Chapter VIII: Extra-Political Forces

Government, wherever organized, is distinguished from other social institutions by claims to universality of scope and competence, and paramountcy of authority; the term _political_, on the basis of such a distinction, refers to activities, occasionally individual but more usually collective, involving access to the symbols of government; and the term _governmental_ refers to the application of such symbols in governmental sanctions and services. The process of government is accordingly one wherein groups smaller than the totality of society seek ("politically") to obtain action in the name of the totality ("governmental"), for or against other groups according to shifting interests. In the West this politico-governmental process has been further characterized by ceremonial forms ("laws") and reinforced by conceptions of amoral omnicompetence ("sovereignty").

The cellular socio-economic structure of old China, plus the Confucian employment of ideological as opposed to governmental control, kept the entire process of politics and government at a very low level of intensity. Modern China, inheritor of an apolitical past, is still the most pluralistic society in the world, and modern Chinese government--despite recent gigantism--a frail legal superstructure above a flood of extra-political power. Western societies depend upon their states; the Chinese state depends upon a society which could, albeit uncomfortably, dispense with states altogether.

This condition amounts in international politics, to both a strength and a weakness. Chinese society suffers more political ruin with less social disturbance than does any comparable society; the guerrillas, for example, probably find government helpful when available, but regard it as a luxury rather than a necessity. Chinese society is near to an orderly anarchy; uniform conditioning from the past, or uniform present opinion, takes the place of mass organization and totalitarian government. The high death rate of traitors is probably not owing to activity on the part of Chungking, but to the spontaneous action of ordinary men; on one occasion a high pro-Japanese official was shot by his own bodyguard while the two sat in a sedan on a busy street: the bodyguard had experienced a revulsion of conscience. Fu Hsiao-ên, Wang Ch'ing-wei's Mayor of Shanghai, was also killed by a member of his own household. Spontaneous but uniform action applies not only to sensational political matters; it appears in less dramatic but equally important affairs, such as commercial rivalry, landlord-tenant relationships, and the police power of the community and the family. However, in a contest for power, while the Chinese lose little by defeat, their counter-attacks are correspondingly more difficult. The fluid autonomy of innumerable groups slows down the engines of formal power. The political-governmental process is apt to be sluggish in crises.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHINESE GOVERNMENT

The society upon which the National Government of China, its Left associates, and its Japanophile rivals rest is not a settled, stagnant society. An extraordinary ferment has gripped China for more than a century--arising from cadastral, agrarian, technological, economic, fiscal, ideological, political, and governmental change. The Chinese people have endured; they have also acted. Within a single century, three blazing revolutions have swept China: the T'aip'ing Rebellion, put down with Western aid after fifteen years of war; the Boxer uprising, deflected into xenophobia by the Manchus; and the Great Revolution, which succeeded in part. Between these, there have been changes, bloody but of secondary magnitude: the Moslem rebellions; the minor uprisings of Sun Yat-sen; the Republican Revolution; the 1919 movement; the _tuchün_ wars; the Communist communes, which failed utterly in Shanghai and Canton; the Communist _jacqueries_, which continued; and the present rip tide of resistance. None of these was effectively mastered by organized government; each was exploited by one government, and opposed by another. Unlike a Western state, wherein government becomes the prime mobilizer during crises, Chinese society shifts its incalculable forces, and governments leap forward to take advantage of them.

This extensive, unorganized residue of opinion and power, outside the reach of government, keeps any modern Chinese government in a peculiar condition. Like a perpetual process of revolution, social changes demand that a government exploit them, deflect them, or employ them--but not launch or stop them. The Kuomintang has failed in its attempts to launch favorable mass movements, and also failed to stop antagonistic ones. The secret of the Chinese Communist power has lain in the skill of the Red leaders, who utilized available movements. Hence the continued development of Chinese government rests upon the wills, fancies, interests, mob action, enthusiasm or dispiritedness of a people who in their own communities do not read newspapers, listen to radios, or pay much attention to the national state. Despite attempts to bring society under the control of government, in order to make it possible to bring government under the control of society (constitutionalism), the decisive forces of modern Chinese life are outside the reach of propaganda or control.

