• What exactly was Hunan under the provincial constitution? Probably few outside Hunan know much about it. To detail its politics, economy, culture, education, and the recently emerging labor movement would require more than a short essay. A concise outline is given below.

(A) Politics

(1) The Provincial Constitution
The discussion of provincial constitutions began in Hunan, and to this day, only Hunan has one. The reason for this is quite ordinary. Hunan lies between the north and the south and suffered three rounds of ravaging by Northern warlord forces under Tang Xiangming, Fu Liangzuo, and Zhang Jingyao, leaving the people with a deep-seated hatred for Northern military power. When Tan Yankai and Zhao Hengti’s Hunan army drove out Zhang Jingyao, just as the Northern Zhili and Anhui cliques were beginning to split, the proposals for provincial self-governance and a provincial constitution emerged—entirely as a reaction to Northern warlord power. If Hunan lacked the provincial constitution as a protective talisman, it would easily fall prey to military incursions, something the people did not want and the warlords wanted even less. The result was that warlords exploited public opinion and used the provincial constitution for self-preservation. Thus, the provincial constitution served merely as a tool for a weak warlord (Zhao Hengti) in Hunan’s unfavorable terrain to secure his own safety. A powerful warlord straddling several provinces, like Wu Peifu, had no need for a provincial constitution; Zhang Zuolin wanted only self-governance, not a constitution; and even a warlord of meager strength, who, thanks to a remote location, feared little invasion and sometimes sought to divert military pay from neighboring provinces—like Tang Jiyao—also had no use for one. Hence, the provincial constitution could only appear in a place like Hunan. Yet it was also destined to be short-lived, for although the provincial constitution, by a timely stroke of luck, temporarily fended off external threats, it ultimately became a fetter binding the warlords. Hunan’s constitution, for instance, mandated that military spending be reduced to one-third of annual expenditures, yet the current budget cannot comply with its stipulations, creating a situation where tearing up the provincial constitution has become almost inevitable. Moreover, the infighting between the Tan and Zhao factions would in practice force one side to draw in outside troops to fight for this position: the lifespan of a provincial constitution can never be long. And the so-called “federated provincial self-governance” is even more an utterly hopeless pipedream.

(2) Political Factions
Tan Yankai, Zhao Hengti, and Lin Zhiyu were divided into three factions. The Min-Kang Society belonged to the Tan faction, the Min-Xin Society to the Zhao faction, and the Xiang Society to the Lin faction—these served as their political parties. The Lin faction had no military power, being only a clique of low-minded politicians banded together for profit, and would swivel according to the waxing and waning of the Tan and Zhao factions—the lowest-grade faction among the three. The Zhao faction was currently in power; its political life was in practice built upon the coercive might and nurturing patronage of Wu Peifu amid the north-south standoff (the provincial constitution, too, was built upon this). Thus, although its military strength fell short of the Tan faction’s, it could hold out and remain unshaken. The Tan faction had been out of power for three years yet still held considerable military power; recently it threw in its lot with the Kuomintang, hoping to regain political power with Sun Yat-sen’s aid, and fought the Zhao faction with extraordinary ferocity. In addition, the Political Science Clique attached itself to the Zhao faction to seek official salaries and perks.

(3) The Government
In January of this year, a new government was formed under the provincial constitution, divided into seven departments: Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Industry, Education, Justice, and Military Affairs. The heads of the seven departments were all under the President of the Provincial Affairs Council, effectively forming a cabinet of responsibility; the Governor was merely a figurehead president. Governor: Zhao Hengti; President of the Provincial Affairs Council: Li Jiannong; Interior Department Head: Wu Jinghong; Foreign Affairs Department Head: Yang Xuancheng; Finance Department Head: Yuan Huaxuan; Industry Department Head: Tang Chengxu; Education Department Head: Li Jiannong; Justice Department Head: Xu Zhongheng; Military Affairs Department Head: Li Shiwen. Such was the structure of the government.

(4) The Legislature
The government was elected by the provincial assembly, so the assembly wielded considerable power. The provenance of assembly members was entirely through moneyed transactions. Their categories: some were bureaucrats, some were overgrown local gentry, and some were politicians. Party affiliations: one-third belonged to the Zhao faction, one-third to the Tan faction, and the remainder to the Lin faction. This latest Hunan Provincial Assembly fully displayed greed, imperiousness, and stupidity, and the public hated them to the marrow.

