CHAPTER VI

THE COMMUNIST AND MINOR PARTIES

The party politics of Republican China fall into two periods: the early period of competitive, pre-parliamentary parties, 1912 to the Great Revolution; and a later period of struggling monopoly-power parties, from the Great Revolution to the present. In the earlier period the Kuomintang and its rivals tolerated one another's existence; each regarded co-existing parties as natural, desirable, and useful. But the sham democracy of the prostituted Republic disheartened the Kuomintang, which thereupon bid for the complete conquest of power, brooking no legitimate competitors; its rivals did likewise. The first coalition (1922-27) of Kuomintang and Communists was therefore not the democratic competition of two parties with different stresses upon a common ideological foundation, but a war-time alliance of basically incompatible forces. After the 1927 break, the Kuomintang became the only legal party in most of the country, while the Communists--with a rebel army, an unrecognized government, and a territory of their own--enjoyed legality within the limits of their own swords. The Kuomintang, embraced by all major groups save the Communists, became the foremost vehicle for Chinese political life. Minor parties enjoyed precarious, ineffectual existences, underground or expatriate.

With the outbreak of war in 1937, Nationalists and Communists adopted a truce, formally a Communist surrender of armed rebellion, subversive ideology, and separate government. In actuality it was an alliance of deadly enemies against the Japan which threatened them both. Today, Chinese party politics revives in the People's Political Council, and to a slight degree in public opinion. The legal prohibition of minor parties, including the Communists, remains in effect. Chinese party politics, in the Western sense of a friendly subdivision of common opinion, remains vestigial. The only guarantee of party rights is an unstable toleration extended by the Kuomintang in the negative form of non-prosecution. The Kuomintang is the Party for most of China. The Communist Party is the party for a separate fraction of China. The minor parties, holding neither territory nor armies in the game of power, maneuver between and about the two, struggling to attain legal existence.

THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS: PARTY AND LEADERS

Literary Marxism runs back to the Ch'ing dynasty, but the first formal organization of a Chinese Communist Party occurred with the first Congress of the Chinese C.P., in Shanghai, during July of 1921.[1] The Soviet-Kuomintang entente was, strictly speaking, not a union between the Kuomintang and the Communist parties, although it came to be such in fact; it was collaboration between the Third International, which agreed that Communism was unsuited to China, and the Kuomintang. The development of a Chinese Communist Party, and open Communist debate concerning the assumption of power, made the Kuomintang mistrustful, repressive, and finally hostile. The suppression of the Communists by Chiang in 1927 has become world history; Vincent Sheean and André Malraux have preserved aspects of it in moving literature.[2]

[Footnote 1: Miff, P., _Heroic China_, New York, 1937, p. 14. This valuable pamphlet is by one of the Comintern's leading expounders of Marxism as applied to China. Trotskyist Marxism is represented by a far fuller, more careful work by Harold Isaacs, cited, together with the following, cited on p. 20, n. 16. Edgar Snow, the distinguished American journalist, operates on the basis of an independent, unacknowledged type of Marxism, which shows itself in consistent prejudice against the Kuomintang, and in a soul-hungry search for a dialectical, inner meaning of things with which to supplement common-sense observation; his "Things that Could Happen," _Asia_, Vol. XLI, No. 1 (January 1941), employs Hegelianism at tenth-remove to analyze the future. It leads to a frequent implication of motives and to subjective interpretations which rearrange fact as it ought to be in terms of a rational economic dialectic (i.e., an occult pattern which provides a uniform key to all human experience). Thus, in his _Red Star Over China_, p. 306, he ascribes the massacre of Reds by Kuomintang officers to the fact that the officers were the sons of local landlords, enraged by expropriation of the land. Land-expropriation is a class motive; a moment's reflection would reveal that previous massacre of the officers' families by Communists would be a better common-sense motive for blood-thirstiness. This feature of diluted Marxism would not be worth mentioning were it not common to so many books about Communists written by self-proclaimed "non-Communists" habituated to the dialectic. It is found in the writings of Agnes Smedley, Victor Yakhontoff, Anna Louise Strong, and I. Epstein, to mention but a few.]

