Introduction
The past decade saw a revived scholarly interest in the right-wing politics during the Republican period in mainland China,Footnote 1 and this includes the controversial topic of fascism associated with GMD rightists. Till now, literature dealing with the topic mostly focuses on the shadowy organization—‘Blue Shirt Society’Footnote 2 and to a lesser extent the ‘CC Clique’Footnote 3—both right-wing factions loyal to their patron Chiang Kai-shek. In the 1970s, Lloyd Eastman’s seminal claim on the fascist nature of the Blue Shirts triggered an initial wave of contention among scholars in the United States and Taiwan. Maria Chang Hsia’s counter-argument that the Blue Shirts were faithfully implementing Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (Sanminzhuyi) did not quite convince Eastman, who responded by emphasizing the ‘undeniable fascistization’ of the group.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, the debates catalysed the birth of Deng Yuanzhong’s book that unveiled the core organization, the history and the activities of the Blue Shirt Society, partially to deny the group’s association with fascism.Footnote 5
A second wave of scholarship emerged at the turn of the century. Frederic Wakeman noticed the profound nativism that underscored traditional social relationships combining imperial loyalism and egalitarian righteousness behind the activities of the Blue Shirts. He used ‘Confucian Fascism’ to invoke the society’s remarkable blend of Chinese and Western components. However, in contrast with European fascism, the GMD leadership was incapable or unwilling to create a true mass movement that resembled anything like European fascism.Footnote 6 Comparing Blue Shirts’ activities with those of European fascists (Italian and German), Dooeum Chung not only reaffirmed the fascist nature of the group, but also stressed the greater influence of ‘Japanese Fascism’ as well as Chinese and Japanese secret societies over the group. However, their experiment with fascism was ‘doomed to fail’, simply because the circumstances did not meet the conditions in the same way that they did in Europe or in Japan.Footnote 7
More recently, Maggie Clinton pioneered a cultural turn on the topic and expanded research subject to include the CC Clique. Instead of seeing the two factions through a power struggle, Clinton underscored the ‘convergences between their technocratic and military worldviews’—a shared developmental logic in their revolutionary aspirations to remodel Chinese society along the lines of a scientifically managed factory and a rationalized military. And she used ‘fascism’ to describe their politics. Through investigating how and why ‘Chinese fascists’—members of the Blue Shirts and the CC Clique—interpreted and defended Confucianism as the exclusive core of the Chinese national belonging, she uncovered a cultural revolution carried out by the two rightist groups who used the nation as a revolutionary subject, coining it ‘revolutionary nativism’.Footnote 8
While existing scholarship has enriched our understanding of the topic, some questions remain underexplored. An important one is what about Chiang Kai-shek’s own understanding and agenda with fascism during the Nanjing Decade? Undoubtedly the Blue Shirts played an indispensable role in the Generalissimo’s engagements with fascism. As this article will show, around the mid-1930s Chiang sent several missions to Italy and Germany to acquire intelligence of fascism, all led by Blue Shirts. But it is equally true that most of the time the two groups merely took orders from their patron. Besides, their activities and propaganda had repeatedly been lamented by Chiang as ‘naïve’, as he put in the diary. Thus, Chiang’s own understanding and agenda with fascism seems an important question yet has been shrouded in myth. The insufficient attempts at addressing it is understandable—compared with the two groups’ often open extolments of fascism in their press, Chiang’s own attitude was much more evasive and ambiguous. When enquired by Dagong Bao in 1932 for example, he openly denied the necessity of adopting fascism for the GMD.Footnote 9 This presents a classical challenge of studying the question with limited sources. Thanks to documents conserved at the Historical and Diplomatic Archives of Foreign Ministry in Rome (ASDMAE), the Archives of Chiang Kai-shek at Academia Historica in Taipei as well as Chiang’s own diary, along with other important sources, it is possible, at least worth an attempt, to fill this gap.
The second (more of a point than a question) concerns the way scholars have hitherto approached the topic. As interwar China is not commonly associated with fascism, existing literature has, to varying degrees, resorted to theories of fascism in an attempt to contour a peculiar variant of ‘Chinese Fascism’ or fascism with Chinese characteristics. Eastman’s initial claim on Blue Shirts’ fascist nature, or their fascistization, was informed by theories developed in the 1960s that propose to see the nature of fascism through a ‘generic lens’, such as statism and collective will, totalitarian control, cult of the leader, glorification of violence and terror.Footnote 10 Later, Chung abandoned the ‘generic approach’ and adopted a ‘fascist minimum’ approach (then considered as a plausibly new consensus in the field), with which she generated a ‘working definition of fascism’ to analyse Blue Shirts’ activities.Footnote 11 Clinton’s Revolutionary Nativism drew on scholarship that sees fascism as an extreme manifestation of nationalism and a form of cultural revolution.Footnote 12 While theories of fascism have undoubtedly yielded important insights, they might also introduce what I call the ‘conceptual or definitional tendency’, that is, treating fascism as an analytical tool drawn from different theories and using it to carve out a peculiar shape of fascism in interwar China retrospectively. Let us bear in mind that as contemporaries, fascism—whatever the word might stand for—to Chiang Kai-shek, members of the Blue Shirts, and the CC Clique was something completely new. Even the definition of ‘fascismo’ kept evolving in Italy until 1932 when Mussolini endorsed an official definition of fascism drafted by Giovanni Gentile—The Doctrine of Fascism. Given the novelty and fluidity of fascism, as well as China’s geographical and cultural distance from Europe, it is perhaps less surprising that Chinese understanding of the word might have also shifted over time. This is somehow reminiscent of Benjamin Zachariah’s explanation of why there was an ‘absence of fascism’ in interwar India: studies of non-normative fascist regimes or movements are largely based on definitions of that ism—typically derived from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany—which were in large part constructed after 1945. For those non-normative fascist regimes, he argues, it might be much more productive to examine contemporary engagements with the idea, rather than impose a definition and look at the problem in these retrospective terms.Footnote 13
This by no means argues that the conceptual or definitional approach is wrong, but it might risk looking at the question retrospectively thus overlooking the vicissitude of changes over time. This article proposes an alternative approach to the topic—instead of treating it as an analytical tool, it sees ‘fascism’ as a highly malleable concept whose interpretation and mode of engagement depends far more on the actor and the context. Such an approach is what scholars of fascism have championed the ‘transnational turn’ which foregrounds cross-border circulations, translations, selective appropriations, hybridization of fascist ideas and practices.Footnote 14 David Roberts, for instance, proposes paying new attention to critical role of cross-border nodes, networks, and the interactions that facilitated the circulation of fascist ideas and political innovations.Footnote 15 Arnd Bauerkämper similarly suggests to understand transnational fascism as ‘an ensemble of selective cross-border perceptions, transfers, appropriations and implementations of ideas, practices, styles, and institutions by fascists and non-fascists for specific ends, according to the prevailing conditions, needs and demands’.Footnote 16 Drawing on mobility studies, Aristotle Kallis further emphasizes the roles played by local actors in circulating fascist ideas, with its effects depending far more on their particular interpretations and expectations. It was through active construction of new discourses—framing, grafting, cultural selection of foreign ideas—that fascism was localized into the local contexts.Footnote 17 A common emphasis of this scholarship—now seemingly a new consensus—is the return to the agency of actor(s) who actively engaged with ideas of fascism in their specific context.Footnote 18
Inspired by transnational fascism, this article aims to pioneer an alternative approach by focusing on Chiang Kai-shek. By tracing and historizing Chiang Kai-shek’s contemporary engagements with fascism, it intends to reconstruct what exactly about fascism Chiang was interested in at different times and how he engaged with that idea as context and relevance evolved. I use the word ‘engagements’ to encompass a range of actions such as perception, interaction, intelligence acquisition, and appropriation. Two words seem crucial in this approach: context and relevance. What were the wider contexts behind Chiang’s engagement with the idea? What was the relevance of fascism at that particular moment?
