The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study

The other four agencies directly dependent on the Council of State are all of important character, but likely to be impaired by a period of crisis.The Academia Sinica (Kuo-li Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan) serves scientific and educational work through its own research bureaus, through systems of extended aid, and through a program of publications; despite war, it has continued, making heroic efforts to preserve the national cultural vitality and continuity.The three remaining agencies are of less importance, although the Planning Committee for the Western Capital (Hsi-ching Ch'ou-pei Wei-yüan-hui) found its work considerably extended when, on October 1, 1940, Chungking was formally denominated an auxiliary capital of the Chinese Republic, and a long-standing anomaly—that of the city's uncertain status—was removed.

The Council of State could be regarded, therefore, as a mere excrescence upon the design of government were it not that ceremonial and formal functions, indispensable to any government but particularly salient in China, can be delegated to it, and the actual policy-making agencies thereby stripped down to maximal utility and efficacy.

The Executive Yüan

The Executive Yüan is the political organ which includes the ministries, and is therefore roughly analogous to a cabinet, just as the Council of State is in loose parallel to a Privy Council. Together with the Supreme National Defense Council and the Military Affairs Commission, it exercises actual control over the National Government in war time. Its growth involves executive giantism, and atrophy for the remaining YüanThe President (Yüan-chang) of the Executive Yüan (Hsing-chêng Yüan) is the highest executive officer of the government.This post has not always been held by Chiang K'ai-shek.At various times Wang Ch'ing-wei (now in Nanking) and H. H. K'ung (now Minister of Finance and Vice-President [Fu-yüan-chang] of the Yüan) have held this office.

The Executive Yüan may be compared to a parliamentary cabinet in respect to its relations to the President of the National Government, but it possesses no authority whatever over the Supreme National Defense Council, nor over the Kuomintang C. E. C. and the Kuomintang Congress. It cannot ask for its own dissolution, nor demand the dissolution of the higher policy-making agency whose will it executes.[15] It resembles a cabinet, therefore, in its service as a consultative and unifying agency for the entire executive, but differs in its lack of controlling interdependence with a broad parliament. Again, the Yüan is unique among national executive agencies in the modern world with respect to its division of the task of policy-making and policy-supervising. Most cabinets consist of meetings of the heads of executive ministries or departments, with the chief executive officer presiding, but have no elaborate secretarial or administrative machinery interposed between the cabinet and its direct subordinates (departments or ministries). The Executive Yüan is peculiar in possessing two elaborate staff agencies which handle as much routine work as possible, act as a clearing house for policy and general administration, and pre-digest a maximum of problems. The outline on p. 58 illustrates the difference.

All matters short of the most critical moment are referred to one or the other of the two staff organs (Mi-shu Ch'u or Secretariat, under a Secretary-General; and Chêng-wu Ch'u, or Office of Political Affairs,[16] under a Director of Political Affairs), which are nominally separate but actually almost fused, with the Director serving as a sort of assistant Secretary-General. All official business (other than crucial matters raised by the members of the Meeting) comes to these agencies, where it is studied, assorted, and usually settled provisionally, pending only formal ratification by the Meeting of the Executive Yüan

The Executive Yüan Meeting occurs once weekly, most commonly on Tuesday.[17] Each Meeting is presented with a formidable agenda, prepared by the Secretary-General, and divided into three categories: reports, matters for discussion, and appointments. The membership of the Meeting consists of the Yüan President and Vice-President, the Ministers heading the executive Ministries, and the Chairmen of Commissions having the rank of Ministry.[18] The work of the Meeting is carried on in a business-like fashion. The Generalissimo, as incumbent Yüan President, takes great interest in the work of the Yüan, and makes faithfulness and punctuality in attendance a matter of high importance.Because of the Japanese air raids over the capital, the exact place and hour of the weekly meeting are not announced, nor are the proceedings public.

In giving effect to the decisions reached by the Yüan Meeting, the Yüan itself issues orders in its own name for matters which are of general interest, or which cannot be handled by any single Ministry or Commission. If the problem is within the province of a particular agency, the Yüan—through its Secretariat—addresses the appropriate form of intragovernmental communication, and the decision is then set forth as the order or act of the agency involved. The following subjects are within the jurisdiction of the Executive Yüan:

(1) laws or legal problems submitted for promulgation by the Legislative Yüan;

(2) the budget, also passed pro forma by the Council of State and put into legal form by the Legislative Yüan;

(3) declarations of war and peace, on the motion of the Legislative Yüan;

(4) appointment and discharge of the higher ranks of officials;

(5) matters which cannot be settled by a single Ministry or Commission;

(6) other matters which the Yüan President sees fit to introduce for discussion or decision.

The Executive Yüan has far outstripped all other Yüan in war-time growth. Its central position, the urgency of most government business, and the need for speed have led to this. Executive exercise of the ordinance-making power has led to the gradual desuetude of the Legislative Yüan, which has found ample work in the preparation of the Draft Permanent Constitution and the attempt to systematize legislation in view of rapid territorial and administrative change. The Executive Yüan, by controlling personnel, usually short-circuits the functions of the Examination and Control Yüan; and the Judicial Yüan has never had practical political parity. Hence, the five-power system must be regarded as a system with strong executive, weaker legislative, examinative, and censoral, and dependent judicial divisions. Above the five powers, the Supreme National Defense Council exercises its august authority; within them, the Executive stands forth; and to them, in the course of the war, a new agency, almost comparable to a sixth yüan, has sprung forth with an elaborate bureaucracy of its own: the Military Affairs Commission.

The Military Affairs Commission

Some sense of the perpetual urgencies underlying Chinese government in the past decade may be obtained by consideration of the Military Affairs Commission.[19] A similar agency was one of the political wheels on which the Nationalist-Communist machine rolled victoriously North in the Great Revolution of 1925-27. After the organization of a relatively stable government at Nanking, the separate military commission was due for absorption into the coordinate pattern of government; instead, it has lingered under one form or another for almost twenty years, growing great in recurrent crises, while the Ministry of War (which was to have absorbed it) has become its adjunct. War led to sudden distension of the Commission, and the creation of an agency comparable to a sixth yüan, if not to a duplicate, shogunal government in the Japanese sense. The Commission had its own head, its own Pu (Ministries or Departments), its own staff and field services. Duplicating the regular government on the one side, and the party administration on the other, it flowered into bureaucracy so lavishly that a fourth agency—co-ordinator for the first three—began to be needed.

Simplicity of government structure has not been a part of the Chinese tradition; the quasi-state of the Empire had been as elaborate as its more potent European counterparts; and the foliation of government at war cannot be taken as prima facie proof of inefficiency. Personnel is provided by giving each officer two, five, even ten jobs; the work is done—delegation and counter-delegation frequently cancel out—and the creation of new agencies does not inescapably involve confusion.

The Military Affairs Commission consists of a Chairman—the Generalissimo (Tsung-ssŭ-ling), who is Chiang K'ai-shek—and seven to nine other members, all appointed by the Council of State upon designation by the Supreme National Defense Council.[20] The key officers of the armed forces are ex officio members, and the Commission is charged with the military side of the prosecution of the war. Its power has been liberally interpreted. New agencies have been attached to it as they arose; now it deals with social work, relief, education, agitation, propaganda, espionage, government-sponsored "social revolution," and many economic matters in addition to its narrowly military affairs.

The work of the Commission falls into two parts.On the one hand, it is the supreme directing agency for all the armies; on the other, the managing agency for a variegated war effort away from the combat lines.The Commission's work in theory covers all armies, but in practice confines its supervisory powers to the forces in Free China and—less clearly—to the major guerrilla units in the occupied areas.

The Commission's governmental structure coordinates military and political functions. The Chief of the General Staff serves as assistant to the Chairman of the Commission. The Main Office serves to smooth interdepartmental affairs and to act as a central clearing point for orders and other transmissions. Beneath the Commission and the main office, there are twelve divisions with the rank of PuThe Department of Military Operations (Chün-ling-pu) serves as a military planning and strategic agency.The Department of Military Training (Chün-hsün-pu) supervises training facilities, military schools, and in-service training.[21] The Directorate-General of Courts-Martial (Chün-fa Chih-hsing Tsung-chien-pu) and Pensions Commission (Fu-hsüeh Wei-yüan-hui) are explained by their titles; the pension program is probably behind that of every Western power, and the personal grants made by the Generalissimo under his own extra-governmental arrangements are more effective than governmental pensions.The Military Advisory Council (Chün-shih Ts'an-i-yüan) acts as a research and consultative body, in no sense cameral.An Administration of Personnel (Ch'uan-hsü T'ing) applies some principles of the merit system.A Service Department (Hou-fang Ch'in-wu-pu) is in charge of transportation, supplies, and sanitation.The National Aviation Commission (Hang-k'ung Wei-yüan-hui) has won world-wide fame for its spectacular work in procuring a Chinese air arm, and in keeping Chinese air power alive against tremendous odds of finance, transportation, equipment, and personnel; Mme.Chiang's association with and interest in its success has been of material aid.Finally, on the strictly military side, there is the Office of the Naval Commander-in-Chief (Hai-chün Tsung-ssŭ-ling-pu), formerly the Naval Ministry, controlling the up-river remnants of the navy.The War Ministry (Chün-chêng-pu) occupies an anomalous position in this scheme. Subordinate to the Executive Yüan, it is also subordinate to the Commission, so that in effect it is a Ministry twice over, and is even shown as two ministries on occasion.[22] General Ho Ying-chin, as Minister of War, is subordinate to the Generalissimo as Wei-yüan-chang (Chairman) of the Commission.

The two remaining agencies of the Commission are of considerable interest.A system of having political commissars in the army, a Soviet device, was adopted by the Kuomintang forces when first organized under Chiang K'ai-shek, and political training accounted for much of that success of the Northward drive (1926-27).After the Nationalist-Communist split, political training as such fell into considerable disuse, and was replaced by ethical training provided by the Officers' Moral Endeavor Corps.[23] With the renewed entente, and war of national union for defense, a Political Department (Chêng-chih-pu) was established.A graceful tribute to Communist skill in combining war and agitation was paid when Chou En-lai, the celebrated Red general, was designated Vice-Minister of this Department.One of the Generalissimo's most orthodox and able subordinates was made Minister.The Political Department extends its function in an enormous sweep across China, and renders aid in military education within the armies, in civilian organization, and in war propaganda.Active and omnipresent, it is an excellent instance of functioning national unity.

