Nationalistic Political Thought Research

The Awaken Lion Party (also called Chinese Youth Party) in the1920s, is one of the three rival powers (the others are KMT and CPC) with a great political influence and power in intellectual community. The Awaken Lion Party is the result of combined action between traditional Chinese culture and Western civilization. From the perspective of "inner" factor, the sense of modern state is germinating as well as the traditional outlook of "Tianxia" is collapsing under the invasion of western powers. From the perspective of "outer" factor, the western system and culture were introduced and put into practice by some young students well versed in Chinese and Western culture. It is in such cultural background that the Awaken Lion Party emerged. The core of the Awaken Lion Party’s theory is "stateness", that is the personification of the state or the cultural value of the state. The Awaken Lion Party created a set of nationalism theory with Chinese characters on the basis of "stateness". The main purpose of the theory is to rebuild China towards structuring the national consciousness of the nationals, which means to structure the sense of responsibility to serve the state consciously and unconditionally. The party raised the slogan with "wiping traitor and power might home and abroad" and "national revolution and national politics", and hoped to arouse the national consciousness by the way of nationalism education, and to finally achieve the rebuild of the state. However, the logical of the theory essentially relies on the national’s awareness, that is the power of spirit. The CPC did quite differently. Under the guidance of Marxism, the CPC achieved its goal with the method of class analysis to launch class struggle. The CPC relies on the class power, which belongs to materialism. The difference between the Awaken Lion Party and the CPC is also can be seen towards the attitude to the KMT. The Awaken Lion Party saw itself as an opposition within the KMT’s system. It agreed with capitalism and it hoped to push the KMT’s reform forward with its endeavor. On contrary, the CPC’s purpose is to destroy capitalism and build a socialist republic state. In the ages of revolution, the Awaken Lion Party was falling apart under its internal struggle and the converging attack between CPC and KMT, and slowly faded out of the political stage of modern China. For the Awaken Lion Party, their failure rested with that, they didn’t jump out of the shackles of traditional way of thinking. Essentially, they wanted to rebuild China with the modern factor within traditional culture, and with the redecoration the "state" to create a cultural identity over the nation. In the end, the Awaken Lion Party disappeared with failure. But the history of the Awaken Lion Party reminds us to be vigilant to the refresh of ultra-nationalism, which may threaten our right by the way of the expanding of state power.