Kuomintang Government Research Articles

Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army (review)

Reviewed by: Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army Peter O. Hefron (bio) Lanxin Xiang . Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army. Lanham, New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $37.50, ISBN 0-7618-1129-x. Lanxin Xiang, Professor of International History at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies, has written a well-researched work that is part biography of Chen Yi and part military history of the Chinese Communist Revolution. It traces Chen Yi's career from radical student to founder and commander of the New Fourth Army (NFA). It is also a military history of the NFA, dealing especially with its pivotal role in destroying the main power base of the Guomindang (GMD) in central and eastern China during the 1947-1949 period. One of the book's strengths is Xiang's use of his interviews with surviving members of the NFA as well as his utilization of newly published primary sources, mainly from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The history of the Eighth Route Army, created by the veterans of the Long March, is well known. Xiang provides us with an in-depth look at what happened to those scattered Chinese Communist Party (CCP) guerrilla units in Southeast China that the CCP Central Committee left behind at the start of the Long March. From these units and their commanders arose the New Fourth Army. He traces the evolution and unification of these units during their three years of isolation from Mao Zedong's Yan'an headquarters. Communications were reestablished in late 1937, parallel to the creation of the second CCP-GMD United Front. From the surviving thirteen thousand "Red Bandits," Mao in Yan'an, Chen Yi and his guerrilla cohorts in southern China, and the Guomindang fashioned the New Fourth Army from October to December 1937. Xiang gives a detailed analysis of the chief battles of the NFA as well as of the controversies between Mao and the NFA leadership over correct military and political strategy. The NFA soon became a microcosm for the factional rivalry between Mao's real and imagined enemies within the CCP, ranging from the pro Stalinist Comintern group to potential rightists among CCP military officers. The NFA ostensibly harbored both varieties. The NFA also served as the arena for strategic debates between Mao and the NFA's leadership, soon personified by Chen Yi and a number of his generals such as Su Yu, Ye Fei, and Huang Kechang. At issue were three matters: Should the CCP continue to rely on Mao's guerrilla warfare strategy or escalate permanently to conventional mobile warfare using regular CCP troop units? By 1947, mobile warfare was favored and successfully practiced by the NFA. To do otherwise, Chen felt, would extend the civil war by allowing the GMD to dominate the battlefield. [End Page 248] Should the NFA follow Mao's periodic desire to rebuild the CCP guerrilla bases south of the Yangzi River or follow Chen's strategy of taking the revolution to the GMD's strategic heartland north of the Yangzi River? Xiang discusses this seesaw debate in detail. Finally, should the CCP's chief goal for the second CCP-GMD United Front be to fight the Japanese invaders or to use it as cover for the CCP to expand its territory, troops, and population at the expense of the GMD? Unlike the other two issues, this latter debate was easily won by Mao. Soon most of the NFA leadership accepted Mao's view that the anti-Japanese war was secondary. CCP expansion, even at the risk of restarting the civil war, was necessary if Mao was to defeat the GMD government after the Western Allies defeated Japan. Xiang includes an analysis of Mao's pre-1949 purges of his CCP opponents, most notably the anti-Bolshevik purge of the early 1930s and the 1942 rectification of both Rightists and Cominternists. Mao's egocentric determination to become "China's Stalin" through periodic purges, regardless of their impact on the revolution, is a forerunner of post-1949 Maoist excesses. Inevitably these issues focus the author's attention on the credibility...

State, media and democracy in Taiwan

This article analyses the relations between media and state in Taiwan. Since the 1980s, progress towards democratization in Taiwan has affected the media. The highly controlled media regime operating under the Kuomintang government has gradually loosened its hold. The party-state, however, still has many means at its disposal to ensure compliance, despite the formally free capitalist ownership structure of much of the media. These include press ownership, economic incentives, controls over editors and the practice of self-censorship. However, market pressures and the presence of an increasingly legitimate political opposition have forced the regime to liberalize its control. The state's capacity to manage news has grown, however, even though the legislature is more accessible, the executive branch of the government still remains unaccountable. Journalism remains boxed in by a combination of state power and `market censorship'.