The Party and Government War Area Commission (Chan-ti Tang-chêng Wei-yüan-hui) is a coordinate agency for propaganda, relief, and social, economic and military counter-attack within the war area (the occupied zone), rather unusual in being a formal amalgamation of Kuomintang and government administration.Through this agency most of the guerrilla aid is extended, and the Nationalists seek to rival the Communists and independents in the number of Japanese they can destroy, or the amount of damage they can do. The more active branches of this Commission are a part of the Party structure, but the dual function of the Commission enables it to coordinate Party and Army work. The very role of the Commission is indicative of the fact that the Kuomintang is trying to meet rivalry by patriotic competition and not by suppression. Its integration with the military makes it a perfect example of the triune force which Nationalist China is bringing to bear on the enemy—army, government, and Party all seek to reach into the occupied zone, to articulate spontaneous mass resistance, to maintain the authority of the central government pending the révanche, and to uphold the existing political system, canalizing social change into evolutionary rather than class-war lines.[24]

The Judicial, Legislative, Examination and Control Yüan

The appearance of an actual three-power administration—army, government, Party—has led to the sharp relative decrease in importance of the four further Yüan. The Judicial Yüan (Ssŭ-fa Yüan) was even in peace time the least important of the five divisions of the government, failing to display—as an American might expect—a tendency toward effective judicial independence to counterweight the executive and legislative. The Legislative Yüan (Li-fa Yüan), while exceedingly active in the years between the Mukden and Loukouchiao incidents, has been reduced in importance by the coming of hostilities.Its work has been confined largely to drafting the Permanent Constitution, and continued codification of administrative law—particularly for coordination of central government and war area (occupied China) affairs.[25] The Examination Yüan (K'ao-shih Yüan) has attempted to continue in the field of civil service reform, and the Control Yüan (Chien-ch'a Yüan) has maintained war-time efforts.

The Legislative Yüan, under the Yüeh Fa of 1931, consists of a Yüan-chang, a Fu-yüan-chang, and forty-nine to ninety-nine members (Li-fa Wei-yüan), appointed by the Supreme National Defense Council for a two-year term upon nomination by the Yüan President. The term's shortness increases the dependence of members upon the President, and transforms the Yüan to a legislative study institute. Furthermore, the newly-developed People's Political Council has assumed the function of representation. The President of the Yüan retains sole and arbitrary power over the agenda, the final decision, and the allocation of personnel, although the incumbent, Dr. Sun K'ê, is one of China's leading moderates and an exponent of constitutional process, not likely to exercise arbitrary power.

Apart from its significant constitutional powers, which remain unimpaired, the Yüan finds much of its work performed at present through ordinances of the Supreme National Defense Council, administrative action of the Executive Yüan, or commands by the Military Affairs Commission.The jurisdiction retained includes:

(1) general legislation;

(2) the budget;

(3) general amnesty;

(4) declaration of war (never exercised);

(5) declaration of peace;

(6) "other important matters" (which, in practice, has referred to the more open and solemn aspects of treaty-making, and whatever topic may be assigned the Yüan by the highest Party agency). [26]

The Judicial Yüan serves as an administrative and budgetary agency for four agencies. The Ministry of Justice (Ssŭ-fa Hsing-chêng-pu) is, obviously, the prosecuting agency, attached to the executive in the United States, but made a part of the general judicial system in China.The Administrative Court (Hsing-chêng Fa-yüan) is an agency only potentially important; so is the Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Officers (Kung-wu-yüan Ch'êng-chieh Wei-yüan-hui). The Yüan President is ex officio chief magistrate of the Supreme Court (Tsui-kao Fa-yüan). Wang Shih-chieh says of this Yüan:

Because of the fact that the Judicial Yüan is itself not an organ of adjudication, and since all affairs concerning prosecution at law are handled by the Ministry of Justice, the actual work to be performed by the Judicial Yüan is very simple and light. In addition to framing the budget for the Yüan itself and approving the general estimates of the organs under it, the Judicial Yüan has only three further duties to perform: (1) to bring before the Legislative Yüan legislative measures connected with the Judicial Yüan and its sub-organs; (2) to petition the President of the National Government with respect to such cases as special pardon, commutation of sentence, and the restoration of civil rights; and (3) to unify the interpretation of laws and orders, and changes in judicial procedure.[27]

With peace, reconstruction and prosperity, the Judicial Yüan might acquire importance through its control of the administrative and technical aspects of the court system. Meanwhile, courts are more closely associated with their respective levels or areas of government than with one another in a unified judicial system.

The Examination Yüan, with a President and Vice-President, is composed of a central Yüan office, which supervises two organs: the Ministry of Personnel (Ch'uan-hsü Pu), operating a selective promotion system, and the Examinations Commission (K'ao-hsüan Wei-yüan-hui). In absolute numbers, few examinations have been held. In practice, standard recruitment technique continues to involve introduction, influence, or family connections. The familiarity of such devices in China at least gives them a high polish, and precludes utter inefficiency. Under the circumstances, the Examination Yüan finds scope for valuable, creative work in the preparation of administrative studies and analyses of very considerable importance.

The Control Yüan is of interest to Westerners, because of the novelty of its functions. Through the courtesy of the Yüan President, a full official memorandum on the structure and procedure was prepared, surveying the work of the Yüan during the course of the war. This is reproduced as Appendices I (E) and I (F) below.[28] Some of the unofficial observers, both Western and Chinese, felt that the Yüan possessed further enormous possibilities of activity, and that the need for controlment was very great indeed. In general, the Yüan resembles its legislative, judicial and examination coordinates, in that the war-time executive growth has relegated it to a secondary position.

Decrease in the importance of the yüan system during hostilities cannot be taken, by a too simple cause-and-effect argument, as proof of the unwieldy or impractical character of this five-power system. Measured on a scale of other world governments, success is slow; but it is enormous in contrast to other Chinese central political institutions. At present, it is most improbable that the form of government will be changed, save in the event of catastrophe beyond all reckoning

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Chapter III
CONSULTATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANS

The outbreak and continuance of war has left the fulcrum of power relatively untouched.The highest organs of state are primarily in Kuomintang hands; the Party Chief of the Kuomintang is, even at law, governmentally more important today than in 1937; and the constitutional monopoly of power remains under the Kuomintang.Even changes in the highest organs—such as establishment of the Supreme National Defense Council and the Military Affairs Commission—have left very little impress on the sources of power.Reforms have altered only the mode of power, not its tenure.

Modifications have, however, been introduced at the level of government just below the apex.These are important in two remarkable ways.The People's Political Council (Kuo-min Ts'an-chêng Hui) admixed an ingredient of representation which (save for the Party) had been lacking since the dubious, betrayed, inaugural years of the Republic.Furthermore, sweeping administrative reorganization and reinvigoration made possible the vitalization of the central government in the course of the war, so that despite Japanese pressure and rising Leftist rivalry, the National Government is, on any absolute scale, becoming more powerful year by year.

The People's Political Council

The People's Political Council was established by order of the Emergency Session of the Kuomintang Party Congress held in Hankow, March 1938.Its creation was a compromise measure between the proposal for a European-type United Front government, based on popular elections to a National Convention, and a continuation of the Kuomintang monopoly of government hitherto prevalent. Like many similar compromises in other countries, the institution has proved its viable and useful character. Without exaggeration, it may be stated to be the closest approximation of representative government which China has ever known. Simple, improvised, legally an instrument promising little independence or élan in its work, the Council demonstrates the effectiveness of the Chinese when purpose accompanies design. Formally the least representative of the Chinese constitutional parliaments, congresses, or conventions, the Council is the first to get down to business and—almost unexpectedly—to represent!

Membership, originally set at 150, was raised before the First Session to 200, and again in the autumn of 1940 to 240.[1] The number, unlike the 1681 tentatively projected for the People's Congress, is small enough to allow genuine discussion and to avoid unwieldiness. Attendance, considering war-time hazards, has been very good, with between two-thirds and four-fifths of the members usually present.

Although the Council was designed to meet quarterly by its fundamental Statute,[2] it soon changed to semi-annual sessions and has actually met at intervals running from six to eight months. Each session lasted for ten days (legislative, not calendar).[3] As the Council sessions recurred, the Council became more and more free and representative. Despite the narrowness of its legal foundations, the Council has provided invaluable exercise in the arts of democratic discussion.

As a technique of representation, the Council's recruitment system is novel.The membership was, while the Council's total was at 200, divided into the following four categories:

Group A: representatives of the Provinces and Special Municipalities—88;

Group B: four representatives for or from Mongolia and two for or from Tibet—6;

Group C: representatives for or from the overseas Chinese—6;

Group D: representatives of cultural, professional, and economic bodies, or persons who have been active in political leadership—100.

There were no elections. In the case of Group A candidates, nominations were made by municipal or provincial governing bodies in joint session with the Kuomintang Party organ of corresponding location and level. Group B candidates were nominated by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. Group C candidates were nominated by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission in the Executive YüanGroup D candidates, which included the representatives of the Communists and independent Left, were nominated by the Supreme National Defense Council. Two candidates could be presented for each seat on the Council. Subject to a minor detour or two on qualifications or for other reasons,[4] the final selection or election was made by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

Thus, an independent or Leftist, whose life had been more or less in danger for years, because of his hostility to the Kuomintang and its policies, might find himself nominated for the Council by the Kuomintang's highest government-supervising agency, and elected by the Kuomintang's highest Party agency.Leaders of the hitherto suppressed, still technically illegal parties and factions—which meant all save the Kuomintang—were designated representatives through the fiction of selection for individual merits.They might take an active share in hammering out policy, and—on the same day—find themselves legally debarred from overt public expression of their own party work.By this device, the Kuomintang provided a safety-valve for opposition without touching the apparatus of its own power.

Had the Kuomintang leaders been obtuse and made the Council something less than a genuine sounding board for public opinion, or had they picked unrepresentative members of the other groups, the whole experiment would have failed.In practice, the compromise worked and gave China a focus for the national concentration of will.

The Council did not elect its own Speaker (I-chang) and Deputy-Speaker (Fu I-chang); these were elected for it by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.Down to 1940, the Council elected a Resident Committee of fifteen to twenty-five members from its own membership; under a recent reorganization, this and the Speaker and Vice-Speaker are to be replaced by a Presidium, to be elected by but not necessarily from among the Council, to consist of five members and to hold the authority of designating presiding officers. This would amount to a further step in the independence of the Council. In both cases, the Secretariat (Mi-shu-ch'u) of the Council is to be under a Secretary-General (Mi-shu-chang) and Deputy Secretary-General (Fu Mi-shu-chang) and to include services of correspondence, general affairs, Council affairs, and police.[5]

With respect to competence, the Council is possessed of three powers:

(1) the right to deliberate on all important measures, whether of domestic or foreign policy, before these are enacted into law by the Central Government (but not, however, the right of making such law);

(2) the right to submit proposals to the government (but since the Supreme National Defense Council is the highest government-directing agency in China, its concurrence is patently necessary);

(3) the right to demand and hear reports from the Yüan and the Ministries, and to interpellate the officers of state.

The distinguished Chinese constitutional scholar, Wang Shih-chieh, Secretary-General of the People's Political Council (Generalissimo Chiang himself being the Speaker) writes of its functions:

From the foregoing description, the peculiarities of the People's Political Council may be clearly seen. It is not an advisory body of the Government in the ordinary conception of the term, because the Government is bound, except in emergency cases, to submit to it for consideration all important measures before they are carried out.The Council possesses not only the power to advise, but also the right to be consulted.Nor is it a legislative organ, as all its resolutions merely embody broad principles of legislation or administration, i.e., lines of policy which, even after being assented to by the Supreme National Defense Council, will still have to go through the ordinary legislative or ordinance-making process in order to become laws or administrative ordinances.

As regards the representative character of the Council, it rests not so much with the method by which the Councillors are chosen, as with the fact that, being composed of men and women most of whom enjoy wide popularity or respect in one way or another, the Council can really speak for almost all the articulate group-interests of the nation.In the less than 30 years of China's experience in republican government, numerous experiments had been attempted at representative government before the convention of the People's Political Council.Few of these were deficient in theoretic grandiloquence, but none of them was found to be serviceable in practical applicability.

Theoretically, the Council is not a popular assembly; but, as I remarked elsewhere,* "it is open to question whether any form of election by popular suffrage can result in so truly representative a body."Even with reference to the limited scope of the Council's powers, I submit that the provision represents a progressive step in that any alternative that is less realistic would impede rather than facilitate the contributive work of the Council.[6]

* Chinese Year Book, 1938, Chap.17.[Wang Shih-chieh's note.]

The author adds that the resolutions have tended to be of an extraordinarily practical character, and that bombast has remained conspicuously absent.

The procedure of the Council has been kept very simple.A quorum requires only a simple majority (101 members), and a simple majority of a quorum (51) is all that is needed to pass a resolution.To ensure the proper spacing of the calendar, all resolutions initiating new business must come within the first four days of the ten-day session. Introduction may not be completed by the action of a single member; a petition of 20 members, one proposing and 19 endorsing, is necessary for introduction. Reference may then be either to the plenary session or to the committees. (There are five standing committees—military, foreign, civil, financial and economic, educational and cultural affairs—which provide further facilities through subdivision into subcommittees, or through the addition of special committees.) Reports by the government are introduced during the first three days of each session.[7]

Members cannot waste time over the pork-barrel, log-rolling, riders, or minor fiscal questions.Since they all have the same constituency at law, and that constituency—the C.E.C.of the Kuomintang—asks nothing of them except representation of their moral constituencies—the groups and areas from which they derive, Councillors are untroubled by constituents or appropriations.The budget is submitted by the government to the Council for approval, not enactment.Salaries of the Councillors are nil.Each is given Ch.$350.00 (about U.S.$20.00) per mouth for expenses, without regard to mileage, and even overseas Chinese representatives receive no further emoluments.Since government officials are excluded from membership, use of a Council seat for purposes of preferment is precluded.

A liberalization of representation and of procedure occurred early in 1941.A new Council—involving the first turnover in membership since 1938—was elected.Educational and other unofficial representatives obtained an additional twenty seats on the Council.The changes were scarcely sufficient to compensate for the further postponement of the promised Constitution, but they indicated a willingness of the government to meet demands for democratization.Procedural changes increased the effectiveness of individual members. A minor but characteristic feature was the increase in number and importance of women members.

Partisan organization in the Council, although elementary, has begun to function. Each clique has informal caucuses; careful scrutiny discloses the presence of whips from these caucuses on the floor. The groupings in the Council are so fluid that they can be variously classified by persons with different viewpoints. (Formally, of course, everyone is either Kuomintang or non-Party, even though The Chinese Year Book, under informal Chungking government sponsorship, proudly lists the high rank of the Communist members of the Council—"Chen Shao-yu (Wang Ming), [age] 33, [province] Anhwei, [remarks] Member, Presidium, Central Executive Committee, the Third International.")[8] The popular classification of the Council cliques, commonly seen in the press, is based on the Four Parties (Ssŭ Tang) and the Four Cliques (Ssŭ P'ai). The four parties are the Kuomintang, National Socialist, Communist, and La Jeunesse[9] The Four Cliques, which according to popular credence, formed soon after the first meetings of the Council, are based on intellectual sympathy and the interplay of temperaments, and not on dogma.

The most Leftist clique is believed to be the Hua-chung P'ai (Central China Clique), with the National Salvationists' Seven Gentlemen at their core. Deeply sympathetic with the masses, and violently patriotic, this group helped to bring about the war by opposing appeasement. Like-thinking Council members, however affiliated, are believed to fall under the legislative leadership of the Central China Clique. Near to this, still far to the Left of the government, is the Tungpei P'ai (Northeast Clique). The Northeastern Manchurian Chinese officers, exiled in the Northwest, were the first bridge between the Communists and the rest of the country. Since their native provinces and kinsfolk have had almost ten years' Japanese domination, the Northeast group is emphatic in demands for national unity. Communists circulate from one group to the other, always cooperative in offering their leadership on the basis of a United Front, which the Comintern still decrees for the Far East after jettisoning the Popular Fronts of Europe.

The two relatively Rightist cliques are the Ch'ê-yeh Chiao-yü P'ai (Vocational Educationists' Clique) and the Chiao-shou P'ai (Professors' Clique). Composed of men still so far from attaining office that they possess perfect freedom of criticism, they therefore stand Left of the government in daily comment, although they may be Right of it in theory. The former group stresses simple, direct problems: it seeks to attack the opium problem, disease, illiteracy, and so forth, without necessarily fighting the social revolution against the landlords. It derives its name from two distinguished leaders of the vocational education movement who have abstained from active political work until finding a forum in the Council. The Professors' Clique is reputedly led by the group of young professors who were eminent in their fields before the outbreak of war, opposed to the government's appeasement policy, but tactful enough not to rebel. They are considered to stand as far Right as anyone on the Council—that is, to discuss politics in terms of soundness of public policy, budgetary reasonableness, immediate practicality, and other common-sense standards, which appear conservative beside the fervid idealism of their colleagues.

The description of the Ssŭ P'ai just given is one which exists in the popular credence. A more authoritative source placed the groups in the Council under the following four headings:

(1) the Kuomintang and non-Party majority;

(2) the La Jeunesse Party and the National Socialists;

(3) the Communists;

(4) the "Popular Front" group, including the intellectuals and the National Salvationists.

On this basis, the Kuomintang would retain its working control of the Council, which appears to be the case, in terms of work performed. The unaffiliated majority, selected by their local governments and Kuomintang offices and elected by the Kuomintang C. E. C. , would in doubtful cases be inclined to turn to Kuomintang leadership. The La Jeunesse Party, despite the fact that it is a Western-returned student organization, is strong in Szechuan; its influence could be expected to run with that of the National Socialists. Both parties, while minute, are decidedly averse to Communist fellow-travelling and not at all disposed to alter the status quo, except to carve modest niches for themselves and to advance their programs in an agreeable way.The Communists stand alone, although they offer their cooperation to the independents.

The Popular Front group is a category widely recognized in China—the Left Kuomintang, the discontented idealists, the irrepressible patriots, the minor parties, the indefatigable conspirators of Chinese hopefulness who are always on the scene.For years they have been unforgotten witnesses to the ferocious integrity of ideals which (in individuals scattered at random at all levels of society) call Chinese out of the lethargy of being very practical.

The Popular Front leaders, more than any other in China, have withstood perennial temptation for years and have kept their activities, under whatever name undertaken, intact.They can be distinguished from other Party leaders, both Nationalist and Communist, by the facts that they have never set up a government, with jobs in it for themselves; have never controlled a government, save through lacunae in power politics; and have never preserved a government which they did control. Warm-hearted, philanthropic, patriotic, their shrill zeal has been audible in China for many years. Without formal organization, they have stood behind others who sought real power, and today—between the cold, realistic leaders of the two opposing Parties—are assembled, ever-hopeful, and advocating a Popular Front.

The Secretary-General stated to the author that he regarded three of the Council's contributions as of history-making importance.First, the Council openly expressed a Chinese national unity unprecedented in modern history.Forms apart, never before had a crisis found all Chinese so united; the Council gave a symbol to that unity.Second, the Council raised the probability of successful democratic processes in China.Failures under the Peking parliaments had reduced democratic discussion to a sham.The Council erased this discredit, making many people believe that democracy promises a real value to the country—not merely as an ideal, but as a practicable means of government.This contribution was reinforced by a third: the Council actually served to make definite, serious, concrete improvements in government and Kuomintang structure, through criticism and through the issues aired.

The Administrative Pattern

Central policy-making is complicated by a trifurcation of organs—Party Headquarters, Military Affairs Commission, and Executive YüanFor example, the nation's publicity and broadcasting services, as well as direction of the official news agencies, are under the (Kuomintang) Party-Ministry of Publicity, while the Foreign Office possesses its own publicity organs for the international relations field, and the Political Department of the Military Affairs Commission handles much domestic propaganda and agitation. The strictly governmental, permanent administrative agencies are simplified from their pre-war complexity, as the following list will show:

EXECUTIVE Yüan

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of the Interior
Ministry of Finance
Ministry of Economic Affairs (to be reorganized)
Ministry of Social Affairs (pending)
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Communications
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs
Commission on Overseas Chinese Affairs
National Relief Commission
Ministry of War (also under the Military Affairs Commission)
Material and Resources Control and Supervision Ministry (pending; status uncertain)

JUDICIAL Yüan

Ministry of Justice

CONTROL Yüan

Ministry of Audit

EXAMINATION Yüan

Ministry of Personnel
Examination Commission

The Ministries outside the Executive are well adapted to their respective Yüan, although Americans may think the Ministry of Justice misplaced. The Executive Ministries form the heart of the administrative system, immediately below the cabinet (Executive Yüan Meeting). The Party scaffolding is to be torn down with constitutionalization; the military scaffolding, with peace. The administrative organs at the center will then bear the real burden of nourishing and protecting the nation which now they help to create.

Despite strong Chinese imprints, the central administrative agencies are organizationally more Westernized than the policy-making agencies. For this reason, and because administrative emphasis is on matters economic (outside the scope of the present work), the reader is referred to other sources for a detailed appraisal of the work of the ministries. Particularly fortunate is it that China Shall Rise Again, partly written and partly edited by Madame Chiang K'ai-shek,[10] has been published, including authoritative statements by the leading ministers on the work of their respective ministries.

The Ministries (pu) may be classified into three groups, according to the major tenor of their work: political, social and cultural, and economic.Military defense through economic development and social reconstruction remains their common goal, however divergent the approaches.

