ROLE OF CHIANG KAI SHEK AND THE KUOMINTANG

3.2 HISTORY- III

SUBMITTED BY

SHREYA RAULO

YEAR OF STUDY

YEAR 2, SEMESTER 3

FACULTY-IN- CHARGE

Ms. UPASANA DEVI

NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY AND JUDICIAL ACADEMY, ASSAM

1st NOVEMBER, 2019

1
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.2 SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
1.4 LITERATURE REVIEW
2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KUOMINTANG
3. THE NANJING(NANKING) DECADE IN SHAPING THE FUTURE
4. IMPLICATIONS OF CHIANG-KAI-SHEK’S LEADERSHIP
5. FUTURE OF TAIWAN UNDER THE KUOMINTANG
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

2
 1. INTRODUCTION

Few defeated political parties in wartime have the opportunity to make a fresh start in a new
location. Even fewer can leave their failures behind and go on to succeed. The Chinese
Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) was such an exception. In late 1949, having been almost
destroyed by the Chinese Communists, the KMT relocated to Taiwan and reinvented itself.

Not only did the KMT leadership build a new party that has endured for five decades, but it built
a new polity on Taiwan that created economic prosperity and China’s first democracy. How did
this defeated party reinvent itself? New microfilmed materials on the KMT Central Reform
Committee—now in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University—shed new light on
this unusual phenomenon.1 From August 1950 to October 1952, more than four hundred working
meetings were held almost four times a week to discuss how to build a new political party and
implement Nationalist government policies. Chiang Kai-shek began the reforms by establishing
the Central Reform Committee (CRC) to replace the inept Central Standing Committee and
Central Executive Committee, the party’s two most powerful agencies on the mainland.

Unlike its predecessors, the CRC recruited young, highly educated party members, who,
encouraged by Chiang Kai-shek, revitalized the KMT by introducing new institutions that would
build a society based on the principles of Sun Yat-sen, one of the party’s founders. Instead of the
communist Chairman Mao ushering in the dictatorship of the people, it could have been the
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT).The challenge was to
stamp the authority of the KMT onto the Chinese mainland as the war ends, so as to avoid a CCP
victory during the Civil War that historically followed Japanese surrender.

Chiang urged all the students to undergo “inner” changes by purging themselves of “selfishness,
corruption, and bureaucracy.”21 The top leaders, he said, should purify their thinking and be
ready to lay down their lives for Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. The academy of
Kuomintang ran smoothly in the years that followed, for only those who had participated in
Chiang’s training course were eligible for high positions in the party or the government or both.

1
Peter Chen-main Wang, “A Bastion Created, Regime Reformed, an Economy Reengineered, 1949–1970,” in
Murray A. Rubinstein ed., Taiwan: A New History (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 328–32.

3
1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
a. What was the reason for Kuomintang (KMT)’s rise to prominence?
b. What was the contribution of Chiang-kai-Shek in reviving the fortunes of the
Kuomintang?
c. What led to the decline of the Kuomintang and advent of Communism in China?
d. What were the implications of the Kuomintang ad Shek’s charisma as a leader?
1.2 SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the instant project is to understand the quid pro quo surrounding the reason
for the revival of the Kuomintang. The second objective extends to the contribution of
Chiang-Kai-Shek in determining the future of China post the First World War. The last is to
analytically analyse the importance of Kuomintang in the current Chinese realpolitik.

1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The doctrinal method of study was being followed. Secondary sources in the form of various
journal articles, reports, newspaper articles and websites have been referred to for completion
of the project. The conclusion has a mix of explanatory and suggestive ideas of the same.

