The Great Empire of Manchou, to use its present official name, arose as Manchoukuo. The word itself was a concession to world opinion, as Manchuria is known to the Chinese simply as the Three Eastern Provinces (Tung San Shêng); its population is overwhelmingly Chinese. With the development of Chinese national unity, the Japanese position in this area was threatened. They invaded Manchuria in September, 1931; the following year they proclaimed the independence of Manchoukuo, inviting the young man who as a child had been the last Manchu emperor of China to serve as the head of the state. In 1934 he was installed as Emperor Kang Têh of the Great Empire of Manchou. The Japanese have done a great deal toward bettering their own economic position in Manchuria, but the effect of their policies on the Chinese population is of doubtful merit. Equal motives underlay the rebirth of Peking, where on December 14, 1937, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was proclaimed.[11] The old Peking-Republican flag was flown. The heads of the new regime were aged men who already twenty years ago had cooperated with the Japanese. Others served under duress and performed their mock routine in the cold agony of treason. The new administration is honeycombed with Japanese "advisers" and under the domination of the Japanese army.
To round out their collection of puppet governments, the Japanese established in the spring of 1938 a Reformed Government of the Republic of China in Nanking, and even went so far as to adopt—provisionally, at least—the constitutional form of the National Government, which had moved upriver. This regime was admittedly even more ephemeral than the others, and the Japanese announced their intention of consolidating it with the set-up they had organized in Peiping. For the time, it was to be subordinate for purposes of theory to the Northern regime, but the future of the whole Japanese adventure was in doubt, and that of their half-conceived instrumentalities even more dubious.
[The Growth of Government in China]
In the decade following 1927, Chinese government became more significant than it had been since the days of the founding emperors of the Ch'in and the Han. Power was based on a correlation of government with ideological and military forces. The Nationalist Party was the first to effectuate this correlation, in part as a result of lessons learned from the Soviet advisers in the period of collaboration.[12] The Nationalists utilized the doctrinal bases of the San Min Chu I, tested in the social revolution which arose from the Nationalist-Communist propaganda. The great personal prestige of Sun Yat-sen was one of the most important contributing factors to the growth of Nationalist administration in Canton.
The military ability and political leadership of Chiang K'ai-shek largely determined the success of the subsequent National Government. Chiang created a military machine superior to any other in China and coordinated army and government in such a way as to add strength to both.[13] But Chiang stood not alone. His wife became his alter ego for press relations, and important in her own right. His brother-in-law T. V. Soong, resourceful financier, and his sisters-in-law, Mme Sun Yat-sen (Sun's second wife) and Mme H. H. K'ung (wife of a later minister of finance), were strong influences at Nanking. Yet these members of the "Soong dynasty" did not shape the course of Nanking policies as a closed concern. They were part of a larger group sharing responsibility equally.
Once the National Government was established its success was largely the result of success. Improvements in the international status of China accrued to the prestige of the regime, and a new surge toward reconstruction, delayed intolerably long by the anarchy of tuchüns, occurred as the result of the Nanking hegemony. In the later years of the National Government, before the Japanese onslaught transformed it into a quasi-military regime fighting for its existence, the increased extent of the national police power was brought into sharp relief. With the extension of a unified gendarmery service over great parts of the nation, and the development of a court system which worked well except when under political pressure, the individual came to face government as a reality—more than ever before, under any dynasty. The government defied custom and tradition in promoting public health, in attacking epidemics, in sponsoring modern burial practices, and in deriding unhygienic superstitions. In the broad field of mores which adjoins public health, the influence of the government made itself felt—in reducing the cost of marriage, in promoting municipal cleanliness and tidiness in public places, in furthering temperance. The New Life movement combined the prestige of the government with the elasticity of voluntary association. In its closing days Nanking whipped up an unprecedented wave of public spirit among the masses.
As to government control of the economy, the Nanking government aimed at system, in place of the inchoate conditions which existed before its ascendancy. Chinese banks began to be as reliable as those of the West. The currency was standardized on a national basis. A national fiscal policy was adopted. A great achievement was the introduction of a managed paper currency in a country where specie alone had been respected for ages. Agriculture, however, was lagging behind.
Government disavowed its previous identification with a scholastic officialdom. It dispensed with a state religion, although the commemoration of Sun Yat-sen compensated in part for the change. Government disclaimed any vague totalitarianism and instead clarified its zone of functioning through the use of law. By narrowing the field of its authority, it increased its effectiveness. Nationalization, centralization, bureaucratization, the development of lawful process, the emergence of a half-Western state working for Chinese needs—thus may the growth of government be characterized in the period after 1928. Obstacles remained, enough to dismay any ruler; but they had become obstacles and were not impassable barriers of cynicism, incomprehension, and futility.
The Japanese invasion of 1937 had two immediate effects on the government. It shattered overnight the structure erected by the Nanking regime. The work of a decade was undone. On the other hand, the Japanese threat helped to drive the Communists and Nationalists together and forced into the national nexus those regional leaders who were maintaining the last vestiges of separatism. Most consequential of all: Japan's push—the greatest invasion the Chinese had known since the 1600's—thrust government and people toward each other. Foreign troops taught inland China what nationalism really meant.