The Communist Party of China is int present interdicted but would be a fallacy to suggest that it has no vitality. The discipline which the Russians introduced has been strengthened by the necessity for secrecy since the Party Purification Movement was inaugurated. The Communists are active; thei programme is clear; their tactics are certain. The Russians have provided them with an ideology and 8 mode of procedure which makes them, in some respects, even more powerful as a political organisation than the Kuomintang itself. The fact that membership is secret, that even the Kuomintang has of discovering who are members of the Communist Party of China, strengthens its power of opposition and its capacity to undermine the Kuomintang.
The Right Wing is scattered. /Afost of the members have gone abroad. They admit that the Russian programme and tactics are unsuitable for China, but they also maintain that it is impossible for the Kuomintang to recede to the position previous to the 1924 Party, Congress. They are in search of revised programme and 2 new: party, organization basically suited to China yet grounded in the experience of western countries which have gone through revolutionary, since the Great War. igations that they must return to Chinese methods and that the political developments in Europe and Amer-fea are unsuited for adaptation to China. Or they may evolve something which will force them to organise new Kuomintang or a new party, in opposition to the dominant Contre. That, of course, is a mere guess. They may return to the fold after their visits to Europe and America and serve on the Central Executive Committee: with the Centre.
Kuomintang Vitality ficant fact is that the ing is by no means without vitality. During November and December, the spirit of the Chinese people and of the Kuomintang members was more depressed than at any time since 1924. It was even felt that the Kuomintang would shortly disappear from Chinese affairs, except as a body of protest centring its activities in Kuangtung.
state of dejection, the apparently renew-
The lowest ebb in the party's history was the moment of the appearance of the correspondence in the vernacular press between Mr. Wa Tee-hui and Mr. Wang Ching-wei in December. From that time of hopelessness, the Centre has accede ed to power and has brought a renewed vigour to the Party. The 4th Plenary Session was perhaps illegal and has undoubtedly accentuated the split between the Right Wing and the Centre, but its mere meeting, the assumption of responsibility and the proof of the continuity of the existence of the party, has quieted the murmurings of defeatism. It is wrong to assume that the Kuomintang has almost disappeared, for all political calculations based upon such ar. assumption will lead to error. The fact is that the Kuo-provinces indirectly. This is a huge slice of China and for good or evil, any party which can make its will felt in so much of China, must be taken seriously in any underatani ing of the problems facing China;
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.