1.4 LITERATURE REVIEW

a. Gerry Von Tander, “Red China: Mao Crushes Chiang's Kuomintang, 1949” (Cold War
1945–1991)- China. 1949: two vast armies prepare for a final showdown that will decide
Asia’s future. One is led by Mao Tse-tung and his military strategists Zhou Enlai and Zhu
De. Hardened by years of guerrilla warfare, armed and trained by the Soviets, and
determined to emerge victorious, the People’s Liberation Army is poised to strike from
its Manchurian stronghold. Opposing them are the teetering divisions of the Kuomintang,
the KMT. For two decades Chiang Kai-shek’s regime had sought to fashion China into a
modern state. But years spent battling warlords, and enduring Japan’s brutal conquest of
their homeland, has left the KMT weak, corrupt, and divided.
Millions of Chinese perished during the crucible of the Sino-Japanese War and the long,
grueling years of the Second World War. But the Soviet victory against the Japanese
Kwantung Army in 1945 allowed Mao’s Communists to re-arm and prepare for the

4
 coming civil war. Within a few short years, the KMT were on the defensive while the
Communists possessed the most formidable army in East Asia. The stage was set for
China’s rebirth as a communist dictatorship ruled by a megalomaniac who would become
the biggest mass-murderer in history. The book is an accurate description of these ideas.
b. G.P. Douglas, “ The Kuomintang and the Chinese Civil War”( 1927- 1949), Amazon
Digital Services LLC, 2013- This book was written to help those studying Asian history.
It highlights the ideology and the history of the Kuomintang at its most powerful on
mainland China, between the Nanjing Decade and the end of the Chinese Civil War.
To text is broken into three sections that express some key themes of the Kuomintang
during this time: namely, the Nanjing Decade, the Invasion of Japan and the defeat of the
Kuomintang. The text also includes a helpful list of resources that readers may use to
help further their study.

5
 2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KUOMINTANG

Against the historical backdrop of the fall of monarchy, the Kuomintang (KMT), which means
the “National People’s Party,” was formed. The party was initially founded by Sun Yat-sen in
1912 during the fall of the Qing dynasty. The KMT, as a conglomeration of revolutionary groups
and guided by ideals of democracy, won a majority in the first elected National
Assembly2However, as mentioned above, Yuan Shikai seized control and blatantly ignored the
Assembly, going as far as to assassinate the most influential leader of the KMT, Song Jiaoren, in
1913.3

In response, Sun Yat-sen and other KMT members led a failed coup against Yuan Shikai in July
1913, prompting him to dissolve the KMT and force its members to flee the country in fear. 4 Sun
Yat-sen reestablished the KMT in 1919 in Guangdong during the height of the Warlords Era.
Pursuing his vision of a unified China, he sought help from foreign powers, signing the Sun-
Joffe Manifesto in cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1923. Under this pact, the KMT agreed
to form a united front with the fledgling CCP in return for Soviet aid. The guiding ideals of the
KMT are the “Three Principles of the People,” a political philosophy espoused by Sun Yat-sen.
These cornerstones include “nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood.

The CCP, under terms of the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, formed the First United Front with the KMT
in pursuit of the common goal of ending the “Warlords Era” and uniting all of China. As such,
CCP members were encouraged to join the KMT, forming the left wing of the party, while still
maintaining their own political ideology. The relationship between the KMT and CCP started out
as a symbiotic one, with the CCP taking advantage of the KMT’s numbers to spread its own
ideology and the KMT taking this as an opportunity to monitor and control the growing CCP.
With the KMT under Sun Yat-sen, the CCP did struggle with the right-wing branch for
influence, but it wasn’t until Sun’s death in 1925 and Chiang Kai Shek’s ascension to the
leadership that open hostilities began, the implications of which were severe in their truest terms.

2
Tung, William L. (1968). The Political Institutions of Modern China. Springer Publishing., 92, 106.
3
Sharman, Lyon (1968). Sun Yat-sen: His life and its meaning, a critical biography. Stanford: Stanford University
Press. pp. 94, 271.
4
Van de Ven; Hans J. (1991). From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–
1927. University of California Press. ISBN 0520910877.

6
 3. THE NANJING( NANKING) DECADE IN SHAPING THE FUTURE

The period from 1927 to 1937, known as the Nanjing (Nanking) Decade, was a time of relative
stability before the outbreak of war. Chiang Kai-shek, in his campaign against the warlords, took
control of Nanjing and made it the capital, even though the KMT government was based in
Wuhan. During this so-called “Golden Decade,” Chiang consolidated land gains and solidified
power.

