The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
to Grasp Anew
Action Is Life Itself: the Tireless Pertinacity of Nature Our Example
Action Is Nature at Work in Man: the Whole Universe Is the Scene of Action
The Revolution Demands Action of All Men at All Times
Sincerity the Root of Action and Goodwill
Formation and Constancy of Purpose
Comrades in Revolution! Resolve Anew!
C. People's Organs through Which Popular Political Opinions May Be Expressed
I. The Question of Unexpected Political "Coups"
II. Is the German-Soviet Pact Casual?
III. Why the German-Soviet Pact?
IV. A Discussion on the "New Front" as Made in a Chinese Story-Teller's Way
V. A Single Enemy? Or a Single Ally?
E. CHINA'S LONG-RANGE DIPLOMATIC ORIENTATION (WANG CH'UNG-HUI) [1]
1. Outline of China's Foreign Policy
2. China's Stand Vis-à-Vis Japan
3. Non-Recognition of Puppet Regimes
4. China's Foreign Relations Based on Nine-Power Treaty
INTRODUCTION
The National Government of the Republic of China, located at the auxiliary capital of Chungking, is one of the most important governments in contemporary world affairs. It has provided fairly effective unification for the largest nation on earth, and has fought a great power to a standstill.
The present work is an analysis of this government. Not a biography of Chiang K'ai-shek, it is instead a delineation of the institutions, the parties and movements, and the armies which today determine the Chinese destiny. Free China, mutilated as it is, is still far more populous and complex than the Soviet Union or Germany. Its political institutions cannot be reduced to the terms of one man's caprice, and the personality of Chiang—while brilliantly conspicuous—is not the entire picture of China. Generalissimo Chiang works, perhaps because he wishes to, certainly because he must, within the framework of a triune organization: the National Government, the central armies and the Kuomintang. These institutions have developed to their present efficacy only by means of thirty years of war, preceded by almost thirty years more of conspiracy. They have become the norm of contemporary China and, whatever their particular future, significant determinants of China's eventual development.
The Chinese Political Inheritance: Some Continuing Aspects
Because of cultural and historical differences between China and the West, the application of identical terms to both is probably either wrong or meaningless. Nevertheless, Westerners can live in China, deal with the Chinese, scrutinize their affairs, and transpose these to such Western descriptions as may suit the purpose. In reading of China, however, one should keep in mind the fact that the words are English, freighted with special meanings, and are used not by scientific choice but for lack of others. Part of this difference can be bridged if one recalls the salient peculiarities of China as against the Western world.
No other society comparable in size, duration and extent has ever existed; the Chinese Empire, from the beginning of the Ch'in (221 B.C.) to the end of the Manchus (A.D. 1911), remains the greatest social edifice mankind has yet brought forth. As such, its modern successor is everywhere stamped with archaic catholic traits which are today both obsolescent and futuristic. To these must be added the characteristics of China as a special area—a cultural zone seeking national form; fragmented economies working their way out of backwardness in technology and helplessness in world economics; a people in quest of government which will give them power without enslaving them. This modern "Chinese Republic," a Western-form state only by diplomatic courtesy in the years succeeding 1912, has been the widest zone of anarchy in the modern world; the Japanese attack on its emergent institutions has helped immeasurably to re-identify the Chinese-speaking people and the officers who presume to govern them.
To understand Chinese government in war time, one might first check the outstanding points of old Chinese development and their modern derivatives.
Pre-eminently, China has been pro forma Confucian ever since the tenth century after Christ.