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The origins of Chinese society may reach half a million years into the past. Anthropologists have suggested that Sinanthropus Pekinensis, among the earliest forms of man, resembles the modern Chinese more closely than he does any other modern race. In what specific period the earliest ancestors of the Chinese came to China is not known. It is certain, however, that about 1500 b. c. there existed a well-developed civilized society in the Yellow River valley, and that this same society has lived on—modified by the centuries, but in unbroken continuity—down into the present. China has outlasted Crete, Tyre, Greece, and Rome. The Aztec empire, which arose in Mexico when China was already ancient, has become only a memory, while China is still vital. How is it that China's institutions survive, while those of other nations did not? How real are Chinese institutions today? What, precisely, is the Republic of China?

Duality or Confluence?

The phrase Republican China indicates an era rather than a system. The preceding ages of China have been known by the names of great dynasties. T'ang China (620–906 a. d.) overawed and instructed all eastern Asia. Sung China (a. d. 960–1279) flourished, civilian and tolerant, in a world marked by bigotry and arms. Well into the past century the West remained distant and vague. Republican China struggles in the presence of the modern world and subject to its superior force; her very name is a capitulation to the twentieth century. The problems of the Republican era are not merely the problems of republican government; they involve the broad question of the meeting and interpenetration of civilizations. How are the Chinese, schooled for thousands of years in the effective operation of their own political system, to adapt themselves fast enough to the Western scheme? What happens when they must and yet cannot effectuate such adaptation? These are not queries to be answered simply in the routine terms of Western politics.

For the past three thousand years and more the eastern end of the European-Asiatic land mass has formed a world to itself. Most of this time it was larger, richer, and more civilized than the European world. Down to the nineteenth century of the Christian era the Chinese had no reason to suppose that theirs was not the most advanced and powerful of civilized societies. They looked upon the Far East as the all-inclusive universe of civilization; to them, their way of life was the common-sense way. The Europeans did likewise, with reference to their own sphere. When the European realm expanded so as to include the whole planet, when Western civilization began to dominate the earth, and the Christian family of nations became the world-wide international system, the Chinese were forced to concede that the Far East could not be kept to itself. They have found it indispensable to respond, as individuals and as a people, to the new environment closing in on them. Doing so has necessitated the reexamination and restatement of nearly all basic values of Chinese life.

Since the nineteenth century the Chinese have been faced with the alternative of adhering to their own traditions or accepting those of the West. Institutions and practices which are so well established that they seem to rest on sheer common sense in each of the competing civilizations have been placed in juxtaposition. As a result, the Chinese now know two kinds of common sense to justify a course of action. The ensuing difficulty at times goes deeper; for they may be said to have even two kinds of sanity. In old China a man who wanted no sons seemed a patent lunatic; in the Western world he might be perfectly sane. A modern Chinese faces thousands of such choices.

The Peculiarities of Old China

Obviously, government in Republican China cannot be understood without analysis of the foundations upon which it is built. Such an analysis requires an inquiry, however cursory, into the peculiarities of old China and those of contemporary China. Some of the difficulties of modern China arise from the very adequacy of the old system. Had the Chinese of the past been less satisfied with their society, they might have become more accustomed to change and transience.

China from the first millennium b. c. occupied the central position in the Far East. No other country in that part of the earth was so powerful or so civilized. India, despite important contributions to Chinese religious thought, was too far away to impinge greatly upon the Chinese. Japan was heavily indebted to the Chinese, and encouraged the Chinese in viewing themselves as the most civilized of peoples. This had important consequences. As China was unified most of the time, and as there was no other polity to compare with the Chinese, their political system took on the appearance of a universal empire. The neighboring states paid formal tribute, and the Chinese were unprepared to meet another people who might claim political equality as an organized state. Even today, in the attitudes of the Chinese and Japanese toward one another, there are strong traces of this traditional point of view and indications that the Japanese would like to restore a closed Far Eastern order with themselves in supremacy.

Since old China was rarely confronted with international problems, the Chinese were not aware of their realm as a nation-state. There was no sharp territorial limit to the Chinese polity, and no requirement that within certain boundaries one authority be defined as supreme. The Chinese were able to make their adjustments in the interplay of social and political controls with less frequent resort to theory than the Westerners. Nor was the Chinese ruler ever so firmly entrenched as to eliminate the chance of being overthrown or to preclude the existence of other—pluralistic—independent social controls. The power of government was indeed limited. It maintained the peace of the Chinese world, directed education, supported the social proprieties, and was ornamental rather than efficient for the greater part of its activities.

