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FRATERNALASSOCIATIONS IN EARLY 20TH
CENTURYCHINESE
POLITICS
Michael Harrison
Why is it that the development of democracy has eluded Mainland China until the present day? I
reject the notion that Chinese civilization is inherently undemocratic, especially considering how
successful Taiwan is as a democracy. In explaining the failure of democracy to take hold in
Mainland China, I have extrapolated from Barrington Moore’s account of China’s political
evolution during the final years of the Qing Dynasty, the Republican era, and the early
communist era. My argument focuses specifically on the role of clans in influencing Chinese
politics during this time period. I have employed a loose definition of the word “clan” which
encompasses different kinds of clans, and as a result, I have identified a variety of ways by
which these intimate associations have made an impact on politics.
I should clarify precisely what I mean when referring to “clans.” A clan is an intimate
association of people. At this time in Chinese history there were other forms of association, such
as guilds and benevolent societies, in which people would associate in a different capacity. The
relationships between people in these associations were far more casual. In clans there was a
more fraternal spirit. In familial clans, relationships were, of course, fraternal in a literal sense.
Ideally, every member of a clan would be a male relative of every other member. The purity of a
clan was considered highly important. There are records of clans prescribing severe punishments
to members who adopt a son rather than producing a biological one (Ebrey, 327). Clans that were
not blood-based nonetheless expected members to be their brother’s keeper. They usually
claimed religion or the metaphysical to be part of their identity. Some were politically active, or

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became politically active, whereas others were not; some employed violence whereas others tried
to influence policy by peaceful means.
This study deals with a particular span of time within Chinese history. It is concerned
primarily with the Republican era (1911-49) and with the 19th century, the last full century of the
Qing Dynasty. In order to contextualize the occurrences during this time in China’s history, I
decided to draw from some of the experiences China’s secession from the Mongol Empire in the
14th century.
The questions I have attempted to answer are as follows. Were clans a catalyst or an
obstacle to the particular political outcomes of the early 20th century? Did these clans cause
political movements to happen more smoothly or more violently than they would have
otherwise? Were they more helpful to the communists or the nationalists? And finally, were they
more conducive of democracy or autocracy? I conclude that, generally, the familial clans were
significant mainly because they alienated families from the rest of their communities and
restrained people from taking part in politics, while the non-familial clans were more often
inclusive and more likely to encourage civic participation. In the context of 20th century Chinese
politics, the familial clans were more significant. By alienating certain families and creating
village-level divisions, these clans created social atomization, making the population as a whole
easier to take advantage of for political gain, meanwhile serving as a convenient scapegoat for
communists. Democracy, as it developed in Taiwan, might have been possible in the Mainland if
events in the first half of the 20th century had been different.
POLITICAL FUNCTIONS OF CLANS

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In understanding the significance of clans in Chinese politics, it is important to consider the
various ways by which commoners could influence policy and instigate regime change. To begin
with, in China there has been a normative context for rebellion since Mencius articulated the
Mandate of Heaven in the fourth century BC. In the Mencius, a record of this sage’s dialogs with
government officials and other public figures, there are a number of points in which Mencius
justifies popular rebellion against the government if the government fails to do its job correctly.
His most elaborate description of the Mandate of Heaven (although he does not use this phrase
explicitly) is his explanation of why an apocryphal king several hundred years earlier was
replaced by another because of a unanimous sentiment among the people that the old regime
was incompetent.
Shun assisted Yâo in the government for twenty and eight years;--
this was more than man could have done, and was from Heaven.
After the death of Yâo, when the three years' mourning was
completed, Shun withdrew from the son of Yâo to the south of
South river. The princes of the kingdom, however, repairing to
court, went not to the son of Yâo, but they went to Shun. Litigants
went not to the son of Yâo, but they went to Shun. Singers sang
not the son of Yâo, but they sang Shun. Therefore I said, "Heaven
gave him the throne." It was after these things that he went to the
Middle Kingdom, and occupied the seat of the Son of Heaven. If
he had, before these things, taken up his residence in the palace of
Yâo, and had applied pressure to the son of Yâo, it would have
been an act of usurpation, and not the gift of Heaven.
'This sentiment is expressed in the words of The Great
Declaration,-- "Heaven sees according as my people see; Heaven
hears according as my people hear."'
Mencius gives a teleological explanation for popular rebellion. He claims that they are part of a
cosmological response to poor governance. The pervasive sentiment among the people –
Mencius mentions princes, litigants and singers – that Shun would make a better king is taken as
an indication of what Heaven wants. According to this philosophical tradition, rebellions occur

