Technocracy and/in Revolution: The Public Administration Efficiency Movement in Republican China, 1927–37

This paper examines the evolving role of technocrats in the Nationalist Party (GMD) during the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937), focusing on the Public Administration Efficiency Movement (xingzhengxiaolv yundong). After seizing power in 1927, the Nationalist government prioritized state-building to counter both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Japanese encroachment. Central to this effort was the efficiency of the government. Beginning in 1933, Gan Naiguang—a University of Chicago-trained political scientist from Wang Jingwei’s faction—assembled a group of non-partisan scholars to spearhead the Public Administration Efficiency Movement: not only did these scholars advice governance with their expertise, but also directly served as technocrats. Through examining the writings of these technocrats and the history of the movement itself, this study demonstrates a red versus expert dilemma in the Republican China—how the GMD’s embrace of “expert” governance collided with its own “red” revolutionary ideology. While technocrats improved governing capacity, their detachment from party creed and popular welfare sparked concerns within the party and finally led to the unexpected failure of the movement. Looking at the usually underestimated governance of the GMD closely, this study proposes a new perspective to understand the relation between the GMD and the CCP: rather than as the diametric opposites, the two parties were parallel revolutionary competitors who formed policies in dialogue with each other as the red versus expert dilemma anticipated a similar challenge faced by the CCP several decades later.