The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical-Style Verse (review)

194 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1997 persistent sub-etìinic division between minority mainlanders and majority Taiwanese —and its significant impact on Taiwan's foreign policy. Klintworth labels all citizens ofTaiwan "Taiwanese," and uses fhe terms "Kuomintang government " and "Taiwanese government" almost interchangeably. Klintworth has provided an important and timely contribution to the largely neglected study ofTaiwan's regional and even global political economy. He does so in prose refreshingly free oftheoretical jargon, writing at a level easily accessible to upper-division undergraduates. Ifthe Asia-Pacific region—as meeting place of the United States, Japan, and a rising China—is destined to be an area of growing importance in the twenty-first century, New Taiwan, New China righdy reminds us that Taiwan, poised among these giants as "one ofthe most well-endowed middle powers in a post-Cold War world," can only increase in stature and strategic significance as well. Karl J. Fields University ofPuget Sound Karl Fields is an associateprofessor ofpolitics andgovernmentspecializing in East Asian political economy. Jon Kowallis. The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study ofHis Classical-Style Verse. Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1996. xii, 378 pp. isbn 0-8248-1511-4. The work under review is an ambitious, comprehensive, and thorough English translation and study ofLu Xun's classical-style poetry. As such it has great potential for enhancing our overall understanding of one of the most talented, complex , and influential Chinese writers and social critics offhis century. Lu Xun used the classical style to express those thoughts and feelings on contemporary issues and events that are not so frequendy found in his more public-oriented essays and short stories. This volume thus helps to round out the English-language reader's view of Lu Xun the person (his diaries and collected letters are avaüable for the reader of Chinese texts). This is not the first complete English translation ofLu Xun's classical-style© 1997 by University verse: David Y. Ch'en's Lu Hsun: Complete Poems, published in 1988, provides ofHawai ? Presstranslations and annotations for not only the present forty-nine tides ofregulated verse, but six "ancient poems" also in the classical style as well as several poems in the folk-song and modern styles.1 Dr. Kowallis' volume provides a more detaüed Reviews 195 and comprehensive introduction to Lu Xun's life, and analytical introductions as weU as more detaüed notes for each translation. Each poem is presented in the form ofits original Chinese text with pinyin romanization under each character, and a literal English-word equivalent under the pinyin. The translation that follows attempts "to produce English versions of Lu Xun's verse that preserve not only fhe imagery, but the literary feel and the tight-knit auditory effects ofthe originals" (p. x), the reason being that "the somewhat archaic tone ofLu Xun's verse lends itself to such expression in English more readüy than many other more famüiar examples ofclassical Chinese poetry " (ibid.). The resulting English verses most often take the form ofa-a-b-b end-rhymed iambic lines, somewhat like heroic couplets. Ch'en's 1988 translations also employed end rhyme, but used a greater variety ofrhyme schemes, such as a-b-a-b and a-b-b-a, in addition to a-a-b-b. Here and there a translation is marred by an unfortunate typographical error (for example, "twinkling of bells" on p. 92, and "afflications" on p. 139), but most ofthe renditions are accurate enough, and do indeed create a somewhat archaic tone. Often reasons are given in the copious notes why a particular interpretation of the meaning of a phrase, a metaphor, or an allusion is chosen over other potential readings, citing authoritative Chinese studies. Yet there are few if any references to differences in interpretation with fhe earlier translations by David Ch'en. Since the first English versions ofthese poems were produced in the author's M.A. thesis in 1978, and Ch'en's translations were published in 1988, fhe reader might expect by 1995 to find some discussion ofdifferences between the two, at least in the Preface ifnot in die annotations to each piece. The...

