| This dissertation traces the emergence and consequences of "cultural revolution" as it was elaborated by the fascist factions that dominated China's ruling Nationalist Party from 1927-1937. I develop a novel account of the origins of cultural revolution in China by revealing how this concept, typically identified with the Chinese Communist Party, was articulated by Nationalist politicians and soldiers on the eve of World War II to transform China into a militantly-united, self-sufficient, and sovereign nation state. I argue that Nationalist concern to foment a cultural revolution emerged from a confluence of global, regional, and local socio-political transformations and intellectual developments. Building upon ideas and tactics inherited from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the Nationalist Party's 1923-1927 experience of Comintern patronage, 1930s fascists articulated an organized program for creating nationalistic artworks and radically transforming popular thinking and everyday activity. Nationalist attention to cultural transformation as a precondition for broad-scale structural change was on the one hand conditioned by China's semi-colonized circumstances, and on the other by the dynamics of civil war as it unfolded after 1927.;Openly challenging the incipient cultural revolutionary agenda of the Chinese Communist Party and mirroring the dramatic rightward march of nationalist movements around the world, interwar Nationalists emphasized China's Confucian-spiritual unity and the power of mass action to achieve a sovereign national polity amidst an increasingly volatile world. Throughout the 1930s, Nationalist leaders and supporters anxiously anticipated that the rising fascist powers of Japan, Germany, and Italy intended to carve out empires of their own from those currently possessed by England, France, and the United States. To thwart China's full colonization by Japan, Nationalists proposed ever-more draconian measures to foster rapid industrialization and to bolster civilian capacities for self-defense. This dissertation documents how the Nationalist right called for a cultural revolution, one aspect of which was the New Life Movement, to rationalize everyday behavior, to inculcate work discipline, and to foster respect for Confucian social hierarchies. In tandem with nationalistic films, literature, and artwork, these measures aimed to cultivate the national unity necessary to eradicate communism and avert the impending Japanese occupation. |
