The Politics of Knowing Shame

Agency in Jiang Jieshi’s Leadership (1927-1936)

Grace Huang

October 2003

 

Dissertation Précis

 

Although intuitively we know that political leaders can alter the course of history, we often cannot clearly characterize how they do so.  In part, we are uneasy about actions that are idiosyncratic and contingent because they chafe against our desire as social scientists to search for a more determinate world.  We have thus tended either to ignore the idiosyncratic actions of political leaders, or to highlight such actions as exceptions to the rule.  In doing so, we often mischaracterize a leader’s unique contribution to a brilliant or catastrophic decision.  The goal of this dissertation is to develop a more robust theory of agency (using the case of Jiang Jieshi’s uses of ‘shame’ in his leadership) to gain a more faithful measure of individual leadership efforts.  

The case of Jiang Jieshi proves intriguing on a comparative and methodological basis.  Comparatively, because Jiang drew from both revolutionary and Confucian ideologies for his leadership, he inhabited structural situations similar to that of the revolutionary leaders, Sun Zhongshan and Mao Zedong, and to that of the ‘reactionary’ leader, Yuan Shikai.  Methodologically, I have relied on the ‘diaries’ of Jiang that the Taiwanese government recently opened to the public in 1997.  In painstaking brushwork calligraphy, Jiang’s secretaries had copied quotations from Jiang’s diaries and portions of his speeches and telegrams, among other writings by Jiang.  The presentation and content of this source, properly called the shilue manuscripts, give us a unique window to understand agency in the Chinese context.

Chapter One: Theoretical Framework
First, the chapter focuses on how patterns in the leadership context enable and constrain the agency of leaders.  To do so, it integrates approaches to structure developed by Stephen Skowronek (1998) and William H. Sewell, Jr. (1994, 1992) thereby reformulating Theda Skocpol’s (1979) approach to structure in analyzing Chinese political leadership.  

Second, the chapter examines how we can conceptually separate agency from structures.  Refining and critiquing Emirbayer’s and Mische’s (1998) work on agency, it first demonstrates that a leader cannot easily revise his or her agentic orientation.  One who consistently draws on suppressors of rebellions cannot easily switch to drawing on the rebels.  In addition, unlike practical evaluation (the day to day decision-making), iteration (selectively reactivating past experiences, patterns of behavior to condition present actions) and projection (imagining future goals, projects, and fantasies that may also condition present actions) can be situated ‘outside’ of time.  An individual, for example, might cognitively decide that she wants to quit smoking, but her goal is not reached within temporal time.  This disjunction suggests that a particular action can be described as being more or less ‘agentic’ depending upon how an individual aligns the cognitively projected agency ‘outside’ of time and the actively projected agency within temporal time.

Third, the chapter theoretically links question of subjectivity to agency in the Chinese context.  The intriguing nature of the archival materials motivated this inquiry.  Jiang’s ‘self’ rarely appeared.  When it did, it appeared detached in the third person.  The chapter therefore investigates the credibility and authorship of Jiang’s shilue manuscripts, delineating the manuscript’s limits and possibilities for understanding Jiang’s agency. 

Chapter Two: ‘Shame’ as Ideological Warrant
Because it is not clear why Jiang drew so persistently on ‘shame’ for his leadership, this chapter outlines the method by which what one might call the “Confucian self” makes decisions.  Within this Confucian framework, this chapter argues that ‘shame’ occurs at certain moments, when propriety [li] has degenerated to where one side of the hierarchical relationship (i.e. ruler to ruled or father to son) has lost its standing (and usually it is the inferior side).  ‘Shame’ serves a dual purpose of reinforcing or transforming the script of propriety (i.e. the rules of proper behavior between superior and inferior).  Each side may exert great effort to reinforce or transform the script to prevent the relationship from degenerating.  But, for various reasons, ‘shame’ might still occur.  This chapter demonstrates that the standards of ‘propriety’ might not follow the changing of times; the superior might be overbearing; the inferior operates with another standard.  Because ‘shame’ often occurs on the inferior’s side, ‘shame’ becomes an important ideological resource and weapon of the weak to recover standing, and in the process, further reinforce or transform the script of propriety.  Given the dire circumstances of the Chinese army and of society, Jiang’s uses of ‘shame’ become intelligible.  Because China was always in the ‘inferior’ position in relation to the ‘superior’ imperial powers that had transgressed propriety, Jiang appealed to ‘shame’ to exhort his soldiers and citizens to overcome their dire situation and to recover their standing in the international community.<

