1. The condition of China in 1936

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  • Created by: jxssrules
  • Created on: 29-04-18 14:33

Main challenges facing Chiang Kai-shek's GMD gover

  • Legal reforms (such as electing headmen to run local administrations)  were slow to change deeply embedded local and national traditions
  • Authoritarian and corrupt GMD gov.
  • GMD's authority did not extend over the whole of China - warlords and private armies
  • Japan in control of Manchuria in North
  • Yan'an
  • Political violence and military campaigns

Countryside

  • Education was beyond the reach for most parents in the countryside
  • Minimal healthcare relying on traditional Chinese medicine
  • High infant mortality and low life expectancy
  • Despite outlaw of foot binding in 1902, widespread until 1930s
  • Concubines still owned by rich men and arranged marriages still common
  • 1930s worldwide depression hit farmers particularly hard
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Chiang Kai-shek's Strengths as Leader of the GMD

Strengthening his power base

  • Professional corps of officers from Whampoa Military Academy - allies for struggles ahead
  • The Soong Family - married Soong Mei-ling;  important connections Shanghai & USA
  • Business interests in the cities - anti-communist & foreign trade supporters; landowners and wealthier peasants in the countryside; close links with gangsters in Shangai

Concentrating key positions in the political & military key positions power structures in his own hands - skilled at political manipulation so no serious challenge

  • National Revolutionary Army (NRA) - Commander-in-Chief and Chairman of the National Military Council; leader of GMD political party; Chairman of the State Council (= President)
  • Created GMD's Central Political Institute, Military Bureau of Statistics, Bandit Suppression Headquarters, Opium Suppression Bureau (Big Ears Du)

Using the police and the army to remove opposition to his rule

  • 1934-35 - police arrested 100s of radical students; many protestors shot dead by police
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Chiang Kai-shek's Weaknesses as Leader of the GMD

Power base - not a celeb

  • Was being first and foremost a military man good for public support?
  • No elections in China during these years so GMD didn't have a popular mandate for its rule

Power structure - corruption and insecurity (reluctant to delegate or trust his subordinates)

  • The Military Bureau of Statistics - torture and political assassinations
  • Opium Suppression Bureau - allowed gangsters to continue their work

Removal of opposition - unstable 

  • Strict censorship clearly didn't work as still need for ruthless suppression of 'radicals'
  • Japanese-controlled Manchuria in the north
  • Chiang's government didn't control what happened provincially or locally: administrators favored landlords over peasants; peasants taxed heavily and little revenue collected went to central government; wealthy forced to provide large loans to gov; gov still perennially short of money & most of expenditure went on military
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Key Points in Chiang Kai-shek's ideology and polic

Confucian values and military background; nationalist and anti-Communist but not capitalist, but Japan& USA ideas = modernisation. Contained many contradictions?

As his successor, subscribed to Sun Yat-sen's 'Three Principles of the People':

1. Nationalism - united China, economically & militarily strong, free from foreign interference

2. Democracy - military rule, 'political tutelage', constitutional rule/democracy - vague aspiration

3. People's livelihood - poverty; Chiang's gov made little progress on tax and land issue because of resistance from landlords

Highly conservative, socially and culturally - society should be a hierarchy; order, discipline & self-sacrifice

New Life Movement (1934) - create a 'new national consciousness and mass psychology'; short-lived as no mass support & Chiang's priorities changed after 1936

Admired fascist regimes of Italy and Germany - Society for Persistent Conduct/Blue Shirts

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Summary

Political: Chiang's central gov. (based in Nanjing) had achieved at least a semblance of political unity, although the powerful warlords still had considerable autonomy within their own regions and the Communists were still hanging on in their remote base of Yan'an.

Economic: growth in industrial production and in its foreign trade, facilitated by the modernisation of the country's transport infrastructure.

Culture: Shanghai was a bustling, cosmopolitan city with a vibrant cultural life.

Yet, Chiang's regime failed to implement Sun's Three Principles - not democratic, doing little for livelihoods and progress to goal of national unity, and independence was slow

International relations: 'Unequal treaties' that gave Western powers and their citizens a privileged position within China were still in force; Manchuria had fallen under Japanese rule

In 1936 the Chinese republic was 25 years old. Much of old China's culture and traditions still survived but much also had changed since the revolution of 1911.

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