A group of minor New Life agencies are clustered about the Headquarters. These, like the Movement, are not financed by popular subscription, membership fees, or collection drives. All administrative expenses are borne by the Generalissimo and his closest associates, who contribute from their private funds or from available contingent funds of their offices, and from contributions by local governments. Since part of the program is distribution of cash gifts to all wounded soldiers, the budget runs into fairly high figures, but the Generalissimo realizes that in China there is no better way to create mistrust of an enterprise than to collect money for it. The leading agencies affiliated with the New Life are:
(1) the War Area Service Corps, designed for propaganda, instruction, spreading of cooperatives, relief, etc., in the occupied and combat zones;
(2) the Rural Service Corps, designed to perform the same functions behind the lines, and to aid in rural reconstruction;
(3) the New Life Students Rural Summer Service Corps, an organization which organizes students from the colleges during their summer vacations, and sends them out on the land for service work, along with new agricultural information, hygienic teaching, literacy drives, etc.;
(4) the Wounded Soldiers' League, a self-help organization for disabled veterans, who are assisted and encouraged to set up their own cooperatives; they have done so with particular success in cigarette-making, printing, and shoe-weaving;
(5) the Friends of the Wounded Society, wherein volunteers become friends to veterans who are in hospitals, or who return to civil life as cripples (each Friend contributing money, transmitted direct to the veteran; Friends are also encouraged to write or visit the veterans);
(6) the New Life Secretaries' Camp, virtually a summer undergraduate college, with an academic curriculum, strict discipline, and ample organized recreation; and
(7) the Women's Advisory Council, which in turn tops another pyramid of war-time activity in the hands of women's organizations.[19]
In addition to these major activities, there are innumerable further enterprises, including another industrial cooperative system, a really extensive chain of orphanages for war orphans, schools for girls, training camps for young women, etc. It is no uncommon sight to stand on a city street in West China and see three-fourths of the young people wearing the uniforms of various war activities, most of which—outside the army—are affiliates of the Party or the Movement.
These activities have not received much praise from Leftists or foreign visitors. They begin at a level so far below American requirements of social service that they seem ineffectual. The author once saw, in China's tuchün years, old people dying in the streets while pedestrians walked by, uncomfortable but aloof; he saw children with burnt-out eyes whining for alms, to the profit of a beggars' syndicate; he watched soldiers rotting alive on the flagstones of temple courtyards. The Kuomintang, the New Life, and their affiliates cannot relieve the general poverty of China, nor alter the fundamental economic faults and continuing maladjustments of class functions. These agencies do, however, eliminate evils so bad that the ordinary American would not remember them for his schedule of social reform. In the vast reaches of Free China, these organizations—like many others—almost disappear in the perpetual routines of ancient, enduring institutions: the market-place, the hucksters' streets, the tea-house. But their influence is felt. In contrast with the entire American New Deal, they are nothing at all; in contrast with the Y.M.C.A., Komsomol, or similar organizations, they are agents of one of the greatest practical social reforms ever undertaken in Asia, and a step bound to have political repercussions.
Popular non-participation still stultifies them. The leadership of the agencies parallels government personnel. Women leaders are in many instances the wives of officials; an exceptional person, such as Mme. Chiang or her celebrated sisters, may be a leader in her own right, but this is no usual rule. In many agencies, such as intended mass organizations for reform, instruction, health, etc., the mass character is entirely lacking. The masses are the beneficiaries of Kuomintang action, but not often participants in that action. The Communists and the independent Left hold an enormous leverage in popular interest; ignoring class lines, illiteracy, or lack of preparation, they draw the common people into a real share in government and social reconstruction. The Kuomintang has ignored this opportunity—in part because of the Confucian cleavage between scholars and the untutored which made the scholar, however benevolent or philanthropic, a being apart from the commonalty.
Two further organs—the National Spiritual Mobilization (Kuo-min Ching-shên Tsung-tung-yüan) and the Mass Mobilization—are Kuomintang devices for mass participation. The former, developed as an antidote to defeatism engendered by protraction of the war, rising prices, and the treason of Wang, actually consists in a propaganda machine, which holds torchlight vigils, national fealty ceremonies, and similar festivals in the larger cities; it has adapted some of the stagecraft of the German National Socialists, but lacks a broadly popular character. The Mass Mobilization is under the Training Department of the Military Affairs Commission; useful as a military device, its political character is slight in Free China. In the guerrilla and occupied zones, a genuine levée en masse has been accomplished; in the free areas, safeguards which hedge Mobilization have robbed it of utility save that which is strictly military. As an adjunct to the army, this is useful; otherwise it has been ineffectual, despite the competitive success obtained by the guerrilla zones in equivalent organizations.
The over-all picture of the Kuomintang and its activities is hard to bring into focus. One general contrast will point some of its strength and weakness clearly: as a governing agency, which created and maintained the government, the Kuomintang has been more effective than any other group in China. The Party has met and overcome obstacles in practical politics, international relations, working administration, internal unification, and national defense. The Party has succeeded well enough to remain in power, which none of its predecessors or competitors have managed to do. As a social and political force, its governing character colors its work. More has been done by the government for the people than in any comparable situation in East Asia. But Kuomintang rule, however excellent when measured by the standards of authoritary or colonial government, still falls far short of even elementary application of democratic techniques. The flexibility of the Party, and a continued ability to yield power in order to retain power, are the most hopeful factors in the view of the Kuomintang future.
The Kuomintang could not be overthrown by any force—mere force—on earth, unless the Party betrayed itself. Attacked by a major power, it has emerged unscathed. But the Communists or other opponents may find their most useful weapons in the weaknesses of the Kuomintang itself: in the slowness of its change, or in its unadaptability to rapidly changing conditions; or in an extra-Party resentment arising from severe economic dislocation which, though consequent to war rather than to governmental policies, was not swiftly enough controlled by a slowly-moving Kuomintang. By contrast with 1935, however, the Kuomintang has gained much power; the Communists have lost some. Regional and half-separatist regimes, often corrupt, have almost altogether disappeared. Along with the Kuomintang, the independent Leftists have also profited.
No prediction, to be plausible, can assume the early demise or collapse of the Kuomintang. The Party has obtained power; its organization is one of the three policy-executing branches of the new national organization. Ruin of the Kuomintang implies ruin of the emergent Chinese state, so laboriously constructed; though a successor might arise, too much of the work would have to be done over again. Many Chinese, of all classes, realize this. Kuomintang rule is the status quo; despite demerits, it is the first stable government modern China has had, and China's chief tool of defense today.