Session 4: Northeast
Professor Xueshi Xie
"The Regime System and Social Grass Root Level Organizations of Puppet Manchuria Kingdom"
Professor Xie argued that the political system in Manzhouguo could be described as a dual structure, in which the government was controlled by the Japanese but relied on Chinese collaborators. Trying to explain the Japanese government’s adeptness as controlling and gathering support, he focused his attention not only on the top levels of government but also on the grass roots’ organizations that tried to garner popular support.
Xie began by describing the dual structure of Manzhouguo’s political system. Japan established Manzhouguo in order to maintain its political control over the region. In 1933 the Japanese cabinet resolved that the military governor and the ambassador in Manchukuo would establish a Japanese-style bureaucratic structure. Based on the implementation of the regime, Xie proposed that the government had four characteristics: 1) the highest authority in Manzhouguo was the commander of the Kwantung Army; 2) the State Council of Manzhouguo was the center of power and was actually in the hands of Japanese officials; 3) the Tuesday Meeting, which was composed of senior Japanese officials, was the highest decision making body in Manzhouguo; 4) the network of Japanese officials held in their hands all the real power in the puppet government.
Despite being planned from the top, control could not have been achieved without help from collaborators. This “dual structure,” in which actual power was held by Japanese officials, was evident in the political structure at central, local, and banner levels. According to Xie, despite several changes in the system, this dual structure, remained.
The second part of Xie’s paper then discussed the Xiehohui (coordination association). Politically, it was a manifestation of the government, but its goal was to integrate the population. By having branches from central levels to local levels, was considered to be the spiritual mother of the government. It was not purely a propaganda organization; rather, its primary goal was to enslave the people, very much like youth organizations and volunteer corps in Nazi Germany. The association would also assist the police in arrests or assassinations, and they assisted in labor recruitment. Thus, the association was part of the political system in Manzhouguo.
The third part of Xie’s paper dealt with grass root organizations. These organizations had branches in many localities, but the government only exerted a limited reach through them. Xie contrasted the situation in the city, where the baojia (hôkô) and street and roads systems were the primary control mechanisms, to the cun and pai levels in the countryside, where there were clubs and neighborhood organizations.
In the end, said Xie, he concluded that control in Manchukuo was military in nature. He added that his paper only deals with the situation on a macro scale, and he was not able to delve into topics such as the police or make comparisons with other Japanese-controlled areas such as Inner Mongolia.
Professor Makoto Iokibe praised Xie’s paper as representing a revolutionary change in the level of research, providing proof for his arguments and wide-scale analysis. He added that he was impressed that most of the sources in Xie’s paper were Japanese, and that he looked not only at the Chinese perspective but also at the Japanese perspective. Likewise, he looked not only at the higher levels of power but at grass root levels. The Japanese government also performed similar mobilizations in Japan; and in both places, the government encountered resistance. Xie recognized these as part of Japan’s strategy to control Manzhouguo and use it as a stepping stone to war on the Chinese mainland and the United States.
Iokibe related that his master’s thesis was on the topic of Kanji Ishihara and the Manchurian Incident, and he complained that the Japanese defense ministry did not allow him to see key documents; he denigrated Japan’s policies about documents and praised those of the United States.
Iokibe proposed two questions to Xie. First, what was the larger strategy behind governing and controlling Manzhouguo; was it simply self-justification for the military? Second, given that the xiehohui were centered around the Japanese population, what was the effect on the native population, and how did this change during the fifteen-year period of war?
Professor Susumu Tsukase, “The Penetration and Influence of Manzhouguo Rule in the Society of Northeast China”
Tsukase began his talk by saying that his research concern was not only with the Japanese forces of occupation in Manzhouguo, but also with its Chinese society. He argued that Manzhouguo’s government had a considerable influence on the Chinese people but that the government could not sufficiently penetrate and influence the populace in directions it wanted. The government could not develop policies that mobilized Chinese interests because, despite extensive research, they did not understand Chinese society. Rather, they tried to impose their ideas on Manzhouguo society. For example, the government was frustrated in its commercial policy of mobilizing Chinese capital; Tsukase attributes the failure to the government’s inability to understand Chinese economic logic. Whereas the Japanese based their economic decisions on prices, the Chinese based theirs on currency value, and the Chinese feared the devaluation of the Manzhouguo currency. Finally, Tsukase urged that this period be considered when researching the later CCP policies in the region.
Professor Stephen MacKinnon read the written comments of Professor Ramon Myers, who was unable to attend the conference. Myers’ comments focused on the economic aspects of Tsukase’s paper. He encouraged Tsukase to approach the economy of Manzhouguo by observing the differences between its enclave economy, its command economy, and its customary economy. Regarding the customary economy, he suggested that Tsukase use the field studies carried out by Japanese research organizations after 1936 to follow the great redistribution of village household assets and the disruption to markets due to military occupation. He also asked Tsukase to consider how the rise of the command and enclave economies influenced the customary economy; Myers guessed that the customary economy turned inward to assure subsistence, and that the wartime command economy became the primary external market.
Discussion
An American professor offered a comment to both presenters. He took issue with the way Xie took for granted in his paper that the government in Manzhouguo was a “puppet government.” He did not want to oppose that term, but rather to problematize it. He argued that the term “puppet” implies that many millions of Chinese who participated in the system were puppets. Avoiding sanctioning the regime, he argued that the term removes the agency of these millions of individuals. He also took issue with the term “military-colonial regime,” maintaining that it would be difficult to distinguish Manzhouguo from the Japanese regime in Korea. Clearly, the cases were very different, so using the same term might confuse rather than clarify.
A Japanese professor followed up on these comments. Having been born and raised in the region, he maintained that the Manzhouguo regime was a puppet regime. It was worthy of this title, because all decisions were made by the headquarters of the Kwantung army, and no opinions from the private sector made any difference, aside from some influence from the Japanese private sector. He maintained that resistance was low among the thirteen million so-called Manzhouguo citizens, and that the majority engaged in commerce even more than in the previous era and, as a result, both felt they had a better life and actually did have a better life. From 1937, once resistance was stifled, rural agricultural life became stabilized, safe, and orderly. Comparing 1937 to 1931, the region was much more stable under the Manzhouguo government and even more so by 1941. Even the railways lowered their security measures after 1936. This is not to deny that areas of anti-Japanese resistance did exist.
He added that, based on his personal experience, China and Japan in later stages of the War were in a state of famine. The only regions that did not suffer famine were Manzhouguo and Korea; their markets had plenty of sugar and red beans, at the time when these products were scarce in Japan. He asked the presenters to address the source of this economic prosperity, and he added that he believed this prosperity attracted the PLA to make incursions into the Northeast in 1946.
Next, an American professor asked why the Southern Manchurian Railroad’s extensive research on the region still left the regime unable to understand Chinese society and its economic logic and unable to carry out effective policy. He asked why the research results had not been absorbed by those in a position to carry out policy.
Returning to the discussion of terminology, a Chinese professor emphasized how emotions skew our objective understanding of history. Of course, in colonial situations, there is a basic contradiction between colonial policy and the people in the colony. But in the eyes of Chinese, both Manzhouguo and the Wang Jingwei regime were both puppets, not nations; this is because both regimes were the products of Japanese aggression. This extends to Korea and Taiwan, too. Still, we must ask why, even if economic conditions were good, why resistance continued. The speaker added that his wife lived in Changchun during the period and had no positive feelings about Japanese rule.
A Japanese professor added that “cooperation association” isn’t an appropriate English translation for xiehohui; it gives it too good an image. In reality, the organization was modeled after Italian fascist “Concordia organizations”; the speaker suggested this as a more appropriate translation. Concordia organizations in Japan reach back to Kanjiwa Yoshihara’s attempt to model his political party on the organization. The speaker’s question to Xie was about the rising number of branches of the Concordia associations in Manzhouguo.
A Canadian scholar added an additional dimension to the discussion of the region’s economy. In Dongbei, she said, there was a huge floating population of people who did not settle but moved back and forth. When things would get bad, people would go home or did not return; when there was famine, people went to Dongbei. She urged that the presenters include this population in their analyses.
A Taiwan scholar said that memoirs of Taiwanese who lived at the time showed that many Taiwanese felt there were opportunities there, both economically and in becoming officials. He asked if the presenters knew of any records of how many Taiwanese became officials.
In response, Xie addressed several points. As to why Japan wanted to control and rule over Manzhouguo, Japan wanted a base from which to invade the rest of China, and they had an overall plan to invade the US and the USSR. Addressing the question of the Concordia society, Japan’s motivation in using a Chinese term was that that they knew they would have to work with pre-existing social structures; as a result, these Japanese sponsored organizations existed under different names in other parts of China. This was the strategy; as to whether they succeeded is a different question. Xie added that he is 75 years old and that he felt that despite the associations’ “loud voices and many activities,” they never succeed in winning over the hearts of the Chinese.
Addressing the discussion about the term “puppet government” should apply to Manzhouguo, Xie maintained that there is a very simple answer: Yes. It had all the characteristics of a puppet government. It was never by Chinese people or recognized internationally. Still, he did not think the term implied that the people under its control were puppets.
Regarding the stability of the Manzhouguo economy, Xie quoted another paper that said Manzhouguo was a strange two-faced creature—good on one hand but hell on earth on another. In other words, according to Xie, it was great from perspective of Japanese; but from that of Chinese of the middle class or those who wanted to resist, it was hell on earth.