China and Taiwan Need to Reassert the United Front and its Objectives
Perhaps the Global Development Initiative can be the new United Front, requiring more than “feeling the stones to cross the river” as advised by Deng Xiaoping.
With Miroslaw Manicki
The Chinese have never ceded cultural superiority to the West. Culturally, socially, and historically, they have never considered that the West has much to offer. The attitude of the Qianlong Emperor in 1793 when confronted by George Macartney’s naval entourage from Britain, offering many kinds of manufactured and craft items. The emperor saw them as trinkets.
Also, he was offended when the foreigners inferred that gifts offered to him might also be enjoyed by the common people. Chinese emperors had long accepted tribute from other, presumed inferior countries. There was no pathway for commoners to enjoy the same.
Over the years, the Chinese rated stability higher than individual prerogative, as had been the norm in Northern Europe as it emerged from its dark age. When imperial regimes became corrupt, others came in to conquer, but then the Chinese culture and norms conquered them back. It had been that way for two thousand years. The fundamental question was one of food production and the requirements of this, particularly regarding waterworks and their novel program for agriculture without deplete the soil. China achieved high performance as a civilization on the basis of this.
What is unified about modern Chinese politics
The Qing dynasty as represented by this emperor was on the downward slope when the British navy showed up in the late 18th century. This made them even less interested in assimilating foreign influences than might have been the case. It was unlikely that there would have been very much interest, particularly not from government leadership.
Chinese thought coalesced around certain themes throughout the 19th century as the Chinese suffered loss after loss to the foreigners. Without belaboring the point, they suffered humiliation, genocide, untold corruption, unfair dealing, enforced drug addiction, and destruction of much of what they had held dear. They were enslaved in their own land.
Nonetheless, they were still proud. The culture had bent but was not broken. Their filial connections were largely intact. They were able to bask in the joy of their Confucian roots. There had been successes along the way, and they had learned from these. Certain Chinese had entered the international stage and had done well. They were prepared to enter into the world stage with a unique kind of contribution.
As a matter of fact, the Qing dynasty was no more just over a hundred years later, as foreign influences encouraged the fall of the empire and the nascent rise of republican desires for China. This was in 1911 and the main leader of the new cause was a Hawaii-trained physician named Sun Yatsen. It could be said that he was the George Washington of China, but that is a dangerous simplification. He was their first major leader of reform.
James Jiao/Adobe Stock
The new regime failed, and chaos ensued. Dr. Sun continued the effort, first from the south and later throughout the country. This served as a lightning rod for Chinese reformers, old and young.
Muddied water from the West
There had always been a general misunderstanding among foreigners as to China’s position, its hopes and its collective desires during those times and onward. This continued in part because vestiges of European influence and some elements of control persisted in early decades of the 20th century. Westerners continued to consider themselves as superior to the Chinese as with the cultures and peoples of the rest of the world. They considered everyone as being inferior to them, including in religion, in art, in literature, in education, in music, and in science.
Nonetheless, the Europeans were more than eager to exercise depravity in the removal of cultural and historical artifacts from around the world. It is interesting, as well, that they had earlier imported the elements of culture and civilization from the very areas they had attempted to colonize and subjugate. Central to it all, their various Christian traditions had originated in the oldest of all worlds, in the Middle East, with its influences from all directions.
They came to China, as they had gone around the world, offering the three ‘m’s’ of ‘missionaries, merchants, and military’. The Chinese were not interested in any of these, certainly not in the context under which it was being presented. these were being presented most forcefully under a presumption of superiority. This was not that the intruders did not feel too superior to steal things.
Unbroken, the Chinese knew that they were vulnerable. Seeing themselves as culturally superior, they knew that they needed to import practical knowledge from the West. This, too, was ironic, because many of the technologies presented to the Chinese in the form of war and destructive capacity had originate in China, if not having been enhanced there in earlier times (Needham, 1981).