State-building and Ethnic Problems in the Development of China's Autonomy Policy

There are two main processes underlying the formation of a nation-state. First is the process of state-building, which has been related to the territorialization of state hegemony. Second is the process of nation-building, which is linked with the creation of a citizenry. In October 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came into power, the influence of the CCP in frontier areas occupied by minority nationalities was quite limited. Such areas formed a kind of buffer zone, where the interests of local ethnic minorities, the former Guomindang government, and various foreign powers all lay in competition. Following the establishment of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in 1947 the CCP produced a state-building plan known as the Regional Autonomy System for Minority Nationalities (RAS), with the purpose of integrating frontier areas into the territory under the direct power of the CCP. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the development of the Autonomy Policy of the CCP, paying special attention to the formation of Chinese state building in the 1950s.In the second section of this study the development and present state of Nationality Autonomous Areas (NAA) is examined from a historical perspective. During the period 1947-1958 four autonomous regions, twenty-eight autonomous prefectures, and fifty-three autonomous counties were established. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the ethnic policy of the CCP had been largely rejected under the influence of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, only the Tibet autonomous region and ten autonomous counties were established. Afterwards, the number of autonomous counties increased rapidly following enforcement of the Law on Regional Autonomy for Minority Nationalities in 1984. Evidence is brought to light, however, to suggest that several NAAs said to have been established after 1959 were set up in the 1950s. In fact, the structure of the present administrative organization in almost all Chinese minority areas, with the only exceptions of the Tuija and the Man nationalities, were formulated in the 1950s. This is considered to be the decisive period in which the CCP government created a nation-state.The third section of this paper explains how, in the first half of the 1950s, Nationality Autonomous Regions (NAR) and Nationality Democratic United Governments (NDUG) were set up as predecessors of NAAs. The CCP dispatched missions to three regions with minority groups which, in the South-West and the Middle-South, resulted in the establishment of a large number of NAR and NDUGs. In the South-West region in particular, eighty-five NARs and 163 NDUGs had been set up by the end of 1951 (with a view to their importance for national defence), although formal enactment was not carried out until August, 1952.Administrative reorganization of these districts in the second half of the 1950s is discussed in section four of this paper. The Chinese Constitution of 1954 provided for a new administrative order, with NAR and NDUGs to be replaced by NAAs comprising autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures, and autonomous counties. Three policies for reorganization, announced officially at the end of 1954, clarified the complementarity of these districts with one another and introduced certain reforms. RAS policies after 1958 are also discussed briefly in this section.The final section investigates whether or not RAS policies have been applied equally to all the main nationality minorities, using data from the 1990 Census of Minority Nationalities. The political and administrative conditions of minority nationalities are classified into six categories according to the number of autonomous areas for each minority nationality and the percentage share of total population occupied by these groups. The results indicate that minority nationalities are not always treated equally by the CCP.

A Theatre of Taiwaneseness: Politics, Ideologies, and Gezaixi

In September 1990o, for the first time after four decades, the Taiwanese government decided to send performance group to participate in state-sponsored cultural event in Beijing-the Art Festival of the Asian Games. The decision was significant not only because the KMT (Kuomintang) government has been on bad terms with China's government since it lost the mainland to the Chinese Communist Party and retreated to Taiwan in 1949. It was also because the group chosen as the representative of Taiwan was Minghuayuan, newly emerged model troupe of gezaixi (Taiwanese opera). Gezaixi, in contrast to the widely studied jingju (Beijing opera), is little known in the West. Yet, in today's Taiwan, gezaixi is getting particular attention from intellectuals, politicians, the media, and the world. This attention is generated mainly because gezaixi is widely recognized as a of Taiwaneseness. Generally speaking, Taiwaneseness refers to the nature of Taiwanese culture and its presumed attributes. It is largely connected with the culture and history of southeastern Chinese immigrants who first arrived in numbers during the 17th century and continued pouring in through the Qing dynasty. It not only excludes the culture of the aborigines (mountain people),' who were the first settlers of the island, but also draws line against the latest immigrants from all over mainland China in the 1940s. The Taiwaneseness designation is given partly because gezaixi is performed in Taiwanese, the mother tongue of the majority of Taiwan's population. Though not the only human theatre (as opposed to puppetry) performed in Taiwanese, it is the most popular, even if in decline. Chinese genres that had existed on the island for long time-such as budaixi, type of Chinese hand puppetry, and liyuanxi, form popular in Taiwan since the I7th century-lost their popularity to gezaixi. Qiou Kunliang, in his pioneering research on the performing arts during the Japanese colonization (I895-I945), concludes that by I925 gezaixi had become the most popular genre in Taiwan (1992:I86).