Based on the changing context and relevance, the article divides Chiang’s engagements into three distinct periods: 1927–30, in which the Generalissimo’s initial interest in fascism mainly stemmed from the need to tackle GMD problems; 1932–34, which saw his interest in and understanding of that word expand exponentially following the rise of ‘Japanese Fascism’ and his continued frustration with the GMD; 1934–37, in which he carried out his own ‘fascistization’ experiment through the labour service corps movement, a focal point of the second phase of the New Life Movement. The article shows that rather than a peculiar and fixed view, Chiang Kai-shek’s understanding of fascism underwent a process of changes and his way of engagements shifted as contexts and relevance of fascism changed. It thus intends to enrich scholarship on the topic both empirically and methodologically.
Two notes related to sources need some explanation. The first concerns the limited amount (or absence) of sources that shed light on Chiang’s understanding of fascism at certain critical moments. For example, it would have been very helpful to read the reports of Chiang’s fascism study missions as they might shed light on how fascism was described and how they might have renewed Chiang’s understanding. However, not all sources were accessible at the time of writing. One reason might be the tragic loss of the Blue Shirts documents (these missions were all commissioned to the Blue Shirts). As Gan Guoxun recalled, documents of the society were unfortunately lost when the GMD were defeated in the civil war and hastily retreated to Taiwan in 1949.Footnote 19 The absence of sources leaves important gaps when probing into Chiang’s perception of fascism at critical point. What can be done is reasonable interpretation.
Another solution is turn to foreign sources, in this case, Italian or German sources as Chiang’s view of fascism dealt with the two regimes most of the time. That bridges to the second note. So far, research dealing with the topic has mostly paid attention to the influence of Germany, probably due to the well-known fact that Chiang personally admired the latter’s military tradition and the presence of German advisors in his military apparatuses.Footnote 20 While it may be true that Chiang’s interest in fascism stemmed in part from his long-standing admiration for Germany’s military prowess, it is equally true, as the Italian sources suggest, the Generalissimo demonstrated an enduring interest in the political aspect of Italian Fascism, particularly the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF) and the organizational methods of the regime. However, despite the predominant use of Italian sources (due to my linguistic constraint), this article does not intend to trace Chiang’s engagements with that Italian Fascism solely, nor does it argue the greater influence Italian Fascism exerted on Chiang. As Chinese sources suggest, both regimes represented fascism to the Generalissimo in much part of the 1930s and he did not make a clear distinction between the two albeit some subtle nuance. Only in certain occasions—such as his early conversation with Galeazzo Ciano and later his appeals to Mussolini—that he seemed to have dealt only with Italian Fascists due to his curiosity of the PNF and their organizational methods. But it would be overreaching to claim a greater Italian influence. In short, albeit drawing on Italian sources, this article traces Chiang’s engagements with fascism more broadly.
The GMD problems and Chiang’s first engagement with fascism, 1927–30
Challenges at the local: The Persisting GMD Organizational Problems and the PNF
During the Third National Congress of the GMD in March 1929, Chen Guofu, the elder of the Chen brothers that led the CC Clique, proposed a plan to tidy up the party organization. Chen’s proposal aimed to streamline the party enrolment process and strengthen the examination mechanism, after years of arbitrary procedures that had undermined party membership, discipline, and solidarity. Besides, the anti-Communist purge in April 1927 and subsequent waves of party purification inflicted a severe blow to the party organization and morale. An unexpected result was that local party organs suffered from factional struggles, disobeyed or fudged orders from the centre. By contrast, Chen referred to the PNF:
It was discovered that the PNF of Italy has similar structure to that of the GMD, yet with much stronger foundation. It is because the party has very strict procedures in place to enrol new members. Once their party members are well qualified, the party foundation is solid. In addition to official membership, they have boy scouts or youth corps as reserve forces. By training these youth, the party can sustain its own life. Their organizational methods are much more advanced compared to ours.Footnote 21
The reason why Chen Guofu was charged with such a task was because of his patron Chiang Kai-shek. Notwithstanding a general, Chiang had long been concerned with GMD organization since the Nationalist Revolution where he witnessed how the Communists leveraged the United Front to infiltrate the Nationalist Party and advance their own agendas. But Chiang at that time was playing cautious, though in secret he was wary of the danger. ‘Allowing a small party to operate within a larger one is tantamount to committing suicide’, as he noted in the diary as early as 1926.Footnote 22 The opportunity came when Chiang was elected as head of GMD’s Central Organization Department in May of the same year, a key position that had been held by the Communists since 1924. Once in office, Chiang appointed Chen Guofu as the department’s secretary. Soon he proposed a series of measures to reorganize party affairs (zhengli dangwu). At that time, he had yet been determined to split with the Communists—pragmatically, he needed military and financial aids from the Communist International (Comintern) for the North Expedition campaign. Thus, his early measures aimed at containing the Communists and limiting their role within the party.Footnote 23
A decisive splitting moment arrived when Chiang ordered the bloody suppression of the Communists and labour unions on 12 April 1927 in Shanghai. The Shanghai Massacre had more than 1,000 Communists arrested and some 300 killed, plunging the city into a state of terror. One of the first measures Chiang took after the foundation of the Nanjing Government was the creation of the Central Committee for Party Purification, a new organ tasked with censuring, registering and examining all party members in order to eradicate the Communists, and their sympathizers, from the GMD once and for all. The party purification soon took the country by storm, with each local party organ busy spotting out Communists (or suspected ones) and expelling them from the party. However, one unexpected outcome was that whereas many Communists were expelled, those Nationalists carrying genuine revolutionary enthusiasm yet suspected as ‘left-leaning’ or critical of GMD’s policies were wiped out as well. This was compounded by another problem—a new nest of ‘social evils’ (local tyrants, landed gentry, social idlers, old-guard politicians, etc.) took advantage of the campaign to sneak into the party.Footnote 24
Chiang was certainly aware of the mixed effects of the party purification. In February 1928, he proposed to the GMD Central Executive Committee (CEC hereafter) an overhaul plan to fix the problems. He justified the overhaul with several reasons. The first was the party members’ persistent inertia to adopt Communists’ theories and methods after the revolution, in particular class struggle. Secondly, GMD members still carried destructive behaviours after the revolution. Thirdly, the still messy party membership despite the purification. And fourthly, the unclear relationship between local party organs and civil groups—peasant, worker, student and merchant, etc. His solutions included cancelling all ill-formed local party organs and dispatching special commissions to re-register party members’ background, abolishing the Peasant, Worker, Student and Merchant Department at central level and all the mobilization methods adopted during the revolution, among others.Footnote 25 In this light, Chen’s proposal of imitating the PNF was part and parcel of Chiang’s plan of GMD overhaul.
Interestingly, soon after the Third National Congress, Chiang finished reading the translated biography of Mussolini. Apart from ardent patriotism, he was impressed with the Duce’s organizational calibre—how he rallied retired soldiers, reorganized the Fascist Party, and trained party members.Footnote 26 It is not known whether Chen’s plan was suggested by Chiang during his reading. Nevertheless, the plan was thwarted by a series of unexpected anti-Chiang revolts between March 1929 and September 1930. After decisive victory, Chiang diverted energy to his bandit suppression campaigns (jiaofei jihua) in October–November 1930, aimed to destroy Chinese Soviets in Jiangxi and neighbouring provinces.Footnote 27 In a lengthy report submitted to the GMD CEC in November 1930, he admitted that the party organization work had practically ground to a halt due to the military revolts and Communist riots.Footnote 28 Though he proposed another plan to standardize the administration of local party affairs,Footnote 29 various local investigations reported that problems remained intact, even exacerbated.Footnote 30 Writing in his diary in early 1930, Chiang expressed a profound pessimism about the Nationalist Party: ‘Despite a big country, China has only less than 2,000 counties. Had they been headed by good leaders, it would not have been difficult to govern the country. Yet party members are not capable of self-strengthening and self-loving, and party organs find no way to cultivate them. It is difficult to acquire talents, especially cadres.’Footnote 31
But Chiang’s enduring concerns of the GMD problems did not merely originate from the provinces; as his ambition and power grew day by day, he also faced severe challenges at the centre, particularly from the party veteran Hu Hanmin who enjoyed much authority within the party. If the persisting problems in the local made PNF a remote source of inspiration, the threat from the party centre would have Chiang turn to Galeazzo Ciano—the young diplomat from the Fascist regime—for aid.
