Private Guns, National Politics: Understanding Foreign Gun Ownership in Republican China, 1912–49

Personal weapon ownership was surprisingly common in Republican China, and many civilians became owners of foreign guns. Foreign guns, which were vastly superior to the traditional Chinese bird gun, constituted one of the greatest threats to public safety during these periods. Ownership of foreign guns had a profound and heretofore unnoticed impact on Chinese society and national politics. My project will show the sociopolitical implications of private—and in particular, foreign—gun ownership in modern China.

Starting in the late 19th century, many Western private arms firms faced slumping domestic sales. They turned to China, with its vast population and mounting civil insecurity as a new market. Sales representatives from Remington, Browning, Winchester, and many others came to China to sell their wares. Their success in the Chinese market benefited from the advent of the rolling breech block system, which made the foreign gun both immensely powerful and easy for civilians to operate. The importation of foreign guns spurred the emergence of Chinese munitions merchants, who served as intermediaries between foreign arms firms and their Chinese clients. Arms manufacturers, smugglers, criminal organizations, and corrupt officials formed a vast distribution network, resulting in the prevalence of foreign guns into both coastal and interior areas.

Civilians’ growing hunger for foreign guns brought about social and political consequences. The social insecurity that resulted from frequent gun violence led to an arms race of sorts, incentivizing other Chinese to purchase ever more powerful guns, or replace their Chinese-made weapons with foreign ones. Civilian possession of foreign guns not only endangered public security, but also helped subvert government’s authority over local areas, affecting the power relationship between the state and commoners. Various mechanisms had been enacted by governments to regulate the foreign gun’s circulation. Despite the strict laws, the number of guns in private hands increased rather than decreased. Their regulation efforts failed when the central power was undercut by regional power blocs. Private gun ownership thus contributed to persistent social unrest, which was manifested in violent confrontations and internal conflict.           

Widespread and largely unregulated private gun ownership exerted appreciable effects in the national political arena, and that too will be a subject of my research. In wartime, the Nationalist government even ceased scrutinizing unregistered gun ownership for fear that restrictive control might provoke illegal gun owners to insurrection. The Communist Party (CCP), however, took the opposite position and linked private gun ownership with their ongoing revolutionary campaign. In some regions, the number of peasants owning foreign guns even determined the location of their revolutionary bases. Local Communist cadres either organized the armed civilians into guerrilla units or confiscated private guns for military use. The mobilization of armed civilians thus played an important role in strengthening its military power and defeating the Nationalist army.

While historians have understood the foreign gun in China in terms of military modernization, my project will demonstrate that foreign gun ownership both contributed to social unrest, but also changed Chinese politics in this important period of China’s history.