The Green Gang and the Guomindang State: Du Yuesheng and the Politics of Shanghai, 1927—37

The complex relationship that developed between Du Yuesheng's Shanghai Green Gang group and the Guomindang regime in the mid-1930s provides useful insights into the nature of the Nanjing government's rule and, in particular, into the manner it exercised power in its Jiangnan bailiwick. Although the Shanghai Green Gang bosses, in particular Du Yuesheng, were coopted by the new Guomindang State, their full integration into the regime's power structure in Shanghai did not occur until after 1932. Despite their participation in Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist coup of 1927, they enjoyed a somewhat unstable relationship with the Guomindang regime in the period 1927–31. The context of their incorporation into the Guomindang's system of power in Shanghai was the new accommodation between the Nanjing Government and the leadership of the Shanghai bourgeoisie following the political and economic crisis of 1932. In other words, the cooption of the Green Gang bosses was part of the new structures of state corporatism that were forged by the Guomindang regime in the wake of the Shanghai Incident.

The United States, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1950: A Reappraisal

The United States government's perception of the relations between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Soviet Union greatly influenced Washington's policies toward China in the years following the Second World War. Secretary of State George C. Marshall worried that a pro-Soviet CCP with strong military forces might upset the stability of East Asia and damage U.S. security in the Pacific region. To offset the threat, he tried to disarm the CCP and incorporate it into a reformist government of China which would be influenced by the U.S. and dominated by the Guomindang (GMD). The CCP, however, refused to lay down its arms, and the GMD was unwilling to reform itself along American lines. Between 1948 and 1950, Marshall's successor as Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, saw no chance of rescuing Jiang Jieshi's GMD regime from collapse and preventing the CCP from taking over short of massive U.S. intervention. Among the other reasons for his hands-off policy was a belief that China under the CCP would likely become another Titoist Yugoslavia in conflict with the Kremlin. But rather than establish a Titoist China, Mao Zedong instead entered into a Chinese-Soviet military alliance in 1950, the year the Chinese Communist invasion of Korea took place. What went wrong? Encouraged by the Sino-Soviet border clash in 1969 and the Sino-American rapprochement in the early 1970s, some scholars

The Development of Ethnic Minority Policy in Yunnan Province, China

Most modern nation states have been formed through their central governments' delimitation of national boundaries in frontier areas, which were often inhabited by ethnic minority groups. To relax possible ethnic tensions, the central governments have presented ethnic policies. Because the minority policy in a nation is one of the most important factors affecting the process of national integration, it is crucial to explore the development of the policy in detail.The ethnic minority people in China account for only 6.7% of the country's whole population However, since the area of their resident districts accounts for more than fifty percent of the nation, and are located at strategically important points, national integration of ethnic minorities has been an essential problem for the Chinese government. Whereas it is said that the government accomplished political equality, it admits the existence of ‘inequality as a matter of fact’: inter-ethnic differentials in both economic and cultural terms. To ameliorate this problem, the government has attempted to implement policies of economic development and ethnic education in the minority districts. To date, their specific circumstances have been rather unclear, however. In particular, with regard to Yunnan Province, Japanese scholars, including geographers, have thus far paid attention to cultural aspects almost exclusively. The purpose of this paper, keeping Yunnan's historical and geographical factors in mind, is to elucidate the development of ethnic minority policy by the Chinese goverment in the province.In the second section, the current situation of the minority ethnic groups is discussed briefly. The twenty-four groups with more than ten million people account for 31.7% of the province's whole population, and these compose eight autonomous prefectures and twenty-nine autonomous counties. Furthermore, the twenty-four groups can be divided into sub-groups. These imply the variety and complexty of the province's ethnic composition. Generally, the percentage of minority population is higher in the frontier districts than in the central districts of Yunnan, and particular minorities tend to concentrate partly according to altitude.The third section is devoted to an explanation of ethnic policy during the period between 1949 and 1958, when an essential aim of the Chinese government's policy was to integrate minority groups into the new system of the communist nation. Even at the time immediately after the foundation of the nation, the central Yunnan districts were under long-standing control of the Han Chinese in terms of socio-economic activities, suggesting a relatively easy integration of them by the Chinese Communist Party. However, the influence of the party in the frontier districts was negligible, because the districts formed a buffer zone, where the powers of Britain, France, the Kuomintang Government and native nationalist headmen were complicated. The Yunnan government sent there a minority maneuvering party in order to establish a better relationship with the minorities, support their lives and investigate their circumstances. In particular, integration policy in terms of economy and distribution was taken seriously at the beginning of this period. With regard to political matters, autonomous districts were established through the assumption of minority leaders to important posts in the Chinese Communist Party, and, as a result, a great part of the frontier districts came under the rule of the party. Minority groups were divided into four different types from the historical stage standpoint of social development. The Yunnan Government presented four land reform methods, correspondent to this minority grouping. Although the land reform based on this method and establishment of collective farms began in 1955, they have made less progress in the frontier districts than in the central parts of the province.