Threats from the centre: Chiang’s dispute with Hu Hanmin and his appeal to Ciano
Though challenged by different GMD leaders at different times, Chiang was most troubled by his rivalry with Hu Hamin. The dispute between the two started with the necessity of having a provisional constitution (linshi yuefa) during the tutelage period. Back in 1914, Sun envisioned a three-staged revolution: military government (junzheng), political tutelage (xunzheng), and finally constitutional government (xianzheng). As the GMD leader foresaw a question of eventual return of political power from the military government to the people, his solution was to have a provisional constitution specifying the responsibilities and rights of both the government and the people during the tutelage period. The three-staged vision of the revolution was further canonized in his Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (jianguo dagang) in 1924 when he restructured the Nationalist Party to launch the revolution. However, in that document nothing was mentioned about the provisional constitution, laying the seed of disputes after his death. Upon the foundation of the Nationalist Government, while xunzheng was proclaimed, there was no consensus among party leadership on the necessity of having a provisional constitution.
While Hu’s draft of the political tutelage programme was meant to guarantee the supreme power of the party, it triggered a chain of unexpected responses at the party centre. The first emerged in July 1930 when Wang Jingwei re-allied with conservative party elderlies, openly challenging the legitimacy of the national congress and calling for the cancellation of the political tutelage in favour of a constitutional government.Footnote 32 Though an aborted attempt, Chiang quickly seized the opportunity to take on Hu. In October 1930, after defeating warlord Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang in the battlefield, he telegrammed to the party centre calling for a national assembly to work out, among other things, a provisional constitution for the tutelage period. To be sure, his supportive gesture for the constitution should not be understood as his embrace of democracy. As Chen Lifu recalled later, no one ambitious enough in the party was wholeheartedly following Sun’s will to build a democracy from bottom up. Chiang’s support for the provisional constitution was only tactical.Footnote 33 The defeats of warlords in 1930 made Chiang the only one in the party who mustered real power, and he certainly did not like Hu’s claim of ‘party power over military power’ (dangquan gaoyu junquan). The vision Chiang had for China, revealed in his diary, was a militarized society placed under one man’s rule, much like the Germany under Bismarck. As early as spring of 1928, he had already envisioned to make military organizations as the basic units of the society, so that the society would be stable and the country peaceful.Footnote 34 By the end of 1931, he seemed to have lost faith in xunzheng, believing that only by returning to the military period could the country be saved.Footnote 35
Direct confrontation between the two broke out during the Fourth Plenum of the GMD Central Committee in November 1930. Chiang’s proposal of organizing a national assembly to design a provisional constitution met with fierce resistance from Hu and his supporters who insisted its redundancy. Despite Chiang’s lofty call of ‘unity in the party as the only solution’,Footnote 36 Hu’s unwavering insistence finally agitated the general who registered his rage in the diary.Footnote 37
It was probably during the same plenary session when Hu Hanmin and his ‘Guangdong faction’ jointly attacked T. V. Soong (Song Ziwen, then minister of finance of the Nationalist Government, also Chiang’s brother-in-law) that finally prompted Chiang to turn to fascism for solving the horrendous internecine struggle. It is not clear what was the cause of the attack, but Chiang was apparently shocked by the ‘collective xenophobia’ of party members from that province who worked together to protect special rights, another sign of in-solidarity in the party.Footnote 38 Several days later, during a conversation with Galeazzo Ciano, then consul-general of Italy’s Royal Legation in Shanghai, Chiang and Soong ‘reservedly asked Ciano for publications, in English or French, about the organization of the PNF, in particular the functioning of central and local organs’.Footnote 39
The word ‘reservedly’ Ciano used in the report deserves some contemplation: did Chiang Kai-shek asked him for publications on the Fascist Party in a reserved way, or did Ciano proactively sell the party’s practices as a possible solution to his interlocutors, who accepted it with a certain degree of reservation? Interestingly, GMD leadership’s tension over the provisional constitution was also observed by Ciano who seemed to have attended it in person, for he filed a lengthy report to Rome in which he likened the GMD CEC to the Gran Consiglio (Grand Council) of the PNF.Footnote 40 So had Ciano already conceived the similarity as a rhetoric to sell the PNF to Chiang? It is hard to know for sure.
In any case, Chiang’s request played to Ciano’s agenda. Having married Mussolini’s daughter in April 1930, the young diplomat was sent to Shanghai in October as the Fascist Government’s consul-general, a role he would be assuming until October 1933. The arrival of Ciano in Shanghai actually coincided with the Fascist regime’s reorientation of foreign policy at the turn of the new decade, largely designed by Dino Grandi who assumed the post of foreign minister in September 1929. Grandi’s realpolitik not only sought to position Italy in a balance-of-power game with Britain and France in Europe, but also facilitated the regime’s reconciliation with Moscow in a joint effort to curtail France’s influence.Footnote 41 But when it came to China, the Fascist regime found itself in a dilemma: despite being one of the signatories of the Washington Treaties, local diplomats at times found the country excluded from the United Front, a coordinated approach among the conference signatories to deal with China-related affairs. Ciano’s predecessor Daniele Varè had reported in 1930 that discussions had been made between the United States, Japan, Britain, and France without involving Italy, although he still preferred to stick to the United Front policy.Footnote 42 Hence, one of the key tasks assigned to Ciano was to strengthen dialogues with other powers while enhancing Italy’s relationship with China. The Fascist Party’s mouthpiece Gerachia even openly suggested him not to think of Italy as a ‘Cinderella’ among the diplomatic body in China; rather, the country was destined to assume a greater role in the international arena.Footnote 43
In tandem with foreign policy reorientation, the arrival of Ciano was also paralleled with Mussolini’s decision to diffuse fascism beyond its native border. Despite earlier appeals made to the Duce to export fascism, it was not until the turn of the 1930s that Mussolini finally decided to endorse the notion of fascism as something for export. And he made it a state-led initiative, assigning such a task to the foreign ministry.Footnote 44 The declaration of the expansion of fascism surely did not escape the attention of international press. The Shanghai-based The China Press, for example, wrote that Mussolini previously believed that fascism was essentially an ‘Italian phenomenon’, once declared that it was ‘not an article of export’. However, eight years into the new regime, ‘the task of fascism, like all great revolutions, must expand beyond its native and experimental country’. It was too early though to say how this expansion was going to be made, yet the ‘prewar Europe has disappeared forever … Europe is awaiting a new order of things and the success of the Fascist experiment shows that Fascism alone can herald in the new civilization’.Footnote 45
Upon Ciano’s request, the Ministry of Corporations recommended a book that explained fascism as a corporatist State—L’organisation Syndicale et Corporative Italianne, together with regular news bulletins ‘News Notes on Fascist Corporations’, to be sent to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, and the Peiping National Library.Footnote 46
It is unknown whether the book and the bulletin on the corporatist State had met Chiang’s need as he was evidently more interested in the PNF. It nevertheless constituted the Generalissimo’s first engagement with fascism whose relevance stemmed from his frustration with GMD’s discipline, organization, and party politics. Though for Chiang the qualities and morals of local party members had been a long-standing source of frustration, it was not until the severe challenge from Hu Hanmin that he was propelled to turn to fascism for help. By 1930, Chiang’s interest in fascism was seemingly focused on the PNF, in particular its operation and party politics. Though he did not register any thought directly about fascism, judging from his reflection about reading Mussolini’s biography and later his interaction with Ciano, it was largely perceived as a solution for party operation, discipline and politics.
In the following years, Chiang’s interest in fascism would expand greatly when faced with the rise of ‘Japanese Fascism’ as well as his persisting frustration with the party during the anti-Communist campaigns.
