China's Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949

by Brian Tsui

In this ambitious examination of the complex political culture of China under Guomindang rule, Brian Tsui interweaves political ideologies, intellectual trends, social movements and diplomatic maneuvers to demonstrate how the Chinese revolution became conservative after the anti-Communist coup of 1927. Dismissing violent struggles for class equality as incompatible with nationalist goals, Chiang Kai-shek's government should, Tsui argues, be understood in the context of the global ascendance of radical right-wing movements during the inter-war period. The Guomindang's revolutionary nation-building and modernization project struck a chord with China's reformist liberal elite, who were wary of mob rule, while its obsession with Eastern spirituality appealed to Indian nationalists fighting Western colonialism. The Nationalist vision was defined by the party-state's hostility to communist challenges as much as by its ability to co-opt liberalism and Pan-Asianist anti-colonialism. Tsui's revisionist reading revisits the peculiarities of the Guomindang's revolutionary enterprise, resituating Nationalist China in the moment of global radical right ascendancy.

Genres: China

304 pages, Hardcover

Published May 22, 2018

Reviews

[LaMarx · Rating 5 out of 5]

If “Order!” was the cry of Guizot, Sebastiani, and Cavaignac, Chiang and the Nationalists not only echoed them, but added “Efficiency!” Brian Tsui's China's Conservative Revolution adds to Maggie Clinton's literature describing GMD conservative revolutionaries as conceiving of a Taylorized Modernity that would allow a spiritualized national community to usher in capitalism without capitalism.
The Nationalist regime depoliticized politics, aestheticized daily life, sought a program of social hygiene, promoted its own imagination of transhistorical Chinese values, and attempted to pave a state-led path through industrial modernity without incurring the pernicious effects of capitalist social relations, all without actually challenging those social relations. People's Livelihood, one of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles, was reimagined as a personal, cultivational journey in which livelihood was spiritualized, liquidating it of its material quality.
Conservative revolutionaries were elitist, but also sought mass support. They recognized the youth as a base of mass energy, but were often anxious about how that energy would be spent without direct guidance by a vanguard elite. Venues such as scouting were one way to discipline youthful energy into nationalist trajectories.
Liberal intellectuals often found themselves and their interests converging with the Nationalist regime. Even if they disdained the heavy-handedness of the government in power, they saw it as a stabilizing force against the tide of class struggle that assailed their university campuses.
The Nationalist Regime attempted to foster an alternative Pan-Asianism to Japan, but ultimately failed after World War 2, taking refuge under the wings of Washington. Though the more overtly fascistic elements were downplayed during the Cold War, the emergency situation allowed for over 40 years of martial law to reign in Taiwan.
I loved this book. It gets five big booms!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

[Naked Fish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall it's a well-written and well-argued book. Tsui situates GMD conservative revolution at the global level and sheds light on the ideological particularity of the state-building project. The conservative revolution was not as much aborted and lacking identities as ineffective and harboring significant ambitions shared by other regimes around world in the "long twentieth-century". But his organization and interpretation of sources are not very distinct from Fitzgerald 1996: the same story of manifesting ideology in mass politics and ordinary people's everyday life is told again. In a word, solid and adding nuance to current understanding but no more than that.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look into how the Nationalists' revolution was the governance of social minutiae, as opposed to class overthrow of communism. It was also highly contradictory, valuing nationalism / anti-imperialism while eventually relying on American semi-colonialism (which thwarted its attempts for Indian pan-asian allyship).

Interesting chapter on how the growth of scouting in China was a form of diverting youthful energy (that would otherwise be caught up in "licentious and liberal" activities like class struggle) paralleled how Edwardian England promoted scouting as a way to counteract the negative effects of urbanization and deal with the growing threat of Germany's military power.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The global dimension of Chiang's Nationalist government

[Andrew Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

KMT, from a revolutionary nationalist party to a conservative nationalist party acting in the old "revolutionary" way but with a different ideological orientation