Yan Xishan - Legacy

Legacy

After the civil war, Yan, like most Nationalist generals who did not switch sides, was demonized by Communist propaganda. It was not until after 1979, with new reforms in China, that Yan began to be viewed more positively (and thus, more realistically) as a pragmatic anti-Japanese hero. The contributions by Yan during his period in office are beginning to be recognized by the current Chinese government. One of his achievements, Yan's success in containing one of the epidemics in Shanxi, was cited recently by various Chinese governmental organizations as an example to follow to contain the bird flu and SARS epidemics in China, and was used to criticize the incompetence of Chinese governmental officials in handling such epidemics.

Yan was sincere about his attempts to modernize Shanxi, and achieved success in some regards. Throughout his rule Yan attempted to promote social reforms that later came to be taken for granted, but which were highly controversial in his time: the abolition of foot binding; work for women outside the home; universal primary education; and, the existence of peasant militias as a fundamental unit of the army. Yan was possibly the warlord most committed to his province in his era, but was constantly challenged by his own dilettantism and the talents of his own officials.

Although Yan constantly spoke of the desirability and need for reforms, until the 1930s he remained too conservative to implement anything resembling the kind of reforms needed to successfully modernize Shanxi. Many of his attempts at reform in the 1920s had been attempted generations before, during the Tongzhi Restoration. These Qing Dynasty reformers had found their reforms inadequate solutions to the problems of their time, and under the Model Governor these reforms proved equally unsatisfactory. During the 1930s Yan became increasingly open to radical social and economic policies, including wealth redistribution via graduated taxation, state-led industrialization, opposition to the money economy, an orientation towards functional (vs. "moral") education, and the large-scale assimilation of Western technology. Despite his adoption of Soviet-style economic policies and increasingly radical attempts at social reform, Yan was regarded as a "conservative" throughout his career, suggesting that the term "conservative" must be used carefully within the context of modern Chinese history.

After Yan's time Shanxi became of site of Mao Zedong's "model brigade" of Dazhai: a utopian communist scheme in Xiyang County that was supposed to be the model for all other peasants in China to emulate. If the people of Dazhai were especially suited for such an experiment, it is possible that decades of Yan's socialist indoctrination may have prepared the people of Shanxi for Communist rule. After the death of Mao, the experiment was discontinued, and most peasants reverted to private farming.