A Political and Economic History of China, Part 26: The Republican Era of 1912-1928, Part 2—International Power Struggles

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6 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs and Other Egghead Stuff continues with the chaotic Republican Era of China, this time detailing foreign influence in the power struggles of the 1910’s and 1920’s including the opening chapter of the Chinese Communist Party.

Picture: Revolutionary founder of modern China Sun Yat-sen (seated) with young military commandant Chiang Kai-shek (standing, center).

After General Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916, Republican China was unable to establish an effective government. Not only was the central government’s army lacking to counter the regional warlords’ private armies, internal republican bickering and infighting produced fourteen different presidents in the twelve year period of 1916-1928.

And not only warlords vied for power in this era. Foreign governments exerted their own malign influence over China.

JAPAN

As most people know Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937. But the fascist Japanese government had been planning these invasions for a long time, even positioning themselves for an eventual conquest of China back in the 1910’s.

As China descended into post-Qing chaos, Japan attempted to exert influence and gain pre-invasion footholds.

At the outbreak of World War I Japan declared war on Germany in a classic display of realpolitik. Tokyo couldn’t have cared less about Europe, instead leveraging entry in the war to expand its presence in Asia. 

While Germany was bogged down in the trenches of Europe, Japan invaded and occupied German territory in China’s Shandong Province. Japan also grabbed a few German territories in Micronesia which would gain notoriety during World War II: the Marshall Islands (including Kwajalein), the Carolines (including Truk), and the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian).

By making token contributions to the allied effort Japan successfully gained a permanent seat at the League of Nations. The Japanese also bribed a regional Chinese warlord into granting sovereignty over Shandong province, followed up by tacit albeit lukewarm consent from the allies at Versailles. Chinese government representatives only put up weak objections.

But the handover of Shandong unexpectedly triggered a watershed event in Chinese history: the May 4th movement of 1919.

Everyday Chinese were so incensed over their loss of territory to Japan that mass demonstrations began throughout the country. In what’s now considered the birth of modern Chinese nationalism, protestors criticized Japan, the Versailles Treaty, the allied powers, and the Chinese Republican government itself. Disillusioned with the continuing failure of China’s elites, the masses turned away from traditional Confucian deference to intellectuals, and Chinese who had formerly considered themselves “Sichuanese” or “Shanghainese” or “Cantonese” unified in a populist mindshift to being “Chinese.” 

The western powers, surprised at the level of outcry from the Chinese public, forced Japan to relinquish sovereignty over Shandong which was promptly returned to China.

However much of the social die was now already cast. Along with rejecting much of Confucian traditionalism many young Chinese were now searching outside the country for new philosophy, new ideas, and new direction.

One of the many strange and foreign ideas that found growing acceptance among everyday Chinese was the anti-imperialist credo of Marxism. In 1921 a small group of radical revolutionaries, anti-imperialist and drawn to Karl Marx’s promises of utopian equality and total peace, founded the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai with the 27-year old Mao Zedong representing his native Hunan province.

RUSSIA/THE USSR

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the Russian Empire in 1917 and, after a centuries-long history of border and territorial disputes in Manchuria and Xinjiang, watched with interest the chaos unfolding in China just four years later.

While attempts at establishing republican government in China floundered, none of the formerly imperialist western powers stepped up to help. Some European governments were concerned about continued reparations payments from the now defunct Qing dynasty. 

The extent of their interest in Chinese stability was usually limited to a desire to avoid total national disintegration, for that would put their business investments at risk. However, western powers also disliked the idea of a tightly unified China that might one day find the strength to say no to outside demands.

Sun Yat-sen, who by now had formed the Nationalist Party or Guomindang, looked to the foreign powers for help getting the new China on its feet, just as he had looked outside for help bringing down the Qing dynasty a decade earlier. But for the reasons just mentioned he found few takers.

The only major power that offered assistance was the Soviet Union, but as one might guess that help hardly came for free.

The Lenin government, concerned that capitalist countries might attack Russia to destroy the communist revolution in its fragile infancy, found the idea of a communist ally on its huge eastern border appealing. Ideologically Lenin also saw China as a fraternal century-plus target of capitalist imperialism and was sympathetic to Sun’s revolution to throw out the foreign Qing rulers.

Given Sun’s need for help, negotiations between Soviet and Nationalist officials led to an alliance in 1923. In exchange for financial and diplomatic assistance, the Nationalists agreed to welcome Soviet advisors who restructured the party with more rigorous discipline.

The Soviets also attached a condition for aid which would change the history of China: The Nationalists must agree to an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party and allow the small upstart movement into their ranks. 

After all, both the Nationalists and Communists were anti-Qing, both were anti-imperialist, and both wanted to build a new, modern China. To Sun, the Communists seemed harmless and possibly even a good fit.

In secret Moscow believed one day they would order the Chinese communists to usurp Nationalist leadership, take over the party for themselves, and transform China into a communist state. However the Soviets felt China wasn’t yet ready for communism—not having first passed through the key Marxist historical stages of capitalism and socialism—and for now ordered the CCP to simply cooperate with the Nationalists.

The Chinese communists, as the Soviets would later learn, had their own timetable which we’ll discuss in an upcoming chapter.

Sun agreed to integrate the Communist Party into the Nationalist Party, but one of his top young protégés—the commander of the party’s military wing—viewed the Communists with suspicion, although he didn’t yet possess the power or rank to act. 

This shrewd lieutenant was Chiang Kai-shek.

We’ll get more into the Nationalist/Communist alliance and Soviet influence ending with the 1949 communist victory later, but on a final note it’s important to contrast Sun and Chiang’s views on alliances and power which in turn informed their different views on the Communists.

For all his strengths, Sun was at heart an intellectual and often politically naïve. By contrast Chiang Kai-shek, mentored in his youth by one of Shanghai’s most notorious anti-Qing societies-turned-organized crime syndicate (the Green Gang), held more cynical and realistic views.

A story recounts how in 1920 Sun entered into another alliance with Guangxi warlord Chen Jiongming. Chiang, still a young protégé, calculated Chen had much to gain by betraying the Nationalist alliance and repeatedly warned Sun of the danger but was ignored. Sure enough Chen rebelled, shelling the Nationalist Guangdong headquarters in 1922 with Sun barely escaping with his life. Chiang, always loyal, made speed from Shanghai to rescue his master and they spent several weeks hiding out on a small riverboat during which time Chiang’s stock rose in Sun’s eyes.

Chiang viewed the communist alliance with similar suspicion. He believed, correctly, that the Communists would attempt to subvert the Nationalist Party from within and take over, but for now Sun sleepwalked into accepting Soviet demands, oblivious to the danger that his young disciple foresaw.

In the next installment we’ll discuss growing tensions between Nationalists and Communists against the backdrop of the campaign to finally reunify China.