[Footnote 2: Sheean, Vincent, _Personal History_, New York, 1937; Malraux, André, _Man's Fate_, New York, n.d.]

In the period 1927-37 the Chinese Communists operated the Chinese Soviet Republic (_Chung-hua Su-wei-ai Kung-ho-kuo_),[3] primarily in Kiangsi, but also in the Ao-yü-wan (Hupeh, Honan, Anhui) area. In the Long March of 1934-35 the main forces of the Communists, in the most spectacular military move in China since the great Northern raid of the T'aip'ing, marched a distance of some six thousand miles, and established their new area in North Shensi (see above, p. 112 _ff._). Not only did the Chinese Red Army remain intact; through great and successful effort, the Communists transplanted schools, banks, and other institutions intact. The Long March was comparable to the celebrated Flight of the Tartars, in that it amounted to the transplanting of an entire people, their worldly goods, and their most highly treasured institutions and traditions.

[Footnote 3: _Kung-ho-kuo_ is the Western-type term for Republic; the Kuomintang uses _Min-kuo_ or Folk-realm. _Su-wei-ai_ is a phonetic representation of "Soviet"; the characters, not intended to have meaning, are unconsciously humorous in that their lexicographical signification is "Revive (and) maintain dust!"]

Despite Kuomintang theory, the Frontier Area is a one-party _imperium in imperio_, and its unchallenged party is the Communist. Under conditions requiring great fortitude, the Chinese Communist leaders have consolidated power, and use their base to spread Marxism through the guerrilla movement. They are thus in the best possible political position; their strategic excellence makes them welcome in precisely those zones wherein their doctrines can best take effect. Their party organization controls the Frontier Area through formal appointment of the leading officials by the National Military Affairs Commission, and through formulae of election for the subordinate officials.

The hierarchy of the Chinese C.P. is much like that of the Kuomintang, which also copied Soviet models:[4]

|--- | CENTRAL PARTY<--COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL | COMMITTEE | |--| NATIONAL PARTY CONGRESS----------------- | |---------------| /\ | \/ | || | Executive Bureau | \/ |->Central Control Political Bureau | National Party Committee Special Departments: | Convention Organization | /\ Publicity | || | \/ | Provincial Council of Party Delegates | Provincial Party Committee | Standing Committee----------| \/ /\ | Communist Youth Corps || | \/ \/ _Hsien_ Councils of Municipal Councils Party Delegates of Party Delegates

_Hsien_ Party Committee /\ |-------->Municipal Party || | Committee \/ \/ Party Members' Mass Meetings District (_ch'ü_) Councils of Party Delegates District Party Committees /\ || \/ Branch Party Organs (cells) Branch Party Organ Executive Committees

[Footnote 4: Based on the Party Constitution, _Kung-ch'an-tang Tang-chang_ [Party Constitution of the Communist Party], [Chungking?], XXVII (1938), p. 1-21. The entire Constitution is reprinted below as Appendix II (E), p. 359.]

The shibboleth of Democratic Centralism applies to the Chinese as well as to other Communist Parties; in practice this means the high and unqualified concentration of power at the top of the hierarchy following action by the democratic, or mass, element of the party through the Party Council or Congress. In effect, nothing is decided at such elections, since the plebiscites, according to the familiar authoritarian pattern, concern questions to which only one answer is reasonably possible: the answer decided by the party rulers. The free use of meaningless elections characterizes Communist activity in governmental as well as party matters. The voting act gives the impression of concurrence, improves morale, and ceremonializes the approval of the majority for the minority. The purpose which elections serve in democracies--that is, of providing a decision to issues not previously ascertained--appears very rarely in Communist elections, where a near unanimity is constructed to indicate popular support, and contested elections, disunity.

In terms of personnel, the Communist hierarchy has been consistently compliant with world Communist policy as made in Moscow. This is a tribute to the high international unity and uniformity of the ecumenical Communist movement, but raises, in China, problems of intra-national Communist policy. Revolutionary veterans of the party, who fought, suffered, studied, and worked for their cause through ten, fifteen, or twenty years of effort, often find themselves displaced, dictated to, or expelled by the clique of younger men who have lived comfortably in Moscow studying the dialectic mystagogy and acquiring an inside track in Stalinist cliquism.[5] The Chinese Communist Party has been shaken by violent schisms, casting off many once highly-valued leaders.

