Chinese Youth Party In Republic China Political(1923-1949)

Chinese Youth Party (CYP) was an important party in Republic China (1923-1949), which was founded after May4th Movement and moved to Taiwan in1949with Kuomintang (KMT). It played an important role in the evolution of Chinese Party Politics from1920s to the late1940s. This paper is planned to explore the relationship between CYP and Party Politics of Republic China and to discuss the reasons of failure of CYP and its historical significance from the perspective of modern state construction and under the combination of the history of CYP’s birth, development and evaluation.Constructing a modern state is a basic task of Chinese modernization. However, China was involved in the modernization without the forces of modern society and new classes, which decided the construction of a modern state in China was lack of leading social force. In addition, about1920s, the Confucian ideology was getting collapsed gradually in the unconventional trend of the New Culture Movement. Therefore, lacking of the leading social force and the crisis of belief formed double troubles of constructing a modern state in China.However, due to ideology parties grew up in1920s, China walked out from these two troubles. The typical representatives of ideology parties were CYP which was developed from The Young China Association, the Chinese Communist Party (the CPC) and KMT. Because of the designs and paths of the modern state construction were different among these parties, they sometimes cooperated and sometimes competed, which lead to an evaluation of Chinese Party Politics in the end.From1924to1927, on the purpose of striving for leadership, CPY, the CPC and KMT began to compete in the area of ideology, organizational construction and military force. Finally, KMT became a temporary leader and achieve its objective of united the country in form. Hence, Party Politics of Republic China came into the next stage. From1928to1937, CYP fought for survival under the pressure of the CPC and KMT. Under the circumstance of KMT’s crackdown and the internal power struggle of itself, especially the failure of military force cultivation, CYP had to transform-abandoning revolution and taking the way of constitutionalism reform. In other words, in order to taking part in building a modern state, CPY was forced to cooperate with KMT through legal channels instead of competing for the leadership in the process of constructing a modern state. At the same time, the CPC explored ways of "rural areas encircling the cities"and "seizing the power by armed force", which made the CPC became the most competitive rival of KMT in fighting for the leadership of modern state construction in China. From1937to1945, the national contradiction between China and Japan gradually rose to a principal contradiction. Therefore, CYP improved its relations with the CPC and KMT and took part in the Anti-Japanese National United Front. On the one hand, CYP participated in the nation state construction. On the other hand, CYP waved two constitutional movements in ruling area of KMT through some legal channels, such as National Defense Council, National Political Assembly and etcetera on the purpose of constructing a democratic state in China. In the meanwhile, CYP fought against Japanese with other parties and independents, which formed an important political force besides the CPC and KMT, namely middle force. In this circumstance, the new structure of Party Politics of Republic China was formed and developed, in which the CPC and KMT played a leading role, while the middle force took the second. From1945to1949, China was facing the problem of where to go, namely, the problem of building what kind of a modern state. During this time, the CPC and KMT were the most competitive rivals and the middle force had become a very important political variable in this competition. However, CYP was breaking away gradually from the middle force due to the strategies of organizational division and differentiation carried out by KMT. And at the outbreak of KMT-CPC civil war, under the consideration of history and the current politics, CYP finally chose to support KMT for its own ideals of modern state construction. After the civil war, the CPC became the new leader of modern state construction and the multiparty cooperation and political consultation system under the leadership of the Communist Party of China had been officially formed. KMT lost its regime in mainland and CYP had to wipe out from new Chinese parties’ politic formation. Modern state construction contains two dimensions-nation state construction and democracy state construction. And there is a certain tension between these two dimensions. The logic development of Chinese modern state construction is giving priority to the nation state construction, while taking democracy state construction into consideration at the same time to make sure that these two dimensions work well with each other and move ahead altogether. To achieve this goal, except for competing to become the leader of building a modern state, all Chinese parties have to deal with the two dimensions properly at the same time.Throughout the history of CYP, it can be found that CYP failed to be a leader of constructing a modern state because of its lack of ideological cohesion, organizational ability and social basis, especially its failure of military force cultivation, which lead to CYP’s plan of nation state construction cannot be realized and its design for democracy state construction also lost relying space. In conclusion, the evaluation and political fate of CYP are reasonable results for the development of Chinese modern state construction. Similarly, this logic can be applied to explain the development, evaluation and political fate of the CPC and KMT. By a logical extension of this point, the evaluation of Party Politics of Republic China is also a reasonable product of this logic.