Government in Republican China Part 16

CENTRAL POLITICAL COUNCIL

1. Secretariat for Civil Affairs 2. Secretariat for Military Affairs 3. Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Political Officials

PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT COUNCIL OF STATE

1. Commission of Military Affairs 2. Board of General Staff 3. Directorate-General of Military Training 4. Military Advisory Council 5. National Reconstruction Commission 6. Academia Sinica 7. National Economic Council 8. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Commission

I. EXECUTIVE YuAN President Vice-president Secretariat 1. Ministry of the Interior 2. Ministry of Foreign Affairs 3. Ministry of Military Affairs 4. Ministry of the Navy 5. Ministry of Finance 6. Ministry of Industries 7. Ministry of Education 8. Ministry of Communications 9. Ministry of Railways 10. Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs 11. Commission on Overseas Chinese Affairs 12. National Health Service 13. Hopei-Chahar Political Council 14. Mongolian Local Autonomy Council 15. Weihaiwei Administration 16. Preparatory Commission for the Sikang Provincial Government 17. Boards of Trustees for Boxer Refunds 18. Committee on Efficiency

II. LEGISLATIVE YuAN President Vice-president Legislative Members Legislative Research Bureau Bureau of Statistics

III. JUDICIAL YuAN President Vice-president Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Functionaries Administrative Court Supreme Court Ministry of Justice

IV. EXAMINATION YuAN President Vice-president Examination Commission Ministry of Personnel

V. CONTROL YuAN President Vice-president Ministry of Audit

PROVINCIAL COMMISSIONS _Hsien_ Munic.i.p.alities Villages

The Executive _Yuan_ was headed, as were all the others, by a _yuan_ president (_yuan-chang_), a.s.sisted by a vice-president, a secretary-general, and a director of political affairs. The yuan included all the major executive ministries, and the formal meeting of the Executive _Yuan_ was a meeting of the _Yuan_ officers, the heads of the ministries, and other directing officials. Such meetings took place once a week and corresponded to cabinet meetings in Western countries.

The executive work of the entire government was performed by the Executive _Yuan_ and--through characteristic Chinese devices--the _Yuan_ Secretariat, divided into bureaus and committees, came to occupy a position of high strategic importance in Chinese government. All executive measures were funneled through the Secretariat, which cast them into proper form and determined whether or not they should be put on the _yuan_ agenda. It thus occupied a position not unlike that of the Grand Chancery and Grand Secretariat of the T'ang dynasty or of the Office of Transmissions under the Manchus. The Executive _Yuan_ combined within itself nine ministries: Interior (having charge of provincial and local government), Foreign Affairs, Military Affairs, Navy, Finance, Industries, Education, Communications, and Railways. Included were also a number of special commissions and agencies.

The Legislative _Yuan_ consisted of a president, a vice-president, and eighty-six members, with an extensive administrative staff attached to it. The _yuan_ was divided, as are parliaments, into committees, but it was not a representative body, nor able to enact laws independently of the other divisions of government. Its president's powers were so wide as to make the cameral organization of the _yuan_ more apparent than real and to reduce the _yuan_ to a legislative drafting and research agency. The Judicial _Yuan_ was made up of four establishments: Supreme Court, Administrative Court, Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Functionaries (dealing with the government personnel below political rank), and the Ministry of Justice. The Examination _Yuan_, composed of two divisions (Examination Commission and Ministry of Personnel) gave expression to the Chinese tradition of separate examining agencies. Its function was to provide a merit system applicable to the whole government staff, except those relatively few positions which were political in nature. Because of the difficulty of developing elaborate machinery under unusual circ.u.mstances, the Examination _Yuan_ did not establish for itself a high standard of accomplishment. Finally, the Control _Yuan_ served as a chamber of censors ent.i.tled to bring suit against dishonest or treacherous officials, and maintained a central Ministry of Audit. In the last few years of the Nanking regime it brought over two hundred and fifty cases to bar each year.

