Party Congress
| Central Executive Committee | Central Supervisory Committee |
| Standing Committee | Standing Committee |
| Central Political Council | |
|---|---|
| 1. Secretariat for Civil Affairs | |
| 2. Secretariat for Military Affairs | |
| 3. Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Political Officials | |
| President of the National Government Council of State |
|---|
| 1. Commission of Military Affairs |
| 2. Board of General Staff |
| 3. Directorate-General of Military Training |
| 4. Military Advisory Council |
| 5. National Reconstruction Commission |
| 6. Academia Sinica |
| 7. National Economic Council |
| 8. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Commission |
| I. EXECUTIVE YÜAN |
| President |
| Vice-president |
| Secretariat |
| 1. Ministry of the Interior |
| 2. Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
| 3. Ministry of Military Affairs |
| 4. Ministry of the Navy |
| 5. Ministry of Finance |
| 6. Ministry of Industries |
| 7. Ministry of Education |
| 8. Ministry of Communications |
| 9. Ministry of Railways |
| 10. Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs |
| 11. Commission on Overseas Chinese Affairs |
| 12. National Health Service |
| 13. Hopei-Chahar Political Council |
| 14. Mongolian Local Autonomy Council |
| 15. Weihaiwei Administration |
| 16. Preparatory Commission for the Sikang Provincial Government |
| 17. Boards of Trustees for Boxer Refunds |
| 18. Committee on Efficiency |
| II. LEGISLATIVE YÜAN |
| President |
| Vice-president |
| Legislative Members |
| Legislative Research Bureau |
| Bureau of Statistics |
| III. JUDICIAL YÜAN |
| President |
| Vice-president |
| Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Functionaries |
| Administrative Court |
| Supreme Court |
| Ministry of Justice |
| IV. EXAMINATION YÜAN |
| President |
| Vice-president |
| Examination Commission |
| Ministry of Personnel |
| V. CONTROL YÜAN |
| President |
| Vice-president |
| Ministry of Audit |
| Provincial Commissions |
| Hsien Municipalities |
| Villages |
The Executive Yüan was headed, as were all the others, by a yüan president (yüan-chang), assisted by a vice-president, a secretary-general, and a director of political affairs. The yüan included all the major executive ministries, and the formal meeting of the Executive Yüan was a meeting of the Yüan officers, the heads of the ministries, and other directing officials. Such meetings took place once a week and corresponded to cabinet meetings in Western countries. The executive work of the entire government was performed by the Executive Yüan and—through characteristic Chinese devices—the Yüan Secretariat, divided into bureaus and committees, came to occupy a position of high strategic importance in Chinese government. All executive measures were funneled through the Secretariat, which cast them into proper form and determined whether or not they should be put on the yüan agenda. It thus occupied a position not unlike that of the Grand Chancery and Grand Secretariat of the T'ang dynasty or of the Office of Transmissions under the Manchus. The Executive Yüan combined within itself nine ministries: Interior (having charge of provincial and local government), Foreign Affairs, Military Affairs, Navy, Finance, Industries, Education, Communications, and Railways. Included were also a number of special commissions and agencies.
The Legislative Yüan consisted of a president, a vice-president, and eighty-six members, with an extensive administrative staff attached to it. The yüan was divided, as are parliaments, into committees, but it was not a representative body, nor able to enact laws independently of the other divisions of government. Its president's powers were so wide as to make the cameral organization of the yüan more apparent than real and to reduce the yüan to a legislative drafting and research agency. The Judicial Yüan was made up of four establishments: Supreme Court, Administrative Court, Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Functionaries (dealing with the government personnel below political rank), and the Ministry of Justice. The Examination Yüan, composed of two divisions (Examination Commission and Ministry of Personnel) gave expression to the Chinese tradition of separate examining agencies. Its function was to provide a merit system applicable to the whole government staff, except those relatively few positions which were political in nature. Because of the difficulty of developing elaborate machinery under unusual circumstances, the Examination Yüan did not establish for itself a high standard of accomplishment. Finally, the Control Yüan served as a chamber of censors entitled to bring suit against dishonest or treacherous officials, and maintained a central Ministry of Audit. In the last few years of the Nanking regime it brought over two hundred and fifty cases to bar each year.
An informative picture of the practical workings of one of the key parts of the National Government, the Secretariat of the Executive Yüan, is given by Tsiang Ting-fu, the Chinese ambassador to the Soviet Union and formerly one of the ranking officials of that Yüan:
The Bureau of General Affairs keeps the internal machinery of the Secretariat going. It receives the dispatches and distributes them among the sections. It manages the funds and looks after supplies.
The Bureau of Confidential Affairs handles confidential telegrams and keeps the secret codes.
The Secretaries in the Drafting Bureau draft documents that require high literary finish, usually formal documents.
The Reception Bureau takes care of callers and visitors and sees to it that dignitaries who come to the Executive Yüan for business or courtesy calls are accorded a due reception.
The Meetings Bureau arranges for all meetings held in, or under the auspices of, the Executive Yüan.
The Compilation and Translation Bureau watches over the periodical press, both Chinese and foreign.
The real political work is done in the Sections. Let us take up first political correspondence. A minister, governor, or mayor sends a dispatch to the Executive Yüan, asking for instructions in regard to, let us say, a problem in raising funds. It goes to Section 5. The head clerk and his assistants look up regulations, precedents, and other relevant facts and write a memorandum. The dispatch with the memorandum goes to the secretary or councillor in charge of the Section, who writes a minute suggesting a solution or approving a solution suggested by the head clerk. Then the dispatch, memorandum, and minute go to the Director of Political Affairs, who, taking into consideration political factors, renders a tentative decision for final approval by the Secretary-General. The clerical staff sticks to law, tradition, and precedent. Adjustments are usually made only by the ranks above. As the majority of problems are so-called routine problems, in connection with which the opinion of the clerical staff is usually sound, the ranks above usually accept the proposed solution. What is important and bothersome is the minority of unusual problems, for the treatment of which procedures are varied.
The sender of a dispatch dealing with an unusual problem may call, or send a representative to call, on the Secretary-General or the Director of Political Affairs before or simultaneously with the sending of the dispatch, giving a personal detailed explanation of the matter and sounding the opinion of the Executive Yüan as represented by the Secretary-General and the Director of Political Affairs. An agreed solution may be arrived at during the interview. In that case the correspondence will be only formal. But the parties involved may disagree, in which case the Secretary-General will courteously say that the matter must be referred to the President or to the Yüan meeting, and the Director has an additional solution of the problem by resorting to consultation with the Secretary-General. In some cases the Secretary-General and the Director will decide the matter during the interview whether the caller likes it or not.
Some unusual matters touch several jurisdictions, i.e., two or three ministries; or a number of provinces or cities; or both. The Executive Yüan then calls a meeting of representatives of the jurisdictions affected and the matter is threshed out there. The conclusions of such meetings may be referred to the President or to the Yüan meetings.
In dealing with unusual problems of primary importance the Secretary-General usually consults the President, and the Director of Political Affairs consults the Secretary-General in most cases and the President in some cases where the work is specifically assigned to the Director by the President.
The average of dispatches (including telegrams) received and sent out daily by the Executive Yüan is about three hundred, of which number only two or three need to be referred to the President or the Yüan meeting, the rest being handled by the Secretariat without such reference.
The Secretariat on its part, by the order of the President as Chairman of the Yüan meeting, or on the initiative of the Secretary-General or at the suggestion of the Director of Political Affairs, sends dispatches to the ministries, commissions, provinces and municipalities, in the form of decrees, ordinances, instructions, inquiries and requests.
The energies of the clerical staff are devoted entirely to the incoming and outgoing correspondence. About half of the time of the secretaries and councillors is devoted to correspondence and half to conferences. The sub-committees created by the Yüan meeting are numerous and are almost always convoked by the Secretariat. In a few cases the Secretary-General and the Director of Political Affairs, usually accompanied by a secretary or councillor, attend; in most cases, however a secretary or a councillor is designated as the Yüan's representative. The conclusions of such sub-committees are always reported back to the Yüan meeting.[5]
Strange as the yüan system may appear, it seems to have been the most effectual form of government that the Chinese have devised in the Republican era. In times of military or revolutionary crisis, however, this elaborate scheme of bureaucratic departmentalization would prove too cumbersome for rapid readjustment and action; during the Japanese invasions, great reliance was placed on the creation of emergency commissions. In addition to the yüans there were a number of agencies which did not fit into the five-power scheme. Great independent establishments were attached directly to the Council of State. An Academia Sinica took the place of the Han Lin of imperial times as a national center for scholarship. A National Economic Council and a National Reconstruction Commission performed specialized functions effectively, with assistance from experts provided by the League of Nations. In fact, there was a scattering of foreign advisers throughout the government. Of these the highest in rank were placed at the disposal of the Council of State, some rendering actual technical service, others active in unofficial representation abroad, propaganda, lobbying in foreign capitals, or similar tasks. Other advisers were attached to the yüans and to the ministries.
Provincial government under the Nanking regime was subordinated to the Executive Yüan through the Ministry of the Interior. The provinces each possessed a commission form of government, with the commission chairman serving as titular head of the province. The actual operation of the provincial governments exhibited a great deal of variation, depending on the character of the area, the extent of its political development, and the tangible influence enjoyed by the National Government. The provincial commission combined the policy-making, policy-executing, and quasi-judicial functions, operating largely on the basis of instructions from Nanking and transmitting reports through the Secretariat of the Executive Yüan at the other end. Attached to each commission were a secretariat and four or more departments—mainly civil affairs, finance, reconstruction, and education. The department heads were members of the commission—a type of government not unlike that of American cities under the Galveston plan. The theory of Sun Yat-sen provided, however, that the province should decrease in importance with the growth of modern government in China, so that the dangerous regionalism in the country would eventually be denied overt political expression. He saw the future significance of the provincial governments only in their role as intermediaries for hsien-national relationships. Under the National Government while at Nanking, the tendency was to centralize control and to emphasize national guidance in those provinces squarely under Nationalist rule. In other provinces the provincial governments tended to follow local conditions and mirror the national standards as a matter of decorum only. The provincial governments were far less important in the life of the provinces than was the National Government for the nation. They had the national civilian and military authorities to cope with, in addition to the impositions of their own local military. Their sources of revenue were not ample, and their authority not well established. In some provinces the commission form was adopted only as a matter of legal compliance, leaving to local leaders the actual conduct of affairs. In fact, reform centered on the hsien rather than the province, partly because the province was a potential rival to the nation, and partly because the hsien was a more organic unit in Chinese society.