[1] The text of this Constitution is given in Arthur N. Holcombe's invaluable study of the Great Revolution, The Chinese Revolution: A Phase in the Regeneration of a World Power, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1930, p. 356-70.
[2] Wang Shih-chieh, Pi-chiao Hsien-fa, Shanghai, XXVI (1937), p. 651-3.
[3] See China at War, Vol. V, No. 3 (October 1940), p. 77-8, for a recent official account of the Corps.
[4] Information given the author by Dr. Ch'ên Kuo-fu and members of his staff, at the Central Political Institute, August 18, 1940. Few places are more beautiful than the valley in which the cool, spacious buildings of the Institute are set. Landscaped for centuries, and celebrated as a beauty spot, the area is filled with carved shrines, severely simple monuments, and flagstone walks. A river runs through a forested gorge; waterfalls feed the stream.
Dr. Ch'ên supplemented his hospitality in Western China by transmitting to the author a series of statements in reply to questions which were put to him in writing. Of these, the two most interesting refer, first, to the economic status of the Institute's students, and secondly, to the Kuomintang training plan in the Northwest: "Judged by functions and economic levels, students of the Central Political Institute represent all economic strata of Chinese society. Those of peasant origin are most numerous, forming over 40% of the total number."—"For the purpose of educating young men and women in the border provinces, the Central Political Institute has established a School for the Border Provinces, of which branches were established at Powtow (Suiyuan province), Sinin (Chinghai province), and Kangting (Sikong province) in October 1934. Another branch was established at Shuchow (Kansu province) in August 1935, this being the school sponsored by the Kuomintang in the Northwest. The Powtow branch was suspended in 1940, and those in Sinin and Kangting were handed over to the Provincial Governments concerned at the same time. So the only Kuomintang school in the Northwest at present is the one at Shuchow. It is subdivided into three parts: namely, a Normal School, a Middle School, and a Primary School. Its annual budget is one hundred thousand dollars Chinese national currency." (Letter to the author, March 10, 1941.)
[5] The term pu is usually translated Board, but the pu-chang (pu chief) is given as Minister. Since the identical terms are rendered Ministry, Minister, Vice-Minister, etc., in the case of the government, the term Party-Ministry is here adopted as both distinct and descriptive.
[6] Visitors to Chungking owe much to the Foreign Affairs Section of the International Publicity Department. Its chief, the affable Mr. C. C. Chi, a well-known economist from Shanghai, has acted as host to almost every visitor to Hankow or Chungking. He has fulfilled endless requests—many of them irrational—with unfailing patience, good humor, candor, and intelligence. Few books on contemporary China fail to bear the imprint of his help; the present one is no exception.
[7] Statement to the author at Kuomintang Central Headquarters, Chungking, July 16, 1940; Dr. K'an also supplied the facts for the new organizational features of the Party. The following interpretations are the author's alone.
[8] For a Marxian analysis of the Kuomintang, carefully stripped of frank Marxian verbiage, see "Wei-Meng-pu," "The Kuomintang in China: Its Fabric and Future" in Pacific Affairs, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (March 1940), p. 30-44. The author a priori defines the Kuomintang as the party of the national bourgeoisie in China, in effect exhorting it to fulfill its historic mission of completing the national democratic revolution, whereupon socialism [i.e., Stalinism] may historically follow. Nevertheless, its comment on personalities is informing in terms of practical politics.
[9] The China Information Committee, News Release, March 4, 1940. English translations of names such as the New Life Movement, Officers' Moral Endeavor Corps, National Spiritual Mobilization, etc. are often awkward or jejune where the original is not.