Introduction
As one of the Chinese treaty ports subjected to colonial influence after the Opium Wars, Shanghai had been a very important base for scouting from the late 1900s. As part of their “civilizing mission,” some missionaries and foreign educators introduced scouting to Chinese adolescents in the late 1900s, hoping to promote Christian values epitomized in the public-school ethos prevalent in Britain. The history of the earliest scout unit in China can be traced back to 1909 when some expatriate scoutmasters founded the first British unit of the Shanghai Baden-Powell Boy Scouts at Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Shanghai International Settlement.Footnote 1 Three years after the foreign unit was established, the first Chinese scout unit was formed at the Anglican preparatory school which was a part of Boone University in Wuchang. It was led by Reverend Benjamin Chia-lin Yen 嚴家麟—formerly a Chinese teacher who received some scouting pamphlets from his British headmaster at Boone.Footnote 2 But the center of scouting activities in China was still located in Shanghai. In 1913, the Shanghai Municipal Public School for Chinese also established its Chinese scout unit under the auspices of headmaster George Kemp.Footnote 3 In the same year a national organization called the “Chinese Boy Scouts’ Association” (CBSA) was established by foreigners and Chinese educators to promote scouting in China.Footnote 4 Headquartered in the Shanghai International Settlement, by 1917 the CBSA had enrolled fifty-five officers and 1,175 Chinese scouts as members affiliated with its branches mostly found in some major cities and the treaty ports such as Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hankou, and Nanjing.Footnote 5
After the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang; GMD) took over the scouting movement in 1927, they began to spread their militant, ultra-nationalist, exclusive ideologies in the ranks of the youth, successfully militarizing and politicizing the young men and women involved. This change signaled the radicalization of the concept of citizenship in China. Scouting, originally begun by expatriate scoutmasters as a remedy for Chinese parenting,Footnote 6 was redesigned by the GMD to boost nationalism, especially during the war against the Japanese invasion. The GMD converted scouting from a religious, defensive, international youth movement to a secular, militant, and ultra-nationalistic campaign.
Focusing on the local history of Shanghai, this article illuminates the radicalization inherent in the above change of direction and control in the International Settlement and French Concession. It sheds light on the ideology and actions of Chinese scouts of both sexes in the two foreign concessions. Shanghai had played a vital role in the development of scouting since the early period of the scouting movement in China, as is evident in its enrollment of 537 out of 1,175 members of CBSA across different provinces in China.Footnote 7 In 1941, the numbers of Shanghai scouts rose to 20,286.Footnote 8 More sources are needed before I can comment on whether Shanghai’s semi-coloniality impacted the collaboration between Chinese scouts and the GMD. But the impact of semi-coloniality on Shanghai is evident in the above figures, which demonstrate that Shanghai was one of the treaty ports with the longest history in developing scouting and had been an important base in the Chinese scouting movement from the 1910s. The high enrollment number of the Chinese scouts in Shanghai thus provided a strong underlying foundation for the GMD’s resistance activities in its war against Japan. Some Shanghai scouts, who did much of the “illicit” work for the GMD in the eyes of the police in the foreign concessions, did it at the expense of the principles of international scouting. Many of them, who acted like policemen and paramilitary force members, compelled ordinary people to behave patriotically and apprehended those who did not follow their instructions or those whom they suspected were traitors. The article focuses on the early months of the war because foreign police reports, GMD party records and newspapers from this period are plentiful whereas information concerning the scouts’ coercive, violent activities after 1937 are not.Footnote 9 While this article demonstrates that the radicalization of scouting activities mainly took place in Shanghai’s foreign concessions, this phenomenon not only stands alone in the local context connected with Shanghai, but also serves as a local story which connected with the making and trajectory of the scouting movement in China—a country which faced a national crisis as shown in its War of Resistance against Japan.
More broadly, this article reveals the Chinese government’s cultivation of Chinese scouts with ultra-nationalistic and militant ideas in the fight against foreign imperialism. Scholars have used the scouting program as a case study to analyze Chinese Nationalist ideology and political strategy. I share Jennifer Liu’s observation that the GMD harnessed the political loyalty of adolescents through their Three People’s Principles Youth Corps,Footnote 10 and I also draw a parallel to the findings of Andrew Morris, who demonstrated how cultivation of the body through physical activity contributed to the building of the modern nation-state in the context of twentieth-century nationalism and anti-imperial movements.Footnote 11 This article also aligns with Nicolas Schillinger’s argument that GMD reformers incorporated classic scout training—heroism, audacity, savageness, and sacrifice for their country—as they organized society along military and disciplined patterns.Footnote 12 In addition to the role of scouting in the GMD’s nation-building project, this article asks the question: to what extent was the GMD’s youth mobilization fascist? I agree that the absence of an expansionist ideology made GMD’s youth mobilization less fascist than totalitarian regimes in Germany and Italy, as Fong Sau-yi has elucidated.Footnote 13 Nevertheless, the article points out, in line with Lloyd Eastman’s exploration, that the Chinese boy scouts exhibited fascist traits,Footnote 14 among them authoritarian, sanguinary rhetoric attached to the personality cult of the GMD. The GMD’s efforts to radically transform scouting into a tool for mobilizing, indoctrinating, and controlling youth was astonishingly successful. Except for a few primary and secondary sources,Footnote 15 literature about wartime Chinese scouts is scarce. Brian Tsui’s work is one of the exceptions. He focuses primarily on the GMD’s ideological goals for the scouting movement. This article goes further. It not only echoes Tsui’s argument concerning how scouting was repurposed by the GMD to co-opt young people in a model of social activism that affirmed state power and class hierarchy,Footnote 16 but also expands on his preliminary finding showing how the scouts were given a vanguard role by the GMD in wartime intelligence-gathering operations.Footnote 17 This article builds on Tsui’s work by analyzing how some Shanghai scouts engaged in underground activities that were more radical and aggressive and often stunned foreign observers.
The GMD’s ideological indoctrination took place in the context of youth political mobilization in the early stage of China’s War of Resistance against Japan. As opposed to earlier scholarship, which has largely used the scouting program as a case study to analyze the Chinese Nationalist ideology and political strategy, this article sheds light on the practical side of the story: how the scouts understood and carried out the GMD’s vision for the scouting movement as a tool of mass mobilization in time of war. While Robert Culp has highlighted Chinese scouts’ criticism of and resistance to Nationalist rule after 1927,Footnote 18 it emphasizes how Shanghai scouts embraced GMD rhetoric and demonstrated their loyalty to the state in the early stage of China’s War of Resistance. Parallels can also be drawn between the scouting activities in the early stage of the war and the role of policing as a means of authoritarianism in early twentieth-century China—a period during which the Nationalists found it difficult to carry out municipal police reform in a hostile and difficult environment according to Frederic Wakeman.Footnote 19 While Wakeman argued that Shanghai’s exposure to Japanese invaders destroyed Nationalist police practices and compelled wartime Chinese security forces to put militarization above regular civilian law enforcement,Footnote 20 this article contends that many Chinese scouts in Shanghai, who were stimulated by the GMD’s indoctrination, bore a striking resemblance to their police counterparts in searching for their roles during China’s War of Resistance by militarizing the concept of scouting and by emulating the role played by the police in the war.
