Word: chiangs
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...Since Chiang's victory over the warlords who had carved up the country after the fall of the Manchu empire, the central government of China has been under one-party rule?first under the nationalist Kuomintang, followed by the communists. In the 1930s, as in the two decades since Deng Xiaoping opened China's door to market economics, the authorities counted on economic growth to make up for the absence of democracy and to win the allegiance of an emerging middle class. Progress was seen as a matter of technology rather than of political development?roads, railways and airlines then...
...last week's Communist Party plenum in Beijing as a priority for action. The faster China grew, boosted by foreign investment and technology, the greater the wealth gap and the fault line in society. Then, as now, a pervasive internal security apparatus kept tabs on an evolving society. Chiang also sought a reform of personal conduct with his New Life movement, which tried to outlaw spitting, smoking and other bad behavior?just like the authorities last month decreeing a Public Morality...
...There are, of course, substantial differences between Chiang's regime and the current central government. Today's China has modernized to a much greater extent than during what is known as the "Nanjing Decade," named for the city the Generalissimo made his capital. Beijing's rule is actually more national than was Chiang's. Nor is there an equivalent of the Communist Party building up its strength for the eventual fight to the death...
...communists alike came to power through military victory, propagating a progressive ideology that was meant to correct the errors of the past. In each case, that ideology was not properly implemented or became outdated. Faced with the immense task of running a country as big and varied as China, Chiang tried to rule by issuing orders. Democracy was not on the agenda. Political power was to be exercised by the sole party on behalf of the people. That created a gulf between his government and those who found themselves kept outside the power structure, just as has been the case...
...combination of the economic carrot and the stick of repressive one-party rule proved insufficient to build lasting support for Chiang's rule. The nationalist era demonstrates how, by not involving the people in the way they are governed and by denying political pluralism, regimes easily become archaic and disconnected from their citizens, with no means of reinvigorating themselves...