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The People's Political Council was established by order of the Emergency Session of the Kuomintang Party Congress held in Hankow, March 1938. Its creation was a compromise measure between the proposal for a European-type United Front government, based on popular elections to a National Convention, and a continuation of the Kuomintang monopoly of government hitherto prevalent. Like many similar compromises in other countries, the institution has proved its viable and useful character. Without exaggeration, it may be stated to be the closest approximation of representative government which China has ever known. Simple, improvised, legally an instrument promising little independence or élan in its work, the Council demonstrates the effectiveness of the Chinese when purpose accompanies design. Formally the least representative of the Chinese constitutional parliaments, congresses, or conventions, the Council is the first to get down to business and—almost unexpectedly—to represent!

Membership, originally set at 150, was raised before the First Session to 200, and again in the autumn of 1940 to 240.[1] The number, unlike the 1681 tentatively projected for the People's Congress, is small enough to allow genuine discussion and to avoid unwieldiness. Attendance, considering war-time hazards, has been very good, with between two-thirds and four-fifths of the members usually present.

Although the Council was designed to meet quarterly by its fundamental Statute,[2] it soon changed to semi-annual sessions and has actually met at intervals running from six to eight months. Each session lasted for ten days (legislative, not calendar).[3] As the Council sessions recurred, the Council became more and more free and representative. Despite the narrowness of its legal foundations, the Council has provided invaluable exercise in the arts of democratic discussion.

As a technique of representation, the Council's recruitment system is novel. The membership was, while the Council's total was at 200, divided into the following four categories:

Group A: representatives of the Provinces and Special Municipalities—88;

Group B: four representatives for or from Mongolia and two for or from Tibet—6;

Group C: representatives for or from the overseas Chinese—6;

Group D: representatives of cultural, professional, and economic bodies, or persons who have been active in political leadership—100.

There were no elections. In the case of Group A candidates, nominations were made by municipal or provincial governing bodies in joint session with the Kuomintang Party organ of corresponding location and level. Group B candidates were nominated by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. Group C candidates were nominated by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission in the Executive Yüan. Group D candidates, which included the representatives of the Communists and independent Left, were nominated by the Supreme National Defense Council. Two candidates could be presented for each seat on the Council. Subject to a minor detour or two on qualifications or for other reasons,[4] the final selection or election was made by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

Thus, an independent or Leftist, whose life had been more or less in danger for years, because of his hostility to the Kuomintang and its policies, might find himself nominated for the Council by the Kuomintang's highest government-supervising agency, and elected by the Kuomintang's highest Party agency. Leaders of the hitherto suppressed, still technically illegal parties and factions—which meant all save the Kuomintang—were designated representatives through the fiction of selection for individual merits. They might take an active share in hammering out policy, and—on the same day—find themselves legally debarred from overt public expression of their own party work. By this device, the Kuomintang provided a safety-valve for opposition without touching the apparatus of its own power.

Had the Kuomintang leaders been obtuse and made the Council something less than a genuine sounding board for public opinion, or had they picked unrepresentative members of the other groups, the whole experiment would have failed. In practice, the compromise worked and gave China a focus for the national concentration of will.

The Council did not elect its own Speaker (I-chang) and Deputy-Speaker (Fu I-chang); these were elected for it by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. Down to 1940, the Council elected a Resident Committee of fifteen to twenty-five members from its own membership; under a recent reorganization, this and the Speaker and Vice-Speaker are to be replaced by a Presidium, to be elected by but not necessarily from among the Council, to consist of five members and to hold the authority of designating presiding officers. This would amount to a further step in the independence of the Council. In both cases, the Secretariat (Mi-shu-ch'u) of the Council is to be under a Secretary-General (Mi-shu-chang) and Deputy Secretary-General (Fu Mi-shu-chang) and to include services of correspondence, general affairs, Council affairs, and police.[5]

With respect to competence, the Council is possessed of three powers:

(1) the right to deliberate on all important measures, whether of domestic or foreign policy, before these are enacted into law by the Central Government (but not, however, the right of making such law);

(2) the right to submit proposals to the government (but since the Supreme National Defense Council is the highest government-directing agency in China, its concurrence is patently necessary);

(3) the right to demand and hear reports from the Yüan and the Ministries, and to interpellate the officers of state.

The distinguished Chinese constitutional scholar, Wang Shih-chieh, Secretary-General of the People's Political Council (Generalissimo Chiang himself being the Speaker) writes of its functions:

From the foregoing description, the peculiarities of the People's Political Council may be clearly seen. It is not an advisory body of the Government in the ordinary conception of the term, because the Government is bound, except in emergency cases, to submit to it for consideration all important measures before they are carried out. The Council possesses not only the power to advise, but also the right to be consulted. Nor is it a legislative organ, as all its resolutions merely embody broad principles of legislation or administration, i.e., lines of policy which, even after being assented to by the Supreme National Defense Council, will still have to go through the ordinary legislative or ordinance-making process in order to become laws or administrative ordinances.

As regards the representative character of the Council, it rests not so much with the method by which the Councillors are chosen, as with the fact that, being composed of men and women most of whom enjoy wide popularity or respect in one way or another, the Council can really speak for almost all the articulate group-interests of the nation. In the less than 30 years of China's experience in republican government, numerous experiments had been attempted at representative government before the convention of the People's Political Council. Few of these were deficient in theoretic grandiloquence, but none of them was found to be serviceable in practical applicability.

Theoretically, the Council is not a popular assembly; but, as I remarked elsewhere,* "it is open to question whether any form of election by popular suffrage can result in so truly representative a body." Even with reference to the limited scope of the Council's powers, I submit that the provision represents a progressive step in that any alternative that is less realistic would impede rather than facilitate the contributive work of the Council.[6]

* Chinese Year Book, 1938, Chap. 17. [Wang Shih-chieh's note.]

The author adds that the resolutions have tended to be of an extraordinarily practical character, and that bombast has remained conspicuously absent.

The procedure of the Council has been kept very simple. A quorum requires only a simple majority (101 members), and a simple majority of a quorum (51) is all that is needed to pass a resolution. To ensure the proper spacing of the calendar, all resolutions initiating new business must come within the first four days of the ten-day session. Introduction may not be completed by the action of a single member; a petition of 20 members, one proposing and 19 endorsing, is necessary for introduction. Reference may then be either to the plenary session or to the committees. (There are five standing committees—military, foreign, civil, financial and economic, educational and cultural affairs—which provide further facilities through subdivision into subcommittees, or through the addition of special committees.) Reports by the government are introduced during the first three days of each session.[7]

Members cannot waste time over the pork-barrel, log-rolling, riders, or minor fiscal questions. Since they all have the same constituency at law, and that constituency—the C. E. C. of the Kuomintang—asks nothing of them except representation of their moral constituencies—the groups and areas from which they derive, Councillors are untroubled by constituents or appropriations. The budget is submitted by the government to the Council for approval, not enactment. Salaries of the Councillors are nil. Each is given Ch. $350.00 (about U. S. $20.00) per mouth for expenses, without regard to mileage, and even overseas Chinese representatives receive no further emoluments. Since government officials are excluded from membership, use of a Council seat for purposes of preferment is precluded.

A liberalization of representation and of procedure occurred early in 1941. A new Council—involving the first turnover in membership since 1938—was elected. Educational and other unofficial representatives obtained an additional twenty seats on the Council. The changes were scarcely sufficient to compensate for the further postponement of the promised Constitution, but they indicated a willingness of the government to meet demands for democratization. Procedural changes increased the effectiveness of individual members. A minor but characteristic feature was the increase in number and importance of women members.

Partisan organization in the Council, although elementary, has begun to function. Each clique has informal caucuses; careful scrutiny discloses the presence of whips from these caucuses on the floor. The groupings in the Council are so fluid that they can be variously classified by persons with different viewpoints. (Formally, of course, everyone is either Kuomintang or non-Party, even though The Chinese Year Book, under informal Chungking government sponsorship, proudly lists the high rank of the Communist members of the Council—"Chen Shao-yu (Wang Ming), [age] 33, [province] Anhwei, [remarks] Member, Presidium, Central Executive Committee, the Third International.")[8] The popular classification of the Council cliques, commonly seen in the press, is based on the Four Parties (Ssŭ Tang) and the Four Cliques (Ssŭ P'ai). The four parties are the Kuomintang, National Socialist, Communist, and La Jeunesse.[9] The Four Cliques, which according to popular credence, formed soon after the first meetings of the Council, are based on intellectual sympathy and the interplay of temperaments, and not on dogma.

