Book Review: Far East: Student Nationalism in China 1927–1937
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| Author | Rene Goldman |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200154 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
145
the
author's
view
that
China's
nuclear-power
may
not
be
used
in
border
warfare
(p.
186)
may
not
be
tenable.
On
the
whole,
the
study
is
a
scholarly analysis
of
the inter-relation
between
China's border
disputes,
her
diplomacy
and
her
over-all
aims
in
world-politics.
Indian
School
of
International
Studies,
New
Delhi
PURUSHOTTAM
PRA3HAKAR
STUDENT
NATIONALISM
IN
CHINA
1927-1937.
By
John
Israel.
1966.
(Stan-
ford:
Stanford
University
Press.
ix,
253pp.
$7.50)
In
the
country
of
mass
illiteracy
China
still
is
to
some
extent
today,
social
stability
and
the
functioning
of
government
have
always
rested
upon
the loyalty
of
the
small
educated
minority. The
prestige
of
this
minority
was
exalted
as
in
no
other
country
by
the
Confucian
ideology,
which viewed
learning
as
the
cultivation
of
virtue, the
striving
for
human
perfection.
The
impact
of
the
West,
which
began
with
the
Anglo-
Chinese
"Opium"
war
of
1840-1842,
acted
as
a
catalyst
of
revolutionary
change,
causing
the
disintegration
of
the
Confucian
society
which
was
the
ratson
d'dtre
of
its
educated
elite.
Therefore,
once
the
doom of
the
Chinese
tradition
was
sealed,
the
new
generations
of
students
brought
up
in
modern,
Western-style
universities,
both
at
home
and
abroad,
became
the
promoters
of
revolution.
Professor
Israel
writes
that
in
1931
college
students
numbered
no
more
than
.01
per
cent. of
the
popula-
tion
and
high
school
students
.1
per
cent. The
influence
they
exerted
upon
the
course of
events was however
far
out
of
proportion to
their
numbers,
indeed
it
was
crucial.
Student
activism
at
the
time
of
the
May
Thirtieth
Movement
in
1925
sparked
a
nation-wide
revolution
aimed
at
foreign
im-
perialism and
"feudal"
warlords
at
home,
a
revolution
which
brought
the
Nationalist
Party
(Kuomintang)
into
power
in
1927.
Ten
years
later,
resurgent
student
activism forced
Chiang
Kai-shek
to
interrupt
the
civil
war
against the
Communists
and, instead,
conclude
with
them
a
United
Front
to
resist
Japanese
aggression,
which
was
threatening the
survival
of
China
as
a
state.
This
crucial
decade of
the
twentieth
century
is covered
by
this
study,
which
shows
eloquently
how
a
scholarly
monograph
can
also
make
for
pleasant
reading.
The
author
does
not
hesitate
to
formulate
judgments,
as,
for
instance,
when he
describes
Kuomintang
policies
as
"a
potpourri
of
warlord
politics,
treaty-port
economics,
hybridized
West-
ern
education,
rural
conservatism,
neo-Confucian
morality
and
ossified
Sun
Yat-senism"
Yet,
these
judgments
do
not
detract
from
the
objec-
tivity
of
his
work.
In
this
century,
like
in
the
past,
the
key
to political
success
still
rested
in
a
party's
ability
to
win
the
allegiance
of
the
intellectuals,
especially
the highly
motivated
students.
Israel
describes
how
the
Kuomntang, after
having
decapitated
in
the
late
1920's
the
student
movement
of
its radical
leadership,
failed
to
inspire
it
and
frustrated
its
patriotic
demands
for
national
unity
and
resistance
to
Japan.
By
the
end
of
the
decade,
the
most idealistic
students
increasingly
looked
toward the
Chinese
Communist
Party
for
leadership
in
the
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