S10: War and Nationalism

• What do you think about your role and your class status?
• Is it fair? What is fair?
• What can you learn about land reform (and about socialism) from the role play?

• Explain the title: What does fanshen mean?
• How would you describe the long bow village and its inhabitants?
• Who were the work team members? What was their relationship to the villagers?
• How were the class labels assigned? What about borderline cases?

Complex criteria (not all official):

• Hardworking or lazy
• Frugal or wasteful
• Personal character
• Household wealth

Divisive quarreling, even among class enemies:

• Who exploited more people?
• Who oppressed others?
• Who was counterrevolutionary?
• Who employed more lackeys?

• CCP Central Committee on Oct 10, 1947: “Chinas irrational landholding system” as greatest obstacle
• Confiscation of land from collaborators, evil gentry, local tyrants
• Not just making peasants beneficiaries of revolution, but also method of mobilization and recruitment
• Display of power: party on the side of the good, with power to enforce popular will

• Dominance over economy and society (through redistribution of wealth and new peasant associations)
• New categories of political entitlement (class labels)
• New class of political elites and activists (CCP members)

• State centric, but also dependent on local power and organization
• Revival of state power based on new alliance with local leaders
• Negotiation of contradictory of interests between state and society
• New social hierarchy as a synthesis of local and state interests

• Property as symbol of power abuse, rather than source of power
• Redistributing land is easier than redistributing power
• How to make a majority of villages participate in the process
• Retributive struggle and material incentives as catalysts for building proletarian consciousness

• Land reform dependent on leadership at all levels
• Diversity of practices, with many exceptions and allowances
• De-centralized policy implementation: Not just a bug, but a feature of Chinese political economy
• Combination of centralized guiding principles with localized practices

• Creation of socialist peasants and new political culture: Values, expectations, and implicit rules
• Propaganda: Not just a tool for indoctrination, but formed and enacted by audience
• Concessions to local cultural traditions: Preference for
• In the reverse direction: Can political life in be understood as a mode of mass participatory theatre?

• Mass line mobilization: Enthusiasm of local population would overcome objective obstacles
• “Crack Troops and Simple Administration”: Reduce bureaucracy
• More moderate economic policies: Private sector viewed as progressive, rather tan reactionary
• Self-sufficiency as ideal: alternative to capitalism, and only way to deal with isolation

• Born in Manchuria to Japanese parents.
• Began singing on the radio at 13 as Li Xianglan
• As a Chinese speaker, Yamaguchi began her acting career in Manchukuo propaganda films at 18.
• She played the same role in each film: a downtrodden Chinese woman who falls in love with a Japanese man.

• After Japan’s defeat, the Nationalist government arrested Yamaguchi for treason: “a Chinese impostor who used her outstanding beauty to make films that humiliated China and compromised Chinese dignity.”
• After the war, re-established her career as “Ri Koran”, a Japanization of Li Xianglan
• Where is home? China her “home country” and Japan her “ancestral country”, but her life never fully recovered from the war between them.

• Wu Zhuoliu’s 1945 autobiographical novel depicts Hu Taiming, a Taiwanese man raised with Chinese traditions during the Japanese occupation.
• Taiming excels in the Japanese system but feels alienated and recognizes the injustice of colonialism.
• He searches for belonging in Japan and China but is ultimately accused of spying for both.

• How did WWII shape China and Chinese nationalism?
• How to think about collaboration? Case of Puyi
• How is the war remembered today? Was WWII China’s good war?

