China’s Assembly

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25448, 20 March 1948, Page 6

China’s Assembly

The machinery for democratic government in China, under the constitution formally promulgated on Christmas Day, is being slowly set up. As a cable message this week reported, the Chinese Government expects the first elected National Assembly to meet at the end of this month to appoint the President and Vice-President of the Chinese Republic. It is four months since the elections to the Assembly were held, and even now few more than half

the Assembly seats have been declared filled. This slow movement is no doubt due largely to the many obstacles to a smooth election process. With the Chinese in the Com-munist-controlled areas excluded, of course, there were still 27d,000,000 eligible voters, of whom 150,000,000, or three times the number who vote in the United States, actually voted. To the difficulties of conducting elections on such a scale in a country deficient in communications and without election experience were added others, before and at the polls, arising from China’s widespread illiteracy, The procedure finally hammered out, which involved open voice’voting and resort to official recorders for marking ballot papers, could hardly he said to be satisfactory, though it might have been difficult to avoid. And it was, of course, even more unsatisfactory if it is true, as some hareful observers have reported, that ■> three parties in the Government, the Kuomintang, the Young China Party, and the Social Democrats, entered the elections in an agreement that could only signify that they were unwilling to let a national vote determine the membership of the new administrative organs under the constitution. It is true that errors were admitted: “ silly ” and “ ghoss blunders ”, according to Chang Li-sheng, the Minister of the Interior; and the admission, perhaps, leaves some hope for the future.

The powers of the National Assembly, which is to contain about 3000 delegates elected on a basis of geography and occupation, are limited. They include the power to recall ■as .well as to elect the President and Vice-President, to amend the constitution and to ratify amendments proposed by the (elected) Legislative Yuan, which in turn will decide upon statutory or budgetary bills and other measures concerning important affairs of state, such as declaring war and concluding treaties. Power to initiate most measures remains, however, with the President, elected for six years, and the Executive Yuan, or cabinet, appointed by the President, leaving the authority of the legislature much more limited ip fact than that of, say the United States Congress or the British Parliament. It is true that the constitution retains some features, such as the Control Yuan, or Censor, reminiscent of traditional Chinese governmental practice; but on the whole it provides encouraging evidence of China’s recent, somewhat slow, perhaps, but steady, progress in political theory. Whether it will ever become more than an outline of good intentions depends, of course, on many factors. Some of them were revealed in November’s Assembly elections. Others, not less important, are clear enough. Unless the present Government is willing to go dll the way in ending what is virtually single party control over China’s military and financial power, unless all loyal Chinese are given practical guarantees of political equality, unless the principles of democratic government are observed in local, no less than in central, government, not even the most liberal constitution can mean very much. The working of the Assembly will be watched for signs of practical progress.