An informative picture of the practical workings of one of the key parts of the National Government, the Secretariat of the Executive _Yuan_, is given by Tsiang Ting-fu, the Chinese amba.s.sador to the Soviet Union and formerly one of the ranking officials of that _Yuan_:

The Bureau of General Affairs keeps the internal machinery of the Secretariat going. It receives the dispatches and distributes them among the sections. It manages the funds and looks after supplies.

The Bureau of Confidential Affairs handles confidential telegrams and keeps the secret codes.

The Secretaries in the Drafting Bureau draft doc.u.ments that require high literary finish, usually formal doc.u.ments.

The Reception Bureau takes care of callers and visitors and sees to it that dignitaries who come to the Executive Yuan for business or courtesy calls are accorded a due reception.

The Meetings Bureau arranges for all meetings held in, or under the auspices of, the Executive Yuan.

The Compilation and Translation Bureau watches over the periodical press, both Chinese and foreign.

The real political work is done in the Sections. Let us take up first political correspondence. A minister, governor, or mayor sends a dispatch to the Executive Yuan, asking for instructions in regard to, let us say, a problem in raising funds. It goes to Section 5. The head clerk and his a.s.sistants look up regulations, precedents, and other relevant facts and write a memorandum. The dispatch with the memorandum goes to the secretary or councillor in charge of the Section, who writes a minute suggesting a solution or approving a solution suggested by the head clerk. Then the dispatch, memorandum, and minute go to the Director of Political Affairs, who, taking into consideration political factors, renders a tentative decision for final approval by the Secretary-General. The clerical staff sticks to law, tradition, and precedent. Adjustments are usually made only by the ranks above. As the majority of problems are so-called routine problems, in connection with which the opinion of the clerical staff is usually sound, the ranks above usually accept the proposed solution. What is important and bothersome is the minority of unusual problems, for the treatment of which procedures are varied.

The sender of a dispatch dealing with an unusual problem may call, or send a representative to call, on the Secretary-General or the Director of Political Affairs before or simultaneously with the sending of the dispatch, giving a personal detailed explanation of the matter and sounding the opinion of the Executive Yuan as represented by the Secretary-General and the Director of Political Affairs. An agreed solution may be arrived at during the interview. In that case the correspondence will be only formal. But the parties involved may disagree, in which case the Secretary-General will courteously say that the matter must be referred to the President or to the Yuan meeting, and the Director has an additional solution of the problem by resorting to consultation with the Secretary-General. In some cases the Secretary-General and the Director will decide the matter during the interview whether the caller likes it or not.

Some unusual matters touch several jurisdictions, _i.e._, two or three ministries; or a number of provinces or cities; or both. The Executive Yuan then calls a meeting of representatives of the jurisdictions affected and the matter is threshed out there. The conclusions of such meetings may be referred to the President or to the Yuan meetings.

In dealing with unusual problems of primary importance the Secretary-General usually consults the President, and the Director of Political Affairs consults the Secretary-General in most cases and the President in some cases where the work is specifically a.s.signed to the Director by the President.

The average of dispatches (including telegrams) received and sent out daily by the Executive Yuan is about three hundred, of which number only two or three need to be referred to the President or the Yuan meeting, the rest being handled by the Secretariat without such reference.

The Secretariat on its part, by the order of the President as Chairman of the Yuan meeting, or on the initiative of the Secretary-General or at the suggestion of the Director of Political Affairs, sends dispatches to the ministries, commissions, provinces and munic.i.p.alities, in the form of decrees, ordinances, instructions, inquiries and requests.

