Government in Republican China Part 6

The old ideology was to be adjusted and supplemented with Western science, so that the new would be compounded of three things: old Chinese social and political experience, old Chinese ethical knowledge, and modern scientific truth. With respect to Western science, the Nationalists had to present few startling governmental innovations, since the need for a knowledge of the physical and technical sciences was widely recognized in China--not only by the Nationalists. That the Western technology should serve to build the new China was obvious; trade schools needed encouragement rather than initiation. As to the old Chinese social and political experience, the Kuomintang stressed study of China's past. They attempted to mend the gap between the generation born in the 1880's and that born in the 1910's by encouraging concentration on the cla.s.sical texts, reverently, but critically as well. Archaeology has heightened interest of the Chinese in their past.

As a consequence, their sense of national value has deepened.

For the restoration of the old Chinese moral and ethical system the New Life movement, which has been fostered personally by Generalissimo Chiang K'ai-shek, is of great importance. Its principles consist of a simple restatement of the cardinal Confucian personal virtues, interpreted to suit modern conditions. It has presumably been influenced by Protestant Christianity, and may be said to be a form of puritanism.

Although the Nationalist movement has not been as successful in ten years as was the Confucian in two hundred, it has at least created a state pattern. A state in the full sense would require a type of organization so clear in its ideology that people would personify it willingly, would accord it existence whether leaders and governments fell or not, and would be loyal to it and to those who claimed to wield its power.

Among negative influences running against the Nationalist ideology, the Nationalist neo-militarism has stood forth. As in the other ideologically integrated states of the world (Russia, Germany, Italy), the army a.s.sumed especial importance because its type of law and order required no common understanding higher than the a.s.sent of idiots. An army is the one inst.i.tution where complete harmony of thought is a luxury and not a necessity, where simple agreement on rewards, punishments, and organization morale will hold the structure together.

The Nationalist armies, however, rose to a new position. Ideological control was introduced; the literate armies fought best. But despite the civilian and intellectual factors from outside, the mere force concentrated in weapons was so great as to amount to a constant temptation. Whenever the day's fortunes were inclement, the men in command tended to settle things with guns. In contrast with sheer ideals, the Nationalists were strongly military; in contrast with their predecessors, the Nationalist generals showed respect for civilian authority. The charge of Nationalist neo-militarism focused upon the personal popularity of army leaders, especially that of Chiang K'ai-shek. It can be adjudicated only by history.

The Nationalist movement neared its most drastic ordeal in 1936. The predetermined period of tutelage as decreed was pa.s.sing, while the inauguration of const.i.tutional government had to be deferred. With the approaching abolition of the Party dictators.h.i.+p the Nationalist leaders were to demonstrate their consistency with their own ideals and programs. The programs of Sun Yat-sen called for the abdication of the patriotic elite, and the requirement--coupled as it had been with the proclamation of definite time limits--placed the issue squarely before the Kuomintang leaders.h.i.+p. Were they to attempt the democratic experiment in a nation patently unripe for it, or were they to disavow the commands of their deceased and sainted Leader, and continue in power?

_Independent Marxism in China_

The proponents of Marxism were welcomed into China as trusted friends.

In 1926 it was obvious to the whole world that China was definitely within the orbit of Marxism; in 1935 it was just as apparent that the Marxists faced a military doom, and that their forcible suppression might mean the end of their political effectiveness. Never ruined beyond all hope of recovery and triumph, never successful beyond all danger of disaster, the Marxists and their doctrines are the greatest uncertainty facing China.

Sinologues, judging from past experience and impressed with the deep continuities and repet.i.tions of Chinese history, may well argue that Marxism is another religious distributive cult such as periods of turmoil always produce in China. They can point to the rise and fall of the Yellow Turbans in the third century A. D., when the two leaders--the Duke of Heaven and the Duke of Humanity--shook the great Han dynasty down into everlasting ruin. Or they can refer to the T'ai-p'ing rebellion, which held a territory infinitely greater than that ever occupied by the Marxists, which impressed a fantastic but politically operative Christianity upon its followers, and which promised to do in South China what Brigham Young and the Mormons had done with the United Order in Utah; but the T'ai-p'ing went down to an extinction so complete that no living advocate of the cult practiced by millions seventy years ago can be found today. Thus it would be no violation of the set patterns of Chinese history if the movement of Marxism were to rise to world-dazzling splendor and then pa.s.s into utter oblivion. Yet Chinese history is no longer the only kind of history which holds weight for precedent in China, and if the T'ai-p'ing rebellion is one example, the Russian Revolution is another. Bolshevism certainly has better chances of succeeding in China than it could have seemed to have--to anyone but a fanatic--in the Russia of 1915.

