The China of Chiang K'ai-Shek: A Political Study

by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

Party Organization

Organizationally the Party is bipolar, with the power concentrated in the entire membership at the base, and in the Chief (Tsung-ts'ai) at the apex. The highest authority of the Kuomintang is the Party Congress (Ch'üan-kuo Tai-piao Ta-hui), which could also be translated as All-Nation Convention of Party Delegates. Party Congresses have been held as follows: I, Canton, 1924; II, Canton, 1926; III, Nanking, 1929; IV, Nanking, 1931; V, Nanking, 1935; and the Emergency Party Congress, Hankow, 1938. Wang Ch'ing-wei organized a rump Kuomintang on the basis of a "Sixth Party Congress" held in 1939; the legitimate Sixth Congress has not yet been called.

The Party Congress is the highest agency of the Kuomintang, and thereby the highest legal authority in China—a position which it now shares with the Party Chief, ex officio its Chairman. The Kuomintang Party Constitution provides that the Congress should ordinarily meet every other year (Art. 27), but permits the C.E.C. to postpone a Congress for not more than one year. This provision has frequently been violated. In actual effect the Congress is neither an effective governing body, nor, at the other extreme, a completely helpless tool. No Party Congress has led to a drastic shift of actual political power.

The barometer of influence functions outside the Congress, and the Congress ratifies and establishes what has actually occurred. The high authority of the incumbent C.E.C. in matters of accrediting delegates, plus its power to appoint delegates from areas not represented (a feature taken from Soviet practice), gives the political Ins a formidable weapon with which to bludgeon down opposition, but since the value of the Party Congress is that of a legitimizing agency, overt interference with Party functions would destroy the utility of the Congress. Its level of freedom and efficacy may be compared with American party conventions. Unwieldy, improvised agencies are not able to meet the challenges of well-knit executive groups, but their very unmanageability preserves to them a freedom of incalculable action. The Party Congress could not in practice exercise its formal, legal power of overthrowing the entire Party leadership and starting the Party off on a new tack; it could, however, so humiliate the incumbents by subtle but obvious political gestures familiar to all Chinese, that the leadership would retire for reasons of health, or because of a yearning to contemplate the cosmos.

The elaborate structure of the Kuomintang is shown on the chart of organization (p. 331). Abstraction of the most essential features of this chart reveals the following:

The Central Executive Committee (Chung-yang Chih-hsing Wei-yüan-hui) is a relatively large body with one hundred and twenty members. The Party Constitution requires that it meet every six months or less. These sessions, the Plenary Sessions of the C.E.C., are by far the best-established political processes in the Chinese state. Actual shifts in power are here fought out, since the C.E.C. possesses authority ample for almost any emergency. The expulsion of Wang Ch'ing-wei was effected through C.E.C. action, and did not require the work of any higher body.

The Central Control Committee (Chung-yang Chien-ch'a Wei-yüan-hui) is an agency which the Chinese adapted from two sources, the Bolshevik pattern of an independent intra-party control system, and the native chien-ch'a power. Similar in function to the Commission of Party Control employed by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union rather than to the Organization Bureau, the Central Control Committee (also termed, in another common translation, Central Supervisory Committee) is in charge of an inspective system. Because of the relative laxness of Kuomintang organization, the work of this Committee is far less than one might expect. It has not been adequate to ensure rigidly strict Party efficiency, diligence, or honesty; neither has it become a terrorist agency inflicting an inviolable Party line. Few faults in politics fail to be virtues as well; inefficiency has its minor compensations. In times of secure power, rigid Party discipline might let the Kuomintang grow into a genuine and full-fledged tyranny; nevertheless, in times of stress, such as the present, the Party stands in need of stiffening and control.

The third agency, the Supreme National Defense Council, is the Party's agent in charge of government. (See above, p. [46] ff.)