Focusing on the interactions between the GMD authorities and the scouting movement in Shanghai, I examine the outsized role that state-controlled scouting played in cultivating in Chinese adolescents the concept of citizenship that could offer answers to the crises of socio-political order and foreign imperialism that China faced from the mid-nineteenth century in the eyes of Chinese intellectuals and reformist leaders. To reconstitute the Qing empire as a nation-state that could survive in modern times, some Chinese elites believed that the concept of citizenship had to include an array of ethical and political elements. These elements included not only a personal morality organized around kinship-based relations (real and imagined) between individuals in a Confucian context, but also loyalty to Chinese rulers and to the concept of the bounded and sovereign nation-state in China.Footnote 21 Adapted to social conditions in China under the rule of the GMD, the influence of the state on citizenship became more extreme. Albeit criticized for its perceived appeasement policy towards Japan,Footnote 22 the GMD accomplished a fair degree of radical indoctrination among China’s youth. This article will demonstrate how the war contributed to the changing nature of the concept of Chinese citizenship in the scouting movement directed by the authoritarian GMD in the early stages of China’s War of Resistance.
Although the GMD-led Chinese scouts were far from identical copies of either German Nazis or Italian Fascists, this article asserts that their militant and radical behaviors could be considered as quasi-fascist activities, which bore a certain resemblance to some of the fascist ideological characteristics listed by Lloyd Eastman. In his study of the Blue Shirts Society—a secret fascist clique dominated by former Whampoa Military Academy cadets—Eastman argues that the participants shared a sense of political desperation stemming from different factors, including national humiliation.Footnote 23 These ideological traits included exaltation of the state, one-party rule, the worship of the leader who subordinated his aspirations to the collective will, and the glorification of violence and terror.Footnote 24 By showing how Shanghai scouts understood and implemented scouting principles, this article restores the lost voices of Chinese scouts who served their country in the war.Footnote 25 Moreover, this article, which turns a lens on the GMD and foreign-run police force at the Shanghai International Settlement, shows that the GMD’s authoritarian rule before the war with Japan and the mobilization at the early stage of the war reinforced each other and penetrated the everyday life of the Chinese.
The concept of citizenship and its adaptation to China’s social conditions before 1927
International scouting developed in the nineteenth century in Britain as a youth movement preoccupied with the concept of Muscular Christianity. John Springhall and Elleke Boehmer have suggested the scouts were trained in a British middle-class public-school ethos that prized patriotic duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, honor, and loyalty. These values were held up as ideals that the working-class should emulate to overcome their “dirty, quarrelsome, improvident, dishonest, and vicious” urban-industrial environment.Footnote 26 Muscular Christianity also emphasized masculinity in opposition to effeminacy and bookishness.Footnote 27 Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown at Oxford—a prominent work epitomizing Muscular Christianity—depicted muscular Christians as different from athletes; the purposes for which their bodies had been given them were poles apart. Instead of using their bodies for personal benefit and pleasure, muscular Christians were chivalrous and missionary-like, destined to protect the weak, advance all righteous causes, and subdue the earth.Footnote 28
Derived from Muscular Christianity, the concept of citizenship practiced in international scouting stressed principles such as amity, cordiality, and non-violence. Like other British youth-movement leaders who embraced the above noble ethos,Footnote 29 Baden-Powell had a training regimen that was military-inspired, but that allowed scouts only to pursue peaceful citizenship, serve their country, and play a supporting role during national crises. He wanted to cultivate the idea of “character-building” and “citizenship” in his scouts, who were expected to “do their duty to God and the King,” “help their country,” and “do their best to help others” regardless of their social class, as stated in the scouts’ oaths and laws.Footnote 30 They should also be courteous, cheerful, imaginative, and friendly to other people.Footnote 31 If an enemy were to bully the motherland, the scouts would stop them if driven to do so. To defend the Empire, every boy should learn to shoot and drill with less lethal weapons.Footnote 32 For example, Baden-Powell’s scout instructors taught the scouts how to use air rifles and crossbows.Footnote 33 They inculcated military skills into the youngsters in an entertaining manner.Footnote 34 Baden-Powell never mentioned that the aim of equipping the scouts with military knowledge was to prepare them to take revenge or annihilate the enemy. He instead stated that the use of force would be needed during a war to restore peace and stop an invasion initiated by intruders.Footnote 35
Empowering the scouts to repulse intruders did not mean that these adolescents were also empowered to investigate and identify those who were operating behind enemy lines. Baden-Powell encouraged scouts to assist the police that handled accidents and crimes. But this was clearly limited to performing civilian duties. For example, if the scouts saw a window or door left open and unguarded at night, they should inform a police constable on the beat. They should not attempt to do detective work as undercover agents nor watch the people who were allegedly involved.Footnote 36 Also, scouts should never subdue suspects on behalf of the police. These points were exemplified in Scouting for Boys where Baden-Powell praised those who assisted the police when they had difficulty with violent men. Baden-Powell’s examples ranged from following a pickpocket and crying “stop thief,” to blowing a whistle for constables who wrestled with criminals until assistance arrived.Footnote 37
Chinese scouting had been largely dominated by foreigners from the time when it was introduced in China until 1927 when it was gradually taken over by the GMD party authorities. Following in the footsteps of Britain’s youth movement, expatriate sojourners and missionaries introduced scouting in China—a country which had been exploited by foreign powers since the Qing’s defeat in the First Opium War in 1842. In 1913, the CBSA—a national organization which was set up by dozens of expatriates and Chinese educators in the Shanghai International Settlement—had more than 1,000 members from Christian organizations or foreign-run schools in different cities which were mostly treaty ports.Footnote 38 After the increasing exposure of scouting activities to the Chinese public who were invited to watch the performances of foreign scouts in Shanghai,Footnote 39 more Chinese schools and social organizations outside the foreign concessions also formed their own units which sought assistance from foreign scoutmasters and scouts to train their recruits and demonstrate scoutcraft on campus.Footnote 40 In the early period of the scouting movement, the scouts were mostly male adolescences from middle-class families.Footnote 41 The first Chinese girl scout brigade only came into existence in a girls’ school in 1919—seven years after the founding of China’s first Chinese boy scout brigade in Wuhan in 1912.Footnote 42 The level of affluence of the scouts was evident from costly expenditures for their study and their participation in scouting.Footnote 43 The elite, male, and middle-class background of Chinese scouting was the norm until the GMD’s takeover of the scouting movement in 1927 after which scouting was developed into a countrywide movement under the leadership of the GMD, which not only oversaw the activities of all scout branches in China,Footnote 44 but also promulgated different laws and regulations for scouting.Footnote 45 The Nationalist government, which was determined to radicalize the scouts’ concept of citizenship,Footnote 46 had turned scouting into a mandatory course in secondary schools in both rural and urban regions from 1927.Footnote 47 Amongst the 507,839 Chinese youths who participated in China’s scouting movement in 1941, around 100,688 were female members.Footnote 48
