese government]
This chapter describes how Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's idea of minzu economy led the National Economic Council (NEC) leaders to embrace corporativism. The NEC became a corporativist organization, merging worldwide fascist trends with reform practices initiated in the Self-Strengthening period. Wang's and Chen's notion of minzu economy and their productivist approach led them to conceive the nation as a community of producers working together for the greater good of the country and overcoming group conflicts. The Cotton Control Commission (CCC) mobilized all parts involved in the cotton industry who appear to possess minzu and productivist qualities. It was also poised to realize the model of corporativism that Gregory Kasza labels “rightist” and associates with the Italian Fascist regime. The Chinese government has established new trading and planning commissions that often include some of the current leaders of private industry, a development reminiscent of the NEC. (pages 103 - 130)
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PART III. From Theory to Practice
Implementing Rural Reforms - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0006
[Cotton Control Commission reforms, rural areas, Chinese village, nation-building, Jiang Jieshi, Wang Jingwei, cotton industry]
This chapter investigates Cotton Control Commission (CCC) reforms in rural areas: their goals, their potential to change the socioeconomic structure of the Chinese village, and the problems these reforms met. The CCC leaders tended to underestimate local market forces and the cultural trends that supported them. It is shown that CCC encountered difficulty in its work in the village. The CCC was trapped in its productivist rhetoric and often ignored the long-established social practices embedded in rural society. The work of the CCC in the rural areas was influenced by the different nation-building visions of Jiang Jieshi and the Wang Jingwei group. The CCC deserves credit for instituting a national network for reforming the cotton industry. The corporativist and reformist unity of the CCC was threatened when it came to reforming the industrial production of cotton. (pages 133 - 174)
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Officials, Industrial Magnates, and Bureaucratic Capitalism - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0007
[Cotton Control Commission reforms, urban areas, Wang Jingwei, Shenxin mills, cotton industry, bureaucratic capitalism, Nanjing government]
This chapter addresses Cotton Control Commission (CCC) reforms in urban areas, reforms designed to modernize the production and management of industrial plants. It reviews the final political demise of the Wang Jingwei group. The CCC attempted to organize and develop the domestic market in finished goods. It saw the 1934 crisis of the Shenxin mills as one more proof of Rong's questionable business practices and as an opportunity to modernize them. The Shenxin affair illustrates that the cotton industry had become a site of struggle between different groups in the government. Bureaucratic capitalism has been viewed as a product of the corruption that characterized the Nanjing government. The CCC reforms would lead to their gradual disappearance, with effects hard to gauge on the Chinese economy as a whole. (pages 175 - 200)
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PART IV. Defending Which Nation?
From Nationalism to Collaboration - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0008
[nation building, Republican China, Japan, Wang Jingwei, Chinese government, Chen Gongbo, Nationalist Party, nationalism]
This chapter highlights the deep impact of the intellectual constructs of nation building on the political life of Republican China. It also explores how different visions of nation led to two dramatically different defensive strategies after the eruption of full war with Japan. Wang Jingwei was in better position to exploit the needs of the Japanese for a strong and legitimate Chinese government and thus would be able to negotiate a more favorable peace. Preserving China's vitality became Chen Gongbo's main focus when he finally joined Wang in Nanjing shortly after the inauguration of the Reorganized National Government (RNG). Wang and Chen planned to use the Japanese to defeat Jiang and regain leadership over the Nationalist Party and the nation. Their ideas of nation and nationalism became completely discredited in the postwar years, becoming exclusively identified with collaboration and divorced from any memory of their wider prewar political framework. (pages 203 - 228)
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Conclusion - Margherita Zanasi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.003.0009
[Nanjing Decade, Nationalist China, anti-imperialism, China, political legitimacy, nationalism, corporativist organization]
The Nanjing Decade was profoundly different from postwar Nationalist China because of the richness and diversity of ideas of political and economic modernity and because of the freedom enjoyed by intellectuals and political leaders to creatively combine elements from different trends without being afraid of going against the political line imposed by their parties. The Nanjing Decade witnessed the confrontation between Communists and Nationalists and also engagement with such fundamental themes as anti-imperialism and the relationships between rural hinterland and industrial coastal China. National economic reconstruction was the Wang-Song group's claim to political legitimacy. Nationalism played an important role in cementing the unity of state and society in the corporativist organization of the state. Today's China is not experiencing the urgency of the 1930s national crisis, and the Communist state is far more powerful and established than the Nationalist one ever was. (pages 229 - 238)
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GLOSSARY
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
