Government in Republican China Part 7

[4] See above, pp. 51 ff.

[5] Lin Yutang, _Letters of a Chinese Amazon and War-Time Essays_, p.

vi, Shanghai, 1930.

[6] See below, pp. 182 ff.

[7] See below, p. 184 ff.

[8] On the Sian incident see General and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, _General Chiang Kai-shek_, Garden City, 1937; James M. Bertram, _First Act in China_, New York, 1938, an account by an Australian newspaperman in Sian at the time; and Edgar Snow, _Red Star over China_, New York, 1938--an extraordinarily valuable work on all phases of Chinese Communism, by an observer of great insight and acuteness.

[9] See the references below, p. 190, n. 10.

[10] See Yoshi S. Kuno, _j.a.panese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent_, vol. I, Berkeley, 1937, for an authoritative description of early Sino-j.a.panese relations. Chinese records of the time of Christ describe the payment of tribute by j.a.panese chieftains. The most explicit acknowledgment of Chinese suzerainty occurred in the time of Yoshemitsu, the third Ashikaga shogun (see Kuno, pp. 92-93).

[11] The j.a.panese patriotic leagues are described in Kenneth Colegrove, _Militarism in j.a.pan_, Boston, 1936.

[12] w.a.n.g Ming, _China Can Win!_ p. 44, New York, 1938. w.a.n.g Ming is a Chinese expert on Marxism residing in the U. S. S. R.

[13] See below, pp. 184 ff.

SECOND PART

ARMIES

_Chapter_ IV

WARRIORS

From the outside, militarism seems to dominate the Chinese scene. China is frequently interpreted in terms of personalities instead of ma.s.s inclinations, wide-filtering habits, and extensive relocations of thought. The picturesqueness of the Chinese leaders has done nothing to prevent the notion of many romantic autocracies from appearing real: the Dog-Meat General, six feet tall, diabolically cruel and brazenly comic, with his veritable zoological garden of ladies from all over the world; the Christian General, burly, bluff, honest, Christian and Bolshevik, with the happy navete of a feudal politician; the Bandit General and his infatuation with fine a.r.s.enals; the Generalissimo, with his Christian wife, himself a Christian, rolling up a military machine against the third greatest naval power of the earth--such figures make Chinese news a confused but exciting serial story.

_Military Rule and Political Economy_

For long-range effects, the literary experiments of men like Hu Shih and the ma.s.s-education drive of Dr. James Yen and his a.s.sociates are more significant than any one of hundreds of military leaders, but long-range trends are never news. The armies and their commanders have occupied the center of the stage, overshadowing the quest of the Chinese for civilian rule. Civilian rule, however, presupposes a sufficient area of common agreement on which to build laws and usages for government; armies require nothing but a nearly mechanical discipline and the crudest rule of thumb administration. The civilian government of Republican China has had to await the coming of at least a minimum of order out of the turmoil; armies, for lack of government, have dominated and continued that turmoil. China has been disunited in great part because she was impoverished by military rule; she has been ruled by arms partly because she was disunited. No unifier of the nation would have needed to maintain the armed hordes which were the greatest impediment to real national defense--hordes powerful enough to wreck governments but not powerful enough to build them. The war lords, as they are perhaps too flatteringly termed, do by no means measure up to the note of the intellectual and political leaders; but they have unquestionably held the greater bulk of day-to-day authority in China since 1912.

The most significant function of the armies is one which is quite frequently overlooked: their power as agencies of unsettlement. They have created disturbances more profound than mere public disorder; they have attacked inst.i.tutions more vital than the public treasury; they have kept all parts of China from the dull apathy of conservatism. The arrogance and rapacity of the military rulers, their utter incompetence as administrators (with a number of honorable exceptions), and their ineffectiveness as propagandists have provided that loose and haphazard tyranny which some philosophers consider the prime requisite for social ferment. The military men have never been intelligent enough to impose truly totalitarian regimes, nor efficient enough to make the people of any one area content with a permanent separatism. The presence of the military rank and file has turned the Chinese social system upside down, reversing the accepted scale of ranks within the society and infringing upon the interests of every group--even the minimum interest of the very poor, their right not to starve to death. More conspicuously, the armies have given a picture of power which, in contrast with the scarcely traceable lines of influence and persuasion arising from ideological movements, is intelligible and reducible to concrete terms.

