The China of Chiang K'ai-shek has withstood the shock of foreign war, and has demonstrated its capacity to grow and survive as a state despite heavy domestic adversity. The constitutional structure nears a condition of realistic operation. The political organs, while still monopolized by the Kuomintang, are highly effective; their unrepresentative character is mitigated by the new experiments with consultative legislation. Administratively, both as to special functions and in developing local government, significant new enterprises are under way. Communist-Nationalist rivalry, while still bitter, has avoided domestic civil war during the invasion; despite the clash of National troops with the New Fourth Army, the postponement may be indefinitely continued. Taken all together, Free China presents a hopeful picture; and it therefore acquires international importance as the presumptive predecessor of a great Asiatic democracy.

Nevertheless, the fact that a Chinese central government has emerged in time for effective action, and has withstood invasion, does not provide proof that Japan is doomed to fail. Japanese progress thus far in China has depended in great part upon Japanese world commerce—on raw materials and finance from her lucrative American trade. China's resistance has depended, but to a lesser degree, on Western aid. In each case, the early history of the conflict was qualified if not determined by the character of third-party relations. If the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and Germany continued for the next twenty-odd years to do in the Far East precisely what they have been doing for the past ten, the future might be more or less predictable on the basis of the Far Eastern elements alone. Such a prediction is, however, wholly unsupportable at the present time; it is indeed safe to predict the contrary, and assume that it is impossible for the major outside powers to continue their reciprocal power-relationships unchanged, in the Far East or elsewhere. China's future is therefore bound up with European and American uncertainties. The Three-Power Pact, signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940 between Germany, Italy and Japan, and the American Lease-Lend Bill have already begun to interlock the European and East Asiatic wars.

The Chief Alternatives in China

The Chinese domestic situation will inescapably be bound up with China's international position. The extremes of probability can be readily marked off: on the one hand, it is most improbable that the Chinese resistance should collapse altogether, and leave the way open for an almost effortless Japanese victory, through the consolidation of the Wang regime without guerrilla, volunteer or West-China opposition; on the other hand, an immediate and complete Chinese victory, coupled with solution of Nationalist-Communist rivalry, is not at all in sight. Somewhere between these two extremes there lie a number of more probable alternatives.

Chief among these is a Kuomintang China, winning a slow victory against Japan under the continuation of existent institutions and leadership. Such a country—nationalist, democratic, and economically pragmatist—would, by the fact of victory over Japan, create a nucleus for liberal democracy in Asia.[1] A variant of this solution would be a United Front China, wherein the independents and the Left actually shared power with the Kuomintang under conditions of broad popular suffrage; this would presumably lie between the United States and the Soviet Union in the matter of ideology and foreign policy. Neither of these would afford Japan much opportunity for continued influence on the continent.

A long continuation of the present hostilities might imply the development of a permanently divided China—permanent save in terms of centuries—with Nationalists and Communists landbound in inner Asia, and pro-Japanese governments along the coast. Such a violation of Chinese cultural and economic unity would perpetuate disequilibrium, and imply continuing wars. Differing from this in degree rather than kind would be a reversion of China to tuchÜnism and anarchy. Neither of these possibilities could command acceptance from the awakened, vigorous China of today.

Outside intervention presents a third group of alternatives: the partition of China through a Soviet-Japanese understanding, or the complete Sovietization of China, through the combined efforts of Soviet and Chinese Communists. Soviet-Japanese partition, once almost unthinkable, appears within the range of possibility because of the apparent weakness of the Soviet Union, which calls for unconventional remedies. If Communist dialectic insured the Soviets who shared China with Japan an ultimate victory over Japan as well, the evil might seem transitory to the Soviet Union. Were such a step taken to thwart rising American influence, it might seem the lesser of two evils. Neither this nor a Soviet China (which would swell the Communist frontier and resources immeasurably) appeared probable in the spring of 1941.

The more practical aspects of the China-building problem still concern the immediate, local effectiveness of the Japanese military effort to control the growth of Chinese government.

To create a victorious condition, Japan has sought the collaboration of phantom Japanophile governments. But in the face of the continuing National Government, and guerrilla opposition, these governments are incapable of functioning. When the conquerors of China entered the cities, and took over the government, they were strangers holding mere islands in the greatness of China.

Japan has the seven most important cities of China. She has most of the railroads. The waters around China are closed by the Japanese fleet. But how is Japan to occupy the hundreds of thousands of villages? How is Japan to persuade the Chinese people, who are still overwhelmingly country people, that they are conquered when Japan thinks that they are?

The Japanese have not yet succeeded in making much impression on the Chinese farmers, except to anger them with cruelty and rapine. In Manchuria, where the Japanese have had undisputed sway for ten long years, thousands of bandits, a Chinese version of Minute Men, are still fighting. Ten, five, even three miles from the great fortified centers of the Japanese army in China, Chinese irregulars, peasant volunteers, spring up in the night. In the darkness there is shooting, sudden flames, perhaps an airplane burning or a gasoline storage tank set on fire; when dawn comes there is nothing to be seen except the patient quiet coolies working in their little fields.

At the present time the war has reached its quiescent stage. The Japanese army has done what in most other cases would be called winning a victory. The battle is accordingly a battle between the Chinese government in the West and the Japanese in the East of China, not with guns or ships so much as with words and with price levels—not for strategic territory, but for the support of the Chinese masses.

The Chinese must make it possible for their own people to live successfully and happily. But they have the world's greatest farm problem, a problem of over-indebtedness, sharecropping, soil exhaustion, prices and markets. Japan wanted to prevent the creation of a united China strong enough to take Manchuria back, and to drive the Japanese off the Asiatic continent back to Japan. Japan accordingly took the disastrous and painful step of conquering the world's greatest relief problem—the millions of underfed, undernourished, desperate Chinese farmers. Now she has them.

