Government in Republican China Part 4

In failing to provide a stopping point for the revolution before they started it, the Nationalists were scarcely guilty of rash action. No human being could have foretold the consequences of revolt against a civilization. The revolutionaries were men who had pa.s.sed through the transition from the old Confucian ideology to that of the West with relative ease. They did not realize that what was obvious to them would be a mystery to the ma.s.ses and that the political changes contemplated would rip asunder the very fabric of thought in China. It is evidence of the simplicity and usefulness of Confucian ideas that--even when admitted to be challenged by the new environment--they continued to operate without the sanction of intelligence, and operated well as empty habits.

With the old patriotic forces behind them, and an untested Utopia ahead, the Nationalists raced the Manchu Empire into revolution. The story of the revolution is not complex.[4] In a great part of China the people awoke to find no government. In the North the imperial officials and princes clamored for the a.s.sistance of a man whom they had once slighted: Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai, the leader of the modernized armies of the Empire. He held the fate of China in his hands. But he betrayed the Empire so that he might betray the Republic; he joined the revolutionaries and thrust a settlement upon the ruling house. With his intervention the whole picture of Chinese politics changed. Yuan brought troops into the play of power, troops dependent upon himself, men no longer interested in ideas now that the all-compelling force of the old way of thought was gone.

_Nationalism: Const.i.tutionalist Phase_

The Republic at Nanking enjoyed a brief Utopian existence, with Sun Yat-sen as its president. The revolutionaries were independent from October, 1911, to March, 1912, when the Republic became the instrument of Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai. No substantial power accrued to the legislative.

During their bright heyday of power as a parliamentary party under the Republic--which they had founded only to give it away to the military--the Nationalists were known as the _Kuomintang_. At this time the Chinese name of the party was significantly translated "Democratic Party." Sun Yat-sen and the revolutionaries had expected that the Chinese people would accept the new ideology without understanding it and then would come to understand it very quickly. They could not hope to replace the old ideology before the revolution, because the presence of the imperial government made large-scale educational work impossible.

After the establishment of the Republic, however, they found themselves hamstrung because they had not inculcated republicanism. It was a vicious circle. The governmental pattern set up at Nanking was replaced by another to make room for Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai, who proposed a third, in which he should have more power, in order that he might create a fourth government, in which he should be emperor.[5] The armies of the revolutionaries, such as they were, became absorbed in the forces of Yuan. When, in a few months, the Republic had been won and lost, the Nationalists realized that the revolution of 1911-1912 was only the first step in their labors. They experimented with a minor revolution in 1913, and then turned to other measures for securing a return to const.i.tutional government and the creation of a republic which should be as firmly rooted in men's minds as the majestic but irretrievable Confucian order had been. They had won the revolution by creating doubt and giving it tangible expression; they lost their revolution because doubt persisted, swallowed everything, leaving China in a turmoil beyond all systematic thought.

The first years of the nominal Republic, the beginning of the new order in China, were marked by a feverish pretense of changed forms. The outlook which superseded the ancient ideology was curious. It was a mixture of traditionalist acceptance of temporary disorder and resignation to a period of transformation into an unconceived and unproclaimed future. This outlook gave life no purpose, but it kept men from falling into complete anarchy. People were willing to accept illegal authorities, since local administrators had traditionally maintained a spotty cloak of public order. Modern Chinese were prepared to pay lip service to a preposterous parliamentary regime but soon found that it was comfortable to think in terms such as armies, foreign interference, and money--thus allowing their thinking to settle in the large framework of an accepted disorder.

The Nationalists tried to combat this anticonst.i.tutional way of thought.

For six years (1914-1920) they combined conspiratorial techniques with the role of a legally const.i.tuted power fighting for law. They a.s.sumed the name _Chinese Revolutionary Party_ until they discovered that they could secure no ideological foothold upon which to base the order they proposed. Some of them went so far as to become anarchists, favoring a continuance of disorder until the world joined China in collapse. Others followed an unrealistic legalism; they held to the paper const.i.tution, to the text of the president's oath of allegiance to the const.i.tution, to the election laws, thinking that the magic of ink would conjure up a government. Sun Yat-sen, and the body of his followers with him, attempted to chart a middle course; in 1917 there was created a "lawful"

administration in the South. With extraordinary good fortune the Republic might have succeeded, but the war in Europe, the j.a.panese interventions, and other adverse circ.u.mstances prevented this.