The Japanese aggression, the Anti-Communist campaigns and Chiang’s soaring interest in fascism, 1932–34
The May 15 Incident in Japan and Chiang’s expanded view of fascism
The Mukden Incident (18 September 1931) marked the beginning of Japanese encroachments of Chinese territory in the 1930s. While the GMD leadership were attacking each other over Japanese policy, another political earthquake in Japan shocked them and the wider world. On 15 May 1932, officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy, in collaboration with the right-wing League of Blood (Ketsumeidan), killed Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi as part of a wider plot to overthrow the parliamentary government and replace it with a military-led regime centred on the Emperor. In Japan, the May 15 Incident was quickly funnelled into a debate that fascism was raising its head.Footnote 47
The ‘fascist turn’ of Japanese politics was certainly monitored by many Japan observers in China. Gao Zongwu, for example, a Japan expert then also working at the Foreign Ministry offered his analysis in Review of Foreign Affairs.Footnote 48 The event surely did not escape Chiang’s attention and in turn shaped his new understanding of fascism. After receiving an in-person briefing on the ‘Japanese fascist movement’—which were the ‘fascist parties’, the history of the movement, its relationship with Japanese militarism, etc.Footnote 49—he put down a reflection in the diary. While foreseeing the failure of the fascist movement in Japan, Chiang nevertheless generalized a list of pre-conditions for the rise of a ‘fascist party’ in any country: the declining qualities of the population, the weak foundation of the society, the unrealized constitutional rule, and the emergence of a strong leader.Footnote 50 Two days later, during a speech to his lizhishe members, Chiang offered his assessment of the fascist movement led by Japanese militarists. Fascism, in his view, found fertile soil where the population were disunited and poorly educated. Because the Japanese population were already well-organized and well-educated, the militarists-led fascist movement was doomed to fail in that country. Such a prediction was meant to urge the lizhishe members to step up political training in the military so that ‘when the second Sino-Japanese War breaks out, we will have solid foundation in the local and can stand a chance to win’.Footnote 51
Albeit a prediction of ‘Japanese Fascism’, it revealed Chiang’s new understanding of fascism. Firstly, Chiang’s summary of the pre-conditions for the rise of a fascist party ticked almost every box for his country: the qualities of the population, the poor organization of civil societies, the unrealized constitutional rule. The country was only awaiting a strongman to organize a fascist party. By thinking of Japan, was he contemplating the necessity and possibility of organizing a fascist party in China, considering that he had only recently founded his lixingshe several months earlier? And who could that strongman possibly be? Secondly, the perceived preconditions for the emergence of a fascist party also expanded Chiang’s view of its relevance, now also an effective means to educate and organize the population. In the same speech to lizhishe members, the Generalissimo explicitly mentioned the success of the PNF (also the Bolsheviks) was a result of their efficient organization of the population and imposed education.Footnote 52
Chiang’s expanded view of fascism also translated into actions. Two months later, he ordered the Blue Shirt Teng Jie to select five candidates to examine their civil education (guomin jiaoyu) in Italy and Germany. The mission needed to take place within one month for a duration of one year.Footnote 53 While waiting for the candidates, he simultaneously approved a volunteering request by another Blue Shirt Deng Ti who was to head the mission.Footnote 54 The mission did take place though only departed in October.Footnote 55 It would be very revealing to see Deng Ti’s mission report; unfortunately at the time of writing, I was not able to locate relevant documents. Nonetheless, the mission to study civil education in Italy and Germany implied another important change—by mid-1932 Chiang’s view of fascism had incorporated both Italy and Germany, and it did not change since then as later sources suggest.
The Bandit suppression campaigns, the non-resistance policy and the persisting GMD problems
The Mukden Incident was quickly followed by a brutal military conflict in Shanghai in January 1932. As soon as a ceasefire agreement was signed (5 May 1932), Chiang re-occupied himself with his bandit suppression campaigns, a series of military campaigns that aimed to eliminate the Chinese Soviets and Communists. The planning started even during the negotiation of the Battle of Shanghai—in April he travelled to the Lushan Mountain in the Jiangxi province with his military commanders to organize the campaign. The reason why Chiang did not wait until the conclusion of the agreement was due to his non-resistance policy—internal pacification before external resistance (rangwai bixian annei)—which gave priority to eliminating all internal enemies, chief among them the Communists, before resisting Japan. The policy hinged on his beliefs that the Communists was a ‘visceral danger’ compared with the Japanese, and that China was too weak to confront directly with Japan.Footnote 56
Thus in mid-June, the fourth bandit suppression campaign was formally proclaimed at Lushan, with Chiang himself assuming the role of commander-in-chief. Judging by its name, this was not the first of its kind. From late 1930 to the eve of the Manchurian Crisis, three major military campaigns had been wielded but they were either cut short by Chiang’s battles with warlords or political crises within the GMD. The last campaign had to be aborted when the Kwantung Army occupied Mukden.Footnote 57 But the fourth campaign was qualitatively different as Chiang adopted the strategy ‘three parts military, seven parts politics’ (sanfen junshi, qifen zhengzhi) proposed by Yang Yongtai, a key member of the Political Study Clique.Footnote 58 Chiang first elaborated the new strategy in a meeting that gathered government and party leaders of five campaign provinces. The previous campaigns mainly focused on military with politics made less of a priority, yet ‘experiences teach us that we must change the old bad habit’. The most important thing for this campaign was ‘good politics’ (zhengzhi qingming) on which 70 per cent of efforts should be spent. As for what constituted ‘good politics’, two issues mattered: firstly, government officials and party cadres should take full responsibility of his/her work with well-defined awarding and punishing mechanisms; secondly, since the ‘committee system’ in local governments and party organs had only created responsibility buck-passing and evasion, it needed to be replaced by a leader who would make final decisions and take full responsibility.Footnote 59 Though Chiang was to refine his definition of ‘politics’ in the fifth campaign in 1933,Footnote 60 at its core the strategy remained unchanged—to mobilize, train, and win over the people in the campaign provinces so that they could help fight the Communists.Footnote 61
Naturally, the focus on politics placed heavier responsibility on local governments and party organs in those campaign provinces. Yet as the Generalissimo personally drove the campaign from one county to another, he found again how poorly local organs were organized and behaved in those provinces, let alone their contribution. In November 1932, while staying in the battlefield, Chiang commissioned Zhang Qun, another member of the Political Study Clique, to present his ‘Plans for Party Reorganization in the Bandit Suppression Areas’ to a conference of the Standing Committee of the GMD CEC. The proposal summarized Chiang’s reflection on why the Communists still remained so rampant five years after the 1927 purge. ‘The fundamental problem does not lie with the Communists but our defunct government and party work. This is why we still cannot eliminate them. Now the imperative is not the military but to improve politics and party affairs.’ He then cited several shocking discoveries his investigation team had discovered in Henan, Hubei, and Anhui: some shared problems were that party organs at county level were only staffed by a few GMD members; some were even ridiculously occupied by Communists, let alone persisting issues of corruption.Footnote 62
The appalling status of the GMD in those provinces obviously concerned Chiang greatly, for he had a conversation with Chen Lifu in the same month (November 1932), expressing his determination to leverage the campaign to strengthen the party’s local foundation. But that plan failed to materialize either. Despite his repeated instructions,Footnote 63 the situation did not improve much. In February 1933, Chiang had twice written to Chen Lifu ordering that party work in the provinces of Henan, Hubei, and Anhui ‘must be urgently tackled with, otherwise all party activities had to be suspended until further reorganization’.Footnote 64 In late March, while urgently heading north after a new round of Japanese attacks in Jehol province, he received the news about the failure of the campaign in Jiangxi. Several days later, he made a reflection in the diary that the fundamental issues in the campaign lay in his military, local cadres, and local populace.Footnote 65
