Modern War And Mobilization - A Study Of The Kuomintang In The Perspective Of Organizational Comparison

The Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, initially established the first Party-State system in Chinese history. The Party-State marked a significant transition for political regime. The study on the organization of Kuomintang in the mainland will help us to find out the key elements in the process of modern state regime construction.Based on the organizational comparison, this study is trying to make up an explanation of how the KMT worked why it did and what it did. All the forms of the Kuomintang organization can be generalized into four modes:the pre-Mobilization Party period, the emergence of the Mobilization Party, the creation of the Mobilization Party, the reconstruction of the Mobilization Party. In this article, we will study the relationship between the appearance of mobilization party and the modern war. And we will investigate the different organization structures among the mobilization party, the bureaucracy and the military, and the resulting collaborations and competitions of them.This article presents two theoretical hypotheses:I The organization-war correlation:Modern warfare is a significant contributor to the organization of the Nationalist Party. II Inter-organizational relationship:The organization structures of the mobilization party, the bureaucracy and the military are different. Each of them has special organization characteristics and operation mechanism of its own.This article demonstrates the two theoretical hypotheses from theoretic dimension and historical dimension.The characteristics of modern warfare are total and autonomous. The modern war requests general or partial mobilization. In order to meet the demands of modem war, as a new tool of coercion, the mobilization party emerged. The mobilization parties are tightly organized, organize from the top down, establish party groups, and have organizational hierarchy. The Party commands the military organization and the bureaucracy. These three organizations are different in constituents, coaching and activities. Social mobilization is the inherent function of mobilization parties.Then, by inspecting the organization of the KMT in the history, we find that obvious changes which took place in the organization structure of the Kuomintang during the wars. With the continuous development of modern war and mobilization, the KMT has established a mobilization organization. The Nationalist Party tried to establish a party-state. But in fact, in the Nationalist government and the National Revolutionary Army, the KMT’s leadership has been weakened. During the war of resistance against Japan, the KMT set up a highest centralized leadership body that was the Supreme National Defense Council and some new type party systems like Lixingshe (the Society for Vigorous Practice) and The Youth Corps. Principle of the mobilization was destroyed.