On March 2, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Policy Committee held its first meeting following its landslide defeat in November last year’s nine-in-one elections to discuss the administrative and legislative agenda. Supported by all the legislators in attendance, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said “Harmony in the family is the basis for any undertaking,” while firing a broadside at President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for his stubbornness.
The KMT’s “big three” — Ma, Chu and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) — all appeared very differently on stage. Chu looked like a rising star and Wang was solid as a rock, but Ma looked like a dying man. It was easy to see who was in the ascendancy and who was on the way out.
The question is if the call for unity really can save the shaky century-old KMT. Looking at the party’s history, it is difficult to find any time when party has been in complete unity.
The KMT was established in 1912 by merging five groups, including the Tongmenghui (同盟會). A year after cofounder Sung Chiaojen (宋教仁) led the party to victory in China’s first democratic election, he was assassinated, and Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) once again took over the party’s leadership.
At the party’s first National Congress in Guangzhou (廣州) in 1924, Sun announced that he would accept financial aid from the Soviet Union, ally with Russia, accept communists and emulate the Soviets by turning the KMT into an authoritarian party under a totalitarian party-military-state system.
However, even at the apex of his power, the party’s left and right wings were like fire and water and had problems coexisting, and there was an endless series of conspiracies and confrontations between the two wings.
Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) later took control of the military and then the KMT and the government, but was unable to establish himself as a supreme and unchallenged leader and dictator like Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Italy’s Benito Mussolini or the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.
Some party heavyweights, such as Hu Hanmin (胡漢民) and Wang Chingwei (汪精衛), more senior than Chiang frequently challenged his authority, and major local warlords, such as Feng Yushiang (馮玉祥), Li Tsungjen (李宗仁), Yan Hsishan (閻錫山) and Chang Hsueh-liang (張學良), were eager to replace him.
The power struggles among party factions were fierce, as each refused to give in to the other. So even if Chiang had been superhuman, he still would have had to build alliances and adopt a “carrot-and-stick” policy, and he was unable to become a leader that won the hearts of all.
In the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War between the KMT and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the KMT’s central command structure was disorganized, with each party official doing what he thought was right during fierce factional struggles.
As for military leaders who sacrificed themselves on the front lines, such as Zhang Zizhong (張自忠) and Li Jiayu (李家鈺) in the Second Sino-Japanese War and Qiu Chingquan (邱清泉) and Zhang Lingfu (張靈甫) in the Chinese Civil War, they did not complain about how tough the enemy was before they died — rather, they condemned their betrayal by allied troops.
Looking at it from this perspective, rather than saying that the KMT was defeated by the CCP in 1949, it would be more appropriate to say that it was defeated by itself.
After the KMT government’s relocation to Taiwan, Chiang eliminated all other party factions and gained total control of the party, government and military. However, as late Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) claimed, “All sorts of strange things might happen when there are no factions within a party.”
Indeed, the KMT has once again been haunted by the ghosts of factions in the post-Chiang era, and the party lost power due to the factional struggles between Lien Chan (連戰) and James Soong (宋楚瑜).
During the Ma era, his factional struggles with Lien, Wang Jin-pying and Chu have become more complex and entangled and are now difficult to disentangle.
The question is whether Chu can resolve the KMT’s predicament as chairman. He does not have very many new ideas and is using old methods. His “family harmony” slogan in fact hides the old Confucian moral of “treating the nation as one’s own property,” which is not the political principle that should be adhered to by an election-oriented party in a democratic country.
The KMT should stop trying to create political idols or maintain unity. Instead, it should reform itself and correct its mistakes, and then promptly transform from an authoritarian party into an election-oriented one.
By doing so, the party could win renewed public support and stand up in the next election. Unfortunately, so far there has been no sign of improvement.
Yu Jie is an exiled Chinese dissident writer.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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