General opinion in China is not ascertainable, except through action. In vital matters this action is apt to be either violent, or the equivalent of violent: sit-down, general, or go-slow strikes; boycotts; universal derision. The National Government possesses unprecedented amounts of power by Chinese standards. By Western standards it is incredibly obliging, casual, and unsystematic. The power which the Government, with Chiang as leader, enjoys, arises from a support which it could not compel, and which it cannot ensure by any means other than the pursuance of support-arousing policies. The Kuomintang, the Communists, the National Salvationists, the independent Left guerrilla leaders--these agencies are not the organization of entire opinion groups, but the spearheads of immeasurable forces. The modernization of government, both administrative and constitutional, awaits the transformation of materials around and under government. Greatest of these is popular mentality. Ancillary are economic, organizational, educational and cultural forces. Progress toward the omnicompetent state is slowed by the fact that few Chinese wish to abandon the freedom of a pluralist society for the efficient universality of legalism. They desire modernization, but haggle at the price.

Three factors in particular are working upon and among the millions of farmers and townsmen: mass education, rural reconstruction, and the cooperative movement. Each not only takes immediate, beneficial effect, but also transforms the political material of China. These forces, not in any strict sense political, possess enormous political importance.

MASS EDUCATION

Literacy has risen very rapidly in modern China. Before the impact of the West, becoming literate was in itself a career. By the time one could read at all, one was a scholar, unless one learned the limited quasi-shorthand of the merchants. Educational reforms came about as the result of modern schools, particularly British and American Protestant schools, and the action of the government. The fabric of Chinese society had begun to change even before the downfall of the Ch'ing dynasty. The literary revolution led by Hu Shih after 1915, which popularized _pai-hua_ (a written form of the Chinese spoken language) had extensive repercussions, and made possible the rapid diffusion of ideographic literacy. (Phonetization failed then, and later.) Almost every government in China has attempted the diffusion of literacy. The popular demand is intense.

The present status of literacy in China is revealed by official figures from the Ministry of Education, which may err somewhat on the side of optimism. These put the total population of China at 450 million (Manchuria presumably remaining unmentioned), of which 90 million are literate and 360 million illiterate. Such an estimate would give China about the same absolute number of literates as the United States. The remaining 360 million illiterates are broken down as follows: 40.05 million children below the age of six; 45 million aged six to twelve; 29.25 million aged twelve to fifteen; 79.43 million persons over forty-five; and 1.57 million dumb, deaf, cripples, or insane. The adults to be reached by the mass literacy movement amount therefore to 165 million; government estimates state that 46,348,469 illiterates were educated since 1938, of whom 25.2 million were adults between fifteen and forty-five, leaving roughly 140 million to be educated.[1]

[Footnote 1: The China Information Committee, _News Release_, April 1,
1940.]

The mass education program is supplementary to the education of children, which is far from complete or even adequate. The literacy imparted is of the most elementary kind; but in a civilized society such as China this has immediate effect. The author never knew a Chinese who could read and was not addicted to it; a common sight in Western China is a knot of coolies deciphering a newspaper together. The intense reverence for learning and scholarship makes the training welcome, and the teachers who seek to teach the minimum of one thousand ideographs in six weeks never lack pupils.

The program of the National Government was summarized by Ch'ên Li-fu, the Minister of Education, speaking over the radio after the Mass Education Conference of March 1940:

Accordingly, our first step is to wipe out illiteracy. In
this respect we proceed simultaneously with the
enlightenment of the masses of adult illiterates, both men
and women, and with the education of children in order to
put an end to illiteracy that may otherwise arise in the
future. At the National Conference on People's Education
held from the twelfth day to the sixteenth day of this month
in Chungking, the _five-year plan for the people's
education_, adopted by the Executive _Yüan_, was further
deliberated and promulgated. The proper enforcement of this
plan will help to convert at least one hundred and forty
million (140,000,000) adult illiterates into intelligent
citizens for China within the coming five years.

At present there are already 44 per cent of the entire
number of children of school age (from six to twelve) in
school; that is, nineteen million and eight hundred thousand
(19,800,000). By the enforcement of this plan, there should
be, during the first two years, at least one people's school
in every three _pao_. And each village should have a nucleus
school, according to the plan. In this way there should be
at least more than 260,000 people's schools for the 800,000
_pao_ of the entire nation at the end of the first two
years. Each people's school consists of three divisions or
classes, namely, the children's division, the men's
division, and the women's division. During the second two
years there should be at least one people's school in every
two _pao_. In the fifth and last year there should be at
least one people's school in each _pao_. That is to say, at
the end of the fifth year there should be at least 800,000
people's schools for the 800,000 _pao_ of the nation,
besides the 80,000 or more nucleus schools and the 200,000
schools of the same grades now already existent which can
be improved, to provide education for at least 90 per cent
of the entire number of children of school age. As a matter
of fact, certain provinces have already succeeded in
establishing one or even two people's schools in each _pao_.
Kwangsi Province, for instance, has at present one people's
school in each _pao_, while Fukien Province even has two
people's schools in each _pao_. The fulfillment of this
five-year plan needs at least $2,932,000,000 and 1,600,000
properly trained teachers.

Our vocational education aims at building a sound middle
cadre for the various professions and industrial
enterprises. There are training schools and short-time
classes for mechanics, electrical communications, metal
work, etc. Also, special classes are opened in more than ten
colleges and universities for advanced studies along such
lines.

Our attempt to universalize productive education may be
evidenced by the incorporation of productive education
courses into the middle school curriculum, besides
instituting organizations for the same in the various
vocational schools in order to facilitate the practice of
students along such lines.... In 1938, for example, only
53.0 per cent of the entire number of students who took part
in the examination studied science and engineering, but in
1939 it jumped to 59.4 per cent.[2]

[Footnote 2: The same, April 8, 1940. Minor changes in punctuation
have been introduced.]

This statement gives the official view, which is highly optimistic. In terms of practical politics, however, the Generalissimo has given the movement his cordial backing, and sees in it a preliminary to democracy. Although final results might fall far short of the hopeful estimate, the effect would still be considerable. Diffusion of literacy creates a momentary satisfaction with the political system which makes literacy possible, but the after-effect of literacy is to make men of any nationality easier to govern well and harder to govern badly. A government which diffuses literacy without advancing reforms is sharpening weapons against itself. The National Government's American-inspired trust in education as a panacea implies that Chiang and his fellow leaders expect to remain popular, and do not contemplate appeasement, reaction, or other unpopular measures.

RURAL RECONSTRUCTION

An even more interesting aspect of the mass-education movement is its connection with rural reconstruction. In this field much is owed to Dr. James Y. C. Yen, a graduate of Yale and Princeton who began his work with the Chinese labor corps in France during the 1914-18 war. The war-time work of the correlated mass education and rural reconstruction movement was summarized by Dr. Yen himself:

The most hopeful factor in the whole China situation is that
her greatest and most valuable resource, the three hundred
and fifty million farmers, has not yet been tapped for the
upbuilding of the nation. The Chinese farmer has had a
measure of freedom and responsibility, of dignity and
independence. He is thrifty and industrious, intelligent and
an expert in intensive farming. A great number of our
national leaders are sons and daughters of our farmers. The
fathers of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
were farmers.

These nearly three years of terrible war have proved beyond
doubt that our faith in the Chinese farmer has not been
misplaced. It has revealed his greatness. Our nation is
rediscovering the "forgotten man," the tiller of the soil.
Most of our soldiers come from the farm. To a remarkable
extent he has also financed the war. He is the real hero of
this war.

The Chinese Mass Education Movement was organized in 1923 to
explore the potentialities of the rural masses and find a
way of drawing out the best in them. Since the first
publication of the "thousand character test," it has been
estimated that some thirty million illiterate people have
been taught to read during the past five years.

