Twenty years after the 1911 Revolution: observations and reflections of Chinese Writers

Abstract

This paper examines the observations and reflections of Chinese writers on the Nanjing Decade (1927–37), a period that the Republican government tried to build the nation after the unification of the country. It was acrimoniously debated whether the 1911 Xinhai Revolution had brought progress and modernization to China. Based on an analysis of modern literature, three aspects related to the debate are identified: (1) The writers noted serious social and economic problems, including poverty, hunger, atrocities of officials and rich people, and moral decay. (2) The political situations were grave due to the threat from Japan and civil military conflicts between the Nationalists and the Communists. The morale of soldiers was low. These problems could hardly be resolved due to corruption among the bureaucrats. (3) With regard to culture, the writers saw many conflicts between traditional thoughts, such as superstitions in rural areas and discrimination against women, and modern ideas, such as freedom of love and women’s rights. Also, intellectuals portrayed in literature were generally sympathetic to communism, although this emerging ideology and its activities were harshly suppressed by the Nationalist government. To conclude, twenty years had passed since the 1911 Revolution, but modern Chinese intellectuals, as represented by the writers, believed that the country had remained poor, weak, and backward. They presented a panorama of the difficult lives of common people whose dissatisfactions grew towards the late 1930s.