A Research On The Party Discipline Of The Nationalist Party Of China(1924-1937)

It was only four years between the victory of the war against the Japanese aggression and KMT's withdrawal to Taiwan.Why did the Nanjing National Government lose the regime in such a short time?In the past,people often thought it was mainly because of the military rout,even Chiang Kai-shek himself thought so.But few people inspected this problem from the perspective of the party discipline of KMT.Discipline is a useful tool in governing the party,a good law 1s the premise of that,the importance of discipline for the party is self-evident.The truly serious party discipline of KMT began with the promulgation of the New Party Constitution after the first national congress.The KMT's party discipline included within the Party Constitution and other party regulations.In fact,the party discipline began to collapse gradually since 1927.The discipline of the Nationalist Party can't keep its seriousness,coerciveness,and authoritativeness.The Nationalist Party was not as valiant heroic as it was in the period of the Northern Expedition,what became the biggest realities were the decline of party affairs and vagueness of party programs.Although the power of the party had declined to some extent,but all the factions in the Nationalist Party attached great importance to the name of the Nationalist Party and fought for that.Just as the allusion 'have a firm hold over the emperor to oppress the princes' in late Eastern Han Dynasty,the emperor in the Republican period was just the party system.The regime could only be legitimate on the prerequisite that you could control the party system.Just as people then said,China after 1924 had came into a time when people mainly talked about disciplines of the party instead of legal principles,and fought for party systems instead of legally constituted authority.The most important source of the party system was the national congress and plenary session of the central committee.Therefore,many sessions with different names followed by,the so-called second national congress held in Shanghai,the fourth national congress held in Nanjing,the fourth national congress held in Canton,the fourth national congress held in Shanghai,the reorganization meeting,the enlarged session,and extraordinary session,etc.Discipline of the party declined to the tool for all factions to fight for party system,they phenomenon of party members' expulsion from the party by other factions became inured to the unusual,the abuse of the discipline of the party was inevitable,even members of the central ministry of supervision were involved.Factional strife within the Nationalist Party among senior members inevitably spread to junior party members,from the statistics that I have made,from March 1929 to November 1931,the majority of party members expulsed from the party were because of all kinds of reactionary activities.This point went with the traits of the developing of the Nationalist Party during this time.Although the central committee of the Nationalist Party made some efforts,such as,making regulations within the party,issuing orders to interpreter disciplines of the party,and paying special attention to the equality of the evidences and disposition procedure.,trying to regain and maintain the authoritativeness and seriousness of disciplines.But,many party members took the attitude of alleviating the guilt,and finally came to the situation of no penalty,hoping that party members could comply with the discipline of the party with their inner moral principles,many party members who had broke the party disciplines were expulsed from punishment.Maybe its because the elite of the Nationalist Party were affected by the traditional thoughts of Confucius,but the history.of vicissitudes of dynasties in China has proved that its not the long-lasting way of saving people's minds and morale through moral courage.Party members are foundation and basic units that consist a party,qualities of party members,to a large degree,determined the standard of a political party.During the period of political tutelage,the Nationalist Party declared to govern the whole country in the name of the party,party members,therefore,should be models for the public,and sacrifice their freedom and rights and shoulder more responsibilities.When behaviors of party members were against the law,they should get more punishment-So,the Nationalist Party had passed regulations like'Regulations for Party Members against Political Pledge'and'Interim Law for More Serious Punishment for Party Members against Law,.Under party-state system,there must be quite a number of party members among public officials serving in all kinds of government organizations.When public officials(who are also party members)broke the law,the conflicts of duality of the status of public officials and party members,would lead to the contradiction of the ordinance for applying disciplines of the party and laws of the country.When facing this problem,the Nationalist Party thought that criminal laws should be prior to disciplines of the party,on one hand,it's the manifestation that the Nationalist Party respected law.While on the other hand,though the investigation of the situation when administrative officers were to be punished,we found out that when senior party and government officials were accused,both national laws and party disciplines would come to the second place.That was the aspect that the Nationalist Party neglected national laws and party disciplines.National laws and party disciplines only worked when restraining and sanctioning the lower classes,and descended to a tool of ruling the public.The national government was determined to fail under such bad administration circumstance.Its not necessary to wait for the coming of 1940s,the seeds of destruction for the nationalist party was buried then.