Dr. Sun has a plan
They were shocked at the lack of success under the 1911 Republic under President Sun. The Republic soon fell apart and Sun began to organize the Nationalist (Kuomintang) organization in the south. Energy flowed into a major effort to learn all that there was to learn, and to embrace what worked. This was largely expressed in the May Fourth Movement, a 1919 initiave to absorb any and all knowledge as to how peaceful governance, with power, can be attained. Governance had devolved down to warlord sectors and China as a whole was descending to a dangerous and unprecedented state.
Many Chinese students were sent around the world to study, most particularly to Europe and to North America. These were gaining support from many sources, as there was widespread concern in Europe and North America for China’s prospects. They were looking past technology by now, to politics in particular. It had always been about technology, but this was different. One nexus of the comings and goings was Beijing University. Fortunate students came and went from there, bringing in sophistication and multilingual erudition in the process. Some liked the American order; some liked British norms; some took great interest in Marxist thought, showing great interest in Lenin and developments in Russia.
In 1924, Dr. Sun gave a series of talks to his acolytes. In these, he articulated what he called his Three Principles of nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood, also interpreted as “nationalism, populism, and socialism” (Wakeman, 1975, 226).
To assuage the old-line members of the Kuomintang, who were irritated at the prominence of the new Communist members, and to quell the doubts of very conservative members, who saw everyone save themselves as Communists and were horrified at the appeal to the peasants, Sun gave a series of public speeches in 1924 in which he summarized his political, economic, and social philosophy, under the rubric: “The Three Principles of the People.” These Principles had long been his guiding star, but to assure the members of his party that he did indeed have a set of principles and had by no means surrendered to Communist doctrine, he chose to make his ideas public (Harrison, 1967, 131–132).
The Three Principles had roots in both old and new developments. Much of the import of Dr. Sun’s contribution was viceral if the details came off as vague. His enthusiasm for the project was clear, a major factor in his continuing leadership.
One of the groups better able to take advantage of the nationalist political fervour which pervaded the young during May Fourth (a fervour which overrode all ideological differences) was Sun Yatsen and his entourage. Whatever one may thing of Sun’s merits as a thinker or stateman, the fact is that during the whole bleak period from 1911 to 1919 he had not been diverted from his political goal of establishing a strong central government, however ineffective his methods. He did not succumb to the ‘new cultural’ obsession with the sickness of China’s culture. On the contrary, even before 1911 his contacts with ‘national essence’ thinking had convinced him that national pride in the achievements of the past must be fostered and he had even developed definite ideas of what was to be prized.
One of the traditional values to be prized was the old stress on ‘people’s livelihood’ which Sun had long since been able to link … to the ‘socialist’ critique of the sharp class antagonism in Western society …he constantly stressed the relative lack of class antagonism, as he defined it, in traditional Chinese society (Scwartz, 2002, 120).
The point was in how objectives articulated by Dr. Sun could be achieved. Until his death from cancer in 1925, he spearheaded efforts to obtain help from all quarters. This included from North America, where his status as Christian attracted support from many. His efforts were noted and praised by Vladimir Lenin. At the time of his death, he harbored desires to partner with Russia “as a good friend and an ally, and that the two countries join hands in the war for the freedom of the oppressed nations of the world.” As an aside, this an interesting act by the man held to be the inspiration for Taiwan’s government.
As to the Communist contingent, there was some small disagreement among the ranks that later made a substantial difference. Many of the elite students crafted themselves as Marxists and there were Leninists. Marxism represented more of a conceptual foundation, while Lenin and soon Stalin were very much alive and willing to support the cause to some degree. There was some concern among the elites among the nascent Communists that China did not reflect conditions in any other of the major Marxist locales, England, or Germany. There wasn’t an industrial base to springboard off of as was the case in Western Europe. Russia was like China in this regard.