Without the militarists, there would have been no visible series of events to trace the change in China, no stereotypes at all by which to show the immediate alterations on the scene of power. Many men did rise and fall regardless of military considerations, but such occurrences were loosely and popularly ascribed to intrigue or else dismissed as beyond all rational understanding. The armies subsisted and roamed about, leaders and men both helpless on a sea of ignorance and doctrinal conflict; but the mere a.s.sent to unthinking discipline looked like order, and the most shadowy and insubstantial military hierarchy held out a promise of Caesarian peace. From 1915 to 1925 foreign comment stressed the movements of the war lords, singling out the man who might play the role of a Chinese Napoleon, and to the present this simple approach satisfies many. Meanwhile the foundations of social life shifted, falling away here, growing more solid there, behind the gloomy panorama of brutal, ineffectual warfare.

Closely related to the problem of armies was another category partially understandable in narrowly factual terms--political economy. The armies conditioned and set the pace, a slow one, for economic development. All financial projects were jeopardized by military rule, both by the exactions which the military might impose and by the constant threat that militarists, devaluating the currency or arbitrarily changing the political controls of economy, might alter the very economic system in which the project was being considered and fostered. Economic life in China could not continue through the traditional agricultural, guild, semicapitalist devices; Western trade and social dislocation prevented that. Yet no new economy could automatically replace the ruins of the old, since economic matters were part of a _political_ economy subject to the extra-economic interferences which ideological change, military power, and halfway government could impose. One of the truly important achievements of the National Government at Nanking was the creation of a core for a twentieth century army. But all the military achievements in modern China pale before the staggering surprise of a managed currency, displacing a commodity and specie system which was older than all modern warfare.

One need not subscribe to either military or economic determinism to concede the relevance of military and economic matters in any society.

In China there exists a peculiarly close correlation between the two.

The absence of a cla.s.s founded squarely on economic privilege and the subordination of the military to the bureaucratic elements in the imperial society were largely the result of the position occupied by the average nonacademic Chinese, who was typically a farmer capable of being a militiaman or a bandit. This duality of role strongly affected the development of government in China, and is a factor which still plays a great part. The Chinese owe many of their social and political peculiarities to the effectiveness of their ma.s.s action, which is able to take place with a minimum of formal leadership and coordination and with a maximum of secrecy and totality. In times when foreign conquest of China is no longer in the realm of the improbable, it is worth remembering that the Chinese are a people adamant in resistance to force and schooled in centuries of rebellion. Neither pacific nor military resistance could take place in the traditional Chinese way without the diffusion of military and economic power among broad ma.s.ses of the population.

How, it may be asked, have the Chinese succeeded in being such a peaceful people, and yet a people so p.r.o.ne to popular uprising? How is it that, with their great talents for organization, they have let a shabby third-rate militarism sweep their land in modern times? The Chinese generals did not command the allegiance widely extended to even the meanest of South American despots; yet the people trembled before them. Not until the war lords lost power was there great popular enthusiasm for military ideals. If Chinese armies are considered solely as rough and primitive parallels to their European counterparts, paradox will follow paradox without rational explanation. To understand the Chinese military situation one must go back across the centuries and trace a system and a tradition which, at times obscure and frequently submerged, must come to the surface in the decisions upon which rest the question of national life or death for China.