The energies of the clerical staff are devoted entirely to the incoming and outgoing correspondence. About half of the time of the secretaries and councillors is devoted to correspondence and half to conferences. The sub-committees created by the Yuan meeting are numerous and are almost always convoked by the Secretariat. In a few cases the Secretary-General and the Director of Political Affairs, usually accompanied by a secretary or councillor, attend; in most cases, however a secretary or a councillor is designated as the Yuan's representative. The conclusions of such sub-committees are always reported back to the Yuan meeting.[5]

Strange as the _yuan_ system may appear, it seems to have been the most effectual form of government that the Chinese have devised in the Republican era. In times of military or revolutionary crisis, however, this elaborate scheme of bureaucratic departmentalization would prove too c.u.mbersome for rapid readjustment and action; during the j.a.panese invasions, great reliance was placed on the creation of emergency commissions. In addition to the _yuans_ there were a number of agencies which did not fit into the five-power scheme. Great independent establishments were attached directly to the Council of State. An Academia Sinica took the place of the Han Lin of imperial times as a national center for scholarship. A National Economic Council and a National Reconstruction Commission performed specialized functions effectively, with a.s.sistance from experts provided by the League of Nations. In fact, there was a scattering of foreign advisers throughout the government. Of these the highest in rank were placed at the disposal of the Council of State, some rendering actual technical service, others active in unofficial representation abroad, propaganda, lobbying in foreign capitals, or similar tasks. Other advisers were attached to the _yuans_ and to the ministries.

Provincial government under the Nanking regime was subordinated to the Executive _Yuan_ through the Ministry of the Interior. The provinces each possessed a commission form of government, with the commission chairman serving as t.i.tular head of the province. The actual operation of the provincial governments exhibited a great deal of variation, depending on the character of the area, the extent of its political development, and the tangible influence enjoyed by the National Government. The provincial commission combined the policy-making, policy-executing, and quasi-judicial functions, operating largely on the basis of instructions from Nanking and transmitting reports through the Secretariat of the Executive _Yuan_ at the other end. Attached to each commission were a secretariat and four or more departments--mainly civil affairs, finance, reconstruction, and education. The department heads were members of the commission--a type of government not unlike that of American cities under the Galveston plan. The theory of Sun Yat-sen provided, however, that the province should decrease in importance with the growth of modern government in China, so that the dangerous regionalism in the country would eventually be denied overt political expression. He saw the future significance of the provincial governments only in their role as intermediaries for _hsien_-national relationships.

Under the National Government while at Nanking, the tendency was to centralize control and to emphasize national guidance in those provinces squarely under Nationalist rule. In other provinces the provincial governments tended to follow local conditions and mirror the national standards as a matter of decorum only. The provincial governments were far less important in the life of the provinces than was the National Government for the nation. They had the national civilian and military authorities to cope with, in addition to the impositions of their own local military. Their sources of revenue were not ample, and their authority not well established. In some provinces the commission form was adopted only as a matter of legal compliance, leaving to local leaders the actual conduct of affairs. In fact, reform centered on the _hsien_ rather than the province, partly because the province was a potential rival to the nation, and partly because the _hsien_ was a more organic unit in Chinese society.

Between the provincial authorities and those of the _hsien_ there stood Special Commissioners of Administrative Inspection, whose function was to relate the two administrative units and to work for the modernization of _hsien_ organization. The _hsien_ served, and still serves, not only a rural area but also the central munic.i.p.ality in which the _hsien_ magistrate has his headquarters. The _yamen_ (official building) occupies the center of the town, mostly a one-story edifice built around a courtyard; some _yamens_ still display the two flagpoles and the two stone lions that were required by the custom of the Empire. Usually the _yamen_ contains:

"(_a_) the rooms occupied by the tax collectors and the administrative and judicial police; (_b_) the court and the a.s.sembly room; (_c_) the offices of the various bureaus; (_d_) the residence for magistrates and the dormitory for officers."[6] The conduct of _hsien_ government is influenced by three main groups--the illiterate ma.s.ses, the conservative gentry, and the younger progressives. In those _hsien_ units where no reformist or revolutionary pressure is felt, the magistrate and the tax collector do little more than collect funds, and the administration is marked by the laxity which characterized old Chinese government in its inadequate form. The gentry, the scholar-administrators, and the tax collectors represent a single social group and manage to rule in their own economic interest. In other _hsien_ units the influence of modern government is noticeable; the magistrate is in most cases a man determined to put into effect the standards of twentieth-century administration. The prestige and power of young men with modern educations have so increased that they are able to obtain a considerable number of magistracies, and if they are willing they may introduce a respectable measure of good government and reform.

