A Brief History of the KMT and the Politics of the Republic of China
The Kuomintang (KMT) is the founding and oldest political party in the Republic of China. The KMT was founded as a Chinese nationalist movement with the purpose of bringing stability to central China during the period of civil war. After gaining a strong following in Lanzhou, the KMT quickly built up a coalition consisting of socialists, republicans, communists, and previously unaligned warlords to oppose the decaying Qing Empire and Korean expansionism within China. After the defeat of the Korean Empire however, the Yancheng Declaration by Chen Duxiu split the party in two, causing many socialists and nearly all the communists leave to form the Union of Chinese Collectives. The eleven year Civil War between Communists and Republicans that followed these events not only removed almost all leftist elements from the party, but also led to the Republic of China and KMT being virtually the same entity. The entry of the Shanxi Military Clique into the KMT in 1926 created a powerful new faction within the KMT, not only allowing the Republic to achieve victory in the Civil War but pushing certain elements of the party even farther to the right and in favor of even more rapid modernization.
Following the defeat of the Communists in the civil war, the Shanxi Military Clique assumed greater and greater influence within the Party, producing the nation’s first two elected presidents, Dong Feng Rong and Xue Yue. The opposing faction to this new element of the KMT was led by senior party member Wei He and consisted of the more isolationist and traditionalist members who sought to keep modernization at a slower pace in favor of agricultural reform. In 1946, the KMT lost its first election to the Traditionalists, though it was able to maintain control of enough Congressional seats to maintain strong influence in the country. The Presidential election of 1952 saw the KMT once again rise to power, when despite again losing the Presidential election, it was able to gain almost complete control over the legislature as well as most of local governments upon the death of three of the five remaining warlords. The death of the warlords was particularly effective as most of the ones remaining, now acting as unelected governors, had long ago aligned themselves with the Traditionalist Party to keep control of their own military forces.
With complete control of most of the Chinese government, save for the presidency, the KMT, still under the political control of ex-President Xue Yue, virtually ran the nation for Wei He’s second term in office. Almost all lawmaking attempts by Wei He were shot down by the KMT controlled congress, and the few laws that managed to pass were simply never put into effect by the provincial governors. Any attempts by President Wei He to fight back were similarly rebuffed with the threat of impeachment, which was a major possibility due to the KMT domination in every other sector of the government. When the election of 1958 came about, the KMT was easily able to paint Wei He as “the do-nothing president”, in part because of their control of the nation’s radio centers which were technically federally administered by the Communications Office of the President, but were in reality ran on a day-to-day basis by the provincial governments. It should be noted that when the KMT did regain control of the presidency, this weakness which they had exploited so thoroughly was swiftly dealt with.
Surprisingly to many, Xue Yue did not seek to regain the office of President in 1958, instead choosing the much younger Chiang-Ching Kuo, President and CEO of the mega-corporation Ba-Mong Shu, to run in his place. Chiang, running on a platform of the successes of Reconstruction, which as the head of Ba-Mong Shu he had partly supervised, found early success with this approach. Though this strategy in combination with the lack of radio airtime for Wei He should have been enough to secure a KMT victory, the final nail in the coffin for the traditionalists was the death of the last reigning warlord, Lin Hu just before the election. The newly appointed KMT governor of Guangxi, Bai Chongxi, quickly scrambled to incorporate the army of the late warlord into the regular Republic Army, as well as provide the soldiers with a pay raise just before the election, ensuring that virtually all of the traditionalist leaning elements of the south would now be pro-KMT. Unsurprisingly, Chiang was able to score a colossal victory in the final election, winning nearly 75% of the vote by the time all the ballots were counted the following year. Though many of the Traditionalists were outraged at the results of what was nearly a fixed election, with an all time low popularity rating, they had no choice but to gracefully bow out and bide their time until the KMT made a mistake. Fortunately for the Traditionalists, this did not take nearly as long as they expected.
President Chiang’s first two years in office proved to be relatively stable. Economic growth continued at a steady pace and the quality of life for the average Chinese citizen was increasing slowly but surely. 1961 however, saw two major events that would prove to be disastrous for not only Chiang, but the KMT as a whole. The first of these events was the French takeover of New English Indochina in March of that year. Despite the fact there was very little that could be done to prevent the takeover of Indochina, many Chinese citizens nonetheless traced the root cause of French occupation of the region to the Vietnamese Rebellion of 1957, which had been in part influenced by “Radio Free Vietnam”, an anti-colonial radio program that had been broadcasting from the Tonkin Province of China using KMT funding. Though most Chinese did sympathize with the Vietnamese, it was a generally accepted fact that the New English at least guaranteed a certain amount of stability in the area. The French, on the other hand, were known even in rural China for an aggressive foreign policy and militarism. Many Chinese saw the French occupation of Indochina as not only a foreign policy blunder caused by strategic shortsightedness, but an endangerment to their very livelihood as well. Chiang responded to the crisis by putting regular military patrols in the Tonkin Province and ending the Radio Free Vietnam program all together. This did little to assuage the fears of much of southern China and forced much of the Vietnamese minority, previously a pro-KMT faction, to realign themselves with other parties.
