The War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) marked a significant turning point for the relationship between the Chinese state and society. Although the Nationalist Party State aimed to build a public-minded, modern citizenry, it was unsuccessful in fully severing ties with semi-feudal, semi-imperialist remnants of the late imperial and early Republican era. Commonly referred to as the Father of Modern China, Sun Yat-Sen articulated his three principles of nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood as the goal of the Chinese state (Sun 1994, p.222-236). Throughout the Nanjing decade (1927-1937), Chiang Kai-shek aimed to continue this legacy through the Nationalist Party, the central organ of the governing apparatus, which would extend its ideals in a period of political tutelage to create a citizenry capable of democracy. Later, Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party, would also trace his foundational goals to Sun’s principles, emphasizing people’s livelihood and a people’s democracy. The Nationalist Party and Communist Party shared common features including the Leninist party state apparatus, three principles of the people, and mobilization during the War against Japan. However, in the Civil War that ensued, the Guomindang was forced to flee, marking the triumphant establishment of the People’s Republic. This monumental historical shift in the path of the Chinese nation was made possible by the evolving relationship between state and society spurred by the onset of World War II. Three fundamental interrelated changes include: (1) the mass mobilization of the population in response to wartime devastation, (2) the responsibility of the state to then provide material provisions for the populace, and (3) the institutional and organizational structures that emerged under these conditions that transferred to the postwar years. Understanding how and why WWII changed state society relations unveils significant continuities between the Communist and Nationalist Regimes as well as site of divergence. The war caused massive devastation and destruction, but also produced the foundations of state-society relations in the making of modern, national, political citizenship.
Since the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the imperial regime, intellectuals and political figures alike strove to formulate a legitimate “modern” government that combined Western science with Chinese culture. Sun Yat Sen proclaimed the former Qing subjects would become masters of the Republic through a period of political tutelage (Sun, 1994, 222-224). The Nationalists would not just govern, but also “build the state through the party (yi dang jian guo)” (Fitzgerald, 1996, 185). To continue Sun’s vision, Chang Kai-shek aimed to extend the reaches of the state into local society. However, the extent of the Nationalist’s state building project was limited by internal factionalism, conflicting interests with militarists who still held local power, resistance to civic campaigns such as the New Life Movement and a general lack of political participation or national awareness. The war fundamentally challenged this dynamic.
The national resistance against Japan became fatally intertwined with the livelihood of the population, thus unwittingly linking the individual to the nation as a whole. Japanese encroachment and destruction, especially in the east, spurred refugee migration that would “in turn help forge a national consciousness that would shape the country for decades to come” (Mitter 2013, 120). Families that had been tied to their local environment were forced to interact with the unfamiliar, fellow Chinese. Travel writer Du Zhongyuan used the disorder as an opportunity to “draft one unified narrative of China’s torment out of the stories of numberless local disasters” (Mitter 2013, 120). Just as the war uprooted existing social foundations, it planted the seeds to cultivate a meaningful national identity. Refugees had the choice to either stay loyal through joined resistance or to settle under Japanese imperialism. Further, “the war provided an opportunity for successful mobilization of society at a level that had not previously seemed possible in China” (Mitter 2013, 122). Cities such as wartime capital Chongging became “a microcosm of the nation itself” (Mitter 2013, 173). Previously ruled by a militarist Liu Xiang, the Sichuan province had retained substantial autonomy due to the limited power the Nationalists had on its territory and local rulerse. The onset of war pressured “warlords” such as Liu to submit to Chiang’s orders as representatives from every province were forced to learn to live and work together (Mitter 2013, 174). The war effort demanded greater contribution in various sectors from the newly mobilized masses: army recruitment, increased taxes, food supply, and means of propaganda to boost public morale. The party state mediated between state and society through a mix of propaganda, coercion and response to material necessity to mobilize and categorize citizenship around the common resistance effort.
