The Boy Scouts Program and the construction of new citizenship in the Nanjing Decade (1928-1937)

Abstract

Robert Baden-Powell established the world's first Boy Scouts in Britain in 1907. With unexpected quickness, the first Chinese Boy Scouts was established by missionary schools in 1912. In 1928, the Nationalist Party (KMT) started to turn the Scouts into a tool to mould ideal future citizens of the country by indoctrinating the Scouts with the Three People's Principles and training them with practical living skills. In the 1930s, stimulated by the Japanese invasion and inspired by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany’s extensive use of youth organizations to train highly militarized youth to serve the nation’s needs, Chiang Kai-shek entrusted the Blue Shirts, who were led by the graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy, to be responsible for the Scout affairs. They changed the focus of remodeling the Scouts from politicization to militarization. The KMT believed that the “reformed” Scouts program would produce a patriotic and disciplined youth who had the will and the ability to contribute to the nation. By analyzing Boy Scouts textbooks and monthlies published by the Commercial Press and the KMT respectively in the 1930s, this paper will first discuss how the KMT responded to the same dilemma faced by Baden-Powell in Britain in the 1910s: should the purpose of the Boy Scouts program be to train future citizens or future soldiers? Second, how the youth was transformed from childhood to adulthood in the KMT Boy Scouts program?