• 500K square miles, from the Great Wall to Siberia, twice the size of Texas
• Diversity of environments: from arctic taiga to prairie grasslands, coastal rainforests to semiarid deserts to alluvial wetlands

• Three provinces east of the Greater Khingan Range, namely Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang
• Often referred to as China’s Rust Belt

• Manchuria as preserve of Manchu heritage
• Restriction of Han Chinese migration
• Alliance with non-Manchu Tungus and Mongol peoples based on tribute system
• System of banner garrisons as principal means of political control
• Monopoly in lucrative trade: Ginseng, fur, horses

• Migration ban relaxed by 1902
• Response to Russian and Japanese expansion in the region, and to famine in north China
• 8 million migrants between 1890 and 1942

• 1895: Treaty of Shimonoseki
• 1905: South Manchurian sphere of influence after victory in Russo-Japanese War

• If colonizing Korea was seen as critical step to securing Japan, Manchuria’s strategic location was critical to secure Korea.
• Korea as the key objective and the real prize of the Russo-Japanese War

• Leasehold over Liaodong Peninsula (later Kwantung Leased Territory)
• Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway from Changchun to Liishun (later Mantetsu, the South Manchurian Railway)
• Railway zone, which land along railway track and key railway towns

• Governor general in Korea and Taiwan
• Colonial military garrisons: two divisions in Korea, one in the Kwantung Leased Territory, and several garrisons in Taiwan
• Financial institutions: Bank of Taiwan and Korea
• Semi-public companies: South Manchurian Railway and Oriental Development Company.
• Police force: Street-level administration

• Regular army division and heavy siege artillery battalion in the Kwantung Leased Territory
• Two-fold strategic mission:
  • Secure concessions to build new strategic rail lines
  • ensure that Manchuria remained free of the political and military instability in ROC

• Japan’s largest corporation
• Expanded Russian-built railway into largest rail network in Asia
• Operated coal mines, harbor and port facilities
• Subsidiary corporations: millet, sorghum, coal, soybeans
• Research wing became center of Japanese colonial research

• Kwantung Army and South Manchurian Railroad as main employers of empire
• Japanese civilian population in Manchuria: from 16,612 in 1906 to 233,749 in 1930
• Most managerial, urban, and professional: manufacturing, commerce, transportation, public service as key industries

• Japan backed Manchurian Zhang Zuolin
• Zhang Zuolin was targeted by the Northern Expedition
• In 1928, Kwantung army acted without Japanese gov consent and killed Zhang to prevent Chiang Kai-shek influence in Manchuria

• Emperor Hirohito ordered PM Tanaka Giichi to discipline the army
• Tanaka, ineffective, resigned
• Too powerful to fail: By 1929, the army could act independently of the gov without fear of consequence

• Great Depression further weakened Japanese gov
• Next PM Hamaguchi Yuko could not solve the Great Depression and was shot by right-wing radical in Nov 1930
• US tariffs increased duties on Japanese goods led to failures of silk industry and rapid unemployment
• Full control over Manchuria predicted to be a Japanese “lifeline” and “our only means of survival”

• Security: Buffer to Russia
• Source of raw materials: Coal, iron, timber, soybeans
• Markets to help withstand impact of global depression
• Four times larger than Japan: Living space for Japan’s population

• Son of assassinated warlord Zhang Zuolin
• Took his revenge against Japan by pushing for rights recovery, stepping up rival investments
• Allied with Chiang Kai-shek to bring Manchuria under the control of the Nationalist
• KMT 1931 foreign policy: Return of the Kwantung Leased Territory and recovery of rights to operate Mantetsu

• Staged explosion of Mantetsu track near the Chinese military base in Fengtian (now Shenyang)
• Japan used the alleged attack as a pretext to open fire on the Chinese garrison.
• Between September 18, 1931, and the Tanggu Truce of May 31 , 1933: four provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Rehe brought under Japanese military control.

• By 1932, Manchuria was wholly occupied by the Japanese
• Not formal annexation of the Northeast and creation of a Japanese colony
• Instead, creation of Manchukuo an independent state in March 1932, under Puyi, last emperor of Qing dynasty

• Describe the life of the boy, Puyi, growing up as the emperor. Was he really ruling China as a boy? Explain.
• What activities were happening outside of the Forbidden City as Emperor Puyi got older?
• What impact did Emperor Puyi’s tutor, Johnston, have on Puyi and the Forbidden City?
• What is a “eunuch” and why did Emperor Puyi kick them out of the Forbidden City?

• What did the Japanese want with Puyi?
• Why did Puyi want to become emperor of Manchuria?