The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Military Affairs Commission

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

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

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

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

The Commission's governmental structure coordinates military and political functions. The Chief of the General Staff serves as assistant to the Chairman of the Commission. The Main Office serves to smooth interdepartmental affairs and to act as a central clearing point for orders and other transmissions. Beneath the Commission and the main office, there are twelve divisions with the rank of Pu. The Department of Military Operations (Chün-ling-pu) serves as a military planning and strategic agency. The Department of Military Training (Chün-hsün-pu) supervises training facilities, military schools, and in-service training.[21] The Directorate-General of Courts-Martial (Chün-fa Chih-hsing Tsung-chien-pu) and Pensions Commission (Fu-hsüeh Wei-yüan-hui) are explained by their titles; the pension program is probably behind that of every Western power, and the personal grants made by the Generalissimo under his own extra-governmental arrangements are more effective than governmental pensions. The Military