Building a Center in the Periphery: Multiple Sovereignty in China, 1917–1925

Yuan Xi, University of Virginia

Existing scholarship on state-building analyzes struggles over the center, the incorporation of peripheries, and peripheral influence on central authority, but it typically assumes a single center and misses competitive dynamics among multiple would-be centers. This paper asks why elites go to peripheries to make an alternative center and why some endeavors succeeded while others failed. Revisiting Sun Yat-sen’s three attempts to build an alternative central government in Guangzhou in 1917-1925, I advance a theory of polycentric state-building in which the de jure center confronts rival proto-states that seek to become de facto centers. By analyzing newspaper articles alongside telegrams, letters, and gazettes, I argue that when a state maintains relatively strong control over the center but weak control over the periphery, challengers who both aspire to and are capable of seizing national power are likely to move to the periphery and establish an alternative center there. In this process, they often depend on the cooperation of local particularists. Yet once a new center has been established, it confronts challenges similar to those faced by the old regime, namely, rivalry from competing actors within the center and resistance from proponents of local autonomy. Whether the new regime can manage these challenges is crucial to its survival or failure. This study offers a new perspective for analyzing the entangled relationship among rebellion, revolution, and state-making.

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 Presented in Session 8. Surveillance, Health, and Settler Administration