Chen Jiongming And The Federalist Movement

The local self-government movement in China began in the late Qing, and by the Revolution of 1911 no less than five thousand self-government councils had formed around the country. While the idea of a federated state was cherished by early revolutionaries, a growing conflict between federalist and centralist leaders culminated in the defeat of federalism in the mid-1920s. The story of this movement has since remained hidden behind Nationalist and Communist accounts of the early revolutionary struggle. This study of Chen Jiongming's political career reopens the record on federalist efforts, focusing on Chen's policies and administrative achievements in Fujian and Guangdong. It describes Chen's role in the tumultuous politics of southern China from 1909 until his death in 1933, including his relationship and notorious break with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the centralist revolutionaries. Leslie Chen argues that his father's attempts to create a democratic, federalist system in Guangdong were aimed at providing a model for China as a whole. His account is lively and readable; it gives an intimate, yet historically accurate, account of Chen Jiongming's considerable role in early twentieth-century Chinese history. Leslie Chen was born in Guangdong, China. In 1988 he compiled "A Collection of Historiographic Materials for a Biography of Chen Chiung-ming [Jiongming], 1878-1933." He has published two Chinese-language biographies of Chen Jiongming.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the ways in which China’s men of guns (so-called “warlords”) and men of letters (May Fourth intellectuals) engaged one another for the making of a Chinese federation between 1919 and 1923.

The local self-government movement in China began in the late Qing, and by the Revolution of 1911 no fewer than five thousand self-government councils had formed around the country. While the early revolutionaries cherished the idea of a federated state, federalist and centralist leaders engaged in a growing conflict that culminated in the defeat of federalism in the mid-1920s. The story of this movement has since remained hidden behind Nationalist and Communist accounts of the early revolutionary struggle. Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement reopens the record on federalist efforts from the perspective of the son of one of the movement’s key figures. Challenging the accepted accounts of the federalist movement, Leslie Chen focuses on his father Chen Jiongming's policies and administrative achievements in Fujian and Guangdong. Chen Jiongming played a key role in the tumultuous politics of southern China from 1909 until his death in 1933. He built a relationship and then notoriously broke with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the centralist revolutionaries. Leslie Chen argues that his father's attempts to create a democratic federalist system in Guangdong were aimed at providing a model for China as a whole. His account is lively and readable; it gives an intimate, yet historically accurate, account of Chen Jiongming's considerable role in early twentieth-century Chinese history.

This book offers research on state and society in Republican China, exploring various aspects of Republican history from the governance perspective. Governance is understood in a broader sense as interactions between state and society, including both the discursive process of social decision-making and the provision of (non-)material public goods. The topics highlighted are: the internationalization of disaster relief, the philanthropic governance of overseas Chinese in Xiamen, the transformation of the cultural group "World Society," historical writing, intellectual autonomy, as well as the construction of warlord identity. (Series: Chinese History and Society / Berliner China-Hefte - Vol. 43)

Economic modernity is so closely associated with nationhood that it is impossible to imagine a modern state without an equally modern economy. Even so, most people would have difficulty defining a modern economy and its connection to nationhood. In Saving the Nation, Margherita Zanasi explores this connection by examining the first nation-building attempt in China after the fall of the empire in 1911. Challenging the assumption that nations are products of technological and socioeconomic forces, Zanasi argues that it was notions of what constituted a modern nation that led the Nationalist nation-builders to shape China’s institutions and economy. In their reform effort, they confronted several questions: What characterized a modern economy? What role would a modern economy play in the overall nation-building effort? And how could China pursue economic modernization while maintaining its distinctive identity? Zanasi expertly shows how these questions were negotiated and contested within the Nationalist Party. Silenced in the Mao years, these dilemmas are reemerging today as a new leadership once again redefines the economic foundation of the nation.

China has become an undisputed global phenomenon, yet twenty-five years ago, its remarkable accomplishments were largely unforeseen. In an ambitious effort to predict China's coming decades, this book explores not only the economic development that has been a key indicator of its success but the often veiled political, social, and international determinants that will be crucial. Leading scholars draw on their years of experience and on-the-ground understanding of current trends to make informed estimates of China's path, positing that its future may well hold neither threat nor collapse. All of the contributors provide a set of scenarios and order them in terms of likelihood, including the seven factors they have identified as central to charting China's future: the Communist Party, local electoral reforms and rule of law, the federalist possibility, social unrest, foreign policy orientations, Sino-American relations, and the Taiwan conundrum. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand China as it rises in power on the world stage. Contributions by: Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Jae Ho Chung, Bruce J. Dickson, Peter Hays Gries, Tao-chiu Lam, Yawei Liu, Gilbert Rozman, and Shiping Tang

For over a century, voting has been a surprisingly common political activity in China. Voting as a Rite examines China’s experiments with elections from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history. Rather than arguing that such exercises were either successful or failed attempts at political democracy, the book instead focuses on a previously unasked question: how did those who participated in Chinese elections define success or failure for themselves? Answering this question reveals why Chinese elites originally became enamored of elections at the end of the nineteenth century, why critics complained about elections that featured real competition in the early twentieth century, and why elections continued to be held after the mid-twentieth century even though outcomes were predetermined by the state. While no mainland Chinese government has ever felt that its rule required validation at the ballot box, the discourses that surrounded elections reveal much about important tensions within modern Chinese political thought. What is the best means to identify talent? Can the state trust the people to act responsibly as citizens? As Joshua Hill shows, elections are vital, not peripheral, to understanding these concerns fully.