In Chinese geomancy which calculates time through the use of symbols of astral and terrestrial bodies, 60 years make up a cycle. In 1954, the Kuomintang completes such a cycle as a revolutionary political party.
Sixty years have elapsed since Dr. Sun Yat-sen organized the Hsing Chung Hui in in 1894 to disseminate revolutionary political ideas. During its cycle of development, numerous martyrs, in wielding the sword of truth under the standard of national revolution, have made the supreme sacrifice of their lives. Their contribution to the evolution of political ideas and institutions in has been generally recognized. It is only during the last five years that the fall of the mainland was chalked against the Kuomintang which has been leading China's revolution and fighting for the freedom and independence of the Chinese people ever since its inception. For the temporary setback in our struggle against International Communism, no useful purpose can be served if we were to put up an apology. To keep the record straight, let us make an honest appraisal of Kuomintang activities during the past 60 years.
Sixty years, though a long time in the life of a man, is but a flitting moment in the life of a nation. As was not built in one day, history cannot be changed overnight. It takes time to translate ideals into achievements. When a revolution is democratic by nature, it often requires a longer time to reach its goal. In the case of the , for instance, it took her almost 90 years after the Declaration of Independence of 1776 to bring about complete national unification.
is a large country. Her population is bigger and her territory more extensive than those of 19th Century United States. Her social complexities are more deep-rooted and political ills more serious. As a result of more than 2,000 years of monarchy, conservatism and feudalistic conceptions preserved some vestigial strength in almost every field. The Chinese revolution has to be, therefore, a crusade against political, social, economic and ideological septic elements which have poisoned the body politic to its very core with consequences almost fatal to the state. In these circumstances, to seek political freedom, social justice and economic democracy for the people is bound to meet with stubborn resistance from both the conservative and the recalcitrant. In the course of the national revolution led by the Kuomintang, every reverse meant only re-dedication and reinvigorated zeal.
Now, in a desperate bid for power, the Communists have thrown much mud on the Kuomintang which they well know is a stumbling block in the way of Communist world conquest. In spite of that, patriots at home and abroad have rallied under the banner of the Party to combat the Communist evil. Such devotion to the Kuomintang cause did not come through blind faith. One of the easily understood reasons is found in the record of the Kuomintang. In the following paragraphs, I venture to discuss briefly some salient features of this revolutionary record.
1. Founding the Republic: First of Its Kind in the
Having lorded it over for a period of almost two hundred and seventy years, the Manchus began to show signs of disintegration in the middle of the 19th century. Political corruption, moral depravity, and intellectual degeneration had eaten into the soul of the absolute monarchy. Successive military defeats at the hands of the Western Powers followed by a series of unequal treaties increased the burdens of the people and jeopardized the life of the nation.
In view of the national crisis, Dr. Sun Yat-sen resolved to come to the rescue of his compatriots. He organized the Hsing Chung Hui to sow revolutionary seeds among the overseas Chinese and line up kindred souls from among members of the secret societies at home to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty. In 1895, he fired the first shot of rebellion in to wake up the people to the ugly realities which kept the fate of the nation hanging in the balance. In 1905, he reorganized the Hsing Chung Hui into the Tung Meng Hui as a revolutionary nucleus and published The Ming Pao as a party organ to propagate the Three People's Principles.
On October 10, 1911, after ten heart-breaking failures, the dynamic force of nationalism launched its irresistible attack for the eleventh time. In less than four months, half of the country pledged its allegiance to the revolution and the last Manchu ruler abdicated. Amidst cheers and blessings of the world, the Republic of China as envisaged by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his followers came into being.
The founding of the Republic not only ended the Manchu rule of , it established the first Republic based on democratic constitutionalism in the whole of . It was a triumph of nationalism over imperialism, right over might. Its impact upon the colonial system was a rapid succession of uprisings against foreign rule. It has indeed fanned the flame of nationalism which has been burning in the hearts of peaceloving peoples ever since. It ushered in a new era.
