FRATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY CHINESE

POLITICS

Michael Harrison

Why is it that the development of democracy has eluded Mainland China until the present day? I

reject the notion that Chinese civilization is inherently undemocratic, especially considering how

successful Taiwan is as a democracy. In explaining the failure of democracy to take hold in

Mainland China, I have extrapolated from Barrington Moore’s account of China’s political

evolution during the final years of the Qing Dynasty, the Republican era, and the early

communist era. My argument focuses specifically on the role of clans in influencing Chinese

politics during this time period. I have employed a loose definition of the word “clan” which

encompasses different kinds of clans, and as a result, I have identified a variety of ways by

which these intimate associations have made an impact on politics.

I should clarify precisely what I mean when referring to “clans.” A clan is an intimate

association of people. At this time in Chinese history there were other forms of association, such

as guilds and benevolent societies, in which people would associate in a different capacity. The

relationships between people in these associations were far more casual. In clans there was a

more fraternal spirit. In familial clans, relationships were, of course, fraternal in a literal sense.

Ideally, every member of a clan would be a male relative of every other member. The purity of a

clan was considered highly important. There are records of clans prescribing severe punishments

to members who adopt a son rather than producing a biological one (Ebrey, 327). Clans that were

not blood-based nonetheless expected members to be their brother’s keeper. They usually

claimed religion or the metaphysical to be part of their identity. Some were politically active, or

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became politically active, whereas others were not; some employed violence whereas others tried

to influence policy by peaceful means.

This study deals with a particular span of time within Chinese history. It is concerned

primarily with the Republican era (1911-49) and with the 19th century, the last full century of the

Qing Dynasty. In order to contextualize the occurrences during this time in China’s history, I

decided to draw from some of the experiences China’s secession from the Mongol Empire in the

14th century.

The questions I have attempted to answer are as follows. Were clans a catalyst or an

obstacle to the particular political outcomes of the early 20th century? Did these clans cause

political movements to happen more smoothly or more violently than they would have

otherwise? Were they more helpful to the communists or the nationalists? And finally, were they

more conducive of democracy or autocracy? I conclude that, generally, the familial clans were

significant mainly because they alienated families from the rest of their communities and

restrained people from taking part in politics, while the non-familial clans were more often

inclusive and more likely to encourage civic participation. In the context of 20th century Chinese

politics, the familial clans were more significant. By alienating certain families and creating

village-level divisions, these clans created social atomization, making the population as a whole

easier to take advantage of for political gain, meanwhile serving as a convenient scapegoat for

communists. Democracy, as it developed in Taiwan, might have been possible in the Mainland if

events in the first half of the 20th century had been different.

POLITICAL FUNCTIONS OF CLANS

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In understanding the significance of clans in Chinese politics, it is important to consider the

various ways by which commoners could influence policy and instigate regime change. To begin

with, in China there has been a normative context for rebellion since Mencius articulated the

Mandate of Heaven in the fourth century BC. In the Mencius, a record of this sage’s dialogs with

government officials and other public figures, there are a number of points in which Mencius

justifies popular rebellion against the government if the government fails to do its job correctly.

His most elaborate description of the Mandate of Heaven (although he does not use this phrase

explicitly) is his explanation of why an apocryphal king several hundred years earlier was

replaced by another because of a unanimous sentiment among the people that the old regime

was incompetent.

Shun assisted Yâo in the government for twenty and eight years;-- this was more than man could have done, and was from Heaven. After the death of Yâo, when the three years' mourning was completed, Shun withdrew from the son of Yâo to the south of South river. The princes of the kingdom, however, repairing to court, went not to the son of Yâo, but they went to Shun. Litigants went not to the son of Yâo, but they went to Shun. Singers sang not the son of Yâo, but they sang Shun. Therefore I said, "Heaven gave him the throne." It was after these things that he went to the Middle Kingdom, and occupied the seat of the Son of Heaven. If he had, before these things, taken up his residence in the palace of Yâo, and had applied pressure to the son of Yâo, it would have been an act of usurpation, and not the gift of Heaven.

'This sentiment is expressed in the words of The Great Declaration,-- "Heaven sees according as my people see; Heaven hears according as my people hear."'

Mencius gives a teleological explanation for popular rebellion. He claims that they are part of a

cosmological response to poor governance. The pervasive sentiment among the people –

Mencius mentions princes, litigants and singers – that Shun would make a better king is taken as

an indication of what Heaven wants. According to this philosophical tradition, rebellions occur

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alongside other calamities that signify heaven’s wrath: natural disasters, famine, foreign

invasion. While these other kinds of difficulties weakened the government, it was always the

people who brought about dynastic transitions.

This form of public accountability – unanimous disapproval and unmitigated violence –

is inefficient but it has been relied upon. The 19th century British diplomat Thomas Meadows

writes that: “it is precisely the right to rebel that has been the chief element of the national

stability, unparalleled in the world’s history. Rebellion is there but the storm that clears and

invigorates a political atmosphere that has become sultry and unwholesome.” (p. 27) This system

of public accountability and regime change has continually restored Chinese civilization to

health for more two thousand years from the Unification of China in 221 BC until the fall of the

Qing Dynasty in 1911. The same concept exists in Chairman Mao’s own political discourse. The

following passage comes from the Quotations of Chairman Mao.

The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the Chinese peasants forced them into numerous uprisings against landlord rule.... The class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.... However, since neither new productive forces, nor new relations of production, nor new class forces, nor any advanced political party existed in those days, the peasant uprisings and wars did not have correct leadership such as the proletariat and the Communist Party provide today; every peasant revolution failed, and the peasantry was invariably used by the landlords and the nobility, either during or after the revolution, as a lever for bringing about dynastic change. Therefore, although some social progress was made after each great peasant revolutionary struggle, the feudal economic relations and political system remained basically unchanged. (p. 9)

Mao is claiming that the civil war which brought the communists to power is the conclusion of a

Hegelian dialectical struggle between peasants and their oppressors. The transition to

communism was their Mandate of Heaven. All the dynastic transitions before communism were

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well-deserved victories for the people, however the communist victory was morally superior to

all the regime-changes preceding it.

Public accountability not only occurred through violence. It was common for people with

government connections to influence the government. In this context, connections – known as

guanxi – gave people a far greater degree of privilege than in a modern Western context. I have

previously done research on some of the string-pulling by people with government connections

in later-imperial China. If we need to impose a modern concept on this form of intervention into

government policy, then I would call it “lobbying.” In this paper I have decided not to discuss

this phenomenon because it does not seem to be common among clans as I have described them,

but rather among more casual forms of association, such as guilds. However, during the Qing

Dynasty, clans were heavily involved in litigation, as we know because records of court cases

have been preserved.

I would assume that these court cases were partly an imitation of a Western model.

However, litigation has a context in China’s philosophical traditions. During the Qing Dynasty

there was a manual, widely considered authoritative, called the General Teachings for the Jurist

(Twitchett and Mote, et al). This manual cites a passage from Xunzi, a Confucian scholar from

the 3rd century BC:

Confucius threw light on the Way to establish a model for the norms of ruler and minister. Thus, litigation is governed by laws and measures. This is because litigation arises, does it not, from the wrongfulness in men’s hearts, struggles between the strong and the weak, and the imbalance in material desires. This is because, by nature, there cannot but be desires (in Twitchett and Mote, et al, 205).

General Teachings for the Jurist infers from this passage that the purpose of litigation is to:

Speak for the dumb, help the blind walk, extend the will of the stupid, chastise the unruly, uproot winter branches, supplement the needy, eliminate the excess,

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disgrace the immoral, punish the evil, pave roads, ford deep rivers, succor the weak and help the imperiled, praise the good and blame the evil (ibid).

This respect for litigation, and its objectives, has a broader context in China’s political culture. In

the Qing era China had a highly sophisticated legal system. There certainly was no equivalent of

the legal systems in modern democracies today, however we can see that an enormous amount of

effort was made to enforce laws consistently and to make them relevant, even to commoners.

Meadows, writing in the 19th century, writes that “All Chinese law is careful codified and divided

into parts, sections and subsections.” (22) He was impressed, for one thing, with the continuity of

the basic apparatus of the legal system. He observed of the penal system in particular: “This,

commenced two thousand years ago, has grown with the nation. Recent reigning families have

more or less modified it; but in substance it is national and not dynastic.” (ibid) He also

remarked that “though some of its enactments viewed from the stand point of Christian

civilization are cruel, it has been said with perfect truth that the Chinese desire only for its

enforcement with strict purity and partiality.” (ibid) Especially significant to this paper is that

“Complete copies [of the penal code] are sold so cheaply as to be within easy reach of the

humbler tradesman.” (ibid) Twitchett and Mote (et al) comment on the importance of the legal

system in the Ming government (which preceded the Qing): “The founder of the Ming felt that a

code was valuable to a ruler because it assisted him in maintaining bureaucratic discipline, public

order, and permanent institutions that centered around a line of descent. A code was,

furthermore, a symbol of legitimacy of his rule.” (172) We know from records of court cases

from the Qing Dynasty that litigation was one way by which clans served their members. It was

often the case that an entire clan would represent a single entity in a court case, at least according

to Allee’s study of litigation in Qing-era Taiwan (p. 211).

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It was generally the case, however, that clans avoided litigation because they preferred to

avoid any contact with the government. We know from studies of written clan rules that they

tended to discourage litigation. In Hui-Chen’s study on this subject, she finds that “Nine out of

ten families who resorted to law, according to a community study, had to sell a large part of their

property.” (p. 155) When they did engage in litigation, their opponent was almost always another

civilian, and rarely anybody in the government itself. Clans relied on maintaining respect, trust

and rapport with the government. Compared with other types of associations from this time

period, clans generally dealt with the government in an honest and straightforward manner. It

was not like them to try to elicit favors.

This tendency of clans to avoid contact with the government relates to another feature of

late-imperial Chinese society which continued to be true until the establishment of the

communist regime. There was (and still is) a popular folk saying: “heaven is high, the Emperor is

far away.” To most people, imperial policy was of little relevance. Policy was enforced not by

the yamen, who were too few in number to have any contact with most of the peasantry. One

yamen would “be responsible for the administration of justice, even in its pettier forms, over

many thousands of persons.” (Moore, 205) Clans had their own private systems of policies not

only because they wanted to avoid contact with the government, but also because the

government was not equipped to do this for them.

Naturally, rather than trying to find way of engaging with the government, clans were

often more concerned with finding ways of avoiding contact with the government. It was usually

to make and implement their own policies in place of government policy. The imperial

government tended to give clans free rein to govern its own members. The reason relates to a

Confucian notion that the family is a better institution than the government for developing

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people’s personal character. One of Confucius’s best-known maxims is that “If the people are led

by laws and rectitude sought to be given to them by punishments, they will try to avoid

punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue and rectitude given to them by

rules of propriety, they will have a sense of shame, and, moreover, will become good.” (In Hu,

53) Whereas the government can try to force people to act a certain way, clans can make their

members into better people altogether.

Having been granted the privilege of making and implementing their own policies for

their members, clans typically had systems of written rules. Hsien Chin Hu is among the scholars

who have studied the systems of clan rules existing in the 20th century. He also considers clan

policies to be a substitute for state policies that can achieve the same objectives more effectively:

If the tsu [the clan] exercises considerable autonomy in the legal sense [which they do], it is at the expense of the authority of the state. The reason for such a relinquishment of power by the central authority lies in the effectiveness of the tsu in maintaining a moral standard among its members. To the Confucian scholar-statesman it is more desirable to develop in the super-ego a consciousness of the person’s moral obligations than to restrain immoral behavior by threat of punishment. (53)

Clans would delegate to one of their literate members the responsibility of codifying the clan

rules, which in turn would be passed down from one generation to the next, along with records of

the collective experiences of the clan. Systems of rules took a variety of forms. Some were long

and precise, others were short and abstract. Ultimately, the autonomy that clans received would

come at their expense. Because they had their own independent political systems, they were easy

to vilify for being different from the rest of the population, and therefore having feudal interests

that come at everyone else’s expense. As I will explain, the communists benefited most from

scapegoating clans.

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The alienation of clans within their own villages relates to another difference between

pre-industrial villages in China and Europe. This is one reason why “The Chinese village, the

basic cell of rural society in China as elsewhere, evidently lacked cohesiveness as in comparison

with those in India, Japan, and even many parts of Europe.” (Moore, 208) In China multiple

classes would exist alongside each other in a single village. One reason is the social mobility

resulting from the Civil Service Examination. Peasants would often receive a government post

through the Examination, which in turn placed them in the highest social class in Chinese

society. They would still be considered a resident of the village and would likely come back to

the same village to retire. According to Moore, this system helped the Emperor to recruit a

bureaucracy with which to fight the aristocracy ... By the Sung Dynasty [960–1279] not much

was left of the ancient aristocracy.” (p. 164) Another reason, as I will explain, is the physical

mobility that characterized rural life in Qing-era China. In one sense, it would seem like this kind

of diversity is healthy. However, these local inequalities were exploited by communists who

managed to manipulate peasants into seeing their wealthier neighbors as ideological opponents.

(Moore, 224) This type of divide-and-rule tactic was an inefficient way of diminishing the

numbers of well-to-do villagers who could potentially be supporters of the nationalists.

The Civil Service Examination was a cause of inequalities not only within villages, but

also within clans, where these social inequalities were not a cause of alienation or hostility. One

way that clans influenced policy by helping their members ascend into government via the Civil

Service Examination. Clans would pool funds to pay for the education of a young member, and

they would pay for members to travel to the nearest testing center (Hui-Chen, 125). The

opportunity for males from all strata of society to become government officials has, by some

people, been considered a means of public accountability. When peasants become government

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officials, they bring a commoner’s perspective with them into the government. Their perspective

was especially important in late-imperial China because at the time the government was

considered not only a policy-making apparatus but also the intellectual center of Chinese

civilization. At this time, Chinese civilization tended to conflate government officials and

intellectuals. In contrast to modern Western civilization, where politicians and bureaucrats are

considered so selfish and petty that they need to be examined by objective and condescending

scholars outside of government, in China people were thought to have a superior perspective on

the world around them because they have a place in the government.

Clans have also been politically significant because they have helped mobilize the

people. Qing-era Chinese society was far more physically mobile than feudal Europe, and as I

will show, this tendency of the people to move around may have ultimately facilitated the victory

of the communists. Sun Yat-Sen described Chinese society as a “loose heap of sand” because the

physical mobility of the people created a society of weaker social ties than in pre-industrial

Europe. (Moore, 208) However, paradoxically, familial clans have catalyzed a great deal of this

movement within China, and in doing so, they have allowed for their clans to establish

themselves continue carrying on their legacies with just as much rigor in another location.

Clans and lineage institutions tend to be tied to a location. Smith, writing in the late-19th

century, observes that “Nearly all Chinese surnames serve as the designation of villages.” (p. 16)

My wife, who is Chinese, has an ancestral village where all inhabitants have the same surname

and they can all trace their family relations to each other. Whenever clans decide, for whatever

reason, to establish a presence somewhere else, they will collect funds not only for immediate

practical necessities such as housing, but also to invest in temples and other symbols of the

clan’s presence. Temples, in particular, were “frequently associated with the families which were

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prominent in their construction.” (ibid) In Chinese villages, temples were usually “The most

conspicuous object in a village.” (ibid) It was often the case that villages would be named after a

temple. (Smith, 98) Smith’s portrayal of these feudal temples seems in many analogous to

churches in European villages, except that they were associated with a particular family rather

than the village as a whole.

The strength of family unity in this society has served to isolate families from their

village, and in the early 20th century, from Chinese society as a whole. Clans would pool

resources to serve their own members, for example by paying for medical treatment, education,

or travel expenses to take the Civil Service Examination. An unintended consequence was a

prevailing sentiment that they did not want to cooperate with the rest of Chinese society. Their

estrangement resulted partly from the greater level of physical mobility in China when compared

to European society at this time. Physical mobility was easier in China than in the West because

property could be bought and sold more easily. Meadows writes that “The Chinaman [sic] can

hold and sell landed property with a facility, certainty and security which is absolute perfection

when compared with English dealings of the kind.” (28) As such, it was common for clans to

invest in farmland in other villages in order to turn a profit. Hui-Chen notes that a few urban

clans also purchased houses or store buildings for supplemental revenue. Because of this

physical mobility, clan members associated with other members more than they did with other

residents in their village. Their solidarity with unrelated people in the same village was not as

strong as in European villages where family ties were not prioritized in the same way.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Clans have influenced Chinese policy through violence, through peaceful means, and most

commonly, inadvertently. I have examples of all three of these phenomena.

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The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), which preceded the Qing, was established as a result of

a series of revolts by which China seceded from the Mongol Empire. The first of these revolts

took place among laborers who had been conscripted to repair dykes along the Yellow River.

This incident inspired another revolt among the White Lotus Society. Their involvement what

allowed the nationwide rebellion to become significant enough to topple the regime – or, more

accurately, remove the Mongol regime from Chinese politics.

During the Ming Dynasty certain clan-like organizations had a cozy relationship with the

government, and consequently an enormous impact on imperial policy. To begin with, at this

time Buddhist monasteries were proliferating. These monasteries were always trading favors

with the government. Twitchett and Mote write that “a close relationship existed between the

government and the sangha.” (p. 897) They write earlier in the Encyclopedia that this

relationship “grew stronger in the course of the Ming Dynasty.” (p. 222) They write that there

was “a well-established tradition that supported the reciprocal relationship between the imperial

court and the sangha: monks prayed for the emperor’s welfare in the hope of receiving imperial

patronage.” (ibid) For purposes of semantic clarification, the fraternal nature of these

monasteries would, by my definition, make them qualify as a clan.

At this time there was a considerable amount of interconnect among various kinds of

institutions. Most significant to this paper is the relationship between relatively casual civilian

organizations and politically-active clans. The While Lotus Society, the key force in China’s

secession from Mongol rule, would be led by a public intellectual who would also, in today’s

lingo, be described as a lobbyist. This man, Dong Qihong, would become a member of the White

Lotus Society, one of the principle paramilitary forces in China’s secession from the Mongol

Empire.

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Also during this time period, academic institutions and more intimate associations would

work together in lobbying. Buddhist monasteries, the numbers of which were growing

exponentially during the Ming Dynasty, were often integrated into the greater community.

According to Twitchett and Mote: “Buddhist thinkers, especially those of the late Ming period,

showed considerable interest in making Buddhism accessible to people outside the Buddhist

community.”1 (p. 893) One way that they engaged with the community was by joining them in

engaging with the government. In particular, they worked with academics, who often functioned

as lobbyists. Most notably, the Donglin Movement, led by scholar-activists, had a significant

impact on imperial policy during the final years of the Ming Dynasty. At first their primary

objective was to reduce corruption. Brook describes the Donglin Movement as “a conservative

revitalization of Confucianism early in the 17th century and a base for challenging bureaucratic

and eunuch factions at court.” (29)

There were generally two ways by which the Donglin Movement tried to influence

policy. One was through soft power. The movement was led by academics who regularly held

political discussions. Their soft power was especially significant at this point in China’s history

because there was there was strong nexus between academic institutions and the government: the

main purpose of these academies was to prepare people to take the Civil Service Examination to

ascend into the government, so they needed to be attuned to the sentiments within the

government in order to better understand what kind of thinking it expects from people who

expect to become government officials. Moreover, as I mentioned previously, at this point in

China’s history the government was considered the epicenter of China’s intellectual life, and

officials were, by definition, considered intellectuals. However, more significant than its soft

power was the Donglin Movement’s use of string-pulling to influence policy. It was common for 1 This passage refers to Buddhist practitioners of all kinds, not only monks or other practitioners of that capacity.

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members of the Donglin Movement to have government connections. Some members were,

themselves, government officials.

Although the Donglin had a considerable amount of influence, they were not always

warmly received. They were eventually disbanded by the outgoing Ming government and many

members were prosecuted and tortured (Twitchett and Mote, 105). However, the Donglin left a

legacy that would live on during the tumultuous times that would follow. When people in other

areas of society saw the way a civilian organization could influence policy, many followed suit,

and “soft alliances among literary clubs led to the formation of vertically integrated factions

interested in challenging the growing power of the eunuch establishment at court.” (Brook, 42)

The activities of the Donglin Movement would intensify when the Ming Dynasty approaches its

violent end. As with China’s secession from the Mongol Empire, the fall of the Ming Dynasty

was the result of loosely-connected rebellions throughout the country. It began with a rebellion

among the Manchus, then considered an ethnic minority. During this disorder, most people

associated with the Donglin Movement were reactionaries who wanted the Ming government to

stay in power. The Fushe or Restoration Society were an offshoot of the Donglin Movement.

The Fushe would then inspire another activist organization, the Jishe, or Incipience Society,

which was founded by Chen Zilong, a man best known as a poet. As with the Donglin, these

movements took a stance in favor of the Ming government and were violently cracked down

upon, in their case by dissidents. Some members, however, survived, and some would

subsequently serve in the Qing government which was to follow (Wakeman, 111-122).

During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China was ruled by Manchus. At first this dynasty

was, like the Ming Dynasty, a highly productive, stable, and prosperous time. However, in the

course of the Qing Dynasty Chinese society gradually imploded. My understanding of this

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historical phenomenon differs from the story told by present-day Chinese history textbooks,

which place the blame primarily on Europeans and Japanese. I would conjecture that the main

reason for Qing China’s downfall was the Taiping Rebellion (1850-65), the deadliest civil war in

world history. Second in significance, by my reckoning, was the epidemic of opium. Also of note

is that foot binding was becoming increasingly prevalent during the Qing Dynasty, making

women increasingly less productive. Finally, as part of the natural course of things in every

dynasty, the government was taking its power for granted and becoming increasingly corrupt.

The 19th century is remembered, among other things, for floods, which seem to be the result of

malgovernance.

During the latter part of the Qing Dynasty was becoming increasingly dysfunctional and

prone to chronic violence. People were displaced by wars, natural disasters and extreme poverty,

and formed gangs of wandering bandits (Ebrey, 320). People responded to this disorder by

sticking closer to their families and local communities. In one region of southeastern China there

are thousands of tulou or “clay houses,” which would be better described as enormous ring-

shaped buildings which housed entire villages. The outer perimeter of tulou consisted of thick

walls which were difficult to penetrate or knock down. On the inside were fields, animals, and

everything the villagers needed to survive. This way an entire village could be protected, as long

a nobody left the premises of the house.

This tendency toward insularity was a defining feature of Chinese family and community

life at this time. The result was atomization of the population, creating a situation in which

people could easily be made enemies of each other. The deposition of the Qing Dynasty in 1911

occurred in this environment of uncertainty and hostility. We know from personal records from

this time period, from people who would become significant in the Revolution, that their political

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activity was opposed not only by their immediate families but also by clans. One example is

Peng Pai, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. Peng came from a familial clan

that owned large tracts of land worked by serfs, who not surprisingly opposed his political

activity. He recalls that “not one soul in the family would talk to me.” (Ebrey, 365)

Other heterogeneous types of clans had the opposite function: they strove to be in the

center of the action. Smith, writing when the Qing Dynasty was on the verge of collapse, states

that “countless secret sects” were coming into being at this time, most of them professing some

kind of religious identity. (p. 98) Ebrey writes of the Small Sword Society, a militant groups

which fought against the Qing government during the Taiping Rebellion and continued to be

politically active during the final years of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent civil war. This

group recruited members from among the gangs of bandits that were ubiquitous during the

Taiping Rebellion and afterward. (Ebrey, 318) The Small Sword had a written ideological

proclamation, as was common for organizations like theirs, in their case “evoking the name of

the Ming Dynasty and the Han people as anti-Manchu gestures.” (ibid)

In order to better understand the circumstances allowing for the communist victory, it is

important to consider the factors that could have allowed for a Nationalist victory. To do this I

will conveniently identify the Nationalists as a “fascist” movement and try to fit them into a

classic academic model. Fascism is thought to result from an alliance between the bourgeoisie

and the aristocracy. According to Moore: “A successful amalgamation gradually took place

between sections of the gentry (and later their successors turned landlord pure and simple), and

urban leaders in trade, finance and industry.” (p. 178) During the Republican era this coalition of

social groups came to represent a synthetic reconstruction of the imperial social order, which

Nationalists tended to look to as a model for solving China’s social ills. “This amalgam provided

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the chief social underpinning of the Koumintang, and attempt to revive the essence of the

imperial system, that is political support for landlordism with a combination of gangsterism

indigenous to China and a veneer of pseudo-Confucianism that displays interesting resemblances

to Western fascism.” (ibid) There was, therefore, some legitimacy to the communist

denunciation of these “haves,” although it is now considered unethical to physically attack them

for this reason.

CONCLUSION

The triumph of the Communist Party over the Nationalists cannot be explained by Marxist

theory, lofty teleological theories, or any kind of notion that there is a natural affinity between

Chinese civilization and socialism, autocratic or otherwise. Their victory was the result of

infinitely complex circumstances. There is, however, a sense in which the communists won

partly because of their ideology. At that time in Chinese history, the poor outnumbered the rich

on a ludicrous scale. The have-nots, with their extreme strength in numbers, made victory far

easier or the communists than it would have been otherwise. The two types of clans that I’ve

listed were significant for opposite reasons. The familial clans were “feudal” institutions that

communists and their supporters needed to be abolished, especially since the poor tended to

think of these clans as being on a different wavelength. These clans also did what they could to

restrain members from taking part in this political unrest. By contrast, non-familial clans were

significant because they wanted to be on the frontlines, carrying out the revolution. Either way,

ideology seems to have of little importance to the people in these clans. Likewise, to the

communist and Nationalist leaders, ideology was less important than purely objective tactical

matters.

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WORKS CITED AND REFERENCED

Allee, Mark A. Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China, Northern Taiwan in the

Nineteenth Century. Stanford University Press, 1994.

Brook, Timothy and Bernard Michael Frolic, eds. Civil Society in Contemporary China.

Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Deng Zhenglai, ed. State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspective. Singapore: World

Scientific Press, 2011.

Ebrey, Patricia B. Chines Civilization: A Sourcebook. Second Edition. New York: The Free

Press, 1993.

Fairbank, John K., ed. “Late Ch'ing 1800–1911, Part 1.” John K. Fairbank and Denis C.

Twitchett, eds. Cambridge History of China, vol. 10. Cambridge University Press, 1978.

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