The Political Ministries

Senior and most famous of all Chinese ministries is that of Foreign Affairs (Wai-chiao Pu). It inherits the splendid traditions of Chinese diplomacy, dating back to the redoubtable Pan Ch'ao, who almost single-handed conquered Central Asia in the first century A.D. by unsleeping guile and consistent boldness. Modern Chinese diplomacy has made the best of a hundred years of defeat, successfully exploiting the mutual suspicions of the imperialist powers. The morale and professional cohesion are high. Despite incessant political changes, the foreign office and diplomatic service have preserved their continuity from the Empire to the present. The Chungking government probably possesses a foreign office superior to the Gaimusho of Tokyo.[11]

The effectiveness of Chinese international statesmanship has aroused an almost superstitious dread among the Japanese, publicists, officials, and others.Japan consistently complains that China is superior at propaganda, and sees, behind the world-wide mistrust of Japan, occult forces from the Comintern or vile Chinese guile.After they perpetrated the Nanking horrors, insulted neutral men and women in Tientsin, machine-gunned a British ambassador, sank an American gunboat, and violated all available international law, the Japanese believed that British and American lack of sympathy was mostly due to the machinations of Chinese diplomacy.The recent Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Wang Ch'ung-hui, a former Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), is one of the modern world's greatest legal scholars.Eminent in political leadership ever since the first foundation of the Republic, he has always urged moderation, legality, and intelligence in government.

The Ministry of the Interior (Nei-chêng Pu) forms the apex to China's constitutional system of provincial and local governments.In accordance with Sun Yat-sen's teaching, the National Government has consistently sought to reduce the importance of the provinces and to foster direct local-central intergovernmental relationships.The importance of this ministry is reduced somewhat by the fact that other agencies possess their own field services, and are therefore not obliged to route policy through it, but it remains significant because of its control and supervision of China-wide administrative development. The National Health Administration (Wei-shêng Shu), formerly separate, is now a department of this Ministry.

Social and Cultural Agencies

The Ministry of Education (Chiao-yü Pu) has continued active despite the war.The heroic marches of the Chinese universities to their new homes in the West have become a world-famous epic.Students, faculty, and staffs moved out of the sinister zones of enemy occupation, usually travelling on foot, until they found new homes hundreds or even thousands of miles from their original locations.Some colleges have found homes in old temples or in caves where, with a minimum of equipment and library material, they continue their work.Others, more fortunate, have become guests of West China institutions.West China Union University in Chengtu has four other universities on its campus, all using the same facilities for the duration of the war.Still other institutions have been consolidated.

The Ministry of Education has subsidized education as generously as possible, and fosters progress despite the war and because of it.In spite of all handicaps, institutions of higher learning have risen in number from 91 in 1937-38 to 102 in 1939-40, with a corresponding rise in enrollment of 31,188 to 41,494.[12] The entering class for 1940-41 was about 12,000, indicating a continued rise.[13]

In addition to the accredited institutions, there are innumerable volunteer agencies, some of which are patriotic but educationally elementary schools for saboteurs, agitators, and guerrillas.Education is propaganda, but such is its immediate appeal that Left schools obtain capacity attendance.A few students are disappointed.One wrote, "The most unpleasant thing to me was that, as soon as I entered the Resist-Japan University, I was deprived of my liberty.I was not free in speech; I was not allowed to say anything outside of Marxism-Leninism ..."and went home.[14] The total attendance remains high; if added to that of the accredited institutions operating according to government standards, it would swell the sum enormously.

In addition to formal aid to institutions of higher learning, and administration of the National Government colleges, the Ministry sponsors the mass literacy movement.In this it has had the benefit of the work of Dr. James Y.C.Yen and his associates.[15] The war, moving vast masses of people and shifting the modernized city-dwellers from the coast to the interior, has proved a stimulus to the rise of literacy and the demand for popular literature.

The Ministry is headed by Ch'ên Li-fu, whose brother, Ch'ên Kuo-fu, is head of the (Kuomintang) Central Political Institute.Together they stand at the Right center of the Kuomintang, exerting enormous influence on the Party and on the country.Both have been very close to the Generalissimo, and took a large share in revitalization of the Kuomintang before and during the war.

The two Commissions serve important needs.The Commission on Overseas Chinese Affairs (Ch'iao-wu Wei-yüan-hui) is the informal Chinese equivalent of a colonial office. The Commission looks after the welfare of the overseas settlements of the Chinese, fostering language schools, hospitals and the like. It acts through Chinese community associations, rarely through official channels. Practices of hyphenated citizenship, so offensive to one Western nationality when undertaken by another, are unobtrusive and necessary in the case of the Chinese. With the outside states putting Chinese in a special economic, legal, and political category—through immigration laws, administrative practice, and extra-governmental pressure including lynching—the individual Chinese who deracinates himself is indeed a lost soul. Few Chinese worry about overseas Chinese irredentas. The Commission fosters no putsches and mobilizes no fifth columns, but does help to keep Chinese, whatever their nationalities, still Chinese.

The Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs (Mêng Tsang Wei-yüan-hui) is the supreme agency for the dependencies.It has a record of considerable success in fostering a good-neighbor policy toward the half-autonomous dominions of Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang, also called Chinese Central Asia),[16] Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia is under indirect Soviet control, and Eastern Inner Mongolia under the Japanese. The Chinese have utilized every device of courtesy and diplomacy in retaining their precarious grip on these areas. The Commission includes dominion members.

The Economic Ministries

The Ministries dealing in economic matters bear the ultimate burden of resistance.Upon their success depend China's tools of war. If artillery, aircraft, machine-guns, munitions, food, clothing and other necessities are not available to the central armies, the opportunity for counter-attack may come and go, and China be lost—not through the power of her enemy, but through her own weakness. Unless economic mobilization succeeds, the guerrilla warfare in the occupied area will be frustrated, since its purpose is merely to prepare for a révanche from Free China; history affords few examples of guerrillas defeating mass armies, fighting positionally, without the intervention of other mass armies.

The Ministry of Finance (Ts'ai-chêng Pu) is the leader of the Economic Ministries.Headed by H.H.K'ung, successor to the celebrated T.V.Soong, it has performed fiscal miracles in maintaining the credit of the National Government.Chief among its accomplishments has been the institution, within the past decade, of a managed currency on the gold-exchange standard.Specie had been the immemorial medium of exchange, and Chinese experience with paper money—from the earliest times to the present—had been unfortunate.Starting with the 1860's, China had undergone one paper-money inflation after another.Governmental currency was frequently a receipt for silver on deposit, in which case it amounted to no more than a commodity warehouse certificate, thereby subject to discount for transportation charges, and fluctuating meanwhile with the world price of silver; otherwise it was fiat money, guaranteed by stranglers' cords and long knives.Fractional coins passed by metallic weight; the shifts in the price of copper in New York and London determined the number of pennies which farmers received for their silver dollars, even on the threshold of Tibet.

By putting private bank notes, both Chinese and foreign, out of circulation, systematizing note issuance to four government banks and a limited number of carefully supervised provincial agencies, the National Government made the change with far less difficulty than anyone, even optimists, dared to hope. Until the outbreak of war subsidiary coinage was copper and aluminum; this has been replaced by fractional paper, circulating decimally without discount for exchange into larger bills. Simple peasants, who used to hide a slug of silver in their fields, now conceal a Bank of China, Bank of Communications, Central Bank of China, or Farmers' Bank of China fa pi (legal tender) note in roofs or walls.

Other noteworthy reforms include the standardization of levies in the provinces, now proceeding to some degree, and the imposition of direct taxes, a revolutionary step for China.Income and inheritance taxes, previously thought to be uncollectible in a pre-modern area such as China's hinterland, are yielding substantial sums. War borrowing is done almost entirely through domestic loans.These are issued in the form of patriotic contribution bonds, and are available in denominations as low as Ch.Nat.$5.00 (about 28 U.S.cents).Further support has come in the form of American, British, and Soviet fiscal aid, and—until the outbreak of the European war—additional credits, both private and intergovernmental, from continental Europe.The Ministry has moved with a financial prudence which promises to maintain China's domestic and foreign credit for further years of war.

The Ministry has engaged in direct conflict with the enemy through bank-note rivalry.Throughout the occupied area, National Government currency is in conflict with the issuances of the Japanese army and the pro-Japanese governments.The Chungking policy has been to hold back the invasion currencies, on the assumption that continued circulation of the national currency maintains a continued popular stake in the government.Many guerrilla leaders believe that the occupied areas should use nothing of value to the Japanese, and therefore encourage the issuance of local emergency currency.

Under the Ministry of Finance, numerous efforts have been made to keep foreign trade alive.With war-time pressure on transportation facilities, foreign trade has become a virtual monopoly of the government; few major transactions are made by wholly private interests, since in addition to monopolizing the highways, government-owned corporations also have access to differentials in foreign exchange (which often mark the difference between great profits and none).In the matter of the governmentalized Sino-American trade, correlated with the American credits, the Foo Shing Corporation (export) and the Universal Trading Corporation (import) control the current both ways.The Ministries of Communications and of Economic Affairs also have a share in this state-capitalist business.[17]

Subdivisions in the Ministry of Finance include sections for customs, salt gabelle, internal revenue, general taxation, public loans, currency, national treasury, accounting, and general affairs.Efforts are now in progress to consolidate all intragovernmental fiscal services, so that the budget shall cover the entire government, and separate agencies will no longer be able to make half-controlled collections and disbursements.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs (Ching-chi Pu) is in general responsible for the industrialization of an area half the size of Europe with well over two hundred million inhabitants.No non-industrial state can defeat an industrial state unless it has access to the industrial resources of third parties.The Chinese, realizing this, have launched a modernization process unparalleled in modern history.The two greatest migrations of the twentieth century have occurred, most probably, in China: the first the settlement of Manchuria, and the second the flight to the West. In each case more than twenty million persons have been involved. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has transformed this rout into a pioneering advance. Refugees have been taught to bring their tools with them; when they had no tools their skills have been sought out and utilized. As the national armies and government retreated up the Yangtze and inward, they brought along the personnel of a modern economic system, and set an industrial society down in a world technologically backward.

West-China modernization will probably be the most durable economic consequence of the war.Cities near the edge of Tibet have underground electric power and automatic telephone systems. Primitive salt-drying areas have been modernized; in one instance, steel pipe being lacking, bamboo pipelines, plastered and cemented for reinforcement, run cross-country.Filthy, tax-ridden, vicious little cities which had been the haunts of opium-sotted militarists are now given the double blessing of fair government and a business boom.(The author felt, when he returned to America in September 1940, that he was going from a new country to an old, leaving the hope, zest and high spirits of the Chinese frontier for the comfortable melancholy of American half-prosperity.)

