While we declare ourselves, despite the differences in principle that exist between communism and Sun-Yat-sen-ism, advocates of the basic revolutionary slogans of Sun Yat-sen, of the best revolutionary traditions of the Chinese people, we Communists never for an instant under any circumstances cease to be true followers of the Marxist-Leninist teachings.[12]
Such utterances were matched by similar ones from the Nationalist side.
In their haste the Japanese utilized an ideology which they had practiced in Manchuria—literary Confucianism colored by notions adopted from the Japanese cult of the emperor. They also appealed to the practical and immediate needs of the Chinese living in the areas which they conquered, setting up governments[13] to govern for them. But this was hardly more than an expedient. Of far greater importance than even the war itself is its long-range impact upon the Chinese mind.
The formulation of the present Chinese patriotic movement into a definite drive for the establishment of a new Chinese way of life may emerge as one of the lasting facts of the century. The various movements of the Republican era failed to disturb and arouse the masses sufficiently to make possible a replacement of the decrepit remnants of the old Chinese social and intellectual world, or a reinterpretation adding the ingredients needed in a modern civilization. If patriotism unites the Chinese permanently, Japanese invasion may have provoked what twenty-five years of Chinese effort could not bring about.
Furthermore, the Chinese have reacted to the emergencies of war in a manner almost unprecedented among modern nations. War has not meant the creation of a temporary despotism; it has brought democracy instead. The ideological concord, the supremacy of a common national purpose, which could not be achieved in a quarter century of peacetime agony, was brought forth in the ordeal of national resistance. Democracy and not tyranny was the unifying force. The Kuomintang Party Congress, meeting in Hankow from March 29 to April 2, 1938, reaffirmed the primacy of the San Min Chu I, but at the same time guaranteed the sanctity of private rights, even in wartime, of groups who had been liable to official suppression for years. The Communist press was flourishing openly in Hankow, a testimony to the curious tolerance with which the Chinese united for national defense. The governmental structure was increasingly democratized. Japan had provided a body of common assumptions strong enough to sustain democracy, despite the burden of mutually tolerated disagreements.
Notes
[1.] For the military aspects see below, pp. [108 ff.]; for the immediate governmental aspects see below, pp. [167 ff.]
[2.] The best account of the internal politics of the Kuomintang between 1927 and 1933 is to be found in Gustav Amann, Chiang Kaishek und die Regierung der Kuomintang in China, Berlin and Heidelberg, 1936.