2. Defending the Constitution of the Republic
Immediately after the Republic was established, rival political ambitions plunged the state into chaos. In the quick turn of events, many opportunists had infiltrated into the revolutionary ranks. These were out for selfish gains. Worse still, many revolutionary cadres assumed that to chase away the Manchus was the ultimate goal of the revolution. Once the Republic was brought into being, they felt contented and were ready to forfeit their former revolutionary stand and would have liked nothing better than to live on their laurels. In addition, the vast mass of the people, not having enjoyed any form of political freedom, had no political consciousness.
These disruptive forces soon gravitated towards the person of Yuan Shih-kai. When Dr. Sun Yat-sen was made the first President of the Republic, the Manchu influence was still predominant north of the . With Yuan Shih-kai's crack troops, the Manchus might prolong the struggle for a long time to come. To avoid further bloodshee, Dr. Sun Yat-sen offered to resign from the presidency in favor of Yuan Shih-kai on condition that the latter would work for the cause of the revolution and uphold the constitution of the Republic. Meanwhile, he reorganized the Tung Meng Hui as a political party and renamed it Kuomintang, hoping thereby to prevent any possible abuse of government powers by laying a sound foundation for party politics.
As soon as Yuan Shih-kai was inaugurated as President, he could not resist the lures of being the monarch. He outlawed the Kuomintang. He dissolved the National Assembly. He published a constitution of his own and made himself life-long head of the Republic. With all powers invested solely in him, he was still not satisfied. He wished to be emperor both in fact and in name. In an attempt to borrow foreign influence to back up his position, he signee the infamous treaties and agreements with as a result of the latter's 21 Demands. The concessions exacted there from exceeded by far those which all the Western powers had ever grabbed from . With the stage all set, Yuan Shih-kai proclaimed himself Emperor by the end of 1915.
These treacherous acts of Yuan Shih-kai soon set the entire nation aflame. He had not only repudiated republicanism in favor of monarchism; he had invited foreign domination to advance his personal ambition. Being convinced of the necessity of resuming the revolution, Dr. Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang into the Chinese Revolutionary Party and implemented a series of reforms to invigorate its fighting spirit. In December, 1915, the torch of revolution was raised high again. Generals Chen Chi-mei and Tsai Ngo rose up in arms against Yuan Shih-kai to crush the dreams of monarchy of the vicious counter-revolutionary.
The death of Yuan Shih-kai in 1916 did not prevent the monarchical attempts of other warlords. It plunged the country into a series of civil struggles lasting for a number of years. Though the National Assembly was once restored under the presidency of Li Yuan-hung, it was the product of a compromise with the ambitious militarists and politicians and could not function as an effective mechanism of constitutional government. Furthermore, the royalist sentiment was still riding high among the die-hards of the former regime which soon crystallized into a sinister design of Chang Hsun to restore the Manchu boy Emperor to the throne.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his followers found it impossible to tolerate any longer such a situation. To defend the constitution, he called an extraordinary session of the Assembly at and set up, accordingly, the Military Government. In response to this clarion call for action, the southwestern provinces declared independence from the regime and pledged allegiance to Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the cause of democracy. In 1924, when Tsao Kun bribed his way into the presidential office, the Party found it meaningless to defend a constitution which was honeycombed with corruption and evil. Before the warlords and their henchmen, the Imperialist powers, were eliminated from the political stage of , no true constitutional government could be developed. Nevertheless, monarchical designs and royalist schemes were shattered through the unfailing vigilance of the Kuomintang and the continued sacrifices made by its members.
3. The Northern Expedition and National Unification
In the 1924 reorganization, Kuomintang was restored as the party name and the First National Party Congress was convened at . In its Manifesto, it affirmed Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles as the party platform and adopted a definite policy with the following salient points: Externally: the abrogation of all unequal treaties and the funding of foreign loans; internally: the division of central and local administrative powers on an equitable basis, the adoption of hsien as the basic unit of local self-government, the introduction of universal suffrage, census-taking and the collection of vital statistics and the improvement of farm and labor conditions.