(5) The Military
The existing military forces comprised one division, plus five brigades. Their organization and distribution were roughly as follows:
First Division Commander: Song Hegeng; 1st Brigade Commander: He Yaozu; Regimental Commanders: Zheng Honghai, Xie Yutao (stationed in Changde and Yiyang). 2nd Brigade Commander: Tang Shengzhi; Regimental Commanders: Liu Xing, Li Pinhe (stationed in Changde). Cavalry Regiment Commander: He Jian (stationed in Taoyuan). Artillery Regiment Commander: Huang Yaozu (stationed in Changde). Also, a regiment under Wang Lei, a part of the First Division, was stationed in Chenzhou.
Second Division Commander: Lu Diping; 3rd Brigade Commander: Liu Xing; Regimental Commanders: Ye Qi, Yuan Zhi (stationed in Nanxian and Xiangtan). 4th Brigade Commander: Tang Rongyang; Regimental Commanders: Tang Shengming, Tang Zhenduo (stationed in Lixian and Shimen). Cavalry Regiment Commander: Tang Xibian (stationed in Xiangtan). Artillery Regiment Commander: Dai Yue (stationed in Changsha).
1st Mixed Brigade Commander: Ye Kaixin; Regimental Commanders: Jiang Chu’ou, Liu Chongwei, Zou Pengzhen, Zhu Yaohua (stationed in Changsha, Liling, Xiangyin area). Artillery Battalion Commander: Yin Fuling (stationed in Changsha).
Hengyang Garrison Commander and concurrently Mixed Brigade Commander: Xie Guoguang; Regimental Commanders: Tan Daoyuan, Cheng Guangyao, Liu Xuegan (stationed in Hengyang, Guiyang, Yongzhou).
Baoqing Garrison Commander and concurrently Mixed Brigade Commander: Wu Jianxue; Regimental Commanders: Wu Jiaquan, Zhang Xiangdi (stationed in Baoqing and Wugang).
Yuanling Garrison Commander and concurrently Commander of the 9th and 10th Brigades: Cai Juyou.
9th Brigade Commander: Liu Xuyi; Regimental Commanders: He Longqian, Tan Runsheng (stationed in Qianyang and Hongjiang in western Hunan).
10th Brigade Commander: Tian Zhenfan; Regimental Commanders: Peng Shouheng, Yang Yufen (stationed in Chenzhou and Qianyang in western Hunan).
Additionally, there were the forces under Chen Quzhen stationed in western Hunan, with more than ten garrison battalions in Baojing, Qianxian, Zhenjie, Suining, and elsewhere; one Hubei army regiment under Xia Douyin stationed in Liuyang; and one military police battalion under Wang Deqing stationed in Yongzhou.
In total, the number of Hunan troops was about 40,000. Among them, the He Yaozu, Tang Shengzhi, and Ye Kaixin factions belonged to Zhao Hengti’s side; Ye Kaixin’s mixed brigade numbered close to a division and was known as the backbone of the Zhao faction. The Hubei army’s Xia Douyin regiment remained neutral. The rest all belonged to Tan Yankai’s faction.
Because Hunan was a poor province and had no arsenal, it could not afford to keep many troops. With relatively few troops, even if military pay was insufficient, it could still be scraped together for a time without causing major disruptions—somewhat different from provinces like Sichuan and Yunnan, which kept too many troops and sometimes had to seek sustenance elsewhere. Thus, as long as no outsiders invaded Hunan, Hunan itself need not invade others. The so-called “Monroe-Doctrine-style” provincial self-governance, in its internal economic aspect, was built upon this factual foundation, enabling it to survive for two or three years—and thus it has persisted up to the present.

(6) Finances
Hunan’s annual revenue was fourteen million yuan in total (including both national and local revenues), with the national taxes that should have been remitted to the central government retained for provincial use—another economic driver of provincial self-governance. According to the provincial constitution, military spending was to account for one-third, education for one-third, and administration for one-third. This was the new budget, yet to be implemented and also utterly impossible to implement. The financial system was in extreme disarray: the government’s direct income consisted only of a bit of tax and levy collections within the provincial capital, plus the revenues of a couple of agencies such as the Salt Revenue Bureau and the Mint, just enough to keep things going day by day. In the outer counties, from land taxes to all regular and miscellaneous taxes and levies, most were intercepted and spent on the spot by military men. Hence, finances could not be put in order. Military, administrative, and educational expenses—with heavy arrears accumulated from before—could not be settled. With old debts remaining unpaid, there was even less prospect for straightening things out. The Zhao government sought to borrow foreign loans, yet Tan Yankai’s faction obstructed it in many ways, and several attempts came to nothing. Hunan had been without major incident for four years; during these four years, the province’s entire financial resources supported a not overly large army, supplemented by the opium tax privately collected by the military, thus barely managing a quiet, untroubled existence. Now, after a relatively long peace, military pay arrears have gradually mounted, and extortionate practices have been exhausted. Borrowing has fallen through, yet not a single soldier can be disbanded. The financial foundation of the Zhao government is now very weak; were the Tan faction to seize the chance and strike, Zhao would either have to throw in his lot with Wu Peifu, or would without doubt topple.