Although the traditional principles of international scouting emphasized standards of behavior such as benevolence, thoughtfulness, happiness, imagination, and a cosmopolitan worldview, the foreign-dominated scouting movement in China largely embodies these lofty values only at both personal and societal levels but not at the national level prior to the GMD takeover in 1927. This is evident in foreign scoutmasters’ prohibition of Chinese scouts’ participation in anti-imperialist protests in the political movements between the 1910s and the 1920s. Alan Robinson—Commissioner for Chinese scouts in Shanghai—and other CBSA scout promoters opposed members in uniform taking part in any volunteering service in anti-imperialist protests. They also forbade Chinese scouts from taking part in demonstrations against the Chinese authorities who appeased the Japanese occupation of German territories in Shandong during the May Fourth Movement in 1919. They even warned that those who did not abide by this order would be punished.Footnote 49 Similarly, Reverend Bernard Upward—a missionary teacher at Griffith John College and the Honorary Secretary of the CBSA’s Wuhan branch—authorized no students to join the anti-colonial protests in Hankou, following the violent police suppression of a largely peaceful protest in Shanghai in May 1925.Footnote 50 Although it is not clear why Upward opposed his students’ participation in the demonstrations, this might be attributed to his reluctance to get involved in political issues in China.Footnote 51 The downplaying and sidestepping of indigenous scouts’ nationalist sentiments by expatriate scoutmasters shows that early Chinese scouting largely defended the privileges that foreign powers gained in China through unequal treaties and therefore failed to embody lofty values such as benevolence and humanitarianism.
Despite facing the foreign invasion of China, some Chinese scouts in the 1910s still implemented certain elements found in the citizenship concept developed by Baden-Powell. Following in the footsteps of Britain’s youth movement, expatriate sojourners and missionaries introduced scouting to China.Footnote 52 However, they were reluctant to cultivate Chinese nationalist sentiments. China’s national identity was of little concern to expatriate scoutmasters, many of whom showed a marked apathy to Chinese politics.Footnote 53 Instead, the missionaries emphasized the “universal values” of benevolence and empathy amongst the scouts, both at a personal and at a societal level, as I have discussed in my previous research.Footnote 54 The Christian element in the scout oath and by-laws gradually faded away in the late 1910s in China,Footnote 55 but the building of physical strength and the cultivation of the practical knowledge necessary to work on behalf of the national interest, remained an important part of the scout code borrowed from the British. Although some Chinese scouts supported the concept of the “citizen-soldier” (jun guomin 軍國民), requiring every Chinese national to arm themselves with the military skills to defend their country,Footnote 56 they rejected the militant spirit of fighting against invaders. Instead, they promoted the more neutral qualities intended for strictly civilian purposes—masculinity, discipline, and Chinese nationalism. These Chinese scouts acted in opposition to their expatriate scoutmaster who wanted to downplay Chinese nationalism. Following what Baden-Powell had taught, they practiced a peaceful citizenship that included a training regimen with military traits, but that only allowed them to play a civilian role in serving their country.
In the eyes of some Chinese scouts, the ethics cultivated by scouting guided teenagers in their career paths and inculcated in them the concept of the “citizen-soldier,” which they could use in various peaceful missions. Du Dingyou 杜定友 and Zhuo Guanchao 卓觀潮, who were active boy scouts and students at the Shanghai Government Institute of Technology in the late 1910s, believed that scouting supplemented the deficiencies of regular education, strengthened the adolescent physique, and formed an obedient mindset through military-style outdoor exercises. The scouts surveyed the land, went camping, and practiced field operations.Footnote 57 Their training equipped them to serve the country under all circumstances. The scouts helped those in crisis and assisted the police in the pursuit of thieves.Footnote 58 They did not use weapons in times of war, but they served as civilians on the battlefield, providing first-aid and reconnoitering the enemy position. Once a young man had been awarded the boy scout certificate, he could serve the Chinese republic by enlisting in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps—a multi-national militia controlled by the Shanghai Municipal Council but dominated by the British.Footnote 59
Scouting gradually adapted to China’s local circumstances. During the protests and strikes in Shanghai in the 1919 May Fourth Movement,Footnote 60 the scouts successfully extricated themselves from the prohibition by their expatriate scoutmasters to participate in Shanghai’s anti-imperialist activities.Footnote 61 Despite the intervention of their foreign scoutmasters, many scouts based in Shanghai’s foreign concessions followed in the footsteps of their counterparts in the area administered by the Chinese government to serve during the anti-imperialist movement.Footnote 62 Divided in various scout units, these scouts, who stressed the need for their countrymen to exercise self-restraint lest they fall into the trap of the foreign powers,Footnote 63 mediated between different parties in Shanghai regardless of their nationalities, job occupations, and political stances, in addition to engaging in food logistics, first-aid, communications, and helping shops reopen for business.Footnote 64 Chinese scouts’ participation in the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai not only shows the development of an acute sense of civic and national responsibility amongst Chinese scouts, but also demonstrates the change of leadership as evident in the replacement of Alan Robinson—who headed Chinese scouts in Shanghai affiliated with the CBSA—by a Chinese scoutmaster named Yao Linshu 姚麟書 as the chief scoutmaster in Shanghai from November 1919.Footnote 65
After 1927, however, scouting was hijacked by the GMD. The Nationalist government’s success in unifying the country after the completion of the Northern expedition in 1927 consolidated their power over the scouts by carrying out ideological infiltration in the teaching materials of scouting and by controlling the scouting authorities in Nanjing which directed the activities of scouting at local levels. They began to inculcate young people with bellicose ideas and authoritarian party doctrine.