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alongside other calamities that signify heaven’s wrath: natural disasters, famine, foreign
invasion. While these other kinds of difficulties weakened the government, it was always the
people who brought about dynastic transitions.
This form of public accountability – unanimous disapproval and unmitigated violence –
is inefficient but it has been relied upon. The 19th century British diplomat Thomas Meadows
writes that: “it is precisely the right to rebel that has been the chief element of the national
stability, unparalleled in the world’s history. Rebellion is there but the storm that clears and
invigorates a political atmosphere that has become sultry and unwholesome.” (p. 27) This system
of public accountability and regime change has continually restored Chinese civilization to
health for more two thousand years from the Unification of China in 221 BC until the fall of the
Qing Dynasty in 1911. The same concept exists in Chairman Mao’s own political discourse. The
following passage comes from the Quotations of Chairman Mao.
The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the Chinese
peasants forced them into numerous uprisings against landlord rule.... The class
struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars constituted the
real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.... However,
since neither new productive forces, nor new relations of production, nor new
class forces, nor any advanced political party existed in those days, the peasant
uprisings and wars did not have correct leadership such as the proletariat and the
Communist Party provide today; every peasant revolution failed, and the
peasantry was invariably used by the landlords and the nobility, either during or
after the revolution, as a lever for bringing about dynastic change. Therefore,
although some social progress was made after each great peasant revolutionary
struggle, the feudal economic relations and political system remained basically
unchanged. (p. 9)
Mao is claiming that the civil war which brought the communists to power is the conclusion of a
Hegelian dialectical struggle between peasants and their oppressors. The transition to
communism was their Mandate of Heaven. All the dynastic transitions before communism were

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well-deserved victories for the people, however the communist victory was morally superior to
all the regime-changes preceding it.
Public accountability not only occurred through violence. It was common for people with
government connections to influence the government. In this context, connections – known as
guanxi – gave people a far greater degree of privilege than in a modern Western context. I have
previously done research on some of the string-pulling by people with government connections
in later-imperial China. If we need to impose a modern concept on this form of intervention into
government policy, then I would call it “lobbying.” In this paper I have decided not to discuss
this phenomenon because it does not seem to be common among clans as I have described them,
but rather among more casual forms of association, such as guilds. However, during the Qing
Dynasty, clans were heavily involved in litigation, as we know because records of court cases
have been preserved.
I would assume that these court cases were partly an imitation of a Western model.
However, litigation has a context in China’s philosophical traditions. During the Qing Dynasty
there was a manual, widely considered authoritative, called the General Teachings for the Jurist
(Twitchett and Mote, et al). This manual cites a passage from Xunzi, a Confucian scholar from
the 3rd century BC:
Confucius threw light on the Way to establish a model for the norms of ruler and
minister. Thus, litigation is governed by laws and measures. This is because
litigation arises, does it not, from the wrongfulness in men’s hearts, struggles
between the strong and the weak, and the imbalance in material desires. This is
because, by nature, there cannot but be desires (in Twitchett and Mote, et al, 205).
General Teachings for the Jurist infers from this passage that the purpose of litigation is to:
Speak for the dumb, help the blind walk, extend the will of the stupid, chastise the
unruly, uproot winter branches, supplement the needy, eliminate the excess,

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disgrace the immoral, punish the evil, pave roads, ford deep rivers, succor the
weak and help the imperiled, praise the good and blame the evil (ibid).
This respect for litigation, and its objectives, has a broader context in China’s political culture. In
the Qing era China had a highly sophisticated legal system. There certainly was no equivalent of
the legal systems in modern democracies today, however we can see that an enormous amount of
effort was made to enforce laws consistently and to make them relevant, even to commoners.
Meadows, writing in the 19th century, writes that “All Chinese law is careful codified and
divided into parts, sections and subsections.” (22) He was impressed, for one thing, with the
continuity of the basic apparatus of the legal system. He observed of the penal system in
particular: “This, commenced two thousand years ago, has grown with the nation. Recent
reigning families have more or less modified it; but in substance it is national and not dynastic.”
(ibid) He also remarked that “though some of its enactments viewed from the stand point of
Christian civilization are cruel, it has been said with perfect truth that the Chinese desire only for
its enforcement with strict purity and partiality.” (ibid) Especially significant to this paper is that
“Complete copies [of the penal code] are sold so cheaply as to be within easy reach of the
humbler tradesman.” (ibid) Twitchett and Mote (et al) comment on the importance of the legal
system in the Ming government (which preceded the Qing): “The founder of the Ming felt that a
code was valuable to a ruler because it assisted him in maintaining bureaucratic discipline, public
order, and permanent institutions that centered around a line of descent. A code was,
furthermore, a symbol of legitimacy of his rule.” (172) We know from records of court cases
from the Qing Dynasty that litigation was one way by which clans served their members. It was
often the case that an entire clan would represent a single entity in a court case, at least according
to Allee’s study of litigation in Qing-era Taiwan (p. 211).