Mass mobilization and political participation from the citizenry in turn reshaped the responsibility of the party to the people. Despite Chiang’s initial lack of faith in the masses, wartime devastation and the increasing demands of the state’s project of resistance meant it would have to depend on the masses. In turn, the state would have to provide for the people’s needs, mainly in the form of material provisions. The context of these provisions stressed the mutual, reciprocal obligations of state and society while also increasing the party’s roe in people’s everyday lives. City authorities felt pressured to more systematically deal with the aftermath of air raids, provide for refugee assistance, and define the Nationalist regime’s identity in competition with the Communist Party and Japanese Occupied zones (Mitter 2013, 179). Various organizations including New Life Movement committees, Public Works Office, and traditional local relief groups such as the Buddhist Red Swastika were incorporated within the unified effort to provide welfare and rehabilitation (Mitter 2013, 179). The newly formed Development and Relief Committee (Zhenji Weiyuanhui) assigned over 214 million yuan to relief work and created jobs for 90,000 refugees between 1937 and 1941. Incentives such as free hospital care and shelter increased participation for employees and public servants who staffed welfare institutions (Mitter 2013, 180). Wartime relief marked a significant shift from traditional welfare systems based on native place associations, local elites, or volunteers of the late imperial and Republican period to a more centralized, state directed program. The refugee crisis was used as a means of Nationalist state building that not only redefined citizenship, but the obligations of a modern state to its people, shared by the global family of nations throughout WWII.
As a result of the state’s increased responsibilities and extension into society, the government needed innovative ways to scientifically and effectively keep track of and organize the masses. To regulate relief provisions, the government made use of the identity document (ID). Wartime circumstances created, for the first time, an opportunity for state exercise of control over individuals through systematic documentation on a national level. Different types of IDs instituted by authorities allowed for different levels of access to assistance, provisions, and jobs. The ID system ensured bureaucratic control of the populace while also binding the fate of refugees to the state apparatus. By uniformly allocating the distribution of provisions, the state centralized control over the various lingering institutions that previously functioned independently. Military recruitment was also systematized in January 1938 with new regulations and target quotas (Mitter 2013, 181). The increase in state management of people mirrored its increasing economic control. A new Ministry of Economic Affairs, that incorporated the prewar National Resources Commission, nationalized major industries for wartime production (Mitter 2013, 183). The state cooperated with capitalists to more efficiently use the limited resources of the less industrialized interior and build the infrastructure necessary to face the ever-growing challenge of meeting supply demands throughout the War of Resistance.
However, the Nationalist Party State’s attempt to use institutions, organizations, and propaganda to build a citizenry with national consciousness and strengthen ties to the state was met with complications. For example, the ID system was often manipulated. The card, which contained information including social class, sex, age, place of origin, etc., in order to systematize rational distribution, created opportunities for corruption through using multiple or fake IDs (Mitter 2013, 179). Regulations made in response highlight the tendency for black market operations within the government already present before the war. Nevertheless, the distinctive categories of scientifically and rationally categorizing the citizenry outlined demands and requirements between the state and citizen. The effort to centrally organize around the system of welfare and entitlements highlight a significant shift in reciprocal state society relationships: acceptance of more assistance would also lead to more obligations and vice versa.
The war against Japan created a context for social mobilization, engaging the majority of society under the urgent claim to an identity linked closely to Chinese Nationalism. The Nationalist Party State’s significant improvements were also a response to competing pressures amongst similar agendas between the Communists and the Japanese. A collaborationist regime headed by Wang Jingwei used the slogan of “peace, national reconstruction, and anti- communism” to assume legitimacy by continuing Sun Yat-Sen’s supposedly vision of “Greater Asianism” in alliance with all Asian peoples including Japan (Weber 2011). Refugees, in formulating their identities as citizen, would, for the first time, have an active choice between loyalty to the Nationalist Party under Chiang or the Reformed Government under Wang. In contrast to the lack of political agency, consciousness, and national participation characterizing subjects in the late Imperial and Republican eras, the War set the stage for a form of self- identification as citizens directly linked to the state.