The increasing militancy of scouting principles under the rule of the GMD
After 1927, a new authoritarian political order arose. Scouts therefore had to reconcile themselves to the prevailing status quo. As the GMD worked to recover China’s sovereignty from foreign powers, scouting, a program of civic education and social engineering invented by Westerners, was brought under GMD supervision. The Nationalist government, headquartered in Nanjing from 1927, took the leadership of the scouting movement out of the hands of foreigners. They also worked to popularize and control the scouting movement by taking the following measures: making scouting courses mandatory in secondary schools from 1927,Footnote 66 founding teaching institutions for scouting,Footnote 67 drafting a set of new scout oaths and laws—solemn promises and regulations which emphasized loyalty to the GMD party-state—unifying the designs of uniforms and badges, and dividing the scouts into different levels earned through qualification challenges.Footnote 68 The “GMD Boy Scout Headquarters,” under the supervision of the GMD, was set up in Nanjing in 1928 to supervise the units and branches in different provinces of China.Footnote 69 All these efforts led to an increase in the number of scouts from 1,175 in 1917,Footnote 70 to 470,000 in 1932.Footnote 71 Data from Chinese authorities shows that the figure rose again to 507,839, with 4,967 scout units nationwide by 1941.Footnote 72 In 1944, the Scouts of the China General Association—the successor to the GMD Boy Scout Headquarters—was headed by the GMD’s secret ultra-nationalist society called the Blueshirts.Footnote 73 Following its incorporation into the “Three Principles of the People Youth Corps”—a GMD-led ultra-nationalist youth organization with the power to centralize the training of the youth in China—scouting was deprived of any remaining autonomy in Chongqing.
Once its takeover of China’s scouting movement was almost complete in 1928 when the “GMD Boy Scout Headquarters” was established, the Nationalist government focused on the notion of the “citizen-soldier” and developed it into a quasi-fascist concept for scouting activities. Pro-GMD scoutmasters believed that scouting was nationalistic instead of internationalist and cosmopolitan,Footnote 74 and they cast the scouting organization as ultra-nationalistic and extreme.Footnote 75 Yang Kejing 楊克敬, a pro-GMD scoutmaster and a staff member of the Scouts of China General Association, regarded the missionaries’ attempts to connect China to international scouting as a glaring mistake. He criticized the scouts’ cosmopolitanism and political neutrality, accusing them of eliminating anti-imperial sentiment in China. To save China from the exploitation of foreign powers, Yang Kejing thought that Chinese scouts should cultivate their patriotism and be trained militarily.Footnote 76 He believed that only by doing so could China uphold her sovereignty and independence against foreign imperialism in the twentieth century. The GMD had already invited scoutmasters to attend a six-month military training program at the Central Military Academy in Nanjing in 1936. There they would learn artillery, rifle-shooting, marching, surveying, and engage in military exercises.Footnote 77 For the missionary scoutmasters, being a boy scout meant you were “a friend to all.” Furthermore, no scout should take part in protests or meetings of a “political nature.”Footnote 78 The militarization and ultra-nationalistic development of Chinese scouting was clearly at odds with these values and rules.
The ideological shift after 1927 led to militant, quasi-fascist concepts and political ideology being written into the textbooks for Chinese scouts. According to Lloyd Eastman, fascism can be defined as a political movement which is characterized by one-party rule, exaltation of the state, the worship of the leader, as well as the glorification of terror and violence.Footnote 79 The scouting movement directed by the GMD also shared some of the ideological traits mentioned above. For example, there was the worship of Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 and the legitimization of the GMD’s leadership in the youth movement. In the eyes of some GMD party members, scouting offered an important way to boost patriotism and party loyalty. It taught adolescents to accept party doctrine.Footnote 80 The GMD-approved textbooks, which were very likely to be adopted by schools in the 1930s during which time scouting had become a countrywide mandatory course,Footnote 81 indoctrinated the tenderfoots with knowledge of the flags of the GMD and the Chinese Republic. For example, the twelve rays of the white Sun, which appeared in the party emblem, symbolized the power of the revolutions that overthrew the feudal system. More importantly, the party emblem on the national flag and the emblem of the Scouts of China General Association signified the GMD’s rule and their command of the boy scout movement.Footnote 82 Figure 1 shows the association’s emblem used in 1929. With Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles and his other political theories,Footnote 83 the scouts were asked to follow Sun, the “savior” of the Chinese nation and the “great man” to whom all people in the world owed deep respect. From here, the next step was straightforward: the unfinished project of restoring China’s sovereignty from the foreign powers. Sun Yat-sen’s will, containing essentially this call, was printed in the GMD scout textbook.Footnote 84 Moreover, the newly drafted Chinese “Scouts’ Promise” required members to join in the revolution against warlords and imperialism.Footnote 85 Chinese adolescents were indoctrinated to blindly take part in the anti-imperialist and nation-building project engineered by Sun and later led by the GMD’s Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石.
The Scouts of China General Association emblem used in 1929. Note that the GMD emblem was put in the middle of the design, symbolizing the party’s leadership of the scouting movement in the Chinese Republic. Image courtesy of the General Association of the Scouts of China (Taiwan).
Textbooks for scouts also incited to vengeful, radical sentiments which might encourage the use of violence against foreigners and those who allegedly had connections with them. While it was legitimate for textbooks to include explicit descriptions of imperialist violence,Footnote 86 their confrontational response to the foreign incursion violated Baden-Powell’s missionary-like, chivalrous, and defensive approach. These textbooks encouraged scouts to act practically and violently to salve the wounded pride of the Chinese nation.Footnote 87 They did not intend for them only to feel aggrieved. While asking the readers to think about the ways to restore China’s national honor, the authors recommended “giving the enemy a blow with the fist and foot,” and even that, they contended, would not be enough to remove the stain of national humiliation. They advised, the scouts could not wipe away the humiliation in one or two days.Footnote 88 The style of indoctrination found in the textbooks could trigger an emotional response at odds with Baden-Powell’s principles. This could drive the scouts to assault foreigners or anyone allegedly involved in the conflicts with foreigners. The GMD party-state could benefit from the militarized, violent citizenship of scouting which could strengthen its efforts in preparing scouts for war. The increasing militancy of scouting under the GMD’s leadership drew the attention of contemporary Chinese scholars and foreigners. Tan Yun’en 譚允恩, a researcher based at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong in the 1930s, examined the state of mind of the scouts in that province. In his 1935 survey he asked why the youngsters participated in scouting. From the results of that survey, Tan highlighted that many Cantonese scouts emphasized their wish to be brave and sacrifice for the motherland.Footnote 89
Meanwhile, foreign scoutmasters worried about the effects of the GMD’s militarized, exclusionary, and nationalist ideology on Shanghai’s Chinese scout organizations which claimed to have 20,286 members in 1941.Footnote 90 Despite the GMD’s takeover of China’s scouting movement from 1927, the British scouts’ authorities had an impact on the development of scouting in Shanghai not only because they used to draw up a training and organization program for Chinese scouts in the 1910s, but also because British scouts constituted the majority of foreign scouts and girl guides in Shanghai: 60 percent (780 out of around 1,300 foreign members) of the membership in 1938 which included French, Germans, Americans, Russians, Japanese, and Koreans.Footnote 91 For these reasons, British scoutmasters were qualified to comment on the authenticity of China’s scouting movement which originated from Britain. Commissioner F. C. Millington, in charge of Shanghai’s British boy scout members which amounted to 480 in 1938,Footnote 92 wrote a letter to Robert Baden-Powell in 1931. Millington expressed his concern over the increasingly militant engagement of the Chinese scouts in the hostilities between China and Japan starting in the early 1930s. He wanted to eliminate from the minds of the scouts any idea of fighting.Footnote 93 The semi-military training instituted in scout units by the Chinese government, was also responsible for the Japanese order to disband all boy scout units in Beijing after Japan took over the city in October 1937.Footnote 94
The foreign scoutmasters’ worries were reasonable. The GMD’s success in taking over the Chinese scouts to promote militarism and the high level of violence after the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance could be seen in the statement promulgated by some Shanghai scouts whose writing contradicted Baden-Powell’s defensive approach when he taught his scouts how to respond to foreign invasion.Footnote 95 In a joint declaration issued by the Shanghai scouts and their international counterparts, ultra-nationalism and militancy were obvious; they called for the extermination of the Japanese who had invaded China.