Immediately under the Central Executive Committee there are three agencies of vitality and importance. The first of these is the San Min Chu I Ch'ing-nien T'uan (usually translated San Min Chu I Youth Corps, or Kuomintang Youth Corps). A war-time addition to the Party, it became politically possible when the abandonment of appeasement re-aligned government and youth. The Communist Youth Corps (Kung-ch'an Ch'ing-nien T'uan) provided a model and rival. The Constitution of the Corps, together with an appraisal (from the official point of view) of its work, is given below in Appendices [II (B)] and [II (C)]. In terms of practical political effect, the Corps is significant, although far less important than its organization scheme would indicate. It combines some of the functions of a military training system with social and propaganda work. Leftists have complained against it bitterly as an agency of espionage and repression within student groups; others have acclaimed it as a meeting of the Kuomintang and the youth, fruitful in terms of national unity. The importance of the Corps lies in its organization of a broad group of young men, one or more steps up from the bottom of the economic scale, and in the fact that the government and Kuomintang—after years of overriding youth opinion—now find it feasible to organize their own affiliate. Few charges of corruption have touched the Corps, which lies particularly within the purview of the Generalissimo. A minor but active element in the political scene, it stands for the Kuomintang's bid for permanence, and, in the event of internal dissension, would be a valuable prop to the status quo. The political indecision and laxness of China in general has kept the group from becoming either a Hitlerjugend or a frankly democratic C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) on the American plan; the Corps is at best a laggard bid to young men, and a belated competition with the Left and the Communists.[3]

The Party Affairs Committee (Tang-wu Wei-yüan-hui) supplements the work of the Central Control Committee in investigating Party personnel and acting as a supplementary housekeeping agency for intra-Party organization.

The third of these agencies is the [Central] Training Committee (Hsün-lien Wei-yüan-hui). To this Committee has fallen the labor of invigorating the Kuomintang under conditions of strain, from war, from the Wang schism, and from new domestic competition. The Generalissimo has put the most vigorous efforts into the work of this agency, and has organized under it a Kuomintang Training Corps (Hsün-lien T'uan) which is providing extensive new resources of leadership to the Party. Enterprising or promising young men are gathered together in training meetings, and given intensive work in Party doctrine, propaganda and organization methods, local administration, etc. The Corps has tended to accept youths and some men of middle age from positions of responsibility, and to equip them with the knowledge and the discipline necessary to continuation of pre-democratic government. In the constant race between government activity as a positive force and government apathy combined with outside anti-governmental revolution as negative forces, the training agencies are doing as much as any single enterprise to stabilize the regime.

The Central Political Institute (Chung-yang Chêng-chih Hsüeh-hsiao) tops the entire program, as a training agency combining features of a university, a camp, and a Party office. Under the personal control and leadership of Dr. Ch'ên Kuo-fu, one of the Generalissimo's intimates and the elder of the celebrated Ch'ên brothers, the Institute stands high for its selection of students, the discipline and instruction it imparts, and its practical political effect. The Kuomintang, pronounced moribund by competent foreign observers ten years ago, today is in a better position for leadership and development than it has been for many years. (The author, who visited the Institute during the summer of 1940, found the student body as well disciplined as any he has seen outside of Germany, the staff highly competent [mostly American-trained], and the physical facilities unsurpassed.) Admission to the Institute is open to graduates of Middle Schools (secondary); students who are married may be admitted, but single students may not marry while in attendance. The courses of study are in general the equivalent of American undergraduate work, although some graduate study is offered. The curriculum includes such subjects as military training, Japanese language and politics, and Marxian thought (in connection with min shêng chu-i). The general course is supplemented by two special courses—the Civil Service Training Corps and the Advanced Civil Service Training Corps—which are set up in collaboration with the Examination Yüan. Graduates are organized into alumni associations, to which the faculty are admitted as supervisory members. It is a matter of success and distinction to undergo the training of the Institute, which is the equivalent of a West Point for political and governmental work. The Generalissimo visits the Institute and speaks before it as much as possible, frequently as often as bi-weekly, but with occasional gaps of months.[4] In addition to the Central Political Institute, there is a [Kuomintang] Northwest Academy of Youth, which has been even more active in training young men for Party and government service. Proximity to the Red training center at Yenan makes its work urgent; training, according to report, is briefer, cruder, and more vigorous than in the central agency. The sub-surface possibility of renewed class war by the Communists makes the Academy peculiarly necessary.

