Government in China has in the Republican era undergone one of the most significant transformations to be found anywhere in the world's political experience. The oldest society on earth found itself forced to redefine its position and to reconstruct its ways of thought and internal means of organization. Pressure from without compelled China to adopt the modern state. Chinese society was required to incorporate this state and all implied institutions in its routine living. The earlier period of the Republic marks an epoch in which modern forms had been established in harmony with the accepted standards of the Western state system. Chinese society fell into chaos beneath the up-to-date superstructure. The later period witnessed the correlation of state and society by coordination of ideological, military, and governmental power. From the collapse of the Manchu rule in 1911 to the operative zest of the National Government at Nanking in 1937 there was a revolution in the processes of government which for completeness can compare with any century of Western transformation.

The Collapse of the Imperial Society

Western ideology has failed to enter China as a constructive whole, but it has smashed whatever reality there was to the old world view. Western-educated Chinese leadership has undertaken the task of governing a people which has learned only indirectly of the West. In carrying out a program of adaptation, contemporary Chinese leadership has relied on Sun Yat-sen's phrase, "modernization without Westernization." But a dilemma remains. How can the standards of the modern world be divorced from their Western origins? How can Western technology be used without the attitude of mind which has created it and brought it to operative efficiency? How can a world which never knew Rome or the Normanic Curia Regis know jurisprudence? How can modern government be made Chinese, when government itself has meant something far different in China from what it has meant in the West?

Further, the nature of Chinese leadership has not only been transformed from being literary and ethical in its orientation to being technical and legal; it has also been transformed socially in the replacement of scholars by soldiers. The ideal ruler of old was a humane classicist with a taste for historical studies; the contemporary Chinese ruler must be military, if not militaristic, and must have the inevitable background of engineering and management which modern war connotes. The soldier must collaborate with the modern administrator, while both recapture the high ideals of devotion typical of the old scholastic rule, even if they cannot use its substance. These imperatives are indispensable if China is to live.

Finally, the language system which did so much to create and then perpetuate the scholastic elite through thousands of years of Chinese culture has now submitted to changes deeper and more far-reaching than any in the past. The development of the pai-hua school of literature and the progress of mass education indicate that even with ideographs the Chinese can reach conditions of uniform literacy approximating those which prevail in the advanced Western nations. If the alphabetization of the Chinese language, which is now in the form of tentative experiment, should become a fact, even more striking developments could take place. Reading and writing, and on this basis the transmission of authoritative tenets, does not presuppose profound economic adjustments. The modern Chinese will know his classics increasingly through paraphrases no more difficult than a newspaper column. When it is realized that the simplification of intellectual activity is offered to a people schooled in the idolatry of books, the potentialities of educational and intellectual renaissance—already partially realized—become apparent.

With the disappearance of the imperial world society of the Confucians as a consequence of its encirclement by Westernized states, with the passing of the scholars and the rise of Western-trained soldiers, lawyers, and technicians, and with the alteration of the linguistic and intellectual foundation upon which the old society rested, what is there left of old China?

The Nature of the Transformation

In the first place, the ideological change is not complete. No Western idea can enter China unimpaired. Sun Yat-sen was influenced by the almost entirely contradictory notions of Western nationalism, democracy, and socialism. In the San Min Chu I their Western identity was destroyed, and the new doctrines had much in common with the past. Western ideas served largely as a mold; when the mold was removed, the form was Western but the content was still Chinese. Mazzini and Confucius might both approve of Sun's political doctrines.

Secondly, the extrapolitical agencies of Chinese life remain. Chinese society may be shattered in dogma, but it persists in fact. The family, though subject to legal redefinition caused by Western cultural and economic influences, nevertheless plays a role far greater than in the West. The village is still the fundamental grouping among the rural masses. The guild system is impaired by the Western impact, but the party organizations—Nationalist and Communist—have absorbed much of the strength which once lay in the hui. Under foreign domination, these institutions may play a determining role in the struggle against the intruder.

Thirdly, for modern government the Chinese have resources of their own experience on which to rely. But they also have Western devices and prescriptions. The National Government, while falling short of Western levels of government efficiency, nevertheless trained large numbers of Chinese to think in terms of the modern state. But no new pattern has as yet crystallized. Chinese political and military development may well present a flexibility beyond Western grasp.

Fourth, the Chinese have still ahead of them the choice of criteria of authority to prevail in society. Learning, office, property played a decisive part in the old society. Hitherto, the Republic has grown with three modes of power: ideological, military, governmental. The relation between them is not yet determined.