In accordance with a resolution of the Congress, the Kuomintang, in order to challenge the warlords and the Imperialist Powers, redoubled its efforts to build up a revolutionary army of its own. In July, 1924, to train military and political cadres of the Party and to step up preparations against the warlords, Dr. Sun Yat-sen established the and appointed Chiang Kai-shek its Commandant. It is sincerely regretted that Dr. Sun Yat-sen did not live to see the actual launching of the Northern Expedition. In the winter of 1924, some Kuomintang members planned to bring about, through political bargaining in , unification by peaceful means. Entertaining this hope, Dr. Sun Yat-sen went to the north to promote the convocation of a national convention and the abolition of unequal treaties. As a consequence of his death in March, 1925, this hope for restoring constitutional government in ended again in failure.
The National Government of China was established in in July, 1925, to step up preparations for military action. In July, 1926, the National Government appointed Chiang Kai-shek as Commander-in-Chief of the National Revolutionary Army. Fired with patriotic fervor, the Revolutionary Army marched bravely and triumphantly north wars. On the way, it crushed Wu Pei-fu in a single stroke and Sun Chuan-fang in another. In April, 1927, they conquered all the provinces south of the Yangtze River and moved the seat of the National Government to . It was a clear case of victory of the few endowed with revolutionary fervor over overwhelming numbers.
Just as the Revolutionary Army rolled up northward, anti-revolutionary forces within the Kuomintang were daily gathering momentum. When the Kuomintang underwent reorganization in 1924, Dr. Sun allowed Communists to join it not as a political group but as individuals. It was not foreseen that they would continue secretly to take orders from the Third International after they had pledged to fight for the cause of the National Revolution under the banner of the Kuomintang. Quite contrary to the expectations of the Kuomintang, the Communists were bent on exploiting every opportunity to snatch political power by resorting to alienation, division, instigation and every form of trickery.
In April, 1928, the expedition was resumed with even greater enthusiasm. When the Revolutionary Army pushed into Shantung, Japanese militarists were so alarmed to see the emergence of a new China that they called in large reinforcements from their homeland to help the remnants of the feudalistic forces in a desperate bid to block the onrush of the Revolutionary Army. In spite of their ruthless acts on May , the Japanese failed to checkmate the irresistible advance of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Army. By the end of December, both North China and came under the jurisdiction of the National Government. Since the institution of the Republic in 1912, this was the first time that enjoyed national unification.
Manifestly, the success of the Northern Expedition consisted not only in rooting out war-lords and their supporters, but also in saving the people from the ravages of a feudalistic mentality. The Kuomintang had, consequently, laid a firm foundation of constitutional government. This achievement of the Kuomintang is undoubtedly a brilliant page in the annals of the Chinese people.
4. War of Resistance against and Final Victory
Immediately after the achievement of national unification, the Kuomintang, to regenerate the nation, embarked on various programs of reconstruction. Following the plans laid down in Dr. Sun Yat-sen's International Development of China, the Kuomintang promulgated the Program of Political Tutelage, initiated the campaign against opium-smoking, formulated a new educational policy, promoted the spirit of local self-government, and started numerous projects of economic reconstruction. The Kuomintang, in compliance with the teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, reorganized the National Government on the basis of five separate powers in the form of five Yuan. A new ship of state was ready to leave the ways.
In view of these happy developments in , most Western Powers reoriented their attitude towards us. Either by diplomatic con cessions or through technological assistance, they gave us moral support to help modernize the country. Only did not feel it that way. They thought that the success of the Chinese national revolution would mean the end of their aggressive designs. After they had failed to block the march of revolution in , they stepped up preparations for fresh aggression and were constantly on the lookout for the opportune moment. Finally, they engineered a pretext and launched an allout attack on on September 18, 1931.
As the Japanese wreaked havoc in , Communist rebels gathered up enough strength to threaten the country from within. They had occupied the south-central part of and set up a bogus Soviet regime. They were fighting a hit-and-run war with peasants of the areas under their occupation impressed into the Red Army. They were using every insidious means to obstruct the work of national reconstruction undertaken by the National Government. They shared in a different manner the nefarious work of the Japanese. The success of the Kuomintang, it looked to them, would be their doom. Though they claimed to be anti-Japanese, they were in fact allies of the Japanese. With such an accomplice as a Fifth Column, the Japanese challenged the Chinese nation on July 7, 1937.
