National Sentiment And Its Impact On The Rational Liberals

The Chinese nation was facing an increasingly serious crisis of survival in the 1930s. After the "9·18" Incident,Hu Shih and his friends published the political weekly Independent Review to expound their politics and Nation-salvations, and the Sino-Japanese relations was the focus which they concerned.Takeing Independent Review as the platform, during 1932 to 1937, the rational liberalists discussed Sino-Japanese conflicts in detail. Which showed us the track of the Sino-Japanese War from a particular perspective.After the "9·18" Incident,Hu Shih and his friends condemned the Japanese aggression severely, and also criticized the non-resistance policy of Chinese government. However, what they paid more attention to were how to solve the conflict and how to avoid the national calamity. Because of the disparity in strength between China and Japan, the rational liberals called for Sino-Japanese negotiations, and supported the Government to submit the conflict to the League of Nations. After the subscription of the Tang GU Pact, they even suggested the government to make a partial compromise in order to seek short-term security only not to violate the principle of the sovereignty-independence and dominion-integrity,and urged the government to dominate in the remnant territory. Thus, Independent Review was regarded as right-wing publications by some people. After the North China Incident,many authors of the Independent Review had realized the constant ambition of Japan to annex China and most of them inclined to take the Anti-Japanese War attitude. As the increasingly deepened national crisis, their attitudes towards Japan through three stages:reconciliation, compromise and the Anti-Japanese War. Which truely showed their strong national emotion and the rough fight between their rational mind. The attitude and opinion of the Independence Review had made a great impact on the demos especially the intelligentsia.