[Footnote 5: Harold Isaacs, in the work cited, has many passing references to this phenomenon; his caustic indictment of Ch'en Shao-yu (Wang Ming), p. 438 _ff._, is a case in point. Note Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, Chang Kuo-tao--in China, as in Russia, most of the founders and early leaders of the Communists have been set aside.]

No sooner does a man become suspect to the ultimate authorities than his previous record, hitherto praised, is re-examined and captious criticism proves that he was a traitor from the beginning, like Trotsky, Bukharin, Chicherin, and Zinoviev. The profound vitality of the Chinese Communist movement as a quasi-religious, self-sacrificial organization is demonstrated by the fact that it has weathered these storms. The terrible hunger for a guidance in life, an insight into the ethical meanings of things, and an absolute which asks nothing but acceptance and obedience--these factors call for courage, humility, abasement, fortitude. They do not favor imagination, individual integrity of thought, or the examination of fact. There has been no indication whatever, despite the wishful thinking of Western liberals, that the mentality of the Chinese Red leaders is one whit different from that of Western Communists. They talk practical democracy, moderation, collaboration with the Kuomintang; they do so because this is the Comintern's China policy, just as they have fought the National Government in the past when the Soviet authorities disliked Chiang more than they did Japan.

Their all-China collaboration is no doubt sincere; but the sincerity is based not on the wish to collaborate, but on what, in their special phrasing, is termed the "objective" analysis of the situation. If the Soviet Union, the chief "proletarian" force in the world, turned against Chiang, the Communist _ipso facto_ would be against collaboration. The war of China against Japan would no longer be a war of "national liberation" but an "inter-imperialist" war in which the true interests of the "working classes" would be against _both_ sides. This provides to Marxians, under the name "science," an absolute, infallible guide to ethics in practical politics, because it presumes to reveal the inescapable long-range meaning of human affairs. The supposition that daily affairs may in fact possess none but short-range meaning, outside of slow, general, nearly impalpable changes in ecology, demography, and genetics, etc., is anathema to the Marxians. A humanism trained to deal directly, pragmatically, and simply with events is as far beyond the Chinese Communists as it is beyond other Marxians.

This orthodoxy, so complete that it enthralls the leadership to Moscow and paralyzes Marxian heretics in the very act of dissidence, reaches throughout the upper levels of the party. This fact does not mean that the Chinese Communist movement is in no wise different from other national Communist movements. The historical basis of the Chinese Communism, ever since Chiang smashed the urban unions in 1927, has been that of an exotic faith imposed upon a native _jacquerie_, in which the exoticism is unwittingly traditionalist. Peasant revolts of the Chinese past have operated with the counter-ideocratic leverage of a superstition, normally Taoist in derivation. The heads of the Yellow Turbans (ca. 200 A.D.) and the Boxers (ca. 1900) were all magicians; the T'aip'ing (ca. 1850) leader was a Christian in communication with God Himself. These heresies against the all-pervading order of Confucian common sense disappeared after their high-pitched dynamics died down in social readjustment.

Marxism provides an element of faith, devotion, and irrational submission which has operated in past Chinese history. The frugality, honesty, and integrity of the Chinese Red leaders are celebrated by foreign visitors and even by Nationalist officials; such revolutionary virtues seem new in China, whereas they are the twentieth-century manifestation of a common enough phase of Chinese political activity. However, one cannot herefrom conclude that the Chinese Communist movement is destined to disappear with its predecessors, for it has three things which they did not have: an extra-Chinese application, which not only supports it, but proves its concreteness and relative realizability; a modern system of education, and thereby a class of counter-ideologues to compete with the post-Confucian Nationalists; and leaders with revolutionary experience greater than any in the world, not excepting that of the great Soviet leaders themselves. Ancient peasant uprisings revealed a final cleavage between dervish-type organizers and the peasants, once infuriated, who finally sought normalcy. If the Chinese Communist leaders can, through the example of the Soviet Union, or by education, or by dexterous leadership, make Communism into normalcy, they may retain their hold on such sections of the peasantry as their leadership has captured.