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It was generally the case, however, that clans avoided litigation because they preferred to
avoid any contact with the government. We know from studies of written clan rules that they
tended to discourage litigation. In Hui-Chen’s study on this subject, she finds that “Nine out of
ten families who resorted to law, according to a community study, had to sell a large part of their
property.” (p. 155) When they did engage in litigation, their opponent was almost always another
civilian, and rarely anybody in the government itself. Clans relied on maintaining respect, trust
and rapport with the government. Compared with other types of associations from this time
period, clans generally dealt with the government in an honest and straightforward manner. It
was not like them to try to elicit favors.
This tendency of clans to avoid contact with the government relates to another feature of
late-imperial Chinese society which continued to be true until the establishment of the
communist regime. There was (and still is) a popular folk saying: “heaven is high, the Emperor is
far away.” To most people, imperial policy was of little relevance. Policy was enforced not by
the yamen, who were too few in number to have any contact with most of the peasantry. One
yamen would “be responsible for the administration of justice, even in its pettier forms, over
many thousands of persons.” (Moore, 205) Clans had their own private systems of policies not
only because they wanted to avoid contact with the government, but also because the
government was not equipped to do this for them.
Naturally, rather than trying to find way of engaging with the government, clans were
often more concerned with finding ways of avoiding contact with the government. It was usually
to make and implement their own policies in place of government policy. The imperial
government tended to give clans free rein to govern its own members. The reason relates to a
Confucian notion that the family is a better institution than the government for developing

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people’s personal character. One of Confucius’s best-known maxims is that “If the people are led
by laws and rectitude sought to be given to them by punishments, they will try to avoid
punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue and rectitude given to them by
rules of propriety, they will have a sense of shame, and, moreover, will become good.” (In Hu,
53) Whereas the government can try to force people to act a certain way, clans can make their
members into better people altogether.
Having been granted the privilege of making and implementing their own policies for
their members, clans typically had systems of written rules. Hsien Chin Hu is among the scholars
who have studied the systems of clan rules existing in the 20th century. He also considers clan
policies to be a substitute for state policies that can achieve the same objectives more effectively:
If the tsu [the clan] exercises considerable autonomy in the legal sense [which
they do], it is at the expense of the authority of the state. The reason for such a
relinquishment of power by the central authority lies in the effectiveness of the tsu
in maintaining a moral standard among its members. To the Confucian scholar-
statesman it is more desirable to develop in the super-ego a consciousness of the
person’s moral obligations than to restrain immoral behavior by threat of
punishment. (53)
Clans would delegate to one of their literate members the responsibility of codifying the clan
rules, which in turn would be passed down from one generation to the next, along with records of
the collective experiences of the clan. Systems of rules took a variety of forms. Some were long
and precise, others were short and abstract. Ultimately, the autonomy that clans received would
come at their expense. Because they had their own independent political systems, they were easy
to vilify for being different from the rest of the population, and therefore having feudal interests
that come at everyone else’s expense. As I will explain, the communists benefited most from
scapegoating clans.

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The alienation of clans within their own villages relates to another difference between
pre-industrial villages in China and Europe. This is one reason why “The Chinese village, the
basic cell of rural society in China as elsewhere, evidently lacked cohesiveness as in comparison
with those in India, Japan, and even many parts of Europe.” (Moore, 208) In China multiple
classes would exist alongside each other in a single village. One reason is the social mobility
resulting from the Civil Service Examination. Peasants would often receive a government post
through the Examination, which in turn placed them in the highest social class in Chinese
society. They would still be considered a resident of the village and would likely come back to
the same village to retire. According to Moore, this system helped the Emperor to recruit a
bureaucracy with which to fight the aristocracy ... By the Sung Dynasty [960–1279] not much
was left of the ancient aristocracy.” (p. 164) Another reason, as I will explain, is the physical
mobility that characterized rural life in Qing-era China. In one sense, it would seem like this kind
of diversity is healthy. However, these local inequalities were exploited by communists who
managed to manipulate peasants into seeing their wealthier neighbors as ideological opponents.
(Moore, 224) This type of divide-and-rule tactic was an inefficient way of diminishing the
numbers of well-to-do villagers who could potentially be supporters of the nationalists.
The Civil Service Examination was a cause of inequalities not only within villages, but
also within clans, where these social inequalities were not a cause of alienation or hostility. One
way that clans influenced policy by helping their members ascend into government via the Civil
Service Examination. Clans would pool funds to pay for the education of a young member, and
they would pay for members to travel to the nearest testing center (Hui-Chen, 125). The
opportunity for males from all strata of society to become government officials has, by some
people, been considered a means of public accountability. When peasants become government

