New Life Movement
[1] Chiang and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, who played a major role in the campaign, advocated a life guided by four virtues, lǐ (禮/礼, proper rite), yì (義/义, righteousness or justice), lián (廉, honesty and cleanness) and chǐ (恥/耻, shame; sense of right and wrong).
[3] The New Life Movement was founded at a time when China, already weakened by Western imperialism, faced the threats of rising Japanese militarism, domestic factionalism and communism.
Chiang charged that "If we do not weed the present body of corruption, bribery, perfunctoriness, and ignorance, and establish instead a clean, effective administration, the day will soon come when the revolution will be started against us as we did the Manchus".
[4] Chiang claimed that Chinese were "unbearably filthy", "hedonistic", "lazy", and physically and spiritually "decrepit", and thus leading lives that were "barbaric and devoid of reason.
[9] Although Meiling acknowledged that the Blue Shirts were "stupid, overzealous, dizzy with success", she also stated that the government did not officially support most of their activities or condone their behavior.
Soong Chingling, Meiling's elder sister who long espoused socialist ideals in contrast with Meiling's more traditional Christian ones, dismissed the New Life Movement as a "pedantic" exercise that "gives nothing to the people" and that such profound emphasis on ancient Confucian ideals of proper behavior were largely impractical and ill-advised in a time when millions of Chinese families were still starving daily.
[10] The leading prominent liberal voice in the KMT, Hu Shih, stated that as "there is neither any panacea to save the country nor will there be any miracle cure to revive the nation", the problems that the Movement sought to address were indeed considerable and prevalent, but Chiang's methods of countering them were much less valid, and that the ROC should focus on renewing the material well-being of the Chinese people before trying to revive their so-called spirituality.
According to Hu Shih, "When children were scouring rubbish dumps to find half a burnt-out coal, or a bit of filthy rag, how could you accuse them of dishonesty if they pocketed a lost item they had picked up?
[12] Chiang's original inception of the New Life Movement purportedly stemmed from his personal negative experiences in both the Soviet Union and in Communist parts of China, where he became repulsed by their harsh reality of class struggle.
"[13] Chiang Kai-shek used the Confucian and Methodist notion of self-cultivation and correct living for the Movement; to this end it prescribed proper etiquette on every aspect of daily life.
Paul Linebarger had stated that the New Life Movement's "principles consist of a simple restatement of the cardinal Confucian personal virtues, interpreted to suit modern conditions.
"[17] The historian Lloyd Eastman saw Chiang's goal as unifying China under a singular ideology, a fascist one at that, with the resulting New Life Movement being a popularized or a "sloganized Confucianism".
[18] According to Keith Schoppa, the new set of beliefs was seen to be easy to execute, with four main virtues backed by 95 further sub-rules that regulated the everyday life of the regular Chinese citizen.
Dirlik sees the movement as a "modern counterrevolution" opposed to an "anti-revolutionary conservatism" due to the fact that it instrumentalised traditional moral codes and societal constructs.
[25] From the perspective of some impoverished Chinese citizens, the policies of Marxists were far more practical and coherent, leading to the lack of significance attributed to the New Life Movement.
The lack of popular domestic reception is exacerbated by the behaviour of the Blue Shirts, a far-right fascist group that enforced the rules of the New Life Movement.
Historian Sterling Seagrave writes "by 1936, the Blue Shirts were running amok, driven by excesses of zeal and brutality, giving the New Life Movement a bad name".
The Literary Digest observed that year, 'Most likely to upset the teacups were Chiang's own civilian, anti-foreign, bombing, stabbing, shooting 'Blue Shirt' terrorists, who once useful, now unmanageable, have become something of a Frankenstein monster.
Other historians assert that the New Life Movement was not without its merits and positive values either, although they also concede it was not able to offset the KMT's painstaking struggle to resolve China's deep-rooted and complex socioeconomic problems.
Being told to eat in silence and go to bed early could only make the modern-minded urban elite regard the regime as a bunch of petty busybodies."
Fenby also notes that modern-day China itself has also tried similar government-sponsored efforts to encourage the Chinese people to "behave better", citing the Public Morality Day of autumn 2003 as "a loud echo of the New Life movement.
In the run-up to the Olympics, Beijing residents were told of a new 'morality evaluation index' which would give credit for 'displays of patriotism, large book collections, and balconies full of potted plants' and lower grades for 'alcohol abuse, noise complaints, pollution, or a violation of licences covering internet cafes and karaoke parlours'.
Yet the purpose of this "complete militarization" was not to conquer other people but to cultivate "courage and swiftness, the endurance of suffering, a tolerance of hard work, especially the habit and ability of unified action."
He also notes that Chiang developed deep personal reservations regarding the Blue Shirts, having mused in a letter to the newspaper 'Dagongbao, "How would I differ from the Communists...if I were to imitate the so-called fascists...of Italy?"
In the words of Soong Mei-ling's biographer, the New Life Movement was a "curious East-West ideological fusion of neo-Confucian precepts, thinly disguised, New Testament Christianity, YMCA-Style social activism, elements of Bushido—the samurai code—and European fascism, along with a generous dose of New England Puritanism."
Albeit noble, its battle against the immemorial ills of Chinese life—gambling, opium, debauchery, poverty, begging, robbery, filth, corruption, and indifference to the public good amounted to tilting at windmills.
