Scale of Change: The Small Group in Chinese Politics, 1919–1921

ABSTRACT

This article links two political forms that emerged at roughly the same time: the small group (xiaozu) and the mass-party. In the tumultuous early Chinese republic, activists considered different possibilities for organising the relations between individual, society and the state. The historiography has by and large focused teleologically on the mass-parties that emerged – the Nationalist Party and Communist Party. By contrast, this article demonstrates that at roughly the same time (1919–1921) activists experimented with small-scale organisations that could form the basis for an ideal society. Such experiments included the New Village Movement (Xincun yundong), the Work Study Mutual Aid Corps (Gongdu huzhu tuan) and the Garden of Morning Light (Xi yuan). The experiments were widely reported and gripped the imagination of many. Interest in these experiments was not limited to future members of one political party or the other. Ultimately, large mass-parties came to dominate Chinese politics, due in part to Comintern intervention, yet terms and concepts associated with the small groups resurfaced and helped shape later Communist policies aimed at the masses. This article suggests therefore that the ascendance of mass-parties over small groups was not inevitable.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• politics
• communes
• political parties
• New Village Movement
• work-study
• mutual aid
• Wang Guangqi
• Zhou Zuoren
• Young China Association

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for Asian Studies Review for their constructive comments, which have improved the article significantly, and editor David Hundt for his careful editorial work. Earlier versions were presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (March 2018) and the Asian Studies in Israel Conference (May 2018).

Notes

1. The fact that these questions could surface in the first place indicates that the state was increasingly seen in earthly, secular terms rather than as an extension of a divine order (Zarrow, 2012).

2. Luo Dunwei, for example, took part in some of the debates about the New Village Movement, and also co-founded the Family Research Society (Jiating yanjiu she) at Beijing University in January 1920 – at the height of the interest in communal forms of organisation (Glosser, 2003, pp. 28–29; Zheng & Luo, 1979).

3. For a list of sponsors as well as data about funds raised and expenditures, see Wang (1979).

4. The views cited here were collected and published in the 1 April issue of New Youth. Reprinted in Anonymous (1979c).

5. Dai Jitao cautioned that these ventures could not actually realise utopia: “At present the Peach Blossom Garden, another world, cannot yet succeed” ([Dai], 1979, p. 412).

6. Wen-hsin Yeh recounts the fantasies of Shanghai bank workers in the early 1930s about idyllic banking in the countryside (Yeh, 1995).