The Origins of the ‘Wang—Chiang Cooperation’ in 1932

In January 1932 Wang Ching-wei and Chiang Kai-shek came to an agreement and formed a joint leadership in the Kuomintang (KMT) Government. The alliance between the two men lasted until December 1938 when Wang defected to the Japanese side during the Sino-Japanese War. Chinese historians often term this period as the era of ‘Wang-Chiang cooperation’ (Wang Chiang ho-tso). In fact, this was not the first time when these two men came to ally with each other in the party. The first time when Wang and Chiang formed a joint leadership was in August 1925 after the assassination of Liao Chung-k'ai. The death of Liao at that time had great repercussions throughout the party and both Wang and Chiang eventually emerged as the beneficiaries in the ensuing power struggle; for a time they jointly ruled the party. However, this alliance did not last long. The outbreak of the March Twentieth Incident in 1926 made Wang Ching-wei decide to let Chiang have his way and he later led a self-imposed exiled life in Europe. It was not until April 1927 when the KMT was seriously divided on the communist issue that Wang went back to China. Immediately after that was a split in the party with Wuhan and Nanking as the two rival centres, each of which claimed to be the legitimate Party Central. Wang and Chiang respectively became the leaders of these two Party Centrals.

Sinkiang 1934-1943 : Dark decade for a pivotal puppet

Lars-Erik Nyman, Sinkiang 1934-1943. Dark decade for a pivotal puppet. During the decade preceding 1943 the province of Sinkiang was Chinese in name only, since the Soviet Union held the region as a pawn for supplied war materials to the Kuomintang government in Chunking long before the Burma Road opened. Another reason behind this Sino-Soviet co-operation on Sinkiang was the threat of a possible Japanese Blitzkrieg westwards across the Gobi desert. Only the decisive battle of Nomonhan in Mongolia between Soviet and Japanese army units eliminated the acute danger of such a Blitzkrieg. When the German front of the Red Army was sagging in early 1942 - before the turning point of Stalingrad - the Soviet grip on Sinkiang was replaced by that of the Kuomintang. Moreover, it has been possible in the paper to point out and to correlate historical events in the USSR and the province of Sinkiang during the scrutinized decade.

The Abortive Liberation of Taiwan

On 1 October 1949 the People's Republic of China was formally established in Beijing. On 7 December Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), who had earlier moved to Taiwan to secure a final base of resistance in the civil war, ordered the Kuomintang (KMT) regime to withdraw to the island from Chengdu, Sichuan, its last seat on the mainland. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared its commitment to the goal of unifying the nation under the People's Republic, and thus called for the “liberation” of Taiwan. Although Taiwan represented the final phase of the still unfinished civil war, it was the strategic significance of the island that became of paramount concern to the CCP, the KMT and the United States.