_The Downfall of the Charioteers_

The Chinese have differed from other peoples not in being peaceful so much as in extolling peace. Not even in the Christian tradition of peace and love are there condemnations of war stronger than those of the Confucians. Yet, century to century, the Chinese have known war against the outside barbarians and with each other. Throughout historic times there are records of struggle and slaughter. H. G. Creel writes, "If we are to locate the traditional Chinese time of 'great peace' it must be far back in the Neolithic stage. Experts agree that in the earlier of the Neolithic sites known to us there is little evidence of warfare."[1]

At the very edge of history, about 1500 B. C., the Chinese appear as accomplished archers, using bows which were probably not dissimilar to those in use down to the twentieth century--heavy reflex bows, with a pull that was sometimes far greater than the longbow of the celebrated English yeomen of medieval times. The pellet bow, a form of slingshot, was also common in the earliest times. Armor was known in the earliest historic dynasty, the Shang, which by Chinese tradition is dated 1765-1123 B. C. The chariot, however, seems to have been less widely used than it later came to be.[2]

Under the Chou dynasty, in all Chinese history the most caste-bound, militaristic, and feudal (traditionally dated 1122-256 B. C.), the implements of warfare and the management of conflict fell into the hands of the ruling cla.s.s. Previous to the Chou there was a relative military equality of all, despite the sharp lines between masters and men. After the Chou the great military states culminating in the warrior-bureaucrat tyranny of the Ch'in Shih Huang Ti (third century B. C.) tended to reduce war to ma.s.s movements, in which establishments, management, and broader considerations constantly increased. During this period the master cla.s.s developed a scheme which was not as elaborately traced out in legal terms as Norman-English feudalism, nor as solidly grounded in outright military effectiveness as the j.a.panese system twenty-odd centuries later, but which amounted to a chivalric order within the limits of an ideology rooted in the family. The lords were the spiritual guardians and clan leaders as well as the earthly despots of their subjects. Standing above the law and invested with positions of high political dignity, their cla.s.s nearly became a caste. Warfare--as apart from slaughter--was formalized and ritualized beyond all Western dreams of gallantry. According to Marcel Granet, who has brilliantly described public life of the period,

The battle is a confused melee of boasts, generosities, homages, insults, devotions, curses, blessings and sorceries. Much more than a clash of arms, it is a duel of moral values, an encounter of competing honours.... The battle is the great moment in which each warrior proves his n.o.bility, while in addition they prove to all present the n.o.bility of their prince, their cause and their country.[3]

Our very word _chivalry_ suggests hors.e.m.e.n; the Chinese n.o.bles ruled their elaborate realm not from horseback but from chariots. The education of every patrician youth involved archery, music, writing, and reckoning, among other arts and virtues.[4] Archery was something which might be learned, after a fashion, by large numbers of common men; even peasants, with a bow and a lance or pike, might const.i.tute light cavalry when provided, or providing themselves, with mounts. But the use of the four-horse chariot necessarily remained the exclusive privilege of the n.o.bles. The chariot fighter had to have a driver and one or two others with him in his vehicle, which was itself costly, hard to obtain, and difficult to operate. A Chou n.o.ble driving forth to war thirty centuries ago was as technical a unit as an aviator in a combat plane today or a small group of men in a tank. Just as there is a democracy implicit in the light machine gun or the automatic rifle, so was there the potentiality of equality in vast ma.s.ses of infantry, supported by light, cheaply armed cavalry. Aristocratic individualism meant something when wars were short and fought with elaborate equipment; but no n.o.ble could stand up against the ma.s.s forces which emerged and continued fighting until the feudal system lost any real significance and left the country open to the development of bureaucratic government and military power.

There was no overt attack on the feudal system. The system, however, possessed within itself contradictions which led to its doom. The central power was insufficient to keep the peace, and certain local groups were--by talent, economic factors, or geography--too strong to remain subordinate. The period known as the Spring and Autumn epoch (Ch'un Ch'iu; 770-473 B. C.) yielded to that known as the Age of Warring States (Chan Kuo; 473-221 B. C.). From feudal cores there grew states, which began to follow the course of development that led to the appearance of a system of sovereign nations in Europe; they increasingly interfered with the free operation of the feudal economy. By effecting the ma.s.sing of power they eliminated the overawing charioteer from the field of decisive combat.[5] The chariots remained as the vehicles of the leaders or the focal points of battles, but they no longer implied a skill so great as to make up a monopoly of first-rate military force.