Meanwhile, Chiang’s frustration with the GMD once again came from the centre due to his widely unpopular non-resistance policy. T. V. Soong (on whom he relied heavily on funding his anti-Communist campaigns) was among the first who resigned in June 1932 and issued a strong condemnation of Chiang’s policy in Shanghai. Wang Jingwei, then president of the Executive Yuan followed suit in August. Although Wang later resumed presidency of the Executive Yuan and supported Chiang’s policy, his resignation caused severe damage to the public confidence in Nanjing. But the biggest threat again came from Hu Hanmin and leaders of the Guangzhou-based separatist government. Chiang’s earlier detention of Hu facilitated a renewed constellation of anti-Chiang forces. Further backed by regional warlords, they proclaimed the Guangzhou Nationalist Government in May 1931, basing their power in Guangdong and Guangxi. Despite the fact that Hu himself was also a staunch anti-Communist, the southern government had been a steady criticizer of Chiang’s policy throughout much of the 1930s. And since the southern government was far from the Japanese threats in the north, their attacks of Chiang’s policy were unfettered compared with those of other GMD politicians.Footnote 66
Chiang’s missions for studying fascism
It was under these circumstances that Chiang’s interest in fascism soared. By no later than March 1933, the Generalissimo dispatched a clandestine mission of four people led by Pan Youqiang (a Blue Shirt) to Germany and Italy to examine the ‘applicability of fascism’ in China. The secrecy of the mission was expressed in his order that the mission in Italy should not be facilitated by the Chinese Legation in Rome, but through the Lega Italo-Cinese (Italian-Chinese League, an institution created to promote trade and culture between the two countries) in order to avoid the attention of Chinese diplomats and other officials sojourning in the two countries. The mission team had a mixed background from the GMD Central Committee, the Central Political Academy, and the Military Affairs Commission, all of whom were Chiang’s confidants. Their task, in the description of League’s vice-president Ines Ioli Insabato (also a sinologist),Footnote 67 was to evaluate the ‘criteria and methods’ used by the Fascist Government that might be relevant and applicable to China, in particular the ‘reorganization of the Kuomintang with a sort of fascist imprint, under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’. Insabato was also informed that the mission had already arrived in Berlin and met with Hitler in person as well as the ‘Brown Shirt Party’.Footnote 68
It is worth mentioning the mediating role played by the Italian-Chinese League in the mission. The organization was born out of an Italian frustration with the Chinese Legation in Rome who allegedly served the interests of Britain, and the lack of Chinese students studying in Italy (students studying abroad presumably became agents of collaboration between China and the host country). The organization was officially proclaimed in October 1932 by Count G. E. Elia and Galeazzo Ciano with the goal to promote commercial, cultural, and educational exchanges between the two countries.Footnote 69 The League’s mediating role was enabled by figures such as sinologist Insabato and Chinese Catholic priest Paolo Yu-pin (Yu Bin), then a devout admirer of fascism who had studied at the Fascist University of Perugia.Footnote 70 Despite politics not being among its declared goals, the League did not refrain from promoting fascism to Chinese delegates when opportunities arose. Just two months earlier, when Kong Xiangxi (then financial minister) visited Rome, the League facilitated his meeting with Mussolini and Pope Pius XI. The reason why the Pope was keen to meet with Kong was because of the worsening situation of Catholic missionaries in China inflicted by the Communists and rural bandits, for which the latter urged Kong and GMD leaders to adopt fascism to combat them.Footnote 71
It would have been highly helpful to read Pan Youqiang’s mission report as well as Chiang Kai-shek’s comments (he habitually left marks or notes on important documents). Unfortunately such documents were not found by the time of writing. But he did register a paragraph summarizing his new perception of fascism after reading Pan’s report:
According to the Germany and Italy mission report, their slogan [of fascism] is little more than ‘labour creates power’ [laodong chuangzao wuli] and ‘air, sunlight, and water’ [kongqi, yangguang, shui]. Their spirit is austerity, courage and loyalty, and striving for the happiness of the nation and the people. [They place] a particular emphasis on discipline and education, with the party and the military being the backbone of the society. With these, can we not avenge the humiliation?Footnote 72
This new perception would play a crucial role later in his ‘fascistization’ experiment of the labour service corps movement in 1935 (the second phase of the New Life Movement), as the next section will feature. It is also worth pointing out a phrase he used in that paragraph—‘little more than’ (bu wai hu), as if the report only served to confirm his earlier perception of fascism, which he might have developed over the years or simply after reading the earlier report by Deng Ti on civil education of the two countries.
Meanwhile, Chiang’s soaring interest in fascism also went beyond party politics and civil education. Caught between mounting Japanese aggression and his bandit suppression campaigns, the Generalissimo also saw the two fascist regimes, though not exclusively, as role models of industrial and military modernization. Between 1933 and 1934, another two important missions were sent to the two countries, along with others, for this purpose. One consisted of six persons Chiang sent to Italy and Germany to study military and civil aeronautics, among other military institutions, in the beginning of 1934. Like the previous one led by Pan, the mission was carried out in secret.Footnote 73 Another was an official mission comprised of 22 persons sent by the Nationalist Government to Europe (Britain, France, Germany, and Italy) and the United States to study the military and the transportation industry in May 1934.Footnote 74
Very interestingly, despite the predominantly military and industrial nature, Chiang’s interest in these missions always contained a political element. For the first one, Chiang’s additional brief to the leader Du Xinru (another Blue Shirt) during his stay in Rome was to ‘focus on the PNF and its intelligence services, while not spending much time studying the army, the navy and air force’.Footnote 75 For the second, though an official one, Chiang told the Italian consul-general Raffaele Boscarelli that the mission actually depended on him. When in Italy, they wished to have ‘a complete understanding of the political-military characteristics’ of the country, including the organization of the PNF, the Royal Army, different industries, etc.Footnote 76 As the arranged itinerary shows, the mission leaders Xu Tingyo and Yu Feipeng supposedly met with Mussolini and the secretary of the PNF, in addition to various military and industrial institutions.Footnote 77
Whereas Deng Xinru’s mission report was not found, we do have access to reports of the second mission. Apart from those purely technical, two reports revealed Chiang’s political interests. The first was a thorough examination of Italy’s various military institutions and facilities. Among the nine conclusions, the last one summarized how Mussolini managed to consolidate power and stabilize his dictatorship using measures such as control of the party and the most powerful military forces, treatment of labour-capital disputes, exercising good governance, enforcement of law, savvy diplomacy, etc.Footnote 78 The second was an in-depth analysis of and comparison between the National Fascist Party and the National Socialist Party, as it was ‘part of the goals of the mission’, and the two parties ‘proved successful in suppressing the communists’. It even went so far to claim that ‘there is no need to study political parties in Britain and France and other parties in Germany’, plausibly an instruction given by the Generalissimo himself. The report analysed in details the structure of the two parties, their organization and training of civil groups particularly the youth, the party chiefs, etc. While the two parties shared some commonalities, e.g., a paramount leader, diligent and disciplined party members, they also had their respective strengths. For the National Socialists, it was the militarization of party organs; for the Fascists, it was their organization of youth and financial and fiscal surveillance. The implications for the GMD reorganization were several-fold: abolishment of the committee system and replacement by a military dictator, restructure of the party, more efforts on training and militarizing party members, increasing surveillance, better organization of civil groups, etc.Footnote 79 Chiang had obviously read the report very carefully as he left marks here and there with his red pencil.
Faced with threats from Japanese aggression and his persisting frustration with the GMD during the anti-Communist campaigns, the years following the May 15 Incident saw Chiang’s interest in fascism soar exponentially; his perception of the idea expanded significantly during the period too. The relevance of fascism now included civil education and training, industrial and military modernization, despite an enduring political aspect. Yet, so far Chiang’s interest in fascism had been perceptional and investigative with little being put into practice. As the New Life Movement gradually unfolded in the following years, he would put his new understanding of fascism into practice.
‘Labour creates power’: Fascism and the New Life Movement, 1934–37
In February 1934, Chiang Kai-shek launched the New Life Movement (NLM hereafter) from his bandit suppression headquarters in Nanchang. Once inaugurated in the capital of Jiangxi, the movement was soon expanded across the country. It would last for more than ten years until the eve of GMD’s defeat in 1949.