The magistrate selects his secretary and four bureau heads, subject to the approval of the provincial authorities. The secretary performs the work usually expected of permanent officials, carrying on much of the routine so as to leave the magistrate free for political and quasi-judicial functions. The secretary is virtually a vice-magistrate and, if successful, keeps the governmental machinery of the _hsien_ in smooth operation. When the magistrate is absent, he acts as the subst.i.tute. The four bureaus of the _hsien_ correspond to the four chief administrative divisions of the province--civil affairs, finance, reconstruction, and education. An opium suppression bureau is often added, carrying on the anti-narcotic campaign. The civil affairs bureau has charge of the census, and supervises local areas within the district. Such matters as police, militia, sanitary administration, public buildings, cla.s.sical shrines, and parks are frequently under its jurisdiction. The subordinate units of administration are provisional, but the _pao-chia_ system has been restored at the lowest level. This is a device for the mutual guarantee, protection, and responsibility of citizens, in which ten families make a _pao_ and ten _pao_ make a _chia_. The tax bureau is one of the weakest links in Chinese local government, as in this office corruption is rife, and severe oppression of the farmers most frequent. In unreformed _hsien_ units, the tax bureau is likely to be the political plum of members of the local gentry, who use it to extend their tenant farms, promote usury, and defraud the government. The provincial governments have begun to send out accountants and to install regular bookkeeping systems--an undertaking which if completed would be one of the major reforms of local administration.

In the smaller _hsien_ units the magistrate is a.s.sisted for judicial purposes by a judge; in the larger, separate courts are provided. Up to the outbreak of hostilities in 1937 the national and provincial governments were making great strides in reorganizing judicial administration and in the professionalization of police work. The judges are appointees of the provincial courts, a factor which may make for greater professional capacity and independence. The general importance of the _hsien_ is ill.u.s.trated by the fact that in Manchoukuo the j.a.panese have been forced to revive this system. They have, however, implemented it with a j.a.panese officer known as the _Kanjikan_, who is supposed to advise his Chinese colleague. The experiment is of great interest, as it provides the acid test for the j.a.panese attempt actually to administer a Chinese area. Without firm _hsien_ governments beneath them, the j.a.panese puppet regimes are foredoomed to failure.[7]

Until the beginning of the undeclared war, the departmentalization and modernization of the _hsien_ had proceeded most extensively in certain model districts selected for the purpose of political and administrative experimentation. Some of these had reached a level of efficiency which augured well for the future of Chinese government. With the coming of war, however, administrative interests had to yield in many cases to political or military ones, but in one significant respect _hsien_ government was constructively affected. The evocation of popular interest in and cooperation with the government caused a great acceleration of progress toward local democracy, and focused attention on reaction and corruption in the inland regions. War propaganda among the ma.s.ses of the people amounted to a call for public-spirited action; such action is bound to take the form of direct military enlistment or of collaboration in local patriotic and defense schemes.

Munic.i.p.al government in old China was carried on largely by the officials of the imperial or provincial bureaucracy. Cities and towns were graded and even named according to the rank of the office for which they served as headquarters. The imperial administration thus extended to munic.i.p.al affairs; each munic.i.p.al government included a designated rural area surrounding the city. With the growth of modern government in China, plans were considered for a definite and systematic development of munic.i.p.al administration. The foreign-controlled cities of the coast provided models of Western administration, and the Chinese were not slow to copy. A few years ago the cities of China were divided for administrative purposes into three categories: those administered directly by the national government; those placed directly under the provincial governments; and those for which no special category was provided, leaving them under the established bureaucratic hierarchy. In 1936 there were five cities of the first cla.s.s (Nanking, Peiping, Shanghai, Tientsin, and Tsingtao) and eighteen of the second cla.s.s, including the very important cities of Hankow and Canton. The munic.i.p.al administration is headed by the mayor and the council. The mayor is appointed by the authority under whose jurisdiction the city is placed.

