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until to-day there have been ten distinct boycotts which can be considered as national in scope (besides anti-foreign movements of a local character), nine of which were directed against Japan[1] and one against the United Kingdom.
Causes of these boycott movements.If these boycotts are studied in detail, it will be found that each of them can be traced back to a definite fact, event or incident, generally of a political nature and interpreted by China as directed against her material interests or detriments to her national prestige. Thus, the boycott of 1931 was started as a direct sequel to the massacre of Koreans in July, following the Wanpaoshan incident in June of that year, and has been accentuated by the events at Mukden in September and at Shanghai in January 1932. Each boycott has its own immediately traceable cause, but none of the causes in themselves would have initiated economic retaliation on so extensive a scale had it not been for the mass psychology described in Chapter I. The factors contributing to the creation of this psychology are: a conviction of injustice (rightly or wrongly considered as such), an inherited faith in Chinese cultural superiority over foreigners, and a fervent nationalism of a Western type mainly defensive in aims but in which certain aggressive tendencies are not lacking.
Boycott movements before 1925.Although a Society for the Regeneration of China (Hsing Chung Hui), which may be considered the pregenitor of the Kuomintang, was founded as far back as 1893, and although there can be no doubt that all the boycotts from 1905 to 1925 were launched with the war-cry of Nationalism, there is no concrete evidence that the original nationalist associations, and later the Kuomintang, had a direct hand in their organisation.
Inspired by Dr. Sun Yat-sen's new creed, Chambers of Commerce and Student Unions were fully capable of such a task, guided as they were by century-old secret societies, guild experience and guild mentality. The merchants furnished the technical knowledge, means of organisation and rules of procedure, while the students inspired the movements with the enthusiasm of their newly acquired convictions and their spirit of determination in the national cause, and helped to put them into operation. While the students were generally moved by nationalistic feelings alone, the Chambers of Commerce, though sharing those feelings, thought it wise to participate from a desire to control the operation of the boycott. The actual rules of the earlier boycotts were designed to prevent the purchase of the goods of the country against which the movement was directed. Gradually, however, the field of action was extended to a refusal to export Chinese goods to the country concerned or to sell or render services to its nationals in China. Finally, the avowed purpose of the more recent boycotts has become to sever completely all economic relations with the "enemy country".
It should be pointed out that the rules thus established were never carried out to the fullest extent, for reasons which have been fully dealt with in the special study annexed to this Report. Generally speaking, the boycotts have always had more impetus in the South, where nationalistic feelings found their first and most fervent adherents, than in the North, Shantung especially having withheld support.
- ↑ The date and immediate cause of each of these boycotts is:
- 1908 The Tatsu Maru incident.
- 1909 The Antung-Mukden Railway question.
- 1915 The "Twenty-one Demands".
- 1919 The Shantung question.
- 1923 Port Arthur and Dairen recovery question.
- 1925 May 30th incident.
- 1927 Despatch of troops to Shantung.
- 1928 Tsinan incident.
- 1931 The Manchurian affair (Wanpaoshan and Mukden events).
