Staging a young China: The Chinese Youth Party and Republican mass politics, 1918–1949

My dissertation examines mass party politics in Republican China. The idea of a mass party, developed as a rejection of elite politics, became mainstream in the 1920s and redefined ties between the state, political organizations, and citizens. My research highlights this critical transformation through the prism of the Chinese Youth Party. I argue that this understudied party bridged elitist reformism of the late Qing era and the mass political culture of the early 1920s, thereby playing a critical role in the transformation of politics in Republican China. The dissertation focuses on three phases of the Youth Party: its origins in Europe, growth in China, and ultimate defeat in the Chinese civil war. By examining the rise and fall of the Chinese Youth Party, this dissertation reveals a dynamic arena of mass party politics in Republican China, not solely dictated by struggles between the Nationalist and Communist parties. Both the Chinese Youth Party and the Communist Party originated out of European political and ideological confrontations after the Great War. This study, therefore, also contributes to the study of mass politics as a global development spurred by the rise of nationalism and socialism in the nineteenth century