Interestingly, the Bolsheviks in Russia had cooperated with the peasants, locally called the mir, to establish and maintain order. The mir were of ancient origin, a longstanding means of cooperative decisionmaking and resource sharing over the generations. If there was a model for how to achieve such objectives, certainly this was it.
The cooperative program was under Lenin. Ten years later, under Stalin, this approach was reversed in a very abrupt, violent fashion. Stalin, as it turned out, was interested in building up industry in Russia to match that of the West. If farmers had to suffer in the process, so be it. The point was that true communal roots were sacrificed on the pyre of enforced centralized planning and national glory with little regard for community or the particular needs of the people.
In China, there was a participant in the dialogs who wasn’t really student, but who worked in the library at Beijing University, who argued in favor of peasants in China, that they rightly represented the key to revolutionary success. None of the elites paid much attention to him or to his ideas. His name was Mao Zedong. His father allowed him to gain a minimal education as a teacher but did not support his further ambitions. Mao had to rebel against him to even stay in Beijing.
In 1924, the Nationalist and the Communist factions within the movement agreed to what they called the United Front. This was a plan to combine efforts between the Nationalists and the Marxists to overcome the power of the warlords, especially in the north. In the face of substantial unrest in the ranks of members, an army was formed and commissioned to carry out the task, called the Northern Expedition.
There was a great deal of ambiguity in terms of policy among the factions in the United Front. There were myriad efforts to grab the reigns among the Nationalists after the death of Sun. The ultimate winner in the leadership contest was a man of many names, most famously called Chiang Kai-shek. He ultimately married Sun’s widow’s sister and declared himself family. In the process, he inherited Sun’s North American finance channels and gained some call on Sun’s legacy. Sun’s widow, on the other hand, joined the other side and was active in senior leadership of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1981 as vice-president (or vice-chairwoman) and as honorary president shortly before her death in 1981.
How the split governance conundrum came about
Subsequent events are given in shorthand here for brevity, so that we can consider the key events in the organization of the People’s Republic of China and its relationship with the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China. In 1927, Chiang instigated a purge of all known Communists among the Nationalists. This was in Shanghai. In the next few years, there was an attempt to eliminate any who had not been killed to date. Most of the leadership had been eliminated. In the south, in Jiangxi Province, army units under Chiang were on the brink of eliminating Communist fighters with German support. Mao and Zhou Enlai escaped to the west with about 100,000 troops, beginning the Long March through southern and western China. Chiang and the Kuomintang were close on their heels, extracting a horrendous toll on the people.
Ultimately successful in reaching Yenan to the northwest, only 8,000 troops survived the Long March. This is true even though they came across many army units who had escaped to the west from Kuomintang annihilation campaigns. The movement grew in isolation. They gained strength and prestige by providing many services to peasant communities throughout China. This occurred largely due to the efforts of Mao, who was firmly in charge at the end of the Long March.
It was a testament to the effectiveness of their efforts that it was commonly said that during World War II, which they called the War of Japanese Agression, it was said that the Japanese ruled during the day, especially in the cities, but the Communists ruled during the night.
There was cooperation between the two groups. This was deemed the Second United Front, in effect a truce from 1937 to 1945 to fight against Japanese aggression together. Interestingly, the Communists forced the beginning of this by kidnapping Chiang, then not harming him in the process.
During that time, Mao concentrated on organic growth of his version of the movement from their base in Yenan by serving the needs of peasants as they perceived them. He got international support from where he could, but there wasn’t much to be had as war took hold. Participation with the Nationalists in the second United Front did provide some rewards.
At the end of international hostilities, there were moves to combine efforts, but they were furtive and didn’t last long. This will be considered presently.
Famously, the Nationalists carried out a massive airlift to move their troops to the north and east to fend off the Communists, but they found that wherever they went, they were met with peasant armies, barefoot doctors, and the whole of the economic, cultural, and military that Mao and his people had been establishing.