In order to keep the dignity of our vows and to exert our children’s influence over the world, we cannot allow the rampant, inhumane enemy of world culture to remain unchecked. In comparison with their counterparts in the world, scouts in Shanghai are among the first to counteract the Japanese and are anxious to be assisted by scouts from other countries to annihilate the enemy of international scouting.Footnote 96
By announcing the existence of the Shanghai Boys Scouts’ wartime service corps, the pro-GMD scout leaders were broadcasting that this scout unit was devoted to volunteer service against the Japanese invaders. Among its 2,500 members, around 500 of which were girl scouts who were as brave as their male counterparts and rescued wounded soldiers and refugees on the front line.Footnote 97 This citywide scout unit was headed by Xu Guozhi 徐國治, Chief of the Fiftieth Chinese Boy Scouts Corps,Footnote 98 under the supervision of the GMD.Footnote 99 In their magazine published in December 1937, members of the corps asserted their willingness to participate in war against the atrocities committed by the Japanese. Couching their arguments in terms of achieving world peace, they nevertheless called upon the people of the world to “rise and destroy the enemy of scouts.”Footnote 100 At recruitment interviews organized by the corps, recruits stated their readiness to sacrifice for the motherland in their field service.Footnote 101
Shanghai scouts’ militant sentiment, self-sacrificing spirit, and loyalty to the GMD party-state could also be seen, in the inscriptions on their placards and in their drawings, by the Shanghai Boys Scouts’ Wartime Service Corps. This was a youth brigade supervised by two corps committee members, including Tong Xingbai 童行白, a party cadre of the GMD in Shanghai, and Pan Gongzhan 潘公展, a senior government official in charge of the bureaus of education and social affairs in Shanghai.Footnote 102 While the Battle of Shanghai was raging between the Nationalist troops and the Japanese, in October 1937, the scouts from the wartime service corps hung a placard outside their headquarters at the International Settlement. This placard—a sketch of Chinese soldiers and General Chiang Kai-shek marching—implied the scouts’ loyalty to the GMD. The slogan on the placard read: “Let the whole nation unite under the guidance of General Chiang and drive away the Japanese imperialists.” Another slogan used by the scouts, “Poison gas is not so dreadful as we have imagined. We can be prepared against it,” reveals the blind loyalty—the willingness to their lives entirely to the state for the war without caring for their own safety—that had been inculcated in the scouts by that time.Footnote 103 The sketches on the placards were meant to incite the population and jeopardize law and order in the eyes of the foreign-run Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP).Footnote 104
The placard that the scouts exhibited in public in Shanghai included violent, terrifying scenes, ranging from a soldier bayonetting his enemy to a man armed with a knife pursuing a party of Japanese soldiers. In some inscriptions printed on the placard, the scouts strongly encouraged their countrymen to take part in economic activities against Japan and to engage in military service for national independence, even at the risk of their lives.Footnote 105 When confronted by the SMP, the scouts asked the police to show them compassion for what they considered their patriotic movement. They even entreated the SMP to return their confiscated placard.Footnote 106 These scouts moved beyond the defensive role foreseen by Robert Baden-Powell and to a certain extent shared some fascist traits outlined by Lloyd Eastman,Footnote 107 including the promotion of an authoritarian party-state, blind allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek, and the adoption of violent and terrorist tactics. They had become a militant and quasi-fascist force loyal to the GMD, and they paved the way for the scouts’ radical wartime behaviors, which placed individual interests below those of the state and forced every Chinese to support the Nationalists’ fight against Japanese invasion in China.
The GMD’s indoctrination in the textbooks and the Shanghai Scouts’ violent depictions in their placards demonstrate that the political ideology prevalent in China’s youth movement in the mid-1930s shared many similarities with the traits of fascism. As shown in the previous paragraphs, the evidence was abundant, ranging from exaltation of the Chinese nation, to the GMD’s one-party rule and the worshipping of Sun Yat-sen, and to the creation of an authoritarian leader—Chiang Kai-shek. Although violence and terror were not deliberately glorified in the state-controlled scouting in China, a vengeful sentiment, which was implied in the GMD-approved textbooks for scouting and placards drawn by some Shanghai scouts, seemingly included the option of using violence not only to repulse the Japanese troops, but also to annihilate them. The above elements found in 1930s Chinese scouting bore some resemblance to many fascist ideological characteristics listed by Lloyd Eastman,Footnote 108 perhaps explaining why some Shanghai scouts engaged in different aggressive, violent activities against anyone who seemed to act in opposition to the direction and the interests of the party-state.
