The Party Affairs Committee (Tang-wu Wei-yüan-hui) supplements the work of the Central Control Committee in investigating Party personnel and acting as a supplementary housekeeping agency for intra-Party organization.
The third of these agencies is the [Central] Training Committee (Hsün-lien Wei-yüan-hui). To this Committee has fallen the labor of invigorating the Kuomintang under conditions of strain, from war, from the Wang schism, and from new domestic competition. The Generalissimo has put the most vigorous efforts into the work of this agency, and has organized under it a Kuomintang Training Corps (Hsün-lien T'uan) which is providing extensive new resources of leadership to the Party. Enterprising or promising young men are gathered together in training meetings, and given intensive work in Party doctrine, propaganda and organization methods, local administration, etc. The Corps has tended to accept youths and some men of middle age from positions of responsibility, and to equip them with the knowledge and the discipline necessary to continuation of pre-democratic government. In the constant race between government activity as a positive force and government apathy combined with outside anti-governmental revolution as negative forces, the training agencies are doing as much as any single enterprise to stabilize the regime.
The Central Political Institute (Chung-yang Chêng-chih Hsüeh-hsiao) tops the entire program, as a training agency combining features of a university, a camp, and a Party office. Under the personal control and leadership of Dr. Ch'ên Kuo-fu, one of the Generalissimo's intimates and the elder of the celebrated Ch'ên brothers, the Institute stands high for its selection of students, the discipline and instruction it imparts, and its practical political effect. The Kuomintang, pronounced moribund by competent foreign observers ten years ago, today is in a better position for leadership and development than it has been for many years. (The author, who visited the Institute during the summer of 1940, found the student body as well disciplined as any he has seen outside of Germany, the staff highly competent [mostly American-trained], and the physical facilities unsurpassed.) Admission to the Institute is open to graduates of Middle Schools (secondary); students who are married may be admitted, but single students may not marry while in attendance. The courses of study are in general the equivalent of American undergraduate work, although some graduate study is offered. The curriculum includes such subjects as military training, Japanese language and politics, and Marxian thought (in connection with min shêng chu-i). The general course is supplemented by two special courses—the Civil Service Training Corps and the Advanced Civil Service Training Corps—which are set up in collaboration with the Examination Yüan. Graduates are organized into alumni associations, to which the faculty are admitted as supervisory members. It is a matter of success and distinction to undergo the training of the Institute, which is the equivalent of a West Point for political and governmental work. The Generalissimo visits the Institute and speaks before it as much as possible, frequently as often as bi-weekly, but with occasional gaps of months.[4] In addition to the Central Political Institute, there is a [Kuomintang] Northwest Academy of Youth, which has been even more active in training young men for Party and government service. Proximity to the Red training center at Yenan makes its work urgent; training, according to report, is briefer, cruder, and more vigorous than in the central agency. The sub-surface possibility of renewed class war by the Communists makes the Academy peculiarly necessary.
Apart from the Youth Corps, the training agencies, and the Party Affairs Committee, but also directly underneath the Kuomintang C.E.C., come the coordinated and uncoordinated agencies of Party administration. Their organization is as follows:
C.E.C. OF THE KUOMINTANG STANDING COMMITTEE
The Party-Ministries[5] constitute a part of the governing machinery of China. The Organization Party-Ministry is important because of its intra-Party work; the Minister, Dr. Ch'u Chia-hua, a German-educated student, is one of the most active Party leaders, and deeply suspect by the Left. His work is the field of Kuomintang Party administration. The Party-Ministries of Social and Overseas Chinese Affairs combine the functions of government with those of the Party; the former is a bureau of protocol, and the latter acts as an extra-governmental colonial office. The Secretariats provide study agencies for the governmental system. They perform functions which are in the United States both governmental and private (e.g., the work of the Brookings Institution, the Public Administration Clearing House, the various Presidential research and advisory committees, and intra-departmental housekeeping agencies). The system of local government reform is sponsored by the Central Kuomintang Secretariat (Chung-yang Mi-shu-ch'u), even more than by the Ministry of the Interior in the government, under whose jurisdiction it falls. The Secretary-General is a benign revolutionary veteran, Yeh-Ch'u-tsang; the Deputy Secretary-General, Dr. K'an Nai-kuang, is a Party official of almost twenty years' standing, who studied in the United States and visited Europe in quest of data on administration. Boundlessly energetic, he is typical of the younger scholars who combine the academic and the political and impart to the Kuomintang a large share of its present energy.
Internationally, the most important Party-Ministry is that of Publicity (Chung-yang Hsüan-ch'uan Pu), which carries out most of the Chinese propaganda program. Headed by Dr. Wang Shih-chieh, a very outspoken man, its functions are distributed between Sections of General Affairs, Motion Pictures, Newspapers, Advisory, Consultation, and International Publicity, together with services such as China's leading semi-official news service (the Central News Agency), the Party newspapers, the Central Motion Picture Studios, and the official broadcasting system. Because of the difficulties of language, travel, and passports, the International Department supplies most of the news which reaches the world press from Free China. The function of the Western newspapermen consists largely in editing and supplementing this news from whatever independent source they can find, or, occasionally and at the cost of considerable hardship, to attempt to discover the facts for themselves.