It wasn’t long before the Kuomintang were ushered over to Taiwan, where they were allowed to establish themselves, to grow, and to apply their policies and ideas. As Taiwan, or Formosa, had been under control of Japan for fifty years, from 1895 to 1945, it was relatively easy for the Kuomintang to assume political control of the island. It is important to note that, as they had not assassinated Chiang in 1937, they did not eliminate the Kuomintang in 1949, or even take steps to constrain their exit from the mainland.
From one perspective it could be considered a good bet to let Taiwan go another way. Ever pragmatic, there could have been some thought that if either of the plans were to fail, the other could come in to make up the difference. Certainly, that was the Kuomintang plan, to return in glory if the PRC were to fail. Fortunately, the best scenario played out: They both succeeded.
Let’s see if we all, lest of all the Chinese, can survive that.
The most interesting thing is what Mao and the Communists did in 1949. Few report this accurately. It is widely reported that Mao declared the “China has stood up,” but without clarifying the context of the meeting. Understanding this is a key to consideration of moves the Chinese on both sides of the straits might take in harmony with their culture and common commitments made now a hundred years ago under the leadership of Sun Yatsen.
The meeting in question in 1949 was not to organize the Chinese government. It was to call to order an organization in continuance of the United Front. Mao made the point that such a meeting had been scheduled at the end of the international war but had been ignored by the Nationalists. The organization in question was The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. This is an ungainly name to be sure, but the organization continues to exist in China, and there continues to be an open door to Taiwan representatives to participate. It is an ongoing invitation for cooperation in the spirit of the United Front.
Here are the specific public pronouncements of Mao in the organizing meeting on September 21, 1949. There are some strong assertions here. We will discuss these presently:
The Political Consultative Conference so eagerly awaited by the whole nation is herewith inaugurated.
Our conference is composed of more than six hundred delegates, representing all the democratic parties and people’s organizations of China, the People’s Liberation Army, the various regions and nationalities of the country, and the overseas Chinese. This shows that ours is a conference embodying the great unity of the people of the whole country.
It is because we have defeated the reactionary Kuomintang government backed by U.S. imperialism that this great unity of the whole people has been achieved…
In a little more than three years the people of the whole country have closed their ranks, rallied to support the People’s Liberation Army, fought the enemy and won basic victory. And it is on this foundation that the present People’s Political Consultative Conference is convened.
Our conference is called the Political Consultative Conference because some three years ago we held a Political Consultative Conference with Ching Kaishek’s Kuomintang. The results of that conference were sabotaged by Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang and its accomplices; nevertheless, the conference left an indelible impression on the people. It showed that nothing in the interest of the people could be accomplished together with Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang, the running dog of imperialism, and its accomplices. Even when resolutions were reluctantly adopted, it was of no avail, for as soon as the time was ripe, they tore them up and started a ruthless war against the people…
In a little more than three years the Chinese people, led by the Chinese Communist Party, have quickly awakened themselves into a nation-wide united front against imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism…
The present Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is convened on an entirely new foundation; it is representative of the people of the whole country and enjoys their trust and support… In accordance with its agenda, the conference will enact the Organic Law of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Common Programme of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference…
Fellow Delegates, we are all convinced that our work will go down in the history of mankind, demonstrating that the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up. The Chinese have always been a great, courageous, and industrious nation; it is only in modern times that they have fallen behind. And that was due entirely to oppression and exploitation by foreign imperialism and domestic reactionary governments. For over a century our forefathers never stopped waging unyielding struggles against domestic and foreign oppressors, including the Revolution of 1911 led by Dr. Sun Yatsen, our great forerunner in the Chinese revolution. Our forefathers enjoined us to carry out their unfulfilled will… From now on our nation will belong to the community of peace-loving and freedom-loving nations of the world and work courageously and industriously to foster its own civilization and well-being and at the same time to promote world peace and freedom. Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up…
There are indeed difficulties ahead, and a great many too. But we firmly believe that by heroic struggle the people of the country will surmount them all. The Chinese people have rich experience in overcoming difficulties. If our forefathers, and we also, could weather long years of extreme difficulty and defeat powerful domestic and foreign reactionaries, why can’t we now, after victory, build a prosperous and flourishing country? As long as we keep our style of plain living and hard struggle, as long as we stand united and as long as we persist in the people’s democratic dictatorship and unite with our foreign friends, we shall be able to win speedy victory on the economic front…
Our national defense will be consolidated, and no imperialists will ever again be allowed to invade our land…
Let them say we are no good at this and no good at that. By our own indomitable efforts, we the Chinese people will unswervingly reach our goal (Mao, 1949, 15–18).