(B) Economy

(1) Industry
The whole of Hunan remained in the handicraft era. Apart from the provincial government’s No. 1 Cotton Mill, the government-run Shuikoushan lead mine, and the commercially operated Xikuangshan (Xinhua) antimony mine, there were no other industries of significant scale to speak of. There were a fair number of small-scale commercial mines, and quite a few small refineries for lead and antimony had been set up, but with very little capital. After the European war, the prices of lead and antimony ore were low, so business was quite depressed. The No. 1 Cotton Mill had government capital (two million yuan) and was leased out to merchants to run; its operating working capital was less than 200,000 yuan, yet business conditions were fairly good, with stock at 115 yuan per 100-yuan par value. The Hunan and Guanghua electric light companies operated in the provincial capital, competing fiercely, but both were in poor business shape (Hunan was somewhat better than Guanghua), with their stocks falling to 60 or 40 yuan. The government-run mint, with the aim of coining lightweight 20-cash copper coins and pocketing the surplus profit, produced 2.1 million strings of coins per month, yielding a profit of 150,000 to 160,000 yuan. The market exchange rate was 2,100 copper coins to one silver dollar, to the great detriment of the people. Apart from a small foreign-run refinery at Shuikoushan, there were no foreign-operated enterprises in Hunan.

(2) Commerce
Commerce overall was small-scale, petty-bourgeois in nature, with Changsha, Xiangtan, and Changde as the three major ports. Among foreign merchants, British businesses were the largest, followed by Japanese, then American and German. All four countries maintained consulates in Changsha.

(3) Agriculture
Hunan had more mountains than plains; aside from some relatively large-scale farming along the shores of Dongting Lake, the remainder consisted of small-scale property-holding owner-farmers and tenant farmers. The life of tenant farmers was even harder than that of hired laborers, because hired laborers generally had few family burdens and lived simply, whereas tenant farmers necessarily had large families. They paid rent to the landowner, usually with the owner and tenant each taking half the harvest; in severe cases, the owner took seven-tenths and the tenant three; in the most extreme cases, eight-tenths to the owner and two to the tenant. Thus, if tenant farmers had to rely solely on the fields’ harvest, they would never have enough to live on; they depended entirely on sideline pursuits such as raising pigs and growing miscellaneous crops to make up the deficit. In the preceding years, Hunan had suffered repeatedly from the scourge of war and severe crop failures. In the last two or three years, production had somewhat recovered. Rice output across the province, except for some yearly surplus exported from the area downstream along the lake, was only just enough to meet local needs. So the old saying “When Hunan has a bumper harvest, the whole realm has enough” no longer holds true. The barrier at Yuezhou was opened every year in early winter and closed in early spring; the government profited from a rice tax of one dollar per shi, used as a financial supplement.

(C) General Culture and Education

(1) General Culture
The thinking of the small peasantry had barely changed; their political demands did not go beyond good, honest officials and a fine emperor. Thirty or forty percent of women still had bound feet, though even in remote areas men no longer wore the queue. In education, the new school system had by and large been adopted, but those running the schools were mostly the same as before, and there had been no fundamental change. The best representatives were the members of the Provincial Assembly: they employed the new political institutions of the bourgeoisie, yet their speech and actions fully displayed all the old feudal-patriarchal ways, without the slightest alteration. Catholic and Protestant churches dotted the entire province; even remote, small towns were not spared. American missionary work was particularly aggressive, with the YMCA as its backbone, branching into educational and charitable endeavors. Because Americans had no commercial influence in Hunan, they concentrated on religious, educational, and charitable undertakings such as hospitals and relief—to which the returned students from America echoed, creating a thick pro-American atmosphere. There were nine daily newspapers in the provincial capital; only the Dagong bao had a circulation of two thousand three or four hundred copies. The rest ranged from a hundred to five hundred copies, and their content was for the most part a disgrace.