The Marxian doctrines had already eaten well into Chinese territory before entering upon the Chinese scene proper. One of the less savory bequests which the tsarist regime left the Communists was the question of Outer Mongolia, a vast stretch of land under the admitted suzerainty but beyond the real control of the Chinese. The area was used by White Russians as a base for operations, and--whether or not it accorded with their principles--the Red forces had to cross the frontier to pacify Siberia. Once in, they could not get out. It was essentially the sort of absent-minded conquest which has contributed so much to the British Empire: a strategic occupation leading inevitably to political domination. The Russians compromised as well as they might, setting up an Outer Mongolian People's Republic and administering the area in the way which the world was to observe on a much grander scale in the case of the j.a.panese in Manchuria--through advisers.

Marxism became a force in China through men and literature and money and arms reaching China by the sea route, as have most Western things. Its position reflected, however, the facts that Russia is China's greatest neighbor and that the Russo-Chinese land frontier is one of the longest in the world. China is much nearer to San Francisco, in terms of s.h.i.+pping costs and speed of connections, than it is to Leningrad, but the appearance of closer proximity to the latter played a considerable role. The Nationalist-Communist coalition[4] was the result of the impact of Marxism from Russia upon China proper. The Communists entered as allies, not as leaders. The period of Nationalist-Communist cooperation lasted because the practical projects of the two revolutionary parties lay in a common direction. The gradual s.h.i.+ft in the role of the Communists from advisers and allies to teachers and masters led to the break between the two organizations.

How did this s.h.i.+ft develop? From the Marxian standpoint it was the move of a party leaders.h.i.+p which was bound by a true ideology, that of dialectic materialism. Whatever the ethics of broken individual pledges, there is no question that the Communists were justified according to their own beliefs in abandoning the Nationalists when the Nationalists ceased positive revolutionary action and began a Nationalist reconst.i.tution. The Communists felt themselves bound to take up the standards of the revolution and proceed against Nationalists as against others. There was no room in the Marxian ideology for anything but the officially approved Communist Party; there was no ground for conceding that the Nationalists might be wise in calling a breathing spell.

The Kuomintang leaders, on the other hand, had every reason to feel aggrieved at the Communists. The Communists had come to help the Chinese revolutionaries in their struggle for national liberation and to bring about a common front against imperialism in the Far East. When the revolution of national liberation was more than half accomplished, the Communists had increased their following to such an extent that they regarded the Nationalist alliance as a mere episode in the growth of Marxian power in China. Marxists had come to help the cause of Sun Yat-sen; Marxism was spread to fight and undo it. The sobering shock of a grasp on power sent the Nationalists into relative conservatism. An eminent Chinese writer has suggested the change of mood:

Our imagination was fired, our enthusiasm was kindled; thousands of young men have fled from home and school from the outermost provinces to join the Nationalist forces; they have toiled and they have sweated, and thousands have gladly laid down their lives on the altar of Nationalism that their dream of a regenerated and redeemed China might come true. But, alas!... The war has ended--so has all idealism.[5]

The Soviet Communists, deprived of their opportunity to broadcast propaganda on a large scale, and unable to ride the back of the Nationalist tiger any longer, found themselves on a defensive which seemed to be permanent. At the same time, the Marxists in China encountered difficulties in adjusting their ideology to the fact that their strength lay in elements which official Marxism discredited. They owed their existence to agrarian discontent and to their excellent army--the shock troops, in many cases, of the former coalition. The leader of Chinese Marxism, Ch'en Tu-hsiu, broke the party wide open with a schism; he believed in modernizing effort rather than orthodox Marxist symbols. Other schisms from the Left produced Marxisms intent on applying the European technique to China's small proletariat, indifferent to the land question and eager to make an Asiatic revolution from the textbooks of European labor conflict. Such deviations were as unrealistic and sterile as Blanquism, against which the nineteenth century Marxists inveighed so heavily. Even so the official Communist Party withstood nine years of savage attack and persecution because necessity forced the Reds to pursue a simple line of policy--survival.

