The Transformation of Elite Nationalism to Mass Nationalism: An analysis of Chinese Nationalism in Second Sino-Japanese War
ASI 430
994737031 An Ru Tang To Professor Yichin Wu
No one can hope to understand contemporary China---The largest and most
populous country in Asian and the World—without understanding the catalytic
force of Chinese Nationalism. Chinese Nationalism has first developed through
the Building of Chinese Nation-State by the Chinese elites. During the early
twentieth Century, Chinese elites started to borrow the concept of nationalism
from the West to counter the aggression of Western imperialism toward China.
These elites studied and influenced by western culture, economic and political
system, but the knowledge they learned form the west awaked their nationalism
consciousness and leaded them to express their opposition to the infringement of
imperialist powers upon China’s sovereignty and advocated to build a nation-
state of China as a significant step toward China’s modernization. However,
among these powerful imperialist countries, no power was more threatening and
destructing than imperialist and fascist Japan in Modern Chinese history. China’s
defeat by the British during the 1840-42 Opium War and by the Japanese during
the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War were the most significant impetus for the rise of
Chinese nationalism. Furthermore, the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 boiling
such nationalism to a heating point. Professor Lucien Bianco point out that:” In a
sense the whole history of modern China can be seen as a reaction to
imperialism, to an outside force that threatened the country’s very existence.
Modern Chinese history in this view culminates in the birth-after an
extraordinarily painful labor-of the Chinese nation. Never was the pain greater, or
delivery closer, than during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45.”1 However, the
second Sino-Japanese War was not only marked as the greatest pain in Modern
Chinese history but also the turning point of the transformation of Chinese
nationalism and revolution. Professor Maurice Meisner pointed out that because
of the war:” The new mantle of modern Chinese nationalism had replaced the old
“mandate of Heaven” as the symbol of political legitimacy in twentieth-century
China.”2 Nevertheless, both Chinese Communist Party and Chinese nationalist
Party present themselves as loyal and patriotic nationalists who fight for China’s
national salvation in the second Sino-Japanese War. Why? At the end, CCP
successfully grow powerful and finally won the subsequent civil war over the
once revolutionary and powerful Chinese nationalist party (GMD). In the brilliant
book Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of
Revolutionary China, 1937-1945. Written by Professor Chalmers Johnson, the
war in his view, created peasant nationalism, which is a mass nationalism
fundamentally differed from the elite nationalism promoted and advocated by
elites before the outbreak of war. He stressed that:” Such early intellectual
nationalism in China was peculiarly the product of Westernized, or cosmopolitan,
educated Chinese…For all the political activities of the prewar Chinese educated
elites, theirs was a nationalist movement with a head and no body.”3 In the
Contrast, the mass nationalism engineered by Chinese Communist party was a
much successful nationalist movement with head and strong body. Lucien Bianco
1 Lucien Bianco. Origins of the Chinese Revolution 1915-1949, Translated from the French by Muriel Bell, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1971, pg 1402 Meisner, Maurice, Mao’s China and after: a history of the People’s Republic, The free Press, New York, pg 383 Johnson, Chalmers, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power, Standford University Press, Standford 1962, pg 24
emphasized that:” peasant nationalism, by contrast, more primitive but in the end
decisive, was a nationalism of despair.”4 It was the Second World War created
transformation from the elite nationalism to mass nationalism in China. More
importantly, GMD’s military failures, factionalism and corruption corrupted the
appeal of its nationalism. In the contrast, CCP took advantage of Japanese
invasion, promoted nationalism under a massive guerrilla warfare and used their
powerful and intelligent organizational and social mobilization techniques to
spread nationalism sentiments beyond the elites and effectively mobilized the
entire Chinese people.
Authorities on nationalism agree on two points: first, that nationalism is a potent
force, and second, that nationalism as a concept is difficult to define. However,
Professor Benedict Anderson defines nationalism as a construction created in
imagination by print media. Anderson explains:” It is imagined because the
members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-
members, meet them, or even hear of them……..The nation is imagined as
limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living
human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other
nations….It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in
which enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the
divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm….it is imagined as a community,
because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in
each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.
Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past tow centuries,
4 Bianco, pg154
for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such
limited imaginings.”5 He emphasized the importance of the books, newspapers
and public opinions on the creation of the imagined community. More importantly,
in such an imagined community, elites in society were more ease to master the
language and control the media. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Chinese
elites had indulged themselves in culturalism, According to Professor James
Harrison; He noted that the primary Chinese identity was cultural rather than a
perception of a Chinese “nation-state”. In the construction of culturalism, two
elements were entailed. One is China was the centre of the world and a superior
civilisation. The other element was Chinese elites must be educated in and
govern the political system by Confucian principles. Modern Chinese nationalism
was born when China suffered her brutal defeat from west imperialism in the past
hundred years. Ironically, in the early development of nationalism in China,
Japan played an important role. In 1895, China’s defeat in the first Sino-
Japanese War terrified Chinese people and also made Japan a source of
considerable admiration. According to Professor Henrietta Harrison, during 1896
to 1905, there was 8000 and 9000 Chinese students study in Japan, including
Chiang Kaishek, who later became the leader of GMD. However, Professor point
out that:”the students who arrived in Japan in the 1900s had to cope with the
clash between the culturalism instilled by their initial training in China and the
self-confidence of the Japanese society around them. Japanese did not conceive
of their relationship with China in terms of China’s traditional culturalism, and the
Chinese students found that their achievements in many of the new subjects they
5 Benedict Anderson’ Imagined Communites, Verso, New York, 2006
had to study were well below those of their Japanese peers. At the same time
they were members of China’s elite suddenly set down in very different society
where their high status was no longer so apparent. Many Chinese students had
moments when, like Lu Xun, they felt that Chinese as a group were being
humiliated and became acutely aware of the differences between the two
Countries.” It’s clear that it was in Japan, the painful process of the change from
cultrualism to modern nationalism started, but in this process, we can clearly
found out that people who qualify to “imagine” China as a nation were Chinese
elites. The students who qualify to study in Japan were from relatively well off
family. Professor Henrietta Harrison pointed out that:” Even though study was
less costly in Japan than in Europe or America it was still expensive and most
students came from wealthy backgrounds. This was obviously ture for those
whose families provided the funding for their stay. He Xiangning, later a
prominent revolutionary, sold her dowry jewellery to finance her own studies and
those of her husband. The fact that her dowry jewellery was valuable enough to
do this suggests the wealth of her background….The same kind of economic
background was also typical of those sent by the state. Many of those who
passed the selection exams, or had the right connections to be chosen by
officials without exams, came from wealthy and highly educated families. Chen
Qimei, who later became Chinang kaishek’s earliest patron, was the son of a
Zhejing merchant and had been apprenticed to a pawnshop, a highly sought-
after situation, and had begun to study English, before he was awarded a
government scholarship to a military academy in Tokyo.”6 In fact, compare to the
6 Henrietta, Harrison. China, Oxford University Press, New York, pg101-102
expansive tuition fees in Europe and America, Japan provided an affordable
place for many Chinese students. More importantly, the ideologies of modern
nationalism can only by ‘imagined’ through the development of modern
newspapers during this period. In 1896, even the pioneer advocator of Chinese
nationalism Liang Qichao wrote an essay to argue that newspaper should serve
political aims and play an intermediary role between the government and the
people of government policies.7But Newspapers demand a certain ability to read
Chinese characters, daily reader should certainly be categorized as national
“elites”, the nationalism ideas which carried by Chinese newspaper thus should
be considered as an Elite nationalism. In short, we can conclude that Chinese
the early development of nationalism in China, including GMD’s founder, Sun
Yatsen’s nationalism was had significant Elite Nature. Professor Suisheng Zhao
point out that:”…KMT elite nationalism strongly resembled the nationalism of
nineteeth-century European Intellectuals as well as the nationalism still in its
formative stage-of colonial or non-European movements early in the twentieth
century, Such as in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey. Elite/intellectual nationalist
movements do not necessarily require popular support for success.”8 However,
thanks to the deepening expansionism, imperialism and militarism of Japan, the
elite nature changed radically. The Change from elite nationalism to mass
nationalism was also a long and painful process. Such process was intertwined
with war and revolution.
7 Ibid, pg1178 Zhao, Suisheng. A nation-state by construction: dynamics of modern Chinese nationalism, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2004, p80
Professor Suisheng Zhao summed Chinese nationalism into two approaches:” In
the debate over the content of Chinese nationalism, on one side are scholars
who view Chinese nationalism as eternal and objective, reflecting China’s
domestic and international position in the pursuing modernization. On the other
side are scholars who take an instrumental approach in defining Chinese
nationalism as an expression of the interest of the ruling elite.”9 Either approach
would deny the fact that the Japanese aggression towards China in the
Twentieth Century was the hotbed for the growth of Chinese nationalism. It
provided an eternal threat and internal instrumental tool for Chinese elites to
agitate nationalism. After the first Sino-Japanese War, Japan’s encroachment on
China was more aggressive than before. In 1915, Japan presented Yuan shi kai
with the Twenty one Demands and tried to colonize China by any means. Later,
the May Fourth Movement was touched off by Japan’s ambitions to take
possession of Shandong concessions seized from Germany during World War I.
