The Tutelary State and National Revolution in Kuomintang Ideology, 1928–31

Abstract

As the Chinese People's Republic (CPR) enters its third decade the question of viability as a stable nation-state has become increasingly urgent. Events since the Great Leap Forward seem to indicate an internal crisis of confidence which has slowly led to the present emergence of military power within the Government. If unity and stability can be maintained only by using the People's Liberation Army (PLA), then a situation is arising which closely resembles the Nationalist regime in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. At that time, the army under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek dominated much of the political life of the state. A sense of impending war (against Japan in the 1930s and against the Soviet Union in 1969 and 1970) also reinforces the tendency of the civilian leadership to rely on military instruments. Of course, Lin Piao is not Chiang, Mao Tse-tung is not a Sun Yat-sen, nor is Liu Shao-ch'i a modern counterpart of Wang Ching-wei. Analogies can be constructed, but the problem is that students and scholars of modern China have not devoted sufficient attention to the Nanking state as a comparative referent for Communist China, with the result that they have largely been unprepared to ask questions which a knowledge of the Kuomintang (KMT) experiment might have raised.