The Nationalists changed the name of their party back to _Kuomintang_ after 1920 but did not discontinue their reformist policies until about two years later. Sun Yat-sen had spent years in study and propaganda; eventually his program became an ideology. No sharp line can be drawn between the two. In some respects the very first programs of the revolutionaries were ideological, in that they presupposed a change in man's outlook which would accommodate republican government. On the other hand, programmatic proposals may be distinguished from ideological theses by the fact that programs refer to things which should be done and ideologies to things in which men should believe in order to do anything at all. A program which is rooted in no ideology is one lacking context; unless a program refers to some accepted scheme of thought it is words in a vacuum. Similarly, an ideology without programs to put it into men's minds, to persuade men to believe in it and give it effect, is an airy prettiness for philosophers. The Nationalists had stood on the foundations of Confucian common sense and proposed a republic; they had destroyed the organization which made that common sense seem real and had cut the ground from under their own feet. They could not distinguish values because their critical att.i.tude enveloped all moral notions or made them isolated points without coherent significance. The Nationalists themselves fell prey to day-dreaming when they appealed to worthless paper for their right to govern. The epoch is significant in the history of the movement in that it taught the Nationalists that men would not fight unless there was something to fight for and that there was nothing to fight for until men could find desirable elements embedded in some larger scheme of life. Politics had to have an end and an environment; without either it was a series of monologues in the wilderness, the soliloquies of logicians.

Sun Yat-sen during this time wrote the drafts of monumental treatises which were to relate the general body of his doctrines to the background of fact and thought from which they had emerged. He never finished them, but meanwhile he and his followers realized that if they were to have a grip over government they must grasp power within the brains of men. The revolutionary reformists had to supply some better medium of persuasion than the frivolity of military cynicism or the impudence of shadow government. They had to abandon legalism and bring forth an ideology capable of serving as the new foundation for a just and effective system of government in China. If their original importance was that of an effective counter-elite springing up in the intellectual borderlands between the Western and Chinese ideologies, their second period of significance begins with their realization that a new framework of thought would have to be set up before any of their programs could be effectuated.

_The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen_

The ideology which the Nationalists were to teach was one which had lain dormant in the party for more than thirty years. It was the invention of Sun Yat-sen--his reinterpretation of Confucianism to suit the modern world. He did not settle down with books before him, pen in hand and notebooks all about, to formulate a Utopia; nor did he approach the subject as a historian, seeking scientific causes for the emotions and loyalties of men. He came to the subject as a political leader, modifying the given background only so far as was necessary. His doctrines grew with his personal growth and the development of his movement. They are scattered among a variety of writings and utterances, and are contradictory in many points although remarkably consistent as a whole.

Sun Yat-sen asked himself: What is China? China is a race, he said, a race which was once great and which held benevolent world leaders.h.i.+p in the world it knew. It has declined because it has fallen upon evil days, under the rule of outsiders, barbarians, and has failed to develop in ways which the West discovered. This race should be a nation in the modern world; a great, powerful, united, effective nation in a world of nations. It should fight for its right of self-rule and should support justice in the international community. In order to achieve greatness, the Chinese will have to turn their nation into an effective state and add the devices of law to the devices of social control through ideology. They should rethink their ideology, keeping the old ethical philosophy and the old social knowledge (the technique of control through thought, as in Confucianism) but adding Western technics. They should then strive to make their nation the leader in progress toward world peace and eventual cosmopolitanism. China should turn to nationalism for the time--decades or centuries--that remained for the travail of nations, but the Chinese should never forget the world society whence they came. This is the first of Sun's three principles, _nationalism_.

