The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
purpose accompanies design. Formally the least representative of the Chinese constitutional parliaments, congresses, or conventions, the Council is the first to get down to business and—almost unexpectedly—to represent!
Membership, originally set at 150, was raised before the First Session to 200, and again in the autumn of 1940 to 240.[1] The number, unlike the 1681 tentatively projected for the People's Congress, is small enough to allow genuine discussion and to avoid unwieldiness. Attendance, considering war-time hazards, has been very good, with between two-thirds and four-fifths of the members usually present.
Although the Council was designed to meet quarterly by its fundamental Statute,[2] it soon changed to semi-annual sessions and has actually met at intervals running from six to eight months. Each session lasted for ten days (legislative, not calendar).[3] As the Council sessions recurred, the Council became more and more free and representative. Despite the narrowness of its legal foundations, the Council has provided invaluable exercise in the arts of democratic discussion.
As a technique of representation, the Council's recruitment system is novel. The membership was, while the Council's total was at 200, divided into the following four categories:
Group A: representatives of the Provinces and Special Municipalities—88;
Group B: four representatives for or from Mongolia and two for or from Tibet—6;
Group C: representatives for or from the overseas Chinese—6;
Group D: representatives of cultural, professional, and economic bodies, or persons who have been active in political leadership—100.
There were no elections. In the case of Group A candidates, nominations were made by municipal or provincial governing bodies in joint session with the Kuomintang Party organ of corresponding location and level. Group B candidates were nominated by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. Group C candidates were nominated by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission in the Executive Yüan. Group D candidates, which included the representatives of the Communists and independent Left, were nominated by the Supreme National Defense Council. Two candidates could be presented for each seat on the Council. Subject to a minor detour or two on qualifications or for other reasons,[4] the final selection or election was made by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.
Thus, an independent or Leftist, whose life had been more or less in danger for years, because of his hostility to the Kuomintang and its policies, might find himself nominated for the Council by the Kuomintang's highest government-supervising agency, and elected by the Kuomintang's highest Party agency. Leaders of the hitherto suppressed, still technically illegal parties and factions—which meant all save the Kuomintang—were designated representatives through the fiction of selection for individual merits. They might take an active share in hammering out policy, and—on the same day—find themselves legally debarred from overt public expression of their own party work. By this device, the Kuomintang provided a safety-valve for opposition without touching the apparatus of its own power.
Had the Kuomintang leaders been obtuse and made the Council something less than a genuine sounding board for public opinion, or had they picked unrepresentative members of the other groups, the whole experiment would have failed. In practice, the compromise worked and gave China a focus for the national concentration of will.
The Council did not elect its own Speaker (I-chang) and Deputy-Speaker (Fu I-chang); these were elected for it by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. Down to 1940, the Council elected a Resident Committee of fifteen to twenty-five members from its own membership; under a recent reorganization, this and the Speaker and Vice-Speaker are to be replaced by a Presidium, to be elected by but not necessarily from among the Council, to consist of five members and to hold the authority of designating presiding officers. This would amount to a further step in the independence of the Council. In both cases, the Secretariat (Mi-shu-ch'u) of the Council is to be under a Secretary-General (Mi-shu-chang) and Deputy Secretary-General (Fu Mi-shu-chang) and to include services of correspondence, general affairs, Council affairs, and police.[5]
With respect to competence, the Council is possessed of three powers:
(1) the right to deliberate on all important measures, whether of domestic or foreign policy, before these are enacted into law by the Central Government (but not, however, the right of making such law);
(2) the right to submit proposals to the government (but since the Supreme National Defense Council is the highest government-directing agency in China, its concurrence is patently necessary);
(3) the right to demand and hear reports from the Yüan and the Ministries, and to interpellate the officers of state.
The distinguished Chinese constitutional scholar, Wang Shih-chieh, Secretary-General of the People's Political Council (Generalissimo Chiang himself being the Speaker) writes of its functions:
From the foregoing description, the peculiarities of the People's Political Council may be clearly seen. It is not an advisory body of the Government in the ordinary conception of the term, because the Government is bound, except in emergency cases, to submit to it for consideration all important measures before they are carried out. The Council possesses not only the power to advise, but also the right to be consulted. Nor is it a legislative organ, as all its resolutions merely embody broad principles of legislation or administration, i.e., lines of policy which, even after being assented to by the Supreme National Defense Council, will still have to go through the ordinary legislative or ordinance-making process in order to become laws or administrative ordinances.
As regards the representative character of the Council, it rests not so much with the method by which the Councillors are chosen, as with the fact that, being composed of men and women most of whom enjoy wide popularity or respect in one way or another, the Council can really speak for almost all the articulate group-interests of the nation. In the less than 30 years of China's experience in republican government, numerous experiments had been attempted at representative government before the convention of the People's Political Council. Few of these were deficient in theoretic grandiloquence, but none of them was found to be serviceable in practical applicability.
Theoretically, the Council is not a popular assembly; but, as I remarked elsewhere,* "it is open to question whether any form of election by popular suffrage can result in so truly representative a body." Even with reference to the limited scope of the Council's powers, I submit that the provision represents a progressive step in that any alternative that is less realistic would impede rather than facilitate the contributive work of the Council.[6]
* Chinese Year Book, 1938, Chap. 17. [Wang Shih-chieh's note.]
The author adds that the resolutions have tended to be of an extraordinarily practical character, and that bombast has remained conspicuously absent.
The procedure of the Council has been kept very simple. A quorum requires only a simple majority (101 members), and a simple majority of a quorum (51) is all that is needed to pass a resolution. To ensure the proper spacing of the calendar, all resolutions initiating new business must come within the first four days of the ten-day session. Introduction may not be completed by the action of a single member; a petition of 20 members, one proposing and 19 endorsing, is necessary for introduction. Reference may then be either to the plenary session or to the committees. (There are five standing committees—military, foreign, civil, financial and economic, educational and cultural affairs—which provide further facilities through subdivision into subcommittees, or through the addition of special committees.) Reports by the government are introduced during the first three days of each session.[7]