The second event of 1961 was what has become known today as “Feng Hsü Scandal” which took place when financial documents began to leak from the Presidential Budget Management Office that essentially stated that President Chiang was issuing reconstruction contracts to the Ba-Mong Shu Corporation at higher than congressional approved government payments and allowing for the company to dismantle and replace up-to-date infrastructure simply for the sake of prolonging reconstruction and increasing profits. The scandal became even worse when it was discovered that Chiang was receiving a cut of the profits through the use of the fake identity “Feng Hsü” and laundering it back to himself by way of a partially KMT owned casino in Kyushu. Thoroughly disgraced and abandoned by his mentor Xue Yue, Chiang resigned from office within a year of the scandal, leaving his Vice President, the unpopular Ning Jie Ch'eng as President for the remaining two years. Ning, unsurprisingly issued a full pardon for Chiang within a month of assuming office. Despite his unpopularity, Ning was able to conclude a treaty with Boston for peaceful return of all New English held coastal cities by 1966. Though this hardly redeemed the KMT, for many Chinese, it nonetheless allowed Ning Jie Ch’eng to leave the presidency much more honorably than when he had assumed the office.
The fallout from the Feng Hsü Scandal and French occupation of Indochina ended up being twofold for the KMT. Not only did it give the Traditionalists much fodder to use in their anti-modernization and pro-isolationist arguments, but it also led to the creation of a new thorn in the KMT’s side when the People’s Progressive Party and the Socialist Party merged in 1964. The People’s Progressive Party had previously been one of the larger minor parties in Chinese politics. Created as a less militaristic but pro-modernization party, it often found its three or four seats usually voting with the KMT over the Traditionalists in Congress. The Socialists Party, winning its first Congressional seats in only 1962 was almost entirely anti-military and in favor of modernization only when it benefited worker’s rights. As such, it rarely voted with either the KMT or the Traditionalists. The Feng Hsü Scandal and French Occupation of Indochina proved to be more than many in the People’s Progressive Party could stomach, and by the election year of 1964, the party had officially dissolved itself, with almost all of its members joining the growing Socialist Party. Though still much smaller than the KMT or the Traditionalists, the Socialist Party was now no longer a fringe movement whose voice could be simply ignored. Though neither the Traditionalists nor KMT was happy about the creation of a third competitive party, it was the KMT who had the most to lose from this turn of events.
The election of 1964 saw the KMT nominate wealthy banker K'ung Hsiang-his as their candidate. When considering the last KMT President was nearly impeached and imprisoned due to his corporate connections, K’ung may very well seem to be the worst choice for a candidate possible. The suspected reasons for this nomination are that Xue Yue, still acting as the political boss of the KMT, accepted K’ung’s selection simply because a KMT loss in the election was inevitable and it was better to remove the chances of the socially disconnected K’ung from being a viable candidate in an election where the KMT may have stood a chance. The Traditionalists nomination went to Dr. Tien-Min Li, the Mayor of Peking. Tien-Min’s modest background and work on making Peking one of cleanest, safest and least corrupt cities in China won him the election handedly. Tien-Min quickly went to work removing much of the corruption and nepotism in place from KMT control. In 1965, Tien-Min officially declared Reconstruction from the Chinese Civil War complete and created “Remembrance Day” on August 5 as an official holiday to honor the dead of China’s wars. Tien-Min was reelected to the presidency in 1970, and was blessed with another six years of relative growth, including the peaceful annexation of Tibet in 1973. Despite these successes, the growth of Mexico as an economic rival in the Pacific, the loss of Persia from APACS and the growing threat of radical Islam in Pancasila led many to declare that the Tien-Min administration was weak on foreign policy and defense.
The 1976 elections saw Tien-Min’s vice president Su Zhu emerge as the prime Traditionalist Party candidate, with a farmer and former Republican Air Force General Kuan Tain emerge as the KMT nominee. In addition to the two main candidates, for the first time the Socialist Party was able to nominate a viable candidate to the Presidential election, Deng Xiapeng, a union leader from the Sichuan province. Though by all accounts, the Tien-Min administration was relatively successful, the rising uncertainty in global politics and general lack of knowledge of Su Zhu on military matters guaranteed Kuan Tain the election. Despite this, Deng Xiapeng was able to take enough votes away from the KMT that the election remained contested for several months after voting had finished. In the Congress, the Traditionalist Party remained in control, but by only by two seats.
Kuan Tain’s early endeavors were to complete the modernization of the military, particularly the air force, as well as manage the rapidly growing economy, which had only just recently surpassed France’s to become the largest in the world. Late into Kuan’s first year in office, the Philippines declared independence forcing Kuan to make the choice of recognizing the new nation and aggravating New England, or rebuffing the rebels and maintaining stability in the Pacific Rim. Kuan’s decision to grant diplomatic recognition to the Philippine Republic caused many of his opponents to call the new President out as a war hawk and state that he was making the same strategic miscalculations that had caused the French to move into Indochina during the administration of Chiang–Ching Kuo. Despite these criticisms, the Philippines have thus far been able to maintain their new independence and no retribution, militarily or diplomatic, from New England has yet come.
Since 1976, Kuan’s policies have been mostly aimed at reuniting APACS, which failed to meet for even one summit during the twelve year long Tien-Min administration. Kuan has also made pledges to begin a Chinese space program and continue modernization for all Chinese at home. Kuan’s main critic has been the increasingly popular Deng Xiapeng who has stated repeatedly that Kuan’s overzealous interventionism is dangerous to the security of the Republic and the Chinese people.