There has been a wealth of scholarship of the NLM both in the Sinophone and Anglophone world. Scholars have attempted to give a sweeping sketch of the movement,Footnote 80 focus on the city of Nanchang as its birth place,Footnote 81 analyse the movement’s context, ideology and feature key programmes,Footnote 82 and examine its role in state building and economic modernity.Footnote 83 Some have explored the relationship between the movement and fascism. Eastman held that the NLM was one of the means that Chiang Kai-shek and the Blue Shirts sought to implant the ‘fascist spirit’ among the Chinese people—remoulding the Chinese masses through Confucian ethical essentials.Footnote 84 Clinton unveiled how ‘Chinese fascists’—members of the Blue Shirts and the CC Clique—articulated through the NLM a programme for reordering the future of the Chinese nation: like a scientifically managed factory or a rationalized military; the nation was to become rigidly organized and maximally efficient.Footnote 85 Kirby pointed out the German influence on the movement, in particular their qualities of simplicity (jiandan) and modesty (pusu) that impressed Chiang and became part of the movement’s goals to modernize the life of the Chinese without materialistic indulgence.Footnote 86 Building on Roger Griffin and Zeev Sternhell’s definition of fascism as ‘a synthesis of organic nationalism and anti-Marxist socialism, a revolutionary movement based on rejection of liberalism and democracy’, Hong Fan contended that the NLM was not a simple neo-Confucian revival, but a ‘fascist movement with a Chinese character’.Footnote 87
Undoubtedly, the two fascist regimes provided much inspiration to the birth of the NLM, not to mention the use of Confucianism in reviving the spirit of the Chinese and rejuvenating the nation. Hitherto research has mainly analysed NLM’s relationship with fascism on an ideological level, yet little has been done to explore what elements of fascism appealed to Chiang and how he put them into actual practice. This part seeks to enrich the topic by foregrounding the labour service corps movement, a focal point of the second stage of the NLM, which I argue was Chiang’s very own ‘fascistization’ experiment inspired by the 1933 mission report.
The book by Curzio Malaparte and Chiang’s appeals to Mussolini
Naturally a project like the NLM was not born overnight. Before its inauguration, Chiang had already stressed the importance of regulating people’s daily life based on the Confucian virtues on various occasions during the fifth bandit suppression campaign in the summer of 1933.Footnote 88 But it is also misleading to think that by the time Chiang launched the NLM, he had already masterminded a clear and detailed blueprint for the years to come. In fact, the NLM was constantly being invented as situations evolved. When the movement was launched, he had only defined its first phase, which focused on two movements in the year 1934—the ‘Movement for Disciplines and Rules’ (guiju yundong) aimed to discipline and uplift individual behaviours up to an acceptable standard, and the ‘Movement for Cleanliness’ (qingjie yundong) aimed to keep private and public spaces clean and tidy.Footnote 89
While the first stage was put to implementation, in April Chiang started to read the Chinese translation of Curzio Malaparte’s book Technique du Coup d’Êtat (bianluan yu geming jishu). Born in Prato (central Italy) in 1898, Curzio Malaparte (his real name was Kurt Erich Suckert) was influenced by syndicalist ideas of Filippo Corridoni as a teenager. In 1921, he was converted to fascism and started his political career at the PNF. In the spring of 1923 he befriended Italo Balbo and Galeazzo Ciano. In 1924, he founded the weekly newspaper Conquista dello Stato. In those years he was also active in creating the cult of Mussolini. Yet despite earlier success, Malaparte’s career as a fascist intellectual came to an end in 1930 for a variety of reasons and he sojourned in France where he published Technique du Coup d’Êtat in 1931. The book was based on his own first-hand observation of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Bolshevik invasion of Poland in 1920, the Kapp putsch in Berlin, and of course the Fascist Revolution in Italy.Footnote 90 It consists of eight chapters, each one dedicated to a modern revolutionary: Lenin, Trotsky, Pilsudski, Kapp, Bonaparte, Primo de Rivera, Mussolini, and Hitler. Chiang evidently spent the entire May reading it, but he seemed especially impressed by the chapters on Bonaparte and Mussolini. On the former, he learnt about the art of revolution—it requires deep consideration, flexibility, and adaptability.Footnote 91 On the latter, he was impressed by Mussolini’s strategic thinking, tactical manoeuvres as well as his calibre in organization.Footnote 92 Interestingly, Chiang did not write anything about Hitler in the diary, probably because the Führer was depicted as a ‘clown’ in that chapter.
Consequently the chapter on Mussolini had Chiang turn to the Duce for assistance. During a conversation with Raffaele Boscarelli in late May, then Italy’s plenipotential minister in China, Chiang made repeated inquiries on the organization of the Fascist Party, the March on Rome and the organization of the youth as well as the corporatist State. He also took the chance to solicit the Duce’s help on the NLM, as reported by Boscarelli:
As you know, I have initiated the New Life Movement aimed at the material and spiritual rejuvenation of China. I would like that it be inspired by the fascist principles and ideas. Couldn’t you ask Mussolini to grant his sympathy toward China again and help me also in this field, by sending some personnel who could advise and instruct me on the task? With Italy’s experience, a sort of ‘educational mission’ could benefit China.Footnote 93
In late June, Chiang renewed his appeal, as he wished the mission be carried out as soon as possible. Yet as Boscarelli reported, Chiang did not want the programme to be fixed in advance. Rather, he preferred the mission advisors conduct a thorough examination of the local situation before drawing up a plan. And the advisors were perfectly free to suggest actions they saw fit to the country’s circumstance. But fearing that some of his rivals would take the chance to mount a new round of attack, Chiang suggested the mission assume a non-political appearance and the advisors be based in Nanchang.Footnote 94 In July, Achille Starace, then secretary of the PNF, suggested two candidates for the mission along with their CVs—Luigi Picciolini, experienced in organizing labour unions, and Steno Bolasco, a time-tested fascist with experience both in Italy and abroad.Footnote 95
It was not until September that Chiang better defined his request. The advisors should help him with: (1) the reorganization of the GMD, particularly between single members and local party organs, and between local party organs and the centre; (2) the organization of the trade unions; (3) the organization of the youth. To carry out the task, it was not sufficient that the advisors be knowledgeable of doctrines of fascism, they should also be well experienced in these three areas. They should be able to speak English and have robust health. To adapt fascism to a country ‘historically and psychologically so different’, they should also possess ‘mental elasticity’. As for the head of the mission, an ideal candidate would be a well-known, first-rank ex-member of the government.Footnote 96 In the same month, to ensure his request was being processed in Rome, Chiang urgently ordered Liu Wendao, then Chinese ambassador in Rome, to follow up with Mussolini personally, with an additional request that preferably one of the advisors had served as secretary to the Duce. Otherwise, he should have taken senior position in the party or in the government.Footnote 97 Several days later, he turned to Boscarelli again, stressing that the advisors should be particularly experienced in organizing the youth.Footnote 98
Nonetheless, despite Chiang’s repeated appeals, the mission did not seem to have taken place in the end. Ironically, it was seemingly Chiang himself that dropped the plan sometime in the spring of 1935. Just in December 1934 he enquired again about the progress in Rome,Footnote 99 but in April 1935 when Rome followed things up, there was no further evidence of response from Chiang.Footnote 100 It is not known exactly why Chiang aborted the mission—no available documents offered any explanation. Some occurrences in early 1935 in Nanjing made it all the more perplexing. On 5 March, Vincenzo Lojacono, the successor to Boscarelli, was invited by the Legislative Yuan to give a presentation on the Fascist Revolution. His audience also included Sun Ke, president of the Legislative Yuan. After the presentation, the acting foreign minister Wang Jingwei confided to Lojacono that it was the first time a foreign diplomat was invited to give talks about politics of a foreign country at the Legislative Yuan, for which an exceptional procedure was needed to make it happen. Later, the Legislative Yuan also requested a series of works on fascism in English, including Mussolini’s discourses and writings.Footnote 101 One month earlier, when Lojacono presented his credentials as Fascist Italy’s first ambassador to China, Wang Jingwei in private asked him at length during lunch about the Fascist Revolution among other things.Footnote 102 In October, the Nationalist Government even intended to send an official mission to Rome to study the organization of the PNF.Footnote 103
These evidences seem to suggest that even among Chiang’s most long-standing political rivals, there was an increasing interest in fascism. So, why did Chiang not leverage the situation but drop the mission plan? One likely explanation is that Chiang remained concerned about being exposed for his efforts to become a dictator, a worry he had confided in Boscarelli early on. A more likely reason, as I argue, is that by early 1935, Chiang had already conceived a way to ‘fascistize’ the NLM.