On the government side, the stimulation to technological advance has consisted of broad, experimental use of government personnel, subsidies, and part-ownership, together with some outright state socialism.Four types of encouragement appear with particular frequency: the government-controlled movement of private industries from the endangered areas to the West, government sponsorship of brand new industrial enterprises, official encouragement of cooperatives, and state ownership-management of enterprises.

Many industries were saved for China through compulsory movement.Thousands of tons of industrial equipment were moved up to the West, floated on barges and river-boats, or dragged by hand over macadam highways, dirt roads, and mud footpaths.One single enterprise, the Chung Fu Joint Mining Administration of Honan, successfully transferred one hundred and twenty thousand tons of equipment, now applied to coal mining in the Southwest.[18]

Government sponsorship of new enterprises covers the entire field of modern industry.Investors wait in line before opportune undertakings.Electric light bulbs, safety matches, automobile parts and tools, clothing—everything from machine-shop tools to luxury goods is being produced in the West.Bottlenecks do occur in new industries competing for priorities in imported machinery.

In the field of cooperatives, the C. I. C. (China Industrial Cooperatives) stand out as truly important social and economic pioneering. (See below, p. 223.)

Government ownership has not been niggard or timorous.In most cases it has followed American patterns and appeared in the form of government-owned corporations, but there are also a considerable number of frankly state-operated enterprises, such as municipal food stores, ferries, and heavier industrial undertakings.The munitions and motor fuel trades are, so far as the author could find, entirely a matter of government ownership.In the air communications and airplane production field, government ownership is relaxed to the point of a senior partnership in joint companies with foreign corporations; the latter provide the supplies and trained personnel.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs is under the control of Wong Wen-hao,[19] whose career was first distinguished in geology and educational administration. His scientific outlook stands him in good stead, since the exploitation of West-China resources requires scientific as well as business application. Subdivisions of his Ministry include those of mining, industry, commerce, water conservancy, and general affairs.

A Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Nung Lin Pu) was set up in 1940 as the third economic ministry.Industrialization's dependence on farm products makes this an invaluable coordinate to the other two Ministries.The Chinese are in many cases proceeding directly from pre-industrial to the latest chemico-industrial techniques, and skipping the phase of reliance upon subsoil minerals.Gasoline is being mixed with fuel alcohol derived from grain; plastics are appearing.

Agriculture also involved China's greatest social problem—that of encouraging freehold or cooperative farming at the expense of sharecropping.Much of the agricultural reform is undertaken by the new local government and provincial government plans, but the problems of farm prices, general farm planning, and utilization of agricultural products fall on the Ministry.It is headed, not by a farm leader or expert, but by the General Chên Chi-tang, former governor of Kwangtung Province.[20]

A proposed Material and Resources Control and Supervision Ministry (or Ministry of Economic Warfare), based approximately upon the British Ministry of Supplies, is in process of organization.[21] The Ministry may be kept independent of either the Executive Yüan or Military Affairs Commission, since it is to coordinate a group of industrial and commercial agencies which are now independent. Upon its establishment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs will become one of Industry and Commerce, and a central agency for economic war work will be available.

The National Relief Commission (Chên-chi Wei-yüan-hui) supervises the general relief work of the government, which is performed in part by the extragovernmental war and Party agencies and in part by local and provincial authorities.The immensity of the relief problem in China has always been such that organized relief can do no more than stir the misery of the masses.Opportunely for the National Government, the Imperial Japanese Army is securely in possession of the world's greatest relief problem, and unable to relinquish it.Chungking is more fortunate.(The author never dreamed that prosperity such as he saw in West China could exist in Asia.Prices are extremely high, but wages and farm prices tend to follow, and unemployment—always low in China because of the work-sharing role of the family—is almost completely out of sight.Skilled labor commands remuneration fantastic by pre-existing scales.)

All these agencies, and much of the rest of the government, depend upon the Ministry of Communications (Chiao-t'ung Pu).The invasion struck at existing communications lines; Japanese are now in control of the mouths of all major Chinese rivers, most of China's railway mileage, and the coastal system of modern highways.A glance at the map of China will show that Japanese forces have hugged modern communications lines, whether steamship, railway, or highway.Whenever the Japanese ventured far from these lines, they met with disaster.

The Ministry of Communications has used existing facilities to draw new networks. The short stretches of railway in Free China are still operated; matériel from the occupied zone was brought West on them, and they are undergoing rapid development. Roadbeds are being constructed in anticipation of future imports of steel rails. Steamship enterprises, under government subsidy, operate extensively, and new reaches of river have been opened to service.

Three lines of reconstruction have proved very fruitful: motor communications, telecommunications, and the rationalization of pre-modern facilities already at hand.

Motor communications, both highway and aerial, have shown enormous progress.Air service is maintained by the China National Aviation Corporation and the Eurasia Company, both owned by the Chinese Government, the former jointly with Pan American Airways and the latter with German interests.Through connections from New York to Berlin are available by the combined services of the two companies.

The highway system can be thought of as spider-like.Three enormous legs reach to the outside: the Chungking-Kunming-Lashio route, famous as the Burma Road; the trans-Sinkiang route, finally connecting with the Soviet Turksib Railroad beyond thousands of miles of desert and mountains; and the due North route, now being developed, reaching the Trans-Siberian Railroad.The body of the system is a tight, well-metalled skein of roads interconnecting the major cities of Free China.Most highways are all-weather, and well-engineered, but niceties of surfacing have been postponed.

Truck and bus service is regular, but very crowded, with inescapable confusion as to priority.The majority of the operating firms are government-owned, either by the central government or the provinces.Complaint has arisen over the restrictions to private enterprise in this field.Since gasoline costs about U.S.$1.00 per gallon and is available only under permit, further official obstructions to highway use seem unnecessary.

Telecommunications have been maintained and extended.Telegraph service has reached into hitherto untapped areas, and wireless is extensively employed.Radio services operate under the Kuomintang, not the government; stations XGOX and XGOY reach North America and Europe with propaganda in the world's leading languages.The telephone has come to be a regular part of Chinese official and business life, and is to be seen, far off the beaten track, as one of the heralds of industrialization.

All these modern services would, however, be grossly insufficient for the needs of the whole nation at war.They have been supplemented through the use of every available type of pre-modern transportation.Most of these rely on man-power, and have had their own elaborate organization for many centuries: boatmen's guilds, unions of transport coolies, carters, muleteers and camel-drivers.It has been possible to ship heavy freight through country consisting of mountains traversable only by stone-flagged footpaths or torrential streams. The Ministry has regimented this complicated pre-modern world, with impromptu modernizations as startling as they are efficacious.Where once couriers trotted, they now speed by on bicycles or motorcycles; the squealing wooden-axled wheelbarrows of the Chinese countryside are yielding to pneumatic-tired carts which resemble American farm trailers.Three to eight men can drag one cart, with half a ton of freight, over any terrain, making up to forty miles a day.Provision can be made, therefore, for moving a quarter-million tons of raw materials across territory lacking even the most elementary roads.The roughness of the country, which bars the Japanese army, is no obstacle to huge coolie gangs, drafted sometimes, but more usually hired.

The Minister of Communications gave the following written answers to questions put by the author:[22]

1.In view of the political interruptions to commerce through British and French territories south of China, will efforts be maintained to keep communications on the same schedules southward that they had before?

Yes, because commercial and export traffic is still being carried on southward, and there is a large accumulation of important materials to be moved from the frontier inward.

2.Will the restriction of gasoline lead to the abandonment of certain truck and bus routes, and the maintenance of others, or do you expect to restrict all routes evenly?

We expect to restrict all important routes evenly if the motor fuel situation becomes really acute.

3.Is a motor road running through Inner and Outer Mongolia directly north to the Trans-Siberian Railroad a feasible project?

Yes, it is a feasible project.

4.For all practical purposes, is the Soviet route as it exists an adequate although expensive channel for the import of high-class American machinery, such as trucks?

Yes, the Soviet route as it exists is adequate though expensive for the purpose.

5.Is there evidence that mail between the United States and China has been censored or tampered with while in transit past Japan?

No, there is no such evidence so far.

6.How extensive a foreign personnel do you have in the varied agencies under your Ministry?

Postal Service:	28
China National Aviation Corporation:	15
Eurasia Aviation Corporation:	13
Railways:	8

7.What developments of the last three years do you regard with most pride, as evidence of China's power to cope with the emergency?

The timely completion of the Yunnan-Burma Highway may be considered as evidence of China's power to cope with the emergency and as an important development in the field of war-time communications.The Highway is 960 kilometers long from Kunming to Anting on the frontier.Construction began in October 1937.Eleven months later, the road was opened to through traffic.At one time during its construction, as many as 100,000 laborers were employed on the road.

The highest point on the Highway is 2,600 meters above the sea level, yet the road has to pass two deep valleys, the Mekong and the Salween, where the Highway dips a few thousand feet within a distance of several miles in order to reach the river bed, and rises precipitously again in the same manner just beyond the suspension bridges over the two turbulent rivers.The scarcity of local labor, the enervating climate, and the wild and sparsely populated country traversed, all combine to make the construction work difficult.But now, anyone may take a motor car and cover the distance between Chungking and Rangoon in two weeks, as Ambassador Johnson did soon after the Highway was completed.

The Minister Chang Kia-ngau (Chang Chia-ao) is one of the most eminent bankers in China.His Ministry is a model of business-like organization and systematic routines; he has a great reputation for getting things done in the American fashion—quickly, and without ceremony.

In addition to these major ministries, there are the Pu of Justice (part of the Judicial Yüan, sharing its war-time somnolence), of War (affiliated with the Military Affairs Commission), of Audit, of Personnel, and—in process of establishment—of Social Affairs, supplementing the Party-Ministry of Social Movements (Shê-hui Yün-tung Pu) now under the Kuomintang Headquarters.

All Ministries are headed by a Minister (Pu Chang), seconded by a Political Vice-Minister (Chêng-wu Tzŭ-chang) and Administrative Vice-Minister (Ch'ang-wu Tzŭ-chang).Since almost all officers are political appointees, and few of the new career men have touched the higher levels of the bureaucracy, this duplication prevents a job famine and keeps personnel levels high; the utility of a large administrative staff depends, obviously, on the nature of the executive.Some of the most crowded ministries seem permanently under-staffed because of the intense activity they maintain; others, with skeleton staff, appear to have far more civil servants than service. The over-all picture of the Ministries, however, leads inescapably to the conclusion that they are really functioning today. Long-transmitted vices of sloth and sinecures are on the wane. The war, high-lighting every demerit into treason, has created optimum conditions for administrative progress in China.

