In previous studies, it has been suggested that Chinese farmers tend to seek charismatic leaders as a result of their limited rationality. In other words, farmers generally overestimate the role of charisma. Moreover, they have been seen as individuals who, under the long-standing structure of subservient domination, have been deprived of decision-making rights and constantly forced to obey and endure. Meanwhile, in rural areas of China, a social system for utilizing and managing regional resources is required to achieve the organization of agriculture. Conversely, in an uncooperative social environment, people tend to construct a hierarchical relationship within homogeneous groups to address various production and living problems as well as exchange different interests. Moreover, to develop organizational governance, leaders first mobilize personal relationships; later, as their authority expands, their private relationships inevitably encroach into the public domain. The plundering of public resources accompanying this authoritarian rule is not only for the personal benefit of the leaders but also for maintaining their private relationships.

Therefore, based on the behavioral principle of rural society and the concept of social capital, this study analyzes the role (and limitations) of leaders in the organization of agriculture in China. For this purpose, it specifically examines the rationality of Chinese farmers seeking “strong leaders” in Qiao Village, Hunan Province, China. It also investigates the processes of leaders in which their private relationships and behavioral principles form their authoritarian rule.

During the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) conducted guerrilla warfare in areas occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army. The Kuomintang aimed to continue the fight against Japan while maintaining their own governing authority in those regions by mobilizing the local population under Japanese occupation for guerrilla warfare. They carried out operations to disrupt logistics and transportation networks controlled by the Japanese forces.

Prior studies have evaluated the KMT’s wartime mobilization system as a “total war” system premised on the penetration of ruling power into society. However, according to some empirical studies on the wartime mobilization system in enemy-occupied areas, spontaneously organized self-defense groups and bandit groups were mobilized for guerrilla warfare, and the conscription system that had been established before the war did not function. Considering this point, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive reexamination of the KMT’s wartime mobilization system, including the actual condition of their guerrilla warfare.

This paper turns its attention to “Jiangnan” region in southern Jiangsu Province, where Nanjing and Shanghai, which were important political and economic bases for the KMT, were located, and which became the front line after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. The paper then examines the extent to which the KMT was able to build a modern military based on a compulsory military service system in the “Jiangnan” region. Then, this paper will shift its attention to the Loyal Patriotic Army, a paramilitary organization of the Kuomintang that played a leading role in guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in “Jiangnan”, and clarified the actual situation of unit management, including the acquisition of soldiers, using primary historical documents. Through this work, this paper reexamines the KMT’s wartime mobilization system at the front-line areas and in the Japanese-occupied areas, which had not been sufficiently examined in previous studies.

This paper reveals that the Loyal Patriotic Army’s main source of soldiers was the various armed forces that emerged because of the weakening of the KMT’s rule. These armed forces could have been the immediate military power of the Loyal Patriotic Army, but their behavior was based on their own survival strategy rather than anti-Japanese consciousness, and it was difficult to control them. Therefore, while relying on these armed forces for wartime mobilization, the KMT continued to face the challenge of “domestic pacification,” which is a process of centralized control of the violent apparatus.

In conclusion, this paper points out that the KMT’s wartime mobilization in “Jiangnan” during the Sino-Japanese War was not based on a total war system but was dependent on local voluntary armed forces that became active partly because of the retreat of the party’s governing power. The KMT was able to mobilize such armed forces because the interests of both sides coincided in securing the war effort and guaranteeing survival, but this symbiotic relationship was very fragile.