A ‘fascistization’ experiment: The New Life Labour Service Corps Movement
In February 1935, the Generalissimo registered several notes in his diary about his new plan for the NLM—the ‘New Life Labour Service Corps’ (xin shenghuo laodong fuwu tuan, NLLSC hereafter). It took him several days to refine its organizational principles and methods. By the end of the month, he announced the plan, confident that it would become ‘a milestone in his life’.Footnote 104 The NLLSC was actually part and parcel of a bigger plan for the second stage of the NLM aimed at three goals: militarization of life (shenghuo junshihua), productivization of life (shenghuo shengchanhua), and aestheticization of life (shenghuo yishuhua), also known as ‘sanhua’.Footnote 105
Compared with the first phase, the ‘sanhua plan’ was much more ambitious in scope. Each of the three goals covered from dozens to hundreds of items.Footnote 106 Naturally, it would be chaotic to implement them all together at the same time. Thus, the NLLSC was made a priority, also a crucial means to achieve the broader objectives. At the first anniversary of the NLM, Chiang elaborated on the importance of labour and service in Nanchang. First and foremost, labour is the foundation for becoming a decent person and was the most precious and sacred thing. To save the nation from decline and demise, it is imperative to get rid of the outdated way of seeing labour as humiliating and not wanting to work. Secondly, labour is not just for the sake of preventing individuals from hunger and cold, but should be done in the service of the nation and society. Thus, he urged everyone to abandon individualistic pursuits of wealth and status, instead to value ‘common moralities’ (gonggong daode). In Chiang’s mind, labour and service were so crucial to national revival that he wanted to dedicate the entire year of 1935 to establishing labour service corps nationwide, which was ‘the most important way to carry out the NLM in the future’. ‘It is not necessary to organize them in a top-down way; every school, government apparatus, party organ, military organization can self-organize their own labour service corps, as long as there appear three to five people who share the same spirit.’Footnote 107
Three months later, the Generalissimo re-elaborated the importance of NLLSC on a philosophical level during a speech to teachers and students in Kunming (from there he continued chasing the Communists). The key to establishing a correct value for life was to understand the relationship between the individual, the universe, and the society. The fact that we were born into this world is already a fortune, for which we should be grateful to our parents. However, our upbringing is also indebted to the country and the society. The latter two are actually the ‘bigger self’ (da wo) on which we, as ‘smaller self’ (xiao wo), depend. The fact that the development of society requires division of labour and collaboration also means that no individual can survive without society. Rather, as a person, he/she should provide labour and service to the society.Footnote 108 In other words, by indoctrinating his audiences on the ‘correct’ value and meaning for individual life, Chiang sought to place the nation and society above the individual, whose meaning of existence should not derive from individualistic pursuits of self-interests but from his/her services to the nation and the society. Such a tenet was best captured by an editorial published in a Shanghai newspaper when the General Association for the Promotion of the NML (General Association hereafter) took an inspection trip to the city and nearby provinces. The article summed up the movement as ‘transformation of social life to rid the Chinese of anarchist and liberal thoughts’.Footnote 109
One step toward the constitution of the NLLSC was the creation of its organizational guidelines (published in April 1935) with a decree ordering that all existing governmental and civil groups devoted to the NLM be reorganized into NLLSC. The core task of the year was to ‘realize the sanhua through labour and service’.Footnote 110 The NLLSC aimed at encompassing all state and civil organizations, from the military, gendarmerie, police to the party and government, from teachers and students at schools and university to women’s groups and trade unions. The concrete work included 21 little movements, ranging from simple tasks like teaching people to read, selling books, newspapers, promoting sports, national products, hygiene and science, to more complicated ones like assisting authorities in conducting censuses, investigating crimes, opening canals, building dams and roads, and air defence training. Each labour service corps was free to pick their own tasks from the list that best suited their needs. There should be at least one core activity in each season, and the corps members should spend at least one hour providing labour and service each day during their leisure time.Footnote 111 Meanwhile, all the NLLSC members were subject to strict discipline: they should always obey the lingxiu, that is, Chiang Kai-shek as the head of the movement, take orders from their superiors, be on time, deliver the tasks with full dedication, and wear uniforms during service, etc. Those who break the rules would receive different levels of punishment depending on severity.Footnote 112
Juxtaposing the NLLSC with Chiang’s new perception of fascism in mid-1933, one cannot fail to notice the striking similarities. Here I requote his reflection after reading Pan Youqiang’s mission report:
According to the Germany and Italy mission report, their slogan [of fascism] is little more than ‘labour creates power’ [laodong chuangzao wuli] and ‘air, sunlight and water’ [kongqi, yangguang, shui]. Their spirit is austerity, courage and loyalty, and striving for the happiness of the nation and the people. [They place] a particular emphasis on discipline and education, with the party and the military being the backbone of the society. With these, can we not avenge the humiliation?Footnote 113
Apparently, Chiang’s idea of reorganizing Chinese population at the service of the nation and society was inspired by both fascist regimes. Whether labour would actually create power—supposedly the strength for national revival and for staving off foreign invasion—is not the point. What matters is that Chiang seemed convinced of it. The ‘air, sunlight and water’ could be understood as a metaphor that depicted his vision for the Chinese to live a highly virtuous life, free of materialistic and individualistic pursuits of wealth, fame, and status. While the qualities of austerity, courage, loyalty observed from the German and Italian citizens were replaced by the four core Confucian virtues, the ultimate goal remained the same—striving for the happiness and revival of the nation. His stress on the importance of education and discipline, on the vanguard role played by the party and the military seemed also inspired by the two countries.
In other words, if the 1933 mission report shaped (also reaffirmed) Chiang’s understanding of the ideology of fascism, which could be summarized as collectivism (interests of the nation and society above those of the individuals) and nationalism (national revival and independence), it was during the implementation of the NLM that he found himself lacking the technical know-hows of organizing the population along the collectivist line. That explains why he urgently appealed to Mussolini and why he later called it off, because he had found his own way to ‘fascistize’ the NLM, through the labour service corps movement.
The direct link between the NLLSC and fascism was also most pronounced in the background surrounding the birth of the movement. As a matter of fact, the idea of organizing youth for service had already been put into experiment by Chiang in the summer of 1934 with the creation of the Jiangxi Youth Vacation Service Corps (Jiangxi qingnian jiati fuwu tuan), which sent students for service during the summer holiday.Footnote 114 In autumn, Pan Youqiang proposed to Chiang to organize youth service corps on a regular basis so as to ‘guide the youth onto the right path’. Pan was explicit that the idea was inspired by the youth organizations in Italy. Considering it necessary, Chiang asked Pan to discuss and refine the plan based on the youth organizational methods in Italy and Germany with Cheng Shikui, then in charge of education in Jiangxi.Footnote 115 But when Cheng submitted his plan, Chiang responded that he had already given the task to Deng Ti whom he sent to Germany and Italy to study civil education.Footnote 116 Finally in February 1935, Chiang ordered Xiong Shihui, chairman of the Jiangxi provincial government, to develop the second-stage plan for the NLM with a focus on the labour service corps. The plan should be based on the previous draft made by Deng Ti while collecting opinions from others.Footnote 117 While the division of work between Deng Ti and Xiong Shihui looked like Chiang’s habitual tactic of balance of power between his factions, it is also true that Deng Ti’s draft plan served as the foundation of the NLLSC because he had hands-on observation of practices in the two countries.
But how were NLLSC actually organized and put into action? To what extent was Chiang’s labour service movement fascist?
