Major Book Review: Blood Road

ok here's my term paper for the history class chinese revolution 1911-1949. it came back today so i know there are no major mistakes or misunderstanding. but this is a really good book. chinese, you should read it.

Schoppa’s Blood Road

What a Communist official told the author on the Phoenix Mountain pretty much sums up what most in China or other Chinese communities think of Shen Dingyi. “We don’t know whether he is a good man or a bad man”(Schoppa, 252). One of the most prominent and controversial revolutionaries of the 1920’s, Shen Dingyi was a landlord-turned Communist, who later joined the Guomingdang (GMD). For the decades to follow his assassination in 1928, various names were added to him. Both parties find it difficult in positioning Shen, a man with multiple identities, in the revolution.

In his book Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China, Schoppa investigates a wide array of materials surrounding Shen Dingyi’s life from late 1910’s to his death in 1928, ranging from historical records, his own writings and narratives from his family and associates. Upon Schoppa’s careful analysis of these materials, Shen’s exceedingly complicated social networks, political positions, ideological influences and actions emerged. In this book, as a result, a humanistic and biographical account of Shen as of 1920’s is presented, and the author’s thesis becomes clear: Because of the causality between a society’s development and an individual’s activities, changes in the society directly influences the individual’s identity, and vice versa, development of individuals determines the course of events in his social context. This is especially true during eras of drastic social and political changes, such as the revolutionary 1920’s in China, and that extremely dynamic and complex society results in an ever-changing face of the individual involved in the process.

With this overarching theme, Shen’s situation seems a little clearer to Schoppa. Since his identities and political positions and actions were an consequence of his social networks, Schoppa puts an emphasis on Shen’s social contacts in his three primary locales of actions, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Yaqian, and effectively reveals the changing sources of his ideologies, identities and his movements in the respective places. Like Shen, Schoppa realized that Chinese tendency of valuing a man’s names more than his deeds often results in oversimplifications and hinders just assessment of historical figures(Schoppa 253). “[I]n the great complexity of revolutionary change, the human mind brings order by naming and holding to that name as the key to the identity of the other”(Schoppa 253). Therefore in his analysis of Shen Dingyi, Schoppa aims to focus on what he actually did in the context of his social networks, such as his leadership in student and worker movement in Shanghai in 1919, his promotion of peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921 and 1928 and his political life in either the Provincial Assembly government of Zhejiang in late 1910’s or the GMD in Hangzhou in mid-1920’s, in order to elucidate the complex dynamics involved.

Shen’s thinking and action in solving China’s social crisis was deeply shaped by his social contacts. The change of social network in 1916 when Shen exiled to Shanghai catalyzed his acceptance of progressive ideologies. Unlike the Zhejiang Provincial Assembly where local elite of the province concentrated on the fate of the province struggling against the aggressive expansion of the Beiyang government, the young revolutionaries whom Shen met in Shanghai were concerned with a wider range of problems. In addition to Shen’s existing anit-feudalism and anti-militarism, he became more conscious of class struggles, women’s emancipation and education, and on a national level (Schoppa 86). The strong influence of Sun Yat-sen’s democratic ideologies and the youths who took part in May Fourth Movements all played a role in his intellectual growth. Identified as a journalist and writer, Shen was proactively working to find a solution to China’s problem, as his writings would indicate. With such inputs, Shen’s output back to the society was much liberated. He wrote for the press extensively about class struggles first and then, at the end of 1919, about a need for reformed social relationships in order (Schoppa 80). In practice, he organized discussion of Marxism where Communism was studied and women had short hair(Schoppa 82). Such actions in turn strengthened the Communists’ progressive presence in Shanghai and altered the intellectual climate there.