On the historical origins of Chinese underdevelopment

The Imperial regime bequeathed to its successors a double heritage and a double handicap: on the one hand, an exceptionally strong population pressure on the area of cultivated land; and on the other, a radical break between interior China (rural bureaucratic, traditional) and coastal China (cosmopolitan, enterprising, open to innovation). The history of the twentieth century only accentuated these contradictions and worsened these handicaps. Rooted in its urban bases, the Guomindang regime of 1927–1949 did virually nothing to transfer technology to the countryside, so that the gap between the two Chinas - coastal and interior - widened, and the regime was condemned to be swept away by peasant revolution. As for the People's Republic, by postponing the adoption of a real birth-control program until 1973, it wiped out a large part of the benefits that a policy of modernization extended for the first time ever to the whole country would have brought, and made economic take-off even more difficult in 1981 than it was in 1949.

Popeye and the Case of Guo Yidong, alias Bo Yang

When Chiang Kai-shek and his government retreated to the island of Taiwan after the loss of mainland China to the Communists in 1949, they submitted themselves to a high degree of soul-searching in order to determine the reasons for their defeat. One conclusion drawn from their reflections was that factional conflicts within the Guomindang, lack of discipline, and a decline in morale were as responsible, if not more responsible, for their overthrow than any superior military strength which the Communists might have come to possess. They judged also that they had lost the initiative in the political and psychological battle by countering the Communists' “unlimited war with limited war,” and by having too negative an attitude towards literature. During this evaluation of past performance the Guomindang felt no need to apologize for the imposition of censorship and oppressive publishing restrictions, nor for its suppression of those Left-wing writers who, since the expulsion of Communists from the Guomindang Government in 1927, had made a point of discrediting the Guomindang in the eyes of the people. These were considered to be necessary measures in the fight against Communism. What they did regret was not having used literature as the Communists had, thereby losing the battle for the minds of the people.

The Kuomintang Regime and the Shanghai Capitalists, 1927–29

“The reorganized Kuomintang [of 1927] established itself on a new social base – the Shanghai bankers, the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie of the cities, and the landlords in the country.” Such was the view of the allegedly leftist editor Frederick Spencer writing in 1934, and his opinion has been shared by writers of a variety of political persuasions and backgrounds. T. A. Bisson, a research associate for the Foreign Policy Association, observed in 1933 that the Nanking regime's “most powerful supporters have been the Shanghai bankers.” Robert W. Barnett, writing in 1941 for the Institute of Pacific Relations, argued that after 1927 “a progressive but anti-revolutionary Chinese bourgeoisie provided the ruling Kuomintang with its principal source of inspiration and support.” Ch'en Po-ta wrote that the Nanking regime was “a counter-revolutionary military dictatorship of the big compradors and big landlords. It was formed with the Shanghai, or the ‘Kiangsu-Chekiang,’ gangster ring of comprador–financiers at its core.”

Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Singapore during the 1930s

The 1930s was a unique, exciting, explosive and highly politicised decade for the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya due to the blossoming forth of Chinese nationalism aimed at China's national salvation in the wake of the Japanese invasion. This China-oriented nationalism took various forms. There was a boycott movement against Japanese goods; there were public and political rallies, cultural variety shows, and propaganda in the press and the schools, stirring up national feelings. There were campaigns for the return of skilled and professional Chinese in serving the Kuomintang (KMT) Government at Chungking, and for relief funds and funds for strengthening China's war footing. Undoubtedly, the Chinese nationalism that began in 1928 was a mass movement, and at its height in 1938 and 1939, the movement involved some 300,000 Chinese in Singapore for national salvation work, or 50 per cent of the total Chinese population on the island. It was during this politically volatile decade that various socio-enonomic forces within the Chinese community surfaced or re-surfaced in the bid for leadership. It also saw the rise, consolidation, collaboration and rivalry of various emergent elites and counter-elites in a rather restricted political arena, sensitively guarded and regulated by the British authorities. It is the concern of this paper to identify the nature and composition of various contending elites and counter-elites, to examine their roles in the national salvation movement and, finally, to analyse why a non-partisan elite headed by Tan Kah Kee ( 1874–1961) was able to capture and maintain the leadership during the period under examination.