Two men stand forth above all others in Chinese Communism. Both would be remarkable individuals in any historical setting. Their partnership has led them to be described by one hyphenated phrase: _Chu-Mao_: Chu Tê and Mao Tse-tung. Chu Tê, the military genius of Chinese Communism, was born of a gentry family in Szechuan, and attended the Yünnan Military Academy at the time that Chiang was in Japan; he entered the years of his early maturity as an aide to a provincial _tuchün_. According to Edgar Snow, he was at this time sunk in vice, enjoying wealth, opium-smoking, a harem, and the amenities of a war-lord existence.[6] Chu felt an urge within himself to escape this rut. He abandoned his worthless existence, leaving his harem provided for, and went to the coast, where he could become acquainted with the revolutionary movement. On the way he broke himself of the drug habit. He went to Europe, living in France and Germany, and in the latter country joined the Chinese Communist branch established among the students. He returned in 1926 during the Great Revolution, and served as political officer in the Kuomintang forces. Later he was instrumental in the creation of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and was the prime military leader of the Communist forces in the long civil war. He led the trek to the Northwest, and is esteemed as a military hero of Arthurian proportions. Friendly, candid, interested in specific tasks, he is characteristic of the superb leadership which preserved Communism in China. He is the only Chinese military leader who was not defeated by Chiang, although Chiang pursued him six thousand miles. Major Evans Carlson, the American Marine officer, compares him with Robert E. Lee, U. S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln--drawing on the best features of each for the purpose.[7]

[Footnote 6: Snow, Edgar, work cited, p. 348 _ff._]

[Footnote 7: _Twin Stars of China_, cited, p. 66. Major Carlson adds to this description in his _The Chinese Army_, cited, p. 35 _ff._ Most enthusiastically, he attributes to the Red Leaders honesty, humility, selflessness, truthfulness, incorruptibility, and a desire to do what is right. He praises their superb tactical abilities, their efficiency as organizers, their competence as leaders. He accepts the statements made by the Communist leaders as matters of good faith, and does not question their sincerity. Since he is the only qualified military visitor to put his impressions on record, these appraisals are valuable.]

Mao Tse-tung was born in Hunan in 1893 of a well-to-do farmer family. His autobiography, dictated to Edgar Snow, is a classic of Western literature on China.[8] His history was that of many other restless young Chinese intellectuals, struggling for education amidst turmoil, and adjusting their sense of values to the chaotic early Republic. He was caught up by the Marxism of the literary Renaissance after 1917, served in the Kuomintang during the Great Revolution, and worked as head of the All-China Peasants Union. During the Soviet period, in which he first became a colleague of Chu Tê, he stood forth as the chief political leader. He and Chu between them formed a team to rival Generalissimo Chiang, although Mao shared his political leadership with various others, particularly Chang Kuo-tao. Mao is an expert dialectician, skilled in rationalizing the policies of the Communist International, and keenly critical within the limits of his Marxian orthodoxy. Less genial than Chu Tê, he is nevertheless an inspiring leader. His political skill, in following the lurches and shifts of the Stalin party line while simultaneously leading an enormous Chinese peasant revolt, is monumental. His earlier rivals and colleagues are in most cases dead or forgotten. He survived both ideological and practical ordeals.

[Footnote 8: Snow, Edgar, _Red Star Over China_, cited, p. 111-167.]

A third Communist leader, Chou En-lai, is of importance because he acts as liaison officer between the National Government and the Frontier Area. The Communist quasi-legation in Chungking is maintained as a purchasing and communications office of the Eighteenth Army Corps (formerly Eighth Route Army). Chou, who studied abroad in Japan, France, and Germany, served at the Whampoa academy under Chiang, and in the period of civil war he was one of the chief political officers, twice Chinese Communist delegate to Moscow. He is an old acquaintance of many Kuomintang leaders from Chiang on down, and appears to be one of the most successful diplomats in the world. Despite acrimony from secondary leaders on both sides, Chiang and Mao seek to maintain their alliance against Japan, and Chou is their chief intermediary. At Chungking he is seconded by the alert, brilliant Ch'in Po-k'u, a veteran of Communist political-bureau work.