The second principle referred to the problem of leaders.h.i.+p and the organization of government. Obviously, the Chinese could not return to monarchy in the modern world. In the first place, it would not be modern; Sun lived at a time when the democratic tide was sweeping to its high point and when the world triumph of democracy seemed a foregone conclusion. Secondly, Sun thought it disloyal to China's past for the Chinese to evade the responsibility of democracy, as it was implicit in their most ancient traditions and thus an obligation laid upon them by their first great leaders. Thirdly, he thought that good administration was to be derived from democracy more readily than from any other system. Fourthly, because democracy was a modernizing force, it should be introduced; the people, partic.i.p.ating in progress, would themselves become progressive. Fifthly and most necessarily, democracy was simply the self-control of a nation. If the nation was to be created and made free through nationalism it had to become democratic, since there was no other way for a whole people to express and rule itself. But the Chinese needed specific devices[6] in order to a.s.sure that the old system of selecting an intellectual leaders.h.i.+p would not be compromised or destroyed by democracy. They should see to it that democracy did not become mob rule. The Chinese people should become self-indoctrinating and thus maintain ideological control along with political. But the Chinese should accommodate the concept of the state in their thinking, since the concentration of power in Western states made it necessary that there be in China an equivalent social device for ca.n.a.lizing and concentrating power, in order to meet Western and j.a.panese attacks. The egalitarian features of democracy should be congenial to the democracy of customs and manners which was indigenous to old China. This was the second principle, _democracy_.

The third principle was the restatement in modern political terms of the cardinal economic principles of the past, together with an infusion of newly invented doctrines. It protected the livelihood of the people, and may be summed up in a single sentence: No government deserves to exist unless it a.s.sures its people of the maximum of material welfare possible under prevailing physical conditions. Government was of no use if the people perished. The state was nothing if its substance was lost.

Political leaders.h.i.+p should aim at constant improvement of economic conditions, spread economic benefits, and make the nation healthy. In doing so it was not to be bound by any creed of capitalism or communism but was to experiment and seek the most efficient measures for the benefit of the whole community. This last principle involved the _life_ of the nation, as nationalism did its _birth_ and democracy its _freedom_. It was an ethical doctrine rather than a schematic principle, and cannot be properly translated. It should best be left in the Chinese, and expressed by two words which mean "people" and "generation": _min sheng_.

This ideology gave the Nationalists a faith to propagate. It was designed to achieve the revision of the old Confucian ideology; experience and the accepted ideology would supply this new skeleton with flesh. It differed radically from the Marxian doctrine in that it was traditionalistic and nationalistic; it resembled the Marxian doctrine in that it sought to create a whole new intellectual civilization before turning to the question of government.

The new ideology had to make headway against other propagandas, the partially adequate ways of thought which had grown up since the establishment of the Republic. It had to restore life to the vast corpse of Confucianism, and soon after its first general promulgation (1924) had to fight its temporary ally--communism--for power over Chinese minds.

_Opportunist Movements and their Anticonst.i.tutional Effects_

The field which the Nationalists invaded to propagate their doctrines was already occupied. The slow evaporation of the Confucian moral, intellectual, and social system had given rise to various movements which, for lack of a better term, may be called _half-ideological_.

These movements made no pretense of presenting a new order sufficient for Chinese thought and belief, but--in the opinion of those const.i.tuting them--they did afford an adequate frame of reference for immediate action. Some of the half-ideologies were: (1) military feudalism, (2) provincial _tuchunism_ (3) China-wide militarism, (4) bureaucratism, and (5) capitalism. Although none of them succeeded in indoctrinating broad ma.s.ses of the population, yet each was effective in a negative way. Each obstructed the development of any coherent system of social and political life. Each was anticonst.i.tutional, since it proposed to const.i.tute a scheme narrowly pragmatic or unattainable in fact.

The presence of these movements gave China an appearance of considerable freedom in the earlier years of the Republican era. Diversity of opinion based upon a fundamental concord in outlook--diversity circ.u.mscribed by one cohesive ideology--may be most wholesome in social and political life. When diversity penetrates so deep as to include all major aspects of human existence, it becomes insupportable, a hindrance and not a stimulant to action. When policy is predetermined by tradition, thought is easy, action relatively more difficult; when there is discord even on fundamentals, thought is difficult, action easy. Almost any scheme mitigating the evils of discord will be a.s.sured a hearing; if the world cannot be rationalized, the individual will be.

Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai inaugurated, in his efforts to control China through military means, a way of thought which might be characterized as military feudalism of the twentieth century variety, an order based upon contract between commander and soldier, upon the payment of wages by the former and the performance of any task by the latter. This militarism never flowered in literature, never developed a political theory, never achieved governmental form. Even Yuan felt its inadequacy as a state philosophy, and by his attempt to establish a modern monarchy ruined what chances he might have had for antic.i.p.ating Mussolini with a Fascist movement. As it was, the movement of military thought was derived from the facts rather than propagated to excuse the facts. The militarists themselves abandoned it whenever they found subst.i.tutes.

Nevertheless, the movement for a military ideology was at times the prevailing mode of thought among the men who held power in China. They were able to gain perspective on their own behavior by reference to the old traditions, regarding themselves as upright magistrates in a time of chaos. For working purposes they could claim from their subordinates and superiors a vague const.i.tutionalism limited to army circles. Amid the cowardice, betrayal, and corruption in the military dictators.h.i.+ps, tendencies occasionally appeared leading toward an effective military spirit. Certain kinds of betrayal or cruelty were beyond the limits of good soldiering, but not many.

A more effective explanation for the condition of the armies in China from 1916 to about 1931 may be found in _tuchunism_. A _tuchun_ was a military commandant ruling an area ranging from a few districts to a number of provinces.[7] The imperial regime maintained a military counterpart to the provincial governor. After the Republican Revolution provinces tended to become separate and autonomous under military leaders. The military man, who was p.r.o.ne to apologize for his position by admitting that he was not developing a permanent establishment, who held his troops together by a modern feudalism, could also rationalize his role by presenting himself to his province as a good son, by stressing the wickedness and strangeness of the soldiers in other provinces, and by suggesting the thought of federalism. The scheme was not convincing or edifying, but it could become temporarily popular. A great part of the news from China is still written in terms of _tuchunism_--since it is a simple pattern and requires no explanation involving Chinese peculiarities. Satrapies have become tyrannies in all ages. At the very best the _tuchunist_ movement could not have served well as the const.i.tuent force of a new China. It would necessarily have ended in one-man government, almost unthinkable with modern Chinese conditions; or it would have implied a military federalism which is scarcely a solution to the problem of unity.

Military cliques at times had China-wide proportions, but despite the proclamations which were occasionally issued, there was no effective single movement for a general military regime. Such movements as there were developed within the framework of the shadow Republic. Moreover, the s.h.i.+fting alignments of Chinese wars within the nominal organization of the Republic were so confused as to make almost anything but order seem possible. Yet many Chinese thought in terms of a "realism"

compounded of slogans and military exigencies.

If movements for military feudalism, provincial _tuchunism_, and (most nebulous of all) China-wide militarism failed to provide more than an explanation of immediate fact, there were counterparts in the civilian administration aspiring to political autonomy for particular cliques.

Ministries tended at times to develop a spirit of independence. Finance was too close to the military, but the revenue collection services (with a large European and j.a.panese personnel) and the postal services behaved as _imperia in imperio_. The foreign office functioned frequently without effective superiors. Working without pay a great part of the time, in a period which offered no near solution for its disastrous troubles, bureaucrats saw in the increase of bureaucracy a possible inauguration of order. The ministries did function in a way, despite the chaos about them. They might have evolved a new bureaucratism to steal the _tuchuns'_ power. Their spirit was helpful in particular and damaging in general, since it was bound to sabotage any government which might come to power. A few years of insecurity may weld a bureaucracy together more closely than would decades of spoils; this was the case between 1916 and 1928. Bureaucratism demonstrates the limitations of opportunist ideology as a foundation for government.

Capitalism flourished wherever economic conditions made it possible; such economic conditions did not last very long under the jurisdiction of the military. In treaty ports[8] the Chinese capitalists prospered, secure under governments which were international in effect, Chinese only in legal fiction. There Chinese soon ama.s.sed enough capital to compete with economic inst.i.tutions erected by foreigners, and exercised an important indirect influence on the growth of Chinese government.

Capitalism helped to thwart a peasant-labor alliance in China, for although the capitalists were an insignificant minority without country-wide influence, its form of control was mobile. No army, no surge of popular resentment, no propaganda, no conspirator can travel as fast as a telegraphic money order. The ideology of capitalism was content in China to remain subordinate as long as the political and legal conditions were favorable to it. Capitalist groups supported any sort of strong government which might protect property and increase opportunities for investment.

Among the most pitiful of the movements for the construction of a general agreement in China were the proalien movements. They were pitiful because they represented a prost.i.tution of thought by men conscious of the nature of their action. The Anfu Party flourished in the first decade after the death of Yuan in 1916; together with its militarism and its meaningless "realism" it was pro-j.a.panese. The present "government" in North China[9] is another such movement.