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officials, they bring a commoner’s perspective with them into the government. Their perspective
was especially important in late-imperial China because at the time the government was
considered not only a policy-making apparatus but also the intellectual center of Chinese
civilization. At this time, Chinese civilization tended to conflate government officials and
intellectuals. In contrast to modern Western civilization, where politicians and bureaucrats are
considered so selfish and petty that they need to be examined by objective and condescending
scholars outside of government, in China people were thought to have a superior perspective on
the world around them because they have a place in the government.
Clans have also been politically significant because they have helped mobilize the
people. Qing-era Chinese society was far more physically mobile than feudal Europe, and as I
will show, this tendency of the people to move around may have ultimately facilitated the victory
of the communists. Sun Yat-Sen described Chinese society as a “loose heap of sand” because the
physical mobility of the people created a society of weaker social ties than in pre-industrial
Europe. (Moore, 208) However, paradoxically, familial clans have catalyzed a great deal of this
movement within China, and in doing so, they have allowed for their clans to establish
themselves continue carrying on their legacies with just as much rigor in another location.
Clans and lineage institutions tend to be tied to a location. Smith, writing in the late-19th
century, observes that “Nearly all Chinese surnames serve as the designation of villages.” (p. 16)
My wife, who is Chinese, has an ancestral village where all inhabitants have the same surname
and they can all trace their family relations to each other. Whenever clans decide, for whatever
reason, to establish a presence somewhere else, they will collect funds not only for immediate
practical necessities such as housing, but also to invest in temples and other symbols of the
clan’s presence. Temples, in particular, were “frequently associated with the families which were

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prominent in their construction.” (ibid) In Chinese villages, temples were usually “The most
conspicuous object in a village.” (ibid) It was often the case that villages would be named after a
temple. (Smith, 98) Smith’s portrayal of these feudal temples seems in many analogous to
churches in European villages, except that they were associated with a particular family rather
than the village as a whole.
The strength of family unity in this society has served to isolate families from their
village, and in the early 20th century, from Chinese society as a whole. Clans would pool
resources to serve their own members, for example by paying for medical treatment, education,
or travel expenses to take the Civil Service Examination. An unintended consequence was a
prevailing sentiment that they did not want to cooperate with the rest of Chinese society. Their
estrangement resulted partly from the greater level of physical mobility in China when compared
to European society at this time. Physical mobility was easier in China than in the West because
property could be bought and sold more easily. Meadows writes that “The Chinaman [sic] can
hold and sell landed property with a facility, certainty and security which is absolute perfection
when compared with English dealings of the kind.” (28) As such, it was common for clans to
invest in farmland in other villages in order to turn a profit. Hui-Chen notes that a few urban
clans also purchased houses or store buildings for supplemental revenue. Because of this
physical mobility, clan members associated with other members more than they did with other
residents in their village. Their solidarity with unrelated people in the same village was not as
strong as in European villages where family ties were not prioritized in the same way.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Clans have influenced Chinese policy through violence, through peaceful means, and most
commonly, inadvertently. I have examples of all three of these phenomena.

