How would China look like under the Blue Shirts Society

What happens to CKS? Good idea for a thread BTW! Man, this will require a lot of thought....
CKS would probably have to be bumped off in the 1936 Xi'an Incident and the Blue Shirts Society could arise in the midst of the power vacuum.
 
At least two sources--Stanley Payne's A History of Fascism 1914-45 and Maria Chang's article on "China" in World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia cast doubt on the common description of the Blue Shirts as "fascist". They both see it as an attempt to turn the KMT back to its original Sun Yatsenist ideology. (Chang even makes the provocative argument that if fascism is to be found in modern China it is in the post-Mao CCP...)

The Blue Shirts may have provoked jealousy from other elements of the KMT but they were not disloyal to the party or to Chiang, and it is hard to see them attaining sole power; Chiang knew that his own power was dependent on keeping different factions of the KMT in contention with each other: "as long as no one of them became all-powerful, he could preside over all of them." Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution,1895-1949, p. 256. https://books.google.com/books?id=wcFh1XI6CSIC&pg=PA255 "Another weakness of the fascist model in China was Chiang's skepticism toward mass mobilization of any kind. The Blue Shirts were never allowed to organize a popular following like the state-controlled mass movements of Italy and Germany. Membership remained largely limited to military officers and Party officials. Finally, the anti-traditional aspect of the Blue Shirt ideology was contrary to Chiang's own instincts." Ibid. Zarrow also notes that the Blue Shirts were not monolithic, some favoring complete nationalization of the economy, while more moderate Blue Shirts simply supported the government's line of modest reforms. "One problem of the Lixingshe's secrecy is that it was not clear whose voice, aside from Chiang's, was authoritative. And Chiang did not speak clearly on many issues..."

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Anyway, here is Stanley Payne:

"Most of China was governed during the fascist era by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT), which is normally classified as a multiclass populist or “nation-building” party but not a fitting candidate for fascism (except by oldline Communists). In the aftermath of the Japanese aggression of 1931, a number of new patriotic societies were formed in China. The most important of these was the Blue Shirts, a secret elite organization formed within the KMT in 1932, which recognized Chiang as leader. The Blue Shirts sought to mobilize a stronger nationalist movement that would unite elite and masses, increase China’s strength, and accelerate industrial growth. They subsequently formed a larger movement, the Chinese Renaissance Society, which had at least a hundred thousand members in widely scattered parts of China. By 1934 the Blue Shirts had gained more favor from Chiang, who granted them temporary control of political indoctrination in the army and partial control of the general educational system. The Blue Shirts also helped mobilize popular resistance when the main phase of the war with Japan began in 1937.29 They were, however, dissolved by Chiang in 1938, possibly because of competition with the KMT itself.

"Lloyd Eastman has called the Blue Shirts, whose members admired European fascism and were influenced by it, a Chinese fascist organization.30 This is probably an exaggeration. The Blue Shirts certainly exhibited some of the characteristics of fascism, as did many nationalist organizations around the world, but it is not clear that the group possessed the full qualities of an intrinsic fascist movement. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the KMT, believed in a one-party system of guided democracy and state-directed industrialization and modernization as early as the 1920s, before any fascist influence could have been felt.31 The Blue Shirts probably had some affinity with and for fascism, a common feature of nationalisms in crisis during the 1930s, but it is doubtful that they represented any clear-cut Asian variant of fascism.


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Maria Chang:

"In the 1930s, an allegedly fascist movement flourished for a time within the then-ruling political party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT, or Guomindang). It was known as the Blue Shirts Society (Lanyi she), but the movement identified itself as the Chinese Renaissance Society (Zhonghua fuxing she) and should for various reasons be classed as “fascistic” rather than “fascist.” What precipitated the founding of the society was Japan’s invasion of China’s northeastern provinces of Manchuria. Convinced that the very survival of China was imperiled, twenty young men—all KMT members and graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy—founded the society on 1 March 1932 in Nanjing in order to “save the nation.” The movement was organized as a series of concentric circles. Within the innermost ring was the 300-member “Three People’s Principles Earnest Action Society,” charged with policy-making. Mass organizations constituted the outermost ring, the largest of which was the Chinese Renaissance Society, with a membership of about 100,000.

