Part 15 (2/2)
_Chapter_ VIII
RECONSTRUCTION
The National Government of China set up at Nanking in April, 1927, was not definitively organized until late that year. Chiang K'ai-shek had to resign from the government before the Left Kuomintang group would accept the regime. In the following year, with the return of Chiang and the adoption of a new const.i.tution (Organic Law of the National Government), the Nanking government was more firmly established than any previous government since the death of Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai. A high price had been paid for stability: Northern military leaders had been allowed to join it, much as those of the South had supported Sun Yat-sen ten years before.
The break with the Communists meant stopping a vast agrarian-proletarian revolution midway in its course, at a cost of many lives. The Nationalists, thrust into the role of governors, could not avoid turning against many of those who had helped to put them in power but wished to continue the revolution.
_The National Government of China_
Despite the difficulties which it faced, the National Government had many a.s.sets. In the realm of ideology, it had the advantage of possessing a state philosophy and a patron saint: the _San Min Chu I_[1]
and its author, Sun Yat-sen. In the military sphere, it had at its disposal an army unequaled in China; in the economic, the support of the Chinese bourgeoisie, together with the friendly interest of the capitalist powers. In the province of politics, it carried with it much of the personnel formerly serving the Nationalist Government, soviet in form, to which it claimed succession. Its officials were accustomed to devote themselves seriously to government, so that from the very beginning the Nanking government was inclined to enforce its laws as well as promulgate them--thereby breaking with the usage of the shadow Republic at Peking. Finally, the new government secured full international recognition with the flight of Chang Tso-lin from Peking and the disappearance of the rival regime in the North (1928).
Sun's state philosophy fulfilled a cardinal function. Even in its most troubled phases, when military factors came closest to the surface of government, the new government did not lapse into fiction. There was a programmatic index against which Nanking's accomplishments could be tested, and a definite long-range plan to follow. The program enabled the National Government to utilize the forms of revolution for the purpose of stabilizing government--far less dangerous than the practice of their Northern predecessors, to use government in order to further disunited military despotism. The officers of the Kuomintang exhibited a meticulous respect for the dead Leader of their Party. Sun Yat-sen, known by his honorific pseudonym _Chung Shan_, was buried in one of the most magnificent tombs of modern times. In carrying out Sun's legacy, the Kuomintang was pledged to the principles of intraparty democratic centralism and party dictators.h.i.+p over the rest of the nation. The formal party organization was not seriously effected by the change from a soviet form of government.
Government under the Kuomintang, despite the breakdown of morale which followed the disintegration of the Great Revolution (1927), was radically unlike that of the Peking regimes. In 1927, when Chiang K'ai-shek turned against the peasant unions and officialized the labor unions, a tendency toward outright military dictators.h.i.+p became apparent. The developments of the following ten years did not at any time suggest that military power had meekly yielded to governmental power, but they did indicate that government was taking an increasing part in the control of society. The close interrelation of ideology and government, dating from the period of the Nationalist-Communist alliance, was to endure after the revolution had been transformed into a reconstructive process and rebellion had been superseded by administration. However much Sun and his teachings failed to create a new political Islam, they weathered criticism sufficiently well to provide a scheme of policy, political values, and broad objectives.
The influence of Sun Yat-sen was harmed, rather than reinforced, by the hysterical ritualists who seem to be the parasites of all one-party governments. The memory of the Leader and his teachings settled into the stabilizing roles of founding father and general dogma. Only a few veterans of the movement are still inspired by the fire of his words and the vigor of his personality. To the vast bulk of Chinese public opinion Sun Yat-sen is the human embodiment of virtuous, brave, and intelligent conduct, whose theories are acceptable in their general form and whose programs have proved pragmatically usable. The _San Min Chu I_ failed to cause widespread political ecstasy; it succeeded in bringing direction and sanity, after a limited fas.h.i.+on. To spread allegiance the government fostered a Sun Yat-sen memorial ritual; every Monday morning, in every government office, college, school, police station, and other public building, there was held a service consisting of the reading of Sun Yat-sen's political testament and pa.s.sages from his speeches clarifying his doctrines. The services seemed for a while to resemble a state religion; but the moderateness and formalism of Chinese life was inimical to the fervor necessary for political religion. The Kuomintang and its government came to see these limitations; although the services have remained, they are now severely secular in spirit.
The most dynamic part of the _San Min Chu I_, the doctrine of nationalism, had contributed to placing the Kuomintang in power. The new government was accordingly nationalist and centralistic; it opposed any type of regionalism--political, administrative, economic, or military.
The Northern generals who sided with the government at the time of its formation were brought within the operation of the national military laws. When they revolted--quite properly, according to their _tuchun_ standards--against reduction of their forces in the Disbandment War of 1930-1931, they were defeated. With the Southern and the Western military leaders Chiang was not as successful, until j.a.panese and Communist pressure brought first the one and then the other group into his fold. After actual autonomy for a number of years, the province of Kuangtung (Canton) submitted in 1936 to the authority of the National Government, thereby bringing to an end the generation-old division of North and South. Nationalism and centralism affected not only the armies but also the entire administration, whose service functions and police powers developed amazingly. Although the Nanking government had originally faced broad popular suspicion, it began to win genuine respect because of its accomplishments.
