Wang's Move Forces Chiang To Take Reins
SHANGHAI—Greater assumption of responsibility as well as authority on the part of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, who to a large extent has had the
game without the name of dictator over China, is apparently to be the most concrete result of the end of the recent "Wang Ching-wei crisis"
in the National Government. Ever since he helped overcome Hankow in 1927, following the successful Nationalist northern military drive from Canton, and as major factor in the expulsion of Chinese Communists from the Kuomintang (and severance from Soviet Russian
"aid"), General Chiang has, without question, been the one man in the Government whose word was law. Yet he has contrived to maintain a
very detached position which left him free to ordain what he wished and escape a large share of blame for such things as, for example, the current conciliatory policy toward Japan. That the health of Mr. Wang, as concurrently president of the Executive Yuan and Minister for Foreign Affairs, has not been good was beyond question, and this was the excuse given for his resignation effort which drew a flood of other resignations finally threatening complete disruption of the Government. Wang Meets Chiang Mr. Wang had been flown to Tsingtao, the Shantung health resort, in a large American transport plane, and the development of the crisis found him well enough to return to Shanghai by the same conveyance. For some hours it seemed likely that he would insist on meeting General Chiang, who had come
down the Yangtze from his bandit suppression campaign at Chengtu, only in Hangchow, a neutral ground, rather than in the politics-ridden
atmosphere of Nanking. But he yielded and went to Nanking, with the result that he presently withdrew both resignations and the "crisis"
was over, for his colleagues likewise decided to stay. The one thing upon which every observer seems to have felt assured is that Mr. Wang's ill-health was in some degree due to the heavy pressure of both duties and worry over his peculiar position in regard to
Japanese policy: and that virtually the one thing which could have induced him to keep on would have been a pledge by General Chiang
that he would spend more time in the capital. Extraordinary indeed has been the Chiang position. While it would appear that the dominating point in the Chinese political machine would be the presidency of the Executive Yuan, the fact has remained that General Chiang has actually dominated in his position of chairman of the National Military Council. Under China's provisional constitution, a complex governmental machinery functions with the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang as the center of highest authority in a system wherein the
party is superior to the Government (the committee is a political instrument of the National Congress, actually the supreme organ but meeting only every two or three years). This is the fact; in name the governmental and legislative functions are exercised through the Central
Political Council which is responsible for the formulation of all important foreign and domestic national policies. Mr. Wang's position as president of the Executive Yuan has been compared to a premiership, but it is not actually so. The Executive Yuan Is really a quasi-cabinet not constitutionally possessed of supreme political authority. It has always been necessary for Mr. Wang to seek agreement on policies from General Chiang and others who were fellow members of the presidium of the Central Political Council and of the Standing Committee.
In short, the executive of the Government functions under a very cumbersome system in which the underlying principle is to obtain
general agreement by a majority of important men on matters of policy. Yet the public has naturally fixed responsibility on specific individuals, notably Mr. Wang, despite the clear fact that without the concurrence of General Chiang and others it would have been quite impossible for him to carry out such policies as that of conciliation toward Japan. While no one has had any definite Japanese policy to suggest, save the "fight to death" policy of extremists out of the Government (notably the wandering Gen. Tsai Ting-kai of "Shanghai war" fame), Mr. Wang has been subjected to a tremendous amount of criticism for his policy of working with Japan. But General
Chiang, regarded in many quarters as not only agreeing with this policy but actually the prime instigator of it, has busied himself in bandit and Communist warfare in Kiangsi and Szechuen Provinces, remote from the political arena, and has virtually escaped such punishment.
At the same time there has been the somewhat extraordinary spectacle of a constant flood of telegraphic orders from General Chiang 
as chairman of the National Military Council, instructing all manner of things having to do with domestic policy—use of compulsory
labor on dike and road work, establishment of public cemeteries, measures for flood relief, various reconstruction and New Life projects.
Decisiveness Needed These instructions had the full force of mandates, obeyed by everyone without question, although they, were either partly or wholly out of the scope of his avowed office, and based on no discoverable legal authorization under the provisional
constitution. Energy and decisiveness are rare enough in China, so that many quarters greatly admire General Chiang for this willingness to go, ahead and make his desires known. But from the standpoint of his associates, laboring in the political spotlight at Nanking, all too conscious that policies concurred in by General Chiang or even initiated by him were bringing censure upon them with no effective "comeback," the position must at times have seemed intolerable. Thus with perfect honesty Mr. Wang may well have come to the
conclusion that his health and morale could not stand this continuous grinding between the millstones of public opinion on the one
hand, and General Chiang's absentee landlordship on the other. With General Chiang present in the capital, obviously an active factor in the formulation of policies, the hands of Mr. Wang and other would be immensely strengthened.