The difficulties and conditions of Communist collaboration with the National Government are well illustrated in the life of Chang Kuo-tao. One of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, in 1921, Chang was of the upper classes, like Chu Tê; and like Mao, he was a radical student in Peking. Just before his departure from the party in 1938, he had been chairman of the Northwestern Soviet, taking precedence over Mao himself; but with the coming of national unity, Chang wished to cooperate fully with China's leader, government, and legal Party, the Kuomintang. He adopted subterfuges to get out of the Communist Area. Arriving in Hankow, he announced his desire to form a genuine United Front on the basis of a candid and sincere acceptance of the _San Min Chu I_, which would mean the actual abandonment of Marxian dreams of Communist "proletarian" dictatorship in China, even for the future. He did not renounce Communism, but simply took his colleagues at their words, and announced his intention of cooperating honestly, and not through compulsion of the Moscow dialectic. He wrote:

According to the views of the Chinese Communists, the present United Front is only a temporary union of many political groups, which are entirely different from one another in nature. These political groups have their own social bases, and they represent the interests of different classes. "The Kuomintang," so they believe, "represents landlords and capitalists, while the Communist Party represents the working class." No [ultimate] compromise can be made between the two parties.

Now we often hear such slogans of the Chinese Communists as, "Let's lead the people _together_," "Let's _all_ take responsibilities," "Let us _both_ be progressive," and "Let's act under the _same_ principles." These represent the old ideas of striving for leadership. These show that they do not have the foresight to work unselfishly for the nation and the people. They want to retain their military forces. They want to maintain the Frontier Area and special, privileged positions in certain occupied areas. They keep these in order to await future developments....

I hope they [the following suggestions] will receive the consideration of the Chinese Communists:

(1) the Chinese Communists should always remember that the benefits of the nation and the people go before everything. They should support the movement of Resistance and Reconstruction under the leadership of Mr. Chiang K'ai-shek. They should carry out the _San Min Chu I_ without hesitation. What they do must agree with what they say;

(2) there should be complete coordination of governmental and military operations, under all conditions.... I hope the Chinese Communists will not think that the Eighth Route Army is one privately owned by the Communist Party.... The Frontier Area [where Chang Kuo-tao had so recently been leader] should not be made a Communist base, nor made into an isolated place where Communist-made laws are executed and prejudice, together with political persecution, prevails....

(3) with a view to working for the nation and the people, the Communists should follow the foreign policies adopted by the central government.[9]

[Footnote 9: Chang Kuo-tao, _T'ou-li Kung-ch'an-tang Mien-mien-kuan_ [An Impartial Survey of (My) Departure from the Communist Party], Kuangchou [Canton], 1938, p. 27 _ff._]

Chang demanded that the Communists react more sincerely, that they accept the full implications of a united China, and abandon their long-range dialectic for power.[10] For this he was denounced, his years of service were reappraised, and he was dropped from the Communist Party.[11] He was accused of hurting the United Front, because he urged a more nearly perfect union. The chief Communist leaders challenged him in open letters, revealing their continued adherence to an ideology which made an eventual struggle for power inescapable.

[Footnote 10: The same, p. 10.]

[Footnote 11: The Resolutions of the Enlarged Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of China comment as follows: "The danger of the 'Right' opportunists lies in the fact that they execute the tactics of an anti-Japanese National United Front at the expense of the independence of the party, politically and organizationally distorting the policy of the proletariat [_sic_] in building an Anti-Japanese National United Front so that _the working class and the Communist Party become tails of the bourgeoisie rather than the vanguard_." (Italics inserted in translation.) New China Information Committee, _Resolutions and Telegrams of the Sixth Plenum, Central Committee, Communist Party of China, November 6, 1938_, Hong Kong [1939?], p. 9. The demand for vanguard position from a minority party still technically illegal, and the damning of the Government and Kuomintang as "bourgeois," are continuous features of Communist policy. Their concept of cooperation is, as in Germany, Spain, and elsewhere, cooperation _under_ Communist leadership.]