In 1928, the Northern Expedition resumed, and Chiang finally defeated the Beiyang warlords in
Beijing (remnants of Yuan Shikai’s reign). 5 It’s important to note that while the KMT had
steadily gained control from the South, up until now, the Beiyang government was still the
internationally-recognized government of the Republic of China.6 With the defeat of the warlords
and unification of China under the KMT, there were still power struggles between intraparty
factions. Although Chiang led the National Revolutionary Army in the Northern Expedition, not
all of the forces were directly loyal to him. He headed the Whampoa clique, but there three other
factions within the Army: Li Zonren’s New Guangxi clique, Feng Yuxiang’s Guomingjun, and
Yan Xishan’s Shanxi clique. Out west, there were the Xinjiang clique and the Ma clique. Even
though they were all nominally aligned with the KMT, the Nanjing Decade was marked by a
series of attempted coups against Chiang from within. The KMT government under Chiang was
somewhat of a totalitarian one-party state that attempted to stamp out all dissent. He was
successful in the military campaigns against the rebel cliques, but the successes came at great
financial cost, bankrupting the KMT government.7 All other political parties were suppressed
under KMT’s control. Chiang again attempted to exterminate the communists using a strategy of
“encirclement campaigns,” but the communists switched from urban warfare to guerrilla warfare
strategies under the leadership of Mao Zedong, making it much harder for the KMT.

4. IMPLICATIONS OF CHIANG-KAI-SHEK’S LEADERSHIP

5
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1996), 271
6
G.P. Douglas, “ The Kuomintang and the Chinese Civil War”( 1927- 1949), Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2013
7
Li, Xiaobing. (2007). A History of the Modern Chinese Army. University Press of Kentucky. 13, 26–27

7
In the war years, 1937-1945, China saw the worst inflation in its recent history. The KMT under
Chiang Kai-shek heavily controlled the banks and relied on bank loans instead of unpopular
taxation to support government programs.26 Later, Chiang’s brother-in-law, T.V. Soong,
established the Central Bank of China, which sold large amounts of government-backed bonds,
which acted as a quick but temporary fix to the government’s economic woes. The 1931 invasion
of Manchuria by Japan caused bonds to fall to half their value.27 In efforts to prop up their
public image, directors of private banks were appointed to the board of the Central Bank, but the
underlying problems of the KMT-controlled banking system were not fixed. In the mid-1930s,
silver flowed out of China as the U.S. began to purchase massive amounts of silver, leading to a
deflationary recession that worsened the Chinese debt situation. Blaming these problems on
private bankers, the KMT seized private banks and consolidated control over the banking
system. However, with rampant corruption and mismanagement, inflation soon followed the
introduction of a fiat currency in place of the silver standard in 1935. From 1937 onwards, the
KMT printed more and more of this new currency to fund the war with Japan, leading to ongoing
inflation with periods of hyperinflation.

As leader of the Republic of China in the Nanjing decade, Chiang had the difficult task of
modernizing the country with whatever time and resources he had before impending Japanese
threat. Trying to avoid a war with Japan while hostilities with CCP continued, he was kidnapped
in the Xi'an Incident and obliged to form an Anti-Japanese United Front with the CCP.
Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, he mobilized China for the Second Sino-
Japanese War. For eight years he led the war of resistance against a vastly superior enemy,
mostly from the wartime capital Chongqing. As the leader of a major Allied power, Chiang met
with Churchill and Roosevelt in the Cairo Conference to discuss terms for Japanese surrender.
No sooner had the Second World War ended than the Civil War with the communists, by then
led by Mao Zedong, resumed. Under Chiang's command, the nationalists were mostly defeated in
a few decisive battles in 1948.

In 1949 Chiang's government and army retreated to Taiwan, where Chiang imposed martial law
and persecuted critics during the White Terror. Presiding over a period of social
reforms and economic prosperity, Chiang won five elections to six-year terms as President of the

8
Republic of China and was Director-General of the Kuomintang until his death in 1975, three
years into his fifth term and just one year before Mao's death.

One of the longest-serving non-royal head of states in the 20th century, Chiang was the longest-
serving non-royal ruler of China having held the post for 46 years. Like Mao, he is regarded as a
controversial figure. Supporters credit him with playing a major part in unifying the nation and
leading the Chinese resistance against Japan, as well as with countering Soviet-communist
encroachment. Detractors and critics denounce him as a dictator at the front of an authoritarian
regime who suppressed opponents. Critics estimate that the Nationalist government was
responsible for between 6 and 18.5 million deaths.

Contrary to Communist propaganda that he was pro-capitalism, Chiang antagonized the

capitalists of Shanghai, often attacking them and confiscating their capital and assets for the use
of the government. Chiang confiscated the wealth of capitalists even while he denounced and
fought against communists.[40] Chiang crushed pro-communist worker and peasant organizations
and rich Shanghai capitalists at the same time. Chiang continued the anti-capitalist ideology of
Sun Yat-sen, directing Kuomintang media to openly attack capitalists and capitalism, while
demanding government controlled industry instead.

Chiang has often been interpreted as being pro-capitalist, but this conclusion may be
problematic. Shanghai capitalists did briefly support him out of fear of communism in 1927, but
this support eroded in 1928 when Chiang turned his tactics of intimidation on them. The
relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and Chinese capitalists remained poor throughout the
period of his administration.[42] Chiang blocked Chinese capitalists from gaining any political
power or voice within his regime. Once Chiang Kai-shek was done with his White Terror on pro-
communist laborers, he proceeded to turn on the capitalists. 

Chiang viewed Japan, America, the Soviet Union, France and Britain as all being imperialists
with nobody else's interests in mind but their own, seeing them as hypocritical to condemn each
other for imperialism which they all practiced. He manipulated America, Nazi Germany, and the
Soviet Union to regain lost territories for China as he viewed all the powers as imperialists trying
to curtail and suppress China's power and national resurrection.8

8
Hoover Institution Archives, KMT Central Reform Committee Archive (hereafter, CRCA), 6.4-2, reel 1, Chiang
Kai-shek’s introduction to Resolution on the Reforming of our Party, July 18, 1950.

9
 5. FUTURE OF TAIWAN UNDER THE KUOMINTANG

In early January 1950, he formed a study group to draft a plan. Writing in his diary on January 3,
Chiang specified that, to attract superior members, “the reform time table should stress the
importance of the party being a new organization, with new party guidelines, new demands, and
new tasks.”Chiang realized that reform could only succeed by building a new party and
eliminating party factionalism. That meant rejecting the uncooperative party veterans and KMT
clique members.9 But serious and terrifying conditions now threatened Taiwan and needed
Chiang’s attention. Intense arguments and bitter recriminations within the party and government
had erupted. Chiang’s leading officials quarreled among themselves and with Chiang. From
February to July 1950, many feared the KMT would split before the Communists even invaded
Taiwan.

Such defeatist views infuriated Chiang and his closest associates, and he despised the ongoing
factional rivalries within the Nationalist government. In March 1950, having argued with
Premier Chen Cheng over who should control party and state financial affairs, Taiwan governor
K.C. Wu threatened to resign.10 Rivalry between the Legislative Yuan and the Executive Yuan
came next, when a group of clique legislators refused to approve an emergency bill that would
give the Executive Yuan more authority to manage crises.

After observing these disputes, Chiang could no longer contain his anger: “Party members have
become rude and unreasonable. In their minds they no longer care about the survival of the
party and the state. I must set my mind on the task of rectifying the party so that it can survive.
Without completely reforming the party, there will be no hope to save our nation.”

