Introduction
There is some historical debate among scholars of 20th century as to the political orientation of the Kuomintang. The simplest way to explain the party is that it was a broad tent. In it you could find anyone from the far-left to the far-right, those between, those mixing different elements, and those beyond it. For example, the father of the party - Sun Yat-sen - could not be understood as conforming to a single ideology in the western sense, hence the coining of "Tridemism" to refer to his Three Principles of the People (三民主義) system.
Left-wing critics of the Kuomintang - often PRC/CCP apologists - will criticise the Kuomintang for its "fascist" past. This is usually politically motivated but does raise the question of how "fascist" the Kuomintang was. I will not seek to quantify the fascist-ness of the party but rather simply document fascist tendencies within it.
I will use a mixture of Pinyin and other romanisations here depending on where I source the information, but I will remain consistent. For example, "Chiang Kai-shek" will always be Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang the Kuomintang, but I will use Pinyin names for other people. This blog is politically neutral and exists to document my own studies into topics on China I find interesting. I am not Chinese and take no position on the PRC/ROC (Taiwan) split.
Sun Yat-sen
The Kuomintang established a one-party dictatorship in the territories that they controlled from 1924 to 1987. The official policy was called "The Party-State" (Dǎngguó, 党国) and initially asserted the predominance of the Kuomintang over other parties (Sun, 1924). This was derived from the Leninist influence on Sun, rather than fascism which, at this point, was only emerging in Europe. This was accompanied by Sun's belief in "political tutelage" - that the Chinese population were not ready for western-style democracy and required an intermediary stage of "tutelage" in which the party-state would cultivate the conditions that would make China ready for democracy (Palmer, 1948, p. 279). Sun had already reorganised the Kuomintang along the lines of the Bolsheviks under the influence of Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin.
I do not think it is fair to evaluate Sun as a fascist however. He had an ideological commitment to democracy and his practical opposition came out of a recognition of the state that China was in. The Kuomintang of his time were never able to establish central control over the whole country which had been ravaged over the past century. His belief in a temporary authoritarianism to reorganise the country is not comparable to that of fascists such as Mussolini or Hitler who had a principled opposition to democracy. Such people, however, did exist in the Kuomintang.
Chiang Kai-shek
Dictatorship formally emerged under Sun Yat-sen but it was Chiang who cemented it. Unlike Sun, Chiang had no personal commitment to democracy. The age in which Chiang grew up in was a period of critical evaluation in China, in which the old order was being analysed from every angle. Chiang did not align himself with any single faction at this time but per Loh, his position was conservative and nationalist. He was hostile to the "total westernisation" agenda of Hu Shih but also communism, which he viewed as non-Chinese. Chiang was philosophically aligned with the Hundred-Day reformers, modernising but also authoritarian and conservative (Loh, 1966, p. 443).
In the 1930s, the Blue Shirts Society, formally the "Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People" (Lixingshe, 力行社) emerged under Chiang's leadership. This was a group of army officers and civilian bureaucrats committed to a radical ultranationalism and militant anti-communism. They were fundamentally hostile to western-style democracy and openly inspired by fascism (Eastman, 1972, p. 6). They called for a system of "national socialism", perhaps directly inspired by Germany's, in which "all productive activity would come under the purview of the government's planning apparatus, which would prepare production goals and detailed plans of development" (ibid., p. 12). They demanded the "nationalization of land and the organization of production by means of state-managed agricultural collectives" - a land reform project designed to weaken the agrarian socialist impulses of the peasantry but without empowering small shareholders. Agriculture was a major focus of many members, most notable among them being Sun Po-qian, whose blood-and-soil style ideas emphasising the peasantry and rural village were, in his view, "the crux of the min-sheng [people's welfare] revolution" (ibid., p. 15).
