The Transformation of Elite Nationalism to Mass Nationalism: An analysis of

Chinese Nationalism in Second Sino-Japanese War

ASI 430

994737031

An Ru Tang

To Professor Yichin Wu
No one can hope to understand contemporary China---The largest and most

populous country in Asian and the World—without understanding the catalytic

force of Chinese Nationalism. Chinese Nationalism has first developed through

the Building of Chinese Nation-State by the Chinese elites. During the early

twentieth Century, Chinese elites started to borrow the concept of nationalism

from the West to counter the aggression of Western imperialism toward China.

These elites studied and influenced by western culture, economic and political

system, but the knowledge they learned form the west awaked their nationalism

consciousness and leaded them to express their opposition to the infringement of

imperialist powers upon China’s sovereignty and advocated to build a nation-

state of China as a significant step toward China’s modernization. However,

among these powerful imperialist countries, no power was more threatening and

destructing than imperialist and fascist Japan in Modern Chinese history. China’s

defeat by the British during the 1840-42 Opium War and by the Japanese during

the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War were the most significant impetus for the rise of

Chinese nationalism. Furthermore, the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 boiling

such nationalism to a heating point. Professor Lucien Bianco point out that:” In a

sense the whole history of modern China can be seen as a reaction to

imperialism, to an outside force that threatened the country’s very existence.

Modern Chinese history in this view culminates in the birth-after an

extraordinarily painful labor-of the Chinese nation. Never was the pain greater, or
delivery closer, than during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45.” 1 However, the

second Sino-Japanese War was not only marked as the greatest pain in Modern

Chinese history but also the turning point of the transformation of Chinese

nationalism and revolution. Professor Maurice Meisner pointed out that because

of the war:” The new mantle of modern Chinese nationalism had replaced the old

“mandate of Heaven” as the symbol of political legitimacy in twentieth-century

China.”2 Nevertheless, both Chinese Communist Party and Chinese nationalist

Party present themselves as loyal and patriotic nationalists who fight for China’s

national salvation in the second Sino-Japanese War. Why? At the end, CCP

successfully grow powerful and finally won the subsequent civil war over the

once revolutionary and powerful Chinese nationalist party (GMD). In the brilliant

book Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of

Revolutionary China, 1937-1945. Written by Professor Chalmers Johnson, the

war in his view, created peasant nationalism, which is a mass nationalism

fundamentally differed from the elite nationalism promoted and advocated by

elites before the outbreak of war. He stressed that:” Such early intellectual

nationalism in China was peculiarly the product of Westernized, or cosmopolitan,

educated Chinese…For all the political activities of the prewar Chinese educated

elites, theirs was a nationalist movement with a head and no body.”3 In the

Contrast, the mass nationalism engineered by Chinese Communist party was a

much successful nationalist movement with head and strong body. Lucien Bianco
1
Lucien Bianco. Origins of the Chinese Revolution 1915-1949, Translated from the French by Muriel Bell,
Stanford University Press, Stanford 1971, pg 140
2
Meisner, Maurice, Mao’s China and after: a history of the People’s Republic, The free Press, New York,
pg 38
3
Johnson, Chalmers, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power, Standford University Press, Standford
1962, pg 24
emphasized that:” peasant nationalism, by contrast, more primitive but in the end

decisive, was a nationalism of despair.”4 It was the Second World War created

transformation from the elite nationalism to mass nationalism in China. More

importantly, GMD’s military failures, factionalism and corruption corrupted the

appeal of its nationalism. In the contrast, CCP took advantage of Japanese

invasion, promoted nationalism under a massive guerrilla warfare and used their

powerful and intelligent organizational and social mobilization techniques to

spread nationalism sentiments beyond the elites and effectively mobilized the

entire Chinese people.

Authorities on nationalism agree on two points: first, that nationalism is a potent

force, and second, that nationalism as a concept is difficult to define. However,

Professor Benedict Anderson defines nationalism as a construction created in

imagination by print media. Anderson explains:” It is imagined because the

members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-

members, meet them, or even hear of them……..The nation is imagined as

limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living

human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other

nations….It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in

which enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the

divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm….it is imagined as a community,

because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in

each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.

Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past tow centuries,
4
Bianco, pg154
for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such

limited imaginings.”5 He emphasized the importance of the books, newspapers

and public opinions on the creation of the imagined community. More importantly,

in such an imagined community, elites in society were more ease to master the

language and control the media. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Chinese

elites had indulged themselves in culturalism, According to Professor James

Harrison; He noted that the primary Chinese identity was cultural rather than a

perception of a Chinese “nation-state”. In the construction of culturalism, two

elements were entailed. One is China was the centre of the world and a superior

civilisation. The other element was Chinese elites must be educated in and

govern the political system by Confucian principles. Modern Chinese nationalism

was born when China suffered her brutal defeat from west imperialism in the past

hundred years. Ironically, in the early development of nationalism in China,

Japan played an important role. In 1895, China’s defeat in the first Sino-

Japanese War terrified Chinese people and also made Japan a source of

considerable admiration. According to Professor Henrietta Harrison, during 1896

to 1905, there was 8000 and 9000 Chinese students study in Japan, including

Chiang Kaishek, who later became the leader of GMD. However, Professor point

out that:”the students who arrived in Japan in the 1900s had to cope with the

clash between the culturalism instilled by their initial training in China and the

self-confidence of the Japanese society around them. Japanese did not conceive

of their relationship with China in terms of China’s traditional culturalism, and the

Chinese students found that their achievements in many of the new subjects they
5
Benedict Anderson’ Imagined Communites, Verso, New York, 2006
had to study were well below those of their Japanese peers. At the same time

they were members of China’s elite suddenly set down in very different society

where their high status was no longer so apparent. Many Chinese students had

moments when, like Lu Xun, they felt that Chinese as a group were being

humiliated and became acutely aware of the differences between the two

Countries.” It’s clear that it was in Japan, the painful process of the change from

cultrualism to modern nationalism started, but in this process, we can clearly

found out that people who qualify to “imagine” China as a nation were Chinese

elites. The students who qualify to study in Japan were from relatively well off

family. Professor Henrietta Harrison pointed out that:” Even though study was

less costly in Japan than in Europe or America it was still expensive and most

students came from wealthy backgrounds. This was obviously ture for those

whose families provided the funding for their stay. He Xiangning, later a

prominent revolutionary, sold her dowry jewellery to finance her own studies and

those of her husband. The fact that her dowry jewellery was valuable enough to

do this suggests the wealth of her background….The same kind of economic

background was also typical of those sent by the state. Many of those who

passed the selection exams, or had the right connections to be chosen by

officials without exams, came from wealthy and highly educated families. Chen

Qimei, who later became Chinang kaishek’s earliest patron, was the son of a

Zhejing merchant and had been apprenticed to a pawnshop, a highly sought-

after situation, and had begun to study English, before he was awarded a

government scholarship to a military academy in Tokyo.”6 In fact, compare to the

place for many Chinese students. More importantly, the ideologies of modern

nationalism can only by ‘imagined’ through the development of modern

newspapers during this period. In 1896, even the pioneer advocator of Chinese

nationalism Liang Qichao wrote an essay to argue that newspaper should serve

political aims and play an intermediary role between the government and the

people of government policies.7But Newspapers demand a certain ability to read

Chinese characters, daily reader should certainly be categorized as national

“elites”, the nationalism ideas which carried by Chinese newspaper thus should

be considered as an Elite nationalism. In short, we can conclude that Chinese

the early development of nationalism in China, including GMD’s founder, Sun

Yatsen’s nationalism was had significant Elite Nature. Professor Suisheng Zhao

point out that:”…KMT elite nationalism strongly resembled the nationalism of

nineteeth-century European Intellectuals as well as the nationalism still in its

formative stage-of colonial or non-European movements early in the twentieth

century, Such as in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey. Elite/intellectual nationalist

movements do not necessarily require popular support for success.”8 However,

thanks to the deepening expansionism, imperialism and militarism of Japan, the

elite nature changed radically. The Change from elite nationalism to mass

nationalism was also a long and painful process. Such process was intertwined

with war and revolution.

7
Ibid, pg117
8
Zhao, Suisheng. A nation-state by construction: dynamics of modern Chinese nationalism, Stanford
University Press, Stanford 2004, p80
Professor Suisheng Zhao summed Chinese nationalism into two approaches:” In

the debate over the content of Chinese nationalism, on one side are scholars

who view Chinese nationalism as eternal and objective, reflecting China’s

domestic and international position in the pursuing modernization. On the other

side are scholars who take an instrumental approach in defining Chinese

nationalism as an expression of the interest of the ruling elite.” 9 Either approach

would deny the fact that the Japanese aggression towards China in the

Twentieth Century was the hotbed for the growth of Chinese nationalism. It

provided an eternal threat and internal instrumental tool for Chinese elites to

agitate nationalism. After the first Sino-Japanese War, Japan’s encroachment on

China was more aggressive than before. In 1915, Japan presented Yuan shi kai

with the Twenty one Demands and tried to colonize China by any means. Later,

the May Fourth Movement was touched off by Japan’s ambitions to take

possession of Shandong concessions seized from Germany during World War I.