The Problems of Government in China

Among the governmental problems confronting China the acquisition of national territorial sovereignty stands out. Ever since the establishment of the Republic the Chinese have grown acutely conscious of the fact that some of their most important economic centers have been lifted out of the national territory. Sun Yat-sen realized in the frustration of his first efforts toward republicanization and social policy that the problems of internal government could not be settled unless the people as a whole were free. Without general freedom there could be no question of democracy, no question of a coordinated plan for the realization of the min shÊng principle.¹ Observing the intimate relation between the tuchÜns and the foreign interests, which often favored them, Sun and his followers began to stress their nationalist role. With the Japanese invasion of the Northeast in 1931, of Shanghai in 1932, of Inner Mongolia and North China in the following years, and of China as a whole in 1937, the issue of territorial sovereignty has become the most important one of all. Until it is settled, all other questions must necessarily be considered in their relation to it.

Second, the question of economic sustenance and development is becoming pressing. Without an adequate economic base, the Chinese population lives under the constant threat of simply starving to death. Military difficulties emphasize this problem; in fact, military effectiveness and strategy will have to depend upon the physical existence of the people in and behind the lines. The Chinese masses have lived close to the edge of starvation for a long time. As a consequence, the Chinese cannot wage war but in close proximity to the point of economic paralysis—plain exhaustion of the physical necessities of life. The economic problem cannot wait for spontaneous self-cure.

Third, the Chinese will have to recognize the need for politicalization of public opinion. They must evolve the faculty of transforming group opinion into governmental or organizational action. They must acquire techniques for group collaboration which will allow them to break down traditional groups into more diversified units—a government commission, a factory workshop, an army unit—without reference to family bonds or village and hui connections. This is less a problem of doctrine or education than one of habit and practice.

Fourth, the restoration of national prestige is necessary to the security of the Chinese nation in the international sphere, and to the wholesome development of the Chinese people within their national boundaries as well. They cannot effectively borrow from the West if they do so reluctantly, overcome by the thought of inferiority or by shame. Unless they conquer their present handicap, the Chinese will continue to lack self-confidence.

Fifth, the army problem must be solved. In the last analysis, the excess of men under arms damages the Chinese military, as the number of well-equipped effectives remains disproportionately small. The hordes of half-armed soldiers constitute a heavy burden upon the society, reduce the general economic level, and—by affording one particular group a disproportionate opportunity for making its preferences felt—brutalize the operation of public opinion and discourage peaceable group pursuit.

Sixth, the Chinese state—if China is to solve political questions through governmental procedures—must be constituted as a clear and legal entity. The old imperial society of China was able to dispense with law through reliance upon social forces expressing themselves in a large number of small but stable units. If these disappear the question arises: How can the individual conceive clearly his relationships within Chinese society? Systematized modern organization requires a legal framework.

The Question of Chinese Political Survival

That the Chinese will survive, biologically, as a race—this no one doubts. That the Chinese will survive culturally is more open to question. The Chinese absorbed all their conquerors of the past because the country was large, because the people were extraordinarily homogeneous in ideology and habit, because the Chinese were wealthier than their conquerors and more cultured. Absorption or cultural extinction is not a matter of race; it is a question of ideology, of thought and the habits which arise from ways of thought. What ways of thought are there today that will absorb the conquerors? What ways of thought are there that the conquerors might tear apart from the long past, to change China into a mere geographical expression?

In the past, China has been conquered by invaders who accepted the Chinese estimate of China, and who reciprocated the Chinese self-esteem with a deep admiration for Chinese culture. China's modern invaders bring with them a veritable cult of national self-aggrandizement. Their fondness for the Chinese past is mixed with contempt for modern China. Will the Chinese preserve their national equanimity and sanity in the face of such an attitude? Much depends upon their military and political fortune and its effect upon their confidence.

Government in the Republican era demonstrates the fertility and inventiveness of the Chinese mind in building political and administrative institutions and in finding means of uniting and controlling the Chinese as a people. When the chaos from which they have been emerging is considered, their recent accomplishments are an attestation of political ability. The National Government and the Chinese Soviet Republic were worthy adversaries; each met disastrous odds, not the least of which was the other. Their governmental forms may be destroyed and yet reappear so long as the Chinese remain Chinese in the sense of their long past. Sun Yat-sen expressed his countrymen's elementary social and national consciousness, so different from the feverish nationalism of the West, in very clear language:

Suppose that we, Chinese, were naturalized English or Americans and helped England or America to conquer China on the principle that we accept cosmopolitanism, would our consciences, I ask you, be at rest or not? If our consciences troubled us, that would be a sign that we have nationalism; nationalism would trouble our consciences.²

Such nationalism may prove indestructible. With democracy and min shÊng as nationalism's corollaries, China promises to contribute a gift of peace and political intelligence to the world, and may yet return to her ancient role as the pacific preceptress of nations.