Government in Republican China Part 17

They serve as advance posts of the Soviet Union--precedent for the creation of puppet states within China. Years later the j.a.panese manufactured a "state" in Eastern Inner Mongolia, with the cooperation of anti-Chinese Mongol princes, which j.a.pan has publicized very little.

Known in the world press as _Mengkokuo_, it provides a j.a.panese buffer state to meet the Russian buffer of Outer Mongolia. On October 29, 1937, it reached its latest phase with the proclamation of the Autonomous Government of Inner Mongolia.

The Great Empire of Manchou, to use its present official name, arose as Manchoukuo. The word itself was a concession to world opinion, as Manchuria is known to the Chinese simply as the Three Eastern Provinces (Tung San Sheng); its population is overwhelmingly Chinese. With the development of Chinese national unity, the j.a.panese position in this area was threatened. They invaded Manchuria in September, 1931; the following year they proclaimed the independence of Manchoukuo, inviting the young man who as a child had been the last Manchu emperor of China to serve as the head of the state. In 1934 he was installed as Emperor Kang Teh of the Great Empire of Manchou. The j.a.panese have done a great deal toward bettering their own economic position in Manchuria, but the effect of their policies on the Chinese population is of doubtful merit.

Equal motives underlay the rebirth of Peking, where on December 14, 1937, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was proclaimed.[11] The old Peking-Republican flag was flown. The heads of the new regime were aged men who already twenty years ago had cooperated with the j.a.panese. Others served under duress and performed their mock routine in the cold agony of treason. The new administration is honeycombed with j.a.panese "advisers" and under the domination of the j.a.panese army.

To round out their collection of puppet governments, the j.a.panese established in the spring of 1938 a Reformed Government of the Republic of China in Nanking, and even went so far as to adopt--provisionally, at least--the const.i.tutional form of the National Government, which had moved upriver. This regime was admittedly even more ephemeral than the others, and the j.a.panese announced their intention of consolidating it with the set-up they had organized in Peiping. For the time, it was to be subordinate for purposes of theory to the Northern regime, but the future of the whole j.a.panese adventure was in doubt, and that of their half-conceived instrumentalities even more dubious.

_The Growth of Government in China_

In the decade following 1927, Chinese government became more significant than it had been since the days of the founding emperors of the Ch'in and the Han. Power was based on a correlation of government with ideological and military forces. The Nationalist Party was the first to effectuate this correlation, in part as a result of lessons learned from the Soviet advisers in the period of collaboration.[12] The Nationalists utilized the doctrinal bases of the _San Min Chu I_, tested in the social revolution which arose from the Nationalist-Communist propaganda.

The great personal prestige of Sun Yat-sen was one of the most important contributing factors to the growth of Nationalist administration in Canton.

The military ability and political leaders.h.i.+p of Chiang K'ai-shek largely determined the success of the subsequent National Government.

Chiang created a military machine superior to any other in China and coordinated army and government in such a way as to add strength to both.[13] But Chiang stood not alone. His wife became his _alter ego_ for press relations, and important in her own right. His brother-in-law T. V. Soong, resourceful financier, and his sisters-in-law, Mme Sun Yat-sen (Sun's second wife) and Mme H. H. K'ung (wife of a later minister of finance), were strong influences at Nanking. Yet these members of the "Soong dynasty" did not shape the course of Nanking policies as a closed concern. They were part of a larger group sharing responsibility equally.

Once the National Government was established its success was largely the result of success. Improvements in the international status of China accrued to the prestige of the regime, and a new surge toward reconstruction, delayed intolerably long by the anarchy of _tuchuns_, occurred as the result of the Nanking hegemony. In the later years of the National Government, before the j.a.panese onslaught transformed it into a quasi-military regime fighting for its existence, the increased extent of the national police power was brought into sharp relief. With the extension of a unified gendarmery service over great parts of the nation, and the development of a court system which worked well except when under political pressure, the individual came to face government as a reality--more than ever before, under any dynasty. The government defied custom and tradition in promoting public health, in attacking epidemics, in sponsoring modern burial practices, and in deriding unhygienic superst.i.tions. In the broad field of mores which adjoins public health, the influence of the government made itself felt--in reducing the cost of marriage, in promoting munic.i.p.al cleanliness and tidiness in public places, in furthering temperance. The New Life movement combined the prestige of the government with the elasticity of voluntary a.s.sociation. In its closing days Nanking whipped up an unprecedented wave of public spirit among the ma.s.ses.