The Communists have, therefore, cooperated as far as they are able, without emerging from the infallibilities of their cult. They retain the Marxian rationalization apparatus, and the linkage with Moscow. As such, they are welcome but not completely trustworthy allies. Their presence is undoubtedly the greatest check to the development of democracy in China; the presence of a totalitarian party, respecting no rules but its own, jeopardizes the entire experiment. The Communists want democracy, but they want it quite frankly as a step toward "working-class" (Marxist) power; they accept the _San Min Chu I_ on the condition that it be read as elementary Marxism. They do not insist on the term Communism, but employ the terms "working-class" interests for their party, "scientific objectivity" for their ideology, and "a people's movement" for radical, arbitrary reforms to rip Free China open with social revolution. The Kuomintang leaders are fully aware of the support in name plus subversion in fact which the Communists offer, and complain bitterly about the principles of Sun being twisted about to Marxism as in the form of "'independent' nationalism, 'free' democracy, and 'beneficent' livelihood," the qualifying terms sufficing for the alignment.[12] They understand that the Communists are incapable of sincere extra-class democracy; the Communists are hurt by the Kuomintang's unwillingness to admit that it is not a Party of patriots, but the Party of a transitional, historically doomed middle class.

[Footnote 12: Ch'ao Shê [The Morning Club], _Niu-wu Yen-lun Chien-t'ao Kang-yao_ [A General Review of Fallacious Utterances], Chungking, XXIX (1940), p. 7. The work is a Kuomintang reply to Communist theses in a debate on the nature of national union.]

COMMUNISM: PATRIOTISM OR BETRAYAL?

If the Communists were as inflexible, disciplined, ferocious, and intransigeant as they like to appear to themselves, China would have had a three-sided war long ago. In practice, however, the Chinese Communists yield amazingly. The Communist International is not goading the Chinese Communists into the sabotage of Chiang and of national resistance. Whether Moscow could do so is a standing question of Chinese politics. The answer cannot be known except by practical test. One might, however, plausibly suppose that an attempt by Stalin to consummate a Moscow-Tokyo pact (possibly in accordance with pressure from Berlin, which would require immediate protection of the proletarian fatherland) would create a deep schism in Communist ranks; but it is unthinkable that all the Chinese Communists would abjure their faith. Moscow would not be naive enough to require the Communists to cease fighting Japan _in form_. Such a Kuomintang-Communist break would probably weaken the National Government; it would not destroy the Chungking regime unless the Generalissimo ignored the chance offered by a Leftward turn, to retain some of the peasant-radical and guerrilla forces in his own ranks. It would, however, enormously strengthen Japan, and be a severe blow to China. The greatest danger of a Kuomintang-Communist break would lie in an American defeat of Japan. By removing the necessity of Soviet support of Chiang, and increasing the power of the National Government, American aid would lessen the opportunities of Communism in China.

At present, however, the Chinese Communists welcome American aid, even though the effect of such aid is to strengthen the China of Chiang as against the China of Chu-Mao. The Communist spokesman, Ch'in Po-k'u, told the author that American aid was not feared in China, but was _welcome_, emphasizing the word. He even stated, in response to a far-fetched hypothetical question, that actual American troops would be welcome at Yenan, and stated that inter-party trouble was to be expected only in case of defeat.[13]

[Footnote 13: Statement of Col. Ch'in Po-k'u to the author, Chungking, July 29, 1940.]

The final picture of the Communist position which emerges in China is about as follows:

(1) the Communists are gaining ground because of their helpfulness and vigorous leadership in organizing the guerrilla areas; wherever the Japanese forces go, the Communists (thus shielded from Chinese National armies) increase their influence;

(2) the Communists are benefiting politically by a genuine popular movement in both Free and occupied China, particularly in the latter, where spontaneous mass action is providing a base either for Sunyatsenist democracy or for Communism in the future;

(3) in view of their belief that time is on their side, because of the present direction of Soviet foreign policy, the Chinese Communists are very cooperative in the alliance against Japan, patiently postponing demands for "democracy" (i.e., unrestricted rights of organization and agitation);

