The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
and the Political Department of the Military Affairs Commission handles much domestic propaganda and agitation. The strictly governmental, permanent administrative agencies are simplified from their pre-war complexity, as the following list will show:
EXECUTIVE Yüan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of the Interior
Ministry of Finance
Ministry of Economic Affairs (to be reorganized)
Ministry of Social Affairs (pending)
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Communications
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs
Commission on Overseas Chinese Affairs
National Relief Commission
Ministry of War (also under the Military Affairs Commission)
Material and Resources Control and Supervision Ministry (pending; status uncertain)
JUDICIAL Yüan
Ministry of Justice
CONTROL Yüan
Ministry of Audit
EXAMINATION Yüan
Ministry of Personnel
Examination Commission
The Ministries outside the Executive are well adapted to their respective Yüan, although Americans may think the Ministry of Justice misplaced. The Executive Ministries form the heart of the administrative system, immediately below the cabinet (Executive Yüan Meeting). The Party scaffolding is to be torn down with constitutionalization; the military scaffolding, with peace. The administrative organs at the center will then bear the real burden of nourishing and protecting the nation which now they help to create.
Despite strong Chinese imprints, the central administrative agencies are organizationally more Westernized than the policy-making agencies. For this reason, and because administrative emphasis is on matters economic (outside the scope of the present work), the reader is referred to other sources for a detailed appraisal of the work of the ministries. Particularly fortunate is it that China Shall Rise Again, partly written and partly edited by Madame Chiang K'ai-shek,[10] has been published, including authoritative statements by the leading ministers on the work of their respective ministries.
The Ministries (pu) may be classified into three groups, according to the major tenor of their work: political, social and cultural, and economic. Military defense through economic development and social reconstruction remains their common goal, however divergent the approaches.
The Political Ministries
Senior and most famous of all Chinese ministries is that of Foreign Affairs (Wai-chiao Pu). It inherits the splendid traditions of Chinese diplomacy, dating back to the redoubtable Pan Ch'ao, who almost single-handed conquered Central Asia in the first century A.D. by unsleeping guile and consistent boldness. Modern Chinese diplomacy has made the best of a hundred years of defeat, successfully exploiting the mutual suspicions of the imperialist powers. The morale and professional cohesion are high. Despite incessant political changes, the foreign office and diplomatic service have preserved their continuity from the Empire to the present. The Chungking government probably possesses a foreign office superior to the Gaimusho of Tokyo.[11]
The effectiveness of Chinese international statesmanship has aroused an almost superstitious dread among the Japanese, publicists, officials, and others. Japan consistently complains that China is superior at propaganda, and sees, behind the world-wide mistrust of Japan, occult forces from the Comintern or vile Chinese guile. After they perpetrated the Nanking horrors, insulted neutral men and women in Tientsin, machine-gunned a British ambassador, sank an American gunboat, and violated all available international law, the Japanese believed that British and American lack of sympathy was mostly due to the machinations of Chinese diplomacy. The recent Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Wang Ch'ung-hui, a former Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), is one of the modern world's greatest legal scholars. Eminent in political leadership ever since the first foundation of the Republic, he has always urged moderation, legality, and intelligence in government.
The Ministry of the Interior (Nei-chêng Pu) forms the apex to China's constitutional system of provincial and local governments. In accordance with Sun Yat-sen's teaching, the National Government has consistently sought to reduce the importance of the provinces and to foster direct local-central intergovernmental relationships. The importance of this ministry is reduced somewhat by the fact that other agencies possess their own field services, and are therefore not obliged to route policy through it, but it remains significant because of its control and supervision of China-wide administrative development. The National Health Administration (Wei-shêng Shu), formerly separate, is now a department of this Ministry.
Social and Cultural Agencies
The Ministry of Education (Chiao-yü Pu) has continued active despite the war. The heroic marches of the Chinese universities to their new homes in the West have become a world-famous epic. Students, faculty, and staffs moved out of the sinister zones of enemy occupation, usually travelling on foot, until they found new homes hundreds or even thousands of miles from their original locations. Some colleges have found homes in old temples or in caves where, with a minimum of equipment and library material, they continue their work. Others, more fortunate, have become guests of West China institutions. West China Union University in Chengtu has four other universities on its campus, all using the same facilities for the duration of the war. Still other institutions have been consolidated.
The Ministry of Education has subsidized education as generously as possible, and fosters progress despite the war and because of it. In spite of all handicaps, institutions of higher learning have risen in number from 91 in 1937–38 to 102 in 1939–40, with a corresponding rise in enrollment of 31,188 to 41,494.[12] The entering class for 1940–41 was about 12,000, indicating a continued rise.[13]
In addition to the accredited institutions, there are innumerable volunteer agencies, some of which are patriotic but educationally elementary schools for saboteurs, agitators, and guerrillas. Education is propaganda, but such is its immediate appeal that Left schools obtain capacity attendance. A few students are disappointed. One wrote, "The most unpleasant thing to me was that, as soon as I entered the Resist-Japan University, I was deprived of my liberty. I was not free in speech; I was not allowed to say anything outside of Marxism-Leninism … " and went home.[14] The total attendance remains high; if added to that of the accredited institutions operating according to government standards, it would swell the sum enormously.
In addition to formal aid to institutions of higher learning, and administration of the National Government colleges, the Ministry sponsors the mass literacy movement. In this it has had the benefit of the work of Dr. James Y. C. Yen and his associates.[15] The war, moving vast masses of people and shifting the modernized city-dwellers from the coast to the interior, has proved a stimulus to the rise of literacy and the demand for popular literature.
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