(2) Education
By “education” is meant the schools. Those running the schools in Hunan fell into the greatest number of cliques, briefly recorded below:
The Da Nong Clique—a blend of graduates from the former Higher Education Academy, the Qiushi Academy, and the Qiuzhong Academy; because many had returned from studying in the West, it was also called the Western-Studies Clique. Its leader was Education Department Head Li Jiannong; the thinking of its followers was largely stubbornly conservative. It used the Da Nong School as its base and had a widespread presence in educational circles.
The Youji Clique—graduates of the Higher Normal Academy. Their thinking was stale and old-fashioned. They wielded considerable influence in education circles.
The Gao-Shi Clique—graduates of the Provincial Higher Normal School. Their thinking was relatively new and fresh.
The Bei-Gao Clique—graduates of the Beijing Higher Normal School. Their thinking was the freshest among all the cliques. The Youth Education Society was its collective body.
The Gao-Gong Clique—graduates of the former Higher Technical School and the current Technical College. Entrenched at the Technical School, they had influence in both the assembly and the government. They were the most obstinate and ill-behaved of all.
The Cheng-Nan Clique—graduates of the former Chengnan Academy’s Central Normal School. Their thinking was as stale as that of the Youji Clique. They dominated the Educational Association.
The Ping-Da Clique—Research Clique and Creation Society figures such as Yi Jiayue, Luo Dunwei, and Zhang Ziping, who founded the Pingmin University, effectively forming a small faction. Their thinking was reckoned the most outstanding among the factions.
The Yi-Shi Clique—graduates of the First Normal School. Their influence lay in elementary education. Their thinking was half obstinate and half fresh.
The Dong-Yang Clique—returned students from Japan. They took the Jiazhong Industrial School as their base. They were as ill-behaved and obstinate as the Gao-Gong Clique.
The Junzi (Gentleman) Clique—represented by figures such as Chen Peilin, Zhu Jianfan, Hu Zijing, and Peng Guojun. They were products of the earliest short-term teacher-training courses in Japan and used the Chuyi, Mingde, Xiuye, and Zhounan schools as their base. Their thinking was obstinate, yet they possessed a certain upright integrity, hence they were known as the “Gentleman” Clique.
Among the various cliques, the Youji were the old guard; the Da Nong figures were old in years but newly organized. These two cliques could at present be called the two hegemons in educational circles. The Gao-Shi and Youji cliques were originally like brothers, yet over the allocation of territory they turned fiercely against one another. The Gao-Gong and Dong-Yang cliques had lately lost some ground, but their latent strength remained formidable. The Cheng-Nan clique were petty pilferers and sniveling opportunists, living off Zhao Hengti. The Junzi clique, from the last years of the Qing dynasty right up to the eighth year of the Republic, had been known as the monopolist in education circles, at the height of their renown; since the ninth year of the Republic, as various cliques rose up, their influence had somewhat waned. The Bei-Gao, Ping-Da, and Yi-Shi cliques were regarded as the new cliques, and there was considerable momentum for them to form a united front to resist the old cliques.
Private schools in Hunan outnumbered public schools, and the various cliques mostly used the private schools as their motherland and the public schools as colonies. Education funding, including funds for overseas study, amounted to nearly two million; private schools were entitled to receive subsidies—some getting as much as over ten thousand, others as little as a few thousand or hundred—which was the reason for the flourishing of private schools.

(D) The Labor Movement

The labor movement in Hunan arose simultaneously with those in other parts of the country. The activities of the workers drew considerable public attention. What follows are tabulations of the various labor unions and strikes.

(1) New-Style Organized Labor Unions
[The original text indicates a list here but does not provide names or details.]
In total, the thirteen labor unions listed above had about thirty thousand members.

(2) Old-Style Organized Labor Unions
[The original text indicates a list here but does not provide details.]
Of the five labor unions above, apart from the Workers’ Comrades Association, which indeed had over four hundred members, and the Mechanics’ Union, which had two or three hundred members, the Labor Union, the General Industrial Union, and the China Labor Union were completely empty shells with no workers at all. The Old Labor Union, before it was closed down, had two or three thousand members, but because it was an old-style organization cobbled together from various trades, it disbanded entirely as soon as it was shut down.

(3) Strike Statistics
There were ten strikes in total. Nine were victories or partial victories; one was a defeat. The total number of strikers was 22,150. The aims of the strikes: the majority were for higher wages, a minority were for freedom. The strike period was all between August and December of last year.