CONCLUSION
The China of Chiang K'ai-shek has withstood the shock of foreign war, and has demonstrated its capacity to grow and survive as a state despite heavy domestic adversity. The constitutional structure nears a condition of realistic operation. The political organs, while still monopolized by the Kuomintang, are highly effective; their unrepresentative character is mitigated by the new experiments with consultative legislation. Administratively, both as to special functions and in developing local government, significant new enterprises are under way. Communist-Nationalist rivalry, while still bitter, has avoided domestic civil war during the invasion; despite the clash of National troops with the New Fourth Army, the postponement may be indefinitely continued. Taken all together, Free China presents a hopeful picture; and it therefore acquires international importance as the presumptive predecessor of a great Asiatic democracy.
Nevertheless, the fact that a Chinese central government has emerged in time for effective action, and has withstood invasion, does not provide proof that Japan is doomed to fail. Japanese progress thus far in China has depended in great part upon Japanese world commerce—on raw materials and finance from her lucrative American trade. China's resistance has depended, but to a lesser degree, on Western aid. In each case, the early history of the conflict was qualified if not determined by the character of third-party relations. If the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and Germany continued for the next twenty-odd years to do in the Far East precisely what they have been doing for the past ten, the future might be more or less predictable on the basis of the Far Eastern elements alone. Such a prediction is, however, wholly unsupportable at the present time; it is indeed safe to predict the contrary, and assume that it is impossible for the major outside powers to continue their reciprocal power-relationships unchanged, in the Far East or elsewhere. China's future is therefore bound up with European and American uncertainties. The Three-Power Pact, signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940 between Germany, Italy and Japan, and the American Lease-Lend Bill have already begun to interlock the European and East Asiatic wars.