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Chapter IV
PROVINCIAL, LOCAL, AND SPECIAL-AREA GOVERNMENT

China consists of twenty-eight provinces, varying in size about as do the European nations. Of the twenty-eight, fourteen are wholly under Chinese control, or are so slightly touched by invasion that normal governmental processes continue. Ten provinces are under dual or triple government—by the Japanese and pro-Japanese Chinese, by guerrilla and other semi-independent groups, and by the usual constitutional authorities. The remaining four are under firm Japanese domination, under the name Manchoukuo[1] Well over half of China's population is under the National Government, and about one-ninth under unchallengeable Japanese control; the residuum is the subject of sharp political competition. The war is not merely a war between governments: it is a struggle for the creation of government.[2]

This problem would be immense even if there were no war.Under the successive Imperial dynasties of the past millennium, China developed extreme regional autonomy.Despite absolutist theory, the provinces under their governors or viceroys were practically as independent as states of the American union in the early nineteenth century.

PROVINCIAL AND URBAN GOVERNMENT

* optional† legal, not administrative, entity

With the advent of war, the position of the provinces has become more precarious, truly new political devices in the form of novel regional governments have appeared, and the concrete problems of reform in the village communities have become as imperative as military measures.

The Provinces

The war-lord period was ushered in by the death of Yüan Shih-k'ai, dictator-President and commander-in-chief, in 1916.He had inherited a tradition of dual government—civil and military—no less sharp than the Japanese distinction, and had continued it by placing his military henchmen in power as provincial satraps.After his death, each province had a military governor (Tuchün), who sometimes tolerated a civil governor (Shêng-chang) and sometimes held both posts concurrently. The various tuchün rivalled one another in a vain turmoil until the rise of the National Government suppressed or incorporated them. Even today some of these men hold remnants of their power, but it is still declining. The power of the National Government has increased almost every year for over fifteen years, and its programs, bequeathed by Sun Yat-sen, call for the constant diminution of provincial authority, until in the end the province shall be little more than a postal link between the central government and the districts (hsien).

Continued vitality of the provinces as a form of political life is shown by the chariness with which the government approaches the problem of re-subdividing the nation, by the continued effect of provincialism through the influence of geography, botany, ecology, economics and spoken language, and by the manifest utility of the provinces in the prosecution of the war. It is impossible to discuss any aspect of Chinese affairs for very long without entering into distinctions between provinces.

In mild, modified, and controlled form, the pattern of civil-military contrast in provincial government still prevails.The civil governor, now in almost all cases the weightier official, is legally termed Chairman of the Province (Shêng Chu-hsi), but he frequently possesses a military colleague amiably designated Pacification Commissioner (Sui-ching Chu-jên).[3] The war has eradicated almost the last vestiges of provincial militarism. No Chinese army is in a position to make peace with Japan through the negotiated treason of its commander, although small groups occasionally change sides both ways.[4] On the other side of the picture, it is not altogether certain how far the National Government could go in replacing local leaders; more has been done than ever before, but the Generalissimo has tried to work honestly with all leaders, provincial or independent, subsuming their power under his and the Government's without destroying it. Four provinces still show traces of autonomy.

Largest of the four is Sinkiang (Chinese Central Asia), under the military leader Shêng Shih-ts'ai; it is subject to very strong Soviet influence, since it is more accessible from the Soviet side of the border, via the Turksib Railroad, than from China.Its trade naturally flows out through the Soviet Union.The provincial authorities have been harsh toward Christian work, and casually cruel to occasional travellers.Since the National Government is exceedingly anxious to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union, and obtains much of its supplies from that country across Sinkiang province, it has made no attempt to interfere.The province has cooperated enthusiastically in war efforts; it is strange to see Central Asiatics with European features marching with Chinese troops.Many of the independent Leftist leaders have been welcomed in the area, although simon-pure Marxians are rare, and the province, with a new university, new air bases, new industries, and a trans-Asia highway, is undergoing rather spectacular development.The British and the Soviets are mutually so suspicious that the Chinese are likely to keep control, but the Chinese central government, taking no chances, cooperates rather than commands.

Yünnan, under General Lung Yün, is the second province with special features.Relatively isolated from the rest of China until the completion of the Kunming-Chungking stretch of the Burma Road, it has never been occupied by large National Government forces.The provincial chairman submitting in form and cooperating in fact has been left unmolested in his position.The province is becoming modernized by a great deal of commerce and development; it is likely that this vestigial autonomy will fade away unnoticed.

Kwangsi province possesses as leader General Pai Chung-hsi, one of the ablest military men in China. A Kuomintang leader of long standing, he followed, in conjunction with the leaders in Kwangtung (Canton), a policy of de facto autonomy down to the very outbreak of war. He and his associates even had an independent air force, which was promptly merged into the National air service. During the war, he has fought in central China. The economic ruin of Kwangtung and the occupation of Canton city by the Japanese has quenched Cantonese autonomy, but Kwangsi has been relatively untouched. No whisper of suspicion has imputed separatism to General Pai, but should he desire it, he is one of the few men left in China still to have the means.

In Fukien province, General Ch'ên I serves as Chairman.He studied in Japan and has a Japanese wife.He remains loyal to the National Government, and he has fought the Japanese along the coast.No Chinese observer has criticized him, but Westerners have observed that Fukien is remarkably quiet; the Japanese have done little beyond blockading the coast and seizing the major ports, and the Chinese have launched no counter-attacks.It is possible that some unexpressed sense of understanding between the Governor and the Japanese prevents further conflict, while the Generalissimo—content to leave well enough alone—lets matters stand as they are.

Provincial government, as outlined in the chart at p. 98, is very simple in structure. The Commission plan, similar in many respects to the Galveston plan in American municipal government, reduces the Provincial Chairman to the status of primus inter paresThe departments of the provincial government are headed by members of the province's committee.The presence of provincial offices of the Kuomintang, military services, and war agencies makes a provincial capital a place more important than it seems in theory.A valuable innovation in provincial administration has been the inauguration of the Provincial People's Political Councils (Shêng Ts'an-chêng Hui).These are being taken seriously by the administrations.Although they occasionally pass visionary, impracticable, or bombastic resolutions, their work has for the most part been concrete.They have aided a great deal in transforming the atmosphere of government, and act as competent outside critical bodies to check the administrative officers.

Provincial government has been significantly transformed by the war.Dr. T.F.Tsiang (Chiang T'ing-fu), a distinguished historian who served on a central inspection commission to the Southwest in 1940, stated[5] that provincial government has improved in two outstanding ways: first, there is a real desire to understand the common people, and to do something for them. This was unheard-of a few years past. Second, all—or almost all—of the officials work very hard. There is far more work than there are men. Money is frequently available but unexpendable because there are not enough experts to go round. Hence, the provincial governments find their need is for men rather than funds, and the war is bringing new levels of actual accomplishment. Although most of the governors have military titles, many of these are like Kentucky colonelcies, courtesy titles from time past. The over-all effect is of hard work and little bombast.

Special Municipalities, most of which are now under Japanese occupation, are directly subject to the National Government and only incidentally a part of the provinces in which they are located. Ordinary Municipalities are under their respective provincial governments, but not under a hsien (district or county) administration; in some cases they include several former hsien. The Municipality is headed by a Mayor (Shih-chang), advised by a City Council (Shih-chêng Hui-i) composed of the chiefs of the administrative sections, several supplementary counsellors, and representatives from the Municipal Advisory Assembly (Shih Ts'an-i-hui), if one exists. Below the Shih the urban pattern of local government differs somewhat from the rural, but otherwise city government displays no features peculiarly Chinese.

Local Government

Chinese local government has been the ever-fertile soil out of which successive Empires grew. To no other level of government has the Republic reached so poorly. Since China is constituted of about half a million villages, several thousand market towns, and a few hundred major cities, the bulk of the population is rural, but rural in a way foreign to the West. Congestion imposes upon agrarian China many problems and evils known as urban in the West. Corruption in government, extortion in economics, demoralization in social and family life—these start with the village and the hsienInconspicuous in any single village, each evil summed to its China-wide aggregate becomes tremendous.

Government has not been beloved by the Chinese farmer.Governmental benefits—for the continuance of scholastic culture, the protection of the realm, the creation of grandiose public works—were remote, but taxes were not; government meant the taxgatherer.Fêng Yü-hsiang, one of the great war-lords and now a Kuomintang general, says of his own childhood:

The people, except for paying their taxes, had nothing to do with the government. The government never paid any attention to the conditions under which the people lived, and the people never bothered themselves about what the government was doing. One party collected the taxes; the other paid them. That was all there was to it. Although Paoting city was only about two li [less than a mile] away, the inhabitants of Kang-k'ê village showed no interest in city civilization; instead, they rather looked down on that sort of thing. No discussions of politics were heard, and nothing about the encroachments of the foreign powers on China. All the big changes seemed to have taken place in another world, and very seldom affected this place.

When the government was about to collect taxes, the Li Chêng [a petty local officer] would ring a gong from one end of the village to the other, shouting:

"Pay your taxes! Four hundred and sixty coins to the mou [about one third of an acre] for the first harvest!"

When the people heard the gong, they did not go and pay their taxes immediately. They would walk listlessly to their doorways, only to withdraw after having taken a nonchalant look at the Li Chêng—as though they had heard nothing.They would wait until the very last minute, until they could not put it off any more, and then go, group by group, to the city to hand in money they had earned by sweat and blood.

They were industrious and miserable all through the year ...[6]

This basic level of Chinese society is not easily susceptible to standardization, or the imposition of ready-made bureaucracies.Even in the United States, it would be almost impossible to impose a uniform plan for community organization from Bangor to San Diego and Walla Walla to the Bronx.Sun Yat-sen once said to Judge Linebarger, "China is a land of autonomy from the smallest village upward.Who shall dictate to the sub-governments of China the form and manner in which they shall express their local governmental needs?Of course, we must have a minimum of uniformity for both economy and efficiency in government, but the will of the people must be followed."[7] By seeking to remedy political abuses the National Government apparently hopes that economic inequalities will be ironed out by the people themselves.

The Chinese land problem cannot be understood except at the politico-economic nexus, where low political morale exposes the farmers to the unrestrained power of the gentry, acting in the triple capacity of officials, landlords, and money-lenders.The cycle, familiar in the West, of freehold farmers or yeomen first mortgaging their land, then becoming tenants, and finally ending in utter economic helplessness, has been familiar in China.In China's past, the cycle had another phase: agrarian insurrection sweeping the land with banditry and innumerable rebellions, thereby increasing the fiscal burden on the remaining land, leading to worse exploitation, until the slate was swept clean by dynastic collapse, general civil war, and a new Imperial house, whose administrative decline began another cycle.The peasantry never won completely, and never lost utterly.Today, if one judges by past experience, rebellion or reform seems long overdue.[8]

The detailed legislation adopted by the National Government in war time is given in Appendix I (G), and Chiang K'ai-shek's own explanation of the new system in Appendix III (C)[9] One might explain the general plan quite simply in terms of inter-connection between the central government and the millions of households. The pao-chia system is one of mutual aid and mutual responsibility between households and groups of households, under government supervision. It has appeared in China from time to time since the Ch'in dynasty (221-203 B.C.). If used for welfare purposes, it amounts to a recognition of the pluralistic character of Chinese society by the government, and the happy utilization of the family pattern. Applied for police purposes, it is well suited to repression and terror. Thus, today the National Government is applying the pao-chia system (in relation to its whole scheme of local government) as a measure of progress and reform, while the Japanese encourage the same organizations in occupied China as a device for despotism and exploitation.

