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3) Politics, like other business investments, is risky but potentially profitable. It is very much the case in financing a government while trying to satisfy vested interests.
Market for Political Investments
This raises the question of under what circumstances financing a regional government is possible? A convenient starting point is to look into the mentality of the time. In a despatch to the Colonial Office, C. Clementi, the Governor of Hong Kong and a famous sinologist who graduated from Oxford, diagnosed a decade of unsuccessful British policy toward China by saying:
A China united under a central Government is not applicable to the facts... China is a civilization, not a state
His contemporary also commented that
If Italy was but a geographical expression, China until very recent times has been but a social expression. China has been a society, not a state; and a Chinese, a familial not a political animal.
In a polity as large as China, regional distinctions are enormous, but these contemporaries believed that the split was between Canton and Beijing. In the book, “Oriental Trade Methods” one finds the following passage:
I observed that the Cantonese have been called the Irish of China. They are traditionally and by temperament against the government, against the constituted authority of Peking [Beijing]...
The Beijing government was first under Yuan Shikai and his followers who were recruited from his Beiyang Military Academy. After Yuan's death, his followers divided into several camps such as Anhui and Zhili. They were named the "Beiyang militarists". The Canton government, nominally, was under Sun Yat-sen. Without an army of its own, until 1924 when the Huangpu Military Academy was established with Soviet aid, Sun and his Canton government had to rely on the "guest armies" from neighboring provinces - the Yunnan and the Guangxi troops, all of whom proved to be ungovernable.
197
3) Politics, like other business investments, is risky but potentially profitable. It is very much the case in financing a government while trying to satisfy vested interests.
Market for Political Investments
This raises the question of under what circumstances financing a regional government is possible? A convenient starting point is to look into the mentality of the time. In a despatch to the Colonial Office, C. Clementi, the Governor of Hong Kong and a famous sinologist who graduated from Oxford, diagnosed a decade of unsuccessful British policy toward China by saying:
A China united under a central Government is not applicable to the facts... China is a civilization, not a state
His contemporary also commented that
If Italy was but a geographical expression, China until very recent times has been but a social expression. China has been a society, not a state; and a Chinese, a familial not a political animal.
In a polity as large as China, regional distinctions are enormous, but these contemporartes believed that the split was between Canton and Beijing. In the book, “Oriental Trade Methods" one finds the following passage:
I observed that the Cantonese have been called the Irish of China They are traditionally and by temperament against the government. against the constituted authority of Peking [Beijing]...
The Beijing government was first under Yuan Shikai and his followers who were recruited from his Beiyang Military Academy. After Yuan's death his followers divided into several camps such as Anhui and Zhili. They were named the "Beiyang militarists". The Canton government, nominally, was under Sun Yat-sen. Without an army of its own, until 1924 when the Huangpu Military Academy was established with Soviet aid, Sun and his Canton government had to rely on the "guest armies" from neighboring provinces - the Yunnan and the Guangxi troops, all of whom proved to be ungovernable. They
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