Under these circumstances, the Kuomintang called upon the people to put up as strong a resistance as possible against the foreign aggressor. In response to this call, millions of men and women rushed to the colors to fight for the fatherland. In the first four years of fighting, we struggled alone, without modern weapons, without friends, without aid. Yet we bogged down two million well-equipped Japanese troops on the Chinese mainland and inflicted heavy losses upon them. Since the end of 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the declared war upon the Axis Powers, the Far Eastern theater of war became an integral part of the world Armageddon.
In this gigantic fight, contributes millions of lives to immobilize a big portion of Japanese might in which gave the Western Allies a free hand to deal with the enemy elsewhere. Equipped more fully with a heroic spirit than with any type of modern arms, we kept on fighting without a respite for eight years against a first-rate power. Finally, in a joint effort with our allies, we brought down on her knees. This crowning success won for the Republic of China world-wide recognition. emerged from the obscurity of a semi-colonial status to her distinguished position as one of the Big Five. Under the leadership of the Kuomintang, had fulfilled the last wish of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Father of the Republic: “the elevation of to a position of freedom and equality in the family of nations."
5. Abrogation of Unequal Treaties
In the middle of the 19th century, had lost all of her vitality and most of her traditional values. In 1840-1842, a war was forced on her by , and in 1856-1860, another one by and . As a result, eleven ports were opened to foreign traders and enormous indemnities, were paid. In view of the inherent weakness of the Celestial Empire, the Western Powers came to the with powerful military and naval machines of modern imperialism both to grab territory and acquire interests under the protection of unequal treaties.
In the last days of the Ching Dynasty, had lost her once tributary kingdoms of , , Tonkin and to the imperialists. Three of her provinces south of the had been picked out as a French sphere of interest. Shantung and the lower Yellow River valley had become a German sphere of influence; the Yangtze valley and the of , a British sphere of influence; North Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, a Russian sphere of influence; and , a Japanese sphere of influence. Moreover, foreigners residing in had the privilege of extraterritoriality. 's national tariff was regulated and administered by representatives of a group of alien Powers. In many important cities, extensive districts had been acquired by foreigners as concessions and settlements. Troops of various Western Powers were stationed in , and the country's resources were largely exploited by foreign capital. In brief, was reduced to a semi-colony. then could not be called an independent state.
To free from the bondage of unequal treaties and from the corrupt administration of the Manchu regime was thus the primary goal of the national revolution. After the proclamation of the Republic, the influence of the imperialistic Powers continued to be dominant. They exploited every opportunity to foster internal dissent and took advantage of the con fusion to improve their respective positions. They aided Yuan Shih-kai in his attempt to stifle the growth of constitutionalism. They helped Chang Hsun in his short-lived coup for the restoration of the Manchu throne. When the National Revolutionary Army was fighting for national unification, the Japanese tried by force to obstruct its march. All these indicated that the revolution could never be brought to full fruition without getting rid of the fetters imposed by the unequal treaties.
With the successful conclusion of the Northern Expedition, the basic foreign policy of the Kuomintang was the abrogation of the unequal treaties. So long as the tariff administration was in the hands of foreign Powers, they could choke off the life of the nation at any time. So long as concessions and settlements existed, they could provide shelter to reactionaries and supply them with funds and arms to disturb national peace and security. So long as they could engineer with impunity civil strife, peace would not be possible and there would not be the freedom to work for our national reconstruction. As soon as the National Government moved its seat of government to Nanking in 1927, the Kuomintang started its campaign to rewrite, on the basis of equality, 's treaties with foreign Powers.
However, it was not until 1942 that the Kuomintang succeeded in getting the nation out of the entanglement of unequal treaties. As a result of the contribution that made in World War II, the big Powers came to realize that had grown to be the stabilizing force of the . Through years of hard work under the leadership of the Kuomintang, was able to stand in the forefront of democratic forces, to stand the challenge of imperialism and contribute her share to victory. On October 10, 1942, the and the took the lead in declaring null and void the unequal treaties which they had signed with the Manchu regime. This friendly act was soon followed by similar action of other Powers.
