followed us all the way home cheering us like a winning football team.’ On the poverty and hard life of the Chinese, Clayton writes, ‘I would see sometimes twenty or thirty coolies pulling a big heavy cart that in America would be pulled by a truck or horses. These people seemed to be nothing but human horses and all they would get at the end of the day was just enough to get a couple of bowls of rice and a place to sleep. I don’t know how they did it.’ The Guomindang despite its attempts to unite the country failed because of its narrow social base and limited political vision. A major plank in Sun Yat-sen’s programme – regulating capital and equalising land – was never carried out because the party ignored the peasantry and the rising social inequalities.
It sought to impose military order rather then address the problems faced by the people. P ATHS TO M ODERNISATION ACTIVITY How does a sense of discrimination unite people? T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY