R. Keith Schoppa

Province and Nation: The Chekiang Provincial Autonomy Movement, 1917–1927

Humiliated and shaken by the depredations of the imperialist nations, early twentieth-century Chinese leaders sought the establishment of a strong nation-state. Bitter struggles over the means to reach that goal—primarily over the distribution of political power—ended in the demise of the Ching, the defeat of Yuan Shih-kai, and the turmoil of the “warlord” period. After Yuans death in 1916, the dispute over distribution of power thrust into serious consideration the model of a federation for building a nation out of Chinas disparate regions and interests. Some felt that a federation was perhaps a more effective integrating form than the centralized bureaucratic model the late Ching and Yuan Shih-kai had supported. The debate was not new in China. However, during the empire, proponents of centralization ( chun-hsien ) and decentralization ( feng-chien ) had been concerned with finding the form that would produce the greatest stability and administrative efficiency; now the Chinese were obsessed with the issue for life-and-death reasons. 2 Rapid national integration seemed imperative for Chinas survival. In 1901, Liang Chi-chao had discussed the possibilities of a Chinese federation; 3 but, until 1916, federalism was effectively submerged by the centralizers. Amid increasing turmoil after Yuans death, federalism seemed to provide an answer to chaotic instability.

Contours of Revolutionary Change in a Chinese County, 1900–1950

MNOST LOCAL STUDIES of the revolution in pre-1949 China have focused on Communist successes and failures during the 1930s and 1940s in the base areas of north and central China. It seems obvious, however, that in its more complete meaning the Chinese revolution in this century has been more than the story of Communist Party fortunes. On the national level, it has been the process of casting off politically enervated and/or discredited systems (the imperial, warlord, and Republican) and moving toward the vision of a fundamentally new state and society. The first major blow in this process was the abolition in 1905 of the civil service system that had served as the foundation for the political and social structure of traditional China. The revolution, which has often focused on struggles for political power and prerogative, has continued throughout the country in a number of phases, with varying actors, agendas, timing, and dynamics. Like a war made up of innumerable engagements, it has been a congeries of countless local revolutions, some only loosely linked to national-level goals. If, as a recent work put it, [a] new generation of scholarship is emerging [in the study of the Chinese revolution] which promises to resolve old debates, bridge old dichotomies, and join formerly separate strands of analysis (Hartford and Goldstein 1989:3), then it must take into account the larger chronological sweep of the revolution at the same time it burrows deeply into its local bases. This essay is an exploration of the contours of revolutionary change in the half-century from 1900 to 1950 in Xiaoshan County, Zhejiang Province, a county in the Lower Yangzi region that was for most of this period in the Guomindang, not the Communist sphere (map 1). More than two decades ago, Roy Hoffieinz sought the secret of Communist success through county environmental and ecological analysis: what social and economic structures and what sort of political culture were most likely to give rise to a flourishing Communist movement? Though he concluded that the proper mixture of contextual and motivational factors was impossible to determine (Hofheinz 1969:76), analysis of the spatial context to help explain social structure and behavior in historical studies of China has not diminished in importance but has become more significant. Part of this is attributable to the marketing and regional systems models of William Skinner in the 1960s and 1970s (Skinner 1964-65 and 1977). But treatment of

State, Society, and Land Reclamation on Hangzhou Bay during the Republican Period

as state-making, the roles of local elites and nonelites, and the presence (or lack) of a public sphere. There has come to be a generally accepted interpretation that these years saw the twin &dquo;secular trends of state building and elite self-mobilization&dquo; (Esherick and Rankin, 1990: 342; Wakeman, 1991: 76-77). Recent work has raised somewhat divergent visions. Kathryn Bernhardt has drawn a picture of a Jiangnan landlord elite &dquo;destroyed&dquo; in the last years of the Qing and the Republic by &dquo;the interrelated processes of state-strengthening and growing tenant political power&dquo; (Bernhardt, 1992: 232). In his thesis of &dquo;state involution,&dquo; Prasenjit Duara has argued that there was &dquo;simultaneous success and failure, growth and disintegration&dquo; within the Republican state structure, though he sees the &dquo;seemingly irreversible course of development of this state&dquo; from the late Qing reforms on (Duara, 1988: 1-2, 74). Kenneth Pomeranz has also described the period as one of &dquo;simultaneous ... state making and unmaking&dquo; and challenged us to &dquo;go beyond either simple linear or simple cyclical schemes, which suggest that political and economic variables all move in the same direction at any one time and do so throughout a whole county (or at least a whole macroregion)&dquo; (Pomeranz, 1993: 270-271). Lenore Barkan in her study of Rugao county

Local Self-Government in Zhejiang, 1909-1927

During the late Qing and early Republican periods, local self-govemment (difang zizhi) became an omnipresent political catchword. It was a phrase used by liberal constitutionalists and centralizing authoritarians alike. For all its use and misuse, however, the term still represents one of the most highly significant political developments in early twentieth-century China. This essay surveys the course of local self-govemment in the province of Zhejiang from its late Qing inception to its destruction with the coming of Guomindang [Kuomintang] control. In addition, it looks at larger questions such as the nature of local institutional change from the imperial era to the Nanjing [Nanking] period and the nature of elite composition and activity during a period of rapid political change.

S. Bernard Thomas. Labor and the Chinese Revolution. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1983.

Because Marxism confers pre-eminence in the revolutionary struggle to the proletariat, a study of the relationship of the Chinese Communist party to the proletariat seems crucial in understanding the nature of the Chinese revolution. Thomas’ book surveys the role of labor in Communist party &dquo;doctrinal, strategic, and policy formulations&dquo; (p. 1) from the nadir of party power in 1928 to the heights of victory over the Guomindang in 1948. Though the outlines of Thomas’ story are well-known-the ill-fated Li Lisan line, the struggles over policy between Mao and the returned Bolsheviks, and the development of zhengfeng and the mass line in Yan’an, Thomas provides a wealth of specific detail in surveying policy from the Jiangxi Soviet period when the class-line approach dominated party thinking to Yan’an where Mao developed what Thomas calls his multi-class urban strategy. The almost encyclopedic chronological approach, which here seems a bit too plodding and mechanical, allows Thomas to probe painstakingly CCP documents, committee reports, and newspaper articles and editorials to chart the course of party thought and action on labor. He shows that from 1928 to 1935 political-revolutionary objectives held priority over economic goals even in the face of evidence that such a policy did not fit reality. He points to the problems of the Li Lisan line, to Li’s inability to use unions effective-