Beyond “a friend to all”: scouts as intimidators and kidnappers at war
After the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai in August 1937, male and female scout members in Shanghai were mobilized in their thousands as volunteers in an array of jobs that assisted the Nationalist government in the fight against the Japanese.Footnote 109 They volunteered as stewards, medical assistants giving first-aid, signalers and air raid wardens, surveyors and factory laborers.Footnote 110 Figures 2 and 3 show the scouts at work in Shanghai—a city under heavy bombardment following Japan’s invasion of Chinese territory. The Chinese scouts, some of whom subscribed to war bonds to support the Nationalist government,Footnote 111 also solicited financial support from the public in fund-raising campaigns for Chinese soldiers.Footnote 112 The scouts from Zhejiang Province were commended by the Scouts of the China General Association for their success in raising more than 23,900 Chinese yuan for the war of resistance.Footnote 113 Some Shanghai scouts went to the hinterland not occupied by Japan to undertake logistical duties,Footnote 114 like conveying medical supplies from Shanghai to Guangxi.Footnote 115 Yang Huimin 楊惠敏, a girl scout in Shanghai, boosted the morale of the surviving soldiers at Sihang 四行 warehouse when it was under siege by Japanese forces in October 1937, by bringing a piece of the national flag to them.Footnote 116 Many scouts lost their lives while carrying out these duties.Footnote 117 The youth reflected a strong sense of patriotism and loyalty towards their home country, and they displayed humanitarianism in the spirit of Robert Baden-Powell. These remarkable and gallant services tell a lot about the civilian roles embraced by the Chinese scouts during wartime.
Chinese boy scouts standing in front of a banner for the hospital of the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, a place where scouts served patients injured in the war. Malcolm Rosholt Collection Ro-n0155. Photograph by Malcolm Rosholt. Image courtesy of Mei-Fei Elrick and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net).
Chinese boy scouts serving as stretcher-bearers outside the Sincere Department Store after an air-raid. Malcolm Rosholt Collection Ro-n0441. Photograph by Malcolm Rosholt. Image courtesy of Mei-Fei Elrick and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net).
This, however, was only one side of the story. The scouts’ resistance efforts at the International Settlement and the French concessions—solitary “islands” that were neither overrun by the Japanese nor subject to Chinese police jurisdiction—show the other side of the story. These efforts illustrate how during the war some Chinese youth, under the influence of the GMD’s indoctrination, pushed the loyalty and patriotism that constituted the concept of citizenship in international scouting to an extreme. They did so by forcing their fellow countrymen to purchase patriotic subscriptions for Chinese soldiers, and by hindering the free movement of people and goods on the grounds of national security. The Shanghai Boys Scouts’ Wartime Service Corps were under surveillance by the SMP in these sectors of the city. It is likely that the SMP, who had the power to define the legality of actions or behaviors, were somewhat biased against Chinese Nationalist activities in the International Settlement, for fear that these activities would damage their neutrality in the context of China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion. But colonial police records still, to a certain extent, reflect the state of law and order in the Settlement in the early stages of the war. The GMD was still in power in the Chinese part of Shanghai and endeavored to recover control over the two foreign concessions whose police force had to compromise on political cases which affected the interests of the Nationalist government.Footnote 118
The SMP reported that the Shanghai scouts engaged in “unlawful” activity involving the use of violence and coercion against their fellow countrymen behind enemy lines. While Robert Baden-Powell had encouraged scouts to assist the police by providing them with useful intelligence,Footnote 119 some Shanghai scouts went way beyond that. The scouts carried out whatever decree came from the Chinese. They conducted raids on private organizations that the government wanted to investigate. On September 1, 1939, six boy scouts and six men in plain clothes entered the office of the Zhangzhou Fellow Countrymen’s Relief Association (Zhangzhou tongxiang hui 漳州同鄉會), accusing them of profiting from selling boat tickets to refugees, who, in the eyes of the GMD authorities, should have the right to obtain their tickets free of charge. The scouts searched the association’s office and seized documents, books, and papers. Mr. Ho Loh Ming, a staff member of the association, tried to contact the police by phone to complain, but was prevented from doing so. Mr. Ho and two of his colleagues were escorted to the Pudong Guild (a native-place association)—the headquarters of the Boy Scouts and the Chinese police bureau at the International Settlement—where they were subjected to interrogation.Footnote 120 The three men denied the allegation that they had set up a profiteering scheme to sell boat tickets. They said that they had collected one hundred yuan from wealthy refugees to cover transportation expenses for poor refugees. They were released only after suitable testimony had been provided on their behalf.Footnote 121 Apart from raiding private space, some scouts also acted beyond the civilian role foreseen by Robert Baden-Powell and increased the GMD’s quasi-fascist tendency by arbitrarily putting various “traitors” under “arrest” and seizing those suspected of betraying the country, sometimes only on flimsy pretenses. The scouts in fact had no legal authority to put anyone in custody. But newspapers reported how, as civilians, scouts brought suspected “traitors” to the police stations located in the French Concession.Footnote 122 Even more unjustifiable was the scouts’ practice of handing over suspected “traitors” to the GMD military and police authorities, which had no authority to enforce Chinese laws in the foreign concessions. Their arrests of fellow countrymen fostered the emergence of a quasi-fascist tendency by putting ordinary Chinese citizens’ interests below the state’s interest, now overseen by the GMD, an authoritarian party led by Generalissimo Chiang.