As to government control of the economy, the Nanking government aimed at system, in place of the inchoate conditions which existed before its ascendancy. Chinese banks began to be as reliable as those of the West.

The currency was standardized on a national basis. A national fiscal policy was adopted. A great achievement was the introduction of a managed paper currency in a country where specie alone had been respected for ages. Agriculture, however, was lagging behind.

Government disavowed its previous identification with a scholastic officialdom. It dispensed with a state religion, although the commemoration of Sun Yat-sen compensated in part for the change.

Government disclaimed any vague totalitarianism and instead clarified its zone of functioning through the use of law. By narrowing the field of its authority, it increased its effectiveness. Nationalization, centralization, bureaucratization, the development of lawful process, the emergence of a half-Western state working for Chinese needs--thus may the growth of government be characterized in the period after 1928.

Obstacles remained, enough to dismay any ruler; but they had become obstacles and were not impa.s.sable barriers of cynicism, incomprehension, and futility.

The j.a.panese invasion of 1937 had two immediate effects on the government. It shattered overnight the structure erected by the Nanking regime. The work of a decade was undone. On the other hand, the j.a.panese threat helped to drive the Communists and Nationalists together and forced into the national nexus those regional leaders who were maintaining the last vestiges of separatism. Most consequential of all: j.a.pan's push--the greatest invasion the Chinese had known since the 1600's--thrust government and people toward each other. Foreign troops taught inland China what nationalism really meant.

They taught nationalism not merely with the fury of their guns, or with the cruelties of their hysterical troops in Nanking. The j.a.panese fostered nationalism most strikingly when they drove inland the protagonists of nationalism. Students, merchants, engineers, soldiers, administrators, physicians, and scientists of the coast were forced into the far interior. Villagers to whom the sight of these modern Chinese was as rare as the sight of a lama in Arkansas now had such refugees dwelling among them. The effect of forced cultural cross-fertilization is yet to be seen, but it may prove to be of extraordinary significance.

Chinese able to hold their own with any representative of the Western world can now be found in the remote valleys and plateaus of the hinterland--twentieth-century China and timeless China, united in their hatred of the invaders, and deeply aware of their new national unity, their desperate need for power.

NOTES

[1] See above, pp. 41 ff.

[2] See Wu Chih-fang, _Chinese Government and Politics_, pp. 147 ff., Shanghai, 1934.

[3] The outline given and the description offered are brief and generalized because the j.a.panese invasion will probably lead to recurrent reorganization of the government. s.h.i.+h Chao-ying and Chang Chi-hsien (editors), _The Chinese Year Book_, 1936-1937, have an excellent series of short descriptions by acknowledged authorities of the organs of government. Some of these are: Tsui Wei-wu, "Kuomintang,"

pp. 223-229; Ray Chang, "Central and Local Administrative Systems," pp.

230-240; Tsiang Ting-fu, "Executive Yuan," pp. 241-246; Hsieh Pao-chao, "Legislative Yuan," pp. 247-292; Hsieh Kuan-sheng, "Judicial Yuan," pp.

293-336; Chien Chih-s.h.i.+u, "Control Yuan," pp. 337-347; Chen Ta-chi, "Examination Yuan," pp. 348-362; and Chu s.h.i.+h-ming, "Army," pp. 946-955.

This annual, which is written by Chinese in English and edited by Chinese, is not to be confused with the British _China Year Book_, 1912-; the latter gives a broad outline of Chinese government.

[4] Kalfred Dip Lum, _Chinese Government_, Shanghai, 1934. The author was himself a member of this convention; his work, therefore, possesses unusual interest.

[5] Tsiang Ting-fu, _loc. cit._ in note 3, pp. 244-245.