Expressed in law, now being applied in fact, the chia is a group of six to fifteen families (households), and the pao, a group of six to fifteen chia.The hsiang is formally composed of six to fifteen pao; actually it approximates what is loosely termed a community in the United States (e.g., a city ward, a single suburb, part of a rural election district). The ch'ü is the rough equivalent of a township. The hsien (district; county) is the fundamental unit of the traditional China-wide bureaucracy. Hence the missing steps are not those between the hsien, near to two thousand in number, and the central government. The gaps occur between the half-billion Chinese and their two thousand hsienThe following chart shows the broad outlines of the system:[10]

This is the official government plan.If ever put into complete effect, China will consist of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of self-governing units, arranged on seven levels (the five local levels; provinces; nation), and the world will wonder at a massive new democracy.In practical politics, what seems to be happening is that the system extends to the National Government areas, involving less than three hundred million people.Much of the application is purely formal, and signifies no more than did the grant of an imaginary suffrage under the first Republic.Elsewhere the new system is installed with telling administrative effect, improving the bureaucracy, strengthening the state, but not arousing much popular participation or enthusiasm.And in the remainder the program is beginning to work as is intended with genuine elections and popular participation in government.

The three chief devices which have been applied to the reform of local government are: instruction, mandate, and other remote controls; inspection systems; and training courses.First are the attempts to change local government by transmission from the capital of voluminous instructions, manuals, etc., supplemented by similar Kuomintang action for Party reform.In the second case, central officials go to the provinces.During the summer of 1940, a number of such groups of officials divided China between themselves, each group taking a number of provinces for its inspection zone.The presence of a central delegation in the field led to some housecleaning, provided an incentive for immediate work, and informed the National Government of the condition of the country.Some junketing was observable, but not enough to vitiate the work of inspection.By the third device, local officials are called to training centers.The Generalissimo is very fond of this method.He encourages the selection of younger men, who thereby feel that their careers are given a boost.They are taught modern governmental practice while living, in most cases, a disciplined but comfortable half-military life. Some training conferences are convened ad hoc in a promising area; others continue from year to year under the government or related organizations. Many thousand men and women undergo some form of training. The program has clearly discernible effects in improving local government. The selection of persons who either hold office or are likely to hold office provides a practical self-interest motivation. Further minor devices of local government reform include the grants in aid to the provinces, the establishment of model hsien, the military eradication of banditry, the reclamation of farm land and forests, some resettlement, and much planned modernization with small-scale projects.Town after town has received the stimuli of modernization from one of these sources.

Estimates—nothing more could be found—concerning the effectiveness of this program varied considerably. Since two equally skilled observers, considering the same institution at first hand, can differ sharply in their value judgments of efficacy or integrity, this is not surprising. A few Westerners and Leftists have insisted that the program was almost altogether sham. A few formal, optimistic officials have insisted that it has succeeded almost everywhere. One competent foreign observer told the author that he believed the pao-chia system to be installed in 90 per cent of Free China, and to be actually working in 50 per cent. Another agreed more or less with these figures, but suggested that there were enormous differences between the provinces, some being genuinely transformed and others remaining unaffected. A Chinese official, himself a social scientist, who had been intimately connected with local reform, stated that 50 per cent application for all Free China would be much too high an estimate, except for the holding of token elections. Only in Kwangsi province was the new self-government structure working over half of the countryside; elsewhere, the ratio was about one-fifth effective as against four-fifths nominal.

Most of all, genuine application consists in making institutions available, and thereupon letting the people help themselves.If local government is of practical use to the common people, they can be counted on to discover its utility promptly.If it is of no practical use, they will know that too.Whatever the present degree of success, obstacles still confront the program.Local extragovernmental institutions possess enormous vitality.If superficial or slipshod reforms are made, the new local governments will be merely operated as screens for secret societies, landlords' unions, or other narrow cliques.

Contrastingly, a tradition of discussion and public action makes it equally possible that the rural masses, familiar with cooperative action, will operate the new institutions successfully.The difference between success and failure is not to be measured in terms of wholly new achievement; it is determined by the choice of existing institutions which, transmuted and fitted, fill the pattern of the rationalized local government system.If narrow, class-bound or unprogressive groups assume the regalia of a novel legality, using their position to obstruct further development, the program will fail.If the town-meeting, cooperative potentialities of the entire adult population are aroused, and if the ordinary farmer or coolie can see that he has the opportunity of bettering his livelihood through political action, the success of democracy will be assured.

Potentialities in the field of local autonomy are enhanced by the fact that the National Government has competitors.The Japanese have an opportunity which, instead of utilizing, they have done their best to destroy: conquest through prosperity.If they and their Chinese associates offered low prices, easy marketing, and fair taxes, in the place of arson, rape, thievery and bluster, their failure would become less certain. As a third side to the triangle of competitive power, the Communists and independent Left, while allied to the National Government, rival it in winning the loyalty of the population. Huge areas in Communist and guerrilla sections are sampling reform of a drastic and immediate kind: the lowering of taxes, the democratization of government, the abolition of usury. With the traitors on its Right and the Communists or guerrillas on its Left, the National Government does not abandon its chief politico-economic weapon by disregarding land and labor reform. None of the three parties has anything to gain by inaction. None has an interest which binds it to self-dooming reaction.

The Communist Zone

Three new governmental areas which are neither provinces nor local governments have come forth out of unification and war.Their relationship to Chungking is strange, perhaps unique.They are not states members of a federal union, since China is a unitary republic.They are not new regional commissions, creatures and extensions of the central government, because—whatever the theory—they were independently initiated.They are not allies, because they profess national unity.They are not rebellions, because they fight a common enemy, only occasionally coming into conflict with government troops.Yet they possess some of the features of each of the following: federal states, regional subgovernments, allied states, and rebellions.They cut across the pattern of the National Government.Two are governments; one is an army.The army and one government are largely Communist; the other government is a genuine United Front of the parties.Two are North Chinese; one is Central Chinese.But all three have this in common: they are Leftist, actively revolutionary; they are objects of patronizing suspicion to the central authorities, who are glad of the help but worry about its post-war cost.

The first and most famous of these areas is the Communist zone in the Northwest. Formally it includes eighteen hsien; the Communists claim inclusion of twenty-three.After being termed the Special Administrative District of the Chinese Republic (Chung-hua Min-kuo T'ê-ch'ü Chêng-fu), and then Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Frontier Area (Shan-kan-ning Pien-ch'ü Chêng-fu), the zone assumed the much more modest style of Administrative Area of North Shensi (Shan-pei Hsing-chêng-ch'ü).[11] This Frontier Area is in personnel and Party life a direct continuation of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Leftist and Communist circles talk as though it were a wholly autonomous state, resting on its own military power, but cooperating with the National Government for national resistance and reconstruction. This is largely true—at any rate, more realistic than the opposing view, which avers that no change has taken place in the Northern part of Shensi province, and that the Communists are interfering with the proper processes of government. The following is a characteristic statement of the latter position:

At present the name "Frontier Area" seems to be very common because it is so called in false propaganda about the "independent sovereignty" [tzŭ-li wei-wang]. But if we agree that the so-called "Frontier Area" is a part of the territory of the Chinese Republic, the name ought to have been issued in conformity with the decrees of the central government. According to central government decree, it is only a "Supplementary Recruitment Area for the Eighth Route Army," but not an area of civil administration. [The author, in an extended discussion, challenges the re-division of the provinces as a matter not to be undertaken casually, denies the legal foundation of the term "Frontier Area," and then examines its practical justifications. He finds that the Communists have two: the regime is now a de facto system, its existence is a fait accompli and further discussion must proceed from this point; also, the regime is founded in popular opinion, and the government should not violate the wishes of the people. He disagrees with both of these and seeks to refute them, insisting on lawful procedure and constitutional government. He concludes with a peroration to the Communists themselves.] ... this problem is really quite simple, unlike the Sudeten problem. Was it the Communist Party of China which called the Sudeten Party of Czechoslovakia violators of the unity of their own country and running dogs of Fascism? Therefore, I think that they would never imitate what the reactionary Sudeten party did. And was it the Communists who originated the "United Front"? Hence they must understand very clearly what unification means to China, and must never utter things which they do not really believe. Therefore, with the rising tide of national unity and concentration, I suppose that the odd name "Frontier Area," which is contrary to the real sense of unification, will soon pass away and be a mere historical term.[12]

In practical terms this implies the informal reconciliation of two claims constitutionally and legally incompatible.The Chinese Communist leaders operate under the national law codes as much as they are able.They employ the national currency.They use the nationally standard system for local government.They profess unity.At the same time they maintain, as a hard reality, a separate regime in which the Communist Party is supreme, the Party Line is gospel, and dissidents are dealt with as "pro-Japanese traitors" or otherwise.Transit between National Government territory and Communist territory is not altogether easy.Leftists are reported to have died on their way to the Northwest, and Nationalists are equally well reported to have disappeared after they got there.

The Area itself is an unpromising piece of land."From 36° N.Lat.on up, South of the Great Wall and West of the Yellow River, there lies a vast, desolate tract of yellow plateau, inhabited by half a million people.The plateau slopes from North to South; the further South it runs, the lower the land lies, but it is still 1000 meters above sea-level at the lowest place.This is what we have already known as Northern Shensi.In this region, the ground is always covered with a layer of yellow dust ...Furthermore, rainfall is scarce and no irrigation has been introduced, so that agricultural products are extremely scant.Under such geographical limitations, Northern Shensi has become a region notorious for its poverty."[13] For a Chinese to call an area notoriously poor implies a degree of destitution which the American mind cannot grasp. In such an area, the welcome to Communism is obvious, and the problems of Communism, once settled, are equally obvious. The probability of mineral resources opens up opportunities for development under Red rule, but these are distant.

Interpretation of the achievements of the Communist regime vary with the political standpoint of the observer, just as they do in the case of the Soviet Union.Sympathetic observers, both Western and Chinese, report enormous improvements in agriculture, fair land taxes, new cooperatives, brilliant experimental democracy, bold education, and great enthusiasm.[14] No unsympathetic Western visitors have been reported admitted, and a few neutrals came away enthusiastic; but critical Chinese have found as much to question as one might find in a similar Western situation: terrorism, puppet elections, murder both judicial and plain, sham education, and immorality are charged.

