U4AOS1 INTERPRETATIONS Flashcards
G + K
Nationalist Decade
“By 1937…China was solving her problems, at least at an experimental scale” (Gray)
GMD made ‘stunning accomplishments from a position of unenviable weakness’ (Kirby)
Fairbank
Nationalist Decade
‘The Nanjing government might have ridden the crest of modernisation, but its fate was determined from the first by the menace of Japanese miltarism’
H + F + B + T
Nationalist Decade
‘Beneath the Nationalist government’s veneer of progress lay fundamental problems of social and economic injustices’ (Hsu)
‘the Chinese people groaned under a regime Fascist in every quality except efficiency’ (Fitzgerald)
‘the unification achieved in this decade was more apparent than real’ (Bianco)
Ch farmer like ‘a man standing permanently up to his neck in water so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him’ (Tawny)
Hu Shi
Aims of the NCM
“new thought tide… to recreate civilisation.”
T + M
NCM significance
New youth magazine “jabbed the rapier of modern Western ideas through ribs of China’s rigid traditions’. (Terrill)
‘intellectually and socially one of the most promising and exciting times in Chinese history’ (Mitter)
Soong Meiling
Purpose of NLM
‘substituting a retreat to Confucius for an advance to Marx’
W + R
NLM
‘Confucian Fascism’ (Wakeman)
NLM achieved very little except for ‘intruding into people’s personal lives’ (Ryan)
Jiang + R
Reason for pursuing the CCP instead of Japan
‘The Japanese are a disease of the skin… The Communists are a disease of the soul’
‘national unity had to take precedence over foreign affairs, as external threats could not be addressed by a divided nation.’ (Ryan)
Rooney
Misuse of lend-lease
JJ “was double-dealing on a colossal scale”
Jiang
Sino-Japanese War strategy
‘saving the nation by the winding path’
Brooks Anderson (NYT correspondent)
GMD’s priorities
“more concerned with maintaining its political supremacy than in driving the Japanese out of China”
NRA saying
“Three Don’t Cares: 1. Don’t Care to fight. 2. Don’t care about the people. 3. Don’t care about myself.”
B + R
GMD weaknesses
Almost ‘every major area of the Nationalist military weakness was an area of Red Army strength’ + ‘Conscription, a tragedy in the government-controlled areas, was an honour in Liberated Areas’ (Bianco)
Nationalists seemed to ‘specialise in keeping land and losing men’ (Ryan)
Z + B + F + Y
Significance of Yuan Shikai
“the true face of the 1911 Revolution belonged to Yuan Shikai, not Sun Yat-sen” (Zarrow)
YS = ‘opportunist’ (Bianco)
YS had “No vision of a new political system” (Fairbank)
“Yuan Shih-Kai usurped power and threw the whole nation into the abyss again…’ (Yu-chang)
S + L
Significance of the May Fourth Movement
“beginning of a credible and important nationalist movement, albeit an urban one.” (Short)
“gave a sense of direction to radicals and revolutionaries” (Lynch)
Sun Yat-sen
Rationale for accepting Soviet assistance for 1UF
“to clutch that Russian straw. I know it is a straw, but it is better than nothing.”
Li Dazhao
Rationale for 1UF
“we cannot afford to have our revolutionary forces divided”
M
Jiang’s rationale for Shanghai Massacre
“It was a major threat to Jiang since the strikers would greatly outnumber his troops.” (Meisner)
H
Significance of Shanghai Massacre
“the left faction of the GMD ‘remained a house divided against itself…its leaders had become rivals for power” (Helmut)
Chen Duxui
State of the 1UF after Shanghai Massacre
‘like taking a bath in shit’
W + D + S
Jiangxi Soviet
‘Necessity was the mother of the CCP’s reinvention’ (Womack)
‘social laboratory’ (Davin)
“Mao Zedong deliberately used the Jiangxi Soviet Republic to counter-balance his opponents who were in control of the Party organisation.” (Shiping)
Sun
Futian purges
Futian purges were “total madness” but “Nobody dared tell Mao that. They were too scared” to expose the nonsense of his paranoia
Mao
Red Army
‘These people are capable of fighting bravely, and, if properly led, can become a revolutionary force’
Mao
The Well-being of the Masses, 1934
“We should convince the masses that we represent their interests – that our lives are intimately bound up with theirs”
Jiang
Rationale for fascism
Fascism = ‘stimulant for a declining society’
Mao
1927
“A revolution is not a dinner party”
S + S + J
Credibility of the Long March
LM = ‘the biggest armed propaganda tour in history’ (Snow)
LM = ‘nightmare of death and pain while it was in progress’ (Spence)
LM = ‘a true story exploited for propaganda purposes’ (Jocelyn)
M + D
Significance of the LM
‘Mao was the prophet who would lead survivors through the wilderness’ (Meisner)
‘Although the LM was a tactical defeat, it had very beneficial psychological and organisational effects’ (Dietrich)
R + L
Yenan Soviet
‘Mao and his comrades built a thriving community in this impoverished rural backwater’ (Ryan)
‘He made Marxism fit the Chinese situation, not the Chinese situation fit Marxism’ (Lynch)
M + R + B
GMD vs CCP during Sino-Japanese War
‘The Party was functioning very much as a nationalist organisation; indeed, it was struggling for nationalist goals more vigorously and more competently than the GMD” (Moise)
“Jiang’s unwillingness to confront J brought his govt into disrepute” (Ryan)
Almost ‘every major area of the Nationalist military weakness was an area of Red Army strength’ (Bianco)
R + R
Sino-Japanese War
“humanitarian tragedy” (Ryan)
JJ “was double-dealing on a colossal scale” (Rooney)
Stillwell
GMD war effort
Nat war effort by 1938 = “practically zero” + govt X able to “get the idea of offensive into their heads” (Stilwell)
Mao
Criticism of US support of GMD
“No nation needs to prop us up”
Mao
CCP civil war strategy
‘Hu came in like a fist. We forced him open like a hand; now we are cutting off the fingers one by one.’