Manchoukuo bases little of her official ideology on such a dangerous outlook and prefers to propagate a Confucianist traditionalism in so far as she propagates anything. Pro-j.a.panese action may express a discontent with the competence of the Chinese for self-government, but more forcefully it relates to theories of Pan-Asianism or Pan-Mongolism.

The opportunist movements--militarism, _tuchunism_, military federalism, bureaucratic separatism, capitalism, and political puppetry--served to confuse the basic alternatives. Because they reflected a narrow and accidental scheme of power rather than long-range transformation, they possessed a specious realism which obfuscated real issues. They distracted attention without rewarding it and polarized opinion around conflicts which were beyond settlement. There is no possibility of agreement between men who think one another deluded in regard to fundamentals. Disorder in China was the more violent because of these different explanations. They delayed the creation of a framework in which men could find a common reasonableness, an ideology sufficient to rationalize all interests and to sublimate all frustrations.

_Christianity as a Political Force_

Ever since the establishment of American and British Protestant missions in the nineteenth century, Christianity has been a conditioning force for a democratic ideology in Asia.[10] The Protestants were among the first to make a breach in the stronghold of Confucianism; they secured international action to a.s.sist them. Their role was that of counter-ideologues whose position was guaranteed by treaty (British Treaty of Tientsin, 1858; American Treaty of Tientsin, 1858). They possessed the power, under the legal sanction of the Chinese government, to preach against the moral foundations upon which that government rested. A missionary wrote in 1887:

The foremost opposition to the introduction of Christianity comes from those who esteem themselves the followers of Confucius. They a.s.sent to our views about the "emptiness" of Buddhism, the deceptions of Taoism, the character of the priesthood, the mud and stone of the images, but when we gently allude to ancestral idolatry, the wors.h.i.+p of heaven and earth, and the sacrifices of the mandarins, they are offended. Also, the Confucianists do the thinking for the people; they have the minds, the books, the schools, and the offices. Without a long residence in the country it is hard to imagine the influence of a penniless scholar in his neighbourhood, and the mental control he exercises over the minds of the peasantry. More than this, the graduates at the government examinations form a clique or "ring," and their voice is the unwritten law of China, their authority above that of His Excellency the Governor. The lamented Carstairs Douglas said at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1877, "Confucianism is the citadel; take it, and the war is ended."[11]

But for the presence of Christianity, a Chinese counter-elite with sufficient moral self-a.s.surance and intellectual ability to attack the traditional inst.i.tutions of the Empire might not have developed. Sun Yat-sen was a Christian, although in his case Christianity has been less of a modernizing force compared with the influence of his actual experience abroad. Large numbers of the reformist and republican leaders were Christian, some of them with missionary or Y. M. C. A. connections.

These men were not bound by the moral tenets of Confucianism; those among them who had mission school educations had little in common with the long intellectual tradition of the Chinese. For a while Christianity spelled Westernization and provided an avenue of self-advancement hitherto unprecedented in China--one outside the archaic scheme of things.

With the coming of the Republic, Christian ethics appeared to have an open field. The emphasis which Christianity places upon the value of individual human life was favorable to the emergence of modern republican inst.i.tutions. Even Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai is said to have acknowledged the influence of Christianity in this respect; he is reported to have said, in an interview with a leading missionary educator, "You missionaries are responsible for this revolution. Now you must see us through."[12] The implication of doctrines of human brotherhood is obvious, despite the fact that such doctrines--in less forceful and spiritual form--were a familiar feature of certain Chinese philosophies.

In its more direct effects Christianity demonstrated a variety of new points to the Chinese. The intervention of the missionaries was not only moral; it was scientific, and the early mission leaders brought Western engineering and industrial methods with them. They published the first journal in Chinese to give regular accounts of practical mechanics. As the missions themselves developed, the physical presence of the Protestant missionaries and of Western ways of life--to which they adhered in contrast with the Catholics--became strong informational influences. Later the rise of churches and of Christian establishments gave the Chinese experience in the Western methods of social and business organization.

In practical administration the Christian impact has been striking.