(4) they have superlative leadership, rich in practical experience, which represents the super-orthodox residuum of years of schism and purging; such a leadership is not likely to abandon the fundamentals of Communism, such as the dialectic, the class-outlook on all history and politics, and belief in the inescapable universality of future "proletarian" rule (Communist world conquest); therefore, it is almost unthinkable that they would fail to do Moscow's bidding, if the party line demanded national treason in war time;

(5) the interests of the Soviet Union run parallel with those of non-Communist China for a long time in the future, unless the European balance of power forces the U.S.S.R. to appease Japan; under such circumstances, the Soviet Union will be very anxious to maintain the foothold of Communism in China, and will not be likely to ask the Chinese Communists to commit candid treason;

(6) lastly, the Kuomintang possesses the opportunity of rivaling Communism, of overtaking its rate of growth in political power, by a bold policy of freeing speech, constitutionalizing the government, reforming the land tenure system, and pushing cooperative industrialism; the base of Communism has been widespread peasant revolt. If the conditions of peasant revolt are eliminated, Communism will not be much more of a threat to China than it is to the advanced countries of Europe. (Wisely or not, the Kuomintang has not consented to meet the Communists in open ideological competition. If it did so, and won, Kuomintang morale would be strengthened. At present the practical aims of Party policy toward Communists are about as follows: restriction and isolation of the Frontier Area and of the Border Region, so far as agitation is concerned, before ingestion by the constitutional national system; military precautions, balancing Communist forces with Nationalist; standardization of Red military practice by national rules, and the elimination of peculiar political features; eventual dissolution of fellow-travelling organizations, and their absorption into the corresponding officially sponsored movements; supervision of Communists and channels of Communist propaganda; courtesy toward Communist leaders, strictness toward Communist subordinates, and harshness toward the Communist laboring class following. A corresponding policy toward the Kuomintang is pursued by the Communists.)

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.

[Footnote 14: An early statement of National Salvation views is found in Wang Tsao-shih, "A Salvationist's View of the Sino-Japanese Problem," _The China Quarterly_, Vol. II, No. 4 (Special Fall Number, 1937), p. 681-9. The author is one of the Seven Gentlemen.]

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.)

[Footnote 15: Statement by the head of The Third Party, Dr. Chang Pai-chün (Chang Peh Chuen), to the author, Chungking, August 2, 1940. The translations were also supplied by Dr. Chang.]

The Third Party is a _San Min Chu I_ party. It accepts the legacies of Dr. Sun, in their Left-most phase as they were at the time of his death. The party is strongly anti-imperialist, socialist, and land-reform in its teaching. Its socialism is of an independent kind; the party neither seeks nor wishes collaboration with the Third International, although it is willing to cooperate with the Communists as well as the Kuomintang. It finds its chief political dogma in the last policies of Sun, executed in the period just before his death: (1) a pro-Soviet orientation in international power politics; (2) a Nationalist-Communist entente; and (3) immediate aid for the peasants and workers. It is therefore more like the old Left Kuomintang than the Communists.

At the present time, the party seeks to promote collaboration between the two major parties, thus becoming the second third-party to that friendship, and urges constitutional government. Eventually it would prefer a representative government of the whole people (_p'ing min_), with the executive agencies composed 60 per cent of peasants and workers, 40 per cent of others, chiefly intellectuals. (The proportion is believed to be Mme. Sun's contribution.) In past practical politics, The Third Party took part in the Foochow insurrection of 1933-34, but has on no other occasion obtained power. It is not expected to attain major status.

THE CHINESE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY

The elder brother of Chang Kia-ngau, who is the enterprising Minister of Economic Affairs, has organized a political party after the fashion of the traditional pavilions of learning and patriotism. In China's past, Confucians frequently developed an institution which admixed the features of a perpetual resort camp, a library, a seminar, and a club. Living together amid scenically beautiful and scholastically adequate surroundings, they made their influence felt through their writings and their example, whenever one of their number returned to public life. Dr. Carson Chang (Chang Chia-shêng) has organized an Institute of National Culture at Talifu in Yünnan, in the mountains just below Tibet. There he associates with kindred souls to attempt a restoration of traditional values in the traditional manner.