For example, some scouts, who served as stewards responsible for maintaining the rule of law in refugee camps, were hyper-vigilant about anything Japanese, and they bodily searched any refugee with minimal justification. For instance, on August 31, 1937, a party of scouts from a wartime service group discovered that three male Chinese refugees at the Dah Kwan Refugee Camp had Japanese badges and cheques written in Japanese. The scouts escorted the three men to 35 Yunnan Road in the Louza District, where they bound them with ropes so that the GMD-controlled public security bureau could interrogate them. The men were detained for one day, and finally released, owing to lack of evidence.Footnote 123 Apart from keeping an eye on the refugee camp, some scouts also scrutinized pedestrians who looked suspicious on the street. On September 8, 1937, Tsai Bei Yuen 蔡培元, a female scout attached to Wei Foong Girl’s School, “apprehended” a 60-year old man named Hua Zang Kwai 花長奎 on Tonquin Road. Tsai suspected the man of being a “traitor,” an arbitrary accusation based on a small circle scratched on the man’s head. There was no other evidence found to substantiate the scout’s suspicion.Footnote 124 A SMP police constable saw this “illegal” arrest at the Red Cross Society on Sinza Road and brought both Tsai and Hou to the Sinza police station. The SMP released the suspect but discovered that the scout possessed a bayonet knife, considered by the police to be a dangerous weapon. The SMP confiscated Tsai’s knife, and she was cautioned in the presence of her chief scout. In fact, Tsai Bei Yuen’s “illegal” arrest of the man was not an exceptional case. According to an SMP intelligence report, between August 13 and 29, 1937, at least twenty people who had allegedly betrayed China were taken to the office of the Wartime Service Corps, one of the locations where scout members were asked to bring suspected traitors. The other destination was the police stations operated by the SMP.Footnote 125 The Wartime Service Corps later admitted that the arbitrary arrests of suspected “traitors” resulted in false accusations and unjust verdicts. The innocent detainees were often tortured and humiliated by a furious public, even when the charges were completely without merit. Some victims lost their lives in the process of arrest or detention.Footnote 126 Only after being warned by the SMP did the Wartime Service Corps instruct its scouts—and the public—to stop this “illegal” practice, demanding instead, that they summon the local police if they suspected someone of being a traitor.Footnote 127
Scouts’ resistance activities not only deprived people of their personal liberty, they also hindered free movement and the exchange of goods. Tseu Chi Shing 周志醒, a proprietor, for example, arranged for 420 shovels in Shanghai to be moved to the International Industrial Corporation in Hong Kong. On September 18, 1937, the shovels were sent to the jetty for delivery to the buyer. Some scouts, however, accompanied by the staff of the Shanghai Refugees Relief Association, seized the goods and alleged that the shovels were being supplied for use by the Japanese. At the time the shovels were seized, Tseu Chi Shing provided the scouts with a letter written by the staff of the International Industrial Corporation stating that the goods had been purchased by them and would not be delivered to the Japanese. The scouts refused to accept the letter as evidence. Three hundred and twelve shovels, which had been unpacked on the jetty, were then loaded onto a boat and taken to 745 Soochow Road. Subsequently, SMP detectives raided the building on Soochow Road, only to discover that it was the office of the Shanghai Refugees Relief Association of the Pudong Guild. The shovels were returned to the proprietor, Tseu, and the settlement police cautioned Tsang Koh Chong 張克昌, the official in charge of the relief association.Footnote 128
On at least one occasion some boy scouts worked with radical students to coerce diners into purchasing patriotic subscriptions for raincoats for Chinese armed forces. On November 10, 1937, while Song Shanqing 宋善慶 and four of his friends were eating at the So Yuen Restaurant at the French Concession, three students approached them to solicit contributions on behalf of the National Students Training Corps—a youth organization under the auspices of the GMD. They told Song the money would go to the purchase of raincoats for the Chinese army. When he and his friends refused to contribute, the students collecting the money upbraided the men for spending money in a restaurant at a time when China was fighting for freedom. They scolded them for their lack of patriotism and accused the men of treason. Incensed by this unreasonable denunciation, Song Shanqing assaulted one of the student collectors. At this juncture, two eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boy scouts—Zhu Hongqi 朱洪琪 and Lu Fubao 陸富寶—arrived on the scene, joining the solicitors to demand a patriotic donation equivalent to two hundred raincoats for the Chinese army.Footnote 129
Aware of the hostility of the crowd, Song suggested that he be allowed to return home to obtain the money, while his friends remained as a guarantee for his return.Footnote 130 On learning that Song wanted to use his own car, the student collectors and boy scouts balked. They instead demanded that a party of men accompany him in a hired car, which was ordered by a boy scout. They also insisted that if Song did not return in fifteen minutes, they would smash his car.Footnote 131 Song and the two boy scouts got into the hired car and drove to his father’s apartment. His father was absent. During their return to the restaurant, their car was stopped by the SMP and Song seized the moment to appeal to the police for help. The men in the car were arrested by the SMP and the persons remaining at the restaurant were apprehended by the French Concession police on information provided by the SMP.Footnote 132 The enquiries made by SMP detectives revealed that the students raising funds had been hired by Chinese authorities and did not receive any remuneration except food. As students, they claimed they were supported by their families.Footnote 133 The activity of these patriotic students and scouts must be viewed as distinct from those unemployed youths who helped Chinese intelligence recruit militia members in exchange for money and meals,Footnote 134 and from the steamship teaboys who worked for different belligerents in exchange for monetary support and job opportunities aboard.Footnote 135
The scouts engaged in coercive, violent activities on their own initiative. They also refused to cooperate with the SMP and prevented the officers from performing their duties at the International Settlement. On September 9, 1937, Li Bijun 李弼軍, an SMP plain-clothes detective on duty near the Pudong Guild, observed a fight at the rice market inside the guild. The dispute had grown out of a disagreement about the fare to be paid to a driver.Footnote 136 Detective Li went into the crowd to inquire about the quarrel and to ascertain if the disturbance had any political significance. The boy scouts who had come to clear the crowd, pushed Li Bijun out of the building,Footnote 137 ignoring him when he told them that he was a SMP detective constable.Footnote 138 While Li was struggling to prove his identity by showing his warrant card, two boy scouts—Cheng Zhihua 程志華 and Xu Guangrong 徐光榮—took hold of his arms and forcibly dragged him inside to the auditorium. They loudly denounced Li for disobeying their orders and hit him several times in the back. Li managed to free himself, but another scout named Yao Jun 姚駿 jumped on him, held him from behind and tried unsuccessfully to get his pistol.Footnote 139 Detective Li was temporarily detained by the Chinese authorities and released only after a unit of the SMP came to the scene.
Judging from the disobedient manner and presumptuous attitude of the scouts at the Pudong Guild, the detectives who rescued their colleague concluded that the scoutmasters had lost control. When the SMP unit went upstairs to the balcony, the boy scouts followed them. While the detectives collected information, the scouts gathered around, together with other idlers in the building. Zee Kao Sze, the scout commissioner, promised the police that he would chastise his scouts for their actions and would call the police should there be any more disturbance. He knew the scouts would not help the police in their enquiries and he, as scout captain, asked the scouts to disperse. Though the order was repeated several times, the scouts ignored the scout captain, just as they had ignored all their officers.Footnote 140
After the outbreak of the war the scouts’ nationalist sentiment was at a high pitch. Although there is no source that could show whether the GMD provided training and gave any support to those Shanghai scouts who engaged in coercive activities, the working relations between the GMD and scouts can still be seen in the Shanghai Boy Scouts War Time Service Corps’ relations with some GMD cadres and Chinese government officials,Footnote 141 and their sharing of headquarters space with the Chinese police bureau at the Pudong Guild in the International Settlement.Footnote 142 All these elements can link the scouts’ war actions with their indoctrination by the GMD with nationalist, combative ideas which, to a large extent, drove these Chinese adolescents to volunteer to take part in confrontational, violent activities.
