The three chief devices which have been applied to the reform of local government are: instruction, mandate, and other remote controls; inspection systems; and training courses. First are the attempts to change local government by transmission from the capital of voluminous instructions, manuals, etc., supplemented by similar Kuomintang action for Party reform. In the second case, central officials go to the provinces. During the summer of 1940, a number of such groups of officials divided China between themselves, each group taking a number of provinces for its inspection zone. The presence of a central delegation in the field led to some housecleaning, provided an incentive for immediate work, and informed the National Government of the condition of the country. Some junketing was observable, but not enough to vitiate the work of inspection. By the third device, local officials are called to training centers. The Generalissimo is very fond of this method. He encourages the selection of younger men, who thereby feel that their careers are given a boost. They are taught modern governmental practice while living, in most cases, a disciplined but comfortable half-military life. Some training conferences are convened ad hoc in a promising area; others continue from year to year under the government or related organizations. Many thousand men and women undergo some form of training. The program has clearly discernible effects in improving local government. The selection of persons who either hold office or are likely to hold office provides a practical self-interest motivation. Further minor devices of local government reform include the grants in aid to the provinces, the establishment of model hsien, the military eradication of banditry, the reclamation of farm land and forests, some resettlement, and much planned modernization with small-scale projects. Town after town has received the stimuli of modernization from one of these sources.
Estimates—nothing more could be found—concerning the effectiveness of this program varied considerably. Since two equally skilled observers, considering the same institution at first hand, can differ sharply in their value judgments of efficacy or integrity, this is not surprising. A few Westerners and Leftists have insisted that the program was almost altogether sham. A few formal, optimistic officials have insisted that it has succeeded almost everywhere. One competent foreign observer told the author that he believed the pao-chia system to be installed in 90 per cent of Free China, and to be actually working in 50 per cent. Another agreed more or less with these figures, but suggested that there were enormous differences between the provinces, some being genuinely transformed and others remaining unaffected. A Chinese official, himself a social scientist, who had been intimately connected with local reform, stated that 50 per cent application for all Free China would be much too high an estimate, except for the holding of token elections. Only in Kwangsi province was the new self-government structure working over half of the countryside; elsewhere, the ratio was about one-fifth effective as against four-fifths nominal.
Most of all, genuine application consists in making institutions available, and thereupon letting the people help themselves. If local government is of practical use to the common people, they can be counted on to discover its utility promptly. If it is of no practical use, they will know that too. Whatever the present degree of success, obstacles still confront the program. Local extragovernmental institutions possess enormous vitality. If superficial or slipshod reforms are made, the new local governments will be merely operated as screens for secret societies, landlords' unions, or other narrow cliques.
Contrastingly, a tradition of discussion and public action makes it equally possible that the rural masses, familiar with cooperative action, will operate the new institutions successfully. The difference between success and failure is not to be measured in terms of wholly new achievement; it is determined by the choice of existing institutions which, transmuted and fitted, fill the pattern of the rationalized local government system. If narrow, class-bound or unprogressive groups assume the regalia of a novel legality, using their position to obstruct further development, the program will fail. If the town-meeting, cooperative potentialities of the entire adult population are aroused, and if the ordinary farmer or coolie can see that he has the opportunity of bettering his livelihood through political action, the success of democracy will be assured.
Potentialities in the field of local autonomy are enhanced by the fact that the National Government has competitors. The Japanese have an opportunity which, instead of utilizing, they have done their best to destroy: conquest through prosperity. If they and their Chinese associates offered low prices, easy marketing, and fair taxes, in the place of arson, rape, thievery and bluster, their failure would become less certain. As a third side to the triangle of competitive power, the Communists and independent Left, while allied to the National Government, rival it in winning the loyalty of the population. Huge areas in Communist and guerrilla sections are sampling reform of a drastic and immediate kind: the lowering of taxes, the democratization of government, the abolition of usury. With the traitors on its Right and the Communists or guerrillas on its Left, the National Government does not abandon its chief politico-economic weapon by disregarding land and labor reform. None of the three parties has anything to gain by inaction. None has an interest which binds it to self-dooming reaction.