The abrogation of unequal treaties was a source of great satisfaction to the Kuomintang. It liberated from undue foreign domination and set her free to shape her own destiny. From a pawn in the game of international politics, the Republic of China became the mistress of her own fate. She looked forward thenceonward to an era of freedom of development and reconstruction. She hoped that a free would be able to make her contribution to world culture and world progress. In that prospect, the Kuomintang would also furnish the leadership and the cadres.
6. Development of Constitutional Government
The ultimate goal of the Kuomintang is to institute a constitutional government in on the basis of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles. According to his Outlines of National Reconstruction, the course of the national revolution should be marked off in three stages. The first stage was to be the unification of the country by military force. The second would be a period of political tutelage under the Kuomintang. After this, the country would adopt a constitutional government.
As soon as national unification was effected in 1928, the Kuomintang embarked on various programs which must be carried out in the period of political tutelage. In 1931, it published "The Constitutional Compact of the Republic of China for the Tutelage Period." Even in the teeth of Japanese invasion in , the Kuomintang never slackened its efforts to advance the constitutional movement. In December, 1932, the fourth Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang resolved that a National Assembly be convened and that a draft constitution be drawn up by the Legislative Yuan. Accordingly, the first draft constitution was completed in 1933 and promulgated on May 5, 1936.
In December, 1935, the Kuomintang's fifth C. E. C. resolved at its first plenary session that the National Assembly be convened on November 12, 1936, and that the election of 1,200 National Assembly delegates be completed before October 10, 1936. As some technical difficulties delayed the completion of the election, the convocation of the National Assembly was postponed to November 12, 1937. But the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities in July, 1937 made it again impossible. In July, 1938, in view of the national crisis, the Kuomintang resolved that the People's Political Council be established as a representative body to bridge over the gap left in the chain of development in constitutional government. That body continued in existence till the National Assembly was convoked in March, 1948.
On March 29, 1948, the First National Assembly was convened in . The draft constitution which had been prepared several months before was adopted as the organic law of the land. A new government was subsequently organized in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution to exercise political powers on behalf of the people. The Kuomintang thus not only lived up to its promise of handing over the political power to the people, not I only did it carry out one of the most difficult tasks of the national revolution, it also fulfilled the aspirations of the nation.
's constitutional development suffered several serious setbacks in the 40 years of its history. Without the fighting spirit of the Kuomintang, Yuan Shih-kai and Chang Hsun might have succeeded in their designs in favor of absolute monarchy. Should the Kuomintang be totalitarian in outlook like the Communists, there would be no constitutional government in today. Moreover, without the teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen as its cornerstone, the Constitution that we have might not be so practical and adapted to the needs of the country. The predominant role which the Kuomintang played in the constitutional development of the Republic of China has never been open to question.
7. Mainland Debacle and National Regeneration
Many have often imputed the mainland reverses to faults of the Kuomintang. Without probing the complex of social and political ills accumulated through the ages, they seem to have expected the Kuomintang to cure them with a magic wand in a matter of a score of years. It is true that the Kuomintang had been in power for slightly more than 20 years prior to the fall of the mainland. Should it have enjoyed the same opportunity as that of the Great in or resorted to relentless absolutism as Stalin in Soviet Russia, it could possibly have achieved a good deal to avert the crisis. But it was not given the opportunity or nearly enough time to put the house in order, nor could it condone the use of the bloody weapons of liquidation so prevalent in Soviet Russia. A careful analysis of the situation will place the problem in better perspective.
First, , since the founding of the Republic, has never experienced a short period of recuperation. Prior to the Northern Expedition, the monarchists, royalists and warlords tore the country asunder in continuous civil strifes. Immediately after the National Revolutionary Army captured in 1927, the Communists, with the assistance of Soviet Russia, rebelled. When the National Government was busy with Communist-bandit suppression, the Japanese invaded in 1931 and then started an all-out war in 1937. As a result of 25 years of incessant internecine strife and eight years of strenuous war against , the not too well developed structure of Chinese economy has been rocked to its foundation.