The council is composed of two appointed councillors and the chiefs of the munic.i.p.al bureaus--four or more. The four required bureaus are civil affairs, finance, public works, and education. Intracity organization was accomplished through the use of _ch'u_, or wards, subdivided into family groups of defined size. With the development of democracy it was intended for each of these to take part in the promotion of self-government; at each level representatives should be chosen by free suffrage. The family foundation has remained a significant feature even of munic.i.p.al administration.

The chief political question before the National Government at the outbreak of hostilities in the summer of 1937 was the adoption of a permanent democratic const.i.tution. This was to be accomplished in much the same way that the Provisional Const.i.tution had been adopted in 1931--by means of a specially elected People's Congress. In the meantime, a draft const.i.tution had reached a nearly final form. The outstanding features of the draft included the strengthening of the presidency, the abolition of the Kuomintang party dictatorship, the extension of a widely defined suffrage to operate on an unprecedented scale, and provision for periodically a.s.sembling People's Congresses to take, by and large, the position of the Kuomintang by exercising the four powers of the people: initiative, referendum, election, and recall.

The elective offices would be reduced to a few. The installation and removal of the major government officers was a function to be divided between the People's Congress and the president, who was himself to be elected and recalled by the Congress.

The j.a.panese invasion led to the scattering and the partial suspension of government. Military needs began to rule the hour. The Kuomintang Party Congress held in the spring of 1938 elevated Chiang K'ai-shek to the newly-created position of _Tsung-tsai_--a term meaning Party Leader, which had been the office held by Sun Yat-sen under the more august synonym _Tsung-li_. Not only was this a partial recognition of the leadership principle[8] in a democracy at war and a testimonial to Chiang as the supreme military leader of the Republic, but it was also a substantial grant of power. Four new powers were given Chiang as Party Leader: (1) the position of Chairman of the National Kuomintang Congress; (2) the chairmanship of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang; (3) the power to ask (impliedly, to demand) that the National Kuomintang Congress reconsider its resolutions, which amounted to the grant of a courteous but effective conditional veto; and (4) final authority on Central Executive Committee resolutions, by means of a parallel veto.[9] This apparent trend toward emergency one-man control was, however, offset by the convening on July 6, 1938, of the People's Political Council, an advisory all-Party representative body, designed to subst.i.tute temporarily for the again-postponed National Congress. Its appearance was the widest break in the formal front of one-party Kuomintang rule to occur in a decade, and was heralded as a signal for the practical democratization of the government.

_The Chinese Soviet Republic_

After the suppression of the Marxists by Chiang K'ai-shek and the liquidation of the Nationalist government at Wu-han, the Chinese Communist movement took to underground agitation. It demonstrated its power, however, by proclaiming the Canton Commune on December 11, 1927.

The Commune ended in b.l.o.o.d.y suppression. At the same time, in the far interior, the first Chinese Soviet had been established; from it, in Tsalin on the Hunan-Kiangsi border, was to develop the Chinese Soviet Republic.

On the fourth anniversary of the Canton Commune the Chinese Soviet Republic came into official being. A const.i.tution was adopted, and soon in the Communist districts soviets began to spread during a period of relative peace. Nevertheless, the Soviet organization was always under considerable pressure because of the war waged upon it by Chiang.

Although labor and agrarian legislation was adopted, the regime had to operate under conditions of extreme military activity, counterrevolution, and terror. Despite all these handicaps, the Communists kept their government intact; they were able to move it thousands of miles across China in the historic Long March from South Central to Northwest China, which began October 16, 1934, and ended October 20, 1935.

