Jiangxi Provincial Cadres Training Of The Chinese Kuomintang: 1932-1949

The cadre training held by Jiangxi Provincial Government in the Republic of China, was an important part in the overall cadre training of the KMT. The Jiangxi Provincial Training Corps was a major institution for its cadre training. Affected by the cadre training policy of the KMT, the cadre training ideas of Chiang Kai-shek and the atmosphere of the entire cadre training, Jiangxi Provincial cadre training was conducted by taking into account the specific circumstances of Jiangxi Province.The cadre training of Jiangxi consisted of four stages from 1932 to 1949. In the period of County Administration Research Council and the county government Training Institute, various problems were in the way. However, the training had certain effect on the "co-suppression", and set up the basic framework for the later cadre training institutions. In the period of Political Research Institute, the training focus was shifted to district cadres, and greater progress was made than before in organizational structure, training scale, training content and training measures. In the period of local administrative cadres training corps, the training saw its supreme prosperity for its degree of organizational integrity, the training scale and degree of standardization. During the period of the Jiangxi Provincial Training Corps, the effect couldn't be compared with the previous stage due to the institutional adjustment and the KMT's rapid defeat, but the veteran training was a highlight.The organizational structure of provincial Training Corps had a gradual evolution, but its institutional setting and institutional responsibility maintained relative stability. It had little change since the period of Political Research Institute in particular. In the course of development and changes, Provincial Training Corps gradually formed a set of systems for recruiting and assessing the working staff, thus forming a relatively stable and high-quality staff team.The subjects for cadre training were divided into common courses and professional courses. Each class (group) shared most of the common courses, but the professional courses were arranged according to the trainees'practical work. These training courses were generally coincided with cadre training goals, but some of them were not closely linked with their practical work. Moreover, the training time of single disciplines was too short for the trainees to make a good command of learning. The training materials, mainly included Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek's thoughts and remarks, the basic political theory and the Kuomintang's existing policy, Chinese history, geography, the KMT history and traditional knowledge and traditional morality, the Common sense of party and administrative work in the practical application. In addition, the provincial and subsidiary training institutions had also compiled some books about the overview of Jiangxi Province and some local regions.Jiangxi Province made an all-round design in selecting, training, assessing and tracking and tutoring the trainees. The Provincial training corps developed rigorous procedures in selecting trainees, but it was difficult to test their ideology. The training was based on classroom teaching, with emphasis placed on discipline, military training and militarized management, while supplementing by a variety of association activities. These measures were reasonable to some extent, but there were problems too, the most prominent one being that according military training to the party and government cadres, without considering their special nature. Provincial training corps formulated detailed assessment criteria, but methods for assessment were inflexible, prim and failed to consider the real personnel administration. Providing services and instruction for the trainees after their graduation were believed to be helpful for them, but graduates held little respect and fear for the cadre training institutions because they had no power or resources. As a result, the trainees tended to skimp their work and the tracking and tutoring became mere formalities.Provincial training Corps had complicated relationships with other cadre training institutions within the Province in the course of development. Provincial Training Corps had certain correlations with the Officers Training Corps at Lushan in aspects of history, training patterns and content, historical background and strategic tasks as both were the cadre training institutions for the KMT. But in either case, big differences were found in hosting bodies, training objects, specific training objectives and training methods. The Youth Leaders training class was sponsored by Chiang Ching-kuo, which was nominally attached to the Provincial Training Corps, but was actually Chiang's "independent kingdom." As for the training institutions throughout Jiangxi, which should belong to the Provincial Training Corps according to the organizational system, but the symbolic significance outweighed the practical significance, as the Provincial Training Corps just provided operational guidance most of the time.This paper argues that the cadres training of Jiangxi Province achieved some success, but it also had some drawbacks. It strengthened the trainees'sense of national identity, improved their theoretical level and practical working ability, promoted the implementation of the "Three Guarantees" policy, promoted and trained people to engage in war mobilization work, strengthened communication and exchange among them, provided basis for government recruitment and created opportunities for cadres promotion and enhanced the provincial government's understanding and monitoring of all the regions. However, cadre training of Jiangxi Province was a failure on the whole. It failed to improve the quality of cadres fundamentally, especially the spiritual quality and failed to fundamentally strengthen the Party's cohesion or to expand the Party. The reason lied in the training itself, as well as the deep-rooted drawbacks of Jiangxi Province and the Kuomintang. Training itself had some shortcomings such as lack of time in single discipline training, the defects in the training means and methods, unscientific evaluation criteria and methods, the frail use of training results, different quality of lecturers' proficiency and their occasional absence from class and nominal instruction after graduation. But the root cause of the failure was the problematic ideology of the Kuomintang on Jiangxi Province, cadre policy, institutional structure, clean government building, cultural and educational foundation, economic development, cadre training fund, the system and standard building and other factors.