The Blue Shirts are a fascinating case study in non-European fascism. But some dispute their fascism. In a monograph about the Blue Shirts, Maria Hsia Chang (1985) argues that the movement was ideologically torn between those hostile to democracy and those in favour of it (p. 19). I find her assessment here to be erroneous. especially where she claims that the pro-democracy faction was "more dominant". She cites Liu Chien-chun as an example of this trend. Chiang was vocally critical of democracy and countless articles in the She-hui hsin-wen criticised democracy, one calling it an "inherited poison" and Liu himself issuing criticisms of the Bolshevik-organised Kuomintang as being too democratic at the time (Eastman, 1972, p. 5). Liu's personal belief in blood sacrifice for China is another example of his fascist-like thinking (p. 2).
Ultimately Chiang would never democratise China. There was no concrete effort made at any stage in his career to create a democratic China. He was a firm believer in a strong central government and its paternal approach to government. But does this make him and the Blue Shirts fascist? Not necessarily.
Argument for Blue Shirt Fascism
The case for the Blue Shirts being fascist would be as follows. They had a concept of the "leader principle", in which they were undyingly obedient to Chiang (Eastman, 1972, p. 5), they were ideologically hostile to liberal democracy, constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, etc. (as stated; Wakeman, 1997, p. 428-429), instead they favoured a totalitarian state in which, according to Ju Ch'un-pu, "all social phenomena, all activity, can in theory be the subject of intervention by cultural control", aiming to to develop "cultural patterns of a new collective life" (Eastman, 1972, p. 10). Following from their totalitarianism, they were critical of capitalism and favoured a statist economy, and they believed in a revolutionary nationalism that would reinvigorate the Chinese population, describing themselves as a "national revival movement" (Wakeman, 1997, p. 412).
Most convincingly, Chiang gave a speech stating his desire for the "revival of [China's] national spirit" through a programme inspired by Japanese and Italian fascism (Wakeman, 1997, p. 395). This "national revivalism", in my view, should be understood similarly to the "new man" idea of Italian fascism (also prevalent in Bolshevism).
Wang Jingwei
Before concluding, I wish to also mention Wang Jingwei and the Reorganisation Group. Wang was a leading thinker of the Left Kuomintang, along with Cheng Gongbo. They would go on to collaborate with the Japanese, establishing the "Wang Jingwei Regime". This puppet government promoted Pan-Asianism and unity with Japan in the struggle against the west. Like with the Blue Shirts, this is a valid debate as to whether Wang Jingwei was a fascist or not. He never held absolute power himself - as a puppet of the Japanese - but the regime was still totalitarian and ultranationalist at its core, desiring much of what Chiang and the Blue Shirts did.
Wang grew up as a radical leftist, inspired by French anarchism and western liberalism (as so many in the Tongmenghui were) before adopting a more sophisticated left-wing thought in the 1920s. He advocated for state socialism and anti-imperialism, favouring the United Front with the Communists and interpreting the Three Principles of the People through a Marxist-Leninist lens. While he later became an anti-communist, he never dropped his left-wing philosophy and remained committed to anti-imperialism and socialist economic policy. I think it is fair to characterise him as "fascist". He was national socialist who rejected Marxism and established a revolutionary and totalitarian regime.
Conclusion
The charge that the Kuomintang was fascist is partially correct. It was led by a fascist and its core leadership, once retreating to Taiwan, was fascist too. But they never established a fascist regime due to the material circumstances of China.
Bibliography
Chang, M. H. (1985). The Chinese Blue Shirt Society.
Eastman, L. E. (1972). Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts.
The China Quarterly, (49), 1–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/652110
Palmer, N. D. (1948). Makers of Modern China: IV. Sun Yat-sen: Canonized Symbol. Current History, 15(87), 279–284. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45307419
Pichon P. Y. Loh. (1966). The Politics of Chiang Kai-shek: A Reappraisal. The Journal of Asian Studies, 25(3), 431–451. https://doi.org/10.2307/2052000
Sun, Y. S. (1924). 組織國民政府案之說明
Wakeman, F. (1997). A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism. The China Quarterly, (150), 395–432. http://www.jstor.org/stable/655343