In this light, the Far Eastern conflict takes on a different appearance from the usual picture of China versus Japan. It is a conflict, not merely of one nation against another but of competing governments within the same territory. China is trying to build one way; Japan, another; but they are both building for the same end, control of the Far East, and on the same foundations, the Chinese people. Both Japan and the independent Chinese government are struggling for the mastery of an area which is in the grip of a tragic farm problem. The key to power is the mastery of the problem, not the mastery of the men. The Chinese farmers would welcome Communism, capitalism, or almost any kind of leadership which could guarantee them a good livelihood in return for their long and patient labor. The basic issues are social, technological, and economic, as well as political and military. The Japanese failure in China is not a failure of the economic resources; Japan could have been a weak but adequate economic partner to China. The failure of Japan now leads China to look elsewhere for help.

The United States in Chinese Politics

The American Lease-Lend Bill, designed primarily to extend effective aid to Britain, also applied to China. The United States executive was clearly aware of the purposes of Japan, and displayed a temper to thwart them. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, presenting a statement in support of the Bill to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 15, 1941, stated:

It has been clear throughout that Japan has been actuated from the start by broad and ambitious plans for establishing herself in a dominant position in the entire region of the Western Pacific. Her leaders have openly declared their determination to achieve and maintain that position by force of arms and thus to make themselves master of an area containing almost one-half of the entire population of the world. As a consequence, they would have arbitrary control of the sea and trade routes in that region.

.. . . . . . . . . . .

It should be manifest to every person that such a program for the subjugation and ruthless exploitation by one country of nearly one-half the population of the world is a matter of immense significance, importance and concern to every nation wherever located.

On March 15, the President's speech to the White House Correspondents' Association included a ringing promise to give help to the Chinese people, who had asked for aid through Chiang K'ai-shek. The United States moved toward a more definite policy in Asia as well as giving more aid to Britain in the North Atlantic area. The lease-lend program might upset the entire balance of power in the Far East even more readily than in Europe; but immediate evidence of such large-scale application was not forthcoming.

In his message to President Roosevelt, March 18, 1941, Chiang K'ai-shek said:[2]

The people of China, whether engaged in fighting the aggressor or toiling in the fields and workshops in the rear in support of the defenders, will be immeasurably heartened by your impressive reaffirmation of the will of the American people to assist them in their struggle for freedom from foreign domination, and in the resumption of their march towards democracy and social justice for all.

Significantly, the statement of Secretary Hull may apply to future Soviet advance in China as well as to the Japanese invasion. American aid which would weaken Japan and strengthen the Soviet Union thereby, would be welcome to Stalin; but American influence, carried to the point of consolidating the National Government against the Communists, and reducing the probabilities of rising Communist influence, would not be welcome.

Whether the United States Government and the American people are pro-Chinese or not, the National Government of China is pro-American. The only influence to rival the American in modern China is that of the Soviet Union. Soviet and American impress are found in intellectual life, in political ideals, in standards and types of organization, and in ethical creeds. It is no accident that the Kuomintang traces its three principles back to Lincoln, while the Chinese Communists quote Lenin and Stalin. The rivalry is clear, and acute. American aid to China strengthens the pro-American party and weakens the Communists; cessation of the Burma route traffic in the summer of 1940 stimulated discussion of a closer Sino-Soviet rapprochement.

Generalissimo Chiang is a Christian. He is surrounded by American-trained officials. The common secondary language of the Nationalists is English. The Chinese Industrial Cooperatives are based on an American background with New Zealand and British advice. The educational system is patterned after that of the United States in great part; the American impress on the system of higher education, in particular, cannot be overestimated. The interests, appetites, and orientation of the Kuomintang and the National Government are Pacific-centered; much bitterness of an intimate, almost uncomplaining sort, has been aroused by America's continued aid to Japan through business channels.

Adjustments within China are bound to react to the pressures in the outside world. If the United States abandons Free China, the Japanese will probably not conquer China; but the Soviets will be in an excellent position to try, for themselves or through agreement with the Japanese, to demoralize Chinese resistance so that the Soviet forces could intervene because of a political vacuum and protect the "racially kin working classes," as in Poland. Whether China should go Communist through the triumph of the Chinese Communists, or through military occupation by the Soviet Red Army, would not matter much to the United States. What would matter would be the loss of an incomparable ally, an ally who today is almost embarrassingly cordial toward us, thankful to us, and who admires our institutions and culture.

Once Japan were forced out of the picture as an aggressive power, once the United States and China were to reach an understanding, the Soviet Union—debarred from a warm-water naval base on the Pacific—could be left in the status quo, its menace removed, to work out its own destiny if it did not challenge renewed intervention by renewed provocation of co-existing societies. No other challenging power could appear on the Pacific. A group of nations from Buenos Aires to Labrador, from Melbourne to Kashgar, from Lhasa to Boston would cover three and one-half continents. The area thus freed from war and aggression, encompassing the Americas and the Pacific basin, would include every necessary article in the entire schedule of man's appetites. The Chungking government, elementarily and crudely, has broken ground for the culture-political American advance into Asia. Strong without us, Free China is a great power with us, and the one place in the world where construction, liberty, education, and hope still rise day by day. Both cosmopolitan and national, the Chinese are ready to accept their share of responsibility for the new world order.

The responsibility for building a democratic world, whether or not the four authoritarian powers go down, lies in great part upon the United States. Generalissimo Chiang, alone among leaders, has stood forth for world government, for world freedom. He has written:[3]

"In as much as cosmopolitanism and world peace are two of the main aims of San Min Chu I, China will naturally be disposed to participate in any world federation or confederation based on the equality of nations and for the good of mankind."