L'inverno è lungo e appena cominciato (III)

"Fascism, Cultural Revolution, and National Sovereignty in 1930s China. By Margaret Clinton. New York University, 2009. 344 pp. Advisor: Rebecca Karl

Margaret Clinton provides in-depth analysis of Chinese fascism’s intellectual content through a study of articles published in fascist and other Chinese journals during the 1930s. Clinton sets out to demonstrate that even though Chinese fascism seems ill-defined and its goals self-contradictory, the fascist movement did have a clear-cut plan. The fascist thought of the Blueshirt, CC Clique, and Reorganization factions – which between them controlled many of the Nationalist regime’s civil, political, and military bodies during the Nanjing Decade – is the primary focus of Clinton’s work. A fundamental point she makes is “while disagreements between these factions have been amply documented, these men ultimately shared more in common ideologically with each other and with fascist movements elsewhere in the world than with other political movements in 1930s China” (pp. 16-17). Chinese fascism sought to reinvigorate the Chinese national spirit – which had made China so powerful in the past – by modernizing it to become compatible with twentieth-century realities, particularly capitalist industrialization. According to the fascist interpretation of China’s future prospects, only a wholesale cultural revolution could modernize the national spirit and make China’s military-industrial complex strong enough to resist imperialism."


Read more:
http://dissertationreviews.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/fascism-cultural-revolution-and-national-sovereignty-in-1930s-china-by-margaret-clinton-review-by-kristin-mulready-stone/