From Alienation To Cooperation

Among the Chinese modern intellectual groups, the intellectual group of th Etatiste Party is a special one, among which Li Huang, Zuo Shun-sheng, Yu Jia-ju, Chen Qi-tian are the representative personages. From the year of1924on, these intellectuals who believed in nationalism began to take an active part in the political activities by forming associations.From1927to1937, faced with the changeable situation, the intellectuals of the Etatiste Party had been attacking the Kuomintang’s one-party system policy, and even they were opposed to communism and the Communist Party. After the September18th Incident, they came up with their political propositions that the whole nation must consistently resist Japanese and the institution of one-party government must be abolished. What’s more, they put forward the National Defense Character-centric Theory. In the mean time, in order to express their political propositions and realize their political ideal, the intellectuals of the Etatiste Party took an active part in the national political activities by starting publications, running schools, getting in touch with famous politicians and joining patriotic organizations. Especially after the northeastern three provinces were occupied by Japanese in1931, the anti-Japanese war broke out and the nation suffered the terrible disaster. The intellectuals of the Etatiste Party such as Li Huang as their representatives resolutely went to North China to establish the northeastern anti-Japanese militia and even fought against the Japanese troops themselves. Meanwhile they positively supported the anti-Japanese activities. The decade was the very period when they participated in the national political affairs most positively.However, it was not as right as rain for the intellectuals of the Etatiste Party to participate in the political activities, in the course of which they were obstructed by the Kuomintang because of their identities of so-called different political party. After1927, when the Kuomintang oppressed other political forces, the intellectuals of the Etatiste Party were influenced one after the other by the oppression. Therefore they had to give up participating in government and political affairs, and carried out the political activities among the diverse parties. Not until Chiang Kai-shek was initiative to extend the olive branch to the nationalist group in1935did the situation come to get better. From then on, the intellectuals of the Etatiste Party were eventually recognized as a political group by the Kuomintang and started to cooperate with the KMT so that they could participate in the political activities under the system of the national government. Unfortunately as far as we saw, without the institutional guarantee for participating in government and political affairs, their political activities were inevitable to be strictly controlled by the Kuomintang. So the political influence of intellectual group of the Etatiste Party was extremely limited. In the end, it was just a fond dream of scholars’ saving the nation.