While the most eminent thinker of the age, Confucius, lamented the decline of order, a new order was being shaped from the social, economic, and military realities laid bare by rapid development, Machiavellian intrigue, and the hard necessities of wartime economies.

The state of Ch'in, a Chinese Prussia, attained overwhelming hegemony in the third century before Christ. Its power rested on universal registration of the inhabitants, conscription, heavy policing, taxation involving constant intervention in economic matters, and legalistic administration. In its warfare there was little of the ritual which characterized the military period when chariots were dominant; codes did not amount to much. The immediate end of war was slaughter for political and economic purposes, not the hazardous parade of a feudal cla.s.s. The Ch'in monarch who finally established a centralized empire took the vainglorious t.i.tle of Shih Huang Ti (The First Emperor), and set himself the task of eradicating the regionalist ideologies of his conquered rivals by suppressing all political history but that of his native state. Proceeding from innovation to innovation, he ended by becoming one of the historic figures detested by later epochs. One of the practices which he extended throughout the Empire of China was the regularization of military service. He is also known as the originator of the grandiose project of the Great Wall; it is less well known that he forbade the erection of walls around cities within the Empire. His system of conscription involved three years of compulsory military service for all young men, and a corvee of three days' service each year at the frontier for every citizen; the former came to depend for its inclusiveness upon administrative integrity, while the latter was soon replaced by a money tax.

Although the First Empire established by the Ch'in did not last long, the Han dynasty (202 B. C. to A. D. 220) continued its military system[6] and kept standing armies at the northern frontier and at the imperial capital. The frontier forces were composed of militia augmented for special campaigns by volunteers and criminals. The Chinese fought the barbarians with the tactics of mounted archers, devices learned from the nomads. Away from the northern steppes, infantry seems to have gained constantly in importance. By the time of Christ the chivalry of the religious-social-military cla.s.s of charioteers was ancient history, and ma.s.s armies had taken their place.

_Military Elements in Chinese Imperial History_

Through the greater part of the past two thousand years, Chinese society has been governed by civilians. The scholastic bureaucracy secured and kept a position of primacy, and a common ranking of the social cla.s.ses was: scholars, farmers, merchants, soldiers. The Confucians were antagonistic to war, and bureaucrats--if for governmental reasons alone--suspected the danger which lay in the broad dissemination of military knowledge. The Chinese consistently ranked the military man below the civilian; as a natural consequence most of the abler men went into scholarship and politics. Chinese history has its great military names and ample accounts of spectacular military exploits, but even here the elements of strategy, of diplomatic and cunning warfare, rate higher than in the corresponding European histories. Despite the fact that arms did not play as great a role in Chinese history as in Western, the difference is one of degree only; military considerations appeared and persisted which colored governmental action and social organization.

Among these was the relation of the armed forces to the social order--in point of numbers and in point of force. When elections are lacking in a civilized society, fighting power demarcates an electorate of force, as it were; the distribution of power determines the center of political gravity as located in the society. In China there were, however, elements distinctly different from those in the West.

One of these was the correlation of ma.s.s power and military power. In epoch after epoch, armies seem to spring forth out of the very soil--armed groups radically unlike the Roman legion. For seasoned veterans marching forth with elaborately effective disciplines China subst.i.tuted ma.s.s forces drawn directly from the populace, as need arose.