To what extent was it fascist? The Labour Service Corps in action
Despite the principle of self-organization, actual constitution of labour service corps were predominantly top-down. These included groups in state apparatuses (e.g., government, police), the party, schools, and universities, even the Christian organizations. Such an obligation was clearly expressed in a series of ‘announcements’ (tonggao) the General Association issued. Initial targets included all Chinese Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and all other Christian groups, all government apparatuses of Nanchang, all secondary schools and above in the Jiangxi province. Soon, women’s NLLSC were instructed to be organized at all levels.Footnote 118 Meanwhile, the General Association issued a principle that practically urged everyone to enrol in the NLLSC: all citizens of the Chinese republic have the duty of labour and service, except for those who are too old or in special conditions.Footnote 119 Yet at the same time the NLLSC were not open to everyone—foreigners were not allowed to join.Footnote 120
With these top-down mandates, the year 1935 saw all sorts of NLLSC established across the country. The Jiangxi province alone had registered 42 corps enrolling 5,645 members.Footnote 121 Another 11 provinces had reported a total of 295 corps with more than 69,000 members. Besides, 98 women’s labour service corps were established in ten provinces outside Jiangxi, enlisting 6,766 members. Among all, the Jiangxi Youth New Life Labour Service Corps (Jiangxi qingnian xin shenghuo laodong fuwu tuan) served as a role model due to the amount of attention the NLM leaders paid to it. Besides, youth had been a steady source of concern for Chiang during the Nanjing Decade. The organization of the Jiangxi Youth Labour Service Corps also served as a template for labour service movements in many provinces and municipalities as well as nationwide movements such as the Women’s Labour Service Corps launched in 1936. It thus provided a good window through which we could observe how the movement was actually carried out.
First and foremost, the organization of youth into labour service corps across the province was completely mandatory following a top-down approach. According to a regulation, the corps aimed to enrol all students, faculty, and administrative personnel at and above secondary level. Cheng Shikui, Department of Education of the Jiangxi provincial government, was appointed as the corps leader of the province. The regulation stipulated that each middle school and above should organize its own brigade (dadui). Automatically, the schoolmaster was the head of the brigade, and was further assisted by one or two instructor(s) (zhidaoyuan), usually the personnel responsible for the school’s boy scouts. Each brigade was further divided into several teams (dui) based on the size of the school. The team leaders were appointed by the schoolmaster and the vice team leaders came from other boy scouts responsible at class level. Each team should be further divided into smaller units (ban) consisting of six to ten members, with their leaders appointed in the same manner. The elementary schools were also the target, though only the faculty and staff were obliged to self-organize into similar brigades. The service items, disciplines, and training of labour and service precisely followed the general guidelines of the NLLSC.Footnote 122
But the mandatory organization was not something that only existed on paper. Since its inauguration, the provincial government ordered that each school report back the result of the organization within ten days, including the name list of all brigade, teams leaders, following a given template.Footnote 123 Three months later, the provincial government reminded Nanchang that some schools had not yet established their brigades and teams, urging the municipal government to take immediate action and submit the updated name list.Footnote 124 By mid-1935, all middle schools and above in Nanchang had registered 24 brigades, enrolling 5,860 corps members including students, faculty, and staff. In addition, a total of 587 faculty and staff had been enrolled into labour service brigades at elementary school level in the provincial capital.Footnote 125
Even the selection of specific service tasks followed the same top-down approach. Despite the proclaimed freedom of choice, the first stage for the provincial corps was narrowly focused on a rather rudimentary task—the Mass Literacy Movement (minzhong shizi yundong) that aimed to teach the largely illiterate population how to read and write.Footnote 126 In addition to the Mass Literacy Movement, corps members themselves were subject to military, physical, and ideological training each week. Members should dedicate at least one hour per day to physical training. Brigade leaders were also encouraged to hold sports contests, either within the same school or among schools.Footnote 127
So, to what extent can the NLLSC movement be viewed as fascist? At a first glance, the mandatory enrolment of the Chinese population into labour service corps and remoulding their life along the Confucian virtues look reminiscent of the totalitarian efforts of fascist regimes to organize the population and make the New Man, particularly the youth.Footnote 128 But compared with Italy and Germany, the effects of Chiang Kai-shek’s collective organization of the Chinese population into labour service corps were far from being totalitarian, despite a multi-year nationwide movement. By the end of 1935, only nearly 70,000 members had been enrolled into various NLLSC across the country.Footnote 129 Even during the war with the Japanese, total enrolment was an unimpressive 383,370 (when compared with the country’s population—approximately 400 million).Footnote 130 Yet such a limited result seemed to be deliberate from the beginning: the various NLLSC were largely comprised of party members, state employees, and school faculty, staff, and students (regardless of gender), whom Chiang considered as ‘educated class’ and should take the lead in the movement. The vast majority of the population—those outside state institutions, illiterate and even ‘savage’ (yeman) in Chiang’s own wordsFootnote 131—were made the target of labour service corps, that is, to be educated first before they could be collectively organized. Besides, unlike Italy and Germany, the various NLLSC were not institutionalized permanently under the party control (such as Ballila or Hitler Youth), they were only temporarily created to carry out the movement.
Another difference lied in Chiang’s stratification of the ‘Chinese New Man’ he sought to forge. On the one hand, he tried to remould those enrolled into labour service corps along collectivism in order to replace individualism and anarchism which he perceived as a barrier for making the New Chinese Man. On the other, a vast majority of the Chinese population—those not organized into labour service corps—were subject to another type of New Man making, not along the collectivist line but the Confucian virtues—whose behaviours in daily life should be uplifted to an acceptable level first.
Therefore, it seems that the labour service corps movement could not be conveniently fitted into a classical model of fascism—totalitarianism and New Man making. Yet it will be equally too soon to disregard the movement simply as a ‘mimicking’, ‘unsuccessful imitation’ of fascism, or ‘failure to truly mobilise the masses as European fascism did’,Footnote 132 for it might risk being ‘fascism-centric’, that is, taking practices of the fascist regimes as standard benchmarks for comparison.Footnote 133 Instead, I argue that the labour service corps movement could be better understood as Chiang’s selective appropriation of fascist ideas and practices. Ideologically, it was inspired by fascism, but its actual implementation—characterized by exclusivity and stratification—was a result of his judgement of local conditions, that most the Chinese population were not yet ready for the collective experiment, and the educated class should take a lead in the movement. Such a mode of selective appropriation was best expressed in his emphasis on the ‘mental elasticity’ of Italian advisors to be sent to China, for the country was ‘geographically and psychologically so different’.
Conclusion
By pioneering an alternative approach, the article historicizes and reconstructs Chiang Kai-shek’s engagements with fascism during the Nanjing Decade. It has shown that rather than a fixed view of fascism, Chiang’s understanding of fascism underwent a process of changes and his engagements with the idea shifted as context and relevance of fascism evolved. Until late 1930, his interest in fascism was seemingly focused on the PNF, perceived as a solution for party discipline and politics. Following the Mukden Incident and soon the rise of ‘Japanese Fascism’, Chiang’s interest in fascism soared exponentially when faced with threats from Japanese aggression and his persisting frustration of the GMD during the anti-Communist campaigns. The period also saw his perception of the idea expand significantly: the relevance of fascism now included civil education and training, industrial and military modernization, in addition to an enduring political element. It was during the New Life Movement that the Generalissimo realized the importance of technical know-hows of organizing the Chinese population. It did not take long for him to conceive his own ‘fascistization’ experiment through the labour service corps movement whose perceived core tenets—nationalism and collectivism—were evidently inspired by the 1933 mission report. Despite the limited effects of the movement till the eve of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chiang’s ‘fascistization’ experiment through the labour service corps movement, I argue, could be better understood as a selective appropriation. By tracing Chiang’s changing engagements with fascism, this study also reveals the amorphousness of the idea in interwar China: it could be relevant and engaged in a variety of ways, depending as much on who engaged it as the context and its relevance.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback with which this paper was turned into its present form.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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