[6] A number of French doctoral dissertations by Chinese students deal with Chinese local government. Although they are of uneven quality, some give considerable material not otherwise available in a Western language. Among these are Chang-Yu-Sing, _L'Autonomie locale en Chine_, Nancy, 1933; Hsu Han-hao, _L'Administration provinciale en Chine_, Nancy, 1931; Ku-Yen-Ju, _Le Regime actuel le l'independance decentralisee en Chine_, Nancy, 1931; and Loo Kon-tung, _La Vie munic.i.p.ale et l'urbanisme en Chine_, Lyon, 1934. Among the most valuable and informing pictures of hsien government is "Hsien Government and Functions" by W. H. Ma, _The Chinese Recorder_ (Shanghai), vol. 68, pp.

506-512, 1937. The quotation is from p. 506. The _Information Bulletins_ published by the Council of International Affairs, Nanking, 1936-1937, include much material on Chinese politics and government. Especially interesting are E. C. Tang, _Five Years of the Control Yuan_, Nanking, 1936, and C. L. Hsia, _Background and Features of the Draft Const.i.tution of China_, Nanking, 1937.

[7] See "An Account of the Hsien and Banner Council System of Manchoukuo," _Contemporary Manchuria_ (Dairen), vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 92 ff., 1938.

[8] Compare the position of Chiang as Party Leader in China with that of the _Fuhrer_ in Germany, as described in Fritz Morstein Marx, _Government in the Third Reich_, 2d ed., pp. 62 ff., New York and London, 1937.

[9] See the news reports in _The China Weekly Review_ (Shanghai), vol.

84, pp. 150 ff., 1938.

[10] See _Fundamental Laws of the Chinese Soviet Republic_, p. 18, New York, 1934. Edgar Snow's _Red Star Over China_, New York, 1938, is the best book on the Chinese Communists. P. Miff, _Heroic China_, New York, 1937, is a useful condensed history of Communism in China based on the material currently available in the Soviet press. Mao Tse-tung, w.a.n.g Ming and others, _China: The March Toward Unity_, New York, 1937, contains some of Snow's material and also translations of important speeches and manifestoes regarding the inauguration of a United Front policy. A considerable amount of Chinese Communist material is to be found in the magazines _The Voice of China_ (now suspended), Shanghai, and _China Today_, New York.

[11] For a description of the nature and organization of the pro-j.a.panese Peking regime of 1937-1938 see Andrew W. Canniff, "j.a.pan's Puppets in China," _Asia_, vol. 38, pp. 151-153, 1938. The new Nanking regime is described in the _China Weekly Review_ (Shanghai), Apr. 2, 1938.

[12] Tsui Shu-chin, "The Influence of the Canton-Moscow Entente upon Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Tactics," _The Chinese Social and Political Science Review_ (Peiping), vol. 20, pp. 101 ff., 1936.

[13] For biographies of Chiang K'ai-shek see Chen Tsung-hsi, w.a.n.g An-tsiang, and w.a.n.g I-ting, _General Chiang Kai-shek, the Builder of New China_, Shanghai, 1929; Gustav Amann, _Chiang Kaishek und die Regierung der Kuomintang in China_, Berlin and Heidelberg, 1936, which is only incidentally a biography of Chiang, since its scope is that of providing nation-wide reportage; Hollington K. Tong, _Chiang Kai-shek_, 2 vols., Shanghai, 1937; and Robert Berkov, _Strong Man of China_, Boston, 1938.

The j.a.panese retired Admiral Is.h.i.+maru Tota published a sensational life of Chiang (which appeared in Chinese as _Chiang Chieh-s.h.i.+h Wei-ta_, Shanghai, 1937); since Mr. Is.h.i.+maru's other works have been translated into English, this one may soon be available for Western readers.

CONCLUSION

Government in China has in the Republican era undergone one of the most significant transformations to be found anywhere in the world's political experience. The oldest society on earth found itself forced to redefine its position and to reconstruct its ways of thought and internal means of organization. Pressure from without compelled China to adopt the modern state. Chinese society was required to incorporate this state and all implied inst.i.tutions in its routine living. The earlier period of the Republic marks an epoch in which modern forms had been established in harmony with the accepted standards of the Western state system. Chinese society fell into chaos beneath the up-to-date superstructure. The later period witnessed the correlation of state and society by coordination of ideological, military, and governmental power. From the collapse of the Manchu rule in 1911 to the operative zest of the National Government at Nanking in 1937 there was a revolution in the processes of government which for completeness can compare with any century of Western transformation.