The most Leftist clique is believed to be the Hua-chung P'ai (Central China Clique), with the National Salvationists' Seven Gentlemen at their core. Deeply sympathetic with the masses, and violently patriotic, this group helped to bring about the war by opposing appeasement. Like-thinking Council members, however affiliated, are believed to fall under the legislative leadership of the Central China Clique. Near to this, still far to the Left of the government, is the Tungpei P'ai (Northeast Clique). The Northeastern Manchurian Chinese officers, exiled in the Northwest, were the first bridge between the Communists and the rest of the country. Since their native provinces and kinsfolk have had almost ten years' Japanese domination, the Northeast group is emphatic in demands for national unity. Communists circulate from one group to the other, always cooperative in offering their leadership on the basis of a United Front, which the Comintern still decrees for the Far East after jettisoning the Popular Fronts of Europe.

The two relatively Rightist cliques are the Ch'ê-yeh Chiao-yü P'ai (Vocational Educationists' Clique) and the Chiao-shou P'ai (Professors' Clique). Composed of men still so far from attaining office that they possess perfect freedom of criticism, they therefore stand Left of the government in daily comment, although they may be Right of it in theory. The former group stresses simple, direct problems: it seeks to attack the opium problem, disease, illiteracy, and so forth, without necessarily fighting the social revolution against the landlords. It derives its name from two distinguished leaders of the vocational education movement who have abstained from active political work until finding a forum in the Council. The Professors' Clique is reputedly led by the group of young professors who were eminent in their fields before the outbreak of war, opposed to the government's appeasement policy, but tactful enough not to rebel. They are considered to stand as far Right as anyone on the Council—that is, to discuss politics in terms of soundness of public policy, budgetary reasonableness, immediate practicality, and other common-sense standards, which appear conservative beside the fervid idealism of their colleagues.

The description of the Ssŭ P'ai just given is one which exists in the popular credence. A more authoritative source placed the groups in the Council under the following four headings:

(1) the Kuomintang and non-Party majority;

(2) the La Jeunesse Party and the National Socialists;

(3) the Communists;

(4) the "Popular Front" group, including the intellectuals and the National Salvationists.

On this basis, the Kuomintang would retain its working control of the Council, which appears to be the case, in terms of work performed. The unaffiliated majority, selected by their local governments and Kuomintang offices and elected by the Kuomintang C. E. C., would in doubtful cases be inclined to turn to Kuomintang leadership. The La Jeunesse Party, despite the fact that it is a Western-returned student organization, is strong in Szechuan; its influence could be expected to run with that of the National Socialists. Both parties, while minute, are decidedly averse to Communist fellow-travelling and not at all disposed to alter the status quo, except to carve modest niches for themselves and to advance their programs in an agreeable way. The Communists stand alone, although they offer their cooperation to the independents.

The Popular Front group is a category widely recognized in China—the Left Kuomintang, the discontented idealists, the irrepressible patriots, the minor parties, the indefatigable conspirators of Chinese hopefulness who are always on the scene. For years they have been unforgotten witnesses to the ferocious integrity of ideals which (in individuals scattered at random at all levels of society) call Chinese out of the lethargy of being very practical.

The Popular Front leaders, more than any other in China, have withstood perennial temptation for years and have kept their activities, under whatever name undertaken, intact. They can be distinguished from other Party leaders, both Nationalist and Communist, by the facts that they have never set up a government, with jobs in it for themselves; have never controlled a government, save through lacunae in power politics; and have never preserved a government which they did control. Warm-hearted, philanthropic, patriotic, their shrill zeal has been audible in China for many years. Without formal organization, they have stood behind others who sought real power, and today—between the cold, realistic leaders of the two opposing Parties—are assembled, ever-hopeful, and advocating a Popular Front.

The Secretary-General stated to the author that he regarded three of the Council's contributions as of history-making importance. First, the Council openly expressed a Chinese national unity unprecedented in modern history. Forms apart, never before had a crisis found all Chinese so united; the Council gave a symbol to that unity. Second, the Council raised the probability of successful democratic processes in China. Failures under the Peking parliaments had reduced democratic discussion to a sham. The Council erased this discredit, making many people believe that democracy promises a real value to the country—not merely as an ideal, but as a practicable means of government. This contribution was reinforced by a third: the Council actually served to make definite, serious, concrete improvements in government and Kuomintang structure, through criticism and through the issues aired.