Self-determination, for whom? A conceptual analysis of Chen Jiongming’s Federal Manifesto (1927)

In 1927 the former governor of Guangdong Chen Jiongming 陳炯明陈炯明 (1878-1933) completed his Modest Proposal for the Unification of China (中國統一芻議中国统一刍议Zhongguo tongyi chuyi). In this pamphlet, Chen exposed his project of a federalist structure for Republican China. Such an agenda was clearly in contrast with the Guomindang’s efforts to “save” China from the fragmentation of warlordism: after breaking with Sun Yat-sen and being defeated by his former comrades, Chen would flee to Hong Kong and eventually establish his own federalist movement, the Zhigongdang 致公黨致公党. As Thomas Curran pointed out “most historians pay little attention to Chen's Zhigongdang on the grounds that without an army or a territorial base Chen and his political allies were marginalized to the point of irrelevance”. And yet, if his party’s political irrelevance was undeniable, Chen’s (failed) federalist agenda provides an interesting intellectual response to the Chinese imperial crisis. In this paper, I will approach Chen’s Proposal through the methodological framework of Begriffsgeschichte, looking at its contribution to and connection with the circulation, translation, and adaptation of the “federalist” conceptual constellation into the Chinese political discourse. A special attention will be placed on how Chen’s conceptualized “self-determination” differently for the Han majority and for the so-called “ethnic minorities”, reflecting many of the tensions and contradictions of the post-imperial debate on “nation”, “democracy” and “territorial cohesion”.