3. City-Building, New Life and the ‘Making of the Citizen’ in 1930s Nanchang

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Nationalists' reconfiguration of the public and political space in the city of Nanchang before and with the New Life Movement of 1934. It discusses how the Nationalists moved the boundary between public space and political space and modified how these two spaces interacted. A fundamental part of the citizen-making process was that of mobilizing and encouraging participation in the activities organized by the party and, by extension, by the local government. In Nanchang the city-building process started as soon as the Nationalists took power, but it reached a crescendo in the mid-1930s, alongside the Nationalists' organization of mass mobilization. The involvement of adult members of society through the New Life Movement introduced a strong political connotation into community services and civics training and suggests that the public space in which individuals would act as citizens had become increasingly politicized. Keywords:1930s Nanchang; city-building process; civics training; community services; New Life Movement