The Communist Zone
Three new governmental areas which are neither provinces nor local governments have come forth out of unification and war. Their relationship to Chungking is strange, perhaps unique. They are not states members of a federal union, since China is a unitary republic. They are not new regional commissions, creatures and extensions of the central government, because—whatever the theory—they were independently initiated. They are not allies, because they profess national unity. They are not rebellions, because they fight a common enemy, only occasionally coming into conflict with government troops. Yet they possess some of the features of each of the following: federal states, regional subgovernments, allied states, and rebellions. They cut across the pattern of the National Government. Two are governments; one is an army. The army and one government are largely Communist; the other government is a genuine United Front of the parties. Two are North Chinese; one is Central Chinese. But all three have this in common: they are Leftist, actively revolutionary; they are objects of patronizing suspicion to the central authorities, who are glad of the help but worry about its post-war cost.
The first and most famous of these areas is the Communist zone in the Northwest. Formally it includes eighteen hsien; the Communists claim inclusion of twenty-three. After being termed the Special Administrative District of the Chinese Republic (Chung-hua Min-kuo T'ê-ch'ü Chêng-fu), and then Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Frontier Area (Shan-kan-ning Pien-ch'ü Chêng-fu), the zone assumed the much more modest style of Administrative Area of North Shensi (Shan-pei Hsing-chêng-ch'ü).[11] This Frontier Area is in personnel and Party life a direct continuation of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Leftist and Communist circles talk as though it were a wholly autonomous state, resting on its own military power, but cooperating with the National Government for national resistance and reconstruction. This is largely true—at any rate, more realistic than the opposing view, which avers that no change has taken place in the Northern part of Shensi province, and that the Communists are interfering with the proper processes of government. The following is a characteristic statement of the latter position:
At present the name "Frontier Area" seems to be very common because it is so called in false propaganda about the "independent sovereignty" [tzŭ-li wei-wang]. But if we agree that the so-called "Frontier Area" is a part of the territory of the Chinese Republic, the name ought to have been issued in conformity with the decrees of the central government. According to central government decree, it is only a "Supplementary Recruitment Area for the Eighth Route Army," but not an area of civil administration. [The author, in an extended discussion, challenges the re-division of the provinces as a matter not to be undertaken casually, denies the legal foundation of the term "Frontier Area," and then examines its practical justifications. He finds that the Communists have two: the regime is now a de facto system, its existence is a fait accompli and further discussion must proceed from this point; also, the regime is founded in popular opinion, and the government should not violate the wishes of the people. He disagrees with both of these and seeks to refute them, insisting on lawful procedure and constitutional government. He concludes with a peroration to the Communists themselves.] ... this problem is really quite simple, unlike the Sudeten problem. Was it the Communist Party of China which called the Sudeten Party of Czechoslovakia violators of the unity of their own country and running dogs of Fascism? Therefore, I think that they would never imitate what the reactionary Sudeten party did. And was it the Communists who originated the "United Front"? Hence they must understand very clearly what unification means to China, and must never utter things which they do not really believe. Therefore, with the rising tide of national unity and concentration, I suppose that the odd name "Frontier Area," which is contrary to the real sense of unification, will soon pass away and be a mere historical term.[12]
In practical terms this implies the informal reconciliation of two claims constitutionally and legally incompatible. The Chinese Communist leaders operate under the national law codes as much as they are able. They employ the national currency. They use the nationally standard system for local government. They profess unity. At the same time they maintain, as a hard reality, a separate regime in which the Communist Party is supreme, the Party Line is gospel, and dissidents are dealt with as "pro-Japanese traitors" or otherwise. Transit between National Government territory and Communist territory is not altogether easy. Leftists are reported to have died on their way to the Northwest, and Nationalists are equally well reported to have disappeared after they got there.