Episode 12: The Nanjing Decade (5): Were the KMT fascists?

This is the last episode on the Nanjing decade, so far we’ve covered culture, economics, feminism, and academia, and I wanted to leave this episode till last because I feel it ties all the other threads together really nicely. We’ve gotten a few glimpses of the Nationalist Party’s governance and policy formulation in a few areas, and how they tried to exert control over different areas of Chinese life, but we haven’t addressed the topic of KMT politics in and of itself. Although in recent years many aspects of the Nanjing decade have been reevaluated in a more positive light, one negative connotation that seems to have stuck is the accusation that the KMT were fascists. Although, actually the KMT themselves may not have actually viewed this as a negative label at the time. In fact, there is evidence to show that they actively strove to model themselves on other successful fascistic regimes at the time, taking inspiration from Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany in particular. So in this episode we’re going to be reviewing the evidence, taking a look at the ideology of the Nationalists, as well as examining some of their major social policies and campaigns, to see to what extent the term fascist can be applied to the Nanjing government.