In some dynasties the system was regularized in militia form. Of the Han, H. H. Dubs writes:

Chinese armies were largely militia. Everyone was compelled to serve three years in the army or in forced labor; at the northern border, the whole male population had constantly to be ready to repel Hun forays. Hence all males seem to have been able to fight and to be required to do so. When the Emperor Wu [ca. 120 B. C.] wanted armies and none would volunteer, he merely had his officials sentence criminals to army service--and thus secured armies which seemed to be able to fight as successfully as his previous armies. Universal military conscription plus a registration of all able-bodied males seems to have been the Han method.[7]

The common people had crossbows for shooting birds or p.r.o.nged hoes for digging which were efficient even in fighting standing armies; they were also frequently in possession of weapons because they were called up as militia against barbarians. Underlying such military conditions, with their highly important political consequences, there were several surprisingly concrete and simple mechanical considerations. The charioteers had come to an end partly because the chariots were drawn by horses yoked in such a fashion that when the horses pulled hard, they often choked themselves. Other factors are suggested by Dubs:

By the time that horses became plentiful, so that cavalry was employed, the crossbow had reached such a state of development that cavalry was shown to be inferior to infantry with crossbows. The medieval European crossbow was hampered by the mechanical weakness of its trigger mechanism--the crossbow was likely to be discharged prematurely by a jar; the Chinese Han crossbow had no such defect and was a powerful weapon. A group of crossbowmen with others in the rear to string crossbows and others to bring c.o.c.ked bows to the marksmen in the front rank, could shoot down cavalry before they could come near enough to discharge the lighter bows cavalry necessarily carried.

c.o.c.ked crossbows could be carried around safely and fired when needed.

A bolt from a powerful crossbow could pierce any armor. Hence the strong-backed peasant with a crossbow had an advantage over the n.o.ble no matter how well the n.o.ble was armed or how good horses the latter possessed. The only advantage retained by the n.o.ble was that of leadership--tactical skill and command of large bodies of infantry.

Cavalry became useful for scouting and pursuit chiefly.[8]

The character of military techniques caused Chinese politics to be qualified by rebellion or the fear of rebellion. The difference between a mob and an army became slight. In times of poor government there were rebellions almost yearly. Insurrectionary forces gained momentum overnight; from era to era huge mobs, tens and hundreds of thousands strong, swept away governmental armies and erased corrupt or oppressive dynasties. The process may be described as popular unrest made effective with arms, which professional armies could not resist. The low place of the soldier in society prevented men of genius from organizing a dominant military caste; the professional armies were insufficient to make military government effective. By a crude and brutal democracy of mob and murder the populace of China could destroy dynasties and governments whenever economic, social, or political conditions veered too far beyond the limits of the tolerable.

Trained fighters there were, but they had the function of frontier defense; when civil war broke out behind them, the imperial governments frequently called back the frontier forces together with the barbarians they had been fighting. At least two great dynasties, the T'ang and the Ming, were destroyed because they used the nomads of the northern wilds in order to put down domestic insurrections. Light cavalry supplemented enormous bodies of infantry. In fact, the Chinese were put down by foreign conquerors only when the foreigners had Chinese allies, or when a campaign of terror had broken the spirit of popular resistance.

Chinese warfare showed the disadvantages as well as the advantages of being carried on by what were in effect militia forces. The cruelty was personal and direct, and not covered with fine disclaimers; restraint of armed forces was the distinguished exception rather than the rule. The line between soldier and peasant was one which could be crossed easily, and the line between soldiery and banditry a matter of intention. At its best, military technique was honest and robustly egalitarian; at its worst it led to abuse of force such as lynching, robbery, and fanatical turbulence. The formal records of Chinese dynasties show the use of trained armies in foreign expeditions, in some of which they achieved feats of military accomplishment which rank with any of world history.

Domestic troops were also employed as guards and ornamental bodies attached to the throne and other great offices of the Empire.

The convenience of rebellion was such as to make revolt a part of the unwritten const.i.tutional practice--that broad ideological framework upon which the Chinese world rested. It was sanctioned by the cla.s.sics. It served as a barometer of popular opinion. An unsuccessful rebellion, one without the dimmest chance of success, might well be launched by intelligent and patriotic men because its very appearance could prompt the government to reform. In the words of one of the earliest Western writers on the subject: