Kuomintang

The Kuomintang (Guomíndang) was the political apparatus of the Nationalist Chinese government, which was essentially a military dictatorship. Founded in 1912 under Sun Yat-sen, brother-in-law of Chiang Kai-shek, it originally advocated parliamentary democracy and moderate socialism. During the power struggles that followed, the party line hardened into a program of military government, to be followed by Kuomintang tutelage and (at some bright future day) popular sovereignty.

The notion that China was unprepared for liberal democracy in the early 20th century may sound illiberal, if not racist, to readers living in the early 21st century. However, there was no tradition of democracy in China; the literacy rate, especially in the vast rural countryside, was appallingly low; and the collapse of the Qing Dynasty had led to political chaos and warlordism. Under these circumstances, it is hard to imagine what better alternative there was to the authoritarian program of the Kuomintang -- certainly not the brutal personality cult of Mao Tse-tung under the Chinese Communists.

Ironically, the embryonic Communist Party had originally been part of the Kuomintang, a "party within a party." However, Chiang had become resentful of the Russian advisors brought in by the Communists to advise the Kuomintang, and when the left wing of the Kuomintang proclaimed its own national government in Wuhan in March 1927, Chiang moved quickly to liquidate the Communists.

The Kuomintang set up the trappings of a modern state, with five Yuans dividing government responsibilities between them. Three of these corresponded closely with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the United States federal government. However, Chiang dominated the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan did little more than rubberstamp his directives. Nevertheless, the Kuomintang had enough credibility abroad to attract foreign capital investment and loans and to renegotiate some of the "unequal treaties" that had infringed Chinese sovereignty and wounded Chinese pride.

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