Chinese nationalism after World War I marked a as an dilemma towards the
western. The advanced western nations no longer representing science and
democracy but they were now considered as oppressors and aggressive
imperialists who threatening the very existence of China. However, Japan was
the most threatening one among them. From 1931 to 1935, Japanese took the
entire Manchria in China and settled up a puppet state of Manchukuo. Japan’s
action instigated numerous student demonstrations and protests against both
Japanese aggression and Nanjing’s passive resistance. However, in the new
9 Ibid, pg13
book that recently published in China, To discover the real Chiang Kaishek ,
Professor Yang tianshi analysis Chiang’’s personal diary, noted that in the diary,
on one side, Chiang was a real nationalist also furious about Japanese
aggression, but he was realistic and clear understand that China was not ready
to confront Japan, and prefer to eliminated the Communists first. However, after
the Xi’an Incident in 1936, Chiang was forced to eventually go to war with Japan
and form a second united front between the GMD and the CCP in 1937.
The following year Japanese forces launched sever attack on China, driving the
GMD from its base in the rich lower-Yangtze region deep into the country’s
impoverished interior. Chiang retreated to the southwest Chinese city of
Chongqing. From 1938 to 1945, Japan occupied all major cities, roads and
railways throughout eastern China and installed another puppet government
which still called government of republic of China in the areas under their control.
The GMD military forces initially put up strong resistance to Japanese, but as the
war dragged on, their elite nationalism lost appeal to the people. There were
three factors contributed to that. The first factor was the military failures. Chinese
military force was ill-equipped and unable to match with modern Japanese army.
The factionalism in the army was increasing during the war and even an
American general lamented that:” We are allied to a corpse”10 However, one of
the most important reason was the deterioration of China’s economy. According
to Professor Bianco, the economic problem aggravated social tensions of
Chinese society. He pointed out that:” First, it made the regime even more
10 Bianco, pg 159
conservative; once the government was installed in the back country and thus cut
off from the merchant bourgeoisie of the eastern ports and great cities, its social
base consisted almost exclusively of that most conservative of classes, the large
landowners. Second, and more important, the war touched off one of the greatest
inflations of all time.” The retreat to the backward hinterland, cut deeply into
productive capacity. Government made an effort to transfer the factories to
interior, but only about 600 private factories and 117,300 tons of machinery were
actually delivered to the interior. The total production can only reach 12 per cent
of pre-war levels in 1943.11 All the heavy military equipment such as truck, tank
and airplane were all rely on import because China’s manufacture technique
were insufficient to produce them. To make the condition worse, the inflation
spiral rose, there were not enough money to finance the war expenditures and
cause widespread financial speculation and corruption. Professor Bianco
describing the condition by pointing out:” …to take just one example,
businessmen making the most trivial purchases had to be accompanied by
coolies carrying enormous sacks of banknotes. ……Government officials and
clerks with fixed saleries saw their income shrink steadily; their very survival
came to depend on monthly rice allotments, graft, and odd jobs the tax collector
would not hear about. …..For members of the ruling class who were close to both
the central government and provincial administrators, the American presence
created opportunities for all kinds of fruitful deals, few of them honest Whether
the United states Army undertook to build an airstrip or simply to tent a building
11 Paul H. Clyde and Burton F. Beers, The Far East: A History of the western and the eastern response (1830-1965), Prentice-Hall, INC, New jersey, 1966 pg 400
for offices and personnel, the fabulous sums at the disposal of the Quartermaster
Corps were an irresistible invitation to the ingenious swindler. “12 The inflation
and corruption sagged nationalism spirit. Nationalism should rally the people to
fight for their country, but what people cruelly saw was inflation, corruption,
speculation. Their nationalism sentiment subordinated to acquisition of power
and wealth. Finally, American entry into the war in 1941 further undermined the
nationalism sentiment around Chinese elites. People started to understand that
China would count on foreign forces to win the war and the fate of China was no
longer in their own hands. Nationalism was disappeared at this point,
disillusionment and resentment toward GMD government was seeded here and
just few years after the war, people withdraw their support on Chiang Kai-shek
and made way for the Communists.
12 Bianco, pg160