Returning to Yaqian in 1920 and coming into contact with the peasants, Shen Dingyi’s social reform thinking was mainly reflected in promoting the peasants’ protests. Applying Marxism, he tried to define the peasants as the proletarians of the countryside and advocated the union between peasants and urban workers to rise against landlords and capitalists. And in his writings, he advocates the ownership of land by the peasants. A network was soon built up, in which he acted as the protector of the peasant class. He encouraged the peasants to organize farmers’ associations and protest against rent collectors and landlords. In the practical endeavor of social reform, strengthened was his relationship with the network of students such as Xuan Zhonghua and Yang Zhihua, with whom Shen built village schools and educated peasant children. However, the protests failed in violent oppression in 1921 and 1922, which Schoppa reasoned to be caused by the influence by the extreme idealism of the May Fourth youths on Shen.

Consistent with Schoppa’s theory, we can also see with a new company and new theory, Shen turned from a local elite member and constitutionalist into a protector of the peasants with a touch of revolutionary thinking. His gentry background might have held him back a little - after all it was a revolution against his own class - but his thinking was very Communist then. After the peasant protests in 1921, although Shen’s political life was little affected by the movement, the failure shocked him strongly, emphasizes Schoppa, as Shen’s writings “betray[ed] considerable guilt, anger, and sadness”(Schoppa 119). In this light, Shen’s ideology in this period was consistently growing more progressive. His complete disregard to landlords’ interest made him target for attack by the rural elite.

With Com-intern's decision for Communists to join GMD in 1922, Shen became a Nationalist, entering a relatively new network in Hangzhou. Under Borodin’s direction in 1923, Shen raised the exclusivity of GMD membership in the way the Communists built their disciplined army, showing his commitment to the new Russianized party organization theories. Naturally Shen in turn made use of the power that he obtained and influenced his social environment by filling the provisional Provincial Party with people from his social network, hence shaping the policy making process. This tightening process of GMD registration and the concentration of power in the province to himself threatened to cause hatred and anxiety, sharpening potential partisan conflicts.

Shen’s switch to the GMD’s side as opposed to the CCP’s side where he came from was not surprising at all to Schoppa. This had much to do with the influence Shen received earlier in his life. Always a fervent follower of Sun Yat-sen’s, Shen Dingyi was genuinely interested in “Three People’s Principle”, even more so than in Communism. His slight reluctance towards class struggle, holding that members from the elite class can be benevolent to the peasants (Schoppa 157), indicated his parting from CCP. This is especially illustrated by his low-key leadership of the peasant protests in Yaqian in 1921. The established exclusivity of GMD and Shen’s complaints about Communist insistence on class struggle and refusal to migrate to Manchuria led naturally to his opinion of abolishing the first United Front. Now, although to Shen himself he was just a Nationalist seeking the best outcome for his party and country, in others’ eyes he was an inconsistent politician fiddling with power. His multiple identities had finally formed in its full complexity. He had enemies in a number of classes and circles, even in his own social networks such as the First Normal circle. The purge was just a trigger, which cut lose any remaining attachment that his old social networks still had with him.

From Schoppa’s narrative, judging from these historical facts combined with the various societal contexts that Shen sequentially put himself in, the course of development of Shen’s ideology and identity was quite consistent and nothing too surprising. Why then, was the assessment of Shen Dingyi all but impossible to do? Schoppa believes that it is because of the Chinese tendency to judge a historical figure by what “names” he is perceived to have, instead of what actual deeds he does. In addition, 10’s to 20’s in China was an era of ideology-mixing and partisan chaos. No viewpoint could be free of self-interest and class influence, resulting in a plethora of inconsistent descriptions of Shen Dingyi, concentrating seemingly disparate names - landlord, Communist, Nationalist, Leftist, Right-wing, revolutionary - onto the one person. This is precisely what makes the interpretation of his identity and the period of history extremely difficult. When comparing materials from a few sources, Schoppa at least solved a number of the inconsistencies.