Beginning with 1929 the point of emphasis of the Movement
shifted from extensive promotion of literacy to intensive
study of the life of the farmers in the rural districts. As
a living social laboratory in which to do our research and
to work out principles and techniques, we selected
Tinghsien, a district of four hundred thousand people,
one-thousandth of the total population of China, in Hopei
Province. This was the first time in our history that an
organized group of Chinese intellectuals went deliberately
to the country to live among the rural people to study their
life and find out how to develop their latent possibilities.
The Movement has evolved what is known as the "Tinghsien
Four-fold Reconstruction Education" including the cultural,
economic, health, and the political.

Several other experimental _hsien_,--Hengshan in Hunan,
Central China, and Hsintu in Szechwan, West China, were
established in cooperation with the provincial governments.
One of our special emphases in these experimental _hsien_
has been the reform of the _hsien_ government, i.e. the
local government.

The Tinghsien Experiment with its "laboratory approach" to
social and political problems and with its _correlated_
program of rural reconstruction as demonstrated in the
district attracted attention from all over China and
inspired similar experiments in various parts of the
country. As a result the movement for rural reconstruction
gained great momentum in China.

Since the outbreak of hostilities the Mass Education
Movement has thrown itself unreservedly into the task of
assisting the Central and Provincial governments in
strengthening the nation's struggle against the enemy. It
was most gratifying that at this hour of China's supreme
struggle we have been able to help the government to
revitalize the _hsien_ government, to train civil service
personnel and to mobilize the farmers. Extensive application
of the new system as developed in the experimental _hsien_
was made to an entire province such as we did in Hunan--a
rich province with a population of thirty million.

In order to insure that the new political machinery should
function effectively a School of Public Administration to
train administrative and technical personnel from the
magistrate down to the village elders was established with
the senior members of our Movement taking full charge.
Altogether the School trained about 4,000 higher officials
for the local government and some 35,000 of the village
elders. Since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek assumed
concurrently the governorship of Szechwan, a new system of
_hsien_ government (chiefly modelled after the experimental
_hsien_ of the country) with the object of releasing the
new life of the rural masses has been promulgated. Under his
order the same is taking place in neighboring provinces.

Unless serious and painstaking study of rural reconstruction
is made by scientists and scholars on the one hand, and
administrative and technical personnel are systematically
trained and imbued with a spirit of service to the rural
masses on the other, the movement for rural reconstruction
may dwindle away as so many other movements have done in the
past.

It is most heartening to state that Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek has given his public approval and backing to the
new National Institute of Rural Reconstruction which he
considers to be of fundamental importance to China's
post-war reconstruction. The inspiration of the Institute
has already helped to mould the principal rural
reconstruction groups in the country into one national
force. The rural reconstruction movement has achieved a
united front unparalleled in its history. Today it is a
great unifying force, an outstanding national platform upon
which all Chinese can agree. It will meet the needs of China
today and lay the foundation for the China of tomorrow.[3]

[Footnote 3: The same, May 6, 1940.]

This program possesses obvious merit. Lacking a foundation of dogma, it requires no implementation through terrorism. The politically innocuous character of the movement is attested by the frequent demands by provincial officials for personnel from the Mass Education training centers. Since the purpose is to improve the entire community without revolutionizing its class structure, the enlightened landlords are as favorable as the peasants themselves. Unfortunately, enlightened landlords are not always prevalent. Despite the modesty of the program, it finds stumbling blocks in actual corruption, extortion, and illegality. Many _hsien_ are under local machines which permit wealthy conservatives to evade tax payments, steal government funds, and repress genuine farmer organization. The consequence has been that the movement succeeds only when it has the immediate backing of a provincial or central authority; its progress has been slow. Many critics, both Chinese and Western, have become disgusted with the slowness of social reform on the land, and despair of anything save reconstruction through implicit class war.[4]

