S08: War and Nationalism
Nationalism and Revolution in Modern China
April 24, 2025
Land Reform Simulation: Debrief
- What do you think about your role and your class status?
- Is it fair? What is fair?
- What can you learn about land reform (and about socialism) from the role play?
Land Reform in Fanshen
- Explain the title: What does fanshen mean?
- How would you describe the long bow village and its inhabitants?
- Who were the work team members? What was their relationship to the villagers?
- How were the class labels assigned? What about borderline cases?
Land reform As Mode of Governance
- CCP Central Committee on Oct 10, 1947: “Chinas irrational landholding system” as greatest obstacle
- Confiscation of land from collaborators, evil gentry, local tyrants
- Not just making peasants beneficiaries of revolution, but also method of mobilization and recruitment
- Display of power: party on the side of the good, with power to enforce popular will
Legacies of Land Reform
- Dominance over economy and society (through redistribution of wealth and new peasant associations)
- New categories of political entitlement (class labels)
- New class of political elites and activists (CCP members)
Not a completely top-down process
- State centric, but also dependent on local power and organization
- Revival of state power based on new alliance with local leaders
- Negotiation of contradictory of interests between state and society
- New social hierarchy as a synthesis of local and state interests
Was Land the Target?
- Property as symbol of power abuse, rather than source of power
- Redistributing land is easier than redistributing power
- How to make a majority of villages participate in the process
- Retributive struggle and material incentives as catalysts for building proletarian consciousness
Guerrilla style of politics
- Land reform dependent on leadership at all levels
- Diversity of practices, with many exceptions and allowances
- De-centralized policy implementation: Not just a bug, but a feature of Chinese political economy
- Combination of centralized guiding principles with localized practices
Staging revolution: Case of Yangge
Mao’s cultural army: Staging the Revolution
- Creation of socialist peasants and new political culture: Values, expectations, and implicit rules
- Propaganda: Not just a tool for indoctrination, but formed and enacted by audience
- Concessions to local cultural traditions: Preference for
- In the reverse direction: Can political life in be understood as a mode of mass participatory theatre?
The Yan’an way
- Mass line mobilization: Enthusiasm of local population would overcome objective obstacles
- “Crack Troops and Simple Administration”: Reduce bureaucracy
- More moderate economic policies: Private sector viewed as progressive, rather tan reactionary
- Self-sufficiency as ideal: alternative to capitalism, and only way to deal with isolation
Mass Line
- “Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas of leadership - such is the basic method of leadership.”
- “From the masses, to the masses”: Policies should be rooted in the realities and aspirations of the people and should ultimately benefit them.
- Basis of party legitimacy and antidote to elite corruption: Cadres should immerse themselves in the daily lives of the masses, understand their concerns
Red Pilgrimage: Carrying forth Yan’an Spirit
Red Tourism
Yamaguchi Yoshiko: Empire’s Orphan
- Born in Manchuria to Japanese parents.
- Began singing on the radio at 13 as Li Xianglan
- As a Chinese speaker, Yamaguchi began her acting career in Manchukuo propaganda films at 18.
- She played the same role in each film: a downtrodden Chinese woman who falls in love with a Japanese man.
Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Li Lanxiang, or Ri Koran?
- After Japan’s defeat, the Nationalist government arrested Yamaguchi for treason: “a Chinese impostor who used her outstanding beauty to make films that humiliated China and compromised Chinese dignity.”
- After the war, re-established her career as “Ri Koran”, a Japanization of Li Xianglan
- Where is home? China her “home country” and Japan her “ancestral country”, but her life never fully recovered from the war between them.
Organs of Asia: The Novel
- Wu Zhuoliu’s 1945 autobiographical novel depicts Hu Taiming, a Taiwanese man raised with Chinese traditions during the Japanese occupation.
- Taiming excels in the Japanese system but feels alienated and recognizes the injustice of colonialism.
- He searches for belonging in Japan and China but is ultimately accused of spying for both.
Key questions
- How did WWII shape China and Chinese nationalism?
- How to think about collaboration? Case of Puyi
- How is the war remembered today? Was WWII China’s good war?
