Finally, the deepest element eludes political analysis: the moderation of the Chinese character, and the heritage of Confucian common sense. The Chinese language and the Confucian inheritance of ideological sophistication lead to clarity, pragmatism, and practicality. The Chinese have long delighted in ingenious formulae with which to meet de jure impasses, while proceeding de facto in quite another direction. The Chinese are perhaps the only people in the world with enough finesse about "face" to save the Communist face. The Generalissimo is in theory consciously anti-Marxian; but when he was asked whether it is possible that Communists or Leftists might exploit democratic rights for unscrupulous power politics, he answered quietly by writing: "No, because democracy in itself has the ability to work out the solutions for those problems if there are any." A Communist leader said, the Generalissimo would have nothing to fear from the Communists if he won the war. His prestige would be unassailable. Chiang and the Communists both know this.

The National Salvation Movement

The National Salvation (Chiu Kuo) movement is third in point of size and influence, and has been largely instrumental in assisting national unification and resistance. The movement began in 1935 with the organization of a number of professors, students, and young intellectuals who were influenced by the student anti-appeasement movement in North China. It had a simple, and very clear program: stop civil war; stop appeasement.[14] Unlike the Kuomintang or the Communists, the National Salvationists never developed formal dogma, or a comprehensive ideology. Genuinely a movement, it had no membership books, no formal or systematic organization, no minorities, and no schisms. The movement spread like wildfire, across the length and breadth of China as well as overseas; and, because of its lack of formal hierarchy, was ignored by the National Government. Its loose organization, consciously based on the middle class of clerks, students, business men, professors, etc., followed functional lines familiar to the Chinese.

When the National Salvationists began the creation of a structure, however rudimentary, by forming an inter-professional federation for National Salvation, and when they followed this with the national congress for National Salvation, the government took action, which resulted in the celebrated trial of the Seven Gentlemen (ch'i chün-tzŭ). The term (chün-tzŭ) is the Confucian word for superior or upright person, without reference to gender, and was applied in affectionate derision by the press. One of the chün-tzŭ was a lady. The seven, who included a celebrated and popular law school dean (Shên Chun-lu), a banker, and authors (Tso Tao-fên, the spokesman among them) were tried and imprisoned late in 1936. Demands for their release figured in the Sian kidnapping.

The movement was financed very simply through volunteer contributions. Most of the work was done by volunteers who asked no pay, travelling and working at their own expense. About Ch. $5,000 (then about U. S. $1,000) sufficed to cover the whole expenses of headquarters. Despite the imprisonment of its leaders, the movement gathered momentum. Funds were collected to support guerrillas opposing Japan in transmural China. Most literate persons not already committed to formal Kuomintang or Communist membership fell under the influence of the movement. General Shêng Shih-ts'ai in Sinkiang offered the movement a home, and many of its workers went to the West.

In practical terms, the National Salvationists often work with the Communist Party, although they are strictly Chinese and do not have an elaborate dialectic. A strain of economic determinism runs through their thought, but this is not systematized. The leaders of the movement were released after the outbreak of war, but their organizations continued to be suppressed, and work is largely suspended. The leaders told the author that they had no means of estimating the actual number of their adherents; they had no formal membership roll, and they were still legally suppressed in Chungking areas. The quest for policy and principle instead of power is new to Chinese politics, and the National Salvation leaders are esteemed almost universally and hated by none. Nevertheless the Kuomintang has not admitted the legality of the movement, which continues to exist in non-public fashion. Some of the leaders were recognized to the extent of being put on the People's Political Council. In addition to standing with the Communists in matters of practical domestic reform, the National Salvation leaders demand two fundamental policies: continuation of the war, and unity of the country above all party considerations.

The National Salvation leaders are able, modest, and patriotic. They represent the older non-political sentiment of China, infused with modern Leftist content. Dean Shên of Shanghai, the senior of the movement, is an elderly man of almost dainty gentleness, keenly intelligent demeanor, and serious but charming good humor. Mr. Tso Tao-fên, an author, is a world traveller. Their colleagues are of the student, publisher, author type: intellectual, patriotic, common-sense in outlook.

The National Salvation movement looks forward to constitutionalism. It has become almost universal in the guerrilla areas. The leaders have faith that the Constitution and liberalized public life are developing, although they expected in the summer of 1940 that the Convention would be postponed until 1941, to allow the Communists and Nationalists further opportunity for balancing and adjusting power relationships. The National Salvationists are past masters in the techniques of indirect, almost invisible pressures. Their disinterestedness, high principles, and patriotism put them in an admirable position to act as a determined moderating force between the two major Parties. As such they are the third party of China, although another, smaller group bears this name.

The Third Party

The party commonly called The Third Party (Ti-san Tang) was organized by dissident Communists and Left Kuomintang members who wished to keep on collaborating after the major parties broke apart in 1927, thus ending the Great Revolution. Led by the indomitable Têng Yen-ta, who was finally shot to death in Shanghai, the party began illustriously with the participation of Mme. Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-ling) and the Left ex-Foreign Minister, Eugene Chen. The formal names of the party varied. From 1927 to 1929, and again from 1930 to 1937, it was the Revolutionary Action Commission of the Chinese Kuomintang (Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang K'ê-ming Hsing-chêng Wei-yüan-hui); in 1929-1930, the Chinese Revolutionary Party (Chung-kuo K'ê-ming Tang); and after 1937, the Acting Commission for the National Emancipation of China (Min-ts'u Chieh-fang Hsing-chêng Wei-yüan-hui).[15] The party is at present led by Dr. Chang Pai-chün, a returned student from Germany and lieutenant to the late Mr. Têng. It suffers from the official ban on minor parties, but retains, by its own statement, a formal organized membership of about 15,000. (This estimate would, in the opinion of independent observers, need to be discounted.)