Blue Shirts Society

Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People 三民主義力行社 Sānmínzhǔyì lìxíng shè
Ideology	Chinese ultranationalism Three Principles of the People Anti-communism Anti-imperialism Pro-Chiang Kai-shek
Colours	Blue
Part of	Kuomintang

Blue Shirts Society
Traditional Chinese	藍衣社
Simplified Chinese	蓝衣社
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Lán Yī Shè Wade–Giles Lan2 I1 Shê4 IPA [lǎn í ʂɤ̂]

The Blue Shirts Society (BSS)(藍衣社), also known as the Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People (Chinese: 三民主義力行社, commonly abbreviated as SPTPP), the Spirit Encouragement Society (勵志社, SES) and the China Reconstruction Society (中華復興社, CRS), was a secret ultranationalist faction in the Kuomintang inspired by German and Italian fascists.

The rise and fall of the Blue Shirt Society was rapid, but obscure, and it was seldom mentioned again by either the KMT or the Chinese Communist Party after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the following KMT retreat to Taiwan.

Membership and development

Chiang Kai-shek founded the Blue Shirts in 1932. Its leaders were young officers from the Nationalist army. Although in its early stage the society's most important members came from the Whampoa Military Academy, and constituted elements of the KMT's Whampoa Clique, by the 1930s its influence extended into the military and political spheres, and had influence upon China's economy and society. Historian Jeffrey Crean notes, however, that while the Blue Shirts impacted elite politics, it had little impact on the rural people who were the vast majority of China's population. Membership peaked at 10,000 in 1935.

Membership in the Blue Shirts Society was kept a strict secret:

With a view to attaining the object of immediately overthrowing the feudal influences, exterminating the Red Bandits, and dealing with foreign insult[s], members of the Blue Shirts Society should conduct in secret their activities in various provinces, xian, and cities, except for the central Guomindang headquarters and other political organs whose work must be executed in an official manner."

— Liu Jianqun (劉健羣)

Ideology and rhetoric

The Blue Shirts articulated a slogan of "Nationalize, Militarize, Productive." Blue Shirt rhetoric stressed contempt for liberal democracy and the political usefulness of violence. Blue Shirts favored a "permanent purge" of bureaucracy, and in their view a "mass violence organization" was necessary to achieve that purge.

Blue Shirt ideology was influenced by contact with the Nazi advisors to the KMT, such as Hermann Kriebel. The organization was inspired by the German Brownshirts and the Italian Blackshirts, although unlike those organizations, the Blue Shirts were composed of political elites, not the popular masses.

Historians Paul Jackson and Cyprian Balmires, have classified the Blue Shirt Society as a ‘fascistic’ ultranationalist group rather than a ‘fascist’ group. Historian Jeffrey Crean notes that the Blue Shirts impacted only elite politics, not the vast majority of China's population. According to historian Jay Taylor, the Blue Shirts hated the fascist Japanese and were fiercely anti-imperialists.

Whole New Culture Movement

Xiao Zuolin (肖作霖), a BSS member early on, drafted a plan called the Whole New Culture Movement and proposed the establishment of an organization called the Chinese Culture Academy to increase the BSS's influence in culture. Xiao got Deng Wenyi's support and carried out his plan by taking over several newspapers and journals, and by enrolling its members in universities. Its scheme of forging a movement for a new culture was adopted by Chiang, and on 19 February 1934, he announced the New Life Movement at a meeting in Nanchang. The plan involved reconstructing the moral system of the Chinese and welcoming a renaissance and reconstruction of Chinese national pride.

In connection with the New Life Movement, some Blue Shirts attacked what they deemed as symbols of Western decadence like dance halls and movie theaters. Some threw acid on Chinese dressed in Western attire.

In March, Chiang issued guidance, consisting of 95 rules of the New Life Movement, being a mixture of Chinese traditions and western standards. It was a vast propaganda movement, with war mobilization and military maneuvers on a scale that China had never experienced before. But because the plan was so ambitious and rigid, and because its policies created too much inconvenience in the everyday lives of the people, it fell into disfavor. Nearly three years later in 1936, Chiang had to accept that his favorite movement had failed. Deng, Kang and Jiang Xiaoxian (蔣孝先), Chiang's nephew and bodyguard, also BSS members were appointed General Secretariats of the New Life Movement, with supervision of public lifestyles enforced by BSS cadres. By controlling the mouthpieces of the KMT, the BSS openly expressed advocacy of fascism in its publications.

With the New Culture Movement failed but still officially ongoing, the BSS spread its influence into the cultural centers of Shanghai and other major cities that used to be the CC Clique's power base.

Other

Blue Shirts supported Korean independence activist and left-wing nationalist Kim Won-bong-led Korean National Revolutionary Party. Among the Korean nationalists who worked for the Blue Shirts, the 'right wing' formed the White Shirts Society in southern Korea in 1945. The founder of White Shirts, Yeom Dong-jin also associated with other Blue Shirts members to join the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics of the National Revolutionary Army (Chinese: 國民政府軍事委員會調查統計局, aka. "Jungtong"), which performed the espionage, assassination and intelligence services for Chiang's Kuomintang regime.

See also

• Anti-communism in China
• CC Clique
• Chiangism
• Chinese state nationalism
• Dai Li
• Political color
• Political uniform
• Red Shirts (United States)

References

General

• Jung Byung Joon (1995), 몽양여운형평전 [Biography of Mongyang Lyuh Woon-hyung] (in Korean), 한울, ISBN 978-89-460-2229-4
• Payne, Stanley G. (2001). A history of fascism, 1914-1945 (reprinted ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 337. ISBN 9781857285956.
• Lestz, Michael; Cheng, Pei-kai (1994). Fascism in China 1925-1938: A Documentary Study. Pingtung, Taiwan: National Pingtung Normal University. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
• Feng, Qihong (1998). 法西斯主義與三〇年代中國政治 [Fascism and Chinese Politics in the 1930s] (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Taipei, Taiwan: Department of History, National Chengchi University. ISBN 9789570210026.
• Ding, San. Lanyishe suipian. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2003. ISBN 7-02-004232-5
• Eastman, Lloyd E. The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974. ISBN 9780674001756.
• Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. "A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism." The China Quarterly 20, no. 150, Special Issue: Reappraising Republic China (1997): 395–432.
• Chung, Dooeum. Élitist Fascism: Chiang Kaishek's Blueshirts in 1930's China. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2000. ISBN 9780754611660.
• Zarrow, Peter (2005). China in war and revolution, 1895-1949. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 255–258. ISBN 9780415364478.