Is there something there to go from in terms of cooperation and efforts to improve the conditions of Chinese persons generally? Non-citizens of the People’s Republic of China still have a seat at the CPPCC table. There is a committee, Liaison with Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Overseas Chinese Committee, with that purpose. Everything could come together with Dr. Sun’s principles, which have universal appeal among all leading factions.
Contemporary United Front opportunities
What was it that Sun wanted that is relevant to the Chinese condition in our times? What should this new United Front be about? If the PRC’s and Taiwan’s rises were the Fourth and Fifth United Fronts, could a Sixth United Front be arranged under current political conditions?
It can’t be about warlords as in the first instance. It needn’t be about Japanese aggression, which is no longer a risk to China. It can’t be about fractionalized relations between different factions with similar roots. To use a Biblical analogy, it is like the parable of the olive tree as described by Apostle Paul in Romans 11:17, with branches of the tree being broken off, then grafted into the nourishing root of the olive tree.
Where did all the ideas in play in China in the early 20th century come from? Wherein were their roots? Colonization and imperialism speak for themselves, principally coming from and with Europeans. Chinese thought was not unitary, but there were very strong cultural groundings that the Chinese did not want to violate. Until the founding of the Republic in 1911, the point was in embracing technology and to a degree election-based, popular government. It is unlikely that those concepts got a fair hearing at that time.
Once the Chinese aggressively opened to learn in 1919, they came across utopian, untested ideas from Europe that were themselves a reaction to elements of imperialism. Marxist thought also resulted from European conditions under mid 19th century conditions. The idea was that commerce would lead to capitalism, which would lead to depravation and a need for collectivization. This was the famous Marxist dialectic.
That is not how it turned out in Europe or Russia. The preconditions in question certainly did not apply to China. Nationalism had been established through the power of Mainland leadership and PRC institutions. It also existed in the pride and feeling of mutual success by Overseas Chinese and those in Taiwan, who gained their success in very different ways than had occurred on the Mainland.
As to Dr. Sun’s thinking, we are pretty much down to the “peoples’ livelihood” question. Questions about this exist everywhere. Other contemporary concerns are not obviously derived from Sun’s principles, other than in the fundamental understanding that the people are to be protected from threats, whether from domestic or foreign sources.
How about natural disasters? Aren’t they really natural phenomena for which adequate preparative steps have yet to be taken? That comes down to social and political failure.
A united front against aggression may not be what is needed; it might even conjure up or encourage hostility on its own. The beneficial goal would be akin to the original one. How can peace be brought to China and to the Chinese, to fend off foreign aggression and intrusion while assuring that the needs of the Chinese people be met, allowing them to flourish as desired by them in Chinese ways?
One hint as to prospects for cooperation can be seen in the history of Mao himself, who for a time was responsible for what we would call public relations for Kuomintang leadership.
Mao therefore did his utmost, in particular during the eight-month period from October 1925 to May 1926, when he effectively ran the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, to consolidate the overwhelming majority of the Nationalist Party and its supporters on positions which were radical, but in no sense Communist or Marxist. Indeed, he devoted a large part of his introductory editorial for the Kuomintang organ the Political Weekly to refuting the accusations that Guangdong was being ‘communized’. The true goals of the revolution he wrote, were “to liberate the Chinese nation...to bring about the rule of the people…to see that the people attain economic prosperity”. In other words, the goal was to implement the ‘Three People’s Principles’ (Schram, 2002, 296).