Firstly, was Shen a local elite, landlord, or a revolutionary devoted to the emancipation of lower classes? Shen has been called all these names, and from his family background, his early political experiences and some aspects of his lifestyle, such as keeping servants, he was indeed a typical local elite in a dying feudal society. However, Schoppa points out that he was an active constitutionalist and reformist, fiercely protecting local government from militarism. Then he felt for the peasants, tried his best to be a protector. He was one of the first people to notice the potential of great power of the rural population in Chinese revolution. With Communist theories, he tried to lead the peasants into class struggle in 1921, and greatly promoted local self-governing experiments and drew up rent reducing documents in 1927. His cold attitude towards his fellow landlords was in stark contrast to that towards the farmers. His writings in this period were mainly singing high praises for the peasant class. In light of such evidence, Li Da’s categorization of Shen into simply “large landlord”(with some enmity) was quite ignorant and unfair. Shen’s hold-back in developing full scale and thorough class struggle came from his position as a member of the elite. To abolish the landlord class is to abolish his own class, his family and his primary social network. This he could not bring himself to do. The conflict within himself is reasonable and is not up to his choice, but a result of social context.

Secondly, his attitude towards militarism also seemed inconsistent, from his boyish love for the martial arts, to his anti-militarism struggle in 1916, to his embracing armed struggle again in early 1920’s. Schoppo shows that in the big picture of intellectual-oriented society in China, Shen’s love for the martial arts indicates something exceptional and revolutionary about him (Schoppa 31). Later during the expansion of the warlord Duan Qirui’s military expansion into the already independent provincially self-governing Zhejiang, the Zhejiang governors sat helpless, therefore Shen’s hatred for militarism seems natural. However, the practical need for military forces when revolution went into full development forced Shen to rethink the value of militarism. Therefore, there was nothing surprising about the his acceptance and even enthusiasm in using and advocating militarism. Again, such choices were a result of events in his social contexts and not so much of a subjective change of mind.

The third problem was his attitude towards Communism, and perhaps is the most puzzling of all. As one of the members of the first Marxism discussion group, he not only became a conservative Nationalist, but also was in charge of the purge of Communists from GMD, turning against all of his friends and associates within the First Normal School network. In 1919, Shen was in desperate pursuit of any strategy that would save the country from the chaos caused by an absence of government. Interaction with the May Fourth worriers naturally led him to both Sun Yat-sen’s theories and Communism. At the earlier stage, both theories were advocating anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and the general atmosphere was rather all-encompassing and tolerant. Partly the tolerance rose from incomplete formation of the theories and their lack of thorough understanding by the revolutionaries themselves. In this environment that did not have sharp conflicts between ideologies, Shen was on one hand trying to find a theory that suited him and on the other hand honestly was not bothered by the slight differences between theories. Here the common enemy was external of China, hence what was developed was Nationalism.

Only when political theories matured into full-fledged ideologies and practical power interests were involved between partisans did conflicts starte to appear. Early 1920’s, from the single-minded revolutionary China, partisan power struggles arose. Communists were backed by the Comintern in Russia, and Nationalists had the political and militant power. When the attention turned from foreigners or Manchu rulers started to point against each other, the two parties found fundamental ideological differences. Tolerance disappeared and party members, especially the double party members like Shen Dingyi, were forced to choose a side. And it so happened that his conviction to “Three People’s Principles” and reluctance towards class struggle turned him towards the GMD, and came to regard Communism as rigid. From a “revolutionary”, people’s perception of Shen rapidly turned into “politician” and rumors about him accepting bribes and criticism about him being “opportunistic” (Schoppa 162) rose from the blue. There are also records of him being arrogant, unfair, and unjust, but Schoppa cautions the readers that such documents might very well be forged due to the bitter political competition then. There were also inconsistent with Shen’s history (Schoppa 162). Due to this period in Shen’s life, some people, such as Shaozili, even recalled Shen Dingyi as a Nationalist in his Shanghai period (Schoppa 88), which was factually wrong.
From Shen’s attitude towards Communism we clearly see the powerful tides of a time capable of directing an individual’s life and identity. Not only did changes in the Chinese political society cause changes in Shen’s identity, from Shen’s life in early 1920’s alone, we see the mirrored reflection of the society itself. The loss of tolerance in Shen’s policy in GMD directly reflects the loss of tolerance in the society; and that Shen started to put more emphasis in controlling the party than nationalistic concerns directly reflects a similar trend in the society too. Just like the metaphor used in the poem cited at the beginning of the book, the society was like a mirror where Shen saw himself in. When the society gets fragmented like a mirror gets broken, his identity, which was the reflection in the mirror, gets torn into pieces too. This powerful metaphor demonstrates the nature of identity being a social construct, which cannot exist without society, and instead of being constant, will change violently when the society does so.

Fourthly, whether Shen Dingyi was a Left-Wing or Right-Wing in GMD was even more confusing. Because Shen used to be an early organizer of CCP some conservative Nationalists fixed his identity as a Left-Wing, however, due to his effort in the Purge and differences of opinion, the Communists held that he was a Right-Wing. In fact, it is hard to say whether he was either. His ambiguous attitude towards class struggle and his seemingly active advocacy of revolution(Schoppa 181) both blur the line, and rendered Shen “moderate”(Schoppa 167). Furthermore, the general chaotic and inconsistent situation within the two parties makes even the definition of right and left ambivalent.

There are a few lessons we can learn from this book regarding methodology of historiography. First is causality. Based on all of his analysis, Schoppa makes a number of guesses as to who murdered Shen, and suggested that the most convincing option was the GMD, judging from the tension within the party around 1928. With these guesses and the entire course of analysis in the book, Schoppa demonstrates the reasoning power of historical causality, which remotely reminds us of the philosophical concept of determinism. To show that everything resulted from a trackable cause can result in greater accuracy and eliminate hand-waving arguments.

Secondly, on a related note, Schoppa tones down the importance of individuals’ subjective choices in the course of a revolutionary history, but emphasizes the irresistible power of societal change itself. Similar theme occurs in Schwarez’s article “The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927”. It May be a shift away from Heroism and Great Man History and turn the attention to irreversible societal trends. In any case, such studies provides a more convincing picture to the period studied because it is definitely more conceivable that collective actions of large number of people propel the progress of a society. Even when a particular figure makes an immensely important decision that changed the society by a huge amount, such as the purge described in the book, the decision maker’s motivation was still the result of a battery of influences and events. Therefore, there could not be individual decision that came from nowhere, which changed the course of the history.
Thirdly, Schoppa proposes the importance of spatial venues in the investigation of a historical figure’s identities and actions. Due to the distinctive characteristics and the existing social networks of a specific location, historical figures often assume very distinct ideologies and actions in each location. Analysis of the subject by locations proves to be useful at least in the case of Shen Dingyi, and helps to reveal the reasons for some of the events that occurred.

Lastly but importantly, Schoppa warns us against the danger of “structured present”(Schoppa 260) in historical analysis. Historians knowing the present find it hard to avoid making judgments on the subject of analysis with information that is gained later, and result in skewed account of the events of the past. Some historians bear an intended structure that they try to fit the subjects in. This strategies are against the spirit of historical objectivity and should be avoided. In this book, Schoppa attempts to stand from the perspective of Shen Dingyi, analyzes his action on the ground of what he was exposed to at the time of the events, and makes guesses and weighs options for Shen Dingyi with the limited amount of information available then. As such Schoppa tries to prevent the retrospective account of what happened and fall into gross simplification or erred perceptions of some writers mentioned in the book.

In this book, Schoppa not only reveals the important historical development of the revolution, but also told the story from a refreshing new angle. Shen Dingyi’s assassination might have been a singularity in the 1920’s, but his story reflects valuable generalities about the time and space he was placed in. From his life and death, we see the course of Chinese revolution in the 1920’s, developing from its infancy with little theoretical support to maturity burdened with partisan power struggle, all reflected in Shen’s ideologies, actions and social relationships. Studies of this style should be carried out on more historical figures, especially those whose name are nearly erased or complicated by the studies that focus on “names” and “-isms”. The potential of revealing valuable new information is tremendous.

Reference
Schoppa, Keith. Blood Road, The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China. University of California Press. 1995.
Schwarez. The Crucible of Political Violence: 1925-1927.