China's Leninist State and strategic relations with the United States: Chiang's KMT in Nanjing Decade and implications for the Chinese Communist Party after 1949

Abstract

This article revisits Chiang Kai‐shek's Kuomintang (KMT) party‐state during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37) of the Republic of China (ROC) and assesses how the actions and ideological propensities of the Nationalist regime affected prewar China's external relations with the United States. While both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were constituted as Leninist parties in the 1920s, due to the Soviet Union's military and economic aid for Sun Yat‐sen's republican revolution, they had very different political objectives and socioeconomic perspectives on China's state/nation‐building. Consequently, the KMT's and CCP's respective attitudes towards the United States also differed. Though Leninism is an antithesis to Western liberal democracy, it is not inevitable for a Leninist dictatorship to engage in confrontations with Washington, as the central leadership's inclinations and actions would determine how China approaches America. Chiang's Confucian Leninism opened up the friendly ties with the United States in 1928, which eventually consolidated into a strong U.S.‐ROC alliance during WWII and beyond, despite the KMT's autocracy. The essay will contrast briefly with the post‐1949 People's Republic of China (PRC), as the CCP experienced from Mao Zedong's radical Leninism, Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin/Hu Jintao's consultative Leninism, to Xi Jinping's expansionist Leninism today. The evolving CCP positions have also affected the extent of cooperation and hostility between Beijing and Washington and illustrated how the changing attributes of the Chinese Leninist regime are crucial in determining U.S.‐PRC strategic trajectories.