[Footnote 4: Research Staff of the Secretariat, Institute of Pacific
Relations, _Agrarian China, Selected Source Materials from Chinese
Authors_, Shanghai, 1938. A more Leftist and even gloomier view is
taken by Chen Han-seng, _Landlord and Peasant in China_, New York,
1936, and the same author's _Industrial Capital and Chinese Peasants,
A Study of the Livelihood of Chinese Tobacco Cultivators_, Shanghai,
1939. Two general surveys of the Chinese economy are Condliffe, J. B.,
_China Today: Economic_, Boston, 1932, and Tawney, R. H., _Land and
Labour in China_, New York, 1932. A significant hypothesis of the
relations of economics, government, and culture in China is found in
Lattimore, Owen, _Inner Asian Frontiers of China_, New York, 1940, Ch.
III, esp. p. 39 _ff._; this rests in part upon Wittfogel, Karl August,
_Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas_, Leipzig, 1931, the leading
Marxian exposition of the subject.]

The present period of resistance and reconstruction opens a very promising period in rural modernization. In the first place, war-time stress puts great power in the Generalissimo's hands. Ubiquitous armies can, on short notice, enforce orders from Chungking. The shift of troops among provinces makes the central government an outside power now physically present in tens of thousands of communities. Devolution of watchfulness by the Commander-in-Chief and his staff results in slow but irreversible accumulation of governmental authority.

Secondly, the proclamation of manifold programs has the effect, obviously, of drawing attention to each of them. The Kuomintang, anxious to retain its paramountcy, promotes new local government changes. These face frustration by mass illiteracy. Mass education is impeded by local economic injustices. The Whampoa and _Erh Ch'ên_ groups in the Kuomintang, while they have landlord connections, are interested--even assuming a strong economic-class interest--in the maintenance of government. Action is appearing, slow and haphazard by Western standards, but indisputably present. The minimum of good government in China is a very low minimum, but it is rising in the face of the Communist and Japanese pressure. One may be sure that the National Government will not pass below that minimum if the state's existence is in danger.

Thirdly, there is a very genuine boom condition in Western China. The movement of the government to the West, and lightening of intolerable but long-endured _tuchün_ exactions, would in itself have led to sudden prosperity. To this are added more than twenty millions of new population, a growing network of communications, a sharp but controlled inflation. These further stimulate speculation and construction and development. The most important factors in a new prosperity have been, however, the reappearance of handicraft-type industry as a consequence of blockade, and governmental advocacy of every conceivable development. The author beheld, during the summer of 1940, conditions of prosperity in Szechwan which he had not expected to find in China within the space of one lifetime. Narcotics were eradicated. The working population was commanding high wages, but suffering from high prices; the prices were somewhat ahead of the wages, but not so far that social morale was troubled. Skilled labor was in a superb bargaining position; chauffeurs, electricians, good carpenters, etc. were in considerable demand. The salaried classes were suffering at all levels, a factor which was patently wholesome in stimulating working-class morale. The clerical class, which had held itself aloof from manual labor with a persistence which boded ill for China, was placed more nearly on a par with its American equivalent. While poverty was still universal by Western standards, the pathological squalor endemic to the coast was nowhere visible.

THE CHINESE INDUSTRIAL COOPERATIVES

The Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (_Chung-kuo Kung-yeh Ho-tso Hsieh-hui_) are an important and widely publicized outgrowth of the war, and are perhaps the only feature of domestic Chinese affairs--outside of the Communist area and the roads program--which is as well known beyond China as within. The purpose of the cooperatives is to launch an enormous program of decentralized industry throughout Free China, with thirty thousand separate industrial cooperatives for the first major goal. The purpose is to develop an industrial system which will keep China autarkic for resistance and reconstruction; long-range, the purpose is to circumvent impending evils of concentrated industrialism, slums, megalopolitan crowding, extra-legal oppression. China might thus proceed directly from a decentralized half-handicraft economy to the decentralized power economy of the future. Four principles underlie the program: sound technical design, cooperative organization, voluntary self-discipline, and social welfare on the basis of Sun's _min shêng_.[5]