Chiang Kai Shek’s regime perceived the Communist Party as the major threat social order. Based predominantly in rural areas of the north, Yan’an became a “beacon of radical resistance” attracting over 100,000 migrants between 1937 and 1940, including the middle class, the educated, students, journalists, and teachers (Mitter 2013, 190). While Chongqing focused on reforming state society relations, the Communist project’s aim was complete, social revolution.
“The CCP wanted mass mobilization and was more enthusiastic about popular participation in political activity than the nationalists” (Mitter 2013, 195). With the War of Resistance as a rallying point of unity, Mao experimented with land reform, consolidated party ideology through the Rectification movement, instigated mass campaigns, and used party propaganda, among various tactics continuously used after war, to gain popular support. Meanwhile, the Nationalist regime, already spread thin over its various responsibilities, unraveled after 1941 from corruption, carelessness, and callousness. Increased taxes, monetary excesses, and insufficient resources created not only a financial crisis, but class tension (Mitter 2013, 273). The fundamental reciprocal relationship of responsibilities between state and society, which defined the citizen’s political identification, was undermined by inequalities in its implementation. Despite the Nationalist’s central planning of welfare programs, jobs, and grain rationing, hunger prevailed in highly populate areas such as of Henan (Mitter 2013, 263-279). The Communists were able to implement a more effective progressive tax system backed by increased agricultural yield largely due to rural organization around land reform, which upturned not only the outline of land ownership, but of an entire social structure (Mitter 2013, 278). By 1945, the CCP became a very real alternative to Chiang’s regime, with party membership increasing from just 40,000 in 1937 to over 1.2 million by 1945 (Mitter 2013, 194). The foundation of Mao’s victory in 1949 and the state-society changes that followed “lay in the ability of his wartime regime in Yan’an to mobilize peasants through nationalism, which further inspired them to embrace the social revolution of communism” (Mitter 2013, 371). Though the CCP attempted to upturn the existing class hierarchy and unequal societal conditions that was seen as a remnant of the Republic and KMT leadership, it also inherited responsibilities of state that materialized during war.
The war of resistance from 1937-1945 transformed the relationship between state and society. Wartime destruction compounded by the necessity for material provisions instigated mass mobilization in the form of refugees and military conscription. Identifying with the party state and its guarantee of welfare support inspired political consciousness as citizens participating in national resistance. The state, in return for its demands on the citizenry, assumed responsibility to provide for, organize, and respond to the masses’ demands. War-making was thus intertwined with state-making. While it increased pressure on Chiang’s pre-war party state building initiative, the massive projects also exacerbated the party’s limitations. Ultimately, the Nationalist bureaucracy failed to fully bind the nation together after the war, creating an opportunity for the more organized, well equipped (particularly with Soviet aid), and popularly supported Communist Party to claim previously occupied territory and political power. Nevertheless, despite the CCP’s attempt after 1949 to bolster its role in WWII and downplay the Nationalists’ achievements in official historiography, a closer examination of changes in state- society relations leading up to, during, and after the war suggest much continuity between the Communist and Nationalist regimes. The Communist Revolution entailed not solely an overthrow or takeover of state, but careful political planning based on pre-existing societal conditions. The eight-year span of anti-Japanese resistance offers a framework into changes between state and society, but it is also limited, incomplete, and non-uniform. The balance between classes, rural urban spaces, and new versus old ways of organizing society continued to pose a challenge for Communist leaders who often compromised with and worked alongside pre- existing Nationalist officials and institutions to meet specific local demands (Westad 2003, 116- 119). Mao declared just months before the founding of the People’s Republic only Communist leadership was able to “internally, arouse the masses of the people” and “externally unite in a common struggle”, setting the conditions possible for democratic dictatorship led by the people (Mao 1949, 354). Emerging from WWII, the formation of a new sense of citizenship, nationalism, and worldview must be seen not merely dialectically opposed to the Nationalist State, but also importantly contingent on the legacy of wartime China that continues to influence the state’s path dependent governance of society and relationship to its citizens.
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