The Chinese lived primarily under the dominance of nonpolitical agencies. These were the family (comparable to the Western clan), the village and district, and the hui (association, guild, society—in the narrowest sense of the term). The family was intimately bound up with the Chinese religious system, which stressed the continuity of each individual in the flesh. A personal immortality was to be secured with greatest certainty through the survival of one's own blood. The village was the main economic unit, and the union of villages into districts (hsien) provided an administrative division of importance: below the hsien level, common interests were fostered by community home rule; above it, by the government. This meant that elders, clans in council, village bosses, and other nongovernmental agencies carried on police work, all local public construction, and most of the activities which are regarded in the modern West as falling under the jurisdiction of the state. The hui was able to supplement the family and the village; in guild form, it provided the chief framework of commercial and industrial organization.

If the government was weak and limited, and social control ensured primarily by nongovernmental agencies, how did the Chinese achieve so great a political stability? Why did their polity not break up into a wilderness of tiny social groups, each jealous and particularistic, like medieval Europe? The answer is to be found in the psychological controls which the Chinese established. They devised a system of indoctrination unequaled by that of any other people.

The Chinese sought to guide men through the guidance of their ideas: government by education, or government by propaganda. For this purpose scholarship and administration were closely allied. The government was made up of scholars, who thereby occupied the position of greatest prestige in the society; the scholars were trained to serve as government officials. Few officials were not scholars; few scholars pursued a nonpolitical course. This led to a profound uniformity of thought, and was in accord with the dictates of the Confucian tradition.¹

From the earliest times Chinese thought was social and political in emphasis, rather than metaphysical and scientific. For thousands of years scholars studied problems of society, government, and ethics. They appealed to tradition, and interpreted it. They organized the primitive religion of the Chinese into a sophisticated social philosophy, and over the centuries their work took effect. Chinese of different racial backgrounds, using different spoken languages and unable to communicate with one another by writing, living under different climatic and economic conditions, came to show a startling uniformity of behavior. Custom and common sense were woven into a solid pattern by the scholars and accepted by the masses. Everything in human life bore some relation to everything else, and the life of man was related to the world of nature. There was no sharp distinction between natural science and social philosophy.

The educational integration of government, mores, and physical existence created a system of control which has exceeded all others in lasting power. The group in command was the scholastic bureaucracy, but membership in it was not hereditary. Scholar-officials were recruited by civil service examinations, and to this degree the society was a democratic one. Every child in the society had the theoretical opportunity of becoming prime minister. Furthermore, the power exercised by the scholar-officials was different in its nature from that of legal rulers in the West. Government was preventive rather than remedial. Constitutionality was not confined to legal matters; in a broader sense it extended to all subjects. The scholars were as much subject to established tradition as the humblest Chinese, and everyone knew the tradition. The scholars excelled only in knowing it more thoroughly.

It may be stated as a truism that under any government the actual scope of its intervention is confined to a certain category of affairs, bounded on the one hand by matters which are so trivial or so unexplored that they are left to the citizen's free choice and on the other by subjects in which there is such general agreement as to make political action unnecessary. This latter sphere might be called ideological compliance—control of men brought about by the inculcation of broad uniform patterns of belief and behavior. If men are induced to agree upon a traditionally fixed mode of behavior, they will unite in persecuting dissenters and will not be conscious of the tyranny of ideological doctrine. But if they think in many different ways, they will be able to gain security only by promises of mutual noninterference. Liberty—as absence of governmental restraint—may thus result either from a complete concord, in which every man is free to do as he wishes since all men wish to do basically the same, or from a specific guarantee of each individual's freedom to follow his own interest or caprice within a defined limit. The old system of China was a free society in so far as dissent calling for government interference was relatively negligible, and at the same time a society rigidly controlled with respect to the uniformity of individual behavior.

This tradition was pragmatic and realistic. The Chinese ideological controls operated successfully because they corresponded reasonably well with the actualities of social and economic existence. With the coming of the West, the old Chinese system was affected in two ways: First, the amorphous Chinese society was threatened by the strong, effectively organized states of the West. Secondly, the competitive accomplishments of Western civilization destroyed, in large part, the assumption of universality upon which much Chinese tradition depended, and thereby impaired the power of the scholar-officials. The twentieth century brought China a new freedom, unaccustomed and unsought. The old system was threatened with ruin, and modern China faced the problem: replacement or reconstitution? Or, more dangerously: chaos or political extinction?

The Peculiarities of Modern China

The lifetime of one man can span the gap between old China and new. There are men living in Peking today who can remember when the Forbidden City (the palace-city of the emperors) was sacred and inviolate, and when the mandarinate ruled in accordance with immemorial usage. These may regard all Western science as a confusion, a wild torrent of exotic words, which answers no problems, gives human life no aim and no dignity, and is bound to return to the alien dust whence it came. Opposing them are younger Chinese who hate the dead hand of the past and look forward to a Westernized, scientific, industrial China which will differ from Europe and America only in being even more modern than they.