The violation of Baden-Powell’s principles of scouting seen in the scouts’ resistance activities in Shanghai during the early stages of the war was an exception. In Changxing—a county in Zhejiang not far from Shanghai—some twenty Chinese scouts worked with Chinese police to ferret out spies in the months before the fall of Changxing in late 1937. These scouts, under the command of their team leader, put pedestrians in Changxing under their surveillance.Footnote 143 On one occasion, they tracked a woman who reportedly drew the attention of Japanese bombers by waving her satin lining. She was eventually subdued by the scouts and escorted to a car for interrogation. These scouts also apprehended some thieves who stole from shops and houses when the air raid sirens were sounded.Footnote 144 These cases clearly show that the scouts in Changxing, who assumed that they had the power of maintaining law and order in the county, acted beyond the defensive concept of scouting coined by Baden-Powell.
Conclusion
In the history of Chinese youth, the scouting movement underwent indigenization under state control in the 1930s. This article argues that the GMD’s radicalization and the war experience transformed the purpose of the scouting movement, changing it from a character-building program inspired by its British origins to a political tool and paramilitary force. After the GMD’s takeover of the scouting movement, the government ushered in a period of rapid radicalization and politicization of the concept of citizenship. The Nationalists pushed the principles of scouting to an extreme by encouraging the scouts to play an active role in serving the GMD party-state in their fight against the Japanese invasion. The ultra-nationalistic, vengeful, and militant spirit inculcated in Chinese scouts by the GMD contradicted the original principles of international scouting—such as chivalrousness, benevolence, thoughtfulness, happiness, imagination, and a cosmopolitan worldview—especially in the context of self-development and interpersonal relationships in society.Footnote 145 At the outset of the war, some Chinese scouts, acted above and beyond what Robert Baden-Powell expected of youth defending their country. Indoctrinated with the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of the GMD, the scouts were armed with combat weapons and were overbearingly confident—like vigilantes. These scouts were presumptuous and audacious in their exercise of power that was not rightly theirs. Apart from exhibiting placards which included violent, terrifying scenes directed against the Japanese, they also maltreated their countrymen when they did not obey their sometimes irrational “orders” and abused presumed collaborators. The coercive, menacing behavior of the Shanghai scouts in the early stages of China’s War of Resistance contrasts with the much meeker efforts by their fellow scouts during the demonstrations of 1919. Then, Shanghai scouts first bowed and bent toward protesters who repeatedly ignored their exhortations to keep the crowd moving to facilitate the flow of traffic. They even kneeled down to beg if their initial efforts were in vain.Footnote 146
This article’s findings align with the observations of Nicolas Schillinger who determined that scouting in China fostered citizenship education with a military orientation for the country’s survival after 1927.Footnote 147 While African scout authorities adopted a pro-colonial stance and claimed British imperial citizenship,Footnote 148 the GMD-led scouting movement, in contrast, attempted to cultivate Chinese adolescents’ ultra-nationalism to counteract foreign exploitation and Japanese invasion. My argument therefore parallels Carey Watt’s observation on Islamic and Hindu service organizations which utilized scouting to enhance the awareness of Indians youths to serve society and oppose British colonial rule from the 1910s.Footnote 149
Moreover, this article puts forth the premise that some Chinese scouts, who actively served the GMD party-state in the early stages of China’s War of Resistance, voluntarily engaged in an array of coercive and violent activities which increased the GMD’s quasi-fascist tendency. The author of this article is aware of the criticisms of the GMD amongst educated Chinese adolescents, who accused the Chinese government of appeasing Japan.Footnote 150 It is also agreed that not everybody engaged in anti-Japanese activities had been successfully impacted by the GMD’s indoctrination. However, based on newly released sources, this article provides an alternative case study to assess how the ultra-nationalistic and self-sacrificing sentiments imbued by the Nationalist government, to a large extent, impelled some scouts to become vitriolic and led to their blind loyalty to the GMD party-state at the outset of the war. The scouts embraced GMD rhetoric and engaged in coercive, sometimes violent activities against members of the public at the expense of the scouting principles initially set by Robert Baden-Powell. Where Fong Sau-yi and Jennifer Liu have found patriotic students’ criticism of the GMD for its appeasement of Japan, I have found none.Footnote 151 Nor did I find evidence supporting Culp’s argument that scouting’s diverse, broad curriculum encouraged Chinese young people to become more critical and resistant to the GMD after 1927.Footnote 152
Instead, different from earlier literature which mainly used scouting as a case study to analyze GMD ideology and strategy,Footnote 153 this article furthers Brian Tsui’s argument regarding Chinese scouts’ vanguard role in a war in which the GMD relied on civilians to carry out different categories of relief work and spying activities against the Japanese. Shanghai scouts embraced GMD rhetoric and participated in resistance activities to demonstrate their loyalty to the GMD party-state.Footnote 154 Scouts were combative in support of the social order directed by the GMD. They used violent and confrontational methods, depriving their fellow citizens of their personal liberty, hindering commercial activities, and obstructing foreign police in enforcing the law. By demonstrating the intimidating and aggressive tasks carried out by Shanghai scouts whose contribution was on a par with that of other urbanites acting as low-level “special agents,” I reaffirm Frederic Wakeman’s argument concerning Chinese civilians’ participation in an array of underground activities related to wartime political terrorism and criminal violence.Footnote 155 This article shows that the GMD’s mass mobilization tactics which heavily emphasized Chinese nationalism further fueled its autocratic agenda and justified its authoritarian governance. This is evidenced by the Shanghai scouts’ coercive attempts to mobilize all citizens of the Republic against Japan. These Shanghai scouts, who were driven by patriotic sentiment and who did not seek gains for themselves, were different from the pro-Japan intellectuals in Shanghai who lamented their loss of innocence while collaborating with the enemy for survival.Footnote 156 They also do not resemble the steamship teaboys who took advantage of the confrontations between different political entities and acted pragmatically to make a living, without moral or politico-ideological scruple.Footnote 157
The radicalization of the concept of citizenship in the GMD-led scouting movement resulted in what Robert Culp highlights: a GMD-led quasi-fascist youth movement being eerily similar to the youth training of totalitarian countries.Footnote 158 The radicalization of China’s scouting movement also resembles the scene depicted by Alessio Ponzio, who writes of youngsters in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy embracing extreme rhetoric and fighting and dying in the name of “freedom and democracy.”Footnote 159 The current article, which expands on Culp’s and Ponzio’s findings on the correlations between the youth movement and totalitarianism, illuminates how some traits of fascism were identified in some Chinese scouts led by the GMD. This article also shares Frederic Wakeman’s observation concerning how the Blueshirts captured the loyalty of many student activists for national revival in a fascist-dominated movement.Footnote 160
In retrospect, scouting was gradually adapting to China’s local circumstances in 1927. Thereafter, especially after the outbreak of the war, scouting was hijacked to inculcate in young people bellicose ideas and party doctrines. This is why many first-generation scouts yearned for a return to the early times when scouting was first introduced in China.Footnote 161
Competing interest
The author declares none.
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