Warlordism Versus Federalism: The Revival of a Debate?

For anyone who studies modern Chinese political thought, the revival of interest in federalism is one of the most striking features of the current scene. It has been particularly visible abroad in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, and its most conspicuous spokesman has been the former director of the Institute of Political Science of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yan Jiaqi. In remarks delivered to the First Congress of Chinese Students and Scholars in the United States, held in Chicago in July 1989, Yan proposed a Chinese “federation” (lianbang guojia) having a democratic system as the best hope both for reforming China's internal politics and ultimately for resolving the problems of Hong Hong, Taiwan and Tibet. He made similar remarks in other speeches in America and at the founding meeting of the Federation for Chinese Democracy, of which he was elected president, held in Paris in September 1989. Some other mainland Chinese intellectuals, among them Ge Yang, former editor-in-chief of Xin guancha , have supported such views, as have members of the China Spring movement. A recent official denunciation of such views is testimony to their growing influence. These are surprising developments. Federalist programmes for China have long been seen as little more than relics of an era which ended in the 1920s. As the Cihai entry for liansheng zizhi (one of the phrases for the idea in Chinese) puts it, while certain warlord politicians of the 1920s believed that federalism was the appropriate political system for China, “after the Guangdong revolutionary government launched the Northern Expedition in 1926, no one advocated federalism again.”