Out of the test of deadly experience the Chinese Communists evolved means of allying themselves with the discontented peasantry, and found the point at which further social reform yielded diminis.h.i.+ng returns in popular support. In relying on the people for practical help, instead of invoking theoretically popular appeals, the Chinese Communists attained a defensive strength which could easily be turned into an offensive.

The reorientation in att.i.tude--the splitting off of both extremes, the iron necessity for an immediate and effectual popularization of the Party among the peasantry, and the lessons derived from responding to actual conditions--enabled the Communists to establish a state in Kiangsi in 1931: the Chinese Soviet Republic.[6] In 1935 and 1936 Chiang K'ai-shek began the most vigorous of his attacks, which led to the removal of the Chinese Red Army some two thousand miles from South Central to Northwest China--one of the most astonis.h.i.+ng military feats of modern times. Some observers have suggested that Chiang had no intention of allowing the Communists to disappear altogether from the scene, as they provided his military power with a _raison d'etre_ in the eyes of the j.a.panese. Had he run them utterly to ground, the j.a.panese might have dispensed with him. Later events have made such an explanation seem less persuasive, after the _coup d'etat_ at Sian in December, 1936.

The personal factors and political events in this extraordinary drama are not yet known in their entirety, and it may be decades before the whole story is pieced together from the accounts of eyewitnesses and interpreters. Chiang K'ai-shek in his published diary mentions no formal agreement for the inst.i.tution of a United Front policy, but the rumors from the Left persist in affirming the existence of a truce between the Nationalists and the Communists, the fruits of which were to be action against j.a.pan. Certainly the military and political effects of Chiang's kidnaping were substantial,[7] and the ideological scarcely less. In brief, the kidnaping arose from action on the part of Chinese National Army troops under the command of Chang Hsueh-liang, the ex-_tuchun_ of Manchuria. His forces were mostly from the Manchurian provinces and had no stomach for fighting the Communists in the far west of China while the j.a.panese remained in undisturbed occupation of their homelands. They had inaugurated an informal understanding with the Communists, and fraternization had begun between the opposing armies. When Chiang came up to investigate conditions, he was promptly kidnaped (December, 1936).

His bodyguard was slaughtered and he himself was injured in the spine.

The kidnaping was nominally the act of the _Tungpei_ (ex-Manchurian) troops. Even the Communist forces worked for the release of Chiang, since they felt that his death would mean national disaster. The release of Chiang was finally procured through the mediation of an Australian editor with a long experience in Chinese politics.[8]

The effect on popular thinking was twofold. In the first place, Chiang's popularity was made fully apparent by the vigor of the demonstrations in his favor all over China. It had long been a.s.serted that even the most momentary relaxation of Chiang's despotism, as its opponents termed it, would be followed either by anarchy or a new revolutionary regime.

Neither appeared. The strength of the National Government as a government was apparent, despite a strong odor of treason in widely separated quarters, and the people as a whole kept quiet. Students, workers, capitalists, officials, military men--all groups sought Chiang's release. Their anxiety for his personal safety was in some cases qualified by a hearty dislike of the man himself, but almost everyone admitted to an admiration, either grudging or whole-hearted, for the effectiveness of his work. The National Government and its chief military leader were indeed strongly entrenched in popular sympathy and thought--more so than even the most optimistic observers had dared to hope.

The second consequence of the _coup d'etat_ at Sian was even more important. The mere physical juxtaposition of the two leaders.h.i.+ps, Marxian and Nationalist, and the probability that forced arbitration would be the result of the kidnaping, led to a wild stimulation of hopes. At the same time it was generally realized that failure to come to terms might end in the murder of Chiang and in fateful results for all groups in China. The kidnapers demanded a United Front; the Communists had issued a manifesto in behalf of it several months earlier (August 1, 1936). The problem was: could Chiang accede without ruining his prestige or impairing the ideological position he had so laboriously built up for himself?

A compromise was found, which amounted to a paper victory for Chiang, nominal punishment of Chang and the other perpetrators of the kidnaping, ceremonial apology to the nation by Chiang for having been kidnaped, and a series of formally unrelated but probably linked events--all of which brought the two ideologies and their adherents to a common ground.

Throughout the following spring, progress was made in the negotiation of a truce, which broadened into an armistice and ended as an alliance. On April 30, 1937, for instance, the Young Communist Congress, composed of men whose brains Chiang would have cheerfully blown out a few months before, elected Chiang and other Nationalist leaders to honorary members.h.i.+p. On occasion, the Communists and the Nationalists exchanged cla.s.sical Chinese poems; each side sought to excel in sincere courtesy.

The armistice lasted through the period of the j.a.panese invasion in the summer of 1937; formal union was achieved in September.[9]

On the political surface, the course of Marxism in China has been one of the most startling developments in modern history. Alliance between Hitler and Stalin would seem more plausible than the reunion of Nationalist and Communist groups in China. To those in the service of the Nanking regime in 1936, such an eventuality was the one thing certain not to happen. The break between the Marxist and Nationalist leaders.h.i.+ps and their subsequent reconciliation appeared, however, less improbable in consideration of the course steered by the Communist world movement during the decade 1927-1937. The United Front in China made it possible for the Chinese Communists to concede more than they would otherwise have dared to except at the suggestion of the Russian and international Communists.

The future role of Marxism in China is still undecided. Nothing can be regarded as beyond the limit of probability, except the immediate establishment of a permanent and unalterable regime. The challenges the Marxists raise are too important to be ignored--land and labor reform and the devising of workable techniques for distributive justice. If they do not take control of the country themselves, they will at least be a formidable factor for whoever does control the government. In the event of foreign conquest the Marxians could provide an underground resistance of spectacular value. If the Chinese, applying terror and espionage against the Marxians then regarded as traitors, were not able to root them out in ten years of ferocious warfare, what will aliens do--against Communists who have become patriots in the eyes of all the people and who are a.s.sured help from all sides?

_j.a.panese Efforts to Partic.i.p.ate in Creating a New China_

China is j.a.pan's greatest outside problem; she is only a secondary problem in the foreign policies of the other great powers. j.a.pan owes much to China in the way of borrowed ideas and inst.i.tutions. j.a.pan and Siam are the only free nations in the modern world which share with China the background of a Chinese-dominated world society in the Far East.[10] The j.a.panese resisted the extension of Chinese suzerainty to their islands, and on only one occasion did they concede formally that the Chinese emperor was the head of all civilized society; this they bitterly regret. While the Siamese have maintained their independence, they are in no position to take an active part in the creation of a new Far East, and the issue is between China and j.a.pan, with the other Pacific powers largely as spectators. The construction of a way of thinking to accommodate the men and territories no longer guided by the old order is a problem shared by j.a.pan and China; the compet.i.tion for imposing a feasible system is sharp. j.a.pan wishes to create a new Far East in which the j.a.panese shall const.i.tute the most cultured core; the Chinese take their ancient position for granted.

In addition to the ideational conflict for prestige between Chinese and j.a.panese, there is another realm wherein the two nations compete, using ideas not as ends but as means. The extension of Western industry and trade to the East produced acute dislocations both in China and in j.a.pan, and in the case of j.a.pan involved transforming the j.a.panese autarchy into a most dangerous dependence upon a share of the world economy. j.a.pan is truly a commercial and capitalist power; hers is no mere affectation of modernity. It is conceivable, should the West go down to its Armageddon, that the Chinese might swing back to the ways of their past. The j.a.panese could not; their economic and political system has expanded too far. They are inextricably bound up with the rest of the industrial, capitalist modern world. In China the stock exchanges have a mere toehold on the country; in j.a.pan they have become the spine of national life. The j.a.panese must either pay the price of modernization by accepting the lowly place of the latecomer or make up their tardiness in entering the imperialist scene by a veritable frenzy of expansion. Apart from the future of capitalism, there remains the question: Will j.a.pan collapse before reaching imperial success in the world economy?

China and the unpredictable but colossal Chinese markets are j.a.pan's goal, formulated after contact with the West. China and her unquestioned cultural prestige are the targets of the j.a.panese drive for the acquisition of standing, a campaign couched in indigenous Far Eastern terms. The conflict between the two countries weaves its way back and forth through elaborate and self-contradictory sets of terms. The j.a.panese have toyed with a mult.i.tude of policies for China. Some of these are: (1) simple conquest; (2) the establishment of a peculiar Far Eastern order under j.a.panese leaders.h.i.+p--either in terms harmonious with Western concepts of international affairs (the "j.a.panese Monroe Doctrine") or in terms derived from a modification of the past ("Pan-Asia"); (3) a common cause of j.a.panese and Chinese against the white peril, without any special emphasis on the relative positions of the two countries; (4) a divine j.a.panese mission, not merely to save the yellow race but to rescue the whole world and put all nations under the protecting benevolence of j.a.panese overlords.h.i.+p; (5) a strict policy of day-to-day opportunism--binding those parts of China accessible for such procedure with treaties and agreements, and catching the Chinese as they come forth into the arena of modern economic life; (6) expediency couched in military terms, looking to absolute j.a.panese gains on the map, regardless of the erection of a social system to perpetuate the immediate military advances; (7) a pro-Chinese policy, to a.s.sure the j.a.panese a close ally (but in such a case a strong independent China would inevitably excel j.a.pan, and the j.a.panese would have to yield to Chinese hegemony--however friendly--or else retreat from it into the isolation from which they emerged in the 1850's).