"The Renaissance movement was animated by a resolve to modernize China through the realization of the ideological program (the Three People’s Principles) of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the KMT. The movement believed that only through an aggressive program of economic and political development could China be saved and revitalized. Economic development would begin with land reform, which included the equalization of land rights, the reallocation of land to the tillers and collective farms. Rapid industrialization would be promoted through a mixed economy that combined state capital with private initiative. The economic program required a fundamental political restructuring that would begin with the installation of a strong central government that could wield effective authority over the national territory without being compromised by foreign imperialists or domestic rivals—communists and warlords. At the same time, a sense of nationalism would be inculcated among the people, whom Sun had long lamented as resembling “a tray of loose sand.” That strong central government would be undertaken by a single party led by a charismatic leader. Authoritarian rule was believed to be necessary because of Japan’s invasion. However, single-party rule was conceived to be an emergency and transitional measure, the necessary means toward the ends of national defense, rapid industrialization, and eventual self-government—all of which were consistent with Sun’s Three Principles. The Renaissance movement believed that the KMT would be that single party—but only if it reformed itself with a renewal of commitment to Sun’s ideology, the purification of corrupt and elitist practices, and the cultivation of grassroots support among the Chinese masses.

"In effect, the Chinese Renaissance Society was an effort to reform the KMT by returning the party to Sun’s ideology of developmental nationalism. As such, the society was one of many movements and ideologies of delayed industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among which were Meiji Japan, Fascist Italy, and countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism, Kemalism, Gandhiism, and Nasserism. Unlike Italian Fascism, however, the one-party authoritarian rule advocated by both Sun and the Renaissance Society was to be strictly transitional—as the necessary means toward the abiding end of democratic government. Although short-lived, the Renaissance movement counted among its achievements four mass campaigns in the 1930s: the New Life Movement, the National Voluntary Labor Movement, the National Economic Reconstruction Movement, and the National Military Education Movement. In March 1938, in an effort at party unity, the Renaissance Society was dissolved by an Extraordinary National Conference of the KMT and merged with two other intraparty factions to form the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps.

"If fascism is to be found in China, a better candidate might actually be the post-Maoist People’s Republic of China (PRC). Beginning in 1979, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping undertook significant capitalist reform of the economy, which catapulted China into the rank of a world power. At the same time, though nominally still Marxist, China’s ideology became that of developmental irredentist nationalism. The transformation of the PRC into a quasi-fascist state was cemented in July 2001 when the party chief and head of state, Jiang Zemin, proposed that capitalists be admitted into the ranks of the Communist Party..."
 
The problem for the Blue Shirts taking over China is that they don't have a very strong power base compared to other KMT factions or the warlords.
 
The problem for the Blue Shirts taking over China is that they don't have a very strong power base compared to other KMT factions or the warlords.
Didn't they? I was under the impression that they were particularly prominent because of their high positions in Chinese government and control of the Whampoa Military Academy.
 
Didn't they? I was under the impression that they were particularly prominent because of their high positions in Chinese government and control of the Whampoa Military Academy.
Yes, but that strength comes from Blue Shirts holding those positions, and not from those positions being inherently Blue Shirt.

In short, after the Blue Shirt leaders were removed from their official positions after the mid 1930s, there was no more Blue Shirt strength in Chinese governmental institutions (even the warlords had significant residue followings after losing their core territories).
 
I'll post this from the other thread about the Blue Shirts about one way to get the group in power:

You might have to ax off Chiang or get the right conditions (i.e. less civil war, stronger Chinese communists, etc.) for the Blue Shirts to take over; one scenario is to have the 1919 May 4th protests go wrong in where the Beiyang government goes against almost everyone in China where the opposition wins under the KMT banner and China industrializes in the 20's and early 30's yet political circumstances lead to the Blue Shirts to take over after Chiang gets assassinated by foreign agents (or at least alleged foreign agents).

And if you ask me about the Blue Shirts regime, I'd imagine it be more akin to the Eastern counterpart to Fascist Italy rather than Nazi Germany given the influence of the Italians upon OTL's Blue Shirts (and same applies to TTL's Blue Shirts).
 
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