Scribes at war: Propagandists and the contentious construction of a 'modern China' circa, 1935.

Abstract

During the 1930s, nationalists, Marxists, socialists, and liberals articulated contrasting visions of a modern Chinese identity and vied for the attention of the reading public in urban centers like Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing. A segment of that discursive struggle is mapped out in this dissertation. The popular writings of four well-known and influential political publicists are examined: the young Marxist, Ai Siqi; the leader of the National Socialist Party, Zhang Junmai; the Guomindang ideologue, Chen Lifu; and the American-educated liberal, Hu Shi. In the commonalities of their concerns, these authors typify but do not exhaust the content of political discussion on Chinese identity during the mid 1930s. My goals were to reconstruct their contrasting views of China; to determine linkages, if any, between their visions of national identity and the target audience(s) they sought to address or create; and to evaluate their conceptual and stylistic skills as propagandists vis-a-vis those audiences. In pursuit of these goals a linguistic methodology was developed, employing elements of social theory, semiotics, and reader-response theory. Ai Siqi imagined China as an emerging proletarian nation, depicted Marxism as a means of personal as well as national salvation, and wrote in simple language buttressed by skillfully developed analogies. There was a disjunction between Zhang Junmai's elitist language and the popular audience implicitly inscribed in his imagery of China as a social democracy. Chen Lifu employed an abstract and impersonal style to construct an image of modern China as a hierarchical, moral community held together by virtues drawn from pre-Qin philosophy. Hu Shi wrote simply, but found little in the Chinese character upon which a new identity might be constructed. Ai Siqi cast the masses in positive terms, in contrast to his ideological rivals. Ai was also the most effective at fostering a sense of community among his readers, skillfully wedding a clear and inclusive interpretation of Marxism to a viable construction of a loathsome but vulnerable Other.