The German Military Mission in China, 1928-38

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe German Military Mission in China, 1928-38Billie K. WalshBillie K. Walsh Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 46, Number 3Sep., 1974 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/241239 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1974 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Ting Guo Responsibility and Accountability: Military Interpreters and the Chinese Kuomintang Government, (Sep 2016): 23–72.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46119-3_2Donald S. Sutton German Advice and Residual Warlordism in the Nanking Decade: Influences on Nationalist Military Training and Strategy, The China Quarterly 91 (Feb 2009): 386–410.https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574100000062XChi-hsi Hu Mao, Lin Biao and the Fifth Encirclement Campaign, The China Quarterly 82 (Feb 2009): 250–280.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000012364George W. Johnson Abstracts of Documents in this Supplement, (Jan 1976): 1–482.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-5172-4_1

Afforestation: A Facet of the Changing Landscape of Mainland China

Afforestation: A Facet of the Changing Landscape of Mainland China Magdalen Woo* FORESTS cover only about 10 percent of China's total area, a large part of the country having been deforested over the centuries to provide for lumber and fuel needs and space for agriculture. With the exception of the extensive coniferous forests in Manchuria, large expanses of relatively undisturbed forests are found only in the less accessible parts of China: Tsinling Shan, western Szechwan, and remote regions in the southern provinces of Yunnan, Kwangsi, Kwangtung, Kweichow , and Kiangsi.1 Wood is needed for fuel and various constructional purposes . The Chinese anticipated an average annual industrial timber requirement of 150 million cubic meters for the period 1960 to 1990, at which date their timber resources will be depleted if not replenished.2 China has definite need for tree plant- * Miss Woo is a graduate student in Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles 90024. Appreciation is expressed to Professors Joseph E. Spencer, Christopher L. Salter, and Jonathan D. Sauer for their critical reading of the master's thesis which forms the nucleus of this article. 1 Yi-fu Tuan, China (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), p. 32. 2 S. D. Richardson, Forestry in Communist China (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 14. In comparison, the United States average annual timber consumption was about 562 million cubic meters for the period 1950 to 1970, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1972), pp. 630-632. 113 114ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS ing, which is not only an inexpensive way to beautify the landscape , but also alleviates the harsh effects of soil erosion and windstorms. And, like other Chinese land modification projects, afforestation is an outlet for surplus labor, providing a common goal toward which the masses work. Chinese newspapers and official reports use the phrase "the greening campaign" for their multipurpose tree-planting programs , ranging in scale from an individual planting a few shrubs around his house to hundreds of thousands of people involved in a massive shelterbelt planting project. All such activities are included in the general term "afforestation" to be used here. Pre-Communist Situation Forestry in the pre-Communist period is not totally a history of destruction, as the present government often claims. Roadside planting was practised as early as 1000 B.C.3 Around the third century B.C., there were officials whose duties were concerned with forest conservation.4 About 200 B.C., Ch'in Shihhuang -ti, the first emperor of China, constructed miles of highways lined with trees/ The T'ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) for religious and conservational reasons enacted laws to control forest fires and preserve certain forests.6 However, during the Sung Dynasty (around 1000 A.D.) the industrial and household fuel demand for wood and charcoal had become too great and coal was increasingly used as a substitute.7 By then, deforestation had already led to widespread erosion. Expanding mountain cultivation for over a century had caused so much damage that laws were passed in the early 1800's to stop the granting of leases to tenant maize farmers in the lower Yangtze provinces and to decree that mountain slopes be used for the 3 Richardson, p. 151. 4 Tuan, p. 34. 5 Richardson, p. 151. " E. H. Schäfer, "The Conservation of Nature under the T'ang Dynasty," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, V, Part III (December 1962), pp. 279-308. 7 Tuan, p. 39. YEARBOOK · VOLUME 36 · 1974115 planting of tea or China-fir.8 In the same century, under German supervision, forests were planted north of Tsingtao, in Shantung ." Although its programs failed because of insufficient control of the country and lack of experience in afforestation, the Kuomintang government (1911-1949) set the stage for a modern forestry movement: forestry training and research were carried out,10 Arbor Day was instituted, and the value of trees was taught in some schools.11 In addition to these mostly nominal government encouragements, people planted trees on their own initiative for both practical and esthetic purposes. Bonsai and the cultivation of tree groves around temples, graveyards , palaces, and memorial...