The confusing and unhappy similarity of the name of his party to Adolf Hitler's party is explained in the following communication:

To give to the world in a clear and unambiguous way the principles our party stands for and the platform we wish to adopt should we have the chance to serve our country, I have written a book, entitled _What A State Is Built On_. In formulating my political philosophy, though I have drawn freely upon the wisdom of the West, I have kept my eye steadily on the needs of my people and the circumstances of my country as the guiding and controlling principles in shaping my own thought. In view of the possibility of distortions you have suggested in your letter, an extract is now being prepared in English, with the idea to facilitate the understanding of our movement and to present to the intellectual world of the West our principles and policies ...

The accidental similarity of names between our party and Hitler's is indeed an endless source of misunderstanding, but the similarity is truly "accidental." In Chinese the name of our party runs "Kuo Chia She Hui Tang," which may be literally translated into "Nation (Kuo Chia) Society (She Hui) Party (Tang)," a name we adopted long before Hitler's party became known, embodying principles widely different from what Hitler's party stands for. The suspicion abroad of our connection with Hitler's National Socialist Party may be traced to an incident two years ago at Hankow when Kuomintang first came to recognize the legal status of minor political parties. The foreign correspondents, in reporting my exchange of letters with Generalissimo Chiang with regard to the recognition of our party, referred without a second thought to our party as "Nazi," thus creating all distortions which might have occurred even without such mischief. I shall be more than grateful to you if you would undertake to clear the suspicion on us and pave the way for lasting understanding between us and your people.[16]

[Footnote 16: Letter to the author, dated October 24, 1940.]

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS AND _La Jeunesse_

These two minuscule parties are both expatriate groups organized in Paris. The Social Democratic Party was organized in 1925. It has no connection with the Socialist Party of the pro-Japanese Kiang Kang-hu, but is simply the Chinese affiliate of the Second International. The Social Democratic Party may unite with the Third Party, in view of the close similarity of aims and ideology; its leader, Mr. Yang Kan-tao, has been recognized by being seated in the People's Political Council.

The party called _Kuo-chia Chu-i Pai_ (_La Jeunesse_, or _Parti Républicain Nationaliste de la Jeune Chine_) was organized in 1923 in Paris, by a Mr. Tseng Chi, with whom is now associated Mr. Tso Shen-sheng, the most active worker for the party. It survived for years as an expatriate organization, joined by successive generations of Chinese students in France. Its policies are strongly democratic and social-minded. A functional legislature, the cooperative movement and state capitalism have suggested a similarity to Fascism in the minds of some observers; of Trotskyism, to others.[17] The party, through accident and the family connections of its founder, has connections in Szechuan, and the transfer of the National Government to Chungking was a corresponding aid to the slight influence of the party. Long in exile, it is known by one of its French names even in China; all it does is to help diversify opinion. Mr. Tso occupies a seat in the People's Political Council.[18]

[Footnote 17: E.g., John Gunther in his _Inside Asia_, New York, 1939, p. 272.]

[Footnote 18: By far the most complete summary of the minor and minuscule parties is to be found in two articles by a young Chinese newspaperman: Shen, James, "Minority Parties in China," _Asia_, Vol. XL, no. 2 (February 1940), p. 81-3; and a second installment, in the same periodical. Vol. XL, no. 3 (March 1940), p. 137-9.]

The National Salvationists are an operating force in China, and the Communists, while a minority party, are not a minor party in the American sense. Unhappily, the existence of minuscule parties among both patriots and pro-Japanese elements suggests that multi-party constitutionalism is likely to degenerate into innumerable party fractions, splinter parties, and novel, unstable groups. The Kuomintang and the Communists possess their respective monopolies of power; the National Salvationists have a popular and sincere cause. The other parties exist in part because they obtain recognition. As long as Chinese political processes depend on leadership by personality, individuals will be free to form their own parties, while the geographical, cultural, and economic diversity of the country holds out little hope for the appearance of two or three China-wide democratic parties. Far more likely is it that, with the presumable advent of constitutionalism, the Kuomintang-Communist alignment will continue, while the present minor parties will gain some ground, and innumerable new parties will appear in order to profit by democratic guarantees of minimal representation, or to fulfill functions exercised by fraternal societies in the United States.