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.
The Provinces
The war-lord period was ushered in by the death of Yüan Shih-k'ai, dictator-President and commander-in-chief, in 1916. He had inherited a tradition of dual government—civil and military—no less sharp than the Japanese distinction, and had continued it by placing his military henchmen in power as provincial satraps. After his death, each province had a military governor (Tuchün), who sometimes tolerated a civil governor (Shêng-chang) and sometimes held both posts concurrently. The various tuchün rivalled one another in a vain turmoil until the rise of the National Government suppressed or incorporated them. Even today some of these men hold remnants of their power, but it is still declining. The power of the National Government has increased almost every year for over fifteen years, and its programs, bequeathed by Sun Yat-sen, call for the constant diminution of provincial authority, until in the end the province shall be little more than a postal link between the central government and the districts (hsien).
Continued vitality of the provinces as a form of political life is shown by the chariness with which the government approaches the problem of re-subdividing the nation, by the continued effect of provincialism through the influence of geography, botany, ecology, economics and spoken language, and by the manifest utility of the provinces in the prosecution of the war. It is impossible to discuss any aspect of Chinese affairs for very long without entering into distinctions between provinces.