[Footnote 5: Publicity release of Indusco, Inc., The American
Committee in Aid of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, New York, January
1940 [1941]. This agency, exceedingly active in publicizing China's
cooperative progress, has released a great deal of up-to-date
information on the movement. The Western literature on the C.I.C. has
appeared mostly in popular sources, to which _The Bulletin of Far
Eastern Bibliography_ issued by the Committees on Far Eastern Studies
of the American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, D. C.,
serves as a useful guide. The writings of Edgar Snow are of special
value and vividness in treating this topic: articles in _Asia_,
various dates; "China's Blitzbuilder, Rewi Alley," _The Saturday
Evening Post_, Vol. 213, no. 32 (February 8, 1941); and his recent
_The Battle for Asia_, New York, 1941, which appeared as this work was
completed and sent to press. A convenient handbook is the anonymous
_The People Strike Back! or The Story of Chinese Industrial
Cooperatives_, Shanghai, (1939?).]

Formally, the C.I.C. Headquarters is a social organization sponsored by the Executive _Yüan_. H. H. K'ung, Minister of Finance and Vice-President of the _Yüan_, is its Chairman. The Secretary-General and Associate Secretary-General, Messrs. K. P. Liu and Hubert Liang, are both American-returned students; the former once worked in the Ford factories while studying at the University of Cincinnati and later was a banker in Manchuria. The most inspiring force in the movement is Mr. Rewi Alley, a New Zealander strongly interested in cooperatives and in labor welfare, formerly factory inspector in the International Settlement. Familiar, because of his Shanghai experiences and famine-relief work, with the problems of economic organization in China, he presented his plan to Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang through the intervention of that extraordinarily popular British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr. The Chiangs were impressed with it, and the Generalissimo gave it his support. A headquarters was established at Hankow in August 1938, with the following five departments: _general_, for secretarial and administrative housekeeping; _financial_, administering funds for the headquarters and the cooperative units; _organization_, in charge of planning and inauguration of cooperatives; _technical_, devising simple industrial techniques; and _accounting_, an independent agency of audit.[6] The Executive _Yüan_ has continued to make administrative funds available; the central headquarters near Chungking now has a staff of about seven hundred. Professor J. B. Tayler of Yenching University, a noted economic expert, is consultant for staff service.

[Footnote 6: "The Movement in Action," _New Defense, A Journal of the
30,000 Industrial Cooperatives Movement in China_ (Chungking) Vol. I,
no. 1 (April 1939), p. 5.]

As projected by Rewi Alley and his fellow-enthusiasts, the C.I.C. had to adjust itself to three zones of China's war-time economy. A guerrilla zone in and around the combat area, as well as behind the Japanese lines, concentrated on the creation of immediate war-time necessities. Some of these were in the form of direct medical and military supplies; others, replacements of indispensable articles which otherwise would have been procured from the enemy. The second zone, of light industry, was within easy reach of Japanese air raids and espionage, and consequently given to enterprises having light capital investment, mobile, and readily concealed. The third, or inmost Chinese zone, being best protected, was the proper area for the development of the heavier industries, although even here no grandiose or heavily centralized works are planned. The ultimate aim, peace-time as well as military, of the C.I.C. is to distribute industry across the countryside, replacing the once flourishing handicraft industries, and allowing Chinese society to develop naturally and continuously.

The author attended a C.I.C. exhibit in Chungking which presented a startling array of modern goods. Ford tools and auxiliary parts, matches, lamps (electric, kerosene, and an improved wood-oil lamp which equals kerosene), light electric appliances, lathes, machine-shop tools, medical kits, Western shoes, toothpaste, canned foods, paper, printing presses, books, and fountain pens--all were produced in areas which did not even have the spinning wheel in some instances, and which until recently imported all Western or modern goods from the coast or from outside.

The organization and practical accomplishments of the C.I.C. are well summarized in a recent article by K. P. Liu, Secretary-General: