FOOTNOTES:
[1] China Information Committee, News Release, Chungking, September 30, 1940; and the same, December 30, 1940.
[2] Wang Shih-chieh, "The People's Political Council," The Chinese Year Book 1938-39, cited, p. 346-55; the same, The People's Political Council, [Chungking], [1939?], pamphlet, reprinted from The China Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. I (Winter 1938-39). Dr. Wang's contributions, brief as they are, worthily supplement his pre-war constitutional studies, and provide the most carefully annotated data on the Council which the present author has found. The list of members given in the first article, above, is one of the most interesting documents of our time, giving, as it does, the residence, profession, and age of each Councillor. Beside "Former Prime Minister" one finds "Living Buddha attached to the Panchen Lama," "Reserve Member, Executive Committee, the Third International," "Professor, National Peking University" and "Head of the Mêng Clan, Descendants of Mencius."
[3] Woodhead, H. G. W., editor, The China Year Book, 1939, Shanghai, n. d., Ch. IX, "The Kuomintang and the Government," contains a detailed summary of the first two sessions of the People's Political Council (p. 231-7). Quigley, Harold S., "Free China," International Conciliation, No. 359 (April 1940), includes a judicious appraisal of the work and meaning of the Council in its first two and one-half years (p. 137-8).
[4] Wang Shih-chieh, "The People's Political Council," cited, p. 346 ff. The new system, inaugurated early in 1941, provided for 90 members to be directly elected by Provincial and Municipal People's Political Councils.
[5] Tang Chêng Chien Chih T'u-piao, cited, chart of the Kuo-min Ts'an-chêng Hui.
[6] Wang Shih-chieh, The People's Political Council, cited, p. 5. Obvious misprints have been corrected.
[7] The author is indebted for some of these facts to an interview with Dr. Wang Shih-chieh in Chungking on August 1, 1940.
[8] 1938-39 issue, p. 351.
[9] Described below, p. [159] ff.
[10] May-ling Soong Chiang (Madame Chiang K'ai-shek), China Shall Rise Again, New York, 1941. Chinese economic developments are the subject of careful study by the Institute of Pacific Relations, whose Far Eastern Survey follows contemporary developments closely and whose Inquiry Series offers a monumental collection of linked works on Pacific affairs, with particular stress on the economic background to politics. The volume in this series on Chinese political development, by Lawrence K. Rosinger, may be expected to fill an important gap in the literature on China today.
[11] For the latest description of the organization of the Wai-chiao Pu, see Wang Ch'ung-hui, "China's Foreign Relations during the Sino-Japanese Hostilities 1937-1940," Chapter XIII of Chiang, May-ling Soong, China Shall Rise Again, cited, p. 139-40.
[12] China at War, Vol. V, No. 2 (October 1940), p. 37.
[13] The same, Vol. V, No. 4 (November 1940), p. 78. See also Wu Yi-fang and Price, Frank W., China Rediscovers Her West, New York, 1940; Chapter VII, "Holding the Educational Front" (p. 69-76) is by Y. G. Chen, President of the University of Nanking. The entire work edited by Messrs. Wu and Price is of value; written from the missionary point of view, it presents first-hand statements of affairs on Western China, and continues with liberal and socially conscious appraisals of the needs of Christian work.
[14] Wang Wên-hsiang, "K'ang-jih Ta-hsüeh yü Ch'ing-nien Fan-mên" ("The Sorrows of Youth and the Resist-Japan University") in the symposium entitled So-wei "Pien-ch'ü" (The So-called "Frontier Area"), Chungking, XXVIII (1939), p. 30 ff.
[15] See the discussion of the mass education problem, below, p. [218].
[16] Among the recent books on Sinkiang, one, unusual because it is by a Chinese author, stands out: Wu, Aitchen K., Turkistan Tumult, London, 1940. The travel books of Sven Hedin, Ella Maillart, Peter Fleming, and Sir Eric Teichman also contain material of political interest.
[17] The Far Eastern Survey keeps effectively up to date with all new developments in this field. An authoritative but understandable explanation of the work of the Ministry is found in H. H. K'ung, "Holding China's Financial Front," Ch. XI, work by Mme. Chiang K'ai-shek, cited above.
[18] Wong Wen-hao, Minister of Economic Affairs, "Industrialization of Western China," Ch. XIV, work by Mme. Chiang K'ai-shek, cited above, p. 142.
[19] He also spells it Oung Wen-hao; by the Wade transliteration, Wêng Wên-hao.
[20] China Information Committee, News Release, Chungking, July 1, 1940.
[21] The same, December 23, 1940.
[22] Communication of August 12, 1940; in the present author's possession.
Chapter IV
PROVINCIAL, LOCAL, AND SPECIAL-AREA GOVERNMENT
China consists of twenty-eight provinces, varying in size about as do the European nations. Of the twenty-eight, fourteen are wholly under Chinese control, or are so slightly touched by invasion that normal governmental processes continue. Ten provinces are under dual or triple government—by the Japanese and pro-Japanese Chinese, by guerrilla and other semi-independent groups, and by the usual constitutional authorities. The remaining four are under firm Japanese domination, under the name Manchoukuo.[1] Well over half of China's population is under the National Government, and about one-ninth under unchallengeable Japanese control; the residuum is the subject of sharp political competition. The war is not merely a war between governments: it is a struggle for the creation of government.[2]
This problem would be immense even if there were no war. Under the successive Imperial dynasties of the past millennium, China developed extreme regional autonomy. Despite absolutist theory, the provinces under their governors or viceroys were practically as independent as states of the American union in the early nineteenth century.
PROVINCIAL AND URBAN GOVERNMENT
* optional† legal, not administrative, entity
With the advent of war, the position of the provinces has become more precarious, truly new political devices in the form of novel regional governments have appeared, and the concrete problems of reform in the village communities have become as imperative as military measures.