“For forty years,” Sun Yat-sen said in March 1925 in the Tsungli's Will, “I have devoted myself to the cause of the people's revolution with but one end in view, the elevation of China to a position of freedom and equality among the nation.” “But,” he lamented, “the work of the Revolution is not yet done.” For forty years since, Chiang Kai-shek has been at the very center of the Chinese political limelight. During half of this period, from 1928 to 1949, he was to a remarkable degree China itself. But like Sun, he has also failed to consummate the Kuomintang movement and the work of the revolution.

In July 1928, upon the termination of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek presented a sacrificial message to the departed leader, Sun Yat-sen, whose body reposed in the Pi-yün Temple outside the city of Peking. Sun had committed his life, Chiang declared, to the attainment of eight tasks in the rebuilding of a new China: (1) the explication of the Kuomintang's principles and the expunging of ‘unorthodox views’, (2) the constructing of a unified party through the curbing of individual freedom and the acceptance of party discipline, (3) the transfer of the national capital to Nanking to symbolize a new beginning for the nation, (4) a purposeful change in the ‘heart’ of the citizenry, (5) the psychological, economic, political and social reconstruction of the nation, (6) the disbanding of troops, (7) the termination of civil strife and a total commitment to national defence, and (8) the speedy introduction of local autonomy. These personal commitments—and public admonitions, as they were also meant to be—covered a wide range of national concerns, dealing as they did with ideology and organization, power and legitimacy, political socialization and national integration. It is noteworthy, however, that Chiang at the moment of personal triumph turned his attention above all to the ideological function of the ruling élite in the transitional Chinese society.

This is a report about the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with supplementary notes on Peita and the Central Institute of Nationalities, all of which I visited while in China between 15 December 1975 and 13 January 1976.

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