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Anti-communism was a distinctive feature in the nation socialism of the Chinese Youth Party. Established in Paris in 1923, the Party played an important role in the political landscape of Republican China. Although modern Chinese historiography emphasizes the dichotomic struggles between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party (the Guomindang, GMD) from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, it was the third largest Chinese Youth Party that assumed the leading role on the right with the aim of defeating the CCP on the left and overthrowing the dominant GMD—at least until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. How did this party achieve such status? While the Youth Party’s founders conceived their national socialist ideology in Europe, their initial success was due primarily to an adaptation of their ideology in accordance with China’s sociopolitical context when they embarked on their own struggles in China, beginning in mid-1924. By exploring the implementation of their ideas in their initial political movements to win popular support, particularly against the Communists among the Chinese masses, including the Five Colored Flag Movement, the Federalist Movement, the National Educational Right Movement, and the Anti-Imperialist Movements, following the May Thirtieth Incident, this paper explores the specific nature of the Chinese variation of national socialism. By doing so, the author presents it as both a global and local phenomenon, formed and transformed by the transnational flow of ideas from Europe to China.
Nagatomi Hirayama
University of Nottingham Ningbo, China