The position of the Frontier Area is clear in a few respects.[15] In the first place, it is not declining. Communist strength is believed to be growing, by persons of almost all forms of political belief; differences arise only over the rate and probable maxima of that growth. The Communist strength in the Northwest is far less than it was in South Central China seven years ago, but much of that loss of power has been compensated for by increased relations with sympathetic guerrillas. Secondly, the Communist area is strategically poorly located. The land itself is poor; the adjacent large cities are completely under Nationalist control; and the general military-political locale is something like northern Arkansas in the United States. This explains the willingness of the Nationalist commanders to avoid friction with the Communists, and the positive zest with which they suggest further consolidation of Communist forces around the one center at Yenan. It soothes the impatience of Communists who wish unrestricted rights of agitation, organization, and propaganda throughout the country. Although the Communists make little visible headway against the Japanese in the great urban slums of the coast, they are anxious to obtain freer access to city workers. Thirdly, the Communist area displays no structural peculiarities of government. Its profound difference from the rest of Free China is not a difference in institutional forms, but in the forces operating behind and through those forms. The Chinese Communists have achieved very considerable success in working within the legal limits of another state philosophy, and have done it with a minimum of violence; this augurs well for the perpetual continuation of the truce. Their practical accomplishments are extensive and novel; their leadership, brilliant; that their government should be so orthodox in form is all the more significant. By remaining within orthodox limits they challenge the National Government on common ground; the gain is theirs and China's.

Guerrilla Governments

The special area second in importance is the Hopei-Chahar-Shansi Border Region (Chin-ch'a-chi Pien-ch'ü Lin-shih Hsing-chêng Wei-yüan-hui).Widely publicized in the Western world as the Hermit Government, this regime functions altogether within the Japanese lines.A number of competent Western observers have visited this area, among them Major Evans Fordyce Carlson, Mr. Haldore Hanson, and Professor George Taylor.All have come away most enthusiastic about the work of the government.The governmental picture which emerges from their and other accounts is one of a highly flexible mechanism, working with great efficacy and superb morale.[16] The driving power behind the regime is social revolution as a means to national resistance, made easy by the flight of many former local bureaucrats, and by the treason of some ultra-conservatives, who affiliated themselves with the Provisional Government established by the Japanese in Peiping. The personnel is as genuinely United Front as may be found anywhere in the world; the position is eased by the circumjacency of the Japanese, and the formal recognition of the area by the Military Affairs Commission and the Executive Yüan

The Border Region, like smaller guerrilla areas elsewhere in occupied China, is scarcely a domestic political problem because it is enfolded by the Japanese armies. Even a United Front area, such as the Border Region, would lead to far greater difficulties in political adjustment if established in Free China. The tension and balance between the Parties is such that this strain might not be borne. Behind the Japanese lines, where the central armies cannot do anything even if they wish, the Border Region finds Chungking's acquiescence to be stimulated by Chungking's impotence. What could or will happen if the Japanese leave the dividing area, and the Border Region has to settle the issue of status quo v. status quo ante bellum with the central government, no one knows.The Generalissimo told the present author that he did not fear the encroachments of the guerrilla groups, because he and they were all working for democracy.

Following from this involuntarily protective and insulating role of the Japanese forces is the constitutional theory of the Border Region.Unlike the Frontier Area, where it is exceedingly difficult to gloss over the autonomy of Communist rule, the Border Region is definitely established as a war-time agency, controlling territory beyond the reach of the provincial governments.The provincial governments still function, in unoccupied corners of their provinces, or in exile, and the openly provisional (lin-shih) nature of the Border Region makes it palatable even to Kuomintang conservatives.

The pattern of government is one of devolution from an Executive Committee, which was established by a meeting of officials, volunteers, mass organizations, and others at Fup'ing in January 1938.The area is divided into provincial districts which are able to function with economy of personnel.The following outline illustrates the structure of this area:[17]

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Secretariat
Civil Affairs Department
Financial Affairs Department
Education Department
Industry Department
Justice Department

Inspectorates of the Seven Provincial Districts

Hsien Governments or Joint Hsien Governments or Sub-Hsien Governments

Hsien Districts

Village Committees

A very high degree of direct popular government has been achieved. Over wide areas, the average age of the hsien magistrates is in the twenties. Recruitment to the Region of numerous professors and students from Peiping has helped to fill the need for trained personnel, and has assisted in maintaining the area as a genuine multi-group affair rather than a Communist front. Communists, although present and highly esteemed, do not hold the highest formal offices. (For further consideration of the United Front problem, see below, p. 123.)

The New Fourth Army (Hsin-ssŭ-chün), third of the special zones, was formed by re-consolidation of the small mutually isolated Soviet areas left behind when the main Communist forces made the celebrated Long March.When first assembling under the truce, these Red units faced a certain amount of difficulty from the provincial military who did not grasp the United Front idea, but the Military Affairs Commission recognized them.The Army did not establish a government except through its Political Department, which coordinated political work of the volunteer village committees.[18]

According to available reports, the Army stands far to the Left of the Border Region.Formally United Front, its proportion of Communists is much higher and Communist control more telling.Operating in East Central China—the Anhwei-Kiangsu-Kiangsi-Fukien-Chekiang area—which provided the base of ten years' Communist insurrection and was long the home of the Chinese Soviet Republic, the New Fourth Army Zone represents a recrudescence of Soviet activities under different names and with a different military objective. This fact has caused intense dissatisfaction among some Kuomintang generals, who spent half their careers trying to root out Communism in that same area. They do not mind the Communist zone in the Northwest, where an effective informal cordon sanitaire can be drawn, but renewed Communist activity in the Yangtze valley impresses them as an evil not much less than pro-Japanese treason.

The New Fourth Zone, the Border Region, and the Frontier Area—together with a wide scattering of guerrilla areas and governments individually of less but collectively of equal importance—are the military step-children of the Chinese government. They all receive subsidies for their work, varying in amount. Usually this is calculated on the number of hsien actually occupied as bases, so that the sum provides for a far smaller number of villages than those directly affected. In the case of troops, the salary allowances are based on the permitted size of the units, in almost all cases below the actual numbers. The money is paid to the commanders or other leading officials, who then set salary rates incomparably lower than those of the central forces. The money thus saved is applied to the general budget of the forces. Corruption, while occasional and inescapable, seems to be more sharply punished in the guerrilla than in the government areas.

In January 1941, the New Fourth Army was officially abolished, following a clash with regular National Government forces.The clash arose from a fundamental difference between the Generalissimo and the New Fourth leaders concerning the nature of the Chinese government.The Communists and their sympathizers held that the unity of China was a political union between separate groups. When the Generalissimo ordered the New Fourth Army to move North, and oppose the Japanese forces above the Yangtze, the New Fourth countered with a demand for arms and funds. Treating this as military insubordination in war time, the central forces attacked the New Fourth—each side claiming that the other opened hostilities—capturing Yeh Ting, the commander. The rest of the Army was officially abolished, although its main forces were within the occupied zone and outside the Generalissimo's reach. A full Communist-Nationalist clash was avoided, however, and the Red leaders unwillingly acquiesced in the Generalissimo's interpretation of the episode as a military and not a political affair. The conflict brought forth the fundamental Communist question: are the Chinese Communists loyal first to the Chinese government, or first to the Communist Party? No answer was forthcoming, although the Communists failed to rebel elsewhere. The Generalissimo, by military swiftness and political acumen, had triumphed in one more particular instance.

With the parsimonious policy of the central government keeping them in fiscal extremity, the more Leftist guerrilla units make up their lack of funds with direct economic measures.These include suspensions of rents to landlords, regulation of share-cropping, lowering of taxes on the poorer farmers, and creation of cooperatives.The Communists have strained every point to avoid actual class war, and the economic reforms of the guerrilla and special areas are smoothed by the usual absence of the landlords.The political necessity of a bold economic policy remains important, if the special areas are to continue their activity against Japan or—in the Frontier Area case—their independence.Political development thus is inclined to stress the use of popular machinery of government, not for the creation of systematic, modern, responsible bureaucracy, but for pushing vigorous mass action, direct popular government, and socio-economic reconstruction, revolutionary by implication if not by immediate content.

Not all the guerrilla areas fall into the Left pattern. The Kuomintang, so long habituated to control of the state mechanism that its revolutionary background is somewhat dimmed, is bringing Kuomintang guerrilla work into action. The Party and Government War Area Commission is the chief supervisory agency for this work, and an enormous amount of planning has been done. Actual application of mass-movement work seems as yet to lag behind that of the Left. Meanwhile, in most areas except the Communist Northwest, Kuomintang officers, officials, teachers, and volunteers are active. The guerrilla groups all accept the same flag, hail Chiang as their leader, recognize the San Min Chu I as the state ideology, and maintain the cherished symbols of unity.

The Government and the Kuomintang were reportedly seeking a settlement of the whole special-area problem, in anticipation of the close of war, by urging the movement of all Communist or Communist-infiltrated forces Northward, so that a more or less continuous Left corridor would run from the Border Region to the Frontier Area.This precipitated the clash with the New Fourth Army; in March 1941 no settlement has been reached.Part of this is owing to the Communist desire to have unrestricted agitational rights, and to official Kuomintang insistence that no Party other than itself is constitutionally legitimate.The special areas meanwhile prepare fighters in the anti-Japanese war, and are helped by a government which is proud of them as Chinese but mistrustful of them as Leftists.And they develop vigorous applications of democratic formulae which challenge the reality and sincerity of everything the National Government does behind the lines.

Despite recurrent clashes, it is likely that the areas and the government will continue their present relations.In part this is owing to the genuineness of the universal hatred of Japan and the devotion to the long-cherished unification now achieved; in even greater part the wrangling, acrimonious, but effective cooperation of the government and the guerrilla Left depends on their equal and great desire for such cooperation.The highest Kuomintang leaders—above all others, Chiang—have pledged themselves to unity and cooperation, and are determined to eschew civil war in the midst of invasion; the higher Communist leaders are equally determined.In three years of collaboration, the highest officers on each side have developed very genuine respect for each other's sincerity.Quarrels are provoked by the men in-between, overbearing Nationalists or the doctrinaire Communists, who cannot forget 1927-37.(The author talked to one Communist leader who had an odd, not unattractive muscular tic in his face: the consequence of Kuomintang torture a few years past.Yet he collaborates, and so do his Kuomintang equivalents, men whose parents lie in unknown graves.)The common people on both sides want peace above all else, internal peace between factions, and peace—after victory, and then only—with Japan.The juxtaposed and competitive forces watch one another, compete in the development of institutions, and engage in an auction of good government: whoever wins the deepest love and esteem of the Chinese people wins China in the end.Few institutional reforms in the West have had such fateful stimuli.