But as the crisis worsened, more former officials and party members backed away from radical
political reform because they feared that the little power they still enjoyed might be transferred to
other party members.11Other things also prevented Chiang from launching party reform. In the
spring of 1950 the Nationalist government confronted a difficult military choice: Chiang could
use the offshore islands still under KMT control to launch attacks against mainland China but
risk losing forces that could defend Taiwan; or he could strengthen Taiwan’s defenses by
9
K. C. Wu, Wu Guozhen Zhuan (The biography of K. C. Wu) (Taipei: Liberty Times, 1995), vol. 2, pp. 428–40.
10
Robert Accinelli, Crisis and Commitment: United States Policy toward Taiwan, 1950–1955 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 3–28.
11
Li Songlin, Jiang Jieshi de Taiwan Shidai (Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan) (Taipei: Fengyun Shidai, 1993), pp.
108–12; Dashi Changbian, vol. 9, p. 167.

10
withdrawing all Nationalist military forces back to Taiwan from the offshore islands along the
coast of southeastern China. Chiang appealed again for U.S. support for his anticommunist stand
but still heard nothing from Washington.12 As invasion and death threatened the island, Chiang
had to postpone party reform and hope for a miracle.13

Having organized a cohesive, loyal party, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to extend its influence deep
into Taiwan society so as to broaden its social base. One way in which to do that was to select
new members from different social strata and groups. Shortly after the CRC was established, its
leaders approved reregistering members who had lost contact with the party during the civil war
(1945–49). During re-Registration, more than twenty thousand members returned to the party
and then helped the CRC recruit more Taiwanese.

In the early 1950s, the party’s nomination system strengthened its control. Although a few local
notables had great support in their districts, the KMT still dominated by virtue of its nomination
system, which almost guaranteed that KMT candidates would be elected14. The elections did,
however, encourage local elites to join the party, win elected office, and then enjoy the benefits
of those elected offices.15As local elections progressed in the early 1950s, the KMT was also
recruiting loyal, local followers to add to its growing power, which had both positive and
negative results. On the one hand, local elections enabled the KMT to work closely with local
Taiwanese elites and strengthen its claim of being a legitimate party representing the people. On
the other hand, however, party involvement in local electoral affairs encouraged factionalism
within the KMT. Chen Cheng planned three phases of reform—reducing rents in 1949, selling
public land in 1951, and transferring land ownership to poor tenant farmers in 1953—which he
began by calling for a 37.5 percent ceiling on rents. In 1951, a CRC resolution offered one-fifth
of the island’s arable land for sale to tenant farmers for a price well below that of the market.
Buyers then had ten years to buy their land by means of produce rather than cash with no
interest.49 Land assessment and agricultural extension offices were established by the
government’s land bureau, which oversaw the start-up of farmers’ and irrigation associations,

12
Dashi Changbian, vol. 9, p. 145.
13
Linda Chao and Ramon H. Myers, The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on
Taiwan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 23–24.
14
J.L. Hao Yumei, Guomindang Timing Zhidu zhi Yanjiu (A study of the KMT’s nomination system) (Taipei:
Zhengzhong shuju, 1981).
15
CRCA, 6.4-2, reel 7, “General guidelines for national mobilization, in minute of the 293rd CRC meeting,
February 21, 1951.

11
quasi-governmental organs that helped local farmers follow government guidelines. More than
150,000 tenant farm families bought land under the program.50 If the average household had
seven persons, more than one million people (out of a population of six million) acquired
additional land.

In September 1950, as the land reform program was getting under way, the CRC decided to
strengthen the national economy by designating the new, state-owned enterprises to take over
mining, petroleum extraction and refinement, and steel production, as well as the production of
electric power, sugar, fertilizer, cement, pulp, paper, and ships. In addition, the government
operated monopolies that produced alcohol and tobacco, whereas forestry was managed by the
provincial government, thus giving it a revenue source.16 Establishing such a large core of state-
owned enterprises followed Sun Yat-sen’s economic development model. Reforms after 1953,
however, concentrated on promoting private enterprise, with a focus on institutional change.

