Fascism is a totalitarian movement, which, through power centralization by a dictatorial party and a charismatic leader, aims to achieve state unity and a revival of nationhood. In order to study the ‘Sinicization’ of fascism, this paper discusses the appearance and development of an informal elitist organization, the Blue Shirts, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek in the1930s. Three levels of power politics are used to analyze the overall appearance of Chinese fascism: (1) party faction politics, (2) domestic military politics, and (3) international power politics.
First, with regard to party faction politics, an informal organization appeared and its movement spread. After the Manchurian incident, crisis-conscious young men from the Whampoa Military Academy, in imitation of the Italian Black Shirts, established a core organization, the Lixingshe, within the party. This secret organization abided by the Kuomintang’s (KMT) organizational rule (democratic centralism) and pledged loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek—this pledge can be seen as a form of Führerprinzip. The purpose of this military fascist movement was to spur the undisciplined KMT to improve its core function as well as to elevate Chiang Kai-shek to the status of charismatic leader.
Second, in the process of becoming a domestic military power, the KMT regime changed from a Soviet-style party-ruling regime to a fascist dictatorial regime led by Chiang Kai-shek. In addition to vigorously expanding informal elitist organizational movements, Chang established the Pieh-tung-tui, modeled on the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA), under the Military Committee, and started the New Life Movement, which took its inspiration from the Italian and German movements to revive nationhood. Through these steps, Chang wanted to institutionalize fascist ideology, i.e. militarization, the Führerprinzip, and the revival of tradition.
Third, Chang aimed to achieve a Hitler-style dictatorship and revival of nationhood by linking domestic fascist policies and international power politics.Though ostensibly compromising with the Japanese, Chang had drawn a plan to wage a war of long-term resistance against the Japanese centered on Sichuan Province as suggested by General von Falkenhausen after the Agreement of He-Mei in August 1935. Chang also approached Hitler via General von Seeckt to carry out diplomatic strategies of allying with Germany to combat Japan. Chang’s purpose for drawing on Nazi Germany was not to fulfill a racial revolution or to mount an invasion, but to gain access to the latest German weapons and industrialized defense techniques through trade exchanges, and to tackle the Chinese communists and the Japanese total war regime by acquiring the Nazis’ highly centralized ruling skills. Therefore, Chang established a unique dictatorial ruling regime by combining informal organizational movements and the Military Committee to replace the KMT’s party-ruling regime, which became a mere formality.
Because Fascism lacks clear logic and theory, the results of its“ Sinicization” were, first, the augmentation of Bolshevik methods of revolution (democratic centralism, party dictatorship, and the anti-imperialist struggle), which were integral parts of the KMT regime; and second, the manifestation of nationalism, i.e. anti-communism and resistance against the Japanese. Though the informal elitist organizational movement did not successfully set up a fascist regime, Chang excluded resistant elites from the policymaking process through the autonomous dictatorial system, and he benefited politically and militarily when competing with local warlords and the Communist Party.

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This article explores the Chinese Nationalists’ early nuclear development and the international politics contesting over uranium deposits in China at the beginning of the Cold War.

Current historiography on China’s nuclear program describes that China began building the bomb at Mao Zedong’s decision at a secret meeting among top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in January 1955. But at the latter half of the 1940s, the Nationalists had already sent young and capable scientists to the United States, with an expectation to build an atomic bomb with both technical and financial foreign assistance. Although the Communist history only negatively writes of the frustrated Nationalist attempt, in fact it bore some fruits that were eventually succeeded to the Communists when they came into power in 1949.

The most important legacies that the Nationalists left to the Communists were uranium deposits and scientists. Since the discovery of nuclear fission of uranium in 1938, and countries began contesting for new deposits of uranium around the world. The Japanese army also dug China’s northeast region, Manchuria, for uranium to build a bomb.

The Japanese discovery of uranium in Manchuria was inherited to the Nationalists. The Nationalists themselves had also found the resources in Southern China in 1943. They also planned to use the Japanese scientists for their bomb. The Soviet filled the vacuum that the Japanese defeat had made in Manchuria and Xinijiang, while the United States started talks with the Nationalists to jointly develop uranium mines in China and to provide China with training Chinese nuclear scientists and engineers in the United States. Switzerland also showed interests in uranium with a promise to send renowned scientists to help China to develop an atomic bomb.

The Nationalist efforts on the nuclear program were not only about uranium. They also dispatched young and promising physicists to the United States in 1946 so that they could learn the knowledge to build a bomb. Although they were not permitted an access to the military secrets at the beginning of the Cold War and the McMahon Act of 1946, what they learned was huge enough to be a “founding father” of China’s atomic bomb, in Zhu Guangya’s case at least.

Thus, the Chinese Nationalist government boasted that it had enough knowledge about uranium and human resources for the basis of building an atomic weapon as early as the spring of 1947. They lost to the Communists in the Civil War, which forced them to flee to Taiwan. But their early effort was, partly and against their will, took over to the Communists.

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