Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution

by John Fitzgerald

This innovative work is the first to approach the awakening of China as a historical problem in its own right, and to locate this problem within the broader history of the rise of modern China. It analyzes the link between the awakening of China as a historical narrative and the awakening of the Chinese people as a political technique for building a sovereign and independent state. In sum, it asks what we mean when we say that China “woke up” in this century. The book follows the legend of China’s awakening from its origins in the European imagination, to its transmission to China and its encounters with a lyrical Chinese tradition of ethical awakening, to its incorporation and mobilization in a mass movement designed to wake up everyone. Fiction and fashion, architecture and autobiography, take their places alongside politics and history, and the reader is asked to move about among writers, philosophers, ethnographers, revolutionaries, and soldiers who would seem to have little in common. The book focuses on the Nationalist movement in south China, highlighting the role of Sun Yat-sen as director of awakenings in the Nationalist Revolution and the place of Mao Zedong as his successor in the politics of mass awakening. Of special interest is the previously untold story of Mao’s role in the Nationalist Propaganda Bureau, showing Mao as a master of propaganda and discipline, rather than as peasant movement activist.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

484 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not quite a historical narrative, but a collection of shorter pieces about how Chinese intellectuals and political groups dealt with a similar problem - how to "awaken" the Chinese people, the rise of modern Chinese nationalism at the expense of other movements, and how the idea of "awakening" became institutionalized in the politics of mass mobilization, and eventually a mass revolutionary movement. Fitzgerald covers the usual suspects - the May 4th Movement, the Xinhai Revolution, and so on.

The part I found most fascinating was the Guomindang's period where they controlled only the south of China, and formed the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party. This was not just how Chinese intellectuals tried to wake up the Chinese people, but also was a formative experience for the Communists - in particular, Mao Zedong had worked for Sun Yatsen's government as head of a propaganda office from 1925-1926.

[Tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now if you're planning on running your own country, who better to turn to than the Chinese? Study this book and find out how to dictate. The do's and don'ts...

[Louloulou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a valuable and yet somewhat schizophrenic book. We can easily divide it into part one, a cultural history of "awakening" and part two, an institutional history of KMT during the Nationalist Revolution. What is more, there is no clear thematic connection between these two parts.
Cultural historians might say that the most interesting part of the book is the first half, while a scholar studying institutional history will definitely argue that the second half is the most meaty part. The last three chapters offer insightful analysis, for example, a discussion of Mao's role in the KMT Propaganda Bureau and a revisionist opinion of Chen Jiongming, based on Fitzgerald's dissertation research. But I find more inspiration from the first three chapters, which brings up many motifs of 'awakening' and invites further research.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't understand why this is a book on history of China. I'd say it's a cultural studies of China with a historical perspective. This book won Leveson Prize in 1998 which may hint to us the trend of historical studies is to get theory-heavy. The content of the book can be easily inferred from the title: it traces the shifts and continuities in the metaphor of awakening China.