Most Chinese fall into neither of these groups. Many of them, however, have a definite conception of the West and of the benefits which Western civilization has to bestow. They also realize the threat which it contains for those who do not master it. Yet they have been nurtured in the serene humanity of ancient custom and hold to it with the effortlessness of habit long transmitted. Out of this dual standard there spring daily problems of ethics and conduct, of private life and public policy. Administrative organization versus family loyalty and nepotism, promptness versus leisureliness, discipline versus courtesy: these and many others are omnipresent antitheses.

Anachronism is China's second self. There is no set scheme of things. Modern Western civilization has not been adopted so fully as to make the traditional habits seem outmoded, nor has the past survived to an extent as to make everything modern appear ridiculous. The notion of world government, for example, is gone from China, and the notion of multi-national government not yet clear. The relation of the individual to society and of the parts of society to the whole are not yet reformulated; this affects such matters as criminal law, political organization, and economic development. Virtually every adaptation in China must be thought through from the beginning by the Chinese; and even in thinking there are varying styles. Are the Chinese to think after the fashion of the West—scientifically and logically—or are they to think in their accustomed traditional and empirical manner?

It is thus patent that the new Chinese world which is appearing must grow out of the background of the past and the necessities of the present. It cannot readily be planned because there are not enough formulas common to the old Far Eastern and the new Western worlds. New China must be a blending, from use, from habit, from new skills imposed upon old. Out of the dangers and misfortunes of the years since 1912 the Chinese have developed a small body of political methods which is temporarily workable. But the greater part of their social and governmental thought and custom has yet to go through the process of reevaluation by practice. Chinese political development has perforce to be emergent and not planned.

According to either time scheme, that of her long past or of the modern world, modern China is anachronistic. The transformation of the Chinese world of the past to the China of the future involves the creation of a whole set of transitional institutions designed to lead from one to the other. Contemporary Chinese institutions are neither those of the past nor those of the future; they are a peculiar scheme of more recent origin and bound to be replaced. Old China is gone. Modern China is novel and unstable; in time it too will yield to a China of which prophecy affords but few glimpses.

The World Significance of Chinese Government

If government in Republican China is an extemporized and doomed system, rooted in no past, committed to no future, why should it be scrutinized at all? A number of reasons for examining Chinese government suggest themselves. Some of these are of sufficient significance to merit statement, so as to suggest facts and issues worthy of special notice. If certain points of key importance are kept in mind, they may serve as references whereby the relative ranking of any specific topic may be ascertained.

First, the mere geographic extent of China is such as to make her government necessary to a picture of contemporary governments. At least every fifth human being now living is a Chinese.

Second, in international relations China has been of great passive importance. The wars between Western and Far Eastern nations have all been fought over the so-called Chinese question. The partition of China and the open door in China have been issues of international concern. Since 1931 the Chinese have been active participants in the struggle for the control of China, and the nature of their government determines in large part the effectiveness of their resistance. China is a vast market, and an even vaster reserve of man power—for troops or for industrial labor.

Third, the pathology of government deserves attention. Chronic social disorder may provide a great variety of political facts wherewith to gauge the nature of political power. Well-governed societies do not supply similar material because they rarely need to probe political fundamentals.

Fourth, old China offers a challenging demonstration of secular, civilian, pacific world government. The Chinese commonwealth of the past was supernational; it seemed to the Chinese like unified civilized humanity. Among the conflicting currents of present world politics, there are some which drift toward world unity; old China may present significant analogies to the international institutions of today.

Fifth, the universal features of government may be more fruitfully scrutinized in a novel cultural and social setting. China presents a background radically different from the Western one, and affords a unique test whereby Western political patterns and those of world-wide significance may be distinguished from one another.

Sixth, the question of method in political science may meet qualifications after being applied to Chinese political thought. The Chinese did not seek that illusory precision which has been one of the chief goals of Western thought ever since logical procedure was established by the Greeks. The Western man in the street, however, depends very little on mathematics or logic in his everyday thinking. Indirectly, the effect of inductive and deductive method has been revolutionary, but their importance in routine operation or unspecialized thought is open to question—especially in view of the findings of modern psychology. It may well be that Chinese thought can assist in the interpretation of everyday experience in the West, precisely because it is not too specialized or scientific.

Seventh, the Chinese may contribute in a practical way to political knowledge and leadership throughout the world. These contributions may be anticipated by a consideration of past and present Chinese government.

Eighth, the Chinese have lived in a peculiar historical environment, consideration of which may broaden our outlook. Most Western "world histories"—with few exceptions such as H. G. Wells's brilliant Outline—are histories of the West Asiatic and European worlds, with only perfunctory references to China.

The relative novelty of Chinese materials to Western research explains in great part the neglect accorded them in the Western social sciences. With the narrowing of the world by modern means of transport and communication the situation is changing. The science of Sinology (systematic study of China through Chinese texts) has won its place among the archaeological disciplines. Sinologists have made available to Westerners a great deal of material, but its value depends in large part upon the degree to which it is incorporated into the generally accessible and usable body of knowledge.