Chinese nationalism after World War I marked a as an dilemma towards the

western. The advanced western nations no longer representing science and

democracy but they were now considered as oppressors and aggressive

imperialists who threatening the very existence of China. However, Japan was

the most threatening one among them. From 1931 to 1935, Japanese took the

entire Manchria in China and settled up a puppet state of Manchukuo. Japan’s

action instigated numerous student demonstrations and protests against both

Japanese aggression and Nanjing’s passive resistance. However, in the new

9
Ibid, pg13
book that recently published in China, To discover the real Chiang Kaishek,

Professor Yang tianshi analysis Chiang’’s personal diary, noted that in the diary,

on one side, Chiang was a real nationalist also furious about Japanese

aggression, but he was realistic and clear understand that China was not ready

to confront Japan, and prefer to eliminated the Communists first. However, after

the Xi’an Incident in 1936, Chiang was forced to eventually go to war with Japan

and form a second united front between the GMD and the CCP in 1937.

The following year Japanese forces launched sever attack on China, driving the

GMD from its base in the rich lower-Yangtze region deep into the country’s

impoverished interior. Chiang retreated to the southwest Chinese city of

Chongqing. From 1938 to 1945, Japan occupied all major cities, roads and

railways throughout eastern China and installed another puppet government

which still called government of republic of China in the areas under their control.

The GMD military forces initially put up strong resistance to Japanese, but as the

war dragged on, their elite nationalism lost appeal to the people. There were

three factors contributed to that. The first factor was the military failures. Chinese

military force was ill-equipped and unable to match with modern Japanese army.

The factionalism in the army was increasing during the war and even an

American general lamented that:” We are allied to a corpse”10 However, one of

the most important reason was the deterioration of China’s economy. According

to Professor Bianco, the economic problem aggravated social tensions of

Chinese society. He pointed out that:” First, it made the regime even more
10
Bianco, pg 159
conservative; once the government was installed in the back country and thus cut

off from the merchant bourgeoisie of the eastern ports and great cities, its social

base consisted almost exclusively of that most conservative of classes, the large

landowners. Second, and more important, the war touched off one of the greatest

inflations of all time.” The retreat to the backward hinterland, cut deeply into

productive capacity. Government made an effort to transfer the factories to

interior, but only about 600 private factories and 117,300 tons of machinery were

actually delivered to the interior. The total production can only reach 12 per cent

of pre-war levels in 1943.11 All the heavy military equipment such as truck, tank

and airplane were all rely on import because China’s manufacture technique

were insufficient to produce them. To make the condition worse, the inflation

spiral rose, there were not enough money to finance the war expenditures and

cause widespread financial speculation and corruption. Professor Bianco

describing the condition by pointing out:” …to take just one example,

businessmen making the most trivial purchases had to be accompanied by

coolies carrying enormous sacks of banknotes. ……Government officials and

clerks with fixed saleries saw their income shrink steadily; their very survival

came to depend on monthly rice allotments, graft, and odd jobs the tax collector

would not hear about. …..For members of the ruling class who were close to both

the central government and provincial administrators, the American presence

created opportunities for all kinds of fruitful deals, few of them honest Whether

the United states Army undertook to build an airstrip or simply to tent a building

11
Paul H. Clyde and Burton F. Beers, The Far East: A History of the western and the eastern response
(1830-1965), Prentice-Hall, INC, New jersey, 1966 pg 400
for offices and personnel, the fabulous sums at the disposal of the Quartermaster

Corps were an irresistible invitation to the ingenious swindler. “12 The inflation

and corruption sagged nationalism spirit. Nationalism should rally the people to

fight for their country, but what people cruelly saw was inflation, corruption,

speculation. Their nationalism sentiment subordinated to acquisition of power

and wealth. Finally, American entry into the war in 1941 further undermined the

nationalism sentiment around Chinese elites. People started to understand that

China would count on foreign forces to win the war and the fate of China was no

longer in their own hands. Nationalism was disappeared at this point,

disillusionment and resentment toward GMD government was seeded here and

just few years after the war, people withdraw their support on Chiang Kai-shek

and made way for the Communists.

12
Bianco, pg160