American missionaries were influential in developing popular education in China. They have led the way in public health. They have organized model orphanages and have a.s.sailed infanticide, footbinding, and concubinage. They have been the public opinion of the Western world, right on the spot, and have introduced the Chinese to a great many of the best features of Western life. Finally, the Christians have embellished and justified Western imperialism in China. The mission enterprises have been among the most expensive and elaborate philanthropic agencies ever set up by one state for the benefit of another. The advance of the West has been saved from seeming unrelieved imperialism. The West has taken, but it has also returned. Christianity has been the companion and the antagonist of Western exploitation in the East; it has suffered and benefited because of this position.

The total contribution of Christianity to Chinese politics cannot be a.s.sessed. The ways of Christian influence are frequently pervasive and incalculable. In the headquarters of the Chinese Red Army, Chinese Communist leaders have quietly gone away to pray. The Christians have breached the Confucian citadel and have weakened the ideological foundations of government. They have also torn the web of Chinese popular superst.i.tion and afforded a foothold for religion in a truer sense. There has been no genuine Christian party, no real Christian army, no government avowedly Christian in policy. Nevertheless, the first president of the Republic was a Christian, as was the outstanding founder of the National Government at Nanking, Chiang K'ai-shek. The Protestant Church counts among its members a large number of the highest government personnel; no other religion plays as active a part.

Christianity, then, has been an indirect force, not a program or an immediate political challenge.

_Nationalism: Social-revolutionary Phase_

In 1912 the Nationalists had won their revolution, which was political in nature, but they found in the ensuing years that mere change in the form of government would not of itself bring about the needed regeneration of Chinese society. By 1922 Sun Yat-sen and his followers possessed a well-defined ideology and a definite new revolutionary program but they had neither a way of propagating the ideology nor a method of realizing the program. Sun himself thought in political and economic rather than agitational terms. He sought loans from abroad and schemed for power in the turbulent military politics of the time. His slogan was still that of the Confucians: "Hold office in order to teach." The Nationalists intended to gain a political rostrum from which to expound their teachings, since they no longer hoped to rule effectively without converting the ma.s.ses to their way of thought. They had not yet realized that conversion scarcely required governing and that--given the appropriate technique--they might agitate more successfully as an opposition than as a government.

The means of systematically winning men's minds--wholesale and high-speed agitation--did not occur to the Nationalists because the Bolshevist revolution was the only successful demonstration of such methods, and Russia was not yet understood. China was just reaching that phase of revolution which the Communists had already traversed in Russia. Without the benefit of Russian advice, the Kuomintang might have become a political sect with long-range plans. Fortunately for their cause, the Kuomintang leaders were willing to learn and the Russians willing to teach. Mere physical contact served to inaugurate the process.

Contact was not afforded by way of the Communist Party of China, a small and largely academic group which developed after 1920, but through direct correspondence and negotiation between Sun Yat-sen and Moscow.

Sun had communicated with persons of influence all over the world, trying to build up interest in the future of a united and powerful China. He had conceived a plan for the international development of China which envisaged the extension of Allied war budgets for one year after the war, and the lending of vast sums for the modernization of China. He believed that his project would appeal to imperialism and at the same time would serve to create in China a modern state-socialist industrialism. China would thereby become a customer for all the capitalist nations of the world and alleviate the depression which was bound to follow the war. Correspondence about other projects for ideological and political reconstruction elicited more replies from Russia than from anywhere else. Sun was not doctrinaire in the furtherance of immediate projects. He was willing to accept help from the Russians, just as he would have accepted help from the imperialist nations had they been prepared to risk their money. From 1920 onward he was in touch with the Bolsheviks.

In December, 1922, and January, 1923, the decisive turning point was reached. Adolf Joffe, the Soviet representative in China, had come to Shanghai and conferred with Sun Yat-sen. These two found that there were terms on which they could cooperate. The Communist ideology and that of the Nationalists coincided in their general opposition to imperialism.

Resistance to the treaties which bound China[13] became more and more apparent to Sun as a necessity for further revolutionary progress. He had met polite regret or open ridicule in his solicitation of help for China from the imperialist powers, and his invitation to Western capital had not been taken seriously. The Communists seemed to have adequate idealistic and practical motives for joining the Chinese.

The Communists, moreover, conceded a point which they had not conceded to any other country up to that time. They willingly a.s.sumed a secondary position, agreed that the communist order of things was not suited to China, and in effect guaranteed their practical a.s.sistance to the Nationalists without demanding, as the price, the acceptance of Marxism.