The Main Factors in Modern Chinese Government

In the consideration of modern Chinese government a somewhat novel approach to government is called for: one which distinguishes different elements and levels of control and makes plain their interrelation. The narrow consideration of the formal structure would be puzzling and discouraging, since the various governments of modern China have been the ornaments rather than the engines of political power. An attempt to explain modern China in terms of constitutional legal development alone would lead to exasperation or frustration; the ideological and institutional context which might convey meaning would be lost.

How can government be studied when politics are antecedent to government? If the rulers make and unmake the form of government almost at will, where is the real source of their power? If armies can dissolve overnight and be reassembled under different banners on the morrow, military power may seem tenuous and dependent on other factors. What are these? If property is insecure and the standards of wealth subject to variation, how can economic power be treated as an ultimate determinant? How do men wield authority of any sort, while they create or destroy the machinery of authority?

For centuries China had been held together by a close-knit system dependent upon tradition. This tradition, the ideology called Confucian, was the device whereby the scholar-officials of the old imperial bureaucracy controlled society. Government itself was subordinate to the moral and social leadership of the intellectuals, who relegated the economic and military professions to the less honored categories of society. The whole fabric of Chinese life was made up of interlocking patterns; the West, by destroying a part, tore the whole asunder. Modern China faces more than political problems; a totalitarian revolution has engulfed it. China has been proceeding not from partial control to complete control, as are Italy,² Germany,³ and the Soviets,⁴ but from complete control to something not far from universal license—freedom all-pervading, unwanted, and terrifying. The problem of modern Chinese government is the problem of re-creating government out of its raw materials: land, people, doctrine, force, and law.

In this problem certain factors stand forth as preeminent: ideological movements, military and economic factors, governments.

First, the movements. These supplant the ancient tradition and the old hierarchy of scholars. In the place of one settled authority over all subjects, there suddenly appeared thousands of little authorities. Anarchism, dress reform, Christianity, feminism, nationalism, pro-Japanism, communism, atheism, capitalism—discordant and partially contradictory, these all compete for the authority or a part of the authority once held by the old system. China undergoes intellectual, moral, educational, political, economic, military, scientific, and industrial revolutions all at once, and all for the same reason—the passing of the old unified order. Imagine the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the industrial revolution, the Gold Rush of '49, the World War, and the Russian Revolution all happening in the same country in the same generation! This is a common-place comparison, frequently made. Movements determined the loyalty of troops, the title to property, the form of government. Power inhered in them, since they determined the conditions under which men would seek and wield power. A great part of the control of China has been exerted directly, by means of the movements themselves.

Second, the armies took the power which goes with military force, simply because theirs was military force. They did not have to seek power. It accrued to them, out of the disorder of society. Along with military power went economic power as the most tangible and negotiable. Guns and property seem very realistic indices of power, as long as the troops are loyal and the property safe from confiscation or devaluation.

Third, the governments. Between ideological movements, which sought to rebuild the ideas and habits of men, and armies wielding a brief but nearly unrestricted authority, government played its tertiary role. It was at times of ludicrous unimportance, and on some occasions possessed power in its own right. It leaped to a sharply improved position after 1928, but never possessed the generality of assent or the monopoly of force to the degree common in the West.

The Approach

Government may mean the control (or attempted control) of society by men professing to act in the name of all society. In this sense it includes propagandists and educators who seek to reconstitute society, leaders of movements, soldiers, economic leaders of all classes, and government leaders (so far as they use government establishments as an actual means of control). Viewed thus, the political processes of modern China are manifold and significant. Here is power stripped naked, power without ornament, power resting squarely upon the brains or guns of men. Men rise and fall in the contest for power; they rise and fall absolutely, not in a fictitious scheme which establishes a fictitious order of constitutional offices sometimes providing asylum for popular leaders in eclipse.

Government may also mean the structure and function of that formally organized group in society which claims to act upon the mandate of legal sovereignty. When the concept of sovereignty itself is vague, confused, or absent, government by title may be merely one among several factors of power. Government in China is broader than the governments of China; the two should be distinguished from one another.

In outlining government in Republican China, the present analysis follows the broader construction of the word government. The governments proper are accordingly discussed in the last part, the first two being devoted to the ideological movements and to the military and economic factors. For the purpose of defining the three sets of controls as clearly as possible, each is treated separately. This has necessitated a corresponding arrangement of the historical data, though in each part presented from a different point of view. But it is highly desirable that the long-range Chinese chronology be kept in mind. To this end a table of Chinese dynasties has been provided.⁵ As a result of separate analysis the movements, the armies, and the governments may appear in bolder relief than would otherwise be possible, and the role of government in the broadest sense may be made clearer, not only for China but for the West as well.