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The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), which preceded the Qing, was established as a result of
a series of revolts by which China seceded from the Mongol Empire. The first of these revolts
took place among laborers who had been conscripted to repair dykes along the Yellow River.
This incident inspired another revolt among the White Lotus Society. Their involvement what
allowed the nationwide rebellion to become significant enough to topple the regime – or, more
accurately, remove the Mongol regime from Chinese politics.
During the Ming Dynasty certain clan-like organizations had a cozy relationship with the
government, and consequently an enormous impact on imperial policy. To begin with, at this
time Buddhist monasteries were proliferating. These monasteries were always trading favors
with the government. Twitchett and Mote write that “a close relationship existed between the
government and the sangha.” (p. 897) They write earlier in the Encyclopedia that this
relationship “grew stronger in the course of the Ming Dynasty.” (p. 222) They write that there
was “a well-established tradition that supported the reciprocal relationship between the imperial
court and the sangha: monks prayed for the emperor’s welfare in the hope of receiving imperial
patronage.” (ibid) For purposes of semantic clarification, the fraternal nature of these
monasteries would, by my definition, make them qualify as a clan.
At this time there was a considerable amount of interconnect among various kinds of
institutions. Most significant to this paper is the relationship between relatively casual civilian
organizations and politically-active clans. The While Lotus Society, the key force in China’s
secession from Mongol rule, would be led by a public intellectual who would also, in today’s
lingo, be described as a lobbyist. This man, Dong Qihong, would become a member of the White
Lotus Society, one of the principle paramilitary forces in China’s secession from the Mongol
Empire.

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Also during this time period, academic institutions and more intimate associations would
work together in lobbying. Buddhist monasteries, the numbers of which were growing
exponentially during the Ming Dynasty, were often integrated into the greater community.
According to Twitchett and Mote: “Buddhist thinkers, especially those of the late Ming period,
showed considerable interest in making Buddhism accessible to people outside the Buddhist
community.”1 (p. 893) One way that they engaged with the community was by joining them in
engaging with the government. In particular, they worked with academics, who often functioned
as lobbyists. Most notably, the Donglin Movement, led by scholar-activists, had a significant
impact on imperial policy during the final years of the Ming Dynasty. At first their primary
objective was to reduce corruption. Brook describes the Donglin Movement as “a conservative
revitalization of Confucianism early in the 17th century and a base for challenging bureaucratic
and eunuch factions at court.” (29)
There were generally two ways by which the Donglin Movement tried to influence
policy. One was through soft power. The movement was led by academics who regularly held
political discussions. Their soft power was especially significant at this point in China’s history
because there was there was strong nexus between academic institutions and the government: the
main purpose of these academies was to prepare people to take the Civil Service Examination to
ascend into the government, so they needed to be attuned to the sentiments within the
government in order to better understand what kind of thinking it expects from people who
expect to become government officials. Moreover, as I mentioned previously, at this point in
China’s history the government was considered the epicenter of China’s intellectual life, and
officials were, by definition, considered intellectuals. However, more significant than its soft
1 This passagerefers to Buddhistpractitioners of all kinds,notonly monks or other practitioners of that capacity.

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power was the Donglin Movement’s use of string-pulling to influence policy. It was common for
members of the Donglin Movement to have government connections. Some members were,
themselves, government officials.
Although the Donglin had a considerable amount of influence, they were not always
warmly received. They were eventually disbanded by the outgoing Ming government and many
members were prosecuted and tortured (Twitchett and Mote, 105). However, the Donglin left a
legacy that would live on during the tumultuous times that would follow. When people in other
areas of society saw the way a civilian organization could influence policy, many followed suit,
and “soft alliances among literary clubs led to the formation of vertically integrated factions
interested in challenging the growing power of the eunuch establishment at court.” (Brook, 42)
The activities of the Donglin Movement would intensify when the Ming Dynasty approaches its
violent end. As with China’s secession from the Mongol Empire, the fall of the Ming Dynasty
was the result of loosely-connected rebellions throughout the country. It began with a rebellion
among the Manchus, then considered an ethnic minority. During this disorder, most people
associated with the Donglin Movement were reactionaries who wanted the Ming government to
stay in power. The Fushe or Restoration Society were an offshoot of the Donglin Movement.
The Fushe would then inspire another activist organization, the Jishe, or Incipience Society,
which was founded by Chen Zilong, a man best known as a poet. As with the Donglin, these
movements took a stance in favor of the Ming government and were violently cracked down
upon, in their case by dissidents. Some members, however, survived, and some would
subsequently serve in the Qing government which was to follow (Wakeman, 111-122).
During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China was ruled by Manchus. At first this dynasty
was, like the Ming Dynasty, a highly productive, stable, and prosperous time. However, in the

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course of the Qing Dynasty Chinese society gradually imploded. My understanding of this
historical phenomenon differs from the story told by present-day Chinese history textbooks,
which place the blame primarily on Europeans and Japanese. I would conjecture that the main
reason for Qing China’s downfall was the Taiping Rebellion (1850-65), the deadliest civil war in
world history. Second in significance, by my reckoning, was the epidemic of opium. Also of note
is that foot binding was becoming increasingly prevalent during the Qing Dynasty, making
women increasingly less productive. Finally, as part of the natural course of things in every
dynasty, the government was taking its power for granted and becoming increasingly corrupt.
The 19th century is remembered, among other things, for floods, which seem to be the result of
malgovernance.
During the latter part of the Qing Dynasty was becoming increasingly dysfunctional and
prone to chronic violence. People were displaced by wars, natural disasters and extreme poverty,
and formed gangs of wandering bandits (Ebrey, 320). People responded to this disorder by
sticking closer to their families and local communities. In one region of southeastern China there
are thousands of tulou or “clay houses,” which would be better described as enormous ring-
shaped buildings which housed entire villages. The outer perimeter of tulou consisted of thick
walls which were difficult to penetrate or knock down. On the inside were fields, animals, and
everything the villagers needed to survive. This way an entire village could be protected, as long
a nobody left the premises of the house.
This tendency toward insularity was a defining feature of Chinese family and community
life at this time. The result was atomization of the population, creating a situation in which
people could easily be made enemies of each other. The deposition of the Qing Dynasty in 1911
occurred in this environment of uncertainty and hostility. We know from personal records from

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this time period, from people who would become significant in the Revolution, that their political
activity was opposed not only by their immediate families but also by clans. One example is
Peng Pai, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. Peng came from a familial clan
that owned large tracts of land worked by serfs, who not surprisingly opposed his political
activity. He recalls that “not one soul in the family would talk to me.” (Ebrey, 365)
Other heterogeneous types of clans had the opposite function: they strove to be in the
center of the action. Smith, writing when the Qing Dynasty was on the verge of collapse, states
that “countless secret sects” were coming into being at this time, most of them professing some
kind of religious identity. (p. 98) Ebrey writes of the Small Sword Society, a militant groups
which fought against the Qing government during the Taiping Rebellion and continued to be
politically active during the final years of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent civil war. This
group recruited members from among the gangs of bandits that were ubiquitous during the
Taiping Rebellion and afterward. (Ebrey, 318) The Small Sword had a written ideological
proclamation, as was common for organizations like theirs, in their case “evoking the name of
the Ming Dynasty and the Han people as anti-Manchu gestures.” (ibid)
In order to better understand the circumstances allowing for the communist victory, it is
important to consider the factors that could have allowed for a Nationalist victory. To do this I
will conveniently identify the Nationalists as a “fascist” movement and try to fit them into a
classic academic model. Fascism is thought to result from an alliance between the bourgeoisie
and the aristocracy. According to Moore: “A successful amalgamation gradually took place
between sections of the gentry (and later their successors turned landlord pure and simple), and
urban leaders in trade, finance and industry.” (p. 178) During the Republican era this coalition of
social groups came to represent a synthetic reconstruction of the imperial social order, which

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Nationalists tended to look to as a model for solving China’s social ills. “This amalgam provided
the chief social underpinning of the Koumintang, and attempt to revive the essence of the
imperial system, that is political support for landlordism with a combination of gangsterism
indigenous to China and a veneer of pseudo-Confucianism that displays interesting resemblances
to Western fascism.” (ibid) There was, therefore, some legitimacy to the communist
denunciation of these “haves,” although it is now considered unethical to physically attack them
for this reason.
CONCLUSION
The triumph of the Communist Party over the Nationalists cannot be explained by Marxist
theory, lofty teleological theories, or any kind of notion that there is a natural affinity between
Chinese civilization and socialism, autocratic or otherwise. Their victory was the result of
infinitely complex circumstances. There is, however, a sense in which the communists won
partly because of their ideology. At that time in Chinese history, the poor outnumbered the rich
on a ludicrous scale. The have-nots, with their extreme strength in numbers, made victory far
easier or the communists than it would have been otherwise. The two types of clans that I’ve
listed were significant for opposite reasons. The familial clans were “feudal” institutions that
communists and their supporters needed to be abolished, especially since the poor tended to
think of these clans as being on a different wavelength. These clans also did what they could to
restrain members from taking part in this political unrest. By contrast, non-familial clans were
significant because they wanted to be on the frontlines, carrying out the revolution. Either way,
ideology seems to have of little importance to the people in these clans. Likewise, to the
communist and Nationalist leaders, ideology was less important than purely objective tactical
matters.

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WORKS CITED AND REFERENCED
Allee, Mark A. Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China, Northern Taiwan in the
Nineteenth Century. Stanford University Press, 1994.
Brook, Timothy and Bernard Michael Frolic, eds. Civil Society in Contemporary China.
Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
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