Situating Manchuria
Manchuria at the height of Qing Empire
- 500K square miles, from the Great Wall to Siberia, twice the size of Texas
- Diversity of environments: from arctic taiga to prairie grasslands, coastal rainforests to semiarid deserts to alluvial wetlands
Northeast China today
- Three provinces east of the Greater Khingan Range, namely Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang
- Often referred to as China’s Rust Belt
Manchuria in Qing China
- Manchuria as preserve of Manchu heritage
- Restriction of Han Chinese migration
- Alliance with non-Manchu Tungus and Mongol peoples based on tribute system
- System of banner garrisons as principal means of political control
- Monopoly in lucrative trade: Ginseng, fur, horses
Manchuria at the end of Qing
- Migration ban relaxed by 1902
- Response to Russian and Japanese expansion in the region, and to famine in north China
- 8 million migrants between 1890 and 1942
Japanese influence in China
- 1895: Treaty of Shimonoseki
- 1905: South Manchurian sphere of influence after victory in Russo-Japanese War
Manchuria as lynchpin
- If colonizing Korea was seen as critical step to securing Japan, Manchuria’s strategic location was critical to secure Korea.
- Korea as the key objective and the real prize of the Russo-Japanese War
Japanese sphere of influence in Northeast China
- Leasehold over Liaodong Peninsula (later Kwantung Leased Territory)
- Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway from Changchun to Liishun (later Mantetsu, the South Manchurian Railway)
- Railway zone, which land along railway track and key railway towns
Governing Japan’s Empire
- Governor general in Korea and Taiwan
- Colonial military garrisons: two divisions in Korea, one in the Kwantung Leased Territory, and several garrisons in Taiwan
- Financial institutions: Bank of Taiwan and Korea
- Semi-public companies: South Manchurian Railway and Oriental Development Company.
- Police force: Street-level administration
Kwangtung Army
- Regular army division and heavy siege artillery battalion in the Kwantung Leased Territory
- Two-fold strategic mission:
- Secure concessions to build new strategic rail lines
- ensure that Manchuria remained free of the political and military instability in ROC
South Manchurian Railway
- Japan’s largest corporation
- Expanded Russian-built railway into largest rail network in Asia
- Operated coal mines, harbor and port facilities
- Subsidiary corporations: millet, sorghum, coal, soybeans
- Research wing became center of Japanese colonial research
Settler colonialism
- Kwantung Army and South Manchurian Railroad as main employers of empire
- Japanese civilian population in Manchuria: from 16,612 in 1906 to 233,749 in 1930
- Most managerial, urban, and professional: manufacturing, commerce, transportation, public service as key industries
Zhang Zuolin
- Japan backed Manchurian Zhang Zuolin
- Zhang Zuolin was targeted by the Northern Expedition
- In 1928, Kwantung army acted without Japanese gov consent and killed Zhang to prevent Chiang Kai-shek influence in Manchuria
Political crises in Japan
- Emperor Hirohito ordered PM Tanaka Giichi to discipline the army
- Tanaka, ineffective, resigned
- Too powerful to fail: By 1929, the army could act independently of the gov without fear of consequence
Economic crises in Japan
- Great Depression further weakened Japanese gov
- Next PM Hamaguchi Yuko could not solve the Great Depression and was shot by right-wing radical in Nov 1930
- US tariffs increased duties on Japanese goods led to failures of silk industry and rapid unemployment
- Full control over Manchuria predicted to be a Japanese “lifeline” and “our only means of survival”
Manchuria as lifeline
- Security: Buffer to Russia
- Source of raw materials: Coal, iron, timber, soybeans
- Markets to help withstand impact of global depression
- Four times larger than Japan: Living space for Japan’s population
Zhang Xueliang
- Son of assassinated warlord Zhang Zuolin
- Took his revenge against Japan by pushing for rights recovery, stepping up rival investments
- Allied with Chiang Kai-shek to bring Manchuria under the control of the Nationalist
- KMT 1931 foreign policy: Return of the Kwantung Leased Territory and recovery of rights to operate Mantetsu
Mukden Incident: Sep 18, 1931
- Staged explosion of Mantetsu track near the Chinese military base in Fengtian (now Shenyang)
- Japan used the alleged attack as a pretext to open fire on the Chinese garrison.
- Between September 18, 1931, and the Tanggu Truce of May 31 , 1933: four provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Rehe brought under Japanese military control.
Founding of Manchukuo
- By 1932, Manchuria was wholly occupied by the Japanese
- Not formal annexation of the Northeast and creation of a Japanese colony
- Instead, creation of Manchukuo an independent state in March 1932, under Puyi, last emperor of Qing dynasty
Discuss: The Last Emperor, First Half
- Describe the life of the boy, Puyi, growing up as the emperor. Was he really ruling China as a boy? Explain.
- What activities were happening outside of the Forbidden City as Emperor Puyi got older?
- What impact did Emperor Puyi’s tutor, Johnston, have on Puyi and the Forbidden City?
- What is a “eunuch” and why did Emperor Puyi kick them out of the Forbidden City?
Discuss: The Last Emperor, First Half, continued
- What did the Japanese want with Puyi?
- Why did Puyi want to become emperor of Manchuria?