Confucianism as Aesthetics; The roots of the Blue Shirt society

In Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937, Maggie Clinton explores the ideological influences of the CC clique and Blue Shirt society, characterising them as ‘Confucian Fascism’. Whilst it’s accurate to say that the Blue Shirts envisioned China “bound together by Confucian culture”, compared to the CC clique their engagement with Confucianism was largely surface level, seeing it as a tool to achieve their aim of reshaping society among military lines.1. This can be traced back to their origins in the Whampoa military academy, specifically alumni who were members of the “Sun Yat-Senism Study Society”, an anti-communist group who opposed the federation of Young Soldiers, a pro communist organisation in the academy.2. This meant that whilst having certain overlapping ideas, compared to the CC Clique’s civilian bureaucrats, military men “constituted the core of the Blue Shirts”.3. As such, the militarization and complete unification of society was the primary goal of the Blue Shirts, something diametrically opposed to the idealized righteous hierarchy of Confucian ethics.

Instead of citing The Four Books, the model for the blue shirts was the Soviet Union and Japan, for what they saw as their successful regimentation of society and national strength.4 The founder of the Sun Yat-Senism Study Society, He Zhonghan was a delegate to the Soviet 1922 Congress of the Toilers of the East and would train int he Soviet Frunze military academy.5 Regardless of his anti-communist views, his military training the in the Soviet Union and Japan would inspire the Blue Shirt idea to create a nation with “united will” and “iron discipline”.6 To achieve this, they would diverge with conservatives in key areas such as land reform and economics, denouncing “feudal remnants” and “landlord exploitation” with goal of implementing a “controlled economy”.7 This idealized state mirror that described in Erich Ludendorff’s Totaler Krieg, in which war was a battle between “the life and soul” of competing races that had to be mobilized giving “everything to the army” as an expression of a people’s vitality.8. This work was influential for Japanese militarism and mirrors the Blue Shirts obsession with public health and the concept of vitality.

Any aspect of Confucian mandate is absent in the ideology of the blue shirts as any challenge to the state’s authority, regardless of it’s virtue went against fascist principles. When Chang Kai Shek greenlit the creation of the blue shirts, the foremost principle was that Chang was the “supreme and permanent leader”.9 Compared to Confucian conservatives, the Blue Shirts found aesthetic inspiration from futurism and concepts of “modernity”, releasing periodicals with titles such as “The Latest in the World of Science” and “Streamlined Forms”, with a focus on military developments.10

Therefore, beyond a sense of paternalism and reverence for hierarchy, the influence of Confucianism on the Blue Shirts was largely secondary to the events of the 20th century, as they envisioned a “modern” China free from what they considered weakening influences. In the words of Liu Jianqun, their goal was the “immediately overthrowing the feudal influences”, and their affinity for totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had little basis in Confucianism.11

 

  1. Maggie Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 26 [↩]
  2. Hung-Mao Tien, Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927-1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 54. [↩]
  3. Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism, 30. [↩]
  4. Ibid, 38 [↩]
  5. Ibid, 39 [↩]
  6. Ibid, 40. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 41 [↩]
  8. Erich Ludendorff, Totaler Krieg (London: Friends of Europe, 1936), 5-8. [↩]
  9. Suisheng Zhao, Power by Design: Constitution-Making in Nationalist China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), 63 [↩]
  10. Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism, 51-52. [↩]
  11. Frederic E. Wakeman, Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 75. [↩]