Secondly, an intellectual vacuum was created by the ugly reality of national disgraces and the sense of frustration in the wake' of the May 4 Movement of 1919. Despits its achievements in various fields, the Movement did more than breaking up classical icons. It upset the traditional scale of ethical values in without postulating anything to take its place. To ascribe all evils to the influence of Confucianism was the intellectual fad of the time and to absorb without choice western ideas of every brand was the theme of the Movement. Consequently, all dangerous doctrines rushed in to vitiate the moral strength of society, adding more confusion to the confounded intellectual atmosphere.
Thirdly, years of political unrest, economic stringency, moral disarmament, and intellectual bewilderment created ample opportunities for Communist infiltration and propaganda. As early as in 1924, they ostensibly vowed their allegiance to work for the national revolution under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. When the Northern Expedition rolled up to the Yangtze valley, they rebelled against the Government. In view of the internal confusion and external threat, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek inaugurated the New Life Movement in 1930 to advocate spiritual rejuvenation, to accelerate the tempo of national reconstruction, to bolster the national economy, to tighten up national defense, and to redouble our efforts to stem the tide of Communism. But for the Japanese invasion which set in just in time to save the Red stragglers, the Generalissimo might have brought the program to a successful conclusion.
Fourthly, the war against had given the Reds a further golden opportunity for expansion. In the name of fighting the common foe, they sought, on the one hand, to develop their military strength by attacking the Government troops in the rear and to court, on the other, the favor of the . Under the cloak of reformists, they propagated the gospel of land reforms to cater to the whims of the peasantry and recruited leftist writers such as Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley to impair the prestige and position of the Kuomintang. Such insidious tactics proved to be a great success for the Reds. On February 8, 1941, President Roosevelt wrote to the Generalissimo, saying:
"It appears at 10,000 miles away that the Chinese Communists are what in our country we call Socialists. We like their attitude towards the peasants, towards women and to wards ." Deplorably enough, this attitude of the , persisted in the wartime and throughout the immediate postwar years.
Finally, the favorable attitude of the towards the Chinese Communists contributed much to the tragedy of the loss of the Chinese mainland. In an evaluation of the Far Eastern situation, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Walter S. Robertson wrote a letter to Philip C. Jessup on October 8, 1949 and explained how the mainland debacle had come about. It reads in part:
"It was in the summer of 1945, immediately following V-J Day, that was desperately in need of economic assistance if collapse was to be avoided. Eight years of war had destroyed communications, paralyzed industry and commerce, devastated agricultural lands and brought to the brink of disaster an economy which is only a pauper economy at best. The Russian rape of had removed the sole industrial production left intact by the war. Without prompt outside relief gigantic inflation and economic collapse was inevitable.
"But by this time the Communist propaganda machine with loud echoes in the American press was in full swing, giving voice to the same views that some of our Foreign Service officers had been proclaiming. So with victory now seemingly assured, we suddenly reversed our policy towards the National Government.
"In we poured out our millions to prevent economic collapse to keep the Communists out. In we withheld assistance at the only time it probably had any chance of being effective ... Once this opportunity was lost, the economic, political and military collapse which followed was inevitable.
If the Communists were allowed to stew in their own juice for a time, they would, in my opinion, soon begin to be confronted with the same overwhelming economic and social problems which contributed so largely to the downfall of the National Government."
While the loss of the mainland did set the morale of the general public at a new low, it never daunted the true followers of the Kuomintang. The mainland debacle highlighted .the inherent illness of the body politic; it also brought the insidious intrigues of International Communism into the consciousness of many more people. It is a tragic lesson which we have had to learn the hard way. It will ever stand as a warning post to other farers of the political way. In answer to the new needs of the day, the Kuomintang staged a party reform in August, 1950 which got rid of the corrupt, reactionary, selfish and unstable from its rank and file. It has since then taken drastic steps to strengthen the revolutionary spirit, tighten party discipline and furnish more enlightened political leadership. As a result of its efforts, stands as a show window of democracy in the , a solace to our people on the mainland, and the hope of the nation in the days to come.