Apart from the Youth Corps, the training agencies, and the Party Affairs Committee, but also directly underneath the Kuomintang C.E.C., come the coordinated and uncoordinated agencies of Party administration. Their organization is as follows:

C.E.C. OF THE KUOMINTANG STANDING COMMITTEE

The Party-Ministries[5] constitute a part of the governing machinery of China. The Organization Party-Ministry is important because of its intra-Party work; the Minister, Dr. Ch'u Chia-hua, a German-educated student, is one of the most active Party leaders, and deeply suspect by the Left. His work is the field of Kuomintang Party administration. The Party-Ministries of Social and Overseas Chinese Affairs combine the functions of government with those of the Party; the former is a bureau of protocol, and the latter acts as an extra-governmental colonial office. The Secretariats provide study agencies for the governmental system. They perform functions which are in the United States both governmental and private (e.g., the work of the Brookings Institution, the Public Administration Clearing House, the various Presidential research and advisory committees, and intra-departmental housekeeping agencies). The system of local government reform is sponsored by the Central Kuomintang Secretariat (Chung-yang Mi-shu-ch'u), even more than by the Ministry of the Interior in the government, under whose jurisdiction it falls. The Secretary-General is a benign revolutionary veteran, Yeh-Ch'u-tsang; the Deputy Secretary-General, Dr. K'an Nai-kuang, is a Party official of almost twenty years' standing, who studied in the United States and visited Europe in quest of data on administration. Boundlessly energetic, he is typical of the younger scholars who combine the academic and the political and impart to the Kuomintang a large share of its present energy.

Internationally, the most important Party-Ministry is that of Publicity (Chung-yang Hsüan-ch'uan Pu), which carries out most of the Chinese propaganda program. Headed by Dr. Wang Shih-chieh, a very outspoken man, its functions are distributed between Sections of General Affairs, Motion Pictures, Newspapers, Advisory, Consultation, and International Publicity, together with services such as China's leading semi-official news service (the Central News Agency), the Party newspapers, the Central Motion Picture Studios, and the official broadcasting system. Because of the difficulties of language, travel, and passports, the International Department supplies most of the news which reaches the world press from Free China. The function of the Western newspapermen consists largely in editing and supplementing this news from whatever independent source they can find, or, occasionally and at the cost of considerable hardship, to attempt to discover the facts for themselves.

In general, the Chinese follow the policy of giving the favorable side of the news, simply omitting anything that could conceivably be unfavorable. Their publicity services are no more guilty of positive suggestio falsi than the services of the British or Americans. Nevertheless, Chinese notions of dignity and public policy differ widely from Americans'; news would be hard to obtain or valueless when obtained, except for the fact that the staff of the International Section is almost entirely American-trained and well-acquainted with American notions of news. The very able and active Hollington Tong, one of China's most successful newspapermen, who was in press work long before he became a Party official, has led in the supply of ample news in the face of great difficulties. He is esteemed by Westerners to be, along with Mme. Chiang, one of the Generalissimo's most effective publicity advisers.

The Party-Ministry of Publicity also attends to the needs and interests of Western newspapermen and other visitors, arranging appointments, schedules, etc., and even boarding many of them at a Press Hostel. These attentions, while from time to time irritatingly restrictive, are in the end almost always appreciated as invaluable. Only the Leftists shun the Publicity Ministry; they do so unsuccessfully, and to their loss. No other Asiatic, and few Western, states can boast as alert and effective a system of propaganda. In the troubled shifts and crises of world politics, the Chinese have managed to retain the sympathy of the most diverse audiences—from American church people to Soviet agitation squads, and from British conservatives to Nazi clubs in Germany. The American traditions of frankness, zest, liveliness in news are transplanted; while they have suffered a sea-change, they still operate with telling effect.[6]

The Ministry of Women's Affairs, decreed in 1940, is in process of organizing women's work for the Party. Previously, most women's organizations had been knit together in the affiliated New Life Movement. The minor committees of the Party—historical, pensions, etc.—lie outside the scope of war activities. Although they continue, their functions are subordinate to the purposes of resistance and reconstruction.

Formal field organization follows seven patterns:

Much of this exists only on paper. After the break with the Communists in 1927, and the transformation of the Kuomintang from a government-destroying to a governing agency, the functional and agitational groups were allowed to slip into desuetude. Under the pressure of war, and the encouraging political situation, which puts a premium on action, the Kuomintang has adopted a variety of policies designed to maintain its position.