Was the Nanking government a dictators.h.i.+p? Its record does not justify the a.s.sumption that it was merely to camouflage a military dictators.h.i.+p commandeered by Chiang K'ai-shek. Moreover, the policy-making power was not by any means a prerogative of Chiang K'ai-shek. Chiang was nearly sovereign in technical military matters and possessed more political influence than did any other single individual. Yet the power of policy making rested with a small group of men not over a hundred in number.
Some of the gentlest, sincerest, and quietest of these leaders had once been _tuchuns_ in their own right; some of the most military and forthright had never handled anything more lethal than a cash register.
The leaders tended to work within the party and government structure, so that the political organization, while not of great simplicity or clarity, accurately portrayed the distribution of power. No one can gauge the degree of interdependence between the leaders of a government system in its formative period, and between the offices which these leaders occupy. The Sian episode indicated that the Nanking government could continue without Chiang and that Chiang's incarceration was not the signal for immediate anarchy. But Chiang was not actually dead, nor was the government deprived of the support which his prestige had generated. From 1927 to 1937 the Nanking government remained under approximately the same leading officials.
The last test for the sources of Nanking's power may be found in considering the relation between the men in command and the authority which placed them there. The supreme organ of the party was the Party Congress. This body did determine the course of government policy frequently, and on such occasions clarified issues through action. The Congress elected the Central Executive Committee and the Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang. The entire members.h.i.+p of the Congress would vote in the elections, any of the members being eligible.
Since the Congress was composed of representatives from the various regional and functional divisions of the party, intraparty democracy was insured in theory and--though to a lesser extent--in practice. The two top committees elected smaller Standing Committees; the Central Executive Committee in addition elected the Central Political Council, which was the highest organ of government in China and the agency through which the party controlled the government. The Central Political Council did not seek to keep track of the detail of government; it outlined governmental policy, appointed major officials, and directed rather than supervised administration. It was a policy-making body in the strictest sense, and its action took effect upon the Council of State, which coordinated the government establishments.[2]
Had there been a schism between the Nanking government and the Kuomintang, it might have been possible to trace a political issue as it was fought out--all the way from the party members.h.i.+p up through the Party Congress and the Central Executive Committee, from party to government by action of the Central Political Council, and down through the Council of State and the subordinated government organs to the administrative network operating upon the broad ma.s.ses of the populace.
In fact, however, no issue saw the light, since the same group that dominated the party controlled the government. The relation between the leaders and the Party Congresses can perhaps best be compared with that between the leading personalities of a Republican or Democratic convention in the United States and the convention delegates. Convention action rarely transfers power or upsets leaders.h.i.+p, nor do constructive plans or formulated policies emerge from convention sessions; and yet the conventions cannot be regarded merely as tools in the hands of the party leaders.h.i.+p. A similar situation existed in China. Even when Chiang and the other leaders seemed to hold the bag, the meetings of the Party Congress did not lack importance, and the issues before the Congress were not considered predetermined. This was no personal regime in the Napoleonic sense. Party dictators.h.i.+p expressed itself in defined forms, as a part of Sun Yat-sen's state philosophy. Benevolent oligarchy of patriotic modernists, acting with party sanction obtained through intraparty democratic processes, was not foreign to Sun's mind. The Nanking government further differed from fascist governments, and resembled the Russian, in that it was democratic in intent; its dictatorial character was avowedly temporary. Throughout the period during which the Kuomintang ruled from Nanking, democracy was regarded as a definite goal of governmental policy. The j.a.panese invasions culminating in open war made impossible the immediate abrogation of Kuomintang party dictators.h.i.+p. Yet when war broke out in 1937, the National Government was on the verge of reconst.i.tuting itself as a democracy; but now the regime itself became itinerant, moving into the hinterland.
The Nanking government was organized under Kuomintang rule in a form unique among modern states. Its three most distinctive features were: (1) the concentration of power in the supreme agencies; (2) a fivefold division of power and function through the _yuans_; and (3) the absence of parliamentary chambers.[3] While the Organic Law was in effect as a const.i.tution (1928-1931), the government was headed by a president wielding considerable power and a Council of State which served as the chief control agency. In 1931 a National People's Convention made up of representatives of the Kuomintang and of occupational groups adopted a Provisional Const.i.tution.[4] Under this const.i.tution the power of the president was sharply reduced, making him practically a t.i.tular officer.
The Council of State became a more formalized agency, and the greater weight of government routine was placed in the Executive _Yuan_. Under the draft const.i.tution proposed for the period after the end of party dictators.h.i.+p a presidential system was to have been inaugurated.
The years 1931-1937 were characterized by the use of the Council of State as the supreme agency of formal government. The president of the National Government was little more than the chairman of the Council.
The Council received instructions from the Central Political Council, and transmitted them to the five regular departments of government in the form of policies. Great as its powers may seem to be, the Council of State was largely an intermediary agency, although the personal influence of its members was extensive. The Council, with its administrative adjuncts, was of value in that it provided an inst.i.tutional center for the government and gave governmental form to the commands of the party. There was no judicial check on the executive or the legislative branches.
The fivefold division of powers (adopted as the _yuan_ system) is one of the most original points in Sun Yat-sen's political scheme. _Yuan_ is an almost untranslatable Chinese term signifying a ”public body” and used in modern China to designate the five great coordinate departments of government.
PARTY MEMBERs.h.i.+P
PARTY CONGRESS
CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CENTRAL SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE STANDING COMMITTEE STANDING COMMITTEE
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