Under its const.i.tution, the Chinese Soviet Republic is declared to be "the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants."[10] The suffrage was set at the age of sixteen. The government was formed in a manner similar to that employed in the U. S. S. R. before the adoption of the new Soviet Const.i.tution: local soviets elect district or city soviets, which in turn elect provincial soviets, which elect a National Congress of Soviets. In practice, the pattern could not be followed closely, since elections were difficult to hold and territorial division not always certain. The Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets was the chief political authority of the Communist regime; it had the familiar executive organization of the Soviet system: a Presidium of the Central Executive Committee and under it the People's Council, the equivalent of a cabinet. The strength of the Chinese Communists lay in their Party and adjunct organizations, in their land policy, and in their Red Army.

The central government of the Chinese Soviet Republic was no mere torso.

It included the following agencies immediately subordinate to the People's Council: the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Inspection, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land, the Ministry of Labor, the Revolutionary Military Commissariat, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Political Safety Bureau, the Ministry of Communications, the People's Economic Commissariat, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Education, and--strangely--the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As a result of the kidnaping at Sian at the end of 1936, the Nationalists and the Communists drifted toward a _rapprochement_. The next February the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang accepted the Communist offer of United Front collaboration, although disguising the acceptance by formal conditions for a Communist surrender. In September the Chinese Soviet Republic was ready to a.s.sume the name of _Special Administrative District of the Chinese Republic_. This left their governmental and administrative organization unaffected; nor did it mean the dissolution of the Red Army, now also under a new name, that of the Eighth Route Army. With the commencement of the j.a.panese advance, Communist leaders began taking part in the work of the National Government, first at Nanking and then inland.

_Other Governments in China_

As the National Government at Nanking rose to a dominant position in Chinese affairs, regional regimes outside its fold found it less easy to fit themselves into the framework of the new Chinese state. The Disbandment War of 1930-1931 had witnessed the defeat of the two most redoubtable _tuchuns_ remaining in the North. On the other hand, it became increasingly evident that acceptance of the Nanking hegemony in name led to the infiltration of Nanking rule in fact.

Nothing but a register of encyclopedic proportions could list and describe the various political inst.i.tutions which arose calling themselves _governments_ in the troubled quarter-century of the Chinese Republican era. Some have bordered on the pathological: Islamistan, for instance, which was the work of an Englishman who proclaimed himself emperor of a new Moslem Empire in Central Asia. The provincial authorities of Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang) drove him out by using airplanes borrowed from the Soviet Union. In Foochow, in 1932-1933, there arose a movement headed by exiled Left Kuomintang leaders and other ultra-patriots eager for immediate war with j.a.pan. This government was the first in years which did not pay lip service to the _San Min Chu I_, nor claimed legitimate descent from the movement of Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionaries--a surprising circ.u.mstance. Its very flexible const.i.tution would have permitted collaboration with the Chinese Soviets--had the Red leaders not decided against it. The other main point in which it varied from the pattern set by the Nanking government was its profession of federalism. Known as the Federal Revolutionary Government of China, it lasted a few months only to be destroyed by Chiang, who had no scruples against using the weight of his modern armies, including planes and motorized troops. These vegetations of government can only interest the political botanist. Far more troublesome have been the opposition governments mentored or sponsored by outside forces. Tibet and Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan) provided a fertile field of anti-Nanking agitation. Two "states" in China proper-- Manchoukuo and an equally j.a.panese-controlled Peking Republic (1937)--find their counterparts in three others located in Chinese dependencies: the Communist republics of Outer Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva, and the ambiguous "state" in Eastern Inner Mongolia (sometimes called _Mengkokuo_).

These Communist republics are under stable government, and, judged from reports which reach the outside, seem efficiently administered. They lie in the former Imperial Russian sphere of influence, south of the Sino-Russian border; except for the complications which would have arisen internationally, they might just as well have been in the Soviet Union as outside. Both governments maintain legations in Moscow. It might be mentioned that when the Russian Red Army invaded Manchuria in 1929 during the conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway, a Barga Mongol Soviet was temporarily established. The Communist "states" cannot be compared with the Chinese Soviet Republic, which depended on no outside military support and resulted from a great ideological drive.