The Misconceived Revolution: State and Society in China’s Nationalist Revolution, 1923-26
Author(s)
Fitzgerald, John
Abstract
This issue’s fifth and final article, also on questions of modern state-building in Asia, shifts attention to China. John Fitzgerald reviews the approaches used by the Nationalist Party in the 1920s with those favored by the Chinese Communist Party. He points out that while most interpreters have stressed the ideological differences between the two, another perspective reveals that both shared a commitment to nationalism and a faith in the power of political revolution as the means to achieve their goals. He suggests that the failure to achieve a true revolution in state power during the mid-1920s came not, as most historians would have us believe, as a consequence of the ideological clash between the Nationalists and Communists, but rather because both parties were acting on misconceptions about the Chinese people’s notions concerning nationalism and the role of the state.
