The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Constitution, see Wu, John C. H., "Notes on the Final Draft Constitution" in Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. X, No. 5 (May 1940), p. 409–26. (Dr. Wu is one of the most extraordinary personages of the modern world; he has taken all knowledge—East Asiatic and Western—for his province. He writes a spirited, graceful English and is capable of discussing anything from modern politics or abstruse points of Anglo-American law to ancient Chinese hedonism or the philosophical implications of the Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Dr. Wu, in a bomb-shelter, possesses much of the moral poise and profound personal assurance for which such Westerners as T. S. Eliot seek in vain.) See also Hsia, C. L., "A Comparative Study of China's Draft Constitution with That of Other Modern States," in The China Quarterly, Vol. 2, 1936–7, No. 1 (Summer), p. 89–101 and Hoh Chih-hsiang, "A History of Constitution Making in China," the same, Vol. 1, 1935–6, No. 4 (Summer), p. 105–117.
[8] For a more extended discussion of this point, see the author's The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I, Baltimore, 1937, p. 218 ff., and also p. 96 ff.
[9] See Sun Fo [President of the Legislative Yüan, and son of Sun Yat-sen], "The Spirit of the Draft Permanent Constitution," in The China Quarterly, Vol. V, No. 3 (April 1940), Shanghai, p. 377–84.
[10] See Appendix I (F), p. 318-24, below.
[11] See below, p. 106 ff., and Appendix I (G), p. 324.
[12] This constitution is available in Yakhontoff, Victor A., The Chinese Soviets, New York, 1934, p. 217–21, and in Kun, Bela [prefator], Fundamental Laws of the Chinese Soviet Republic, New York, 1934, p. 17–24. The writer has been unable to secure the Chinese text of this document.
[13] China Information Committee, Chungking, News Release, No. 351 (February 25, 1939), p. 2269–71.
[14] [Chiang K'ai-shek], Tsung-ts'ai Chien-kuo Yen-lun Hsüan-chi (The Party Chief's Utterances on Reconstruction), Chungking, 1940, p. 237–43. The Generalissimo concluded his speech with a homiletic touch which is so characteristic that it may be included here; it also explains his relative lack of interest in the Constitution: "Lastly, I have another point to tell you gentlemen. I have already repeated this, again and again, many times. Desiring to complete our revolutionary work and national reconstruction, and to have a constitutional government as seen in many modern states as soon as possible, I often study the causes of the weakness and disorder which exist in our country. … [He cites the traditional political vigor and excellence of the centuries before the time of Christ, with the "degeneration" and "departure from order" of the following centuries.] The departure is not simply due to the failures in politics and education and to the deprivation of the popular rights by a few tyrannical kings and lords since the Ch'in and Han periods. It is due to the fact that before the Chou, we had government by law [fa chih] as a mere supplement to government by social standards [li chih, also translatable as ideological control, or control through moral indoctrination]. We had social organization as the foundation of political organization. Everything was then well-organized and well-trained. Everywhere, in schools, in armies, in families, in society, order and the forms of propriety [i.e., social standards] were regarded as most important. No citizen could evade his duty and obligation."
[15] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, New York and London, 1934 (Everyman's Edition), p. 49.
[16] The writer is indebted for much of the material in this chapter to Dr. Djang Chu, of the New Life Movement Headquarters, Chungking, who supplied it to him in the form of a lecture and other memoranda. Dr. Djang is, of course, not responsible for any reinterpretations here made.
[17] See Appendix I (D), p. 309.
[18] Liu Shih, "Chung-kuo Hsien-chêng Yün-tung-ti Chi-ko Chieh-tuan" (Stages of the Chinese Constitutional Movement) in Li-lun yü Hsien-shih (Theory and Reality), Vol. 1, No. 3, November 15, 1939, p. 13 ff.
[19] From Tso Tao-fen, "A Few Questions Regarding the Constitution" in Ch'üan-min K'ang-chan Shê [The United Front Club], Hsien-chêng Yün-tung Lun-wên Hsüan-chi (A Symposium on the Constitutional Movement), Chungking, 1940, p. 1 ff.
[20] Statement of Col. Ch'in Po-k'u at the Chungking office of the 18th [Communist] Army Corps Headquarters, on July 29, 1940, to the author.
[21] China at War, Vol. IV, No. 5 (June 1940), p. 79 ff.
Chapter II
THE POLITICAL ORGANS OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
By constitutional stipulation, and by dogma legally established, the National Government of the Chinese Republic is a Kuomintang Party-dictatorship over the Chinese nation. This rule is formally dictatorship by a minority democracy over the absolutely governed majority, since the Party constitution requires intra-Party democracy. No pretense is made of further formal democracy. Actual experience of the past ten years has shown the government to be a broad, loosely organized oligarchy in which the Party, the Government, the Army and regional military, and independent leaders (such as bankers, college professors and presidents, secret society chiefs, community spokesmen) have shared power. The center of gravity has stayed somewhere near Chiang K'ai-shek, who as co-leader and then formal Chief (Tsung-ts'ai, "general ruler") of the Party and creator of the central army has combined two of the chief sources of influence. Variety in the sources, nature, and incidence of political power in recent Chinese affairs has, however, not destroyed the constitutional theory: Party-dictatorship pledged to national democracy.
The state machinery—as it has been since promulgation of the Provisional Constitution, 1931—is among the most elaborate in the modern world, but is nevertheless effective. One may justly regard the present government as the most efficacious, generally powerful, and growing Chinese government since the mid-eighteenth century. This government is pre-eminently the creation of the Kuomintang, and of Kuomintang leaders. A war which threatens China's national existence accordingly threatens the leaders as government officers, as Party members, as patriotic citizens, and as members of the Chinese race. At the time that they fight an alien enemy, they must simultaneously increase state power and diffuse it so that a democracy may emerge and survive.
China's leadership is therefore posed a two-fold problem: to perpetuate a regime, successful in one period of relative peace, through years of invasion to a period of even deeper peace; and to permit popular access to policy-forming agencies, allowing freer operation of pressures, without endangering resistance and reconstruction thereby. To the Western political scientist, it is amazing that they have carried into the years of catastrophic war a unique, complex constitutional system, treasuring it like an ark of the covenant. This is the five-power