Direct military conquest has a considerable appeal to the j.a.panese, except for its limitations. All the armies of the modern world would not be enough to garrison and patrol a China desperately hostile through and through. The Chinese would not stop at suicide to embarra.s.s their enemies, if there were complete ideological antagonism. The j.a.panese would have to persuade the Chinese whom they conquered to remain alive, to keep working, to grow wealthy so that the conquest might not be without value. It is not possible to consider a policy involving the outright murder of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred million persons; short of such extermination, there is no way for the j.a.panese to clear the field for colonization in Chinese territories. If the j.a.panese cannot replace the Chinese, they must make use of them; to make use of them, they must teach them to think in a way which will permit exploitation, for even the most inequitable exploitation involves some cooperation.

Ever since their peculiar Far Eastern order had been partially recognized the j.a.panese began building up theories of a zone of influence to be based not upon law but upon geographic and racial fact.

The doctrines of Pan-Asia fitted their purpose. Writers in the different Asiatic countries had pointed out the desirability of a union of those Asiatic peoples which were not yet under colonial rule to prevent further occidental advance and to rescue their conquered neighbors. Sun Yat-sen himself thought well of the Pan-Asia idea and stressed it, along with the recommendation that all economically exploited powers confront the exploiting powers--a cla.s.s war between nations. As soon as the j.a.panese began turning to Pan-Asia for furtherance of their own peculiar ends, these arguments lost much of their realism. The j.a.panese policies generated more disturbance in Asia than did the Western. Their call to prevent Western aggression, at a time when the Western powers were in retreat, sounded artificial. Nevertheless, the Pan-Asian movement forms a link between ideology-conscious leaders in China and j.a.pan; j.a.pan's ultra-patriotic Toyama had been friendly and helpful to Sun at the time when the former led the _Genyosha_ and the latter the _Hsing Chung Hui_.[11] It was natural, however, that the Pan-Asian doctrine, although it never disappeared altogether in China, should be strongest in j.a.pan.

Pan-Asia or its restricted form--Far-Easternism (_Toa-shugi_)--played a significant part in the military indoctrination in j.a.pan, even though attempts to propagate it in China ended in almost complete failure.

To the ideological conquest of China the j.a.panese have contributed very little. Their theories, summed up, amount to but a drop in the sea of doctrines. Only as the spokesman of China's ultra-reactionary monarchists--who flourished twenty-five years ago--has j.a.pan presented an ideological program which is other than derisible. Rich in the ceremonial trappings of government, and in the personal elegance of its powerless ministers, the Great Manchou Empire makes a strong appeal to literary persons with archaic tastes. Even there, the blunt modernism of the j.a.panese military machine destroys the illusion.

_Patriotism: The United Front_

1937 was one of the most critical years of modern China. It marked a swift and startling grouping of the three active forces in China: Nationalism, Communism, and j.a.panese compulsion. For ten years the Nationalists and the Communists had waged a war of terror against each other; for six years a Chinese Soviet Republic had defied the National Government of China established at Nanking. Six years had pa.s.sed since the j.a.panese invasion of Manchuria, five since the establishment of a Manchoukuo government. The Nationalists had hated the j.a.panese, but they hated the Communists more; at the humiliating price of non-resistance to j.a.pan, Chiang K'ai-shek had brought the full military and agitational power of Nationalism to the suppression of the Marxians. The j.a.panese had no great attachment to Chiang and the Nationalists and regarded Nationalism itself as a force subversive to j.a.panese order in the Far East. But they had tolerated the Kuomintang because it seemed a buffer between themselves and the Communists, and because they did not have the power or the immediate inclination to destroy the Nationalist regime.

This triangular deadlock was first broken by the kidnaping at Sian.

Nationalist and Communist leaders.h.i.+ps were brought face to face, and preliminary terms were agreed upon. With each step toward a termination of the Nationalist-Communist wars the danger of a powerful China became more striking to j.a.pan, while simultaneously the Nanking regime became less valuable to the j.a.panese as a bulwark against Communism. The spring of 1937 marked the settlement with the Communists in the Northwest, the continuance of a general armistice, and the sharp improvement of Nationalist prestige throughout the country. Circles which had been Rightist recognized the increased military and financial power of the Nationalists, now that the long and wasteful struggle with the Communists was ended, releasing men, weapons, and money for application in other quarters. Leftist groups again found the Nanking state philosophy palatable, and discovered in the official tenets of the Nationalist Party enough common principles to justify the re-coalition of revolutionary forces. The radical intellectuals and students, who had swung sharply to the Left as a result of continued Nationalist yielding to j.a.pan, turned again to Nationalist leaders.h.i.+p.

As practical solutions to the Nationalist-Communist conflict were found, the people in the larger cities were released from the governmental restrictions which the Nationalists--upon j.a.panese insistence and threat of force--had placed on the expression of patriotic sentiments. A vast and vigorous patriotic feeling came suddenly to life, having grown more intense under the cramping inhibitions of police prohibition. The patriotism was revolutionary in mood but not wholly different from Chinese patriotism of the past. The slogans all centered on national defense. Release of political prisoners, cessation of internal war, and democratization of the government were regarded as steps to union and defense.

When the j.a.panese decided to push forward in earnest and began fighting in North China in the summer of 1937, the patriotic movement became so powerful that for the time it supplanted all other separate movements.

Only a number of aged or cynical opportunists remained outside. It was now possible, under the slogan of a United Front of all China against j.a.pan, to disregard the fundamental differences between the Nationalists and the Communists. A Chinese Communist wrote:

While we declare ourselves, despite the differences in principle that exist between communism and Sun-Yat-sen-ism, advocates of the basic revolutionary slogans of Sun Yat-sen, of the best revolutionary traditions of the Chinese people, we Communists never for an instant under any circ.u.mstances cease to be true followers of the Marxist-Leninist teachings.[12]

Such utterances were matched by similar ones from the Nationalist side.

In their haste the j.a.panese utilized an ideology which they had practiced in Manchuria--literary Confucianism colored by notions adopted from the j.a.panese cult of the emperor. They also appealed to the practical and immediate needs of the Chinese living in the areas which they conquered, setting up governments[13] to govern for them. But this was hardly more than an expedient. Of far greater importance than even the war itself is its long-range impact upon the Chinese mind.

The formulation of the present Chinese patriotic movement into a definite drive for the establishment of a new Chinese way of life may emerge as one of the lasting facts of the century. The various movements of the Republican era failed to disturb and arouse the ma.s.ses sufficiently to make possible a replacement of the decrepit remnants of the old Chinese social and intellectual world, or a reinterpretation adding the ingredients needed in a modern civilization. If patriotism unites the Chinese permanently, j.a.panese invasion may have provoked what twenty-five years of Chinese effort could not bring about.

Furthermore, the Chinese have reacted to the emergencies of war in a manner almost unprecedented among modern nations. War has not meant the creation of a temporary despotism; it has brought democracy instead. The ideological concord, the supremacy of a common national purpose, which could not be achieved in a quarter century of peacetime agony, was brought forth in the ordeal of national resistance. Democracy and not tyranny was the unifying force. The Kuomintang Party Congress, meeting in Hankow from March 29 to April 2, 1938, reaffirmed the primacy of the _San Min Chu I_, but at the same time guaranteed the sanct.i.ty of private rights, even in wartime, of groups who had been liable to official suppression for years. The Communist press was flouris.h.i.+ng openly in Hankow, a testimony to the curious tolerance with which the Chinese united for national defense. The governmental structure was increasingly democratized. j.a.pan had provided a body of common a.s.sumptions strong enough to sustain democracy, despite the burden of mutually tolerated disagreements.

NOTES

[1] For the military aspects see below, pp. 108 ff.; for the immediate governmental aspects see below, pp. 167 ff.

[2] The best account of the internal politics of the Kuomintang between 1927 and 1933 is to be found in Gustav Amann, _Chiang Kaishek und die Regierung der Kuomintang in China_, Berlin and Heidelberg, 1936.

[3] See below, pp. 172 ff.