Problems of the National Government and a Critique of Its Achievements during the Golden Decade

The ten years between the accomplishment of the Northern Expedition in June 1928 and the breakout of the second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 was called the “Golden Decade”in modern Chinese history. It was also the first time for the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang) actually controlled national political power and implemented its ideals to build up a modern nation.During this period, the National Government faced various difficulties politically or diplomatically, economically or financially, militarily or national defensewise. However, the government eventually overcame all these difficulties one by one with every possible efforts and gradually accomplished its preliminary ideals of building up a modern nation, thus stored sizable national strength for the forthcoming eight-year Sino-Japanese War. This performance was unprecedented in the history of China.Based on some materials and studies published in the past few years, this article is to review this period of history and evaluate the difficulties the National Government encountered and the success it might have achieved at that time. The discussion is limited to only military and administrative aspects in order to have a deeper insight because of limited space and since historians had studied achievements of China in the fields of economy, finance, transportation and society brilliantly during this decade.