8. Reforms and Anti-Communism
When the National Government moved its seat to , the prestige of the Republic of China was on a steady decline. Her friends wished to wait till the dust had settled or just wrote her off right there. Her enemies were relentless in their continuous attacks. Despite adverse comments from our own people and sources abroad, the Kuomintang kept on studying its own past mistakes and striving hare for improvement for the future. Externally, it tried its best to awaken the free peoples of the world to the militant, expansionist and international nature of the Chinese Communists and to warn them of the next Communist moves in and . Internally, it called for political, economic, social and educational reforms in accordance with the fundamental principles laid down by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
In the spirit of overcoming difficulty and self-reliance, the Kuomintang recognized as of basic significance the maxim of "achieving progress through stability and of achieving greater stability through further progress." No progress can be expected unless there is stability and no stability can be maintained without continuous progress. Bearing this principle constantly in mind, the incumbent Kuomintang members have worked devoutly to carry out the Four Year Plan of Industrial Development. With the financial and technical assistance rendered through the U.S. Foreign Economic Aid Program, has not only maintained a stable currency and economy, she has improved production in both agriculture and industry. Above all, with the assistance of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, she has successfully implemented the Land-to-the-Tiller Program to lay a sound foundation for our social economy and to speed up the process of industrialization.
The rule of democracy is not something that can be instituted by the sole effort of the Government. It is something that requires the conscious and cooperative effort of the whole people. One bitter lesson that we have derived from the past 40 years of unrest is that the establishment of a democratic government is predicated upon the establishment of local self-government. In order to make a base for national revival, we have accelerated in the past four years the pace of enforcement of local self-government. We have not only improved the system of voting; we have also trained workers of various levels in the hsien, municipal, village and district administrations and achieved an improved standard of administrative efficiency. All the administrative heads of hsien, municipal, village and district governments are elected by popular suffrage.
Going hand in hand with achievements in economic reconstruction and political democracy, we have made a rewarding effort in rebuilding the revolutionary forces. In addition to measures formulated to mobilize the entire nation, special attention has been paid to combat three evils of the Army: unsound organization, inadequate training and lax discipline. With the assistance of MAAG, we have changed the organization of the three branches of the armed forces in accordance with tactical requirements. As a result, we have increased our combat strength manifold. Now the National Army is the best trained, the best equipped and the most efficient armed force in the to challenge the threat of International Communism.
In 1949-1950, the situation confronting us was extremely unfavorable and dangerous. As a result of the efforts we have made during the last four years, we have convinced the free world that our Anti-Communist and Resist. objective deserves the support of all lovers of freedom. As far back as in 1949, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek called for united action against International Communism in the . Owing to the undercurrent of inter national appeasement, many nations failed to support openly such concerted action. Since the beginning of the Communist aggression in , most free peoples have come to recognize the true nature of International Communism, and have improved their diplomatic relations with us. The People's Anti-Communist Conference recently held at , , is apparently the answer to the demands of the peoples of for a more concrete organization of the anti-Communist will of the peoples. As such, it may prove to be an effective instrument for the further consolidation and extension of the will to freedom of all peoples of Eastern and .
With the international situation gradually developing in our favor and the national strength steadily rejuvenating, we look forward with confidence to the day when we may complete the third mission of the revolution. The return of the ex-POW's from to the fatherland has well demonstrated the growing popular hatred against the Communist traitors. Their choice of the Republic of China augurs well for the support of our compatriots on the mainland when we start the counter-offensive. The full support of the overseas Chinese for the cause of the Kuomintang has strengthened immeasurably our hand in the Anti-Communist and Resist-Russia struggle. The dawn of renaissance cannot be far away. Let us re-dedicate ourselves and work hard for national recovery and national reconstruction.
In reviewing briefly the history of the Kuomintang, we cannot but feel that we have to give a creditable account of ourselves before we may face with honor the memory of the many revolutionary martyrs who had given their lives for the success of the revolutionary cause. Let us not deceive ourselves that our future is a broad and comfortable boulevard. It is anything but that. Let us not fail to rise up to the challenge of each fresh reverse. Let us not be lulled into somnolence by each slight improvement in our circumstance. With our goal ever clearly in view, determined to reach it in spite of all obstructions on the way and realizing our special responsibilities as members of the Kuomintang, we meet the morrow with good cheer, dedication and unquestioning confidence. Under the guidance of our leader, President Chiang Kai-shek, we shall not fail in our mission.