Kuomintang Quotes

“And yet, except for Japan's impatient and greedy seizures of Chinese territory, China and Japan might have found a common meeting ground. Ideologically, the two regimes seemed not far apart. The Kuomintang was much impressed by both Fascist Italy and Hitler's Germany. Chiang chose german officers to train his army, and Italians (before General Claire Chennault's day) to train his air force. Germans helped organize his political gendarmerie, the Lan I She, or "Blue Shirts," modeled after the Gestapo. Cadets in the Kuomintang military academies were taught the fuehrer principle of unquestioning loyalty to "Leader" Chiang, and that teaching soon reached public schools through the organization of Kuomintang youth corps.

The Kuomintang "tutelage period" was always a one-party dictatorship; no legal basis existed for an opposition. Although this dictatorship was inefficient and incomplete, opposition was possible only under shelter provided by militarists not yet wholly "assimilated," or in terms of open armed insurrection such as that led by the rival Communist party. There was no Bill of Rights, thousands were held in jail without trial, and executions went on daily, but as few records were published it was never possible to know just how many people were being killed.”
― Edgar Snow, Journey to the Beginning