North Vietnam Faces Peace*

T NHE long march of the founders of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement towards the creation of an independent and socialist state embracing the whole of Vietnam began on a spring day in 1941, when a couple of dozen outlaws, pursued both by the Chinese Kuomintang government and the French colonial power (then 'protected' by the Japanese), founded at Chingsi, on the frontier between China and Indochina, the Vietminh, the league for the independence of Vietnam. The brains of the enterprise was a militant of long standing, Nguyen Ai Quoc, not yet known under the name of Ho Chi Minh. The kelnel of the new body was the Indochinese Communist Party, which had been created ten years earlier. But it was in 1941 that the Vietnamese movement acquired its own particular character, combining both a decisive impulse towards the conquest of power and a political line that combined Marxism and patriotism. It took Ho Chi Minh and his men thirteen years to overthrow the French colonial system, which from 1949 onwards had the support of the United States. At the Geneva Conference of 1954 they secured international recognition for a communist half of Vietnam, with as its counterpart an anti-communist state in the south, which the Americans treated as a military base for resistance against the communist thrust southwards and as the point of departure for an eventual reconquest. Ho Chi Minh and his followers had resigned themselves to this compromise under pressure from their Soviet and Chinese allies, who were seeking a detente, and also in order to avoid direct American intervention. But they regarded their attitude as purely provisional. Elections, they believed, would make reunification possible within two years, and it seemed obvious that partition was prejudicial to all the deepest aspirations for national unity; it would condemn the new state, deprived of the agricultural wealth of the South, to poverty and therefore to a struggling socialism whose rigour fell far short of 'Uncle Ho's ' intentions. The desire to emerge from the political ghetto; witch-hunts in the South; the refusal by Saigon and Washington to embark on the elections envisaged at Geneva-all these factors combined to produce a conflict during which the South three times narrowly escaped being

Reform Work in the Chinese Communist Educational System

In the 16 years since the establishment of the political authority of the Chinese Communists the only officially promulgated educational system has been that of 1951. When this educational system was promulgated, all the newspapers on the Mainland and the renowned scholars concerned with education rushed to proclaim its "excellent" nature. They compared it with the educational system that had been promulgated by the Kuomintang government in 1928 and emphasized the differences between them; for example, everyone praised highly "the unified five-year primary school system," "the system of accelerated schools for workers and peasants," "spare-time education," etc. However, the Chinese Communists ordered that the unified five-year primary school system "stop being implemented" in December 1953, and they continued to use the 4-2 system. In addition, the accelerated schools for workers and peasants, another "excellent point," were also ordered to "stop recruiting students" in the autumn of 1955. Finally, in 1957, the Chinese Communists again stressed that the educational system must be reformed, and therefore they organized discussions on broadening development in every locality, set up experimental points, and engaged in educational reform experiments. However, up until today, there have been no results. For the last several years the education work of the Chinese Communists has again concentrated on using all their strength to develop part-time work, part-time study and part-time farming, part-time study education and to systematize and determine the educational system. This essay concerns simply the process of the evolution and the development of this aspect, as will be seen below.

Politics and Education in Nationalist China: The Case of the University Council, 1927–1928

In 1927, Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei, one of China's eminent intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, initiated a program to reform Chinese education. In June of that year, the leaders of the Kuomintang government in Nanking approved Ts'ai's recommendation that they establish a new organization, a University Council [ta-hsüeh yüan], in place of a Ministry of Education to direct educational affairs. A month later they appointed Ts'ai to the post of Chancellor of the University Council. In the first issue of the Bulletin of the University Council, Ts'ai accounted for the change. He stated: “Looking back over the past decade, one can see that the Ministry of Education, situated in the midst of the corrupt atmosphere of Peking, was infected by the government agencies around it. There were times when those who headed the Ministry knew nothing about scholarship and education. Those ministers took advantage of their position and put members of their personal cliques into office. Word of this has spread so that the title Ministry of Education is synonomous with corrupt officialdom. It is for this reason that the Nationalist Government has decided to abolish the title ‘Ministry of Education’ and adopted the title ‘University Council’ for the body which supervises scholarship and education.”