Chapter Three: The Jinan Incident of 1928
In Jiang’s first serious confrontation with the Japanese, where he ultimately abandoned Jinan to the Japanese, Jiang appealed to Gojian, a historical king during the Spring and Autumn Period [722-481 B.C.].  In doing so, Jiang signaled to himself and to his country to be patient, to endure the humiliation, so that in the meantime they could self-strengthen, and eventually, avenge humiliation.  The cleverness of drawing on this historical figure was that Gojian took twenty-three years to avenge humiliation against the King of Wu.  Therefore, Jiang could afford to avoid the Japanese, and when necessary, concede to them, in the name of avenging China’s ‘shame’ at a later date.  This chapter explores how Jiang employed the Gojian story as a template for China’s eventual success.  First, Jiang used Gojian’s ‘lying on brushwood and tasting gall” to call on the soldiers and citizens to endure the humiliation and to not strike back or to protest against the Japanese.  By avoiding the Japanese, Jiang aimed to minimize the humiliation at the hands of the Japanese, and at the same time, impute strength in actions that otherwise might be interpreted as passive or weak.  Second, Jiang used Gojian’s ‘pooling the population for ten years and training the population for ten years,’ to imagine blueprints for systematically strengthening China.  While Jiang could not actively implement these goals (because he was busy preventing China’s collapse), Jiang’s plans served as possible blueprints for when China would be ready to take positive self-strengthening measures.

Chapter Four: The Manchurian Railway Incident of 1931
Methodologically, the goal of this chapter is to gage Jiang’s education as a leader in his second major confrontation with the Japanese.  This chapter demonstrates that Jiang became more adept at pursuing his negative approach towards avenging humiliation.  In the name of enduring humiliation, Jiang took the position of nonresistance, noncompromise, and nondirect negotiation with the Japanese, which allowed the Japanese to occupy the whole of Manchuria within five months.  In addition, he became more reliant upon the international situation to solve the Japanese problem.  This chapter argues that Jiang’s continued negative approach, while understandable given his goals of preventing China’s collapse, nevertheless further undermined positive outlets in which the people and the soldiers could self strengthen to avenge humiliation. 

Chapter Five: The New Life Movement of 1934
This chapter studies Jiang’s second important use of ‘shame,’ as one of the four cords that uphold a moral society.  Jiang’s exhortative speeches, New Life Movement speeches, telegrams, and daily reflections reveal that Jiang consistently confronted a profound gap between material resources and the realization of the ethics of ‘shame’: how were the soldiers to fight the Japanese effectively if they lacked bullets for battle, let alone for target practice, and, how were the citizens to conduct themselves as befitting a strong moral society when they lacked food, clothing, housing, and basic transportation?  Drawing on the pre-Confucian philosopher and statesman Guanzhong (ca. 645 B.C.), Jiang argued that the ethical value of ‘shame’ was more important than material resources (i.e. the soldier’s moral spirit was more important than the bullets).  To instill ‘shame,’ Jiang started with small changes (i.e. straighten one’s posture, refrain from spitting), believing that this would eventually lead to larger changes (i.e. a fearless spirit to confront the Japanese).  This chapter attempts to explain why Jiang was unable to advance beyond the small changes. 

Chapter Six: Jiang vs. Yuan on ‘Shame’
This chapter demonstrates that revolutionary leaders such as Sun Zhongshan and Mao Zedong appeared larger than life because they based their claims of authority on opposing a vulnerable ideological regime.  By contrast, Yuan Shikai and Jiang appeared reactionary and weak because they based their authority on a vulnerable ideological regime (respectively, Yuan Shikai’s basic continuation of the Qing Reformist policies and Jiang’s Guomindang ideologies).  In demonstrating that Yuan and Jiang inhabited similar structural situations that constrained their agency, I then compare the agency of Jiang and Yuan on their uses of avenging humiliation (in Yuan’s case, his response to the Japanese Twenty-One Demands toward China in 1915) to further delineate Jiang’s unique and creative uses of ‘shame.’