The party thus used the economic power of the state to encourage the rise of a market economy.
Although many directing Taiwan’s economic policy planning, such as K.Y. Yin (Yin
Zhongrong), were non-KMT members, Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Cheng allowed them to
remain in their jobs in an effort to promote liberal economic reforms. The party also made it
possible for young technocrats such as Yin to manage Taiwan’s economic and financial affairs
without political interference. Such tolerance showed the KMT’s willingness to connect
creativity with a free market economy. But although the KMT in its reform period still advocated
“revolutionary democracy,” it carefully selected only loyal Taiwanese for KMT membership.
Meanwhile, the party softened its ideological demands and abandoned the idea of making
Taiwan a launching pad for recovering the mainland.17

Finally, the 1953 Land to the Tiller Act enabled landlords to still own a limited amount of land.
They were compensated with land bonds and stock shares from four privatized, government-
owned enterprises: Taiwan Cement Corporation, Taiwan Pulp and Paper Corporation, Taiwan
Agriculture and Forestry Corporation, and Taiwan Industry and Mining Corporation. The former
tenants purchased that land for 2.5 times the land’s annual crop value. The privatized corporate
assets financed the stocks and bonds with which the landowners were compensated henceforth.

16
Ching-yuan Lin, “Agriculture and Rural-Urban Migration: The 1949–53 Land Reform,” in James C Hsiung et al.,
eds., The Taiwan Experience 1950–1980 (New York: Praeger, 1981), pp. 138–41
17
John F. Copper, Taiwan: Nation-State or Province? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 131–32.

12
Because national security was still a primary concern for Chiang Kai-shek, he insisted on
tightening the grip of party organizations and disciplining work teams to prevent Communists
from infiltrating Taiwan. Chiang especially feared that the Communists would enter Taiwan
from the sea by recruiting impoverished Taiwanese fishermen to aid them in their efforts. His
instructions at the eighty-second meeting of the CRC reveal that concern:

“Fishermen are particularly important for consolidating our regime and for our military to
recover the Chinese mainland. We should pay close attention to strengthening their organization
and training, and help improve their living standards so that they will not be manipulated by
Communist bandits. They must be made aware of what is the absolute right and the wrong
thus?”18

Taiwan’s local elections—open and competitive as they were—did not always convince people
that the KMT would never intervene in such elections. Having so many local elections in a year,
however, did convince many voters that the KMT wanted to foster political pluralism19, although
party leaders believed that political tutelage was necessary to teach voters how democracy
should work. By so doing the leaders hoped to broaden their influence while only slowly
allowing opposition politicians to compete.

Incremental, but tangible, progress slowly elevated party prestige. Having learned how brutally
the Communist Party was governing the mainland, more people began condemning Chinese
communism as a failure. As the Taiwanese worked with the KMT, some even believed that
recovering the mainland might be possible.47 Meanwhile, the KMT addressed itself to solving
the land problem, to find a more peaceful environment for the Taiwanese to live and enjoy fully.

Although conceding that more democracy was needed in the future, Chiang believed that enough
liberalization had already occurred. Party leaders continued to emphasize that martial law was
still necessary. Taiwan’s limited democracy, guided by a new political party, thus mobilized
popular support for the KMT20. For the first time in its history, the KMT, learning from its
mistakes, had organized a new polity for the people of their beloved new haven, area of Taiwan.

The fare reaching effects extended deep and long, till the dawn of the new Millennium globally.

18
Denny Roy, Taiwan: A Political History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 84-85
19
Zhang Qiyun, Guomindang di Xinsheng (The rebirth of the KMT) (Taipei: Chinese Cultural Service, 1952), pp.
63–64
20
Dickson, “Lessons of Defeat,” pp. 74–75; Hood, The Kuomintang and the Democratization of Taiwan, pp. 33–34

