The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
far from being a crude hierarchy of soldiers and taxgatherers, but had accrued about its policy-making core the essential staff and line services of modern rule. Inadequacies lay not in absolute lack of species of personnel or structure, but in the relative weakness of many key functions. During the third decade of the Republic the then Nanking Government, under Chiang's leadership, gave China its first modern national government.
Despite this beginning, which—without the invasion—stood a very good chance of evolving into a paternalistic oligarchy in democratic form, such as Brazil, there were enormous difficulties still facing genuine China-wide government. First among these difficulties was the question of regional autonomy—lingering vestiges of tuchünism, reinforced by a vigorous provincialism. Whole regions of China were under the merely nominal control of the National Government.
The second difficulty was that of personal politics. Modern China has had ample politics of principle. It is a rare ideological cult, of any kind, anywhere, which does not have its Chinese affiliates. No other nation has known such a wide choice of doctrines, each represented by armed forces and by definite political leadership. At the same time, this ideological struggle was and is paralleled by the politics of individuals and cliques. This made the National Government function as an oligarchy based on three patterns of control:
(1) ideological eminence, orthodoxy, appeal and timeliness;
(2) military or economic control of power in the form of soldiers or cash, the two being for the most part interchangeable; and
(3) governmental incumbency.
A man like Hu Han-min could owe his importance almost altogether to his past associations with the Party and with Dr. Sun, to his authority as an exponent of the San Min Chu I, and to his appeal to the sense of prestige, dignity and stability on the part of other people who did not possess such power, which was exercised in the name of the Kuomintang and its ideology. T. V. Soong, in money matters, or Chang Hsüeh-liang, in military matters, were important because they had under their immediate influence so much cash or so many troops, the availability and mobility of which from day to day determined their actual share of power. Lastly, these same men possessed political authority by narrowly lawful means, i.e., by the governmental offices which they held.
Thirdly, the government was deeply out of harmony with an overwhelming majority of college students, much of the professional and intellectual classes, and a broad section of the articulate farmer and labor groups. In the pre-war years of strain, unofficial persons could follow world fashions in ideas associated with Leftism. Although the full Western pattern of Right, Center, and Left was not imposed upon Chinese politics, many of the most active publicists wrote in these terms. There was, accordingly, a traditional China and a Leftist China; the latter faithfully imported European concepts and did much to change the language of Chinese political struggle. The government—itself Left from the point of view of the pre-existent order, yet committed to modes of thought and policy formally little more radical than the American New Deal—was constantly recalled to the most cold-blooded of realpolitische considerations.
Fourthly, the student movement—in some phases a part of the general Leftist drive—proved a constant source of difficulty and trouble. Chinese students (both collegiate and secondary) are self-conscious, frequently arrogant inheritors of the Chinese tradition of rule by literati. Their influence over the masses is impressive; their patriotism, however unreflective, is ardent; and their interest in international affairs is violent.[5]
Fifthly, Chinese society, accustomed to acting independently of government, urged varied foreign policies and sought wars. Almost every kind of organization, from archaic guilds and secret societies to business groups, sought to wage its own attack on Japan. Uncanalized, counter-attacked, dammed up, these efforts might have undone the government. Toward the end, the government raced frenziedly with time, losing power through unpopularity, and increasing power through rearmament and technical preparation. The vigorous extra-governmental pressure of a populace accustomed to spontaneous mass action is a factor which qualifies and will probably continue to qualify Chinese foreign policy. It is often left out of account in Western comment on China.
Sixthly, in the winter and spring of 1936–37, the National Government was under pressure from its own subjects to begin the negotiation of national unity, starting with a Communist armistice and continuing with the incorporation of as many regions as possible into the sphere of the government; but despite such increasing pressure, the government took no effective step in this direction until after the kidnapping of Chiang at Sian.[6] As a result of this melodramatic affair, however, the National Government revised policies which had become traditions ten years old and agreed to an armistice with the Communists. The Kuomintang—bearing full responsibility for an actual emergent state—found intra-Chinese diplomacy as perplexing as foreign.
Thus, at the outbreak of war, the National Government had reached a higher level of actual political and administrative power than its predecessors, but was faced with grave problems. In any other country the government would presumably have been on the verge of ruin. Controlling only major sections of its internationally recognized territory; faced by autonomous provinces, half-legal military satrapies and outright warlord despotism, all backed by vehement provincialism, great distances, linguistic difficulties and mutual geographical isolation; unpopular with its own student, intellectual and professional elites; ridden by personal politics; just emerging from a ten years' civil war—with these handicaps, a second-rate power undertook to challenge the greatest power of Asia to an irreversibly fateful war. The Chinese went further: they sought in the war not only victory, but unity, democracy and prosperity as well! This background of purpose makes China's internal politics richly meaningful in relation to the world scene.
The Beginning of Active Hostilities
After nearly six years of military and political conflict, a full quasi-war[7] broke out with the episode at Loukouchiao on the night of July 7–8, 1937. It was the evident intention of the Japanese to end an unsatisfactory state of affairs (i.e., Chinese control) in that area once and for all, although they were perfectly willing to express temporary amity and ad interim non-aggression toward what was left of China. The National Government, after a few days of uncertainty, began real preparations for war. Since the government's appeasement policy had accustomed many to think of resistance in terms of the Left, there was an enormous inflation of Leftist sentiment, not deflated for about eighteen months.
While new mass organizations were formed, the Chinese military command framed a plan for a three-stage war:
(1) a period of resistance by heavy regular forces fighting positionally;
(2) a period of stalemate wherein enemy forces, immobilized by opposing regular armies, found lines of communication, supplies and business harassed by guerrillas and saboteurs;
(3) a period of counter-attack in which the Chinese, having prepared themselves technologically during the stalemate and having weakened the enemy by a test of endurance, should drive the Japanese back into the sea.
The strategy of this type of war was based upon the plan of retreating in space in order to advance in time—that is, to yield area slowly and purposefully, without too great cost to oneself, in order to outlast the enemy and reach victory. In thus purchasing time by the mile, the Chinese could not afford to yield intact cities, factories, communications, mines, docks, warehouses and the other goods of business; such cessions would only profit Japan: hence the scorched earth policy. The strategy was obviously suited to a country rich in territory and population, but poor in matériel. It not only made both regulars and guerrillas effective against Japan but made each truly reliant upon the other. Without the Nationalist regular armies, who in