_The Collapse of the Imperial Society_

Western ideology has failed to enter China as a constructive whole, but it has smashed whatever reality there was to the old world view.

Western-educated Chinese leaders.h.i.+p has undertaken the task of governing a people which has learned only indirectly of the West. In carrying out a program of adaptation, contemporary Chinese leaders.h.i.+p has relied on Sun Yat-sen's phrase, "modernization without Westernization." But a dilemma remains. How can the standards of the modern world be divorced from their Western origins? How can Western technology be used without the att.i.tude of mind which has created it and brought it to operative efficiency? How can a world which never knew Rome or the Normanic _Curia Regis_ know jurisprudence? How can modern government be made Chinese, when government itself has meant something far different in China from what it has meant in the West?

Further, the nature of Chinese leaders.h.i.+p has not only been transformed from being literary and ethical in its orientation to being technical and legal; it has also been transformed socially in the replacement of scholars by soldiers. The ideal ruler of old was a humane cla.s.sicist with a taste for historical studies; the contemporary Chinese ruler must be military, if not militaristic, and must have the inevitable background of engineering and management which modern war connotes. The soldier must collaborate with the modern administrator, while both recapture the high ideals of devotion typical of the old scholastic rule, even if they cannot use its substance. These imperatives are indispensable if China is to live.

Finally, the language system which did so much to create and then perpetuate the scholastic elite through thousands of years of Chinese culture has now submitted to changes deeper and more far-reaching than any in the past. The development of the _pai-hua_ school of literature and the progress of ma.s.s education indicate that even with ideographs the Chinese can reach conditions of uniform literacy approximating those which prevail in the advanced Western nations. If the alphabetization of the Chinese language, which is now in the form of tentative experiment, should become a fact, even more striking developments could take place.

Reading and writing, and on this basis the transmission of authoritative tenets, does not presuppose profound economic adjustments. The modern Chinese will know his cla.s.sics increasingly through paraphrases no more difficult than a newspaper column. When it is realized that the simplification of intellectual activity is offered to a people schooled in the idolatry of books, the potentialities of educational and intellectual renaissance--already partially realized--become apparent.

With the disappearance of the imperial world society of the Confucians as a consequence of its encirclement by Westernized states, with the pa.s.sing of the scholars and the rise of Western-trained soldiers, lawyers, and technicians, and with the alteration of the linguistic and intellectual foundation upon which the old society rested, what is there left of old China?

_The Nature of the Transformation_

In the first place, the ideological change is not complete. No Western idea can enter China unimpaired. Sun Yat-sen was influenced by the almost entirely contradictory notions of Western nationalism, democracy, and socialism. In the _San Min Chu I_ their Western ident.i.ty was destroyed, and the new doctrines had much in common with the past.

Western ideas served largely as a mold; when the mold was removed, the form was Western but the content was still Chinese. Mazzini and Confucius might both approve of Sun's political doctrines.

Secondly, the extrapolitical agencies of Chinese life remain. Chinese society may be shattered in dogma, but it persists in fact. The family, though subject to legal redefinition caused by Western cultural and economic influences, nevertheless plays a role far greater than in the West. The village is still the fundamental grouping among the rural ma.s.ses. The guild system is impaired by the Western impact, but the party organizations--Nationalist and Communist--have absorbed much of the strength which once lay in the _hui_. Under foreign domination, these inst.i.tutions may play a determining role in the struggle against the intruder.

Thirdly, for modern government the Chinese have resources of their own experience on which to rely. But they also have Western devices and prescriptions. The National Government, while falling short of Western levels of government efficiency, nevertheless trained large numbers of Chinese to think in terms of the modern state. But no new pattern has as yet crystallized. Chinese political and military development may well present a flexibility beyond Western grasp.

Fourth, the Chinese have still ahead of them the choice of criteria of authority to prevail in society. Learning, office, property played a decisive part in the old society. Hitherto, the Republic has grown with three modes of power: ideological, military, governmental. The relation between them is not yet determined.