Ironic? Perhaps so. The path of history involved external events, serendipity, and the results of poor understanding and imperfect communications. Perhaps now is a better time on those counts.
The Global Development Initiative initiated by the PRC embodies elements of this. Perhaps leadership in Taipei and Beijing can address these together. It isn’t that they do not know how. The most significant epidemiological study in the world to date was conducted by major universities and the scientific communities of the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Republic of China (Chen, et al., 2006). This study included collaboration in health study of 69 counties on the Mainland, and 16 areas in Taiwan.
The Chinese are not the only people in the world with histories of subservience brought on from foreign interests and associated depravation, which are emerging with similar objectives with respect to self-determination and cultural determinism. It is important to note that in the worldwide assaults to the corners of the Earth by colonists and would-be conquerors, many cultures did not have the resources, the scale, and the strength of character of the Chinese such that they ultimately succeeded.
Still, remnants of those old cultures persist. The key to success is to piece together elements of these to forge a future that is worthy of successes of the past. The Chinese are in position to show the world how this can be done. The GDI could be the vehicle.
The GDI has attracted less criticism thus far in the west than its older sibling, the colossal BRI with its reputation for opacity and a lack of financial sustainability. Nevertheless, it displays many of the distinctive characteristics of past grand Chinese initiatives. It is fluid in nature, opaque in implementation and flexible in the measures used to deliver projects and offer grants. This has long been the preferred style of Chinese political elites. Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping described his ethos for reform in the late 1970s as “crossing the river by feeling the stones” (Yu, 2022).
Could this not extend to an idea of “crossing the straits by feeling the stones?” This is much deeper water, requiring considerable care for awhile. Eventually the metaphor breaks down; it cannot be done. Better is to remember old alliances as foundation for new ones. There is much to be gained with a broader view as to cultural and economic commonalities by the bulk of countries of the world on the other side of the story with regard to the history of modernity and its effects on the old cultures. It also calls to an ability to “bury the hatchet” and view common goals and objectives going forward.
Whether the GDI succeeds will serve as a test of China’s economic statecraft. The keyword in Beijing’s description of the initiative is sustainability, with the emphasis less on physical infrastructure projects, and more on poverty alleviation and sustainable development through grants and capacity-building, all with the stamp of approval of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (Ibid).
This represents the kind of multilateral collaboration that is needed in the context of all international projects. Such could well contribute not only to United Nations objectives, but those of the G20, which can justly benefit from the breadth in development and experience that China brings to the table.
References
Junshi Chen, Richard Peto, Wen-Harn Pan, Bo-Qui Liu, T. Colin Campbell, Jillian Boreham, Banoo Parpia, Patricia Cassano, Zheng-Ming Chen. 2006. Mortality, biochemistry, diet and lifestyle in rural China: Geographic study of the characteristics of 69 counties in Mainland China and 16 areas in Taiwan. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
John A. Harrison. 1967. China since 1800. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc.
Mao Zedong. 1949. The Chinese people have stood up. In Committee for Editing and Publishing the Works of Chairman Mao Tsetung, Central Committee of the Communist Part of China, 1977, Selected works of Mao Tsetung, Vol. V. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Joseph Needham. 1981. Science in traditional China. Boston: Harvard University Press; Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Stuart Schram. 2002. Mao Tsetung’s thought to 1949. In M. Goldman and L. O. F. Lee (Eds.), 2002, An intellectual history of modern China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Benjamin I. Schwartz. 2002. Themes in intellectual history: May Fourth and after. In M. Goldman and L. O. F. Lee (Eds.), 2002, An intellectual history of modern China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wakeman, F. 1975. The fall of imperial China. New York: The Free Press.
Yu Jie. 2022, August 24. China faces a new test of its economic statecraft. Financial Times. https://tinyurl.com/mrz2nnu3