13
 6. CONCLUSION

When the KMT convened its Seventh National Congress in October 1952, the CRC’s role was
officially ended, with Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Cheng now leading the party. In the preceding
two years, Chiang and the ROC government, together with the CRC, had built a new political
regime. The KMT encouraged citizens to join with party members to achieve the national goals
supported by the party and state. Although the CRC did not fulfill the KMT’s grand goal—
recovering the Chinese mainland—it had transformed the defeated and demoralized KMT
organization into a new ruling party that clearly defined citizen’s rights and obligations. We can
summarize the reinvigorated party’s achievements as follows: First, the CRC had established
party leadership of young, creative executive managers by reorganizing the party’s structure and
eliminating the old factions. Second, the CRC had given the KMT an identity and purpose.
Third, the CRC had set up a cadre school to train party members in party policies and principles.
Fourth, the new KMT had expanded the party’s social support, thus solving the “penetration
crisis. Last, but not least, local elections and economic reforms had begun restructuring the
society, economy, and polity. When taken together, those achievements enabled the party to
recruit loyal members, establish party discipline, and share a common ideological vision. The
KMT could now exert its influence on the government and society and interact with the people
of Taiwan. The party had never held such power or imposed such influence on the mainland. To
revitalize itself in a new environment, the KMT introduced new rules and regulations that
strengthened the party’s institutions. By paying attention to party organization, institutions, and
mission, Chiang Kai-shek had consolidated more power to the KMT than ever before. In the next
two decades, the KMT governed through enlightened authoritarianism. By the 1970s, however,
the party, responding to new political opposition, began loosening its control. Democratic
reforms were introduced in the late 1980s, followed by further reform in the early 1990s. The
KMT’s overall achievements could never have been anticipated in 1949. Having miserably failed
before 1949, even its Taiwanese supporters had little confidence the old party could be reformed.
But the KMT had learned its lesson, and, after the years of sweeping reforms, its confidence
increased. Without the iron will of Chiang Kai-shek and his handpicked CRC members in the
early 1950s, the party might well have splintered and collapsed, disappearing into the dustbin,
but the heyday efforts of Chiang-kai-Shek in revitalizing the ethos of the Taiwanese after having
been thrown out of his native Chinese motherland, trying to lift his adopted home to the standard.

14
 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

 Denny Roy, Taiwan: A Political History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 84-
85

 Linda Chao and Ramon H. Myers, The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the
Republic of China on Taiwan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998),
pp. 23–24

 Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1996), 271

 Fu, Zhengyuan. (1993). Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics. Cambridge University
Press, 153–154.

 Li, Xiaobing. (2007). A History of the Modern Chinese Army. University Press of
Kentucky. 13, 26–27
 K. C. Wu, Wu Guozhen Zhuan (The biography of K. C. Wu) (Taipei: Liberty Times,
1995), vol. 2, pp. 428–40.
 Robert Accinelli, Crisis and Commitment: United States Policy toward Taiwan, 1950–
1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 3–28.
 G.P. Douglas, “ The Kuomintang and the Chinese Civil War”( 1927- 1949), Amazon
Digital Services LLC, 2013
ARTICLES

 Zhang Qiyun, Guomindang di Xinsheng (The rebirth of the KMT) (Taipei: Chinese
Cultural Service, 1952), pp. 63–64
 Dickson, “Lessons of Defeat,” pp. 74–75; Hood, The Kuomintang and the
Democratization of Taiwan, pp. 33–34
 Ching-yuan Lin, “Agriculture and Rural-Urban Migration: The 1949–53 Land Reform,”
in James C Hsiung et al., eds., The Taiwan Experience 1950–1980 (New York: Praeger,
1981), pp. 138–41
 Sharman, Lyon (1968). Sun Yat-sen: His life and its meaning, a critical biography.
Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 94, 271.

15
  Van de Ven; Hans J. (1991). From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese
Communist Party, 1920–1927. University of California Press. ISBN 0520910877.
 Li Songlin, Jiang Jieshi de Taiwan Shidai (Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan) (Taipei:
Fengyun Shidai, 1993), pp. 108–12; Dashi Changbian, vol. 9, p. 167
REPORTS AND COMMUNIQUES
 J.L. Hao Yumei, Guomindang Timing Zhidu zhi Yanjiu (A study of the KMT’s
nomination system) (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1981).
 CRCA, 6.4-2, reel 7, “General guidelines for national mobilization, in minute of the
293rd CRC meeting, February 21, 1951.
 Hoover Institution Archives, KMT Central Reform Committee Archive (hereafter,
CRCA), 6.4-2, reel 1, Chiang Kai-shek’s introduction to Resolution on the Reforming of
our Party, July 18, 1950.

16